[Duellist_D]

Keep this in mind when referring to magic skills:

SHOOTING
Skill (15) + Agility (12)+ mods (+4) = 31 dice.

this is pretty much the max.

From this, Damage is determined.

MAGIC:

Spellcasting (15) + Magic (unlimited!*) + Mods (unlimited!**)

There is no max, as magic has no upper cap. And since magic has no upper cap, Foci have no upper cap.

something doesn't add up here at face value, I'm curious how you get these numbers

max skill 12 + specialization 2 + Aptitude (14 karma btw) 1 + max attribute 8 + exceptional attribute (another 14 karma so you can't have both) 1 + max augmentations 4 = 28
only a 3 dice difference but still ... ??

while magic techincally has no upper limit considering that initiation is required to go above 6 (7 with exceptional attribute I know) and initiate grade can not exceed you magic rating, plus factor in bonding cost and availabilty ratings of foci ... at what point do you pass the point of worthless investment of karma? ... anyone plot this curve by chance?

Those numbers are pretty much the max that can be squeezed out, and even then, with a lot of work.

Skill (15) comes from the max of 12, +2 for specialization, and aptitude. (You can always buy traits and qualities after character generation. Just costs double)

Agility (12) comes from an elf (7 max normally) +1 for execptional attribute, +4 for max moding (however you choose to get there)

+4 modifier bonus addmittedly was rather abritrary. Smartlink for +2, and the other +2 for something/anything I missed (there are alot of little mods for firearms that can give a situational bonus)

And yes it depends on Karma, but that is not the point. The point is that there IS a limit on mundanes that isn't there on awakened.

No matter how much karma a Sammy has, he can not break that 31 dice limit*

But an awakened can continue to 'throw karma' into his dice pools through initiation and magic increases.

It there a point of diminishing returns? I would say yes, but where that point is, is going to change from table to table.....

And DECREASING the number of skills doesn't help with this issue, as the LESS skills there are, the LESS incentive a mage has to invest his karma in skills, and quicker ALL skills get 'maxed out'.... which leads you down additional problems.

But, like I said before: if you don't like how many skills there are, houserule to your heart's content. Just be aware of the consiquences.

Highest possible mundane Skill would get even a bit higher:
(Note: this is a huge money and karma sink and way down the road of diminishing returns. Going 70-80% of it is stil borderline practicable though).

Skill: Automatics.

Nocturna with Aptitude and Genetic Optimization: Agi 12 (note: those points don' need to be filled up, we just need it as a theoretical base frame to make the base for our Cyberlimbs. 4 Cyberlimbs at Agi 12 + 3 Agi Enhancements + Redliner (Note: i assume that this doesn't fall under the general +4 cap. If you assume otherwise, substract one die from the total), all of which are optimized for the specific skill, giving +4 Limit, + 2 Skill.
+2 from Smartlink, +1 from Reflex Recorder, +1 from Synch (after the first action), +13 from Skill and +2 from Spec.

12+3+2+2+2+1+1+13+2

So we are at 38 Dice, 36 if you go for the other interpretation of redliner.

But wait, there is more!

"Take Aim" with smartlink gives a max bonus of WIL/2.

So we take the 6 Base WIL, add genetic Optimization for another one (Aptitude is only allowed once), Cyber Singularity Seeker for another +2 and  Rating 1 Adrenaline Pump + Pain Editor for the last two, taking us to WIL 11.
Add a Rating 3 Tremor Reducer and the max Bonus for Aiming goes to 11/2 + 3 = 9.
(Pixies could cheese out an additIonal Die due to their natural max of 8 in WIL, but alas, i refuse to do anything with these pests).

Add this to our pool from above and the ceiling for a cyber mundane would be 45 Dice for a single shot (or 43 if you don't allow the Bonus from Redliner to go up to +5 and take synch out of the equation).

Melee Fighters could use "Revels in Murder" for an additional Die, but loose out on all the Smartlink bonuses.


Now, if you put all this into an adept with a Mentor spirit, you could add an additional 17/2= 9 Dice from the Adept Power and 2 if you take an appropriate (Toxic) Totem, bringing you to 56 Dice.
Letting a Technomancer optimise your Smartcrap might also give you some bonus Dice, but i know nothing about these.

Its already on a decent level though and if you still want more you could always get yourself infected with a nice Dose of HMMV to increase the Attributes even more.

[Coyote]

"@Banshee
Good question I was more wondering at what karma point a mage passes a mundane in terms of how many dice they can roll so I had an idea how likely it was to hit it (if its at say 190 that's very different to needing 1,400). However at what point the karma investment to raise magic when you have to also initiate first hmmm . . ."

That would be very hard to answer theoretically, because you have to ask: at what point is paying 60 Karma to increase Magic to 12 worth more to the character than learning 12 new spells? And that would be different in different campaigns, depending on what kind of dice pools are the characters facing. If you're consistently outpooling the enemies with 11 Magic, you might prefer the 12 spells. If you're not, then you might feel the need for another die to be more important than the spells. So I'm not sure how someone would really answer that other than making 10-20 mage characters with different priorities and seeing at what point do they break the 'Muggle Level' in their dice pools.

[Rosa]

All this math is fine and all, but you all seem to forget limits ( something mages have had since 4th ed. i might add. It' doesn't really matter if i have a theoretically unlimited dice pool, if i cast a force 6 spell, i'm limited to 6 successes period ( unless using reagents or edge of course )...and so on. Yeah maybe mundanes can "only" achieve a dice pool of somehwere between 38-45 or something but they too are limited eventhough mundanes in contrast to mages have more ways of raising the limit with gear and such. So to get my 6 successes i basically only "need" a dice pool of somewhere in the vicinity of 20-24 and i'm pretty much certain to get my hits. So it might be that on paper mages look overpowered with that theoretically unlimited dice pool, but in reality it will never be a factor as the game is now.

I do however agree that at some point through character progression a mage becomes quite powerful and maybe even more powerful than the mundanes in the team, however in my experience that has more to do with sheer versatility than huge dice pools, at some point after having gone through initiations, learned many new spells and raised spellcasting and summoning, as well as magic and drain stat, then yes they can be rather hard to deal with, on the other hand they also have more weaknesses than the mundane runners on the team. Enemy mages with spell defense, spirits being sicced on them, background counts, generally lower dodge and soak dice than the mundan team mates oh and surprise, mages generally don't deal well with being unprepared. I know that mundanes would also suffer by being surprised of course, but due to the aforementioned generally lower dodge and soak pools, it hits mages pretty hard, i know from personal experience 

[Reaver]

The limit of a spell is force.
Force is tied to Magic for determining drain.
Initiation ranks add to drain resistance with a single metamagic quality.

Thus, initiation helps to resist drain, cast larger spells, and have a larger limits...

@Coyote,
Which brings us back around to dice pool and perceptions of dice pools.
There is a large and vocal community here that insists you need a dice pool of midteens to low twenties (14-22) to effective (or professional, useful, good, or whatever the descriptor of the week is....). Don't believe me, visit the character creation forums.

Seriously, someone's 'Average 17 Year old' has a logic higher then 90% of the people on the planet?  Come on! Every 17 year old I have ever met I have wanted to hit with a shovel -to hopefully BEAT some sense into them.... Ihat 17 year old, on a high school education is a better programmer then 70% of the 'professionals' 

Perceptions.

Look, play the game however you want to play it, with whatever dice pool levels you want. IDGIAF.

But the level of contradictory whining by the same people, who usually haven't taken the time to learn or read all of the rules and history...... Just WOW.


So the Biggest agruments I have seen, boil down to 2 camps of basic thought.

Camp 1: there are too many skills, and because there are too many skills, I can build my super elite character at the aritrary dice pool minimums I have arbitrarily set.

Camp 2: skills don't reflect the vast range of knowledge that a person has, thus we need more skills and skill points so my character can have all these arbitrary skills, that may do nothing mechanically for the game, at an arbitrary value so I can be effective at the arbitrary skills that probably have no bearing on 90% of the game.


Well, Solution for both sides!
House rule it! The book tells you its a frame work, and a frame work only. If you don't like something you are free to change it! And you don't even need MY or the writers, or the editors permission! They have it to you in the introduction! (You did read that right?)

The only time what the book says matters verbatum is Missions play. And that isn't going to change (Heck, Missions play it can be argued is a dumbed down version of SR, what with banned qualities, racial meta types, and what not...)

[Senko]

To be fair a lot of us who came in on 5th don't have the resources from earlier editions to read the history and try to do the best we can with no idea of something is (a) still in effect and just hasn't been mentioned or (b) is not in effect as its been removed but that hasn't been explicictly stated so when we go by the 5th ed books someone tells us we're wrong. I'm still trying to find several magic resources that were recommended from earlier editions as reading (mainly a time constraint) but even if I do find them I wont know if that's been retconned or not unless there's a mention somewhere in 5th ed that either supports the earlier view or contradicts it. Espeically when said contradiction is not likely to be a clear "This is no longer in effect" but simply "X is Y" as part of the general rules. There was a debate in a thread I started awhile back about how spirits view the world that was eventually resolved when people realized one group was arguing they still saw it as they had in previous editions when there's ONE sentence in one paragraph that describes how they do view things which changes how they view things. Not a clear "This has changed in this edition" but a "Spirits see in X manner" and if you miss that because you have read the history you wouldn't realize it'd changed.

[Blue Rose]

The limit of a spell is force.
Force is tied to Magic for determining drain.
Initiation ranks add to drain resistance with a single metamagic quality.

Thus, initiation helps to resist drain, cast larger spells, and have a larger limits...

Worse than that.

A lot of spells care only about hits, not force.

Limit can be superseded by reagent or edge use on lower-force spells, allowing you to artificially deflate drain values, removing drain as a limiting factor much of the time.

Wanna get real crazy?  Shapechange into a monkey.  Get 20 hits.  Add +20 to your agility.  Pick up a rifle.

[Rift_0f_Bladz]

The limit of a spell is force.
Force is tied to Magic for determining drain.
Initiation ranks add to drain resistance with a single metamagic quality.

Thus, initiation helps to resist drain, cast larger spells, and have a larger limits...

Worse than that.

A lot of spells care only about hits, not force.

Limit can be superseded by reagent or edge use on lower-force spells, allowing you to artificially deflate drain values, removing drain as a limiting factor much of the time.

Wanna get real crazy?  Shapechange into a monkey.  Get 20 hits.  Add +20 to your agility.  Pick up a rifle.

Yup and yup.

Also, to whom it concerns, when adepts get brought into a skill pool equation you are no longer talking mundane.

[Senko]

I'm pretty sure I saw an errata that shapechange obeys the usual +4 to a stat max bonus. If it doesn't shapechange specifies a voluntary target so you could just as easily shapechange the street sam into a monkey in which case who really cares since its the party that benefits?

[Blue Rose]

There is an errata that alters how Shapechange works from, "I got 20 hits.  +20 to everything!" to, "I got 20 hits.  I have 20 points to spread around physical stats."  It makes no mention of augmented limits.

And also changes critter form from letting you change into one mundane critter, like a hellhound or cockatrice, to one mundane critter, like a dog or cat, and it now has a lower drain code.

I believe Shapechange has the essence bug, so it would be cast at a penalty, and I somehow suspect the super cybered up street sam would be a little put out at, "Don't worry, Mister Tank; Imma turn you into a monkey so you can shoot better!"  Druids tend to take to that sort of thing better than the bastard spawn of Gojira and a trash compactor.

[Dinendae]

..."Don't worry, Mister Tank; Imma turn you into a monkey so you can shoot better!"  Druids tend to take to that sort of thing better than the bastard spawn of Gojira and a trash compactor.

[Blue Rose]

..."Don't worry, Mister Tank; Imma turn you into a monkey so you can shoot better!"  Druids tend to take to that sort of thing better than the bastard spawn of Gojira and a trash compactor.

...

I so need to make that a thing.  Lots of casemods and Distinctive Style!

[Bull]

I guess it also depends quite a bit on whether you expect the campaign you make a character for to be either long or short.

This is an interesting topic, and is one that came up during SR5 development amongst the freelancers.  We were discussing character growth, specifically a combination of "How much karma should characters get per session", how expensive it should be to upgrade skills or attributes, and why we were limiting starting characters to skills of 6, but having the rankings go up to 12. 

I was making the argument that we wanted characters to have room to grow in a long term campaign, and that if it was too cheap to upgrade or we handed out too much karma by default, that characters would rapidly be capping out or simply outgrowing campaigns too quickly.  I was citing my experiences with games I've played in and run, where the games lasted 2 or 3 years (or in the case of the original Bull the Ork Decker, 7+) and characters accumulated hundreds of karma.

And another freelancer was shocked at this.  He had never played in or seen a game that had lasted for more than a year, nor had players or characters ever break 100 karma. 

It really drove home to me how different campaigns can be.  I frankly consider a game to be just getting settled and rolling at 100 karma, and I never sit down to a game expecting it to only run a few game sessions.  I always go in as if I will be playing this character or running the campaign for years.  But obviously, there are others with different expectations and experiences.

[Senko]

Hmm your right I guess I must have just gotten the idea from somewhere that it doesn't bypass the normal limits on augmenting a skill.

[Blue Rose]

It is not an unreasonable houserule for those that want to avoid 40P lion maulings after two spells.

[Tym Jalynsfein]

I guess it also depends quite a bit on whether you expect the campaign you make a character for to be either long or short.

This is an interesting topic, and is one that came up during SR5 development amongst the freelancers.  We were discussing character growth, specifically a combination of "How much karma should characters get per session", how expensive it should be to upgrade skills or attributes, and why we were limiting starting characters to skills of 6, but having the rankings go up to 12. 

I was making the argument that we wanted characters to have room to grow in a long term campaign, and that if it was too cheap to upgrade or we handed out too much karma by default, that characters would rapidly be capping out or simply outgrowing campaigns too quickly.  I was citing my experiences with games I've played in and run, where the games lasted 2 or 3 years (or in the case of the original Bull the Ork Decker, 7+) and characters accumulated hundreds of karma.

And another freelancer was shocked at this.  He had never played in or seen a game that had lasted for more than a year, nor had players or characters ever break 100 karma. 

It really drove home to me how different campaigns can be.  I frankly consider a game to be just getting settled and rolling at 100 karma, and I never sit down to a game expecting it to only run a few game sessions.  I always go in as if I will be playing this character or running the campaign for years.  But obviously, there are others with different expectations and experiences.

I have the same expectations from a starting campaign. I expect to play for hundreds of Karma at the least. Yes, occasionally, it is nice to get a one off for a few sessions or so, but ultimately, I want character development and growth. Our SR5 Campaign has been going on since it came out, and we are running at about 315 Karma for the long term, non-dead characters that started the campaign - Decent growth with what I would call average to low Karma Rewards (with an occasional windfall), and enforced training times. I would say the Skill diffusion works pretty well, but then, I am in the camp that more skills is better than less skills. I absolutely hate the characters that come out of chargen with 4-5 skills maxed out and no support skills, nor Knowledge skills showing life experience prior to campaign start.. In that regard, I agree with Senko, Like Paths work amazingly well.