[argouru]

So I was reading the 6e rulebook and have some questions...

Is the damage from a direct attack spell the same as with indirect spells only they cannot use Body to resist the damage? The wording in the book is rather vague. Say I have a magic of 4 Would the damage of the spell be 2 per hit ir only 1 damage for each 5 and/or 6 rolled?

On page 132 there's a box containing an example of casting a fireball at a group. The pc used has a magic score of 5, but the damage is listed as 3P, but with 2 net hits the damage increases to 5P. Is this a typo? Since the base damage is 3p, shouldn't the 2 hits equal 6P damage?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Direct spell damage is equal to the net hits. But it can't be soaked.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Indirect start at magic/2, direct start at 0.  Indirect gets a defense test+a soak. Direct doesn't get soaked, just a defense test. Unless you are blowing massive edge, or rolling a crazy high defense pool direct attack spells are pretty bad without a ton of drain from boosting the spell.

Magic 6
 Lets say you have a very nice spell casting pool of 21 dice, you get 7 hits, rando security guard probably drops that by 2 hits for 5 net hits.

Indirect they are soaking 8 probably taking 7. 

Direct they just take 5.

As your magic goes up base damage goes up, and your dice pool so potential damage scales as well. So direct falls behind even further. Against enemies with large soak pools direct can be useful in comparison.

That's a massive starting pool for a mage. Probably out of the possible range, but I may be missing a die. Many guns would get you to one shot kill range against rando guard with a smaller die pool. Not saying don't use them, they have their place. But you probably want to risk drain and amp them if you do, target already heavily damaged enemies(good tactic anyways). Or go with a different spell like mind control.

[penllawen]

I ran numbers on this the other day... I agree with SK. I don't know why anyone would take manabolt, or any other direct damage spell, in 6e.

(Context: Alice is casting mana bolt at Bob.)

Let’s make Optimised Alice. Bump her drain stats to 6 and 5 and her Sorcery skill to 6. And we’ll weaken Bob to the absolute lowest goon in the CRB, with all 2s for his stats. Then run it again.

Starting with her drain roll and working backwards: she now rolls 11 dice, so has a good chance of taking no drain from a non-amped manabolt, with its drain value of 4. But amping it would quite likely hurt her, so we won't do that. Her spellcasting roll is now 11 dice, for four (being generous) expected hits. Bob’s resistance roll is 4 dice, for one hit (again, being generous to Alice.) Net three hits. Bob takes 3 boxes; Alice takes none. Hmm. Not exactly overwhelming.

(BTW how is amping up a combat spell in 6e not the same basic thing as selecting the force in 5e? “Streamlined” my arse. But I digress.)

Let’s make Supercharged Alice. We’ll give her drain stats of 7 and 5, two levels of Initiation, and Centering. We’ll increase her Magic stat to 7 and a power focus at rating 2. We’ll also give her Increase Attribute at +4 on both her drain stats, sustained without penalty via Focused Concentration. That’s an impressive 22 dice, for an average of 7 hits. Let’s say she amps the spell twice, meaning she’s resisting 8 points of drain. Her spellcasting roll is now 15 dice, for 5 expected hits. Less Bob’s 1 expected hit to resist. Bob takes 6 boxes, Alice maybe takes 1.

Hmm some more. It's hitting hard now, but golly, Alice had to do a lot of work to get there. And don’t forget Bob is a compete schlub in this scenario.

Let’s say instead Ordinary Alice has an Ares Predator and can scrape up 6 dice in Firearms. She shoots Bob, with two expected hits. Bob’s defence test has one expected hit, for one net hit to Alice. Bob now rolls to soak 3P damage on Body 2, receiving 3 or 4 boxes of damage. Instead of facing drain, Alice has used one bullet.

I’m not seeing why Alice would ever spent five karma on learning manabolt.

Edit: forgot to add. In moving from 5e to 6e, when resisting physical damage, characters lost their armour, so dice pools went down from circa 12-20 to circa 3-6. Big step down. OK. But at the same time, when resisting direct combat spells, characters now get to add intuition to their willpower, approximately doubling their dice pool. This seems inconsistent.
...
Reaver, you mentioned summoning. Let's look at that. We know manabolt has a drain value of 4 before amping up. When summoning, the spirit rolls Force x2 dice, and the drain value is equal to the hits it rolls. So that means, someone, somewhere, said "yes, this manabolt spell is correctly balanced at the same drain as summoning a Force 6 spirit." Which, honestly, what the fuck. This makes no sense to me at all.

[argouru]

So combat spells (damaging ones) are pretty poor in this game and it would be better to stick with guns for ranged combat?

[penllawen]

Direct spells are weak. Indirect are not as bad.

Consider manabolt, as mentioned above, compared to lightning bolt. MB does 0 base damage. LB does (Magic/2) base damage. In both cases the spell casting roll is the same, and the resistance roll is similar. But for a Magic 6 caster, LB is doing 3 more boxes of damage.

Now for soak. MB doesn’t have this, LB does. But if your target has lower than Body 6, you’re still going to come out ahead on that roll, on average.

Lightning bolt has one extra point of drain to consider, but again: you’d need to amp up manabolt 3x (at 6 boxes more drain) to equalise it to LB’s base damage. So I think LB still comes out a long way ahead, most of the time. Especially as it also gives your target the Zapped status, to boot.

[Michael Chandra]

So combat spells (damaging ones) are pretty poor in this game and it would be better to stick with guns for ranged combat?

Something that was there more explicit in the past, is that Direct spells require LOS, while Indirect also require effect: You can't cast a fireball through a window (and a weak gun will also fail against a strong window), but Direct spells could hit someone through a window/mirror.

This difference isn't made explicit in SR6 rules, so a GM can rule otherwise. They may also rule that in SR6, you only need LOS to cast at a spot and the fireball sparks from there. But against single-target spells, the advantage of a Direct spell may be (nothing solid in rules either way) that you can cast them through windows / mirrors.

(Note that this logic helps expose that Powerbolt is weird: By all logic, it should be an Indirect spell.)

And of course against Hardened Armor, you definitely want a Direct spell.

[penllawen]

And of course against Hardened Armor, you definitely want a Direct spell.

Mana bolt is now officially an anti-shark spell I guess. (HT u/D4rvill for pointing this out to me. I just checked and no, it wasn't fixed in the January errata, mundane 6e sharks are still bulletproof.)

Edit: In fact... in the entire 6e CRB, hardened armour only comes up for (a) sharks (b) dracoforms and (c) materialised spirits in the context of Immunity to Normal Weapons. ItNW doesn't grant defence against spells anyway, and if you're hunting dragons you're in over your head.

So yeah. It's literally for sharks.

[Lormyr]

SR6: where even the errata's errata needs errata.

[penllawen]

SR6: where even the errata's errata needs errata.

SR5's fourth printing (2016) still says that Matrix Perception can tell you about the target's commode. And I just found that typo mentioned on Dumpshock at least as far back as 2014.

Shadowrun deserves better than this.

[Lormyr]

Right?

I want to make it clear that I am not a person that wants Shadowrun to fail. It's my favorite game. I want it to thrive and be around forever.

That said, I wonder if any of line producers / quality controllers / shot callers ever look back and are just plain embarrassed. I know I would be if I had allowed things to print in this state, and then not corrected it in a timely manner.

[Hobbes]

SR6: where even the errata's errata needs errata.

Totally knew about the shark, was discussed in passing around Hardened Armor and ItNW.  I thought it was funny.  I don't think we even made a recommendation to change the Shark entry.

[Lormyr]

Sharks: better than you since prehistoric times!

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

SR6: where even the errata's errata needs errata.

Totally knew about the shark, was discussed in passing around Hardened Armor and ItNW.  I thought it was funny.  I don't think we even made a recommendation to change the Shark entry.

My headcanon explanation for it is the hardened armor represents how tough it is to hurt things when you're underwater.  If a sharknado deposits a shark into your living room, then I wouldn't give it its hardened armor versus your shotgun while thrashing on your coffee table.

[Michael Chandra]

I discovered that puppy on the 3th of August. Sharks are awesome. I see it as a special blessing from the Sea Serpent.