[markelphoenix]

Ok, Updated.

[Hawke]

Oh and you NEED counterspell skill.... You MUST have this.  Others can have their own opinion, but imagine you having all this power, able to make someone do whatever you want with Control Actions, and a mage does this to you... and now he has the power of 2 mages.  Geek the mage?  Yeah your team will be killing you first.

Counterspell helps reduce the "damage" of a spell before your resistance dice take effect.  And you can protect your team.. or do an active counterspell if your samurai has already been affected.

You need to make concession for this.

[markelphoenix]

Oh and you NEED counterspell skill.... You MUST have this.  Others can have their own opinion, but imagine you having all this power, able to make someone do whatever you want with Control Actions, and a mage does this to you... and now he has the power of 2 mages.  Geek the mage?  Yeah your team will be killing you first.

Counterspell helps reduce the "damage" of a spell before your resistance dice take effect.  And you can protect your team.. or do an active counterspell if your samurai has already been affected.

You need to make concession for this.

Dropped to Mag 5, Added Counter Spelling 2, added your Negative Quality Ideas. Added positive quality Aptitude Spellcasting and upped it to 7 [illusion +2]

[Hawke]

Nice, you gained 11 BP with that move.

Just keep in mind you dropped by 1 point for binding, summoning , etc also.  But with a power focus 4 item... you are already ahead of the power curve.

I still like edge, but maybe one of the heavy hitters can comment, as I am still novice with shadowrun in comparison, but no stranger to rpgs.

[markelphoenix]

I dropped Counter Spelling to 1, figured Power Foci and Mag rating would make up for it. Added Mentor Spirit Trickster, upped my contacts rating and loyalty

[TheNarrator]

Actually, a high Magic and Power Focus doesn't help with Counterspelling... not for the most important uses, anyway. You roll Magic + Counterspelling to dispell sustained magical effects, but when it comes to Spell Defense--protecting yourself and your teammates from enemy magic--you only get to add the Counterspelling skill itself to the resistance roll.

Personally, I think you need to get your Counterspelling from 1 to 4 (12 BP) more than you need to get Spellcasting from 6 to 7 (14 BP). Oherwise your first encounter with an enemy mage may go quite badly.

[ShinigamiWolf]

I would have to say, while I agree that edge is a lovely thing to have for back up purposes...edge 1 starting off really isn't horrible. Your GM isn't likely to throw party wipers at you from the very beginning lest he have to deal with more work of approving a whole nother back of new characters and possibly lose a player or two for being too rough. Edge 1 costs you nothing, so it's a freebie to help you on a critical moment you see in a run. Awesome on that, buying edge 2 and 3 only costs your 25 karma as opposed to a 20 bp. It's cheaper and easier to get your skills from bp then to deal with you may not get your extra dice for a whole couple of runs based on bad learn rolls. Anything above three and you might as well write into your character story that he's an extremely lucky man in life (Which if your wanted, have amnesia and other such attributes really isn't true...unless you're trying to say that he's lucky he's alive instead of dead which is arguable.) I'm honestly happy with 3, it's pretty good to keep you good in those critical moments without making you seem like a number kind of guy and gives you enough to keep your character alive and healthy.

[Hawke]

Actually, a high Magic and Power Focus doesn't help with Counterspelling... not for the most important uses, anyway. You roll Magic + Counterspelling to dispell sustained magical effects, but when it comes to Spell Defense--protecting yourself and your teammates from enemy magic--you only get to add the Counterspelling skill itself to the resistance roll.

Personally, I think you need to get your Counterspelling from 1 to 4 (12 BP) more than you need to get Spellcasting from 6 to 7 (14 BP). Oherwise your first encounter with an enemy mage may go quite badly.

Actually the focus does affect counterspell.  It affects any test where the magic attribute is involved. Page 200 under Power Foci in the Core book.

Yes, you have to burn a free action to defend against magic against someone else.  But always have to be in line of sight.  No action is required when you are defending yourself.


Sweet another negative.

[Lethe]

Actually, a high Magic and Power Focus doesn't help with Counterspelling... not for the most important uses, anyway. You roll Magic + Counterspelling to dispell sustained magical effects, but when it comes to Spell Defense--protecting yourself and your teammates from enemy magic--you only get to add the Counterspelling skill itself to the resistance roll.

Personally, I think you need to get your Counterspelling from 1 to 4 (12 BP) more than you need to get Spellcasting from 6 to 7 (14 BP). Oherwise your first encounter with an enemy mage may go quite badly.

Actually the focus does affect counterspell.  It affects any test where the magic attribute is involved. Page 200 under Power Foci in the Core book.

That's what he said, but you don't use magic for spell defense, which is indeed the most important application of that skill. A total waste in my eyes...

Also Spellcasting from 6 to 7 costs 18 BP. 10 BP for the quality and 8 BP (double cost) to raise it from 6 to 7.

[TheNarrator]

Actually, a high Magic and Power Focus doesn't help with Counterspelling... not for the most important uses, anyway. You roll Magic + Counterspelling to dispell sustained magical effects, but when it comes to Spell Defense--protecting yourself and your teammates from enemy magic--you only get to add the Counterspelling skill itself to the resistance roll.

Personally, I think you need to get your Counterspelling from 1 to 4 (12 BP) more than you need to get Spellcasting from 6 to 7 (14 BP). Oherwise your first encounter with an enemy mage may go quite badly.

Actually the focus does affect counterspell.  It affects any test where the magic attribute is involved. Page 200 under Power Foci in the Core book.

That's what he said, but you don't use magic for spell defense, which is indeed the most important application of that skill. A total waste in my eyes...

Also Spellcasting from 6 to 7 costs 18 BP. 10 BP for the quality and 8 BP (double cost) to raise it from 6 to 7.

I'd completely forgotten that it was double cost for the 7th rank. That just makes my point even more valid: for the cost of that one extra die, you could get four skill ranks and have a couple BP left over.

And you don't add Magic to Spell Defense, so the Power Focus is useless there. You need the Counterspelling skill at a better rating, or it will be easy for a corp mage to stunball your whole team into submission.

[Hawke]

I hate to say this, but you are mistaken on that Narrator.  As much I respect everyone here on the boards, the rules in core page 177 counterspelling:

Counterspelling
Counterspelling is used to interrupt other spells, either as they
are being cast or while they are sustained. For spell defense,
Counterspelling dice are added to each protected defender’s dice pool.
When dispelling, a Counterspelling + Magic Opposed Test is made
against the target spell’s Force + caster’s Magic, with net hits reducing
the hits scored to cast the spell. For more information, see p. 185.

And power focus' are applicable to all tests involving the magic attribute.  So yes, power focus would be available for counterspelling, unless it is written elsewhere in the books.  If so, please let me know so I am not doing the wrong thing.

[Lethe]

You can use counterspelling in two ways:
1. spell defense: uses only counter spelling
2. dispelling: uses counterspelling + magic + power focus
As you so nicely quote, magic goes to dispelling, but not to spell defense. For spell defense you only use counterspelling dice.
And that is exactly what TN said before.
He is right, you are right, you just got confused somehow.

[Hawke]

I suppose we were saying the same thing.

Seems I tripped a few nerves.

No more "blowing holes into the character?"

[TheNarrator]

No more "blowing holes into the character?"

Pretty much all my earlier comments still stand: all attributes other than Charisma, Will and Body are pathetically low (the OP knows that Magic and Edge don't count against the 200 BP limit, right?), vital skills like Assensing and Counterspelling (things only the team mage can do) are entirely missing while not-vital-but-potentially-useful skills like Binding and Unarmed Combat are there but at so low a level as to be useless (making getting them at all a waste), and Spellcasting 7 is an unnecessary expenditure of an enormous amount of Build Points for a very small gain.

[Mara]

Initiates of the Golden Dawn is a Hermetic group, you need to join a Shamanic group..Personally, I would drop the BP
from there and just join a group after play begins. Now, if you are a Hermetic, then you need to have Logic up higher.
Elves make great Charisma Traditions, Dwarves make the best Intuition/Logic Traditions.

Don't listen to the people who say the Conjuring group "isn't worth it"..It is, however, I do not usually go with the
group: it works out better math wise to make it a staggered grouping, with Binding being the big one, Summoning
and Banishing being lower at Chargen. You can up them all after Chargen. Also, you missing two important survival
skills: Etiquette(Needed for getting stuff from your contacts, and knowing how not to offend your Johnson), and
Perception(unless, of course, you like not seeing the ambush before it fires on you....)