From:	Marc Renouf renouf@********.com
Subject:	SR3... SpellCasting.
Date:	Wed, 3 Mar 1999 08:32:06 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Simon wrote:

> I sort of liked the shaman who just was found by his totem, who could
> despite having a lousy sorcery skill still cast one or two impressing
> spells at the cost of keeling over. Admittedly those are not your
> typical mages, but I kind of liked them for flavour alone.

Actually, you can still have them in SR3. Consider a mage with a
Sorcery of 2 and a Magic Attribute of 6. If he has enough Spell Pool to
be able to add up to his maximum of 6 dice, he can roll a total of 8 dice
to cast a spell. Say he casts the only spell he knows, Manabolt. He
doesn't know much, but he knows manabolt, and can cast it at force 6.
Say his target is a random goon, Willpower 4. The untalented
street mage rolls 8 dice (2 Sorcery + 6 Magic Pool) at a target number 4
(his target's Willpower), netting a statistical total of 4 successes,
enough to stage the damage up twice. Ouch! His target, on the other
hand, rolls 4 dice versus a target number of 6 (the force of the spell),
yielding a statistical total of 0.67 successes (i.e., if he's lucky he'll
get one). This is not enough to stage the damage down. Hence, the street
mage need only cast a Moderate Drain Manabolt at force 6 to give his
target a deadly wound.
Had the target had a Willpower of 6, the mage would have gotten
fewer successes (1.33 on average), but even with a Willpower 6, his target
would only typically get 1 success against the force 6 Manabolt. While
this isn't sufficient to stage the damage up, a tie goes in favor of the
caster, meaning the target will take the spell's base damage. As such,
the no-talent street mage (recall his Sorcery skill of 2) can inflict a
Deadly wound on his target, but has to cast a Deadly drain manabolt to do
it.
In order to affect his targets, he needs to cast high force
spells, which means that he will have fewer of them (as he only has so
many points to spend).
In other words, he has a lousy sorcery skill, but can still cast
a few impressive spells at the cost of keeling over.

Marc