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There are a lot of reasons for the non-awakened to be leery of magic. Perhaps the biggest one is that spellcasting is not obvious, especially when the spellcaster is invisible. A perceptive runner will notice when a potential adversary aims a firearm or baton at you, but your first indication of offensive magic may be when you start bleeding out of your ears.
Flipping the roles around, what this means for the spellcasting runner is that in cases where adversaries are not aware that they are in fact adversaries, you can often take the time to knock out each member of a guard detail with stunbolts staged to deadly as they won't understand that you are the one attacking them.
NOTE: Spellcasting alone does not initiate combat, meaning it does not put you in initiative rounds. Outside of initiative, you have a half second delay (IRL time) between spells.
NOTE: Technically, a target that takes damage does understand that they are being attacked, but if the damage is staged to deadly, they don't get the chance to react (unless they have a trauma damper or pain editor).
Improved invisibility is probably the most desired (or hated, depending on who has it) spell in the game. But for runners, there is a bit of nuance to using it. If the invisibility is seen through by any means, guards will respond aggressively. While a force 1 stealth spell can be used to prevent auto-detection via ultrasound, astral perception or the rare lucky spell resistance roll will still be able to spot you. In addition, if you initiate combat in a way that does not immediately knock your target unconscious, they will fight back even if they can't see you. Once somebody is fighting you, they can also alert others who cannot see you and so you can end up fighting everybody in the room (and possibly also adjacent rooms). There are a number of autoruns that will go smoother if the subtle runner does not use invisibility.
That said, improved invisibility (+stealth spell) is still very valuable in situations where you can expect to be attacked regardless. If an adversary is fighting you but can't see you, they will suffer a +8 blind fire penalty. If they have ultrasound, they suffer a penalty of (8 + the force of your stealth spell)/2, max +8. If this changes an adversary's attack TN from 2 to 10, the net effect is to reduce their number of successes by a factor of 10 and so greatly increase your odds of dodging or soaking.
Unlike a shaman, a hermetic's spells are limited by the quality of their library. There are no sorcery libraries with a rating greater than 8 available in Awakened Worlds CE. That restriction causes hermetic attack spells to be very unreliable when facing off against certain top tier opponents. Example: a force 8 stunbolt with 24 dice vs 16 willpower gives less than 4% chance of success, whereas a force 12 stunbolt in the same situation gives a 20% chance of success.
Where the hermetic has the advantage is their elementals, which have the ability to sustain spells associated with their element. A shaman is not able to sustain the various beneficial spells (beyond what can be handled by the available force 3 or 4 sustaining foci) without having to deal with prohibitive TN penalties in subsequent actions. Thus, a hermetic is better at using their magic in a self-supporting role. Along with the weakness in offensive spells, it makes sense for high-tier mages to approach situations they find dangerous in the same way as a street samurai (i.e. shooting large firearms loaded with APDS from outside the room).
NOTE: Elementals cannot sustain health category spells.
NOTE: A mundane street samurai can reach rating 12 with firearms and melee skills and so is generally better at killing (except for elementals). A hermetic with a full suite of buffs plus spell defense / reflecting is generally better at surviving (even more so if willing to pick up some cyber/bioware).
NOTE: In a team situation, a shaman is better at support magic, as they can sustain force 12 spells on teammates while the hermetic is limited to force 8. While the shaman would take sustaining penalties, that doesn't matter when teammates can be relied on to handle the action.
Spell | Element | Comments |
---|---|---|
Armor | Earth | stacks with normal armor; not counted for quickness armor limit |
Combat Sense | Air | no cap to combat pool dice allocated to dodge or soak |
Stealth | Water | negates ultrasound; if the target is sneaking, adds to the TN to spot them |
Improved Invisibility | Water | can be defeated by successful spell resistance, ultrasound, or astral perception |
Spell | Comments |
---|---|
Stunbolt | low drain; if it fails, it does not initiate combat |
Waterbolt | for targets that are immune to stunbolts (e.g. vehicles) |
Heal | as with all other spells, wound penalties apply |
Levitate | ignore terrain (e.g. climbing, swimming, icesheet); force 1 is enough |
Increase Willpower | contributes to spell pool, drain resistance, and stun/manabolt resistance |
Increase Reflexes +3 | once in combat, spellcasting follows initiative rules; force 1 is enough |
Increase (everything else) | qui to layer armor, qui+int+wil for cpool, bod for soak, cha for conjuring, str for melee |