Help! Wild Talents: Shadowrun Drain Flaw

[Cgeist7]

Hi all,

I'm running a game of Shadowrun using Wild Talents and am modelling the different aspects (Magic, Cyberware, Adepts and Martix/Cyberspace) using WT miracles with required extras and flaws depending on the power type.

The players all love the setting and system, except for the Shaman, who doesn't like how magic has been converted over. A big part of the problem is how I've handled drain - feedback magicians can take when channelling magic.

Drain: The effort of manipulating mana can exhaust or even injure a magician. As mana is a form of energy, channeling greater quantities of that energy may strain the body and mind. The effect of this strain is referred to as Drain.

Here's how I modelled it in WT to begin with.

NEW FLAW: Drain (-1): Every time you use your power, you take a point of Shock damage to the torso (or whatever counts as your core hit location).

Based on feedback (the player doesn't like rolling and when magic is unsuccessful but even more, he hates taking damage each time he uses his powers), I've come up with the following work around.

I wanted to try and find a One Roll option, but couldn't figure out an elegant option.

NEW FLAW: Drain (-1): When you roll dice for a power with the drain flaw, each loose die of 6 or higher (called Flare) inflicts a point of shock damage. This damage is summed and can be resisted by a Command + Endurance roll in which each point of width reduces the damage by one. All shock damage received from drain is applied to the torso (or whatever counts as your core hit location).

I'd love any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks!

[Shane Ivey]

Sounds cool. But basing it on loose dice means the better the shaman is -- the larger the dice pool -- the more often he or she takes damage. That sounds likely to frustrate the player more. And calling for a separate skill roll for every spell sounds burdensome. I don't remember Shadowrun magic well enough to make a solid recommendation, but you could ditch the Endurance roll and make it loose dice but only if the spell roll fails. Or if an awesome spell should hurt more, than maybe only if its Height is greater than the shaman's Command + Endurance dice pool or something.

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[Cgeist7]

Thanks Shane,

In Shadowrun, the more powerful the spell is, the more likely potential drain damage will occur as the magician manipulates powerful energy.

This is balanced in SR as the more skilled the magician is, the more likely they will resist the drain. It is burdensome and the overhead of SR is why we're not using the system.

I like the second option as it increases possible damage based on the dice rolled (power of spell) and reduces the amount of maximum drain damage based on skill (reducing # of possible loose dice).

It also makes magic much more dangerous for the weak-willed and unskilled...

Anything else I'm missing here?

[Shane Ivey]

Well, thinking about it, Height is an entirely random part of the roll. Sometimes Width is better to reflect the "power" of an effect, or sometimes the dice pool itself can represent "power" because a large dice pool makes high rolls more likely. So you could say if the spell dice pool is larger than the shaman's Endurance dice pool and the spell roll succeeds, that's what causes damage. There are a lot of ways you could run it.

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Shane Ivey, Arc Dream Publishing
The One Roll Engine and more: www.arcdream.com

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[Charles Coleman]

 

Shane, whilst you mentioned The One Ring a while back, I did not realise that you had contributed to the game.

Bundle of Holding for those interested: https://bundleofholding.com/presents/OneRing2

I have been wanting these books, but my group is not as interested, so fun reading for me.

c

[Shane Ivey]

Thanks, Charles. I hope you like them.

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