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Welcome to the forums guy_rocks

No the spell does not affect cybernetics bionics and M.D. Guns. I think this is clarified in the book of magic but don't recall.

Now nothing says you couldn't house rule otherwise.

The spell is more for mundane electronics like killing power in a room and so on.

If I was the GM and the player had some good ideas on how to affect cybernetics and so on I would listen. I would probably house rule if you can touch the item it would work for maybe half the duration. I don't have the spell. In front of me to review.

Just have fun with it and do what works best for your game.

What the RBoM says about What it does not effect is...

RBoM 1st printing, page 106 wrote:Can not affect MDC environmental armor, power armor, robots or Military vehicles.

I do believe there are Q&As that state that the spell does not effect cybernetics.

So your MD guns are vulnerable to the spell.

The concept of the spell is that it stops energy from being used in the target.

Concerning Cybernetics and bionics, as a GM I would let the spell effect a non-essencial (i.e. they are not going to die directly from it's effect) systems. Like weapons, hacking tools, radios...etc...

guy_rocks wrote:my only concern is that with no save, a level 3 mage could just shut down any tech opponents weapon. So unless the non-magic opponent has MD weapons that that don't run on electricity (grenades maybe?), he can't really touch the mage for 36 min, which pretty much means an instant win for mages in ever fight doesn't it?

unlikely. i'm not looking at it right now, but i'm just gonna go with a guess here, and say that the spell probably has a range of less than 200 feet.

unless you exclusively fight people who are armed only with a wilks laser welder, it's not a free ride by any means.

guy_rocks wrote:my only concern is that with no save, a level 3 mage could just shut down any tech opponents weapon. So unless the non-magic opponent has MD weapons that that don't run on electricity (grenades maybe?), he can't really touch the mage for 36 min, which pretty much means an instant win for mages in ever fight doesn't it?

The spell would shut down ONE tech item.

So in the above...
*Mage casts spell shutting down the weapon in the cs solder's hand.
*Cs soldier waists one or two APM then drops weapon and pulls out his/her second wepond and starts shooting with that one.

Or
*CS soldier comes at the mage and goes hand to hand with him.

The problem is that which side are you going to NERF to protect the other?
KS has been changing the rules of the game to protect his tech baby the Colalition States. Nerfing the magic side cause people were [u]"Using Their Brains"[/u] playing mages and figuring out how to defeat the CS with magic.

guy_rocks wrote:my only concern is that with no save, a level 3 mage could just shut down any tech opponents weapon. So unless the non-magic opponent has MD weapons that that don't run on electricity (grenades maybe?), he can't really touch the mage for 36 min, which pretty much means an instant win for mages in ever fight doesn't it?

If they allow a mage to get that close they deserve it.

mages have so many ways to completely and utterly neutralize infantry at close range anyways, i don't really feel inclined to worry about it.

consider, for example:

magic net (they either spend an action dodging, or they're caught... and then, by the time their next action comes around, they have to spend that on dodging as well)
carpet of adhesion (they don't get any save against this, and once cast the mage just walks out of their LOS)
various charm/dominate spells (2 of them are low enough level to be used to mind control a soldier)
impervious to energy vs opponents with energy weapons (which is most intelligent enemies)
blinding flash (save or they basically can't hit the broad side of a barn)

i mean, i'm not even really putting much thought or planning into it at all. if you are a regular soldier, and a mage gets within 60 feet of you (and knows you're there), you have already lost the fight unless that mage has essentially no PPE left, or the mage is just completely clueless. alternately, if you severely outnumber the mage, you may also have a chance.

but over all, probably one of the core lessons drilled into every CS soldier's head is that you do not let a mage close distance on you. or at least, it should be. which makes it really quite absurd, when you think about it, that their anti-mage strategy at one point consisted of sending in dog boys armed almost exclusively with melee weapons (no really, that's why vibro-blades were originally manufactured, as a way to give dog boys MD weapons without giving them guns).

of course, the CS isn't quite that foolish *now* (although the difference between a group of dog boys armed with lasers and melee weapons isn't that different from the same group armed only with melee weapons once the mage casts impervious to energy, if they know it), but they must've lost a lot of dog boys at the start of that program... which is probably also why dog packs have 10 dog boys in them.

Disrupting energy in an area is still really strong. It can power down lights so you can make an escape, shut down a radio so your opponent can't call for help, there are some good uses even if it doesn't affect weapons.

As to casters vs dead boys, there really aren't that many magic users when compared to the number of infantry in the coalition. I think most casters have a field day with a CS platoon until they get cocky and are flanked, then they get knocked down, stripped of gear and have their SDC head bashed into a rock until they're dead by 10+ angry people.

The trick is to not get full of yourself an assume it's going to be easy.

even against larger numbers, a mage can do quite well if he gets close...

consider, for example, the spell "realm of chaos". yes, it's 2 actions to cast (being level 9), but there's a fair number of spells that can set up enough time to cast it at lower levels, and it's bad news bears for whoever he manages to bring along.

now, obviously not every mage knows the spell. but it isn't the only option, just one of the best ones (imo) against large groups. if tolkeen had built realm of chaos land mines around their city, i suspect the final fight would have been a lot worse for the CS...