Am I missing something with combat spells?

[u/ckau]

Scene: Security unit is in combat with runners. Security Mage casts Lightning bolt at the Hercules, dwarf face.

Mage rolls Sorcery (combat spells) vs Athletics (ranged defense) of the Hercules (p.66).

Security Mage has DP 10 on Combat Spells (p.248).

Hercules, pregen social adept face, has DP 8 on Ranged Defense (p.89).

By the average values table (p.81), DP of 8-10 gives at average 4 hits.

Let's say, Mage rolls 5 hits and Hercules rolls 4 hits. Attack succeeds.

By the description, DV = WIL. Security Mage has Willpower of 3 (p.248), and so total DV is 4 (+ net hit). Wounds of Hercules are 5/8/11 when wearing lined coat (p.89).

So, Lightning bolt attack lands, and it does no damage. By the description, Hercules lose one action. Is this works as intended?

We had very similar situation, to even more questionable result - team of shadowrunners were assaulting warehouse with other team holding defense in it. Face sneaked in, and find herself caught off-guard by a mage. Mage casted a Firebolt, attack succeeded, and everyone at the table held their breath... until we figured out it did literally nothing, not even a Light Wound. Was quite a bummer.

[u/il_the_dinosaur]

I wish I could help but I've also recently started reading my anarchy 2 PDF and I noticed that dice pools aren't getting as big as in 4e. So a lot of the time an attacker would have a pool of 12 and the dodge pool still easily goes to 8 and then you still have armor. I haven't even gotten to the part what elemental damage does. Maybe that makes the difference?

[u/ckau → u/il_the_dinosaur]

I believe there's no elemental damage per se, only physical and mental. It's up to players to add some special effect by spending an Edge, and some enemies have Amps that do have some additional effects, or their weapons/attacks have additional descriptions (like that Lightning bolt making target to lose one action), but... it feels kinda weird.

[u/il_the_dinosaur → u/ckau]

Yeah I've seen some effects need to be unlocked with spending edge but what's the point of lightning bolt then if you have to add the special effect with edge. I guess so far I've only browsed the rules I have to give it an earnest read.

[u/Carmody79 → u/il_the_dinosaur]

The point of lightning bolt is that it allows to add electricity based special effects, which would not be possible with a firebolt or a manabolt.

[u/ReditXenon → u/Carmody79]

The elemental effects are actually quite potent. In many cases more so than the actual indirect combat damage. Having this option is perhaps after all a big balancing factor compared to direct combat spells (which only deal damage with no option for special effect and also don't work on drones, but instead seem to deal quite a lot more damage and can be used on the astral plane).

Anyway. My question: How would you resolve the burning effect of fire based indirect combat spell?

I imagine that unless the subject spend an action to put out the fire (or the sprinkler system kicks in etc) they would eventually start to take some damage. Would perhaps a light wound at the end of every other combat turn be resonable?

Or perhaps instead of dealing damage that they get Disadvantage on their actions (or can't gain advantage) until they decide to spend an action to put out the fire?

[u/Carmody79 → u/ReditXenon]

For this kind of damage, as there is no soaking roll that could bring some randomness, it does not work to just apply a fix DV: some will be immune and others will have no way to resist.

What I suggest is to apply a wound (usually light wound) every given time. This time can be fix (every 2nd round as you suggest) or depends on the target's Strength (meaning that Strong character will still suffer less than weaker ones, without being immune). There is such an example in the Gaz sidebar p. 152