From:	Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject:	Limited spells (was Re: Turn to goo spell effects)
Date:	Mon, 19 Jun 2000 10:50:30 +0200

According to Sebastian Wiers, at 11:14 on 18 Jun 00, the word on the
street was...

> Maybe, but look at the "Phantasm" spell. It allows a very similar
> thing- cast an ilussion, get lots of successes, and then use a complex
> action to change the illusions appearance or location.

That's true, though it's a game balance issue, IMHO. Phantasm and other
illusion spells generally don't have as much impact as detection spells,
not to mention that in many situations a static illusion just isn't
believable. I think detection spells become more powerful than they should
be if you allow them to change the type of thing they're detecting too
easily.

> But yeah, maybe that is a more blanced type that to allow- although I do
> think something along the lines of a metamagic technique (maybe one per
> spell category) could allow versatile selectable target spells without
> unbalancing things unduly. Well, at least that would work in games I've
> played, where Intiaties who know multiple metamagic techniques are very
> rare.

In part, that's also a drawback, as Keith pointed out to me once. If you
make metamagical techniques out of too many things, chances are you'll
never actually see it in use... Making it a metamagical technique would
make more sense in games where initiates are pretty common, rather than in
games that don't have few, if any, initiates at all, IMHO.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Here come the golden oldies. Here come the Hezbollah.
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
->The Plastic Warriors Page: http://shadowrun.html.com/plasticwarriors/<-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X++ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998