Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Achille Autran)
Subject: Illusions & Spellcasting (was: Astral Perception and
Date: Tue Mar 13 19:25:04 2001
At 09:35 13/03/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>If I may intrude in this thread, it's all in the main book I'm afraid:
>SR3 p182 "An astrally perceiving spellcaster can cast a spell at anything
>physical *or* astral he can see with his normal vision *or* astral
>perception....such a spellcaster could cast a spell at someone hidden by an
>invisibility spell, using astral perception to target the physical body,
>since both the spellcaster and target are on the physical plane."
>
>So, an astrally perceiving magician can cast spells at anything astral
>and/or physical just using astral perception. Illusions are, of course, no
>protection against a perceiving magician, and a perceiving magician casting
>mana-based area spells will simultaneously affect all physical and all
>astral targets within the radius of effect.

Well, this springs up a question: how would you people, rule lawyers, docs
and other related unearthly beings, rule spells cast at an illusion ?

Does even trying to cast a spell at an illusion shows its nature, or do you
know what you're trying to affect only after - or just when - the spell is
cast ?

Basically, IMO it boils down to: when are you establishing the astral link
with the target, before or after "spell weaving" ? (I'm using ED
terminology for a lack of a better expression.) Of course, this exclude
elemental manipulations.

I would opt for the later option, personnaly, but for game balance reasons,
i.e. you could suffer drain from manabolting an illusion. So, opinions ?

Molloy
Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Achille Autran)
Subject: Illusions & Spellcasting (was: Astral Perception and
Date: Wed Mar 14 18:20:06 2001
> > Well, this springs up a question: how would you people, rule lawyers,
> docs
> > and other related unearthly beings, rule spells cast at an illusion ?
>
>
>Well, as I'm not such an unearthy being, I don't know if I could answert this,
>but I'll try ;)

Nah, you don't have to, that was supposed to qualify Docs and similar
downunderlings who manage to stick to the bottom of the matter, blatantly
ignoring the tremendous forces that try to bring them up, up, up...

At 06:20 14/03/2001 -0500, Doc' wrote:
>However, you could work off the rules that say it's
>impossible to attack a spell in the astral plane
>anymore. That could mean that physical spells can
>attack the illusion (or possibly only manipulation
>spells), but mana-based spells (which are effectively
>astral attacks) would fizzle. You just wouldn't be
>able to cast them at the illusion. Which would, if
>you're smart enough, be a giveaway as to the nature of
>your target.

That seems sensible for the mana spells. Not a safe tool however: "I'm sure
this devilish jester personnal-masked himself as a child and created an
illusionary crowd outside of that school... Manaball !"
Still for physical spells, I don't know... Well, I know better now that
I've read SR3 blurb about spellcasting. As was saying Boondocker (a doc as
well, isn't he ?), you need to synchronize with the target before casting
the spell and actually channeling mana, so physical spells, excluding
manpulation, would also fizzle with no drain.

Molloy

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Illusions & Spellcasting (was: Astral Perception and, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!