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From:	Dustin Stovall dustins@***********.com
Subject:	Spirits and Focuses and Wards, Oh my!
Date:	Wed, 5 May 1999 21:46:19 -0500

Message no. 1 I have a question regarding items from the title. I do not yet have MITS
and may not be able to get it for a short while. My first question is
about spirits.

A: If I have a spirit I have summoned at say force 2 does that mean he owes
me two favors? And if I tell a spirit to act as my bodyguard (lets say
this is a water elemental) and someone casts a fireball at me can my water
elemental absorb the fire? Or if it were a fire elemental could it absorb
the fire and maybe I would just take heat damages?

B: Now lets say I can enchant my own focuses. Can I enchant some sort of
focus as a detect enemy maintain spell for my apartment? And if I can am I
able to cast an area sleep spell on a focus once someone enters a certain
range that would be detected by my DE spell? Or something like that using
a combination of focuses to paralyze my opponent?

C: What are a few wards that I am able to cast at all? And can I use
these astrally and physically?

D: How is it that you pronounce nuyen? New-yen? Yen? Nyen? N-yen? Is
there an actual listing of pronunciation somewhere?

Thanks in advance

--SilverThorn

I O I O, it's off to work we go. We're reads and writes from bits and
bytes I O I O I O!
:)

From:	Brett Borger bxb121@***.edu
Subject:	Spirits and Focuses and Wards, Oh my!
Date:	Thu, 6 May 1999 08:43:16 -0400 (EDT)

Message no. 2 > I have a question regarding items from the title. I do not yet have MITS
> and may not be able to get it for a short while. My first question is
> about spirits.

I just got MITS. Yeah! Anyway, some of your questions are from the
main book, some are from MITS.

> A: If I have a spirit I have summoned at say force 2 does that mean he owes
> me two favors? And if I tell a spirit to act as my bodyguard (lets say
> this is a water elemental) and someone casts a fireball at me can my water
> elemental absorb the fire? Or if it were a fire elemental could it absorb
> the fire and maybe I would just take heat damages?

1) Force and services are not the same, (Force=Target # of summoning
(your choice), & services=successes) and generally are inversly
proportional (higher force spirits mean you get fewer successes means
they have fewer services).

2) When you are ordering them to be your bodyguard, they'll stay in
the astral unless you specify otherwise, so he wouldn't have time to
do anything about a spell cast at you. If, for some reason, it was on
the physical AND had a delayed action to be able to do anything....
That's a GM call. In such a case, I can see allowing a water
elemental to engulf you to protect you from the fireball (and note
this only works with manipulation spells, not with combat spells).

But overall, I'd say that is not a terribly effective way to count
on them helping you. You'd be better off using their Aid Power aspect
and keeping extra Spell Defense (much improved in 3rd edition). [I
believe Aid Power only helps with casting, but that means you can save
the Spell Pool you would have used in casting...]

Plus Shielding is always (and still is!) an option for an initiate.

> B: Now lets say I can enchant my own focuses. Can I enchant some sort of
> focus as a detect enemy maintain spell for my apartment? And if I can am I
> able to cast an area sleep spell on a focus once someone enters a certain
> range that would be detected by my DE spell? Or something like that using
> a combination of focuses to paralyze my opponent?

You are looking for Anchoring foci. See MITS. Short Answer: Yes,
with Karma and initiation.

> C: What are a few wards that I am able to cast at all? And can I use
> these astrally and physically?

Um, can't tell you off of the top of my head. THis is all in SR3.

> D: How is it that you pronounce nuyen? New-yen? Yen? Nyen? N-yen? Is
> there an actual listing of pronunciation somewhere?

New Yen, as I understand it. It only makes sense, as SR1 was written
when America existed in fear of a Japanese Corporate Invasion. (If
you are unaware of how paranoid [justifiably or not I won't get into]
people were, read Rising Sun by Michael Crichton.

-=SwiftOne=-

From:	Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject:	Spirits and Focuses and Wards, Oh my!
Date:	Thu, 6 May 1999 21:51:01 +0200

Message no. 3 According to Dustin Stovall, at 21:46 on 5 May 99, the word on
the street was...

> A: If I have a spirit I have summoned at say force 2 does that mean he owes
> me two favors?

No. It just means the spirit has a Force of 2. When you summon it, you
roll a Conjuring test with a TN equal to its Force (in this case, that
would be 2). Of course, modify this for wounds and other distractions as
normal. The number of successes you rolled is the number of services you
will get. Thus, if you rolled 1, 2, 2, and 5, you would have 3 services
because you have 3 successes.

> And if I tell a spirit to act as my bodyguard (lets say this is a water
> elemental) and someone casts a fireball at me can my water elemental
> absorb the fire? Or if it were a fire elemental could it absorb the
> fire and maybe I would just take heat damages?

You could draw on the elemental to gain extra spell defense dice (through
the Aid Sorcery service, see SR3 page 187), but this way each elemental
could only protct you against spells in its category -- a water elemental
would be useless against a manipulation spell like Fireball (and, BTW, so
would a fire elemental; even though it sounds a bit strange, you'd need an
earth elemental here).

> B: Now lets say I can enchant my own focuses. Can I enchant some sort of
> focus as a detect enemy maintain spell for my apartment?

You could get a sustaining focus (SR3 page 190) for a Detect Enemies
spell, and then cast the spell into it as explained on page 190.

However, this only allows the spell to "work" for the target of the focus -
- that means that if you nail said focus to your apartment door, the
apartment will "know" someone is approaching who wishes to harm it (i.e.
the apartment). All in all, not an _exceedingly_ useful application, I
would say :)

Now if you yourself were to carry the focus, you would know who has
hostile intentions toward you, as long as they are within range of the
spell. You can't really protect your apartment this way, though.

Aother way would be to anchor a Detect Enemies spell to some other spell,
but as I also don't have MITS yet, I don't know how this would work in
SR3. Under SRII rules, though, it would be possible to make a Detect
Enemies spell which fires up some kind of alarm spell (say, Entertainment)
when it finds an enemy.

> And if I can am I able to cast an area sleep spell on a focus once
> someone enters a certain range that would be detected by my DE spell?
> Or something like that using a combination of focuses to paralyze my
> opponent?

You definitely want anchoring for this -- it would work like above, except
the Entertainment spell would be replaced by Sleep.

> D: How is it that you pronounce nuyen? New-yen? Yen? Nyen? N-yen?

It depends. I usually say something between NOO-yen and NEW-yen, but
different people will give different pronunciations.

> Is there an actual listing of pronunciation somewhere?

Not to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps we could persuade Dvixen to put
up another .wav? :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Another year and then you'll be happy.
-> NERPS Project Leader * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
->The Plastic Warriors Page: http://shadowrun.html.com/plasticwarriors/<-
-> The New Character Mortuary: http://www.electricferret.com/mortuary/ <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ U 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?
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