From:	Joshua James Harrison <harrij4@***.EDU>
Subject:	Astral Barrier
Date:	Fri, 25 Mar 1994 00:06:07 -0500

On Mar 24, 3:45pm, "Matthew P. Sims" wrote:
I have a former companyman who has a force 7 astral barrier quickened to him.
This astral barrier protects him like armor from spells.
In the 1st edition, this barrier would be considered automatic successes
towards any spells being casted on him. But if this was the 2nd edition, how
would the
barrier affect spells since automatic successes are ruled out?

E.I.- A force 5 mana bolt hits the companyman and the mage gets 5 successes on
him. How would the astral block the spell and how much damage would pass
through the barrier?

(-sheepherder-)
- End of excerpt from "Matthew P. Sims"

Well, it would work like this... if it works like armor, as you say... the
force of the attack would be decreased by the strength of the barrier before
the character makes his resistance test. In the example above, the force 5
spell would not even penetrate the level 7 sheild.

This is the same way ballisitc armor works for firearms... if I shoot at
somebody with a Predator (9M) and they hae Ballistic 5, then the force of the
attack is decreased to 4 before rolling body dice for the resist test, and a
target number of 4 is used.

An alternative to this is to use a method similar to barriers... have the
spell and the barrier make an opposed test (in the example, the spell rolls 5
dice TN 7, the barrier 7 dice TN 5), and whoever rolls more successes wins...
if the spell wins, then the barrier falls and the character needs to resist...
if the barrier wins, the spell fails.

There are two options that I can see... I would use one of those two...
variations on them, are of course, possiblle, depending on various house
rules.

Hope this helps.



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