| From: | Kelly Martin <kelly@*******.BLOOMINGTON.IN.US> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: focus question |
| Date: | Fri, 8 Sep 1995 09:01:50 EST5 |
Mark> officailly and i think its the main book not grimoire you should
Mark> be looking in, a magician can turn off any focus he/she has
Mark> bonded at any time as a 'simple' action. The focus need not be
Mark> in LOS on even on their person, and this applies to ALL foci.
no, according to SRII a focus can only be active if it is on the
magician's person. if the focus is dropped or stolen, it deactivates.
likewise, a magician must have the focus on his person in order to
activate it.
what you describe more closely matches the rules for activating _spell
locks_, which follow different rules than for other foci. weapon foci
are not spell locks. :)
Mark> Weapon foci however are a real pain played this way as foci
Mark> atuomatically deactivate if taken from where they were placed,
Mark> which means by the book you can quickdraw (free action) your
Mark> waepon focus but it then takes a simple to turn (no point
Mark> turning it on till you are) on meaning you spend a whole action
Mark> just drawing weapon.
you're misreading the rules, i think. a weapon focus would not be
automatically activated nor deactivated by the act of drawing it.
spell locks are the only foci which are deactivated by moving them.
Mark> Most GM's (as far as i know) therefore rule
Mark> weapon foci as on 'while held' and off while not, ie making the
Mark> activation part of 'i grab my ....' though you can specifically
Mark> turn them off while holding them (eg want sword out to worry
Mark> mundanes but don't want astral link', after all the ganger just
Mark> sees 'katana' and has no idea if its a focus or not.
i don't like this, myself. activating a focus requires some mental
concentration, and providing that as a Free Action seems to me to be
both unrealistic and inappropriate.
you can only quickdraw pistols, and enchanting pistols is pointless,
so i think you've got a misunderstanding there too. for _all_ melee
weapons, you can't both ready the weapon and then attack with it in
the same phase, because readying a weapon is a Simple Action, and
melee is a Complex Action. so you use one Simple Action to draw, and
the other (which you'd otherwise not use) to activate the lock.
k.
--
kelly martin <kelly@*******.bloomington.in.us>
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet
be determined to make them otherwise. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
