Sustained area spells and movement, relative motion and mana manipulation Options

[Suriyel]

In the spell design chapter of MitS (around pg. 53 iirc) it says you can move a sustained area spell as a complex action. It does not go into much detail (or at least detail that I have found) as to whether it is a complex action to move it to a specific spot, or if you can use the complex action to give it continuous motion (until your next action), ie you spend a complex action to keep your domed physical barrier over you as you run. Does anyone know how this is supposed to work?

Also, if you were in a vehicle, and cast a domed barrier spell over the vehicle, would it's motion be relative to you (sticks with the vehicle) or to the surface the vehicle is on (sticks to the ground it was initially cast on)?

Basically, I'm looking to be able to provide some extra protection to our rigger's tricked out van by providing an astral barrier to make opposing mages have to get even luckier to powerbolt it to smithereens and to keep pesky spirits at bay long enough to have time to deal with them. It's unlikely I'll get a spell shield at a high enough force to affect the van directly for quite sometime, and it'd be nice if I could just maintain a barrier spell over it, but its usefulness would diminish if the van had to be stationary to make use of this.

[Zeel De Mort]

You could ward the van.

[TheScamp]

How about Spell Defense? Powerbolt target numbers against your standard van are going to be at least 12.

[Kanada Ten]

Use a "Personal" Astral Barrier (IE, non area effect) on the Vehicle if your GM doesn't think an area effect spell moves with the spell's subject.

However, the rules seem to indicate the spells do follow the subject regardless. Shadows and Silence are both area effect and defiantly follow the subject as I read them.

[Suriyel]

We did have the van warded. Past tense is very appropriate. A pair of elementals and a city spirit chewed through it in less then a turn. (Silly us thinking force 6 was decent.) The current plan is to ward the outside and the inside to maybe buy us a full turn next time, and an astral barrier would be another speed bump they'd have to go through. Previously we only warded the inside of the van.

Spell defense will also be a big player in the soon to be implemented plan. In the last bruhaha, our current spell slinger was busy trying to be offense and not defense. With the addition of my shaman, who can take on the defensive responsibilities, we can cover both. My current theory is you can never get your opponent's TN's too high, so if I can make it nigh impossible to get more than one success, I don't have to allocate as many spell defense dice to each incoming spell, meaning I can probably keep dice available throughout a heavy "I've got increased reflexes +3" mana shootout with multiple opponents sending multiple valleys of hostile mojo my way.

Having the spells move with the subject would nicely answer a lot of the possible questions that would arise if they stayed fixed relative to one thing but not another.

[RedmondLarry]

Just in terms of game balance, playability, etc., I don't see any reason not to allow a magician to keep a physical or astral barrier around a vehicle if the magician wants to continually concentrate on it. Does anyone else?

[mfb]

well, there's logical considerations. the front edge of your barrier will be plowing into the ground every time you try to go up a hill or over a speedbump.

[The White Dwarf]

Just use an astral barrier following the vehicle/caster. Also, whatever the GM was doing with 2 elementals and 1 spirit means you had at least 2 different magicians attacking you at once. Id be wondering why that was the case, and look into it. But regardless using the "watcher swarm" following the vehicle to make engaging in melee with the ward/barrier impossible is another idea; even 3 spirits on 6 watchers will buy you time, and you can probably garner better odds with some planning.

[Suriyel]

I believe it was one shaman and two hermetics we had after us (two opposition runner teams). As to why, well we ended up with something even hotter than we had imagined, and there were some people who really didn't want the contents of the headware memory to get into the wrong hands (which appeared to be anyone but them). After misunderstanding their statement of executing the streetdoc we hired to find out what was in the troll we 'obtained', we figured their bargain of 'give us the head and we'll let you live' actually meant 'give us the head so we don't have to waste our time making the last six seconds of your life painful, we'll execute you nice and quick like if you comply'. Insert one forgone conclusion of a 'chase' scene (our van in character movement mode went as fast as a 7 quickness non-dwarf) where the only casualty we inflicted was when we pasted one of the hermetics with a great dragon missile (not like we were getting desperate or anything). Fortunately, all they did want was the head (containing the headware memory) of the troll, and after lobbing it off and out of the van, they bugged out (probably thanks to all the attention a great dragon round can bring, even in the roughest areas), and the diminished payout was still quite enough to allow us to live comfortably in some far off lands for quite some time.

And yes, from now on, we will be including more planning on active magical defense and not just relying on passive systems.

And to stay on topic, allowing the barrier spells to follow the caster makes them much more useful as you don't get pinned down to a single area. One thing that always kept me from thinking about them was thinking that using them (particularly the domed ones) on yourself kept you pretty much immobile.