New metamagic: malleability. Options

[emo samurai]

Whenever you cast an area effect spell, you can use a free action to make a spellcasting+magic test (spell's force-initiation grade) to be able to change the spell's shape to anything you want it to be as long as its volume is the same as the spell's normal volume. You can also decrease the volume of the spell as much as one desires.

Also, I have a new spell.

Catharsis
Type: M Range: T Duration: S DV: (F/2)-1

The caster rolls Magic+Spellcasting against the subject's Willpower. Each minute that this spell is sustained with the caster touching the subject, the net hits scored are added to a total. 1-3 net hits releases repressed surface emotions. 4-6 net hits releases repressed personal feelings, such as love, hatred, etc. 7-9 net hits releases thoughts nd feelings on the Jungian level. Any more and the subject goes berserk. After the spell is released, the subject gets a bonus to his/her Willpower and Charisma equal to the numer of hits/3, rounded up for a number of hours equal to his/her hits.

[Grinder]

[emo samurai]

Hmmm.... the malleability rocks, though, right?

[Ta'al]

Damn right! Drop a fireball into a melee in include area holes around your allies. Or warping a fireball into a pencil thin thread 250m long (to achieve the same volume) that cuts/burns like a ribbon of fire!


This metamagic is surprisingly reminiscant of a D&D power available to the 'Archmage' prestige class; was that your inspiration?

[emo samurai]

I think it's balanced, too. Which makes everything better. And yes, the archmage metamagic was my inspiration.

[Jaid]

this would probably be one of the first metamagics i would take, personally... might be a shade too good, but i do think it's at least pretty close.

actually, completely disregarding the part about too good or whatever, it's too much paperwork IMO...

as written, you could figure out the volume of, say, a force 5 AOE spell

V=4/3 * pi * r^3
= (approximately) 523.6 cubic meters.

now just sit there and imagine how many potential different shapes you could make with 523 cubic meters. the pencil thin line, for example, could go on for a really long distance... if, for convenience, you figure on a 1 cubic cm square pencil (which isn't really any pencil at all), you can go for (approximately) 523598775 cms long, which is about 5235988 m long... which is a really fragging long line of fire for one spell, to put it lightly.

i would be ok with leaving holes, and maybe also allowing one or two predetermined shapes, such as a line force x 3 meters long or a cone force x 2 meters long and force x 2 meters wide at the end, or even larger volumes. didn't really think about those numbers, so feel free to fiddle with them... just, my basic point is that it's too much paperwork to bother with calculating the volume and allowing it to be any shape within that volume. providing a few different shapes would be much less work in the middle of a gaming session, IMO.

anyways, as far as the spell goes: remember net hits would be limited by spell's force (and you should probably explicitly mention that). and some game effects for what each stage means would be nice. also, how long does this last? i would imagine that if a person opposed it, this would count as a mental manipulation spell (you should probably mention that too, just to note how it interacts with totems and such).

all in all, quite interesting. not sure i personally like the spell, but that doesn't mean it isn't good... i'm not a big fan of fireball either, really :P

[emo samurai]

Yeah... that's true... and you could kill so many people with a pencil-thin line like that. If you made a fireball into a series of small baseball-sized orbs that dealt full damage even though they were really tiny, you could melt, like, 5 million people with a force 10 fireball. Maybe I'll limit the manipulation to the edge of the normal spell, so the main benefit will be protecting friendlies.

[Teulisch]

if you can make it any shape though? it could be comb-shaped, and hit a perimiter at multiple points. all the security team will know is the west fence just got hit by fire in X number of places.

but lets face it... your gonna use it to make grafiti on the archology wall. i know you are.

[SL James]

Wow, that looks a lot like a metamagic Ellery made over a year and a half ago.

[Grinder]

Emo samurai wasn't around back then. And his Search-Fu is weak ;)

[emo samurai]

What the hell would I search for? I'm sure he didn't use the term " malleability."

[emo samurai]

I double posted. 1 4|\/| 73|-| 501212 :nuyen: .

[SL James]

She, and I'm just saying it looks familiar. See, if I wanted to call you a thief, I wouldn't pussyfoot around it. I'd call you a f-ing thief.

[Edward]

The shaping should be limited to leaving gaps, or arranging up to fose^3 connected 1 meeter cubes, meaning less aria covered but you can probably do more with it and the maths is so much easier. And you don’t get stupid effects like 5000k lines of fire or anything

Edward

[neko128]

Frankly, I think that "any shape" is massively, massively too powerful. How about "any simple geometric shape" - triangle, square, rectangle - with limits on width vs. height vs. length, to avoid the mile-long ribbon of doom and the freaky octopus of doom where your "fireball" extends little tendrils and then suddenly blossoms into a miniature cocoon surrounding every enemy?

[emo samurai]

Maybe any shape within a sphere twice the normal volume, but having to occupy the same volume or less?

[nick012000]

Personally, I wouldn't put any limits on shape. After all, you still need LOS to hit things, and the ribbon-o-doom isn't all that great when you consider that you can hit anything in LOS with a spell, anyway.

[Crusher Bob]

Actually, as written you can hit just about anything you want in your LOS with a singe AOE spell. Consider, not the 'line of doom', but instead the 'twisty string of doom'. The string hits anything it can touch, and is up in the air (or whatever) the rest of the time.

And, of course, once you levitate yourself high up into the air, and use your awesome cybereyes, you could devistate entire crowds of people. After all, the twisty string of doom is a much more efficient use of volume that a sphere.

How about simply allowing you to effect your choice of targets within the spell's normal area of effect?you can combine with the normal rules for expanding the AOE if you want to hit more stuff, and you don't need to worry about calculating volumes.

[NightHaunter]

It does seem quite over the curve, and a malleabul Chaotic world spell would just be insane!

Not meaning to be offensive but i'm not a fan.

[Eryk the Red]

An even simpler way to represent what this ability is trying to might be to simply allow the user to choose a number of targets for the spell within line of sight. The number of targets could equal the force value. This replaces the normal area of effect for the spell. It abstracts the effect quite a lot, but I think it's functionally similar and a lot easier to work with. Plus, having a simple limit like that prevents the ribbon of doom exploit, and similar things to that.

[Crusher Bob]

I don't much like that version since it removes a lot of the stylistic things you can do with 'shape area' like write flaming grafitti with your fireballs, and has about the same effect as selective targeting within your normal area of effect.

[Eryk the Red]

It doesn't remove the stylistic things. You can still do those things in a roleplaying sense. The rule is meant to represent that. Instead, the rule I suggest provides a practical limit to the power. The rule I suggest doesn't solely define what it means in roleplaying terms.

[fool]

I would suggest a much pared down version of the ability. Ie. for each level of initiation the person can have the area effect spell not effect 1 metahuman sized area within the area of effect. In effect, they would be able to not hit their freinds or themselves within an area effect spell.
No style but much more practical and milited and easy.

[Ravor]

Well personally if I were running a game I think I'd use fool's version of allowing each Initiation Grade to exclude one target within the area of effect, coupled with being able to limit the total AoE with a number of free virtual dice equal to the Mage's Grade as well.

As for using Magic to write flaming grafitti and the like, well personally I would allow Mages to do that anyways, just not within the timespan of a Combat Pass.

[desverendi]

This is kind of related to something I posted a while back, in concept at least. But I didn't explain it very well at the time. Here it is again, it's basically a new range type for combat spells:

LOS Multiple – Allows the caster to designate a number of targets equal to half the Force of the spell within an area equal to the area defined by the Area range (defined as a circle with a radius equal to the spell’s force in meters) in the SR4 rulebook. No target may be designated more than once for a single spell. Drain cost lies between LOS and Area spells.

So a Force 6 spell could target 3 individuals within a 12 meter diameter area. It adds +1 to the drain code of the individual version of the spell so an LOS Multiple Mana bolt (I call it Mana Strike) would have a drain code of (F/2)+1 vs (F/2) for Mana bolt and (F/2)+2 for Manaball.

Opinions?