Levitate & HALO jumping, No need for a chute or 'chuting skill? Options

[Witness]

So my players want to do a HALO jump to get into an area quickly and quietly.
None of them have parachuting skills, but have an opportunity to learn them now. They've got the gear. There's talk of using an air spirit to help out, to both stabilise and conceal the drop. That's all good.

Now one of them, a young mage, is talking about using his Levitation spell, hoping that he won't have to spend precious karma on the parachuting skill. I suspect he's even thinking of doing it without a chute.

I will of course point out to him the obvious things, like, what if the spell fails or glitches? With his skills, though, I must concede that that isn't very likely.

But I can't help feeling that the parachuting skill would still be well worth having, since it's not just about landing but about steering the drop, judging the distances etc.

What do you folks think?

[TBRMInsanity]

I think you are on the right track with needing a skill. You may want to point out to your characters one of the biggest strengths of the SR system (cover each other's buts). Let the mage use the levatation spell but remind him that it is always good to have a backup. The whole idea is worth a Karma point if they pull it off though.

[Juca Bala]

Well, if I was the GM I probably would let the mage try this but I would simply let him make the Parachuting test without the parachutes :D And, if I was feeling really kind in the moment, I could add a +2-3 dice bonus to his test. So it would be really good to his health if he actually knows how to do land

[Witness]

I've opted for pointing out the potential dangers but then saying 'do it if you still want to'. I agree that Levitation and air spirit are two cunning and stylish ways to augment a stealth HALO drop for the Sixth World. But I don't think they can necessarily be enough on their own. Jumping without a chute is foolish and jumping without some parachute training is going to make it very difficult for him to land stealthily and with his team mates.

[Crusher Bob]

Depends on what he wants to do. A fully powered descent would work just fine as long as he can levitate fast enough to keep up the the rest of the team. They'd be free falling at 80 to 100 miles an hour, if he can levitate that fast, no problem. If he plans to just use levitate as a chute, and make most of the descent unpowered, then he'd need some skill to stick together with the rest of the team. However, you'd have to be very good at parachuting (in SR4 maybe skill lvl 4?) to stick together during a HALO jump. The high altitude winds are going to give you plenty of scatter at it is.

In general though, there should be no problem with scattering from the team, you just bury your chute and them mate up with them.

Dropping without the chute might be a good idea since it will really increase the amount of weight that the mage can drop with, as he won't need to carry the chute. Of course, if you are dropping with drone cargo carriers, then the amount of gear you can personally carry might not matter too much.

Depending on the deployment, it might be better for the mage to sink his karma into stuff like 'purify water' and 'nutrition' so that the amont fo food and water the team needs to carry is cut down.

[Zen Shooter01]

Levitate makes Parachuting skill totally unecessary.

Any danger of spell failure is matched by the danger of Parachute skill failure, and obviously in either case the PC will spend Edge like a madman to correct the failure.

But there isn't any danger from spell failure, because you don't jump out of the plane and then cast Levitate. You cast Levitate, and then step out of the plane. If Levitate fails, you do not step out of the plane.

Levitate is the single most useful spell in the 6th World, and any spell caster without it is a chump. It amounts to flight when used for travel, for the caster or his friends. It can also be used to deliver everything from notes to bombs, not to mention fling your enemies out windows, or just hold them in the air - especially if they're melee fighters, like adepts or shapechangers - while your friend the Street Samurai shoots them to pieces.

It can also be used to pick up things like refrigerators or couches and slap them down where they'll be handy as barricades, and/or for squashing enemies.

[Witness]

The impression I got was that he only wanted to levitate himself. He was basically just trying to avoid getting the parachuting skill. Everyone else was going to buy it, and do things the normal way.
Agree with you about the difficulty of staying together, but that, I think, is where the air spirit is a cunning idea, so I'm going to let that pass.
The job is very quick in and out, so not much supplies to carry, and stuff could be droned in anyway.

[Zen Shooter01]

Crusher Bob makes a good point that the spellcaster will be traveling slower than the rest of the team. So he'll arrive a minute or two behind them, but that's not a big deal, especially if they're not dropping into a hot LZ.

[Witness]

And to Zen Shooter, I rather think the point here is for a very quick entry (with element of surprise). Levitate, while great for lots of things, shouldn't be making anybody swoop around like superman. It could slow and cushion your fall yes, but if you sustain it all the way down you're going to drift down like a leaf more than swoop down like an eagle.

This post has been edited by Witness: Jun 2 2006, 03:50 PM

[Crusher Bob]

Hmm, looks like they' reduced the speed you used to be able to get with levitate.

[Zen Shooter01]

Oops, my bad math. Do Air spirits have Movement? That'd help.

[Witness]

[mfb]

i've been pondering doing HALO drops with nothing but an air spirit's Movement power. haven't done the math to see what force spirit you'd need, yet, but i guestimate it wouldn't have to be more than 4 or so. best part? for most of the drop, you can use the Movement power to increase your speed, only using it to slow you down at the very end.

[Witness]

Personally, I feel that relying purely on the air spirit and movement power to do something like this would be a bit... well... munchkinny, open to rampant abuse, and actually a little dull!
But if you're happy to allow it in your game then that's all that matters, so don't listen to me.

[ronin3338]

[Cheops]

Why do they have to HALO jump? Can't they have a spirit conceal them and then levitate over the wall?

[ronin3338]

LOL :D

I wish I'd thought of that! Sometimes the simple solutions are the best!

[Witness]

I guess there're two reasons for the HALO jump.

1) They need to get there really quickly with a signal jammer, as explained above.

2) They believe the neighborhood (which is a fairly large area) to be well defended and extraordinarily well monitored- proximity wires under the ground, hidden cameras everywhere, spirits, wards etc. Oh and it's very close to the Ares Seattle HQ. It's a very high class gated luxury residential area in Beaux Arts, patrolled by Knight Errant, but they have reason to believe that their enemies will have gone to extraordinary lengths to defend this particular family (which is the family of one of the PCs) and grab the PCs when they go in. Long story!

[Shrike30]

If the neighborhood is full of "spirits", "wards", and (in theory) astrally patrolling mages, wouldn't some dude dropping out of the sky maintaining a levitate spell on himself and being tailed by an air elemental show up like a flare on a dark night on the astral?

[Geekkake]

[fool]

I actually did this once in SR 3. Jumped out of the plane and cast levitatea about 1/2 way down, with the air spirit it worked marvelously. But the GM is rather into gutsy moves like jumping out of a high altitude plane with no chute on, besides we had 2 mages in the group so we had the whole party covered.
As far as using just the air spirit's movment power, I opened a topic once about what constituted a physical service and never got a consensus (or even very many answers) about whether an air spirit can be used to fly someone around.... i.e. can you just order your spirit to fly you over the alley way from one building to another. It's written that way in some of the fiction, but there are no rules for it.
I still don't see how doing a HALO drop into bellvue is feasible. I mean aside from getting clearance to fly over the area, there's always the risk of hitting an air taxi, vtol shuttle etc. Besides hitting a gated community from 50 klicks up (someone else was using that as the altitude above) is going to be pretty difficult. A better approach might be something like from XXX where you have a LOW flying cargo plane come over the area and do the jump from NOE. Gliders another decent option.
As far as falling and levitation goes, when under a levitate spell, you're not falling, you can move any direction you want. tThough as a GM I'd make them do arcing turns when flying.

[Witness]

[Shrike30]

Fair enough. I was just thinking that it'd increase their target profile noticeably. Nothing quite like getting the local security mages antsy when you're a klick above them in plain sight.

Parachuting is a really handy skill every once in a while, kinda like Diving.

After this goes off, tell us more about it?

[Witness]

Happy to!

[Voran]

Heh, its kinda odd but my first thought when I saw the thread was, what does levitation have to do with grenades and warthogs?