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> Dispelling Defence, No way to protect your spells?
Bodak
post Jun 26 2006, 03:24 PM
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When an enemy magician uses Conjuring/Controlling to try and wrest a spirit from you, you get to make an opposed test (with bonus dice for 'being there first') to keep your spirit.

When an enemy magician uses Sorcery/Dispelling to try and eliminate your successes on a sustained spell... ... you get to do nothing but watch your spell be whittled down, turn after turn? For things like Shapechange or Invisibility, that could be rather disastrous (eg losing threshold and stopping being a rat while escaping through some narrow shaft, morphing back into full-sized troll mage... ouch!) As far as I can tell, Spell Defence on yourself or Shielding or other such buffs don't provide any way to reinforce a spell currently active on you.

One solution would be to custom-design all your spells to have a very high casting TN so a dispeller is unlikely to be able to take away your successes in a hurry. Then it takes several attempts before you can cast your own spell, every time. A less effective solution might be to design your spells with severely ramped-up drain codes, so although it hurts to cast your own spells, an unwary dispeller might well succeed in cancelling your spell but then has to immediately face an unexpected +6D drain.

Apart from simply dropping and recasting your spell once you're worried about the number of successes you have left (which wouldn't really be an option for the troll rat) what (if any) other ways around this have you tried? I'm aware of quickening/anchoring, and dropping F*2 karma into making the spell harder to dispell, but defending your spirits is an option that comes 'free'... where's the corresponding way of defending your spells?
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Herald of Verjig...
post Jun 26 2006, 11:25 PM
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Enemy rolls against force, not your TN.
So learn the spells big and (when possible) get a maxed out tattoo for those you really don't want to fall.

One of my first mages had improved invisibility at force 4 just so the opponents would have the same TN to resist or dispell it that he had to cast.
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Bodak
post Jun 27 2006, 08:21 AM
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QUOTE (Herald of Verjigorm)
Enemy rolls against force, not your TN.

My mistake, Force. Or if you use the Tattoo, up to F*4 when you spend F*2 kp on it. Even so, successful dispelling tests permanently erode your successes (which in the case of tatoo magic or basic quickening you paid good karma for). As far as I know, there is no way for the caster to top up the quickened spell with extra successes to repair it from dispelling damage.

It sounds a bit like some punk with a discombobulator ray shines it on the cybersam repeatedly for a few turns and suddenly some of the sammie's 'ware gets turned off. Not only that, it's actually been removed from his body and he has to go pay for it again.
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Herald of Verjig...
post Jun 27 2006, 10:06 AM
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Maybe, but with the high force tattoos, you may end up killing the person before he can get any successes. If the effective force is greater than their magic rating, the dispelling drain is physical damage, and the TNs are pretty bad too.
A no longer present poster had a tale of his force 4 quickened levitate spell accidentally killing some random mage who the GM had try to dispel it.
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