The Supersonic Mage, Or: Why Immortal Elves Scare Me Options

[Demerzel]

So I was just crunching some numbers last night.

Okay, Imagine a Grade 6 initiate with a rating 6 power focus. Effective Magic rating 18, summons a rating 8 spirit with the movement power. Then casts levitate on himself and instructs the spirit to use it's power of movement on him.

Levitate grants a movement rate of Magic Rating x Net Hits (But it's not opposed when cast on self so no opposing hits to subtract.)

The magician with spellcasting 6 and an effective magic of 18 has 24 dice in his spellcasting pool yielding a 57.6% chance of getting 8 or more hits on this test.

18 x 8 = 144 meters per combat turn.

Combat turn is 3 seconds so 144/3 = 48 m/s

1 m/s = 2.2369362920544mph, so:

48 m/s * (2.2369362920544 mph / 1m/s) =~ 107.4 mph

Then the force 8 spirit using it's movement power multiplies the magicians movement rate by 8, giving:

107.4 mph * 8 = 859.2 mph
Exceeding the speed of sound by roughly 100mph.

If he casts it at force 9 he sustains 6s stun, a little rough perhaps but not bad for a supersonic naked man holding a power focus.

This line of thought came from wondering how fast I could make a fairly standard mage fly without doing anything extraordinary, got something like 18-25mph though that wasn't bad compared to say walking, then thought, "Wow, what would it take to be a supersonic mage?"

So how do I use this against the players in my game... :vegm:

[X-Kalibur]

The better question... what spell protects their body from G's pulled at that speed?

[ShadowDragon]

[hyzmarca]

Check the latest Errata. Levitation speed is determined by Force X Net Hits, not Magic x Net hits.

The bad new is that this doubles your hypothetical chatacter's potential speed to a whopping 1718.4 mph. The good news is that even an IE would have trouble resisting 19P drain.

A Dwarf or a Human optimized for drain resistance could get 10 (Logic) + 8 (Willpower or edge) + 7 (Edge or willpower) + 6 (Spellcating Focus) = 31 dice. Even for a Body 12 Dwarf that would usually hurt.


Resisting 9S drain is a little easier but it still isn't recomended.

You could get 3 extra drain resistance dice with an adrenal pump but the essence cost is rather large compared to the cerebral booster.

[McGravin]

Convert the Horse Totem from Magic in the Shadows to a new Mentor Spirit, and you don't even have to summon a spirit.

Back in SR2, a friend had an Elf Horse Shaman with cyberskates and a maxed out Quickness and four levels of Muscle Toner.

That's a 7 Quickness plus 4 for Muscle Toner, times 6 for cyberskates, times his essence of 5 thanks to the Movement ability granted by the Horse Totem (1 point of essense sacrificed for cyberskates). You get 330 meters per combat phase, or 66 meters per second (SR2 combat phases were 5 seconds, right?).

That's a little under 148 mph or 238 kph, on par with the Eurocar Westwind Turbo. Without casting any spells or summoning any spirits, there's no drain to resist.

[Grinder]

[Thanee]

The Movement power always has been a little bit on the silly side, with the force multiplier. ;)

Bye
Thanee

[Edward]

First Demerzel a power focus no longer ads to magic for calculating effects, only to magic related dice pools, you need to get a little more speed from somewhere

Remember you don’t need to resist all the drain, just enough.

We have in initiate grade 6 magic 12 hermetic mage with a power focus 6. Wanting to cast a levitate spell at force 24 (max) and stay alive. Drain 13p

Using hyzmarca’s max 31 drain dice (moor easily achieved than you would think when you consider that stats can be broat to max with spells, also consider that there is no theoretical cap on spell focus force) we will assume that drain was reduced buy 10 points (you spend edge so statistically you will get more from 6s) that is only 4 boxes of drain. Even if you could cast your force 36 monstrosity with 19 drain you only take 9 boxes, min body to remain upright only 3, less if the spell was fetish limited. then you cast a heal spell or 2 and your right as rain for your mad dash across the border.

[Dender]

hmm... numbers... numbers...

18 dice from magic and focus, 6 from spellcasting, 6 from edge

nice even 30 dice, for an average of 10 successes
plus an edge reroll for the failures and the 6's from the last one (about half)
25 dice for an average of an extra 8 successes

well... with 18 successes on average for casting.... i'd say casting a force 12... anything... wouldnt be unheard of.

then to resist, spellcasing focus + will + centering + attr (+ 8 from that spirit if you want)

32 dice to resist
11 successes on average

... at that point, any spell cast like this is... scary, especially if quickened...

think: +18 to dodge rolls and surprize checks
30P lightning bolt (12 force +18 successes on that spellcasting check to hit)
an extra 10+ dice using most weapons (i've never even seen a panther cannon before... alright, i'm ready to go)
maxing out anyone's physical stats (need a weakling str 6 troll to have 15 str? no problem!)
paralyzing the majority of anyone, or anything, with decrease
healing someone from the edge of death to full health
armor 15+, perminantly (unless you know someone who can dispell 15 +15 + 18 dice of doom)
if you wanted to be a jerk, invisible full body armor and invisible riot shield
the fling power (thats right, 9P before successes on the test to hit with that axe)

i honestly think the only thing keeping immortal elves from waging DBZ-like fights is that they're still elves, and expected to act like royalty. That and its just plain silly to use phenominal cosmic power for something so petty as mortals.


i'm betting there are some mistakes made in this post. But the greatest mistake would be underestimating just what an immortal elf can do.

[SL James]

[hobgoblin]

because of movement speed?

[James McMurray]

[2bit]

[Demerzel]

Well the IE thing was just that if a mere rating 6 initiate can do this then the power of the extremely magical is frightening.

Anyhow, if errata changes it to force x hits then it’s even easier to be a supersonic mage. Consider:

Rating 4 initiate with magic 10 casts levitate at max 20 force.

If he has 18 spellcasting pool (10 magic + 8 from skill/foci not hard), that’s roughly 6 hits on the spellcasting test then edge to reroll failures, netting another 4. But say we only need 8 anything else is gravy so the odds of 8 are probably pretty good.

20 force x 8 hits = 160 m/turn = 53.33 m/s = 119.3 mph

Force 8 spirit with movement makes that 954.43, nearly 200mph to spare over supersonic.

So drain is (20/2)+2 = 12P, Say he uses edge and gets a minimum of 4 successes, he’s still conscious, throws 20 karma at quickening, and boom near permanently sportscar fast. And spirit enhanced supersonic.

Then he hits his docwagon bracelet or has his buddy throw an equally powerful heal spell (or does it himself). Whoever said powerful magic didn’t come at the cost of a painful ordeal?

The cost?
Initiate grade 4 = 70 Karma.
Improving Magic from 5 to 10 = 120 Karma
Quickening = 20 Karma.

All this for 210 Karma, and it’s not at all the only thing you can do that’s assuming a pretty standard character to start with, not minmaxed for this example.

Also if you’re worried about walking/flying through astral barriers. The quickened levitate above would get 60 dice to defeat barriers. (Force x 2 + Karma spent), not too bad for almost any barrier you’d accidentally blunder across…

[Kyoto Kid]

[Shrike30]

See, it's the thought of whipping around town, popping barriers as I went, that would scare me :P Eventually, someone's going to get tired of it and tag you with a badass spell or a sniper rifle (or a drone missile, since you're moving so damn fast...).

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

[hyzmarca]

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

OK, so 36/2 + 1 = 19, no argument...

Now, where's 36 coming from?

Nevermind - I see where you were getting it (though I think an assumption is wrong.)

The example given was a rating 6 initiate with a rating 6 power focus.
that's 12 magic (possibly) + 6 extra dice for casting, but you were reading (but not showing your work ;) ) it as magic = 18, overcasting at 36...

However, at most that's a force 24 spell - the power focus adds dice to any magic attribute test, but nowhere does it say it raises other magic related caps (such as the max rating for an adept power, or the force at which spells can be cast)

[Demerzel]

That's basically the it. I read the line in the power focus description, "Possession of a power focus feeds a magician’s Magic directly, making her efforts more powerful in all forms of magical ability. " to mean that it adds its force to the Magic Attribute, as it did in prior SR versions. I'm not so sure anymore. . .

Personally in my games I plan on ruleing that it adds to magic while activated, jusst because I like that better. =) My second speed calculations do not include that assumption however.

[SL James]

[James McMurray]

Ah, I thought you meant it was a bigger deal in that it was more powerful.

[Edward]

[James McMurray]

The Movement power description in my book doesn't say that. Is it specified elsewhere? If not, then it's up to the GM, and those GMs that don't want people breaking the sound barrier are more than free to interpret it as being dangerous. Of course, even if it does say that, they're still free to rule it the other way, it just puts them firmly in the House Rule camp. Not that that's a bad thing. :)

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

*shrug*

every time it's come up as a player - I've always insisted on two spirits - one using the movement power, one using the guard power.

Mach 2 fenderbenders are a PITA.