What about Anchoring tatoo magic?, Anyone else done this in SR4 yet? Options

[GrinderTheTroll]

One of my groups favorite things to do was use a tatoo to Anchor a spell to themselves like Increase Reflexes (duh). The rules in SM seem general enough to cover such a contignecy. In prior versions of SR, tatoo size was proportional to the Spell Rating but I don't see any mention of an Anchor's physical size but only its Astral Space requirement.

More generally in SM, the spell takes up "astral space" equal to the caster which is not hideable does that mean the physical anchor (tatoo) could be any (reasonable) size? This would make you very visible astrally, but rather non-descript in the meat world.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome!

Thanks,

~GTT

[Cold-Dragon]

Well, the only flaw I can see is the mixing of aura's. I would think that would hurt or interfere....but if you mix in the ingrediants for a focus into the tattoo ink/whatever before it's applied (or enchant it that way) I can see that as an excuse for a focus. I'd house rule it to be at least the size of your hand though, to avoid those nasty little moments of 'I want to put a itty bitty heart here on my left buttcheek, so I can anchor an air spell spell into it' and whatnot.

Not only that, but people might see this magical aura sticking out your ass, and what will they think of you then?

[Slithery D]

Do you mean Anchoring or Quickening tatoos? I remember the latter, they just let you spend even more karma to make the spell more resistant to wards/dispelling/astral combat. I think with current rules overcasting most spells and then spending the double karma cap will be enough. Blow 16 karma on a Force 8 quickened spell and it will be the equivalen of Force 16 for any ward fights. That's enough to make it pretty much immune to anything. If you bust a lot of Force 10s you might have trouble, but given the drain on that you won't see them very often. Tatoos are superfulous in this case. You're probably better off just bumping your force and spending more karma under the regular rules.