Magic Fingers Options

[Blink]

I had two questions about the Magic Fingers spell on page 203.

First, can you sustain the spell and in the next round cast Death Touch or Heal and use it to deliver the spell to a target in your line of sight?

Second, can Magic Fingers cross the plane boundries? For example, if you are projecting on the astral plane, can you use magical fingers to attack or heal someone on the physical plane if they would not otherwise be in your line of sight if you stopped projecting? Sorry for the wordy question...it just seems to be a gray area in the rules.

[Dashifen]

1. No; I wouldn't allow Magic Fingers to extend touch range to LOS.

As for the second one, I'm not sure. I can't recall any specific rule that says physical spells cannot be cast from the astral plane. It does specify that astral beings can only be targeted by Mana spells unless they have a physical Materialization (i.e., spirits). But, your question seems to be casting from the astral a Physical spell to interact with a Physical target (i.e., a teammate). My gut says no.

[Noctum]

Magic Fingers is a Physical Spell and only Mana spells function in the Astral Plane.

[Dashifen]

Yeah, regardless of whether or not you can cast the spell, it's still not going to do anything and you're going to suffer drain. In other words, it's not going to work.

[djinni]

bad runner no nuyen!

the point to alway slook at is not whether or not it CAN be done, but should it.
if you could cast physical spells from the astral plane then the team gets ambushed from the astrally projecting magician, POW POW POW!!!

[Redjack]

[laughingowl]

[kzt]

A bomb is complex technical device. Yow are not going to see anything useful looking at it from the astral. Other then possibly confirmation that it is a bomb by seeing the intent and hatred/anger of the guy who built it.

[laughingowl]

Hmm true, and actually thinking back no reason technologica viewing at this point couldnt be used for the magic fingers.


So could the astral projecting mage 'Punch' somebody (on the physical) with the mage fingers, not real effective, but then unless they could go astral there isnt anything the opposing side could do?

[knasser]

[Jaid]

you cannot project a spell across planar boundaries. a spell is other on the physical plane, or the astral plane, and you cannot cast between them.

[laughingowl]

Jaid that is the catch:


"and you cannot cast between them."

You cast Magic fingers on the mundane...

You Sustain Magic Fingers on the mundane ...


You Astral Project and move towards some place and use the magic fingers (which are on the physical plane).

Spells can be sustained from anywhere.

Magic fingers can interract with anything you can see.

I can see nothing in the 'rules' that would stop it, although I guess the quetion would be 'can the mage 'see' the people to punch them' He can see 'their aura's' but that arguabley is not quite the same thing.

[Jaid]

you don't have physical LOS to the target from the astral. therefore, you cannot change the direction or effect of a magic fingers spell from the astral.

you could sustain it and have it just hold something in place, or constantly rotate it, but you couldn't change the orders.

[laughingowl]

Knasser:

Well levitate (if you mean the target could be problematic) (since you would have to levitate the target 'before' projecting'


Control line would be good accept for the general very short duration.


Shape Material could be interesting.

'Shape' a tunnel for you crew to escape.
Sustain the spell and get in vehicle, astral project back to the tunnel, when/if follow shape the tunnel closed again.....

It is given that a spell can be sustained across the planes (even meta); however, can it be 'directed' across the planes...

Nothing says no...

But then nothing says yes?

[Tarantula]

This gives me an even better idea. Cast your magic fingers, and sustain it, then cast clairvoyance, and use your new sight plane to control the magic fingers.

While clairvoyance does say you cannot use it to target with other spells, you're not. You're simply controlling your sustained spell which has already been cast.

Anyone find something that says no?

[hyzmarca]

You need actual LOS to control sustained spells. Clairvoyance will help you get a better view but it won't work through walls. You need an actual LOS.

[DireRadiant]

In fact p. 204

"The spell can reach any point the caster can see, and Clairvoyance
or remote-viewing technology can be used to get a close-up
of the scene as long as it is within the caster’s normal line of
sight. This spell comes in very handy for disarming bombs
and handling other hazardous work from a safe distance."

Darn someone though of it already! (Check the within normal line of sight clause)

[Ravor]

:vegm:

Just remember that anything your Mage can pull off so can my Mages, and I get more of them to play around with.


Seriously though, although I think that it may be legal under RAW I don't believe that Controlling a spell is the same as Sustaining a spell so it wouldn't work in my games unless the Mage still had 'real' LOS and was just using Clairvoyance to remove any 'Remote Control Modifiers' he might have while disarming the bomb.

*Edit*

Hmm, good, it seems that I don't have to plug another leak in RAW after all.

[knasser]

Hmmm. So I think we're probably mostly agreed that RAW doesn't forbid this. I guess the useful question now is should it? Are we opening ourselves up to abuse with flying knives and The Amazing Grenade Swarm (watch it buzzing it's way through the corridors of the site, dropping off one or two of it's number every now and then, as it passes).

-K.

[Da9iel]

When did this agreement come? You can sustain a physical spell from astral space, but you don't have LOS to control it. There is no LOS from the astral plane to the physical plane. You can see auras and shadows, but you cannot see the physical plane.

[knasser]

[Jaid]

well, if you're determined to interpret the rules such that it allows that kind of nonsense, then i suppose you would need to add some houserules to remove it.

otherwise, you're pretty much looking at anyone who spends the points on ritual sorcery and telling them they're an idiot, because this sort of thing is *exactly* what ritual sorcery is for.

seriously, you need to have LOS to cast a spell, and you need to have LOS to control it. if you can't get LOS to cast a spell from the astral to the physical, then how does it make sense that you can get LOS from astral to physical for sustaining [edit] controlling purposes?

[edit] i really need to figure out how to do strikethrough text on these boards... pretty sure i've seen it here before, so i just need to quote the right post i guess =P [/edit]

This post has been edited by Jaid: Jun 17 2007, 06:39 PM

[Konsaki]

Magic fingers, the poor mages Orgasm spell... :D

[Glyph]

I would disallow this because:

1) The divide between astral and physical planes, and the inability to affect targets in one plane from another, has been established in every edition of SR. The only exception was the old rules for grounding (which still needed a dual-natured object to work), which were removed for being unbalancing.

[Da9iel]

What they said!

P. S. Jaid: strikethrough is [ s ]nevermind[ /s ] (without the spaces of course).