Sustained Spell Question Options

[Red]

I ran into a magic related question while GM'ing for my group yesterday, and collectively we were unable to come to a solid conclusion. The team shaman was astrally projecting, and chased some dual natured awakened dingos (cerebus hounds) into an underground stream. Since they were dual natured he was able to stunball them into unconsciousness.

He cast levitate to drag the bodies back against the current, but he wasn't able to pull the bodies all the way before they drowned and died. At this point, they would have ceased to be dual natured. Does the levitate spell still function? I don't believe it is a line of sight issue. Rather the dingos simply ceased to exist on the astral plane where the spell was cast.

Ultimately it didn't matter. The shaman simply summoned a water spirit to drag the dingos out of the stream. But I'm still curious, because it might have implications for those that have astral perception. If the sustained spells still worked, then one could give buff spells to a spirit of man, and using metaplanar shortcuts they could deliver buffs to astral perceivers behind wards without materializing.

edited to clarify underground stream

This post has been edited by Red: Dec 31 2007, 03:10 PM

[FrankTrollman]

How was he possibly incapable of pulling them out before they drowned? Levitate moves meters per second, drowning is... nowhere near that fast.

Secondly, how did he cast Levitate at all? Levitate is a physical spell, meaning that you have to be physical to cast it. As an Astrally projecting entity he would not have been able to cast that spell on any target.

The summoning of the Water Elemental of course works fine, and should have been his first attempt.

And lastly, a sustained spell does not need for its target to stay legal for the spell to continue. For example, Petrify can't target statues, but that doesn't mean that it dispels itself!

-Frank

[Karaden]

I'd guess that the GM was making the levitate go slower because it was pulling against the stream. As for drowning, I'd assume that they had already been underwater for a little while, and when they went unconcious... well holding your breath is hard to do when unconcious. (This is all asssuming they where compleatly underwater with no air above them)

[Glayvin34]

Yeah, the short answer is that Levitate can't be cast from the Astral.

But I'll assume levitate was cast in the physical and then the Mage projects while the spell is still being sustained for argument purposes. In this case, I'd say he would have to manifest to direct the spell, because he needs LOS. If the Mage remained in the Astral without manifesting, then the spell would remain in effect, but he would be unable to move the target because of the lack of LOS. So the target would remain in the air, the spell is still in effect, it just can't be moved around.

I guess it would be the same principle if you levitated an object and then left the room. The object would remain in the air, but without LOS you wouldn't be able to manipulate its position.

[Abbandon]

-why didnt the mage raise the dingo's up out of the water? water current should have been irrelevant.

-Forget levitate and astral lets get to the core issue.

A mage is astral, his target is dual natured, he is sustaining a spell on the target on the astral plane. Then the target dies. Is there anything left to target on the astral??(not that any spell would be helpful)

- If you cast levitate on a rock and then go astral and its floating above the ground a meter, shouldnt you still be able to manipulate it from the astral because now there is a big glowy levitate spell one meter off the ground in the astral too ???

[Karaden]

[Red]

Oops. I meant to use the word underground instead of underwater. They were in a cave system at the time. I was factoring in some drag resistance due to the current, and the distance was less than trivial. These awakened dingos had the movement power, as well as a head start. They made a significant distance down stream on the way to the next air pocket. (They had memorized the system escaping from their original masters) I had a nice mental picture in mind, but that mental picture failed to make it into my original post. My apologies.

I failed to realize that the spell could not be cast in the astral. I'll keep that in mind.

Though I guess it does open another question. Does medium (air/water) pose any change to the movement speed granted by levitate? By RAW, probably not. But I don't believe it would be unreasonable.

This post has been edited by Red: Dec 30 2007, 11:07 PM

[Mercer]

Why can't the spell be cast in the astral? Or more correctly, why can't an astral mage cast it on a dual-natured creature's (physical) body?

Regardless from that issue, my feeling was once a spell is cast and sustained you can generally keep sustaining it unless you or it have to go through a ward or something. To look at the opposite side, if your friend casts an Inc INT spell on you and then you go astral, your INT is still boosted. Likewise, if a meatbod mage buffed his meatbod team and then went astral to scout something, he could maintain those spells even if he flew to Topeka and back.

Or, in another weird example, could Petey the Projector cast Levitate on himself while he was physical, go astral and then guide his floating body around places? (It seems odd, but following my line of reasoning I can't think of a reason it wouldn't work. Or if it works on the rock, why wouldn't it work on the meatbod?*)

The metaplanes are probably a different issue, although magic (in any edition) is not my area of expertise. My feeling is a mage who is sustaining a spell on something in either the physical or the astral world has the link severed when they go into the metaplanes, but I never played around much with the metaplanes. Likewise, if you were sustaining a spell on something and that something left the manasphere (because your astronaut friend just had to be buffed), the spell would end at the edge of the manasphere. This would be similar to a sustained spell being disrupted by someone walking through a ward. The target goes where the magic can't follow.

Although if there was a specific ruling in the book one way or the other, it'd be nice to know about it. Really, I'm just guessing here.

(*Oof, that example is messing with my head. It might just be a whole lot easier to say a spell can't be sustained if the caster or the target are on different planes. Either way it seems like that would be covered in one of the books.)

[Fortune]

[Jaid]

levitate can't be cast on the astral because it is a physical spell. it can only exist on the physical plane. a mage on the astral has no LOS to the physical plane, regardless of whether the target is dual-natured or not.

spells can be sustained without LOS, but i would argue (as it appears some others around here) that you require LOS to manipulate one of your sustained spells. thus, if you cast stench in one place, and then walk away, you can't move it to a new place unless you still have LOS to it.

[Crusher Bob]

Assuming that Dingos aren't too oddly put together, they should have the diving reflex which, among other things, would tend to keep them from drowning until they actually run out of oxygen (some few minutes of time under water).

[Karaden]

Hmm, didn't know about that, kind of cool really. Though they may have gasped in pain when they where hit with the stunbolt? Oh well.

[Red]

The dingos had taken about 17 stun from two stunballs at that point. I was probably too hasty to drown the dingos because I hadn't thought it through. However the point was inconsequential. They received the same bounty whether they fetched the animals alive or dead so long as they had a body for proof. Nobody felt cheated or slighted in the matter. Given that the dingos were corrupted by toxics, the players weren't too keen on keeping them alive anyways. They were using stun for the lower drain. Mercy had little do to with it.

But I'll have to keep the diving reflex stuff in mind too. That's pretty nifty.

This post has been edited by Red: Dec 31 2007, 03:17 PM

[Moon-Hawk]

As for levitation rate vs current, meh, there's nothing official but I don't think the GM is out of line at all to decrease the speed when fighting a current.
Granted, you can't cast a physical spell while projecting. Oopsie.
As for the real question, what happens when an astral mage sustains a spell on a dual-natured creature which ceases to be dual-natured? I'm going with the spell fails. Purely astral beings are not supposed to be able to affect purely physical ones. They're different planes. This is just my gut feeling on how I think SR magic is supposed to work.

[Jaid]

[Mercer]

I understand that you can't cast Physical spells on the Astral, but in the case of a astral magician casting a Physical spell at a dual-natured creature, it seems like the spell is being cast on something physical, through the link provided through the creature.

I don't mind if the rules specifically prohibit this, but I'm looking for a page number.

[Fortune]

[Mercer]

I appreciate that Fortune.

I hate to sound stubborn, but it still seems like a dual-natured creature has both astral and physical forms. The prohibition in that text is that an astral mage can't affect physical world targets (because there is no link), and that a perceiving mage (who is dual natured) can't use physical spells on purely astral targets, because they have no physical form.

But dual natured creatures aren't purely astral. In much the same way that a dual natured creature can bite a astral magician, an astral magician can affect them with spells (or even punch them with his astral fist). If the dual-natured creatures were purely astral, physical spells would have no affect. But they're both physical and astral at the same time, so those spells have something to "grab" onto. (This may be yet more of my atavistic knowledge of previous editions bubbling through. I never really got over grounding being taken out of the game.)

Another thing that is bugging me is that Increase Attributes is Physical (at least in my book). So, if a mage has sustained Increase Intuition, and goes astral, does this mean his INT is no longer boosted? That seems odd. (Likewise, a spirit with that Innate Spell couldn't buff his boss if they were both astral, since Inc INT has no effect on astral forms?)

In the case of an astral magician Levitating his own body (through the spell he cast while physical and sustained while he projected), it makes sense that that spell would stick on the body since its a physical spell. It can't go astral. Inc Body too, the astral form has no Body Attribute (or more correctly, its Will is its Body) so there is nothing for that spell to do. But Inc Int does affect the mind (in fact, its your Astral Reaction), so it seems like that spell would do something. Buffing your mental stats in astral combat would seem like a good thing to do (and it really seems like those spells would be M).

Way back when there were two Levitate Spells, Levitate Person and Levitate Object, the dying while levitating thing came up. If you were levitating someone who got killed (past their physical overflow, Ess 0, deader than Caeser), the Levitate Person spell failed because technically, they became an object. I think the spells had different drain codes or something, which is why people always took Lev People. Occasionally there'd be a cool scene where a wounded person was floating back and just plopped on the ground when the spell failed. But if you had the Lev that didn't care if (like the current version), it didn't matter if they died or not.

[Glayvin34]

[Glayvin34]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Karaden]

Glayvin34 has put it fairly good. You can also use the mirror analogy that the book puts forth:

Physical stuff can only see other physical stuff, it can't see into the astral, nore can it affect anything over there. Astral stuff can see both physical stuff and astral stuff, but the mirror inbetween them affects the astral stuff doing anything to the physical stuff.

Now, dual natured stuff exists on both sides of the mirror at the same time. They do not however create a breach in the mirror through which an astral thing can directly affect the physical part of a dual natured creature. It can, however, indirectly effect the physical form by manipulating the astral form.

[Mercer]

I saw the thing on pg 184, but its the same conundrum. A dual-natured creature is both a physical and astral form.

Inc Att is just where is gets weird. Casting Inc INT on a projected mage's body to have his INT boost just seems odd. It does say that damage carries over between the two, but buff spells aren't mentioned. (That would make an interesting tactic though to send the mage into astral combat and have the other mage buff and Heal him; although big Heals might take too long to be really useful.)

If Inc Att is a Physical spell, according to page 184, it can't affect the astral form. Its an easier fix to make the Inc Mentals Mana spells and keep te Inc Physicals Physical (even if you leave it as one spell).

I'm not being deliberately obstinate about the dual-natured creature exception. I'm just looking for a specific ruling that disallows it. It seems like if a mage or adept were to perceive, an astrally projecting mage would be able to affect him with spells like Levitate and Inc Att, because the target is not purely physical (no link), or purely astral (no body). Dual-natured seems like it would be both, a physical body linked to the astral, the exception that proves the rule.

[Jaid]

hmmm... i could've swore there was some rule somewhere that explicitly says an astrally projecting magician can't even cast spells unless they are mana spells, but i can't seem to find it. anyone?

[Fortune]