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xicidis
post Jan 6 2009, 06:23 PM
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How long does a sustaining foci stay active? If you go to sleep? If you get knocked out? If you die? The way it seems to work from the book its just as good as a quickened spell, but no meta magic required and you can recast if its disrupted.

Am I missing something?
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masterofm
post Jan 6 2009, 06:56 PM
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You turn it off when you want to, or you start getting addicted. If you have your sustaining spell foci on 24 hours a day the GM can decide that you have a sever addiction and remove a point of essence off of your character sheet.
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Cain
post Jan 6 2009, 09:34 PM
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As long as you like; but if it's disrupted by walking through a ward or attacked in astral combat, the focus is broken and cannot be repaired. You can re-enchant it from scratch, though.

A quickened spell is much harder to dispel.
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Eugene
post Jan 6 2009, 10:23 PM
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I've got another focus question - a lot of people say that one of the problems with using a lot of foci is that "it lights you up" in the Astral. I've yet to find any 4e rules that support this IMHO common notion, though...
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Cain
post Jan 6 2009, 10:36 PM
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QUOTE (Eugene @ Jan 6 2009, 02:23 PM) *
I've got another focus question - a lot of people say that one of the problems with using a lot of foci is that "it lights you up" in the Astral. I've yet to find any 4e rules that support this IMHO common notion, though...

Well, "Lights up" is a bit of descriptive license, but here's how it works. Each focus you use has an astral presence, and the more astral presences you have, the more noticeable you are on the astral plane. If you're running with 6 active foci, that's 7 astral presences for someone else to spot. Getting away with one or two is possible, but with 7 chances to notice you, you are pretty well "lit up".
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Stahlseele
post Jan 6 2009, 10:42 PM
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does that mean, that an enemy mage does only get one chance to spot you, or your aura or whatever on the astral, if you have nothing else magically active?
and if you have 6 foci around you and they are active, then the mage gets to try 7 times to notice anything being there? O.o
ye gods, that could end up one hell of a lot of ice rolls, if there's more than one mage with foci on either side x.x . .
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masterofm
post Jan 6 2009, 10:45 PM
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To make it so you don't have to roll tons of dice I would give bonus dice to spot the mage on the astral. Simple and cuts down on a game that already has quite a bit too much dice rolling.
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vollmond
post Jan 6 2009, 10:51 PM
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QUOTE (Cain @ Jan 6 2009, 03:34 PM) *
As long as you like; but if it's disrupted by walking through a ward or attacked in astral combat, the focus is broken and cannot be repaired.


Are you sure abut this?

SR4 pg. 186
QUOTE
For example, a character who unknow-
ingly walks through a mana barrier carrying an active focus, or
a dual being in an elevator that passes through a ward on its
way up. In this case, make the same Opposed Test described
above (using Force x 2 for spells, spirits, foci, etc). If the bar-
rier wins, however, the item or entity still breaks through but is
automatically disrupted. Disrupted spells immediately end and
disrupted foci deactivate.


A deactivated focus can be immediately reactivated, but I do have to recast whatever spell it was sustaining (if it was a sustaining focus), but I don't think it is permanently damaged in any way.
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pbangarth
post Jan 6 2009, 10:52 PM
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I concur with vollmond.

Peter
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RedeemerofOgar
post Jan 6 2009, 10:53 PM
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Correct, Vollmond. The SPELL is broken, but not the focus itself.
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xicidis
post Jan 6 2009, 11:10 PM
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Ah, I see. Because I have a character that has a bunch of sustaining foci, and wants to have Improved invisibility and levitate on all the time. I kind of thought that was a bit much compared to like a quickened spell. The sustaining foci can be used on many kinds of spells and can be changed whenever, making it was more useful, and not much more expensive.
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i101
post Jan 7 2009, 01:21 AM
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So this means, that a foci cant just be turned off and on? Cause everytime the magican turns the foci off, he or she would have to spend new karma to bind the spell, right?
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pbangarth
post Jan 7 2009, 01:52 AM
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QUOTE (i101 @ Jan 6 2009, 06:21 PM) *
So this means, that a foci cant just be turned off and on? Cause everytime the magican turns the foci off, he or she would have to spend new karma to bind the spell, right?


No, you don't spend karma to bind the spell. You spend the karma, once, to bind the focus. A deactivated focus would have to have another spell cast into it, as per normal spellcasting.

Peter
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RedeemerofOgar
post Jan 10 2009, 11:09 AM
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QUOTE (xicidis @ Jan 6 2009, 07:10 PM) *
Ah, I see. Because I have a character that has a bunch of sustaining foci, and wants to have Improved invisibility and levitate on all the time. I kind of thought that was a bit much compared to like a quickened spell. The sustaining foci can be used on many kinds of spells and can be changed whenever, making it was more useful, and not much more expensive.


Basically correct. Note that a sustaining focus is specific to a magic type - thus, you cannot take the same Illusion Sustaining Focus that was holding your Invisibility, and use it to hold Levitate. Levitate would have to go into a Manipulation Sustaining Focus instead. You could, on the other hand, drop your Invisibility spell and use its focus to sustain a Mask or Chaotic World spell (as those are both also Illusions).
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masterofm
post Jan 10 2009, 11:30 PM
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Foci in a nutshell

- 1 sustained spell for a foci.

- Each sustaining foci has a specific type of spell you can put into it (health, manipulation, illusion, ect.)

- Spells force is capped at the foci's rank. You can get around this by using edge.

- The only way to damage or break the foci is to specifically target the foci. There is no real rules on how to do this though.

- Foci is affected by background count and if it reaches a force of 0 the spell fizzles.

- The spell in a Foci can be dispelled.

- You can turn it on or off whenever you want but when you want to turn it on you must recast a spell into it.

- If the character never turns it off the foci they start to suffer from addiction.... which if your GM really wants to be a punk and pwn you can strip a point of essence off of your sheet.

- When foci are active they can set off wards as they act as duel natured items.

- If you have a foci activated and are not on the astral a mage can target the foci, but not you as you are not duel natured when you have it activated (just the foci.)

- If the mage disrupts your spell on the astral the foci will turn off and you will lose any of the benefits it gave you.
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Glyph
post Jan 11 2009, 12:10 AM
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Where are you getting this spell type limitation? I don't see it anywhere in the rules. SR3 was even more limited (the sustaining focus could only be used for one specific spell), but I don't see anything in the SR4 description limiting the spells that can be cast into a sustaining focus. Of course, I'm looking at the focus description itself, so with the way SR4 rules are laid out, it could be buried in another paragraph somewhere.

Focus addiction is a negative quality, and inflicting it on a player for keeping his foci active for too long is pathetic and lame. It's like giving the sammie augmentation addiction for keeping his wired reflexes on too often. Honestly, one of the improvements in SR4 is how mages don't lose Magic every time they sneeze any longer. Keeping foci active too often has enough other negative drawbacks - you don't need heavy-handed GM dickery to demonstrate that it's a bad idea.
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masterofm
post Jan 11 2009, 12:28 AM
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"If your GM wants to be a punk"

A GM can assign any flaw that they feel they want to give to a character. The book talks about leaving foci on for too long creates an addiction. If the GM wants to be a punk they can give you the flaw eventually. I would consider moving it from minor, to moderate, and up and warn the player if you even wanted to do this much bean counting.
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pbangarth
post Jan 11 2009, 03:16 AM
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QUOTE (Glyph @ Jan 10 2009, 05:10 PM) *
Where are you getting this spell type limitation? I don't see it anywhere in the rules.


SR4, p. 191, under Spell foci, "Each spell focus must be attuned to a specific category of spells." Three type of spell foci are then discussed, one of which is sustaining foci.

Peter
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Glyph
post Jan 11 2009, 07:18 AM
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Ah. I guess I'm not used to sustaining foci being lumped in with spellcasting foci and counterspelling foci. Still more versatile than they were in SR3.
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Mäx
post Jan 11 2009, 10:11 PM
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QUOTE (Glyph @ Jan 11 2009, 02:10 AM) *
Focus addiction is a negative quality, and inflicting it on a player for keeping his foci active for too long is pathetic and lame. It's like giving the sammie augmentation addiction for keeping his wired reflexes on too often.

No it's not, it's much more like the gm giving the character addiction to a drug for popping drugs all the time. Augmentation addiction is more about wanting more and more augmentations then about using those augmentations.
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RedeemerofOgar
post Jan 11 2009, 10:32 PM
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QUOTE (Mäx @ Jan 11 2009, 06:11 PM) *
No it's not, it's much more like the gm giving the character addiction to a drug for popping drugs all the time. Augmentation addiction is more about wanting more and more augmentations then about using those augmentations.


No, I really agree with Glyph here. A combat mage keeping a sustained Increase Reflexes is 100% identical to a street sam having Wired Reflexes implanted. The same mage using a Power Focus is roughly equivalent to the street sam using Muscle Replacement.

And by the way, I keep seeing people say that Edge can get around the Force Cap on spellcasting successes. Is that an actual rule in a book somewhere (citation please), or is that just a popular house rule?
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Stahlseele
post Jan 11 2009, 10:49 PM
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if those spells were quickened, i would agree with you.
but for them to be sustained, he has to recast them every so often, while the samurai does not have to have his reflexes reimplanted every some hours/days . .
every time they cast, they are basically using their drug of choice.
the samurai gets one shot and stays high all the time, so it becomes the norm for him. and you could say the next fix would be faster reflexes some time . .
but judging by how it is now?
yes, mages would be able to obtain an addiction to certain spells . . especially, when they overcast . .
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AllTheNothing
post Jan 12 2009, 01:09 AM
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There are ways to keep the player in check without inflicting a negative quality.
For example some particulary heinous act of blood magic is committed somewhere near where the PC lives, and alot of DIPs and or toxic/shadow spirits are roaming about, explain him/her that abusing of foci brings misfortune, if he/she doesn't catch the wind have the PC catch a bullet, being ospitalized and his/her foci misplaced (it's not like they were legaly owned and the PC is going to sue anyone, is it?), if the PC behaves he/she might find his/hers stuff returned (well maybe something is missing); you could have him contract an astral diseas which makes the PC allergic to the foci for a while, or maybe having flying drones to collide with the PC while flying........ as a GM there are many ways to handle excesses.
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Glyph
post Jan 12 2009, 01:30 AM
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QUOTE (RedeemerofOgar @ Jan 11 2009, 04:32 PM) *
And by the way, I keep seeing people say that Edge can get around the Force Cap on spellcasting successes. Is that an actual rule in a book somewhere (citation please), or is that just a popular house rule?

Pg. 172: "This limitation does not apply to Edge dice that are used to boost a spell."

However, while not expressly forbidden, some GMs might frown on allowing Edge dice to get around a the Force limitation for a sustaining focus. (For example, using Edge to cast a Force: 1 Increase Reflexes spell and get 4 successes, letting you get 3 extra initiative passes from a spell used with a Force: 1 sustaining focus, rather than the single extra initiative pass that a Force: 1 spell/sustaining focus could normally do).

Keep in mind, though, that a Force: 1 sustaining focus is still just as vulnerable to a background count of 1, and that using Edge makes re-casting the spell every time you need to turn off the focus (for passing through wards) a more expensive proposition.

That's the best way to handle things, if a player is abusing something - use the by-the-rules weaknesses of the tactic, and let the logical consequences of the tactic ensue, rather than "punish" the character with GM fiat. And not every rules exploit is necessarily abusive - some are simply logical tactics, and are no more munchkinny than the sammie turning on his wired reflexes before a fight, or always using his smartlink.
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AllTheNothing
post Jan 12 2009, 09:04 AM
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QUOTE (Glyph @ Jan 12 2009, 02:30 AM) *
And not every rules exploit is necessarily abusive - some are simply logical tactics, and are no more munchkinny than the sammie turning on his wired reflexes before a fight, or always using his smartlink.

Except for an elven sammie with delta-grade Synaptic Booster 3, Suprathyroid Gland, Muscle Toner 4, Reflex Recorder (firearms skillgroup), Cyber Eyes 4 (flare compensation, low-light vision, smartlink, thermographic vision, vision enhacement 3 and vision magnification) and a Barret Model 121 loaded with Ex-Ex or APDS/AV rounds. 100% legal but also 100% munchkinnic/powerplayerish.
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