Grim Theory, Ideas on off-limit or much-needed spells Options

[Moonstone Spider]

Mental Adepts:

A concept I came up with a while back but never really tested much. The reverse of a physad, the Mentad (no, not Mentat although it amounts to the same thing) can buy such powers as improve Mental Attribute, Mental Attribute Boost, and improved ability for things like biotech, electronics, or etiquette (My rules said .25 per die for knowledge, language, and b/r skills and .5 for all other active skills linked to a mental attribute).

Powers also included the ability to fog the memory of others and powers that acted like the spells "Mind probe" "Control Emotion/thought/action" and "detect intelligence" with no drain.

Other powers were similar to the critter powers influence, fear, and glamour.

[Nikoli]

Reason being, no other caster has the mind set for magic that the casting phys ad does. They have a unique outlook on the magical world.

[Fortune]

[Diesel]

All mages can have a unique outlook on the magical world.

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Nikoli]

hehe, nice touch Herald.

Good point about each has it's own world view. Forgot about that point.

[Moonstone Spider]

Getting back to spells, there's a lot of room for abuse with the transformation manipulations. Create Food opens up a lot of possibilities for spells creating things, and better yet it's only S drain and what it creates lasts forever. Were I a gunbunny inclined mage I'd learn Create AV ammo first thing, quickly followed by create grenade, create milspec armor, etc. Since it can be a drag running out of fuel I'd learn create Gasoline. When I get low on Karma I'd whip out my create Gold spell and buy myself a few million nuyen worth of Karma just like spirits do with Create Wealth. Wait, forget gold, I'm learning create Orichalcum instead, So I can make a force 11 transformation manipulation foci and use 100 units of orichalcum to make it absurdly cheap to bond. With that I can create even more and sell it, Then I'd use the Karma to learn even nastier create spells (After 69 initiations in order to have the magic attribute to make such vast objects, quickly followed by a Create Force 25 Power Foci spell and a Create force 50 transformation manipulation spell) like create drone, create Anti-vehicular missile, create aircraft carrier, etc. I'd save the environment by teaching Ecologist groups spells to create manufactured goods so that there's no need to mine or log or do anything else in order to make money off the environment, ushering in a new golden age of peace and endless wealth for all.

Obviously no GM in his right mind would actually allow a player to do this. And neither would I. But it's perfectly legit by the rules.

Another spell that seriously needs fixing is the series of improve reflex spells. Those spells are totally broken, not by their effect but because Improve Reflexes 3 cast at force 99 with 10,000 successes has absolutely identical effects to Improve Reflexes 3 with force 1 and 1 success. Nobody ever learns it at a higher force or uses more than 2 die to cast it with, hence it's drain never applies. The entire series needs to be scrapped and replaced with a single spell where total number of initiative die is linked to successes and force like other spells.

[Kagetenshi]

I'd allow it. It'd be pretty neat, humanity living in peace and tranquility until the Horrors come and eat everyone.
Well, that is to say, I'd allow it if I didn't mind, y'know, the campaign ending.

~J

[BitBasher]

I disallowed all spells that create something from nothing, permanently. Such as create food.

[Nikoli]

My feeling was that food was creatable because food is simple structure, I'd never allow technological or magical items to be created, but say, Amish style clothing made of cotton (no buttons, etc.) would be okay, or hemp rope, etc.

[nezumi]

[simonw2000]

Yes, but people will notice that someone has been dealing in a lot of gold lately...

[Nikoli]

It's little different than teh create wealth power of some critters. JUst make it a hellishly high drain for a PC (we're talking they will likely suffer magic loss from casting it but once) and it will balance out. that money does little good if you keep using the money to buy kara to initiate and get your magic attribute back so you can cast the spell to start the whole cycle over again.

[Reaver]

[Neon Tiger]

Do you really need more crappy spells that no-one uses? I don't think so. There's more than enough spells in the BBB and MiTS, and if you really need soemthing that's not there, hell, that's why the spell design rules are there.

[spotlite]

I've PMed seige, but I wrote a reasonably comprehensive set of adept rules for 'empathic' or 'artistic' adepts. it included new powers and some metamagic, ranging from emotionally 'tweaking' other people using some sort of audible performance, sonic attacks (cost more than killing hands but I didn't go as far as secondary effects though I think it needs it), right up to magically enhanced mnemonic abilities. Certain powers could only be bought if the metamagic was learned.

Anyway, all I'm saying is if anyone wants any ideas on that line, let me know and you can read it over. I was going to use it as the basis for an official submission but got an attack of nerves and chickened out but anyone who wants to is welcome to look.

[Nikoli]

Expanding the metamagic skills would be nice, I think there is a lot more out there that could be axpanded upon.
Like just how useful is centering to a phys ad?
Why couldn't they learn psychometry?
Adding a special form of astral projection (metaplane only) so that aspected magicians and phys ad's could go on spirit quests would be nice

[spotlite]

I would tend to allow an adept who could astrally perceive access to metamagics which would realistically only require that (and maybe a skill other than sorcery) to work, like psychometry.

Centering is INCREDIBLY useful to an adept. They sometimes get more use out of it than magicians do! The basic centering grants them a significant advantage, then they can learn it again for melee combat skills, again for ranged combat skills and on for most physical skills. It doth rock. A decent grade physad with a few lots of centering can do some truly staggering things!

[Nikoli]

Good to know. Though expensive to learn. Gotcha

[spotlite]

Should say - *I* would allow them to learn psychometry. I'm not sure whether the book does.

and adepts on the spirit way - i.e. shamanic physads - can at GMs discretion go on quests if their totem takes them.

The rest just have to do it the hard way. I've seen various house rules about an adept power of astral projection with a prerequisite of buying astral perception power as well, costing 6 power points. This is a fairly standard take on it from what I can tell for people who allow it (I don't). So a starting character couldn't do it cos they couldn't have both powers with the points they have available. But its a reasonably balanced house rule. 6 magic points is a LOT of karma and points saved up.

[Kesh]

Don't really need many more spells. However, new magic rules would be useful.

Spell matrices.

A real psionics magic variant, instead of the bad jokes about "Focus and clear your mind!!!1!" nuts. Or at least a more 'neutral' magic practice... something more akin to instinctive spellcasting than god-based (shamans) or book based (hermetics).

More fun physad abilities. Wall-running would be neat. ;)

Advance the metaplot a little. Bug spirits, shedim, Horrors, so forth...

[Kagetenshi]

An idea for psionics without changing the nature of magic in SR...
Because of their approach to magic, psionicists don't need to learn spells. They can cast anything.
They also take übernasty drain for everything unless they take a long time to cast it. If they take their time (primitive Matrices?) they can potentially get it down to the level that their normal counterparts would take casting it.

Disclaimer: not entirely thought through for balance.

~J

[Herald of Verjig...]

My take on the idea Kag made:
Psionics can learn a spell in 0 time without a need for research materials. In addition to the normal tests, the psionist must make a willpower test at the force of the spell to "realize the inner strength" or something like that.

This makes a very stubborn psionic the ultimate at improvisation once it has a dozen or two unused karma.

[Kagetenshi]

I like the changes. Add in a rule for how frequently someone can try to relearn the same spell and a few other tweaks (or potentially allow people to retry as much as they want but make them pay karma every time) and a few other things and you've got yourself a decently-balanced character type, I think. I may have to playtest it at some point.

~J

[Moonstone Spider]