[X] My Assistant

[_Pax._]

The density of a normal (not obese) human is ~ 1055kg/m³.

Or, 1.055g/cm³ ... close enough, like I figured.

[Lionhearted]

Are you telling me we got close to two tons of golden hobo?
Well that makes my point even the more poignant, just sell the hobo and buy a castle, complete with gargoyles that you airlift to the top of an skyscraper in NYC.

[_Pax._]

Are you telling me we got close to two tons of golden hobo?
Well that makes my point even the more poignant, just sell the hobo and buy a castle, complete with gargoyles that you airlift to the top of an skyscraper in NYC.

Two tons Avoirdopois. Not Try weight. And gold is priced on Troy weight. I think we've got 1.5 tons, Troy weight.

For that reason alone, I would not ever allow a permanent spell of that nature. The result would turn out to be fools' gold or some such, instead. I'd be honest with the player about it, too - including the reason I was saying no: "technically legal, but game-setting-destroying". The result would convincingly LOOK and FEEL like a golden statue, so the "style" of it would be preserved. But not the value. NOSIR.

[O'Ryan]

That's the problem with turn-to-anything spells, if the result is more valuable than human flesh.. and why, as a blanket, I don't allow them at my table without very strict limitations. Turning a hobo to marble, aluminium, diamond, or even glass (or pyrite!) would result in something worth far more than selling a dirty diseased hobo into slavery would get you, and is probably less risky... especially if you take day job: Homeless Shelter Worker.

The easy solution, and the first thing I tell all my players, is: "Shadowrun is the easiest game I have ever seen to break, often unintentionally. If you're going to play, you have to promise to make a good-faith effort not to break the game, to keep your character reasonable, and to revise your character if needed."

Mages that turn people into something, clever hackers*, and the pornomancer are examples of this. At some point you have to just look at your players and go: "...C'mon."




*I couldn't find the thread to link to, but the idea of using a high grade agent and com to hack people out of a single nuyen a day... left at a mall or other busy place. The Office Space scheme.

[_Pax._]

That's the problem with turn-to-anything spells, if the result is more valuable than human flesh.. and why, as a blanket, I don't allow them at my table without very strict limitations. Turning a hobo to marble, aluminium, diamond, or even glass (or pyrite!) would result in something worth far more than selling a dirty diseased hobo into slavery would get you, and is probably less risky... especially if you take day job: Homeless Shelter Worker.

Slavery? Pfaugh. Tamanus, my friend, for ALL your hobo-selling needs!

*I couldn't find the thread to link to, but the idea of using a high grade agent and com to hack people out of a single nuyen a day... left at a mall or other busy place. The Office Space scheme.

I remember that. I'm the one that suggested "gecko tape and count the commlink as disposable" as part of the scheme.

It's fun to posit as "a doable thing", but I wouldn't let it slide in an actual game, unless it was just a fluff explanation for an alternate version of "Trust Fund", or maybe "day job" ("I run scams like that for the Yaks; my salary is my cut of the take."), and so on.

[tisoz]

Sorry again to beat a dead spell, but the Flight spell had me thinking. What is "wrong" with the spell is that it intends to multiply successes. Either by a factor of 10 in the original or a factor of 5 in the revised. Then limiting in some way that just happens to reduce Drain and is the most heavily used instance. I was thinking of other spells you could create in the same vein of "wrong".

Sharpshooter: Enhance Aim spell, but only for personal use and only when used to target Pistols. Each success on casting test worth 5 (or 10) hits. (Sorry, I am used to playing SR3 so not even sure what the mechanic is.)

Bulletproof: Increase Body spell, but every success counts as 5 (or 10) but only when resisting gunshot damage and only good for single target.

Regeneration: Heal Spell, but with self restriction, but every success heals 5 (or 10) boxes of damage.

I'd say about any spell is going to break when it is made 5 times as effective even if restricted to it's most heavily used scenarios. At first I was thinking about the tenfold increase for Detection Spells using the Extended modifier and thinking there is an instance of multiplying an effect by 10. But really it doesn't make it 10 times as effective, it just covers more area, it doesn't multiply the successes by 5 or 10 and give the resulting information based on those successes. It just gives the capability to add more targets.

Which leads to the next multiplier for effectiveness, changing a single target spell into an area effect spell. But again, it just increases the number of targets. It does not make them deader by having every success against them count as 5 or 10 hits when calculating damage.

So I guess the conclusion is - the player and the GM need to get together and decide how game breaking the spell could be and balance it against the FUN of playing the game. Which comes down to just because the player thinks it would be fun, will the GM find it fun as well as will the other players find it fun, especially if the same spell gets turned around on them.

[KCKitsune]

Sorry again to beat a dead spell, but the Flight spell had me thinking. What is "wrong" with the spell is that it intends to multiply successes. Either by a factor of 10 in the original or a factor of 5 in the revised. Then limiting in some way that just happens to reduce Drain and is the most heavily used instance. I was thinking of other spells you could create in the same vein of "wrong".

First off, I did change the drain code on the spell to (F/2)-1

Second, I did reduce the speed to times 5.

Third, compared to turning hobos into gold my spell is NOT game breaking. Heck, Falconer, even had a way to fly a hell of a lot faster than what my spell would allow (Mach speed anyone?) and that is using the rules as written. Why keep beating up on a spell that while nice is not game breaking?

Now your proof that times five speed is a straw man argument. Levitate allows you to move 200 kg of material PER SUCCESS at a speed of magic times NET NUMBER successes! So a mage with Magic 5 & Spellcasting 5 has ten dice. The average number of hits for this test is 3. That means the mage can levitate 400 kg of material at 5 meters a round. Or he can levitate 200 kg of material at 10 meters a round.

My spell doesn't allow ANYTHING other flight for the caster. He can't give it to anyone else and he can't move anything else with it. Your "Super Duper Enhance Pistol Aim" spell only reduces the range category one level per hit. The same mage that I described above would be able to make any shot as if he was at short range (using the same number of hits as above). If you want a limited spell than only the mage can use (an has to take a dice pool penalty because he's sustaining a spell) and only works on pistols and doesn't do anything better than a normal enhance aim spell, but has less drain then go ahead.

Your "Bullet Proof" spell would only work on the first mook shooting at you. Sure, go ahead, the second, third, fourth, etc etc ad nauseam would blow though because you didn't have your "Bullet Proof" spell up.

Stop beating up on my spell.

[Halinn]

Not that I have anything against the flight spell proposed (movement is not as superawesome as some of the other hit-dependent spells), tisoz's post got me thinking about some spells that would be really broken with the touch/self-only/5x effect at -2 drain relative to the regular one.

How about (Astral) Armor. Your 12 spellcasting dice now suddenly adds 20 armor on average (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)
Then there's of course Combat Sense and Deflection. Now you're pretty much immune to gunshots, with your total of 40 extra dice on reaction tests against ranged attacks, and 20 against melee ones
Of course, there's also a whole lot of combat/combat-ish spells that would enjoy just x5 at +2, for example Stunball and Orgy

[Irion]

Are you telling me we got close to two tons of golden hobo?
Well that makes my point even the more poignant, just sell the hobo and buy a castle, complete with gargoyles that you airlift to the top of an skyscraper in NYC.

Well, thats not that surprising... Gold is very heavy. If you see how gold is stored it will occure to you. You have to keep in mind, that those shelfs are mostly at maximum capacity to save storing space... And that means a few Gold bars on them, you can mostly count with one look...

@Halinn
It is a different thing, if you just multiplay any numerical number with X or if you multiply dicepool modifiers with X. A die is a die after all... But in general, there might be quite a differance...

[KCKitsune]

Not that I have anything against the flight spell proposed (movement is not as superawesome as some of the other hit-dependent spells), tisoz's post got me thinking about some spells that would be really broken with the touch/self-only/5x effect at -2 drain relative to the regular one.

How about (Astral) Armor. Your 12 spellcasting dice now suddenly adds 20 armor on average (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)
Then there's of course Combat Sense and Deflection. Now you're pretty much immune to gunshots, with your total of 40 extra dice on reaction tests against ranged attacks, and 20 against melee ones
Of course, there's also a whole lot of combat/combat-ish spells that would enjoy just x5 at +2, for example Stunball and Orgy

The big difference between my Personal Flight Spell and Levitate is that Levitate allows movement of a LOT more weight than what a normal spell caster weighs. Also Levitate allows you to move ANYTHING that you can affect with the spell. If you get six hits on your spell casting roll you can move 1000 kg at 5 meters per round. That's a whole lot of weight.

[tisoz]

Crap! I had a post all written out and my internet connection bounced me. Insult to injury, I was thinking it might occur and had almost copied the old post to save it, but barely failed, but that was a full failure even if it was just by a little. ;)
I'm almost in a hurry now, but will try to remember what I wanted to post.

Third, compared to turning hobos into gold my spell is NOT game breaking. Heck, Falconer, even had a way to fly a hell of a lot faster than what my spell would allow (Mach speed anyone?) and that is using the rules as written. Why keep beating up on a spell that while nice is not game breaking?

Please do not ignore my comment that if you guys think it is fine and are having fun to go with it.

Now your proof that times five speed is a straw man argument.

It most definitely is. But the point is to show the "brokenness" of introducing a mechanic that achieves 5 or 10 times rolled success. If you want 5 or 10 times successes, there is already a mechanic to achieve that - roll enough dice to get the expected outcome, or have a big enough dice pool to use auto successes. Both of these are achieved by casting at a higher Force. The downside is the Drain will make it untenable. You could achieve the effect you were going for using the Levitate spell, restrict it as you did, but then do not try to estimate a Drain modifier to "balance" successes when it can be accomplished with an existing mechanic.

Your "Bullet Proof" spell would only work on the first mook shooting at you. Sure, go ahead, the second, third, fourth, etc etc ad nauseam would blow though because you didn't have your "Bullet Proof" spell up.

Sorry, either you misunderstand what I meant or I just said it poorly, but I meant the subject of the spell was restricted to a single target, like self only. But your interpretation could be useful if needed to survive an end boss battle with a known entity that might otherwise not be survived, OR if the same person shot a lot at the beneficiary of the spell - think Hunted.

Stop beating up on my spell.

Sorry again, but it is not personal. It is that it was a poor example for a person seeking advice on spell design. My intent is to try to show ways I think spells should be designed in relating them as much as possible to existing spells and mechanics.

I have a lot of time to think and I couldn't get my mind of why I thought Flight was 'wrong' (as well as the weight of a golden hobo.) I knew there was the Extended Range mechanic and tried fitting this into it. But it came down to Really just multiplying successes and trying to omit the existing mechanic for getting those successes.