[X] My Assistant

[O'Ryan]

Should I be more worried about you chopping up hobos or the fact that you're arguing how make him worth more when he's already like 170lbs. of pure gold?

Chopping up hobos is small potatos in Shadowrun. There's a reason, after all, that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) signs pop up in your eyes when you kill a street sam and he's close enough to drag to your truck...


For the record, ladies and gentlemen, we WILL find a solution to the hobo to orichalcum problem, it just may end up being a dozen or so steps.


Falconer - now that more than just us have chimed in, I will concede that your interpretation is probably the correct one. I still say the wording of "The Limits of Magic" as saying it can make anything that doesn't require an enchanting test, but the game isn't O'RyanRun (yet).

Umi, Pax... I think you might have the solution.

So!
We take a druid. Let's make him English or Tir na nOgian for ease of access to unspoiled nature. Same skill sets as before. This time, you lure your unsuspecting hobo into the woods, fight off the wildlife, and zap him with the spell I will henceforth refer to as "Orichalcum Starter Set." A couple days later the spell is permanent, the hobo is raw (but not yet reagent) material, and you've regained consciousness. Now, Ritual Sorcery occurs. Tapping into the mana lines beneath the UK / Tir na nOg (your preference!), you sing and dance and prance about infusing your hobo-statue with the natural mana of the world. Volia - it is natural* gold/silver/mercury/copper with higher than normal mana content, all perfectly nature aspected due to your druidic tradition. You cart the hobo back to your appartment, hacksaw, tub, 3-4 months later 6.4 million (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) .

Volia?

Edit: That 170 pounds of raw, unmagical, unreagent hobo is still worth 2,720,000 nuyen, double that if you spend a month refining it. So, not a bad fall back plan.

[_Pax._]

Worst case? Geomancy / Geomasonry; split off a trickle from a Ley line and direct it into a constructed Place of Power. Bring the hobo there, turn him into whatever, and ... leave him, for the proverbial "year and a day" ... with a Spirit bound to long-term service as "gardener". Let the ex-hobo drink in nice, aspected mana for a good long time. Then haul his shiny metallic butt off to the alchemy laboratory. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Falconer]

The drain is calculated as such:

Physical: +1
Touch range: -2
Very Restricted Target: -2
Physical Manipulation: +0
Minor Change: +0 (It's not changing the caster at all... just making it so he can fly)

1: Why is it over powered? It only affects the caster, can't be used as a weapon, and is much slower than your Mach 1 mage.
2: The Drain calculation is legit I believe.
3: I don't want to have to convince a spirit to use Movement like that.

1. No the spell is not calculated as such. You use the existing spell as a template.
The existing spell is levitate at +1 drain. It needs a threshold of 1 per 200kg that needs lifting (it's left grey whether that is round up, round down... or just a flat out 1 per 200kg or fraction thereof to be moved).

So at this point net successes times force is the speed... (not raw successes time speed... there is a threshold involved... technically 2 thresholds together if you're lifting something non-living like a steel i-beam... OR2 + threshold(weight)==threshold... If you reach the threshold and no more you can hold the object up by not move it... you need at least net 1 to actually be able to hold and move it with any speed.

But in any case... the speed of the spell is *ONLY* 1m per (net success * force).

Your example unreasonably increases this by a factor of 10. And you call this a minor change.
Also you removed the weight threshold part of the spell on top of this.

2. The drain calculation is only legit if the only thing you changed about the spell is it's range... LOS -> personal only fully accounts for the +1 -> -3 drain code. The ludicrously added effect. This is no longer a minor effect... if you had increased the drain by +2 to major effect... you might have an argument. But you can provide no case for why you have utterly ignored the limitations of the levitate spell in doing this.

3. it doesn't matter if *YOU* don't want to use a movement power service. (it's not haggling with the spirit... it's compelling a service). If *YOU* can learn the spell. ANYONE else can learn the spell (turnabout is fair play)... and they very well may use the movement power.

I can tell you from personal experience that the actual levitate spell + movement has had my mage literally go supersonic... and he can easily reach high mach let alone half the speed of sound. So something which goes 10x as fast... is starting to really push the envelope of a 'minor' magical effect.

Your gripes are only that at low force and successes the mage moves slower... and in this case for a mage who has 'unnaturally' high base mundane movement already.


O'Ryan:
Once again the problem is you don't do a spell ritual to convert mundane materials into magical reagants. That's the problem. You only get *1* unit of raw gold reagent for a very difficult extended test to first find, and then another one to actually harvest a single unit. Doubly difficult because most of the raw natural sources are probably prime protected turf since this is alchemical gold... which can be quickly converted to 20k per unit raw materials for sale, let alone 40k per unit if they have someone who can radicalize them with an extra month processing time. Stop and think how much more valuable that is if some of that gold is now recognized as an even rarer form of alchemical gold...

Somehow this is done by nature and the manasphere over very long periods of time. My opinion is the best way to describe this is 'natural alchemical process'. Since spells can't produce magical goods this requires alchemy/talismongering processes... I completely reject any sense of a spell or ritual magic.

Similarly... if you can do this... why aren't major corps with bigtime resources already doing this already. And not even using hobo's... say they're using rats instead... The major leyline stuff is already controlled by major interests. So this isn't merely a matter of some simple geomancy.


Just to put a tl/dr recap... the problem is there are no rules whatsoever for converting raw materials into reagants of any kind. Only very difficult ones to find and mine natural sources. So even allowing this step has HUGE consequences on the rest of the setting far beyond merely magical hobo gold.

[O'Ryan]

Assuming you are correct - magic can't produce something magical (not really what you're saying but it made me smile so that's how I'm quoting you.) - the solution turns to thinking outside the box. The reason the corps aren't doing it is because (handwave) they are doing it the writers of the book just didn't think about it so it wasn't mentioned.

How come a ritual, that you design yourself, can't redirect existing ley lines so that they, gaia, NOT YOU, infuse our Orichalcum Stater Kit with higher than normal concentrations of magic?
How come Pax's solution of having a spirit gardener channeling natural occurring magic through the Starter Kit for "a year and a day" (long term binding!) won't work?
Again, assuming your interpretation is correct, you're still not making magic with magic (heehee again), you're manipulating nature into doing it in a controlled environment. SCIENCE.



In case anyone is wondering why I'm so curious about the hobo-reagent issue is because while this is obviously a ludicrous example, there are less game breaking applications. One of the reagent examples is a sawn off foot - do you have to go Texas Chainsaw some mages, or can you take a foot and Magic at it until it works? Or say you're enchanting a focii and the recipe calls for "blah blah telesma infused with radical koala fur." Do you have to fly to Australia and face certain death, or can you break into the zoo and refine some?

[Umidori]

It's kind of like Shapeshifters.

A shapeshifter IS the animal in question. It has the same DNA. It looks, sounds, behaves, and thinks like the animal in question. For all normal intents and purposes, a shapeshifter is no different than the mundane equivalent. Except that ~Magic!~ somehow lets them turn into the shape of a person, and gives them intellect to match.

Can you create a Shapeshifter by taking a dog and artificially infusing it with mana? No. Can you create a mage or an adept by taking a mundane metahuman and artificially infusing it with mana? No. Can you create a natural magical reagent by take a mundane equivalent and artificially infusing it with mana? No.

Why? Because ~Magic!~ doesn't work like that. If something has to be natural, it has to be natural. If you try to use synthetic diamond as a reagent for enchantment, the alchemy fails. Why? It just does. Alchemy is weird. Magical theory can't quite explain it yet.

~Umi

[KCKitsune]

1. No the spell is not calculated as such. You use the existing spell as a template.
The existing spell is levitate at +1 drain. It needs a threshold of 1 per 200kg that needs lifting (it's left grey whether that is round up, round down... or just a flat out 1 per 200kg or fraction thereof to be moved).

So at this point net successes times force is the speed... (not raw successes time speed... there is a threshold involved... technically 2 thresholds together if you're lifting something non-living like a steel i-beam... OR2 + threshold(weight)==threshold... If you reach the threshold and no more you can hold the object up by not move it... you need at least net 1 to actually be able to hold and move it with any speed.

But in any case... the speed of the spell is *ONLY* 1m per (net success * force).

Your example unreasonably increases this by a factor of 10. And you call this a minor change.
Also you removed the weight threshold part of the spell on top of this.

Yes I called it minor because the spell can NOT be used on anything other than the mage who is casting the spell. It can't be used on your friends and can't be used on inanimate objects (other than what the mage is carrying or wearing). You want to levitate objects at the speed I'm talking about, then by all means do it. Also, unless you're a troll then you're a LOT less than 200 kg. That extra weight saving can go straight into speed.

I'll concede that times 10 may be too much, but times 5 should be more fair.

[_Pax._]

Can you create a Shapeshifter by taking a dog and artificially infusing it with mana?

Maybe. Care to funnel a few trillion nuyen into a research program to try and find out?

Can you create a mage or an adept by taking a mundane metahuman and artificially infusing it with mana?

Maybe. Exactly what does or does not make someone capable of Awakening is as of yet unknown. Various corporations and other organisations have already funnelled hundreds of trillions of nuyen into figuring that out. (And similar programs re: Technomancers exist as well.)

Can you create a natural magical reagent by take a mundane equivalent and artificially infusing it with mana?

Once again, maybe. Care to funnel a few trillion nuyen into a research program to try and find out?

[O'Ryan]

Why? Because ~Magic!~ doesn't work like that.
~Umi

A lot of this theoretical discussion is centered in snippets of fluff, so I'd like to take a second and go over, in crunch, what magic can or cannot do.

1 - You have to have a link, be it visual or sympathetic.
2 - You can't control time or teleport. You can make yourself invisible, pass through all resistance, and travel at mach 37 to simulate teleportation however.
3 - You can't tell the future.
4 - You can't summon / banish spirits unless you use conjuring
5 - You can't raise the dead. Except for the exceptions.
6 - You can't create magical items (specifically mentioned: Foci, vessels) unless you use enchanting
7 - You can't bridge planes.
8 - You can only make simple things. A hammer is complex.
9 - Magic is dumb.

To my knowledge that list (160, Street Magic) is the only crunch explanation of what you CANNOT do with sorcery. Just because it hasn't been discovered yet (IE, the pseudo-teleportation only came about recently, in Spy Games), doesn't mean it's impossible unless it's on that list.

Creating higher concentrations of magic somewhere is something magically specifically CAN do (ala background counts). So just because there isn't a precedent, I ask again - why can a brand new ritual designed specifically for this new task, not create ore with higher concentrations of mana, which is the only difference between a reagent rock and a mundane rock.

Furthermore:
"Enchanters specializing in alchemy concern themselves with the transmutation of base materials to those of magical potency. The bulk of magical goods are products of alchemy" - SM 81

[Falconer]

Yes I called it minor because the spell can NOT be used on anything other than the mage who is casting the spell. It can't be used on your friends and can't be used on inanimate objects (other than what the mage is carrying or wearing). You want to levitate objects at the speed I'm talking about, then by all means do it. Also, unless you're a troll then you're a LOT less than 200 kg. That extra weight saving can go straight into speed.

I'll concede that times 10 may be too much, but times 5 should be more fair.

Except a -4 change in drain code is ENTIRELY subsumed by the change to severely restricted target.
-2 for LOS(0) -> touch(-2)... -2 more for self only (-2 severely restricted target)... look at the chart. (yes it is possible to make a LOS self only spell.. but rather pointless... you might as well toss on touch as well for total -4. You can also make a los- less restricted to say orcs only... as another example of a los restricted target spell.)

There is no room for improving the base template spell on top of that... the net swing in drain is already for and only for the change to self-only. That is why you're not constructing the spell properly.

A full order of magnitude increase in effectiveness is not a minor change... that puts it squarely in the majors. Even a 5x increase is not a small change. And as I pointed out above it is in no way covered by the change to self-only. if you had increased the drain by +2 for changing the effect from minor -> major.

As for the reason it's questionable to me is because the basic levitate can already do this. It's simply your refusal to acknowledge a tool already at your disposal (movement power) to further enhance the speed that stops you from reaching your goal. If someone else uses your newly made tool... and does combine it... (anyone who sees you use your spell gets bonuses to make their own copy)... will produce some questionable results.


Aside:
My point on the threshold was that it's grey... if you're under 100KG... you could make the argument you round down to threshold 0. Or you could just go with it's a flat 200kg or fraction thereof for always a min threshold of 1. The rules simply don't define this by RAW. (I personally think rounding makes sense... if someone wants to levitate a feather it doesn't make sense to me that it's threshold 2... OR1 + weight threshold 2).

[Umidori]

@O'Ryan

You're being willfully pedantic. Until it is DISCOVERED it is for all intents and purposes IMPOSSIBLE.

Remember that recent Petition to the White House for the construction of a Death Star? Yeah, see, that's impossible. Why? Because physics wouldn't allow it? Because it cannot ever be done, with any form of technology? No, of course not. Rather, it's impossible because we lack the capacity to make it happen - because it is so very far beyond our powers as to be absurd and laughable.

You're basically saying, "Well who cares if the most powerful corporations in existence haven't managed to get magic to act this way before, that doesn't mean that Awakened Joe Schmoe can't just build a custom spell to do it anyway!" That's like saying your mechanic character can design and build his own Death Star. It's stupid, it disregards all the setting and history of the world in which you're ostensibly playing, and you know better.

But you're right, maybe it just hasn't been discovered yet! And to reflect that possibility, if 5th Edition rolls around and suddenly you can hook a person up to a mana-battery and artifically Awaken them? Then you can do it! But for now, you follow the existing rules, or make up your own houserules. And the existing rules say that you need NATURAL materials for reagents.

~Umi

[Falconer]

Furthermore:
"Enchanters specializing in alchemy concern themselves with the transmutation of base materials to those of magical potency. The bulk of magical goods are products of alchemy" - SM 81

Exactly... the book defines base materials as raw reagents though.

The book similarly provides no mechanic whatsoever for getting raw reagants except to mine natural sources.

I *DO* believe there is an alchemical process for converting baser materials into raw reagents. I also think it is a holy grail of corp research... so very unlikely that anyone can actually do it. Or that any means of doing so artificially are unecomonical at best...

The reason for this opinion... Is if it were that easy to convert normal materials into magical... the corps would already be doing it large scale. Similarly things like orichalcum would flood the market depressing costs. Corps would be flooding the market with cheep gold from 'petrifying-gold' rats...

The other basis for this opinion is orichalcum forms naturally... the lab process for making it is a refinement of the natural process (literally... naturally occuring is something like half the price of artificially made and not as effective).

[O'Ryan]

Umi, that is not my intention. If that is how you perceive my statements then I apologize - I am not trying to be pedantic, I am trying to have a lively discussion about, officially, the limits of creating your own spells. I am not trying to be hostile, flame, or troll. I genuinely believe that as it stands my ridiculous idea about turning a homeless person into (eventually) orichalcum is possible in the rules of shadowrun.

By what I understand you are saying, creating your own spell is limited directly to variations of existing published spells... except what's in WAR!, IIRC previously stated opinions. The table of what ~Magic~ CANNOT do can be largely ignored, as it will never come up. It is not the "to do list" of mage research everywhere. Is this correct? I am getting the impression you believe PCs/players do not have the influence to come up with an original idea, which is entirely contrary to the impression I formed of you based on previous topics. Please elaborate for me.

I am not saying the corps aren't doing it - if it is indeed possible to do this, as nothing even approaching this has been mentioned in published book, I see that entirely due to writers not thinking like me and, therefore, the corps are almost certainly all doing it in secret trying to keep the other corps from finding out. I am willing to bet on the possibility that the writers of a tabletop RPG did not have the capacity to predict every use of their words from hundreds (or tens, whatever) of thousands of different minds.

Falconer -
You bring up a good point about the base materials definition.
I still reject the "if it were possible corps would be doing it" argument based on both in setting secrecy and writer oversight. It is plausible in my mind that corps have a control on the market of orichalcum, artificially inflate or decrease the price, and meanwhile mass produce the *^@!@) out of it for research purposes.

[Umidori]

I'm not saying that players and GMs should not create their own spells, or work their own custom magic.

What I am saying is that it needs to be kept reasonable, and not go against existing rules, or if it must, to have a strong reason for doing so. Perhaps I got too hung up on how absurd and stupid changing homeless people into gold, and then "manatizing" them into reagents is, because that was the primary focus of my indignation.

~Umi

[_Pax._]

@O'Ryan

You're being willfully pedantic. Until it is DISCOVERED it is for all intents and purposes IMPOSSIBLE.

... and who's to say, the PC isn't the bloke who first discovers whatever-it-is ...?

[Umidori]

Catalyst Games, that's who.

You wanna play your own homebrew system, fine. You wanna play Shadowrun, you stay reasonably within the bounds of Shadowrun lore. You don't introduce secret Moon Nazi Space Elves just because, and you don't create absurd game-breaking magical spells that contradict extant magical theory and lore.

Honestly. Some random PC discovering hitherto unknown absurd magical theory on their own between bouts of getting shot at? And people somehow thought I was invoking Mary Sue in the other thread...

~Umi

[_Pax._]

Catalyst Games, that's who.

Cite me a book and page number.

[NeoJudas]

You can't just refine any raw gold. It has to be gold taken from unspoiled nature, and naturally infused with mana. That's why there are tests for finding and harvesting reagents. Your golden hobo doesn't qualify in the least.

~Umi

Actually... No. In theory you could take the "magical hobo of gold" and attempt to refine, then radicalize it. Granted, I also think there is a unitary limit involved here as well. Only so many units can be worked with at a time. The Hobo, regardless of how bad his "health" probably exceeds the body-weight conversion for this limitation. And the number of units of,Orichalcum is also limited afterwards. Many, many processes involved.... Even with the ally and any spirit help on an aspected Ley Line, this becomes incredibly time consuming.

The raw reagent determination is not quite "Undisturbed in nature" as a lot of you are grabbing for. Tech and other resistance related thresholds however will come into play for each step in the process where applicable.

[NeoJudas]

I,want a fresh tackle at Flight

Flight (Caster)
Type : Manipulation (Telekinetic) (physical, +1 drain)
Duration : Sustained (+1 drain)
Range : Touch/Self Only (Very Restricted Target, -2 drain)
Additional Mods : x10 Movement (major physical change +2)

You do not get to stack Touch and Self Only mods. Voluntary with self only either. Magician casting remains the person in charge of the direction of the flight. Drain is only marginally higher than Levitate due to the spell will only work on the caster. Gear s/he has on him/herself might, at the GMs insistence alter the threshold similar to weight and Levitate or should the magician hope to carry someone else with him/her. Alternatively, the caster attempts to carry anything beyond the basic threshold of say 200 kilograms and the spell might outright fail. Same might be true if the caster attempts to catch/carry someone with them (conflicting auras in extreme proximity).

My opinion, go for a better spell design than above or even the version being suggested already.

Flight (Ver 2.0)
Category : Manipulation (Telekinetic)
Type : Physical (+1 drain)
Duration : Sustained (+1 drain)
Range : LOS (Touch)
Additional Mods : x10 Movement (Major Physical Change, +2 drain), Voluntary (-1 drain), Recipient Control (+1 drain)

Speed : Spell Force x 10/Spell Force x Magic x 10 M/turn.
Control/Piloting : Hits + Reaction (hits not to exceed spell force)
Handling : +1 per 100 kilograms of weight (or part thereof)

Limitations : spirit movement is not compatible with this spell design due to the movement modifier built in. Spirit Guard may be necessary at higher elevations or greater speeds at GMs discretion. Weight (loose translation of mass in motion here) can effect the control. And what's nicer, the recipient gets to determine their own direction of flight. Drain is more complex than Levitate because Levitate is literally the fundamental basics to this "family" of spells.

[NeoJudas]

Catalyst Games, that's who.

You wanna play your own homebrew system, fine. You wanna play Shadowrun, you stay reasonably within the bounds of Shadowrun lore. You don't introduce secret Moon Nazi Space Elves just because, and you don't create absurd game-breaking magical spells that contradict extant magical theory and lore.

Honestly. Some random PC discovering hitherto unknown absurd magical theory on their own between bouts of getting shot at? And people somehow thought I was invoking Mary Sue in the other thread...

~Umi

Wow... Talk about inflexibility. "Lore" or "Game"? If you want to stay in the Shadowrun Cannon/Official rules, that's fine. If not, that's fine too. Be happy. Play, create, destroy, imagine. But that above statement is puritanian beyond a scope even I was never called back on the RN list days. I personally would love to know the "meta story" that the editors are up to... I miss the days back when I had some of that. But I don't have it anymore and you know what ... I'll live. So will my players. And the world will go on and the editors circle will continue to drink its kook-aid and be merry. The rest of us will choose to use/follow what works, because quite frankly ... the editors are the end-all masters of the Picard "Make It So" for the Shadowrun universe.

[Falconer]

NeoJudas:
As far as combining drain effects... Very restricted target cannot be combined with Restricted target. It *CAN* be combined with Range LOS or Touch. Your spell range is not LoS(Touch).. it is range LOS or touch... pick one and then add the appropriate drain modifier.

But if I'm looking at your numbers right... you've produced a new effect with a +4 drain code which seems to be fairly well done... don't know how well I like 'can't be combined' as that's something new and unique though it does address the combination problem.

The other problem is handling is not a people stat... it's a stat unique to drones... drone rules and people rules do not merge well because they have entirely different sets of stats on two different scales... The weight limittion comes for two reasons... the person... plus stuff carried with the person... so I think you would still need to keep the 200kg per point threshold limit. With even a 5x speed mod... this should provide no problem to this spell... (think normal caster force 5... with say 4 successes... 1 threshold... 3 net hits * force 5 * 5m== 75m combat turn... and that's without using extremely high force! As soon as you turn up the force and the number of hits... hitting 200 or 300 even at x5 isn't an issue. (at force 10... you're looking at 50m/turn * however many net hits you get for demonstrations sake).





As far as the reagant bit goes... the problem is the raw amount of non-reagant gold alone is a problem in purely economical terms.

And the rules for alchemical gold in any form (raw in this case). Only allow for extremely small amounts to be collected at a time and also make it clear that this what i'm going to call 'alchemical gold' is different from mundane gold. Since spells can't create magical materials... this is a problem which requires them to step completely outside the bounds of the rules to make stuff up.

Given the limitations on spells not creating magical goods... while it's fun to conjecture about a 'turn to gold' permanent version of Turn to Goo... that at least fits within the spell construction rules with no controversy whatsoever.


The rest basically amounts to the classic munchkin trick of... 'the rules don't say I can't'. The rules are silent on the matter but they *DO* give only one way to get reagants which this method would render completely null and void. So it's a pretty safe bet this is completely against the spirit/intent of the rules/setting that this is a non-starter at any level.

As for the rest... I basically chalk this up to the proclivity among certain players to cheat. Yes cheat... they have to have some ability which is absolutely game breaking and outside the scope of the rules to feel special. I don't understand this myself... as operating within the confines of the rules provides a challenge I enjoy. But I see it regularly.. they get a 'cool' idea in their heads and it simply doesn't matter to them that it doesn't fit the setting of the game.

[O'Ryan]

The rest basically amounts to the classic munchkin trick of... 'the rules don't say I can't'. The rules are silent on the matter but they *DO* give only one way to get reagants which this method would render completely null and void. So it's a pretty safe bet this is completely against the spirit/intent of the rules/setting that this is a non-starter at any level.

As for the rest... I basically chalk this up to the proclivity among certain players to cheat. Yes cheat... they have to have some ability which is absolutely game breaking and outside the scope of the rules to feel special. I don't understand this myself... as operating within the confines of the rules provides a challenge I enjoy. But I see it regularly.. they get a 'cool' idea in their heads and it simply doesn't matter to them that it doesn't fit the setting of the game.

I absolutely agree that this specific example is Munchkining. The technically legal "turn to gold" spell is also crap - I think I've been fairly clear that I would never allow this at my table, but am using this as the extreme version to see if a precedent can be set for less munchkin purposes.
The rules give A way of getting reagents. Admittedly it doesn't even hint at the possibility of another way, but let's pretend I'm creative. It says the requirements for a reagent is a higher than normal mana concentration in the material - can that effect somehow be done? I am 100% going off of "it doesn't say I can't" because it gives an ALL INCLUSIVE list of what CANNOT be done and this isn't on there. It seems to me the whole point of the make your own spells chapter is being incredibly creative, not just doing minor tweaks to existing stuff. ("Alright, it's going to be a standard fireball type spell, except it'll also have physical illusions to make the explosion look like confetti and the Nintendog bursting from their chest...") versus ("My fireball also does shocking damage!")

Falconer, I'm getting a little offended. The summation of your post kinda sounds like you think the only reason I'm continuing this debate is because I want to cheat, I'm a munchkin, and I don't care about the rules. If that is the case than I ask that you go back like three pages where I say that this is hypothetical and in no way a plan and, infact, blatantly cheese... and then consider that if I didn't care about the setting of the game I wouldn't be having this discussion, I'd just go "Yep nothing says I can't, doing it!" ...and do it. I understand we seem to disagree on a couple fundamental issues of wording but I'm fairly certain that doesn't make me a munchkin out to cheat and pillage. I am taking the possibility to an extreme because what might have passed when it was been done to a single bone shaving will come into question when you're using it to make 6.4 million every month. By the inverse, if this holds up to any scrutiny beyond knee jerk reactions of "the writers didn't think of it so no" than it does work for the smaller, more plausible scenarios. (This magic sword formula calls for the fresh heart of a virgin. ...do I have to keep cutting people open until I find a heart with more than average mana, or can I take one person and make it work?)


NeoJudas, the GoldHobo is about 256 units of "stuff" which equals 64 attempts to make orichalcum. That's almost certainly beyond the scope of a single person to do in a single refinement / alchemy set, even if you're only doing minute adjustments every 8 hours. Getting 64 tubs alone would be a hassle! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) That comes out to 8 adjustments an hour if you stagger it, or an adjustment every ~7.5 minutes. Forever.

[Lionhearted]

Just sell a couple gold hobos and buy the reagents?
Sheesh, way to overcomplicate things

[Falconer]

You're right... I'm projecting some frustration with another person IRL. Some of that frustration is uncalled for in this case. You have an apology for it.

He's pulling the same, the rules don't say otherwise argument. Even though the rules provide a method to do so... and he doesn't like the only method provided within the rules. He ignores the other constraint that a spirit must earn karma from other sentient beings and can't just get it for himself.


In that case... he got what he wanted a formula pact... intentionally found spirit which only could do this kind of pact. Now he completely rejects p107... free spirits and karma, and feeding the free spirit. The spirit doesn't offer any of the other pacts with which it can drain karma per use... and the spirit can't advance itself without karma. So the spirit as a NPC has to perform free spirit services by the normal bargaining for karma route with other sentients... BUT... He's the only functional copy of the spirits formula (the side effect of formula pact and it' immunity to age)... he must be present for the ritual in which the spirit gets karma (which takes 1 hour per point of karma).

So now, anyone paying the spirit also has to have him present... and some of the less savory ones might not be amiss to kidnapping him to compel services out of the free spirit either (the ones who were using the spirit's formula to compel the spirit before). But in any case... you can see this requires significant time and travel budget in some cases to work with the spirit.

In Eve online... the philosophy is that... players are free to do what they want... they'll just suffer consequences for it. Now that the consequences of his decisions are hitting him... he's busy with the spirit doesn't need him to get karma on it's own. (the spirit got out of problems with some others using it's formula to compel it to do things... he got his immortality... now the spirits view is he has nothing but time and should be happy to give it a few days time now and then for it's business... what's a few days/weeks/years out of forever; but the situation isn't so insufferable that if the spirit can't advance it wouldn't have qualms about seeing the character dead and dealing with the loose copies problem again on it's own... it's used it's 'immunity' to the other copies already to eliminate a few of the extra copies... (it always knows where all copies of it's formula are)).


So as you can see the specifics are radically different... just a similarity in the formulation of the position. One section of the rules provides a constraint... X cannot/needs Y. Another section of the rules provides one and only one way to produce Y. So we see an insistence on there must be a way Z which isn't covered anywhere in the rules.


But one of the reasons I mention this is there is another source of alchemical reagants and it is not a spell or ritual.

It's the greater power free spirit's... 'Wealth' power.
That one is intentionally vague about where this stuff comes from.... though again there is a severe cost to the spirit itself in that it carries the spirits astral signature indefinitely.

[_Pax._]

Well, someone with Cleansing could probably erase that signature. So having that metamagic would probably make the spirit more willing to use that power, for a comparatively-lower price, on behalf of a bargainer who had it.

[Falconer]

I strongly disagree... you have an immovable rock vs irresistible force problem here. 'indefinitely' is the problem...

Cleansing isn't a requirement... anyone can scrub astral signatures with time and astral presence.

And SR4a...
"Foci and other magical items (like magical lodges) *ALWAYS* contain the astral signature of their owner or owners)."
Street magic is published later... but permanent magical reagents with an indefinite length signature would most likely fall into that category as well. Just as you can't remove your signature from a bound foci, or from a ward you've constructed... A good argument can be made, you can't remove the spirit's signature from an alchemical reagant it's created through its power.



By the same, the rules don't say so... I can come back with... great you cleansed the reagants and instead of 1 unit of raw alchemical gold (10,000) it's now mundane gold as you've cleansed the signature which made it an alchemical reagant... it's now worth a fraction of what it was as a reagant.

Similarly the spirit's edge is it's initiate grade... nothing stopping it from cleansing itself if this were the case. Which would remove any block on using this power whatsoever.


To me this represents nothing less than an attempt to undermine the word 'indefinitely'... which I take to mean that it's present as part of the reagant... until the reagant is used up as ritual materials... or bound as a foci.