Whenever you cast an area effect spell, you can use a free action to make a spellcasting+magic test (spell's force-initiation grade) to be able to change the spell's shape to anything you want it to be as long as its volume is the same as the spell's normal volume. You can also decrease the volume of the spell as much as one desires.

Also, I have a new spell.

Catharsis
Type: M Range: T Duration: S DV: (F/2)-1

The caster rolls Magic+Spellcasting against the subject's Willpower. Each minute that this spell is sustained with the caster touching the subject, the net hits scored are added to a total. 1-3 net hits releases repressed surface emotions. 4-6 net hits releases repressed personal feelings, such as love, hatred, etc. 7-9 net hits releases thoughts nd feelings on the Jungian level. Any more and the subject goes berserk. After the spell is released, the subject gets a bonus to his/her Willpower and Charisma equal to the numer of hits/3, rounded up for a number of hours equal to his/her hits.

Hmmm.... the malleability rocks, though, right?

Damn right! Drop a fireball into a melee in include area holes around your allies. Or warping a fireball into a pencil thin thread 250m long (to achieve the same volume) that cuts/burns like a ribbon of fire!


This metamagic is surprisingly reminiscant of a D&D power available to the 'Archmage' prestige class; was that your inspiration?

I think it's balanced, too. Which makes everything better. And yes, the archmage metamagic was my inspiration.

this would probably be one of the first metamagics i would take, personally... might be a shade too good, but i do think it's at least pretty close.

actually, completely disregarding the part about too good or whatever, it's too much paperwork IMO...

as written, you could figure out the volume of, say, a force 5 AOE spell

V=4/3 * pi * r^3
= (approximately) 523.6 cubic meters.

now just sit there and imagine how many potential different shapes you could make with 523 cubic meters. the pencil thin line, for example, could go on for a really long distance... if, for convenience, you figure on a 1 cubic cm square pencil (which isn't really any pencil at all), you can go for (approximately) 523598775 cms long, which is about 5235988 m long... which is a really fragging long line of fire for one spell, to put it lightly.

i would be ok with leaving holes, and maybe also allowing one or two predetermined shapes, such as a line force x 3 meters long or a cone force x 2 meters long and force x 2 meters wide at the end, or even larger volumes. didn't really think about those numbers, so feel free to fiddle with them... just, my basic point is that it's too much paperwork to bother with calculating the volume and allowing it to be any shape within that volume. providing a few different shapes would be much less work in the middle of a gaming session, IMO.

anyways, as far as the spell goes: remember net hits would be limited by spell's force (and you should probably explicitly mention that). and some game effects for what each stage means would be nice. also, how long does this last? i would imagine that if a person opposed it, this would count as a mental manipulation spell (you should probably mention that too, just to note how it interacts with totems and such).

all in all, quite interesting. not sure i personally like the spell, but that doesn't mean it isn't good... i'm not a big fan of fireball either, really

Yeah... that's true... and you could kill so many people with a pencil-thin line like that. If you made a fireball into a series of small baseball-sized orbs that dealt full damage even though they were really tiny, you could melt, like, 5 million people with a force 10 fireball. Maybe I'll limit the manipulation to the edge of the normal spell, so the main benefit will be protecting friendlies.

if you can make it any shape though? it could be comb-shaped, and hit a perimiter at multiple points. all the security team will know is the west fence just got hit by fire in X number of places.

but lets face it... your gonna use it to make grafiti on the archology wall. i know you are.

Wow, that looks a lot like a metamagic Ellery made over a year and a half ago.

Emo samurai wasn't around back then. And his Search-Fu is weak

What the hell would I search for? I'm sure he didn't use the term " malleability."

I double posted. 1 4|\/| 73|-| 501212 .

She, and I'm just saying it looks familiar. See, if I wanted to call you a thief, I wouldn't pussyfoot around it. I'd call you a f-ing thief.

The shaping should be limited to leaving gaps, or arranging up to fose^3 connected 1 meeter cubes, meaning less aria covered but you can probably do more with it and the maths is so much easier. And you don’t get stupid effects like 5000k lines of fire or anything

Edward

Frankly, I think that "any shape" is massively, massively too powerful. How about "any simple geometric shape" - triangle, square, rectangle - with limits on width vs. height vs. length, to avoid the mile-long ribbon of doom and the freaky octopus of doom where your "fireball" extends little tendrils and then suddenly blossoms into a miniature cocoon surrounding every enemy?

Maybe any shape within a sphere twice the normal volume, but having to occupy the same volume or less?

Personally, I wouldn't put any limits on shape. After all, you still need LOS to hit things, and the ribbon-o-doom isn't all that great when you consider that you can hit anything in LOS with a spell, anyway.

Actually, as written you can hit just about anything you want in your LOS with a singe AOE spell. Consider, not the 'line of doom', but instead the 'twisty string of doom'. The string hits anything it can touch, and is up in the air (or whatever) the rest of the time.

And, of course, once you levitate yourself high up into the air, and use your awesome cybereyes, you could devistate entire crowds of people. After all, the twisty string of doom is a much more efficient use of volume that a sphere.

How about simply allowing you to effect your choice of targets within the spell's normal area of effect?you can combine with the normal rules for expanding the AOE if you want to hit more stuff, and you don't need to worry about calculating volumes.

It does seem quite over the curve, and a malleabul Chaotic world spell would just be insane!

Not meaning to be offensive but i'm not a fan.

An even simpler way to represent what this ability is trying to might be to simply allow the user to choose a number of targets for the spell within line of sight. The number of targets could equal the force value. This replaces the normal area of effect for the spell. It abstracts the effect quite a lot, but I think it's functionally similar and a lot easier to work with. Plus, having a simple limit like that prevents the ribbon of doom exploit, and similar things to that.

I don't much like that version since it removes a lot of the stylistic things you can do with 'shape area' like write flaming grafitti with your fireballs, and has about the same effect as selective targeting within your normal area of effect.

It doesn't remove the stylistic things. You can still do those things in a roleplaying sense. The rule is meant to represent that. Instead, the rule I suggest provides a practical limit to the power. The rule I suggest doesn't solely define what it means in roleplaying terms.

I would suggest a much pared down version of the ability. Ie. for each level of initiation the person can have the area effect spell not effect 1 metahuman sized area within the area of effect. In effect, they would be able to not hit their freinds or themselves within an area effect spell.
No style but much more practical and milited and easy.

Well personally if I were running a game I think I'd use fool's version of allowing each Initiation Grade to exclude one target within the area of effect, coupled with being able to limit the total AoE with a number of free virtual dice equal to the Mage's Grade as well.

As for using Magic to write flaming grafitti and the like, well personally I would allow Mages to do that anyways, just not within the timespan of a Combat Pass.

This is kind of related to something I posted a while back, in concept at least. But I didn't explain it very well at the time. Here it is again, it's basically a new range type for combat spells:

LOS Multiple – Allows the caster to designate a number of targets equal to half the Force of the spell within an area equal to the area defined by the Area range (defined as a circle with a radius equal to the spell’s force in meters) in the SR4 rulebook. No target may be designated more than once for a single spell. Drain cost lies between LOS and Area spells.

So a Force 6 spell could target 3 individuals within a 12 meter diameter area. It adds +1 to the drain code of the individual version of the spell so an LOS Multiple Mana bolt (I call it Mana Strike) would have a drain code of (F/2)+1 vs (F/2) for Mana bolt and (F/2)+2 for Manaball.

Opinions?

I'd say if you line of doom some people the next person in line would gain cumulative bonus dice starting with +1, then +2,then+3 and so on to their resistance roll eventually the spell will stop effecting people. With the exclusion in the fireball spell you could set a threshold equal to the number of people that will be effected, so you can either say it is an all-or-none that being their all exclused or all hit or you could say each hit exclused one target.

For the Drain code I was looking at the effect of the spell mainly. In an Area range category for Force 6 you could hit a lot of targets vs only a small number for LOS Multiple. It does add a lot of tactical flexibility though, now your melee friends can rush right in without worrying about getting caught in a friendly spell. Now if only grenades were that smart....

Aye, it basically allows a Mage to have the flexability of casting multiple spells at once without having to spilt her Dice Pool.

Well, in previous editions you lost one dice for every meter you wanted to extend an area spell, and 2 dice for every meter you wanted to decrease it...

Not sure if that option is in SR4, yet.

I like Ellery's stuff. I've got all those metamagics saved on my home comp because I found a link once. But I sadly can't navigate Shadowland to save my life. Which, really, is why I have them all saved. Hyperextension sure makes for some interesting possibilities. I also really liked the added diviniations, like clouding and prophecy.

Ouch. My puny human brain had trouble processing that one. The rule is nice, it makes sense, but it's kind of a bit too exact for my tastes. I'd be curious to see how it plays out in use. But I've always found that it's best to do as little calculation during playtime as possible. If I know "I can hit X guys with this" or "I can hit all guys in X radius with this" or even "I can hit X guys in Y radius" or "I can hit all guys in X radius except for Y guys of my choice", so much easier. Keeps play moving.

Thematically, however, I think Sculpting is great. I might adapt it to a metamagic for my campaign using the same fluff, but simplifying the math. Where I come from, we don't do long division!

Yeah, I thought it added some flexibility without heavily affecting play balance. I also mean it only to apply to Combat spells so you couldn't use it to cast Levitate on multiple targets, you would still have to stack spells to do that. If the spell type doesn't already have the Touch, LOS, and Area ranges then LOS Multiple does not apply. So no LOS Multiple Decrease Attribute...

I came up with another one called Personal Area, it's more controversial because it involves fudging the "mage must be able to see the target" rule, but not much. Here it is:

Personal Area – 2m (single square or hex at standard miniature scale) range in all directions. Because this is considered a forcible extension of the casters’ mana field the normal LOS rules do not apply and the spell does not affect the caster or any equipment or items worn or held by the caster. This area is fixed and cannot be adjusted by withholding dice from the Spellcasting test. Drain Cost lies between Touch and LOS spells.

So the Mana based Physical damage version of this spell (I call it Mana Burst) would have a Drain code of (F/2)-1 vs (F/2) for Mana Bolt.

the nice thing about Sculpting is that if you plan to use it frequently (and, Jesus, who wouldn't?) you can do most of the math ahead of time.