One of my players wants to design a spell that I'm not sure is possible, so I wanted to run it by the masses.

Essentially, it's an astral barrier spell that functions like reflection metamagic, in that if the defender has net successes, he adds those to the original power of the spell and gets returned to the caster.

1) Is this possible?
2) If so, should it be limited to Initiates with the Reflection Power?

My line of thinking is "If (1 is true) then 2 = true". I wouldn't allow an uninitiated mage to have this spell, myself. But I wanted to get some feedback before I outright dismissed this. Thanks!

SR13

Personally, I'd make it operate so that the force of the barrier subtracts from the force of any spell targeted inside the area of the barrier, and if the result of this is negative, the spell, with a force equal to the absolute value of the difference, is returned to the caster. There should be a signifigant drain code associated with casting this barrier spell.

I'd allow it with the following limitations:

Would not stack with Astral Barrier.
If the number of successes for casting the Reflection spell do not equal or exceed the number of successes the caster gets, the spell penetrates the Reflection.
The 'net successes' be defined as the number of successes the caster of the Reflection spell gets over the caster of the other spell.

Don't forget, this spell would be VERY useful if he has Shielding (raising the TN of the caster) or even just Spell Defense (negate the successes of the caster). It will be EASY to get more successes than the caster, even if it's only 1 or 2 successes on the spell.

Sphynx

I don't think this should be possible. It honestly removes the need for the reflecting metamagic. Sure the spell isn't quite as good, but now the mage who knows it doesn't have to "waste" a metamagic technique slot learning reflecting.

That aside, if you go forward with it, I'd have it have a middle-of-the-road drain code, but if it successfully relfects the spell, then the caster of the "reflection spell" should have to make a drain test for the reflected spell. That way it keeps reflecting as a viable metamagic technique.

I would only allow this as a variant spell of Redirect that works against magic only - as written above it is a BIG no-no.