It states in the rules that permanent spells must be sustained for a certain amount of time before they become permanent (twice the drain value in combat turns, to be precise). Can you use a sustaining focus to sustain a permanent spell until it becomes permanent? I believe you can. In the case of a touch spell (like heal), however, do you still need to maintain contact until the spell becomes permanent.

I can still see this being useful. Even while holding onto the target of a heal spell, you can still use your full dice pool to fire your pistol at your enemies, keeping them at bay, etc. A GM might still inflict a dice pool penalty to reflect the concentration of the touch, but I'd think a sustaining focus would help.

What do you think?

Dread Polack

i don't think you'd even have to be touching them still. you don't need LOS to sustain spells, only to cast... why would you have to maintain touch?

I would allow a sustainer to sustain a permanent spell for the needed duration.

Further I would not require you to maintain a touch after the initial casting. Weather you where sustaining it yourself or not.

I do this after considering some of the touch ranged spells with a sustained duration. For example combat sense and the various detect spells. These do not require touch to be maintained for the spell to be sustained

Edward

Then again those spell aren't permanent in nature, heal is. That's relevant.

I'd allow it. The low force of most people's sustaining foci might keep 'em away from this, though. Limiting the max successes on your healing isn't usually a good idea.

I believe the sustaining foci must be in contact with the target of the spell. If the spell is being sustained before it becomes permanent that is okay, the spell basically ends once it becomes permanent.

The caster does not need to continue to maintain contact with the target of the spell in any case, the range is only applied at the time the spell is cast. Once that is over the caster is free to move away from the target.

Foci don't work unless their owner is touching them. The spell doesn't work unless the caster is touching the target. It's pretty obvious to me you'd have to maintain contact for the duration... you just manage to avoid the -2 to everything else (like the autofire you're pouring down the hallway).

What indicates that you need to maintain contact?

As for the sustainer needing to be in contact that contradicts the rule that the focus must remain with the caster.

Edward

In SR3 Sustaining foci specifically work when in contact with the subject of the spell being sustained. The magician gives the sustaining focus to the subject of the spell and then casts the spell through the focus. So long as the subject maintains contact with the focus the spell is sustained. The magician is not required to maintain physical contact with the sustaining focus.

Likewise, an anchoring focus, which can act as a sustaining focus, only requires physical contact with the subjct or the ability to detect the subject using a detection spell in order to work.

SR4 glosses over this but I'm going to assume that it remains the same.

I'd be inclined to think that the focus still has to be in contact with the subject of the spell. In many cases this is the magician themselves, but if you were to use it to sustain a spell on a group member, you'd better trust them!

I would allow a permenant spell to be sustained by a sustaining focus, and would not require the caster to remain in contact whilst the spell was made permenant (nor would they need to keep contact normally whilst a healing spell was taking effect).

I would not require the sustaining focus to be put into contact with the subject of the spell, or kept in contact. There is nothing in the SR4 rules to support such a need, and sustaining foci already explicitly work differently from how they worked in SR3 (they used to be linked to a single spell, not a spell category) so evidently there is some intentional reworking going on.

The reason I was saying they'd have to stay in touch with the target for the purposes of a HEAL spell is because the spell has Touch range.

Hmmm... well there seems to be some disagreement. Is there a way to ask Fanpro directly?

I think, personally, I would run it that the target of the spell would have to be in contact with the focus, or the caster would have to be in contact with both until the spell becomes permanent. That would mean possibly leaving the focus while he or she moved around. This could be risky.

As for regular sustained spells, I'd run it like SR3, and allow the target to carry the focus.

Dread Polack

On a slightly different note, does using the appropriate spirit to sustain the spell differ in any way from a focus being used?

You are comparing an argument (metahumans can fly) that has absolutely no basis in the rules to an argument (sustaining spells can sustain permanent spells), which has plenty of basis in the rules. It's a pretty common fallacy. Basically what you're saying is:

1) you argue that sustaining foci as described in the rules means that permanent spells can be sustained, even though it isn't explicitly declared
2) therefor someone will argue that metahumans can fly (slippery slope)
3) arguing that metahumans can fly is wrong
4) therefore point 1 is wrong (straw man)

Slippery slopes can be either fallacies or valid arguments, depending upon the correlation between 1 and 2. In this case there is no correllation between arguments for or against foci and arguments for or against slying metahumans, meaning in this instance the slippery slope argument is a fallacy.

Comparisson of my argument to the metahumans can fly argument is incorrect, as they are different kinds of arguments. 'Metahumans can fly' is an "it doesn't say I can't", or double negative, argumnet. My argument is not a double negative argument, as the rules do positively allow it. IE: it's an "It does say I can" argumnent, which I also added the fact that "It doesn't say I can't" for good measure. The "It does say I can" argument is enough on its own, frankly, and if you wish to disprove it then you really need to find something that says in the rules that it cant.

See, emphasis mine:

I don't see that casting heal through a sustaining focus is actually all that open to abuse. It simply frees the mage up from having to sustain the heal spell until it becomes permanent, which is normally only a handful of rounds anyway. I would suggest that once a spell has become permanent its effect is ended, much as an instant duration spell is over in the same round that it is cast.

Plus, as was mentioned earlier, the force of the focus is limiting the force of the spell which limits the boxes healed, and there's no second chance on magical healing, so that helps to keep it non-abusive.
I think the more useful version of this trick is using stabilize, rather than heal. Being able to stabilize and having it only take one action in the middle of combat is nice.
And to chime in on the other issue, by my understanding of SR magic (which I admit is heavily influenced by prior editions) the sustaining focus would need to remain touching the subject of the spell, and the mage wouldn't have to touch either of them past the initial casting, but hopefully that sort of thing will be cleared up in Street Magic.

Agreed with ornot and Moon-Hawk, although I personally think that each edition should be read on its own.

In past editions it was possible to target people with offensive spells through the foci they were carrying (grounding?), and that was removed in third edition which made using continually-active foci more plausable.

In third edition you needed to give someone an extremely valuable item, or leave one lying around (in your home if it was sustaining a defensive spell, for example), in-order to sustain a spell on them without effort. The item could be used to track you, and through that perform ritual sorcery on you, or simply re-bound by the thief costing you a lot of karma and money. This has (seemingly) be removed in 4th edition, there is absolutely no mention of it, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Changes from one edition to another should not need to be explicitly stated. I'm all for looking at previous editions when there's ambiguity in the current rules, but there is not in this case. In this case there is merely a conflict with previous edition rules, and if you're playing 4th edition then the 4th edition rules take precident. They don't need to explain that with a foot note or anything, the SR4 book should be a stand-alone game without you needing to reference a shelf-full or two previous-edition books.

I agree with you, but it's really hard to keep separate the things that I know are true about the SR world from one edition vs another.

Cochise, a few questions:

1) What do the rules for a sustaining focus say that they do for spells?

2) Are there any limitations in the rules regarding which spells a sustaining focus will work for?

3) Is Heal a spell?

Try to set aside any preconceived notions about what a sustaining focus should and shouldn't be allowed to do and look only at the rules we've been given in 4th edition.

@Cochise: It doesn't say either way wether or not metahumans can fly, that's true, but it can be simplified into two arguments. Only one of them causes any problems. There's the assumption that metahumans can fly, which uses the logic "It doesn't say I can't" (and thus is a double negative argument) unless they're invoking rules which do allow it (flying in a helicopter, using a levitate spell, ETC). And the assumption that metahumans can't fly, which uses the argument "It doesn't say I can".

I thus labeled the 'metahumans can fly' argument a double negative argument as the statement 'metahumans can fly' is not always true unless the "it doesn't say I can't" argument is used.

When deciding between things that aren't made explicit either way, we must assume that the "it doesn't say I can, so I can't" argument is the correct one as otherwise we have the slippery slope. In-order to be playable, the book would need to read something like "You cannot fire fireballs, lightning bolts, acidic waves (or streams, gushes, or -filled water baloons) from your ass or any other part of your anatomy. Nor can you fire them from buildings or have them spontaneously fall from the sky onto targets (defined as people, vehicles, animals, plants, buildings, spirits, or generally anywhere in the world), or hit them from the side, or burst out of the ground and hit them, or materialise just infront of them while they're walking..."

The rules explicitly do allow the casting of any spell into a sustaining focus. That is as much as I could ever need to support my argument, you cannot argue with an explicit statement in the RAW, yet you have still not supported yours.

And now Cochise's 4 questions:

1. Yes.
2. No contradictions are created. I don't think there's anything in the RAW to say that instant spells can't be sustained. There are areas which aren't explicitly covered by the rules, but these grey-areas are actually already present with all spell types. An example is that sustained spells end if dispelled, just like the instant-cast spell ends as soon as it's cast. Exactly what happens when a spell that is being sustained by a sustaining focus ends is not explicit, but the fact that it can happen is not a contradiction either.
3. No decision must be made. There is a potential decision that could be made (what happens when a spell in a sustaining focus ends) but that can't affect any of what has happened before it which is RAW.
4. I've been going on nothing but the RAW

Actually, I'll change my answer to #3 above. Yes. There is a contradiction in the semantics of instant spells being sustained, rather than in the defined terms where there is not exactly. That is outside the topic of discussion, however. What is explicitly the RAW takes precident unless there is a contradiction, but the contradiction is only present in the case of Instant spells. Permanant spells do not contradict the semantics of sustaining, and in-deed they must be sustained in game-terms, thus there is no contradiction in that case and no house-rule must be made.

To claim that premanant contradicts sustained is to deny the very definition of permanent in this area of the SR rules. James McMurray was right to point this out.