I'm sure that it's easy to develop an indirect "Destroy Cancer Cells" spell, one that drowns them or something. So why hasn't anybody done it?

The same reason that explode head doesn't work. You can't make called shots with combat spells, period. The cancer is still a part of the character's body.

But maybe it isn't. Maybe it's detached from the aura and has started to act on it own, which is why it's replicating without any particular care for the body as a whole.

That also doesn't really explain why there isn't a "slay bacterium" spell.

Oh? You mean like Sterilize?

Oh, yeah.

slap on the back of the head for emo

Honestly, how often is a PC going to use that? Maybe it exists in the game world, but it's not printed because it's completely useless for the game.

How about a gamma-ray laser? Would you allow someone to make a called shot with a gamma ray laser to attack cancer?

And indirect spells can't have limited targets, anyway. At least not reasonable. Fireball is an actual ball of fire, after all.

Dude, there are limited Acid spells that corrode one thing in particular, like "corrode armor" or "corrode guns."

It's 2070, man. And I could have sworn that in SR3, they had already cured cancer with modern medicine.

Nannites ftw.

Or just use a Health spell that Removes Cancer. I mean, it can't be harder than Detox or Cure Disease.

I agree that reality and game balance conflict here. If you can have an area effect Slaughter Human spell that leaves tuskers, trogs, runts, and dandelion-eaters alone then I think it would be possible to design a Cure Cancer spell. Well, unless a cancer cell is NOT any different than a regular cell. Of course if they weren't, we wouldn't need a cure now, would we?

Concidering the existence of replacement organs and cybernetics. Cancer may be a 10 times more common but 100 times more curable. After a long cancer doesn't mean much when they can grow you new lungs.
Hell right out of runner's haven there's that qoute in seattle. Buy hey replacement lungs are cheep these days

It has to do with magic not being able to target just a part of a thing, but has to target the entire entity.

If you wanted to cure cancer, it would have to be a health spell. Maybe a variant of the Cure Disease spell? If not, just cast a high level cure disease spell using foci and maybe a spirit to boost one's ability. A casting or two should be able to handle it.

I agree with the above. Cancer probably should be curable with magic, just not combat spells.
Of course, nasty cancers require a lot of hits, which means high force, which requires reasonably high magic, which means the people who can do it are rare, and it's expensive. Sure, there are a few people who are willing to heal people for free all day every day, and they've got people lined up for months.
Just because magic can cure cancer doesn't mean the disease isn't still a problem for millions of poor people.
But yeah, it should pretty much mean that middle-class and up people never have to worry about Cancer much.

Cancer is a disease. Why can't Cure Disease cure cancer? Just pump that healing magic into the body and watch the cancer burn away.

Alcoholism is a disease. At least that's what I hear on Oprah.

I've heard that addiction to the internet is also a disease. Does Cure Disease blow up the internet? !!!! Is Cure Disease the anti-Al Gore!?

Yes. Apparently someone in Bush's campaign staff was awakened.

I'm not sure that this is the right place for a serious question, but here goes:

How do you determine how many health levels it takes to destroy inanimate objects such as guns or commlinks? I aks becasue I'm interested in using spells intended to target those devices.

Also, would a spell intended to destroy guns affect a concealed weapon? Do you have to see the weapon clearly to affect it?

I guess each of thiese can be turned back to cancer cells, too.

You give them an armor and barrier rating. The core book under barriers has a listing with sample ammounts, such as a tire, etc.

And yeah, you'd need to see the gun to use a limited target direct combat spell. If you used a limited target indirect spell, such as acid that only melts guns (wtf!?), and if you can wrap your mind around that, then you wouldn't need to see the guns, but you'd still need some kind of line-of-effect to get the magic gun-eating acid onto them.
Weird.

Ha, so a gun would get a cover benefit from a direct damage spell like Gun Bolt . . .

Is that a -2 or -4?

Speaking to Cure Disease for cancer, I really don't see any reason why that wouldn't work. In fact a player of mine and I are wondering what the difficulties for various STD's would be. (he is a member of a magic frat)

But I wold use the amount of body lost to Cancer as a baseline for the strength of the spell needed.

As I remember in 3rd ed anyways there was a very gene re-sequencing process you could go through to cure really bad genetic illnesses, cancer and some cyberware modifications. It was VERY expensive and took weeks of time with the character suspended in some kind of tank while his genes and body were rebuilt.

BlacKat

my buddy Kit does much the same thing

"In one campaign a mage made extra money curing the various major gang's "talent" of diseases picked up in the course of business."

Thanks for the solid ornot.

Imagining medicine in the Sixth World it's impossible to not imagine EVERY surgical ward trying to maintain at least a marginally talented magician on staff. The shit they can pull is quite literally miraculous. Hell, even one half awake mage on duty in reception can make triage a breeze with assensing. I'm just trying to decide how useful assensing would be in surgery (or more likely in assisting other surgeons).

One thing to remember with all the genework and various medical stuff they're doing, is that it opens the door for new diseases and such to come in. I recommend reading Bruce Sterling's 'Our Neural Chernobyl' short story.

To quote one overview of it:

This story was written by Bruce Sterling, and was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1988. In a bizarre future, free from AIDS and genetic diseases, everyone can be a human genome hacker. One such hacker/scientist, while trying to find a way for the human body to become a cocaine-producing factory, engineers a virus that enriches the dendritic connections of mammalian brains. This virus seems to produce eccentric, absent-minded geniuses, but most humans are immune to this neural Chernobyl. Instead, it is animals that suffer the biggest changes as a result of this virus, leading to more intelligent dogs and cats, as well as a culturally-aware raccoon society.

So, you could have a world that is free from most of our modern diseases, but is now up for some of the world's strangest diseases.