I had two questions about the Magic Fingers spell on page 203.

First, can you sustain the spell and in the next round cast Death Touch or Heal and use it to deliver the spell to a target in your line of sight?

Second, can Magic Fingers cross the plane boundries? For example, if you are projecting on the astral plane, can you use magical fingers to attack or heal someone on the physical plane if they would not otherwise be in your line of sight if you stopped projecting? Sorry for the wordy question...it just seems to be a gray area in the rules.

1. No; I wouldn't allow Magic Fingers to extend touch range to LOS.

As for the second one, I'm not sure. I can't recall any specific rule that says physical spells cannot be cast from the astral plane. It does specify that astral beings can only be targeted by Mana spells unless they have a physical Materialization (i.e., spirits). But, your question seems to be casting from the astral a Physical spell to interact with a Physical target (i.e., a teammate). My gut says no.

Magic Fingers is a Physical Spell and only Mana spells function in the Astral Plane.

Yeah, regardless of whether or not you can cast the spell, it's still not going to do anything and you're going to suffer drain. In other words, it's not going to work.

bad runner no nuyen!

the point to alway slook at is not whether or not it CAN be done, but should it.
if you could cast physical spells from the astral plane then the team gets ambushed from the astrally projecting magician, POW POW POW!!!

A bomb is complex technical device. Yow are not going to see anything useful looking at it from the astral. Other then possibly confirmation that it is a bomb by seeing the intent and hatred/anger of the guy who built it.

Hmm true, and actually thinking back no reason technologica viewing at this point couldnt be used for the magic fingers.


So could the astral projecting mage 'Punch' somebody (on the physical) with the mage fingers, not real effective, but then unless they could go astral there isnt anything the opposing side could do?

you cannot project a spell across planar boundaries. a spell is other on the physical plane, or the astral plane, and you cannot cast between them.

Jaid that is the catch:


"and you cannot cast between them."

You cast Magic fingers on the mundane...

You Sustain Magic Fingers on the mundane ...


You Astral Project and move towards some place and use the magic fingers (which are on the physical plane).

Spells can be sustained from anywhere.

Magic fingers can interract with anything you can see.

I can see nothing in the 'rules' that would stop it, although I guess the quetion would be 'can the mage 'see' the people to punch them' He can see 'their aura's' but that arguabley is not quite the same thing.

you don't have physical LOS to the target from the astral. therefore, you cannot change the direction or effect of a magic fingers spell from the astral.

you could sustain it and have it just hold something in place, or constantly rotate it, but you couldn't change the orders.

Knasser:

Well levitate (if you mean the target could be problematic) (since you would have to levitate the target 'before' projecting'


Control line would be good accept for the general very short duration.


Shape Material could be interesting.

'Shape' a tunnel for you crew to escape.
Sustain the spell and get in vehicle, astral project back to the tunnel, when/if follow shape the tunnel closed again.....

It is given that a spell can be sustained across the planes (even meta); however, can it be 'directed' across the planes...

Nothing says no...

But then nothing says yes?

This gives me an even better idea. Cast your magic fingers, and sustain it, then cast clairvoyance, and use your new sight plane to control the magic fingers.

While clairvoyance does say you cannot use it to target with other spells, you're not. You're simply controlling your sustained spell which has already been cast.

Anyone find something that says no?

You need actual LOS to control sustained spells. Clairvoyance will help you get a better view but it won't work through walls. You need an actual LOS.

In fact p. 204

"The spell can reach any point the caster can see, and Clairvoyance
or remote-viewing technology can be used to get a close-up
of the scene as long as it is within the caster’s normal line of
sight. This spell comes in very handy for disarming bombs
and handling other hazardous work from a safe distance."

Darn someone though of it already! (Check the within normal line of sight clause)

Just remember that anything your Mage can pull off so can my Mages, and I get more of them to play around with.


Seriously though, although I think that it may be legal under RAW I don't believe that Controlling a spell is the same as Sustaining a spell so it wouldn't work in my games unless the Mage still had 'real' LOS and was just using Clairvoyance to remove any 'Remote Control Modifiers' he might have while disarming the bomb.

*Edit*

Hmm, good, it seems that I don't have to plug another leak in RAW after all.

Hmmm. So I think we're probably mostly agreed that RAW doesn't forbid this. I guess the useful question now is should it? Are we opening ourselves up to abuse with flying knives and The Amazing Grenade Swarm (watch it buzzing it's way through the corridors of the site, dropping off one or two of it's number every now and then, as it passes).

-K.

When did this agreement come? You can sustain a physical spell from astral space, but you don't have LOS to control it. There is no LOS from the astral plane to the physical plane. You can see auras and shadows, but you cannot see the physical plane.

well, if you're determined to interpret the rules such that it allows that kind of nonsense, then i suppose you would need to add some houserules to remove it.

otherwise, you're pretty much looking at anyone who spends the points on ritual sorcery and telling them they're an idiot, because this sort of thing is *exactly* what ritual sorcery is for.

seriously, you need to have LOS to cast a spell, and you need to have LOS to control it. if you can't get LOS to cast a spell from the astral to the physical, then how does it make sense that you can get LOS from astral to physical for sustaining [edit] controlling purposes?

[edit] i really need to figure out how to do strikethrough text on these boards... pretty sure i've seen it here before, so i just need to quote the right post i guess =P [/edit]

Magic fingers, the poor mages Orgasm spell...

I would disallow this because:

1) The divide between astral and physical planes, and the inability to affect targets in one plane from another, has been established in every edition of SR. The only exception was the old rules for grounding (which still needed a dual-natured object to work), which were removed for being unbalancing.

What they said!

P. S. Jaid: strikethrough is [ s ]nevermind[ /s ] (without the spaces of course).

Like I said. Clairvoyance lets you see distance scenes as if physically present. While it says you can't use it to target other spells, it doesn't say you can't control a spell you've already got sustained. Such as levitate on a rock, and flying said rock at someone.

Well if you allow this then there really isn't a reason for the phrase "Geek the Mage first!" to even exist because every WageMage and smart Runner would use this trick to completely pawn any mundane force with no risk other then Drain.


So the fact that this trick would completely change the face of the world as presented tells me that it wasn't done on purpose and is a mistake that shouldn't be allowed to work.

Considering you still have to be within the range of the clairvoyance spell, which is Force x Magic meters, if you're trying to avoid drain, then its going to most likely be within your line of sight anyway already. Also, I'd limit any successes on anything done while looking through clairvoyance to the hits on the clairvoyance test. Frankly, unless you're casting it at a high force, the distance in which you can look is fairly pathetic (unless you learn the extended range version, in which case the drain hurts a good bit more (+2)). Basically, it'd be good for levitating a grenade at someone around a corner, and having it explode on impact.

Your version? Sure, although I think I'd levitate the grenades from the floor above/below in order to be safer. (And for a properly built Mage, Drain isn't that big of a limitation, especially a Corp Mage with access to toys like Pain Editors.)

Now knasser's version where a Mage could pull the same stunt from the Astral is completely Earth Shattering.

However, I still think that both versions are broken and wouldn't allow it in my games, even to the point of Thor Shotting the team before breaking out a deck of cards/board game if they tried to press the issue.

How do you propose to levitate the grenade from the floor above or below? You cast levitate on the grenade, and cast clairvoyance. Great. Now how do you plan to get the grenade down to the next floor? Either you take some drain from casting clairvoyance at a high enough force to be useful (which is probably about as much as you'd take from a stunball on whoever you're planning on grenading) Or, you can't see the entire path to get the grenade from where you are, to where you want it to be.

The range of clairvoyance is a sphere, not a linear track. Assuming that you are in range of the stairwell, it would work.

However, clairvoyance can't be used to create LOS for the purposes of controlling a spell. That's explicit, though it only appears in the Magic Fingers rules.

Kill Holes, perferably with one way Doors built into them so people can't throw grenades back down/up to me.

So, as i read that, it can't be used for LOS for controlling magic fingers. Otherwise it'd be in the sustaining rules, not only in the magic fingers explanation.

Like I have said in other Posts Magic fingers is Great for Opeing things or manipulating at range... But the TOP 5 Uses of Magic Fingers in my game.

1. Pulling the pins on Grenades of the bad guys.

2. Distractions of various Types - Opening doors moving objects around the room.

3. Turning the Handlebars on those annoying Go-Gangers bikes... Crash!!!

4. Flipping skirts / Goosing the Waitress.

5. Getting the Remote for the Trid / Getting beer from the fridge.

There you go thats the list of my Favorites from my game.

If clairvoyance can never be used to establish LOS for controlling sustained spells, then why does magic fingers state so explicitly, instead of it being in the LOS, or sustained spell rules?

It never stated that. What it stated was that you could use Clairvoyance to get a better view of what you are manipulating, provided you already have LoS.

The best example is the one they mentioned. If there is a bomb on the ground and you are 10 meters away behind a transparent blast shield you can see the bomb. You have LoS of the bomb. What you can't do is see the bomb well enough to determine the details on it. So if you cast magic fingers on the bomb, and then clairvoyance you can use clairvoyance to discern see the bomb with greater detail before you start to manipulate it. The bomb is still in LoS, but seeing is not seeing it with detail.

It's the same as using a powerful optic telescope. You can see the ganger 4 blocks away to powerbolt him, but with a telescope you can see him well enough to remember the gory details.

Yes. And it says that ONLY for magic fingers. Not for other controllable sustained spells. It doesn't say under levitate that you can't use clairvoyance to get a view that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get, and still levitate something controllable. Example. Mage and teamate are at a corner. Mage levitates teamate. Mage casts clairvoyance to see around the corner, and moves teamate around the corner up under a camera that was there for him to disable it. The mage normally wouldn't have been able to levitate the teamate there without moving around the corner. But clairvoyance lets him control it. The exception is with magic fingers because it specifically says that you can't use clairvoyance like that in conjunction with magic fingers.

No, your still missing the point.

You can't levitate someone around corners even with Clairvoyance because you lose LoS as soon as they go around the corner. You can't manipulate anything with magic fingers around corners even with Clairvoyance because you lose LoS.

Quick re-cap. All magic requires a link from the caster to the target. Most of the time that link is the line of sight, there is a direct path from the caster to the target. Its no different with Magic Fingers. The bit about Clairvoyance was just to give an example that even though you have LoS you can't use Magic Fingers without limits. You can see a telephone with the naked eye from a block away but dialing a number on it with Magic Fingers isn't possible because you can't see it with enough detail to discern the number pad.

Clairvoyance was an example of a usable aid with Magic Fingers. If you tried to disarm a bomb from 2 blocks away with Magic Fingers and you couldn't see the bomb well enough to tell which wires were which colors your negative DP modifier would be enormous. With Clairvoyance thats possible but you must maintain the LoS from your meat body to the bomb to affect it with Magic Fingers.

Even if you already cast levitate and were only sustaining it you need to keep the link to keep the magic active. If you were using ritual magic with a piece of someones hair and someone jerked the hair out of the ritual circle during the casting it would disrupt the spell because the link was severed. As soon as your target breaks LoS with your meat eyeballs *barring mage sight goggles, but I disagree with anyway* then you have lost the link and thus lose all ability to had to actively control the spell.

So, say I'm levitating him around the corner, he goes around the corner and I 'm still sustaining the spell, so what happens? He continues on the direction he was last in at teh same speed he was last at? He stops? Spell drops?

If the spell drops, then do you have any other sustained spell drop as soon as they leave sight of the magician?

The answer is no, you can't cast it while you're on the physical plane and continue to maintain it while you project.

The reason is that if this were possible, it would be possible for all sustained spells, and it would have many, many applications. It would completely change the way magicians did their thing. If the game designers had intended it to be possible, they would have said so very clearly.

If it's not against the letter of the rules, it is against the spirit of the rules. RPGs aren't court battles. You don't "win" by twisting words.

It would depend on your GM, but I would say they stop. You can obviously sustain spells without LoS but you cannot direct them. They would remain floating at the same height and in the same place until you stopped sustaining or walked around the corner to get a fresh LoS. Though I would argue that you can't float them completely out of your LoS.