I'm still pretty new to SR4, and I'm just wondering if I understand the nature of the metamagic Quickening correctly. It seems like an incredibly cheap and efficient way to boost a characters power, duplicating some of the best augmentations in the game, but without any of the inherent drawbacks (high cost, reduced essence, MAD scanners all over the place and issues with legality).

Is there a downside to loading a ton of enhancement magic on to your character and quickening it all? The cost in terms of karma seems negligible, relative to the potential gains.

The character I have now is an elf magician, of the shamanic tradition, made with the standard 400 BP creation rules. He started play with magic 5, charisma 6, willpower 5, spellcasting 6 and a force 4 power focus (gained with the restricted gear quality), and 2 points in the influence skill group. So, straight out of the gate I can roll 15 dice to cast spells and 11 dice to resist drain. I've been on a few runs and accumulated 20 karma. More than enough to initiate once.

My intention is to initiate and gain the quickening metamagic (which will cost 13 karma) then cast increase charisma on myself, at force 6, and quicken the spell (for 6 karma). The drain on Increase [Attribute] is (force/2)-2, so even though I have overcast it and the drain is physical, it's only a drain value of 1. I see no reason why I can't keep casting the spell until I manage to roll 6 hits on the spellcasting test with my 14 dice. I'm far more likely to get 6 hits than a glitch, and I can soak 1 drain with no trouble. Once quickened, I will be walking around with a charisma of 6(12), rolling 17 dice to resist drain, and 14 dice for any influence skills. That's a huge boost to the character's abilities, for 19 karma.

Another magician trying to dispell this effect needs to succeed in an opposed test, pitting their counterspelling + magic against the force of the spell + the magic it was cast at + karma used to render it permanent, which in this case is a total of 21 dice. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to just shoot me in the head, so dispelling isn't much of a concern.

The BBB states: So, while it's possible to perceive the spell with a high enough assensing roll, anyone managing to even detect it will also already know I'm a magician with a magic attribute of 5, making the quickened spell something of a non-issue.

After boosting charisma, I'll cast and quicken Increase Reflexes, to get 4 initiative passes, then I was thinking a force 9 Combat Sense would be useful. Quickening these two spells will cost another 13 karma, so I've spent a total of 32 karma and not a single . Unlike cyberware and bioware, which has a built in limit, thanks to its essence cost, I can't find anything to limit quickened spells.

So why stop there? I can start casting quickened spells on the other runners in my team, giving them the best of cyber/bio enhancement and spells as well. Someone assensing my buddy might be able to detect the spell that's become part of his aura, and which bears my astral signature, but I doubt it's going to be as easy to spot, or as much of a concern, as the illegal cyberware and weapons strewn about his person.

Are there NPC magicians in the world that cast and quicken spells for a fee? If so, what's a reasonable price... and if you can get a permanent force 4 Increase Reflexes cast on your character in an afternoon, why would anyone ever get wired reflexes or a synaptic booster? Can I go in to business and subsidize my income this way?

Surely it can't be this good, and this easy to exploit. I have to be missing something... so, dumpshockers, what am I missing? Have these issues come up at your table, and how have you dealt with them?

My understanding of Quickening is that it doesn't render a spell "permanent", as there are specific "permanent" spells. Quickened spells are still normal sustained spells - the only difference is that you don't have to think about them and they're a bit harder for the opponent to overcome.

They still light you up on the astral, and they still give you major problems if you need to pass through a ward or mana barrier - every ward or barrier you pass through (whether you're astrally perceiving or not) will result in an opposed test, and alert the creator of that ward to your presense. These are pretty huge downsides. Then, if the ward actually wins and dispels your spell, you're out the Karma it took to Quicken it in the first place.

There is also the Masking-or Extended/Advanced/Improved masking(or something like that) that can help shield your quickened spell from a ward, making it easier for it to pass through. That being said, you need to also learn the Masking and Uber Masking metamagics(more karma for initiation), AND there is still a chance it will fizzle.

IMO, hell, go with the foci. it's cheaper and you can at least activate/deactivate them. (I'm not sure, but Masking might also help the foci get through the wards)?

Quickening is a powerful tool in the magician's arsenal. One advantage over Foci is that you can Quicken a spell of any Force, as long as you have the karma to spend. It may not be as good as it seems to you, though. Aside from the issues listed above, you should consider the following.

1)
Counterspelling a Quickened spell may not be able to get rid of it at one go, but net successes on the Counterspelling attempt do reduce the hits you received in the original casting. So, at the first shot, the Counterspelling mage may not be able to bring down your Increase Reflexes spell, but he may reduce its effectiveness from then on. Your karma is still spent, and the spell is that much closer to disruption the next time.

2)
Background count, generic or that set up by the Mana Static Spell, does affect Quickened spells. Though this effect is temporary, and the Quickening magic rebuilds itself once the area of background count is left, your comparison to implants should include the fact that implants keep working no matter what background count there is.

3)
Your idea to Quicken the whole team would make the bunch of you an incredibly attractive and delicious target for nasties that consume magic.

4)
How would you hide the fact that you (and your teammates?) are Powerful, Nasty and Dangerous if you wanted to go into a restaurant or meeting unobtrusively?

Peter

The biggest issue is, as already stated, wards. If you have a Quickened spell, you cannot pass through a Ward without alerting the creator (barring Extended Masking, which requires Masking & is often difficult to use in this manner). This may also result in you being physically barred from passing, similar to a Dual-Natured creature.

If the spell ever ends for any reason, including you dismissing it, the spell ends permanently, & the Karma spent to Quicken it is lost. This also includes it being reduced to Force 0 through Background Count, most notably from Mana Static.

Finally, in Shadowrun, wards are everywhere. Most are low-Force & a non-issue if you alert the creator; they likely go off all the time. In secure environments however, such as many runs, tripping a ward will likely result in imprisonment or death.

See Street Magic, p. 118: Quickened spells repair themselves once they exit the background count area.

Peter

Good call. I misinterpreted this.

This would work! I'd have to initiate twice more to gain masking and then extended masking, and then boost my magic attribute from 5 to 6, to mask a force 6 quickened spell. All told, this would end up costing me another 53 karma, for a total of 72 karma. So, this isn't cheap or easy, but it could work.

This would work, but to pull off the same trick I was considering with Increase Charisma, I would need to spend 60,000 to buy the appropriate foci, which has an availability of 24R, then spend 12 karma to bind it. It can be done, and would let me drop the spell at will, to go unnoticed, or slip by wards, but it doesn't seem either as cheap or easy as just quickening it.

While another magician could conceivably try dispelling the spell, they'd have a hell of a hard time scoring even one net success against the 21 dice pool in the scenario I described. Sure it could be done, but my character would immediately be aware of the attempt and start taking measures to stop the other magician. The only way I can see the quickened spell being dispelled is if my character is rendered unconscious and a powerful magician goes to work on them on their leisure. If that happens, getting my Increase Charisma dispelled is the least of my worries.

Hadn't thought of that! It's a good point and a fair consideration.

Also a good point!

The answer to this question is "Not very well". Anyone assensing such a team would perceive the active auras of the spells. Generally speaking though, I think there's a greater proliferation of the means of detecting illegal or restricted cybertech and weapons, than there are awakened NPCs scouting the astral. If it's a question of who is the more unobtrusive, comparing me with my perfectly legal force 6 sustained spell and my buddy with his 20F move-by-wire 2 cybertech, I think I win.

Wards seem like the main problem, and will probably keep my character from taking the quick, easy, munchkin road to power and profit. Muspellsheimr summed them up nicely. Though I still feel like the game designers haven't adequately addressed the possibility of people wanting to run around with quickened spells in the same way they've explored other means of augmentation, and how those methods of upgrading a character are dealt with in society.

Slightly off topic, but relevant anyways... that was the reason I went with a Synaptic Booster for my combat mage rather than a spell lock with Improved Reflexes. That booster will just work. I can go anywhere and it won't fail. It's also a stone bitch for anyone to know that I have it since it is bioware rather than cyber.

Incorrect. You are only aware if the spell is dispelled - aka ends. You are not automatically aware of dispelling attempts if they fail to end the spell, even if they successfully reduce the spell's Hits.


While a valid interpretation, I must disagree. When a Quickened spell is disrupted, it is gone permanently. Something can only be repaired if there is something left to be repaired. The reference to the wards & Quickened spells repairing themselves is in reference to those that have had their Force reduced, but have not been disrupted.

OK, reading the whole paragraph closely leads me to see your point, Muspellheimer.

Peter

No, I'm pretty sure I had that one right.

Okay, I was looking under the Quickening metamagic, where that is not specified.

To the OP,

Why cast a Force 6 spell and pay 6 Karma? Why not just use a Force 1 spell and tack on edge to potentially gain more than 6 hits. That way you can dump 6 more spells on yourself like Increased reflexes and whatever else suits your fancy for little to no karma invested.

A spell's force limits the number of hits (not net hits) that can be achieved on the spellcasting test. (SR4 p.171)

In the case of the spell I want to cast, Increase [Attribute] it requires that you cast it at a force at least as high as the (augmented) attribute. So, to increase my characters charisma, which was already at 6, I need to cast a spell of at least force 6. Since he's an elf and can get an augmented charisma of 12, if I score 6 hits on the casting test I double that attribute with one spell.

edit: wind_in_the_stone beat me to it.

Edge Dice are not limited to the spell's Force. Stupid rule, but it's RAW.

Correct, although some spells, such as the Increase [Attribute] spell, are limited by the Force they are cast at, as well as by their number of hits.

The biggest weakness of using Edge to help quicken a Force: 1 spell is that it is still a Force: 1 spell, so even the lowest background count could disrupt it. And the spell uses Force x 2 for the opposed test if it is forced through an astral barrier.

Also, why would you waste Edge on something so... minor? If you're going to blow Edge on something make it *GRAND*!

As you'd cast the spell in your downtime and the edge would refresh before you need it next anyway, nothing would be "wasted".
The point that a force 1 spell is way to easily disrupted by random magical effects still stands, though.

All in all, quickening is way more cost effective than paying half a million nuyen for the chrome versions, but it's far from perfect and has it's own fair share of disadvantages.

Also remember, if you pay (Force x 1,000) nuyen in Quickening Materials and (Force x 3) Karma, you can make a Quickened spell practically undispellable. One thing I occasionally do for my really "important" spells is go ahead and overcast them at Force 12, using Ritual Magic and Edge to guarantee a large number of successes, and pour 6,000 Nuyen and 36 Karma into them. Sure, the drain hurts, but you generally do it during the sort of down-time where you'd be healing from cyber-implant or bio-implant damage anyways. And 36 Karma for +3 IP or a maximum augmented attribute is a pretty good deal.

At Force 12, you wind up resisting 8P Drain for Increase Reflexes and 4P Drain for Increase (Attribute). But you also wind up with fourty eight dice for your spell to resist disruption from dispelling, passing through wards, or what have you. (If I were the GM, of course, I'd immediately slap the "Astral Beacon" Quality on the character, because come on). At 48 dice, though, you can basically just have the spell "buy hits" and give the counterspelling mage an effective Threshold of 12.

Also, remember that just about any powerful Triad or Yakuza clan is going to do this. They will have a wujen, that wujen will learn Quickening from his sifu, and he will be put to work making the "favored thugs" a force to be reckoned with.

I think that having a 12 charisma is pretty grand.



In many games, edge is refreshed at the end of scenes, rather than the beginning. So if you use edge during downtime, you don't get it back for your first mission. Just a little something to keep people from abusing their edge for improvement rolls.

Indeed it is, especially since it's full augmentation, which means it boosts the number of spirits you can keep around.

Basically it all boils down to, yes quickened spells are very powerful and can do a lot for not a great deal of karma, but they still suffer from all the problems of sustained spells, save the -2 penalty to all actions.

Personally, I just use sustaining foci.

A rules question I've had on Spell Quickening:

Is there any precedent for allowing the spell's recipient to pay part or all the Karma to Quicken the spell, rather than the casting mage? It seems like this would make sense in many cases (like attribute-boosting Health Spells).

Not in any regular usage. The magician with Quickening has to pay the cost.

But I suppose if a magician had the ability to accept karma from the subject (ie. spirit pact?), then the caster of the spell and Quickening could use that karma.

Peter

Hrm. Maybe I need an Unique Enchantment that's an orichalcum-tipped tattoo gun, which only accepts prepared Quickening Materials as ink, and allows the person being tattooed to transfer Karma to the tattoo artist, but only during the Quickening of a spell into the tattoo being inked.

Is this allowed by RAW? If I am not wrong the corebook says on page 62:

This means if your char starts with cha 6, the maximum augmented value would be 9, and not 12 even if you cast a force 6 increase charisma spell..

Unless we're talking about an elf...
Which we are...

Well, no. Elves can get to (12), yes, but they don't get to ignore the 1.5 rule. You still need that natural 8 to augment up to (12).

The full paragraph i101 was quoting reads:

So, the maximum augmented attribute value is based off of the natural maximum, not what you have the attribute trained to. If a character is unable to augment their attributes above 1.5 times its base value, several of the archetypes would be invalid, like the Bounty Hunter, with his 3(5) reaction.

Ooops. wow. My apologies.

*goes off to reevaluate some choices on a few unfinished characters*

@Draxtier: Looks like I interpreted the attribut ruling a little bit wrong..

I hesitate to resurrect a post that has not seen any activity in 6 years! But this seems to be the best post that has discussed a lot of the questions I have been wrestling with the last few days. It is high in the google search results. It just seems to be lacking a final post that sums up the whole topic along with some detail that was referenced but never explained and I had to find elsewhere. So here is a summary of the answers to the OP as I finally understand it.

I could be the guy in the original post. Have a new Shaman. Thinking of quickening some spells. What to make sure of the upsides and downsides.

Executive Summary: Quickening buff spells upon your person seems to be a cheaper/quicker/easier way of getting buff spells, except it has two very major disadvantages, both having to do with Wards or other Astral Barriers, which go from being a big nuisance, to a gigantic nuisance.

(1) If you should happen to unexpectedly pass through an Astral Barrier on the physical plane and the ward is sufficiently powerful or you are sufficiently unlucky, your quickened spells (and the karma used to quicken them) could be lost. As stated on SR4A page 194 (Passing though Barriers) if you walk thorough an astral barrier in your meat body (which you can and will do unknowing so long as you are not astrally perceiving), each focus and active spell must make a Force x 2 test against the barriers Force x 2. Unless the spell or focus wins, it is disrupted. The karma spent to quicken a disrupted spell is gone forever. However, the karma spent to quicken the spell gets added to all tests the spell needs to make (SR4A 298), so it is less likely to be disrupted than a sustained spell of the same Force.

Lets look at some sample numbers:
A Rating 4 sustaining focus costs 8 karma to bond, plus 40K nY to buy (unless you enchanted it yourself, which you should have). This focus, passing though a barrier will use 8 dice to attempt to avoid disruption. It is more likely than not to fail against a barrier as weak as Force 4. But, other than having to recast the spell again, there is no harm done to the focus.
A Force 4 spell that has been Quickened, uses 12 dice to attempt to avoid disruption (Force of spell x 2, plus 4 more for quickening it). It will likely fail against a Force 6 barrier.
If you take that same force 4 spell and overcast it at force 8, you will spend the same 8 karma you would have spent to bond a sustaining focus. It would use 24 dice to avoid disruption each time it passes a barrier.
Note that you are (kind of) better off raising the force of the spell rather than just adding extra karma to the quickening. Raising the force gives you three times as many dice as simply adding extra karma. Of course raising the force of the spell makes it harder to mask the spell (see below) if you eventually want to go that route. Also overcasting some spells at high force might send you to the hospital.
If your magic attribute is 5 or 6 your can cast the spell at force 10 or 12 and spend 10 or 12 karma, giving 30 or 36 dice to avoid disruption. Note that this is MORE expensive (karma wise) than bonding a rating 4 sustaining focus, but you probably don't have to worry very much about your spell being disrupted or dispelled unless you happen across a seriously major barrier, or you have some seriously horrible dice rolls. Or of course you go into a Mana VOID.

You can only have one Foci per point of Logic, so while Mages can always to have lots of Foci, Shamans who might have relatively low logic might be better off quickening.

Of course all this is moot if you never accidentally walk unprepared through an astral barrier on the physical plane. So be careful. Scout, know where the wards are, and rather than risk your items being disrupted, astrally perceive, and then force your way though the barrier (SR4A page 294). For each extra net success your get, you can take one focus/spell though, That might be hard if you have lots of spells. To take 4 focus/spells through a barrier, you need 5 net successes! Still, you should be able to get one or two low Force spells thought a barrier that way.

(2) Accept that when you start down this path of the Astral Christmas Tree, it will be a long time before you ever sneak into a warded location ever again. Before you quicken your first spell, all you needed to do was drop all your spells, deactivate all your Foci, and walk through the ward. Then on the other side of the barrier, reactivate your Foci and recast all your spells. No Alarms, No problem. The drain of recasting all your buff spells in the middle of a run was a bitch, but at least you got in quietly and hopefully have a bit of time to do the recasting.
With quickened spells, it is not going to happen like that again for a long time, your only three choices are to stay outside the warded area while your pals go in, fight your way past the barrier while duel natured as described above, or walk in single-natured and hope your quickened spells survive. The last two options will cause every member of the team that raised the wards to wake up from a sound sleep saying "Hey! somebody just attacked the ward we put on X-Corp last week!". For a very long time, there is just no way to sneak in.
There is a way to sneak in, it is just going to be a long time before you can pull it off. SM 124 has a section of "Fooling Wards". Basically it says that you need to know Masking metamagic, and you need to astraly assense somebody who is allowed to pass the barrier. Then you have to mask your form look like theirs, and pass a test to fool the barrier. This sounds annoyingly difficult, but not impossible. You just need to know one additional metamagic and do some pre-run legwork. Unfortunately, while the "fooling wards" section does not mention foci and spells specifically, all the discussion I have read on the topic seems to include the assumption that you need extended masking to get your spells and foci past the ward.
It seems to me a reasonable argument could be made that if a ward will let me in, and I am carrying spells and foci attached, the ward ought to let those spells and foci in as well.
However the counter-argument seems to be more persuasive.
Again, I have never seen anything definitive on this, but the assumptions seem to be as follows. The ward keeps anything magically active out unless it has a signature that the ward has been specifically told to let in. Spells and Foci contain the signature of the person who cast them. If somebody who is allowed to pass the ward casts a spell on somebody, that spell is allowed to pass the ward. If somebody else casts a spell on somebody who is allowed in, that spell is not allowed to pass the ward, even thought he person carrying it is. Thus, to get you and your quickened spells in, you need extended masking as well, to mask your spells and any active foci. And you can only mask as many things as your initiate grade. And you can only mask a force as high as your magic rating. So if you have 4 or 5 spells needing to be masked, and some of them are Force 8 or 10, then you will not be able to mask them until you are initiate grade 5 and have a magic rating of 10. Find out what your GM thinks of this issue.

(3) Oh, and lets not forget the VOID problem. Get on a semi-ballistic, a space shuttle, or some other area of massive background count differential, and all your quickening's start to die.

But once again, if you are willing to live with these drawbacks, it can be a very attractive option. You just need to remain aware of the things you can't do any more.

I did'nt see it was a 6 Year old Thread.
Sorry
Hough!
Medicineman

Thank you for the summary. It helps a lot to have everything in one post.