Was reading the whole mirror and los for magic thread, and Nezumi made the comment of hitting someone with a spell on another continet with mirrors and lenses, and I was wondering how that would play out... does magic travel at the speed of light, or is it instantaneous? i.e., in above example, figure it would take a few seconds of delay to see your target. So when you cast, does it happen now, or does it take the same few seconds? The light has to travel to see you; does the magic? SO lets just say for an example (not accurate here, just for arguements sake) it takes 3 seconds for the light to reach you, meaning what you see happened three seconds ago. If you have to wait for the magic to travel, would it be a full 6 second delay for the spell to take effect? The target could be totally out of your line of sight by then, esp if your targetting a moving vehicle or something. I realize this is prolly nothing that would ever come up, but ya never know. Like could you see, say, sparkling from their hands (mana flowing) before you get hit with that manaball, or would the spell hit just a split second before you see it?

Like a fine wine, thou makest the forehead hurt.

We will guess that magic travels at the speed of light (since even gravity seems to propigate at the speed of light). Now, do you need someone in LOC for the whole time, or just when the spell is cast.

If the spell happens instantly this means that I am shooting at things that happened in my past. (A evil mage around 50 ligth years away sees your grandfather and nails him with ye old manabolt - what happens then?

Well, speaking as a student of Thaumatology at the U of C (damn bugs), my best guess would be that magic travels at the speed of astral travel (which is not the speed of light, but the speed of thought). This is actually considerably slower than the speed of light, however, magic need not traverse the same time-space as light.

That being said, the speed of a magical effect targeted through mirrors would depend on the nature of the effect. An elemental manipulation would take a long time to reach the target, whereas an effect that channeled local mana to produce the effect would only take as long as it takes for a local spell to take effect.

Magic doesnt *travel* at all, except in the case of elemental manipulations (and I think the clout spell). When you cast any other spell, you create the effect at the target instantaneously. That's why the mana conditions matter for both the caster and his or her target... if either one is in an area with background count or a mana warp, those effects apply to the casting. The actual delay in light reaching you from the target shouldnt really matter at any time in game.

As for the 50 light years away thing... its, err, not ever going to happen. You won't ever get a purely optical light path to any target 50 light years away... and, well, even if you did, since the target of your spell isnt where you see it being, the spell would simply fail. (As the target(s) would not spatially be where the spell takes effect).

Not only that, but you're either in a mana warp, or in an entirely different manasphere.

Dude, light is really fricking fast. If you somehow managed to set up a mirror, or series of mirrors, in the sky that allowed you to see the other side of the world, the delay would still be negilible. Light only takes a second to travel all the way to the moon. Traveling around the earth takes it less time than a human can perceive.

Right. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (300,000,000 m/s) The circumference of the earth is ~25,000 miles (~40,323,000 m). Hence, the statement "the actual delay in light reaching you from the target shouldnt really matter at any time in game. "

I think maybe the question should be Mage A is trying to shoot something at a deep space station at the edge of the solar system.

Pre-supposing that Mage A is a double digit initiate(to overcome mana warp, etc) and can see the target in the deep space station. Does he hit the target or not? Since the target isn't physically at the same position he was in a few minutes ago?

Taking the question to extremes, can a very powerful initiate from another galaxy away cast a spell at something he saw through a VERY VERY VERY VERY powerful telescope? Since the time for the light to travel is hundred of years, is it possible to attack something 50 yrs ago?

Ah, but you must first see it to cause the effect. Since you are 50 LY away you are seeing what was happening 50 years ago. If you try to then create the effect on that light, what happens?

You target what you see. That is how magic works in SR3.

So what happens when you target that something based on something you saw but that something is so far away the time-light lag kicks in?

Don't try to be clever with me. You're not smart enough.

I'd say the spell would fail unless your target's corpse was still somewhere near the source of the spell effect you were creating and you still had LOS to it. Consider that darkness modifiers represent what happens when you don't know exactly where your target is, if you aim somewhere where the target isn't exactly then you get TN penalty mods. If you can't then shoot them due to full cover then the spell fails.

So I can make a 'light capture device" (magic mirror, or something) that captures the actual light showing a person. Put it on my wall, and blast them whenever I feel like it?
You may be on to something...

Not unless you have a PhD in Physics, man.

You see the old guy as he was 50 years ago. You target him now. Your spell does what? By Canon rules, it should affect him instantly. Thus, does the spell travel through time and him there in the ass then? Or travel through space and hit him now? That was my question. I can't help it if you are too *ahem* low in Intelligence to understand my question. tsk tsk

I take it from your lack of response that you do not have an answer.

The way of discussion is getting ridiculous now, isn't it?

Not only is the question relevant only in theory (as it has already been pointed out, that any place on earth is reached within fractions of a second with light-speed!)

Furthermore there are so many variables (including but not limited to warp, type of manasphere, necessary medium, etc) that we on "earth in 60 years" find constant but may be very different if looked upon on galactic scale.

I, for once, find it more interesting to imagine whether it is possible to even target the deep space station mentioned earlier, because I think the black cold void of space lacks the medium of conveyance to deliver the spell's effect to a place beyond the gaiasphere.

Talking about physics, now one has to find out if mana (and therefore spells and their effects) stick to the model of waves or of particles!