This just came up last session when the team magician was trying to figure out if he could have an Air Spirit use Movement on a MiG-67 T-bird with Body 18. My reading indicates that a Force 9 spirit would be needed to get a x4(or x5 if you round up) speed multiplier. The team magician could probably get away with summoning a Force 9 spirit without taking too much Drain, but I interjected that the pilot of the t-bird refuses to fly like that.

The reasoning I used is that the MiG-67's Speed is 800 meters per Combat Turn ~= 600 mph. Assuming a x4 multiplier the t-bird would be moving at 2,400 mph, or just a bit over Mach 3 and coincidentally right around the max cruising speed of the now-defunct SR-71. Now, assuming the air-frame could take it, imagine maneuvering at that speed while hugging the terrain to avoid detection. Even with hot-sim rigging, I just don't see it. I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong if anyone has any thoughts.

Edit: It occurs to me that if the vehicle is under the Movement Power, then the spirit is doing the driving. Am I correct? Does that make any difference?

Magic + Physics make heads explode.

Once you introduce Magic into the equation, then it must be present in all phases of the equation and accounted for. Therefore since the mach billion plane is being powered by magic, you can also include the Magic on the side of operating the vehicle.

e.g.

Flying Vehicle Velocity * 4 = Handling problems
Is different from
Flying Vehicle Velocity * 4 + Magic = Handling Problem + Magic

Can't add Magic just on one side, it affects all elements.

edit: Net effect of all of this, is once Magic is applied to the speed, this doesn't change how the normal Handling/Crash tests are handled. You didn't strap on an Atlas Rocket booster, you used the Power of Magic.

Math looks right.

It depends on if you're GM thinks that the power allows safe movement at that speed, or if it just allows movement up to that speed. Also, the pilot doesn't have to move at top speed and presumable has full control. But I assume the bird would handle much differently. That is saying, I don't think the spirit drives; it can use the power on multiple targets at once and having to control each one seems silly and too much like telekinesis.

And so it all comes down to YMMV again. That solution strikes me as a bit too much of an "iWin" button for magic. Then again, it makes little difference in the final analysis; it just means that the party their chasing is doing the same thing with their t-bird, so it all cancels out.

Reading the entry for the Movement Power in SR4A it is not obvious to me that the spirit can use the power on multiple targets simultaneously. What am I missing?

Exactly. Magic just makes it better.

Physics = Physics
becomes
Physics + Magic = Physics + Magic

Ah, my bad. I was getting it mixed up with Concealment. Still seems a bit too much like Telekinesis if the spirit has to drive. And really, who would let the spirit drive the car?

Oh I can just see this. Someone going to ask what happens to all the occupants when the vehicle suddenly is going ten times faster. I remember the stories of people were going to suffocate on those old 20 mile per hour steam trains in the old days.

As an aside, there is somewhere an errata or modification where the spirit Movement Power is limited by the Vehicle body so you don't get supertanker moving around at warp speeds.

Magic does not always create added value. If the team is getting to Denver in twenty minutes then it makes it hard for me to insert the colorful stopover encounters along the way. When you add Magic to these equations the situation can spiral out of control. Good smuggler outfits will have magicians who can do this, making smuggling ultra fast. The authorities trying to prevent this method of smuggling come up with countermeasures. And on and on. I don't always have the mental energy to think out the the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order ramifications of making Magic a panacea.

SR4A says that a being cannot use Movement on a subject with a Body Rating more than twice it's Magic Rating, which is why a Force 9 spirit is needed to Move a Body 18 t-bird (at a multiplier of half Magic Rating).

Um... That is the published max cruising speed. Believe me it went faster. If you believe the published maxes then an aircraft carrier can only do about 40 knots max however I have personally seen them go much faster.

As for the hot-sim rigging, it should not be a problem because you are operating at the speed of thought for the commands. Should be just normal tests.

I'm aware that top speeds and top altitudes for these sorts of craft are classified, having worked with the ER-2 (research U-2) program in the past. My point was more that those aircraft are achieving those speeds at very high altitude, where friction is substantially lessened by the much lower air pressure and where they don't have to maneuver around anything. I'm just dubious that a LAV craft designed to handle and maneuver close to the ground at approximately 600mph can do so easily at 2,400mph. If you think hot-sim rigging is up to the task, I can't prove you wrong. If DireRadiant wants to say that Magic!! hand-waves away all problems, like massive ram-heating of the aircraft's skin temp, then again I can't prove him wrong. It just feels wrong to me.

Flying at SR-71 speeds at high cruising altitude is much different than flying at terrain level at those speeds. It would be near impossible (and possibly completely impossible, given momemtum and turning radius etc. etc.) to 1) react, and 2) effect the needed course adjustments to avoid impacting something.

At 2400 mph, you're covering, what, 2 miles every second?

About 2/3 of a mile per second, but I believe your argument holds. If I understand correctly, the whole point of the ground-hugging t-bird smuggler is to stay well below the altitude at which ground clutter makes radar detection impossible. I agree that maneuvering through canyons and around hills at Mach 3 stretches plausibility, even with rigging at the "speed of thought."

You might have a slightly increased IR signature also, if memory serves the SR-71 heated up substantially due to friction.

Well sharp turns could hurt

As long as we're mixing physics and magic, who's to say that the spirit isn't directly modifying spacetime? You know, taking the T-bird and the bubble of spacetime immediately surrounding it and sort of "skating" them over the surface of reality.

Also, God just killed a metric fuckton of kittens. You bastards.

SR2 and SR4A just describe the change is speed. SR3 add a bit including "Depending on the situation, this change in speed may call for a Crash or Stress Test."

So I would say that the power does not aid the driver/pilot, and that ground (or close to ground) movement would be exceedingly difficult if the terrain is at all restricted.

Having said that, if a spirit was also using Guard (which prevents accidents and glitches) on the driver/pilot, than I would probably just ignore such complications.

If I was a government trying to stop smugglers who might use a tactic like this, I think I'd put a mage in the intercept team. The intercept team would be parked at some station, searching for craft with radar, watching for ground-hugging vehicles and the mage would, every day, create a new Force 1 mana barrier in a few random spots (around a corner, on the other side of a blunt cliff). Once the craft flys through the barrier, the spirit makes the barrier pop, the mage instantly knows where the craft is, sends a spirit to astrally chase it while the intercept team piles into their craft and uses the same technique to boost their vehicle to catch up with the spirit who's chasing the other craft.

End result, chase sequences work the exact same. Stuff + Magic = Magic + Stuff. There might be a period of a week or a month where someone could exploit this "new" technique, but soon everyone else starts catching on (and catching up) and the situation returns to the status quo.

Agreed. Which is why I we all, as GMs, have to draw the line somewhere. I posted this topic mostly to make sure I wasn't making any glaring math mistakes or missing rules. As it turns out there are good arguments for and against. If it makes the game more fun* then great; if it bogs things down then not so much. In this particular case I think I can make the game more fun by having the t-bird cat-and-mouse with patrols and have roleplaying opportunities at the rest stops.

* for subjective values of fun.

I've ruled that the change in speed only changes the time it takes to cover a distance. No other secondary effects are changed. A few examples:

Using movement to increase/decrease the speed of a car does not alter it's crash damage value. This means that one clever use is to have a spirit reduce the speed of a vehicle allowing you to appear to 'slowly bump' someone in a parking lot and still send them sprawling.

Using movement to increase/decrease the speed of a falling body does not alter falling damage. This means that one use is to have a spirit increase the speed of a parachuting runner to reduce the 'hang time' without taking any additional damage. You could also slow the asshole you throw off a building, giving him more time to contemplate his terrible situation, but he still impacts and takes falling damage based on his base speed.

Using movement to increase/decrease the speed of an aircraft does not alter stall speed. This means you can reduce the effective speed of an aircraft and give it more loitering time over a given spot.

Er... you might need to check your reasoning on that. If you reduce an aircraft's speed below its stall speed, it stalls and falls out of the sky. In order to give a fixed-wing aircraft additional loiter time, the Movement power would have to reduce the plane's stall speed; alternatively, the spirit may use another power to suspend the aircraft in the air.

You obviously missd that I said all physics-based calculations are still based upon the character's/creature's/vehicle's true speed before Movement is applied.

I agree, just because magic has you moving at ludicrous speed... doesn't mean spaceball I is going to stop in time!

Or that the contents/passengers won't have their heads smashed in when they fly into the command console headfirst!



Just because you can now move faster, doesn't mean you're better able to handle the G-forces which result either.


When was the last time you heard for someone using the movement power asking to have their effective ramming speed reduced when slamming into something intentionally? That's what they're doing when they're asking for all the speed and none of the drawbacks.


IMO: the movement power would have been far better if the points could have been split between +1 handling, and +10% speed per hit.

Yeah, sorry, but no.

The entire point of the power is to magically enhance your speed and everything related to it. If it was an instant death trap, there'd be no point to the power; metahumans, bikes, and cars aren't meant to travel at those crazy speeds either, so why only pick on aircraft? People coming up with all this silliness, instead of just limiting the effect of the power to metahumans or small/light vehicles if they really see it as a problem, is pretty damn lame.

I agree

I have personally seen the USS Theodore Roosevelt cruise up along side my ship easily at 50+ knots. I wasn't in CIC at the time but I was on the bridge and we were pulling like 30 knots and it wasn't long from the time they were spotted on the horizon till the time they pulled up.

I remember looking at the various Jane's encyclopedias at some of the "published" Speeds. Talk about low balling.

I thought it already had a built-in Body limit based on Force? Just cap it as a house rule, or something.

Really? It seems to me that you're taking the opposing stance.

If it really does enhance "everything related to [speed]" then it does become the "instant death trap" that you say you don't want. This is why I insist that the only thing that changes is how much time it takes you to cover the distance. All other bits of physics still treat the subject as if they were moving at their original unaffected speed.

"Everything related" includes being able to acclimate to the speed change, maneuvering just fine and dandy, stopping just as easily as ever, and etc.

That would have the same effect as saying that all effects are based on the unaffected speed, yes?

Where do you find "everything related" in the following power description?

The only thing the text says the power affects is movement rate. Nothing here says you can't screw up and drive that empowered motorcycle so fast the wheels come off.

I use this thing called a "brain." As opposed to being a total dumbass and just trying to find idiotic reasons to come up with equally idiotic reasons to be a dick to players.

I use this thing called a "brain." As opposed to being a total dumbass and just trying to find idiotic reasons to come up with equally idiotic reasons to be a dick to players.

Yeah, same here. Was pulling a "high speed run" and doing 35 knots (CG-26 class cruiser) and had the USS JFK pass us like we were standing still.

Guard prevents the Accident Power and negates glitches... but if you need 4 threshold, and you do not reach that threshold, you are still just as dead from the 2400mph impact...

as for multiplying speed... I would multiple the threshold equal to the speed multiplier provided by the Spirit... especially at ground levels. For high Flying and straight movement, extreme high speeds make little difference, but closer to the ground, things matter a great deal... there is a reason that they test those ultra-fast cars on the salt flats... there is nothing to hit...

Just because you go faster, does not mean that everything else stays equal to what it was... at those speeds, on ground levels, you do not have enough reaction time to do anything... by the time you see it, it is way to late to react to it...

Just Sayin'...

Keep the Faith

Well TJ, I agree with you on the reaction time part - because it deals with time - but not on the impact being based off of the increased (power-adjusted) speed. If it was based on such, then humans trying to run at x5 their running speeds would blow out their joints in short order, and the power would be useless as well as requiring so many houserules to account for tolerances to be a nightmare.

The power relates to the base speed of a "subject", that speed is usually the "safe movement speed" for something (requiring vehicle tests or sprint tests to move faster) This indicates that its safe to move at the rate given.
However, that would only apply to situations with no obstacles. just like you cant drive your 200km/h car around tight turns at full speed, neither can you do so with movement power on it. So, by the rules, you would get the usual terrain tresholds and so on. But avoiding unforseen obstacles would yeld much highers tresholds.
As a GM, i would probably increase the terrain treshold by some amount due to the speed, unless the vehicle was able to move in a straight line.

As for the G forces inside a vehicle affected by movement: If the power just applied to the speed of the "shell", you would knockout or kill anyone abord a vehicle the moment it was used, if it is indeed meant to be used on vehicles (a completely different discussion, as its not directly emphasised in the description of the power) then it would effect "the vehicle and contents". otherwise, the power would be mostly pointless and have little reason for existing.

If you insist to do math on the subject, how about this: the power movement decreases or increases the weight of the subject and contents, but keeps the same amount of "movement" energy in it. That would allow the speed to increase or decrease without any so-called G-force. And it would allow it to keep mostly the same turning radius, and mostly the same effect of an impact.

Too bad it doesn't just work on metahumans so it was really just the run really fast power. I'd say less arguments, but I know I'd be wrong. People would be arguing about the spraining ankle likelihood.

IMO this is a case where there is a reason they didn't add a line, increased speed is hard to handle you will likely crash. And that is because its magic and it isn't harder to handle the increased speeds. If your car normally goes 50 and now its going 250, the 250 is just like the 50 to the driver. if he'd need to make a crash test at 50, he still needs to make the same crash test. If they wanted additional modifiers for moving at light speed, there would be additional modifiers in the game. They already addressed the power with an errata and in 4A, if they thought they should mention increased difficulty of control they would have added it. Instead they just limited the vehicles size a bit.

Speaking of limits for spells, how large can the subject of Improved Invisibility be? Is it reasonable to assume Object resistance goes up markedly based on size and not just complexity?

As far as I know, there is no size limit...
Common Sense would have precedence here...
People and metahumans: okay... a vehicle? maybe... a building? Never...

That said, each GM has a different vision of what is rational when using this spell I would imagine...

EDIT: The spell targets a single Target... I would say that a single target is something fairly small... A car has multiple compartments, as do buildings... You want large areas? Then use an area version of the spell I would say...

Keep the Faith

As large as you want really. Though that seams stupid at stupidly large sized objects ie the earth ect.

The thing about magic is, its magic.
So, why can't you make the earth invisible? why cant you use power: movement on the earth?
Because it wouldnt be fun for more than 5 minutes, thats why. That is the sole reason every work of fiction which includes magic has it limited somehow and/or controlled by some mystical power who aparently doesnt want to turn the earth invisible.

Its pretty much the same reason that 95% of the times, aliens in fiction has 1spine 1head 2legs 2arms. Is there a reason for this within the backstory? mostly not. It is all a matter of keeping things within some limits that allows humans to wrap their heads around it, and relate to what is going on. And in shadowrun, it isnt exactly entertaining if magic has the power to do anything the magician wants, and as such, the rules presents all sorts of limits. However, it is a need for said rules to be relatively short, and you cannot take everything into account. For an example of this, look at laws in the real world. The collective law text for a single country is probably more than most people could ever read and comprehend, but we still expect everyone to know and follow said laws. Happily, most people has a decend portion of common sense, and only need to know the basics of the laws to deduct most of the rest as needed. At any rate, even real laws still have holes in them, and we don't want our rulebook for a game to be of 10.000+ pages. As such, only some basic stuff is written in the books, and its up to peoples common sense to deduct the rest. Alot of topics on here seems to want to analyse the rules for holes. That is completely rediculous, if you want that kind of accuracy and applicability (ok, i made that word up) then you can go make your own 10.000 pages rpg.
Sorry about the rant, actually, this discussion seems well argumented and my rant had been better placed in alot of other topics lately.

TL;DR:
Rules are simple for a reason, apply the gamemasters common sense to everything.

I assume this is directed at my comment above. The only evidence of a brain being turned off in this discussion is the attempt to rationalize house-ruling to make magic more than it is.

A player has his PC stick a jet engine on the back of his motorcycle, and then kills the PC when he tries to turn a corner at 500 kph... the player is an idiot.

He sticks a Movement power on the bike and fails the same corner at 500kph... the GM is an idiot. That makes sense?

There are lots of ways to use the Movement power that do not require house ruling it to keep the character alive, and do not nerf the power.

- Levitate and Movement - if you don't burn up falling at terminal velocity, you won't ignite going horizontally at 120 kph either.
- Movement on said bike, and run a race just fast enough to beat the competition (Hey, what would the gang leader pay for a year and a day of the fastest bike in the city, at the end of which he sells the bike to his rival gang leader?)
- your plane gets hit and you lose one of two engines -- empower it and keep flying at the same speed the plane was built for
- jumping from one building to the next will save your life... it doesn't matter if you break an ankle on landing, but you have to run fast enough to bridge the gap
- etc. (Insert your own creativity)

If one insists he has a brain, let him use it to be creative with the rules and situation as they are, rather than throw out the consequences of silliness and sloppy play and invent a whole bunch of rule-contradicting rationalizations just as silly, "'Cause its... magic!"

That's dumbass.

First off, just because a vehicle has a listed upper-limit speed, that does not mean that it will always be traveling at said listed speed.

The same thing applies here. The MiG-67 isn't ever going to be moving at full speeds through hairy terrain, so, with magic boosting him, he's still going to be going at those same relative speeds. On a straight-away though, he'll be able to burn out at his full mach 3 if he feels the need. Air-resistance is not going to factor into this since he has a Magic Air Ghost moving the air for him.

And, since we are talking about relative speeds, he should even be able to cruise around natural land features at that same [multiplier] speed. See, I envision the whole Movement power as sort of a bubble of around the object. This bubble acts as a pathway or tunnel through the appropriate element wherein the target of the power is drawn along its path in a much more efficient way. I extrapolate this through the [multiplier] effect to Acceleration. A vehicle with a typical Acceleration of 60 has a new Acceleration of (F/2)60 which means that the Spirit is actively pushing/pulling/assisting the movement. This would mean the target should also be [multiplier] more effective at turning and breaking, which would allow the craft/person to apply that multiplier effect to every single movement action. So, a car capable of making a 90° turn at 30 kph without losing traction should be able to take that same turn at (F/2)30 kph without skidding out because a Magic Air Ghost is compensating with counter-forces. Therefore, if this MiG-67 usually traces a stream at around 350 kph, then, with the assistance of the magic Movement bubble, it should be able to do so at (F/2)350 kph. Meanwhile the rest of the world outside of the movement tunnel is affected in the regular manner, so no tornado-force winds tearing up trees or cows being lifted up in the suction wake of the displaced air.


But it really is like Dire Radiant says. Magic. It is MAGIC. You can't just factor Magic into or out of an equation.

enough that various fluid systems was built leaky to allow the connections enough expansion room without breaking something during flight.

Yeah.. those things leaked like a sieve on the tarmac...

Keep the Faith

I would DEFINATELY be employing a spirit with GUARD

This would include massive airspace confliction. (An environmental hazard of flying over .3 miles a second.) As well as explosive decompression from ejecting from a craft at atmospheric limits/

You beat me to it. I was going to suggest "accident" as the authorities countermeasure to movement aided smuggler runs. I imagine accident + movement = instadeath. In fact, that's not a bad tactic to use in a chase. Movement then accident the pursuing KE cruiser. Hmmm....

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'm going to use a spirit of air to boost my runner's movement rate next time he breaks into a corporate facility.


I was making a pinewood derby car once and was sanding down the wheels so that they would be perfectly smooth when I had the brilliant idea to use the grinder with a high grit wheel to get a smoothly buffed wheel. I put the wheel on the brad so it would spin freely (so it would sand evenly around the wheel) and held it up against the grinder. Apparently, plastic spinning that fast heats up some where it rubs against the brad and the wheel melted its way through the brad, destroying the wheel.