Sure you can... Not that it will have much of an effect though... Since Fireball is an elemental spell that requires actual oxygen to allow combustion, well, you will get no actual combustion, and thus no actual Fireball.

Also, is there a way to establish that trans-planar connection from Earth to the Moon? Are they separate mana spheres? Does the moon actually have any inherent mana? What's the moon's Object Resistance Threshhold?

Touche.



Fireball doesn't have to overcome object resistance (and even if you did, it's natural, so it has an OR of 1).

As for the other questions, they're irrelevant. Spells have a range of "line of sight" and I can see the moon, therefore, I can cast spells at it (the reason you shouldn't be able to do so is the mana void between here and there, but as Demonseed Elite so kindly pointed out, it doesn't effect instantaneous effect spells (such as fireball) as per RAW.

In any case, I'd imagine that hitting the moon with an indirect spell would be difficult, given the velocity of the moon's orbit, the earth's rotation, the relatively low velocity of the indirect spell, etc.

Direct spells on the other hand, well, telescopes using just lenses are pretty cheap and you can get some good quality.

Preventing the moon from being targeted by spells was never really the point (or even a concern) of mana voids.

So what does stop a mage from targeting celestial objects, then?
/me begins researching Wreck (Space Station)

I remember reading in the space thread that there was a company dealing with the idea of casting spells through some of the most powerful telescopes they had. So apparently leading the target either isn't a concern or requires mega-corp resources to track.

One way of trying to do space exploration on the cheap with the right spells. Rather than shoot a probe off, find a manasphere that can be seen with a traditional telescope and hit it with a few spells.

Can one see manaspheres? In anyway?

Well, IIRC, Luna (Earth's moon) has one, so more heavenly bodies will likely have one as well. So, spy Mars through a telescope and...

The problem then would only be looking at further away manaspheres, like the stars that we see that are already dead. Still, I know it would find little use (I assume anyway) but I think it would be nice to get a small Solar System book, much like Gun Heaven.

Yeah, I don't think we're getting out the solar system yet. Sol still has a rock-solid grip on (meta)humanity, it seems.

Agreed. I am honestly surprised though the moon hasn't become a penal colony yet. Though with the setting now an AI could easily start a revolution as a practical joke.

I think Corporates that would have ideas for space would also have read enough Heinlein to know why that's a bad idea.

"The Heinlein Maneuver" is really, really easy to do, after all.

Forget Thor Shot. We'll throw rocks at 'em.

Essentially, that's what a Thor Shot is, only better aimed and in closer orbit.

It's an orbital crowbar cannon.

Nowhere does it say that fireballs need external oxygen.

According to Demonseed Elite spells do not travel with finite velocity, so hiiting a moving target should be no particular problem. On the other hand relatively slow moving targets (running people) do get a bonus.

Ahh, good point! I had skipped over the passage about indirect combat spells being nearly instantaneous.

As far as the original question goes, I think its a very interesting question, which is clearly not covered by the rules or we wouldn't be having this fun argument. My current game is heavily dependent on background count, as all the major forces have their home places heavily aspected to buff them and debuff their enemies. One of the opponents the players have faced was a cyberzombie, and I relied quite heavily on the astral hazing as "armor" against the players spells, as well as trashing all the spirits that might be sent against it.

Having read this thread I think its clear that I don't have a very good idea how Astral Hazing should be modelled. Using the (perhaps weak) analogy of temperature, is it the case the the astral hazing character acts as a temperature modifier around him.

The test cases look to me to be:
Background +0: There is no conflict every one agrees that the background is now tainted +4
Background -2: Should the aura be tainted +2, or tainted +4
Background +2: should the aura be tainted +6, or tainted +4

I think its clear that whatever we decide for Background -2 should be the same with Background -10.

The answer that I emotionally want, that has the best effects for me as a GM is Background -2 means Tainted +2, Background +2 means Tainted +4, but I struggle with coming up with the fluff to support it.

I look forward to this thread coming to some consensus.

I raised this particular issue back when only cyberzombies had astral hazing, before YOTC during the days of the old forums. IIRC, the idea was along the lines of using the CZ to provide a stable datum of Background Count for mages to cast in space where BC was worse than 4.

An Astral Hazing mage is actually a very niche character. A more feasible character would be to modify the idea stated above - have a cyber/bio sam at low (but not sub-1) Essense with Astral Hazing. This way all the mage needs to do is move close to the Astral Hazing character to benefit from the presumably lower Background Count.

As close to the RAW as I can rule:
Background Count A domain - anywhere but within the Astral Hazing of the cyberzombie/character, the BC is A. Within the area affected by Astral Hazing, the Background Count is always 4.

An example: A large soccer stadium has a BC 5 Aspected domain. The home team mages being in their domain benefit from this Aspected BC. When the visiting team with their Astral Hazer comes to play, they only lose this benefit if they get too close to the Astral Hazer.

Ah, yes, i remember now . . the dwarf cyberzombie torso backpack without arms and legs.

The OR of that space station is going to be a bitch...

well . . do you need to overcome OR in addition to the BGC? O.o
If the BGC is 12 and the OR is 8 . . Well, you need a Spell of Force 20 then . .

Who said something about OR 8? Sure the book mentions OR 5+ for the most sophisticated devices, but going much higher seems to me just a way of arbitrarily saying "no you can't. By the plus behind the 5 you could just as well say 10^10.
What besides highly processed materials and electronics would there be on a space station? IRL space equipment isn't really SOTA, because, for critical systems at least, they want to have stuff that already has proven for some time that it works.

OR is a totally separate mechanic. You have to beat it, whether you are in an positively aspected domain or in the deepest mana ebb.
The minimum Force though does only add up like that for sustained spells. Wreck(Space Station) isn't one of those.

Well, highly processed and redundant materials/manufacturing i would say are pretty much standard for anything space borne.

I dunno, space tech seems exactly the place for high OR stuff. A great deal of the 20th century's new materials, including most plastics, were developed for space programs. Because space programs require exceptional material properties (ridiculous heat/radiation/impact resistance for as little weight as possible).

I think it continues in SR; because transporting stuff up the gravity well is expensive, they would prefer to assemble it on location with nanoforges, which are certainly in the high OR category. It allows them to send mostly generic supplies (or perhaps mine those from asteroids) instead of having to know exactly which parts to send up.

I read about people shooting stuff at the moon and only one word comes to mind.

"SSSSSSPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCEEEEEE"






-k

The BGC of 12 doesn't matter as Demonseed established above, or were you not here for that part of the conversation?

It matters if you are in it though...

Yes, yes it does. But I plan on casting my spell from the safety of my front yard looking through a telescope.

I'm not too sure about the wisdom of that rule... I understand Demonseed Elite's reasoning, but it creates these wonky situations like casting Ignite at the moon...

There are some weird spells, but my point is that addressing weird spells through space mana voids doesn't really accomplish anything.

For instance, let's say that casting Ignite at the moon is bad. Well, what about casting Ignite at the Earth? That's in line of sight for nearly every mage. Will the entire Earth go up in a ball of flame? Wow, that'd be pretty bad. What about if you're a mage living in Seattle and you want to cast Ignite on the Space Needle? Line of sight is not the issue there either and there are no mana voids protecting it.

Hell, casting Ignite on the moon is less problematic because the fire will be immediately snuffed out due to lack of oxygen.

Casting Ignite at the moon would have a notable affect on nearly no runs. Even using spells to throw moonrocks at the earth would only really serve to create a cool "shooting stars" effect for somebody on the other side of the rotation, unless you planned it out ahead of time, and to reduce the moon's mass. Plus, you'd need a really good telescope, making you easy to identify ("Who's bought telescopes powerful enough to view moon rocks in basic detail? 300,000 worldwide, a good start. Okay, now let's map out the time they began to burn up in the atmosphere versus when they'd have left the moon.... okay, we have an area, cross-reference the list... 2,000? Good, good, ..." and so forensics earned another paycheck, and the magician was caught after about 2 weeks investigation and 3 RRTs...).

Edit: just, y'know, FYI, I'm not the kind of GM that tells my players that something is out and out forbidden, I let them know before the game begins that they have to deal with the consequences of their actions, esp. the logical and easy to determine consequences.

So you're OK with Stun Bolting cyberzombies, then? I imagine their Willpower stat can't be that great.

Why would you need a Telescope? The Moon is a hard target to miss.

Why wouldn't I (or you) be? Stunbolting the Cyberzombie has less Drain involved than PowerBolting or ManaBolting. Their Hazing has absolutely no effect on Combat Spells, nor does it protect them from such spells.

I'm as comfortable with stunbolting cyberzombies as I am with stunbolting anything else, yes.

But let's back up and look at the overall issue. Conceptually, the problem can be solved by answering where mana is drawn from when casting a spell. If in the case of instantaneous spells and permanent spells, the mana is gathered at the target being attacked/manipulated and not at the caster himself, then it would be subject to background count around the target. This is an easy enough call for a GM to make and I'm not sure it's disputed in RAW anywhere, since I'm not sure there's any explicit language saying where the gathering of mana takes place. I'd have to re-read through a bunch of material to see if that's described anywhere.

The reason, conceptually, why I didn't lean that way was because of ritual magic. It seemed to make more sense that ritual casters would benefit from their local ambient mana and not the mana environment at the target. Which is why it's popular to cast ritual magic from a Lodge or from a blood magic-aspected teocalli if you're the Blood Mage Gestalt. You'll get bonuses to the spellcasting and to resisting drain. If the target's mana environment determines this, where you conduct your ritual has a lot less importance, your spellcasting and drain will be determined by where they are.

EDIT: For the sake of this discussion, I'm leaving out the very poor wording of the Astral Hazing quality, which is really a separate discussion.

The international space station on the other hand, is.
As I don't think Wreck (Space Station) would effect the moon.



See, that's what everyone believed (or liked to believe) before you showed up. Casting an instantaneous spell into an area of BGC from outside it would reduce the force of the spell (rather than reducing the magician's magic and upping the drain).

There's a certain amount of consistency required with magic, and the RAW on BGC and spells is decidedly not consistent. If there's less magic at the target destination than there is at the source of the casting (for things like lightning bolt, fireball, stun ball, etc.) then they should be effected in the same manner as wards and quickened spells (a magician's astral form is torn apart, why not a spell's astral form?). Background count disrupts the nature of magic and should be applied consistently. A mage inside the BGC takes a hit to their magic score and increased drain, but any spell cast is subject to those limitations and thus proceeds normally. But a spell cast outside and enters should not have full effect (nothing else does).

Permanent spells are harder to work out, as they're all different. For things like Heal, it has a range of touch, which implies that the caster would be in the same BGC as the subject (there's still an edge case, but it's so rare we won't bother discussing it--that is, the case where the caster is standing outside the edge of a zone of BGC and the subject is within it, yet somehow the two characters are touching, at which point we need to determine how much of a mage's body needs to be inside an area of BGC for his magic to wane and vice versa for the spell effect on a target partially inside the BGC, and we get into a nitty gritty argument over the splitting of hairs). Permanent spells with range on them (are there any?) I would say have the same interaction with BGC as instantaneous spells: losing force.

Now, the only other thing to consider are net hits. A mage casts a force 4 stunbolt with 4 net hits, into an area of -2 BGC. The spell is now force 2. How many net hits? IMO it would be four as that was the force of the spell at the time it was cast and that's how much power the spell was imbued with. Others may insist that it is two due to the nature of the BGC's reduction of the force also reduces the cap on net hits. Either works. I can see the argument both ways.

The idea was that an instantaneous or permanent spell effect happens so quickly that there isn't really much for the background count to alter. What the background count does impact is gathering mana to form the spell, which is a process that occurs during spellcasting.



There are a handful of permanent spells with line-of-sight range. As of Street Magic, they are the following: Alter Memory, Aspected Mana Static, Clean Element, Ignite, Influence, and Mana Static.



How would keeping four net hits indicate that the background count did anything to effect the spell?

Are we sure about this? I was pretty sure spells showed up on the astral plane. Like, blatantly stated in the book, sure. Which means they have an astral presence.



I was sure there were some, I just didn't know what ones. And Mana Static is permanent!? Holy shit. I'll have to start using that spell more often.



Base damage, dude. A force 4 stunbolt with 4 hits does 8 damage. Dropping only the force means it does 6. There are other force-based factors as well, such as the radius on area spells.

But like I said, I can see an argument both ways.

Astral Presence does not equate to Astral Form... Non-Awakened have an Astral Presence, but do not have an Astral Form.



The permanence of Mana Static degrades at 1 point per hour until the Ambient mana re-establishes itself. It lasts Force Hours, and degrades by -1 Force per Hour.

Spells have an astral presence, yes. Basically, when Street Magic was being written, it was decided that the term "astral form" was too broadly used in the core rulebook. Because astral forms are substantial on the astral and can impede the movement of other astral forms and be engaged in astral combat. Astral forms were more narrowly defined in Street Magic (p. 112), constructs were added to explain foci and barriers, and it says "spells cast on the astral and similar magical effects, however, are not constructs; they remain insubstantial if highly visible auras."



Beware the terminology. Mana Static fades at the rate of 1 point per hour. Permanent duration doesn't mean the effects are permanent, oddly enough. Weird spells!

Right. ShadowRun does weird shit sometimes. And while "quicken" is a correct word for making a non-permanent spell have a permanent effect, I don't like it. It confuses people.

Anyway, yes, by RAW you can cast spells through/into voids, as dumb as that is.

The RAW is pretty much ambiguous on that topic.

I can certainly see the argument for casting into background count being altered, especially after re-reading the "On the Manipulation of Mana" section of SR4 Core (p. 167 in the original version, p. 176 in the Anniversary printing).

This still doesn't address ritual casting, though.

Not without potentially making it not worth the cost, anyways.

Ritual spellcasting is already not worth the "cost."

So you get four bums in a room (magical lodge of force 4) together who all have the ritual spellcasting skill and all know the spell being cast. The maximum force on the spell is also 4 (lodge limits the number of participants and the force of the spell) AND all participants have to have 4 ranks of ritual spellcasting (# participants limited by the lowest skill rating).

AND the force of the spell is limited by the leader's Magic rating (or the entire group is overcasting for physical).

AND the entire group, including the spotter* have to resist the full drain value of the spell.

What was the point then? The group rolls their own test, adding hits to the leader's test. The leader's test is then used in the opposed test against the target, but net hits are still limited to the force of the spell!

*Spotter is not in addition to the four guys in the room, he's a participant, and therefore subject to the restrictions on the size of the group.

Well, yeah, but if the ritual is being cast within favorable background count, which is used in many cases (ex. the Blood Mage Gestalt casting from an aspected teocalli) then they receive a dice pool bonus for the spell cast and the drain resistance. But if the background count on the target's end is the important part, then it would seem to nullify this advantage. You'd have to get your target to stand in a place aspected to your magic.

You do realize that a Single Spellcaster can use Ritual Magic right?

Basically, meaning that if you say the background count at the target matters more than what's at the caster, then it's a pointless, detrimental mechanic that is entirely too easy to exploit, which would mean Astral Hazing would thereby be a POSITIVE QUALITY even greater than Magic Resistance. You shouldn't be treating a negative quality like an AoE version of a positive quality, anyways.

With the background count at the caster being the important consideration, you've halved the exploit while not entirely nullifying it. Keep in mind, Astral Hazing is MEANT to be A NEGATIVE QUALITY. If you can still be stunbolted/powerballed/MC'd, then it's not very advantageous and very much worth the 10 BP it gives you.