This idea popped into my head this morning, so I thought I'd write it up and post it for discussion. I think there is some room for this type of casting within the SR universe...the question is how to balance it properly.

New magic positive Quality:
Spontaneous Casting (+15bp)
Allows you to use your spellcasting to cast spells your do not know the specific formula for. Pick any spell in the grimoire and attempt to cast it. Your spellcasting test is at -4 dice. If you succeed, the spell takes effect as normal. You must then resist Drain as per the spell +5. Failure to completely resist the drain temporarily reduces your Magic Rating by 1 for 8 hours.

So, what do you think?

With a Power Focus of 4 (obtainable at chargen with Restricted Gear) you have every spell at normal magic rating. If you also buy a Spell Casting Focus at rating 3 (highest you can get without taking Restricted Gear again) you only have 2 less dice for your drain.

A nice attempt, but too powerful.

So, how would you modify it to make it work? Half skill rating? No foci allowed for test? Extra time to cast (1 complex action + 1 complex action per Force rating)[which only limits casting in combat situation]?

Too powerful. Your numbers are good though. +5 drain is huge... it would take 20 extra drain resist dice to guarantee successful drain resistance.



While I agree that its too powerful, there are considerations: First,


So you cant stack Power Foci and Spell Casting Foci.


Also, even if you had 5 extra dice to resist drain with, that does not balance out 5 extra drain. Only 1/3 of your dice are likely to be successes, so you would need 15 extra drain resist dice to on average compensate for the extra drain, or 20 extra drain resist dice to buy successes. +5 drain is a substantial penalty, and if this quality were to be allowable, it would be a sufficient penalty to balance out the benefit.

The problem is, ANY spell, ANY time... its just too much, no matter how you penalize it.

Sorry where you getting something to help with drain have I missed something?

It might be more balanced if you cast at -4 Magic instead of -4 spellcasting dice. That reduces the effective Force at which you can cast, and that can't be made up by any focus. (Even the power focus only add dice to Magic tests, not actual Magic rating.) I would specify that the Drain is taken as if the Force of the spell were 5 higher...or do you mean that the Drain DV is 5 higher?

Spellcasting Foci only add dice to the Spellcasting test (not the drain test, though you could initiate and get a Centering Focus for that), and they're limited by category of spell (SR4A, 199). That being said, maybe another balancing agent would be to restrict the new quality to a particular spell category, chosen when you buy the quality.

Another balance might be to require a Free Action and an Intuition (or Magic) + Arcana test with a threshold of either 2 or 3 (or determined by the intended Force of the spell, like the Drain DV of the spell) to do the on-the-fly spell design. This test is a one-shot deal, and cannot be used later to augment the design of the actual spell formula. This test must be completed each time a spell is cast through this quality. (Note that you get only one Free Action per initiative pass, so the spontaneous caster won't be doing anything else until his/her next IP.)

I might instead look at making this an advanced metamagic technique, with enough prerequisite advanced metamagic techniques that you'd have to be something like initiate grade 5 or 6 to even consider taking it. And then make the penalty something like -6 Magic for casting and +6 Drain DV.

I like the idea of making it a metamagic. To me this is just a caster attempting to shape raw ambient mana to generate an effect without the benefit of a spell formula and the protections there in.

would be fun to not know, what spell exactly it is.

A F/2+1 spell would be F/2+6 instead.



Making it an advanced metamagic, which only applied to a specific class of spell (combat, Divination, etc) might be better. I like that idea.


Heh, yeah, it could be set up so that an Int+Log (Force) test is required and number of tests determine how close to the desired effect you get.

@DamienKnight & Lansdren: Yes you can't stack the Spell Casting Focus and the Power Focus to make a spell really powerful, but here's the rub... you use the Power focus to deal with the power of the spell and the Spell Casting Focus to deal with the drain. They are not one and the same test.

If they are not the same test, why not just use the Power Focus for both tests?

C'mon, Fireball... C'mon Fireball!! ... ... DAMN, I just gave them a perm! Wait, they're confused, time to go!

Random Grimoire
Bonus: 5BP

A magician with this quality can never learn specific spells. Instead whenever he tries to reach an effect he rolls Edge (Edge may be spent for this test) and the number of successes determine how close the spell determined by the GM is to the one desired by the player. The spells range must conform with the action taken, so touching someone while casting will always result in a touch-based (version of a) spell and the spellcaster may choose the area of effect as normal.

4 successes: exactly as desired
3 successes: correct spell category and type (eg: indirect combat spell, or positive health spell)
2 successes: correct spell category
1 successes: outcome as desired (eq: target is damaged or confused or mentally controlled would all fall under the same desire of attacking someone)
0 successes: something neutral happens (eq: Makeover instead of combat spell, or Shadow in an already dark area instead of Firewall)
glitch: the opposite effect happens:
critical glitch: same as glitch, but increase drain by 2

Sounds perfect for Chaos Tradition mages.

I was musing on this as well, making Magic a bit more similar to Technomancers and Threading.

You can still learn Spell Formulae, the primary advantage of a formally learned spell is that it's easier to cast. The spontaneously cast spells, or modified ones, have greater Drain penalties and are cast with a Spellcasting penalty.

For example, you know the Lightning Bolt spell (Indirect, Elemental, Combat) but you need to cast it with a different Elemental effect, say Water. Lightning Bolt is F/2+3, so let's say changing the Elemental type is a -2 to the spellcasting roll and an extra +1 to the Drain.

Perhaps only Centering can be applied to the Drain test, Focused Concentration would only work for those spells you know the formula of.

First off: drain dice pool isn't modified, so you don't have "2 less dice for drain."
Second: spellcasting foci do not add their rating to your drain dice pool (since SR4A, due to unclear wording and ambiguity over their use in SR4, which was that the added dice were SPLIT between spellcasting and drain).
Third: as was mentioned, you're still at +5 drain DV, which is DEADLY levels of drain.

The way I would do it is have it as an advanced Metamagic that you can only take once. When you take it you choose a spell casting school (combat, illusion, manipulation etc...) and you can spontaneously cast any of those particular spells but at limited force and increased drain. I would limit the force to half your magic attribute (so if you have magic 6 the max force for this would be 3). The drain for all the spells instead of being F/2-n would be either F*2-n or F*4-n (n being the modifier for that particular spell).

At a maximum force of 3 (for 6 magic) a stunbolt cast in this manner would have 5 DV at F*2 or 11 DV at F*4 drain.

11 DV drain for a F3 stunbolt? Really?

Yes, this makes it extremely dangerous to spontaneously cast a lot and changes the ability from "Yay, now i don't have to spend money or karma to lean new spells!" into "Holy crap we are in the intense situation where we really need this one spell but none of us know it so ill suffer the potential crazy drain to help the team."

Or if you don't like the crazy drain for all the spells in that school of magic you could have it so the drain for spells in that school is F*2-n and the drain for any spells outside that school is F*4-n. In fact I like that better then what I originally came up with.

Very much too under powered.
Most mages can barely(or not at all) resist 5 points of drain, so +5 to drain DV is a gigantic drawback for something minorly usefull like that.

Somethink like drain being F+/-n instead of F/2, might be a workable metamagic(instead of a quality, so that it available to all mages), possible a different metamagic for each category of spells.

Spell Casting Foci do not add to the Drain Test... you are thinking of Centering Foci...

If you think it's underpowered, go with my earlier (mis)interpretation: For drain, treat the force as if it were 5 higher.

On the other hand, this is a brand new ability in the Shadowrun world. It should be hard to do.

But as originally written, an initiate with Centering (especially with a Centering Focus) and a Power Focus (and what initiate isn't going to have one?) is not going to be bothered all that much by the penalties.

My bad... in SR4A they did away with that wording. So no you can't use a Spell Casting Foci to resist drain.

It looked like a copy-paste error due to inheriting from SR3.

The best houserule i've seen for some variation of Impromptu Spellcasting on dumpshock is actually Freecasting. By... tanegar, i think? Not sure, been a while.

Its actually pretty well thought out and fairly balanced.

No 'any spell from nowhere at little penalty', reasonable drain code for improvising on the fly, clear consequences of failure, and, best of all, you can't combine it and overcasting for insta-win force 12 asspulls. More than you already can, at least.

That looks pretty good. Oddly, the Arcana page lists distances in that archaic measurement system peculiar to D&D: she can knock them back 1d6 feet before they fall down.

In SR3 you could always learn all the spells available at Force 2 with the Exclusive limitation or Force 1 with the Fetish limitation for no karma expenditure. This prevented you using them at high force but also meant you had a small collection of utility cantrips you'd never justify spending actual karma to get. This wouldn't exactly be "spontaneous" casting for all possible / custom / NPC spells (you'd need the knowledge skill Spell Design, and to assense the spell being cast, then make the formula, then learn the limited spell for no karma, which would take time) but it would allow a caster to cast all spells (albeit at low Force and consequently (if ported to SR4) low net hits).

I'd still like to see this worked up as a metamagic.

Here's my hack at it:

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Spontaneous Casting (Advanced Metamagic)
Prerequisites: Filtering (and thus Cleansing), Masking, Reflecting (and thus Shielding) (All of these reflect techniques that shape local astral space around the caster. This therefore cannot be learned before grade 6.)

This highly advanced metamagic technique allows the magician to create astral constructs that mimic the effects of spells, without having to learn the corresponding spell formula. This technique is limited to a particular category of spell (Combat, Detection, Health, Illusion, or Manipulation), which is selected when the magician learns this technique. This technique may be learned at more than one initiate grade, in which case the magician learns to spontaneously cast another category of spells. The magician can cast any existing spell in his/her selected spell category without needing a spell formula, and may design new spells on the fly. If designing a completely new spell on the fly, the magician must design the spell using the normal procedure (Street Magic, 158), except that the interval for the design test (Arcana + Logic) is changed to an interval of 1 Complex Action. It is assumed that a magician of such high initiate grade (at least grade 6 upon learning this technique) knows enough about existing spells to forego the design test. In all cases, the magician must then spend a Free Action and succeed at an Arcana + Intuition (drain DV) test to create the astral construct before he/she can actually flow mana through the construct and cast the spell. (Note that the magician commits at the construction test to cast the spell at a particular Force.) A critical glitch on the construction test causes the spell to malfunction, having the opposite effect (e.g., a combat spell is cast on the magician and/or allies). None of these tests results in a lasting spell formula; if the magician later wishes to design the formula and learn the spell, he/she must start from scratch and pursue the normal processes of designing and learning spells.

This technique is much more difficult and dangerous than casting a learned spell. A spontaneously cast spell is cast at a penalty of -5 to Magic rating (this affects the allowable Force of the spell as well as the Spellcasting dice pool and all other applications of Magic rating). Further, the drain DV is increased by 5. A glitch on any test during the spontaneous casting (design, construct, casting, drain resistance) reduces the caster's actual Magic rating by 1 until the next sunrise (or sunset, if the magician is of a nocturnal tradition).

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Note: A GM who wants to allow more spontaneous casting might alter this technique in the following ways:
1. Calculate the additional drain DV as if the Force were 5 higher instead of DV +5.
2. Reduce the number of prerequisite metamagic techniques to allow learning at lower initiate grades.
3. Reduce the Magic rating penalty during casting.
4. Remove the requirement to spend a Free Action for the construct test.
5. Reduce the interval on the design test to 1 Simple Action instead of 1 Complex Action, which allows two intervals per initiative pass for on-the-fly design.

Warnings: Allowing on-the-fly spell design at all requires fluency (not just familiarity) with the spell design rules and may slow down game play at critical junctures. The GM should encourage players of spontaneous casters to have their spell designs ready before their turn in the IP.