Would it be plausible to cast an elemental ice attack while sustaining a shape element/material (ice) spell to create complex forms; such as,

Walls
Catwalks/Bridges
Melee weapons
Statues of people (just because)


Would the same concept be used for other elements like shape metal and elemental attack metal to make walls, bridges, or knives?

Shape Fire to create a fire dragon (it couldn't attack except for you shaping it's fire onto a location)

What about Elemental attack while sustaining the shape spell to make the attack branch out and become SOE?


Standard shape only questions.

Shape Earth for causing barriers when being chased?

Shape light....shape it away from the area to create darkness?? make it brighter someone to cause vision penalties.

Shape Air to suffocate people?

I am not looking to create the 'end all' combat mage. I am creating a fun mage with nifty magic trickery and manipulation.

Honestly it's all up to your GM. The rules don't really get into things like that. The game designers have always been painfully black-and-white when it comes to rules interactions; spells are expected to be cast one at a time, and having effects that combine with other effects is a completely alien concept (unless the spell itself was already a combination of effects, such as Firewater).

I know and I am planning to discuss it with the GM but I was just hoping to get some ideas from people here first and to see if they thought these ideas were viable.

Why is it necessary to have interacting spells? Why not just create a spell that both creates and shapes the desired material?

I definitely would not allow "shaping" a single-target elemental spell to make it AOE.

After I thought about it shaping a spell to make it AOE would be pretty ridiculous and unbalancing.



One of the reason for have to separate spells and having them interacts is that if I have a spirit with the elemental attack ability, I would want my mage to be able to shape it rather than creating his own material and then shaping it which would probably increase the already high drain for the shape spell.

The way I see it, this is largely impossible on the originating spell. Elemental spells, and combat spells in general, are supposed to be instant effect, results, gone. The only ones that leave a result that is "shapable" to me, are fire (if the target/area catches), Ice (says it leave a slick layer of ice, which melts depending on conditions around), and Light (which creates fire, if the target/area catches). But, I would require waiting until the next turn to affect these creations, certainly not immediately.

Edit: It occurs to me that Smoke leaves a result as well, whch could be shaped as well. But, since it says it only affects for one turn, I would keep that in mind.

That's a good point that I did not think of. With the effect being instant, you could only shape anything else behind (such as fire or icesheets)

That being the case, I think I will just try to limit my concept to mostly shaping or using ignite to start a fire and then shape it.

That's why you multicast. Also consider the adept's Elemental Strike - it lasts (Magic) combat turns. You could, say, shape your hands' elemental auras into knives and then use the Blades skill to attack. Per GM approval of course.

you can cast an [Element] Wall spell, sustain it and then cast Shape [Element].
I would allow that for two reasons.
-The wall spell is restricted in its shape, it's either a wall or a dome. With Shape, you actually have some kind of synergy to overcome this restriction.
-both have ridiculous drain. If you have a mage, that makes regular use of Napalm Wall and Shape Napalm, you win the game by the rule of cool!

however, I suggest the element Thunder=Electricity+Sound.


I like this, too

No this is not possible. Magic cannot create matter. While magic can crate something that functions like all sorts of matter, this stuff is not persistent. It vanishes at the end of the spell without a trace.

If you can target actual earth, and not concrete or asphalt or whatever, yes.

This is an edge case. Is Light really material?

Even though the spell's description explicitly mentions shape air, it should not work. You cannot see air and as such you cannot cast a spell at it.

@Shape [Element]+[Element] Wall: This should work, as long as both spells are sustained.

Well, in Third Ed magic can Create Food with permanent duration. Magic has forgotten quite how to do that in 4th (only providing supernatural nourishment), but still, there's a precedent for creating matter.

But in SR3 there was no rule against creating (complex) matter. In SR4 there is an explicit rule against it.

At least to me even fire, air, water and earth are pretty complex things. fire is a multitude of oxidations of various materials emitting visible light in the process, air is a mixture of various gases (N₂, O₂, CO₂ etc.). Water may be the least complex of the four (only H₂O), but if you actually had pure water the liquid might behave quite differently from what you'd expect (low conductivity for example). So again you might need a more complex thing to achieve what you wanted. Earth is an amalgam of various organic and inorganic materials an even lifeforms. So that's even further out of the question than the rest.

What I'm saying is that how things were in SR3 has no impact on the rules of SR4 whatsoever.

Multicasting.

EDIT: Beat to it.

That's power-creep for you. Despite the mana-tide rising, it can't even conjure up a donut for me any more! Magic is so over-powered!!
You got ninjad... by a good 10½ hours