Just had an idea for an interesting situation. Say someone found a large crystal wall that was still part of mother earth in a cave somewhere. The crystal wall would be solid on the astral as mother earth is solid, but still see-through.

What effect would this have on spellcasting? Any ideas how to fit this into a run somewhere?

Iiinteresting. I'm not sure. I might have it block magic just for the added effect of giving the mages a situation they probably aren't prepared for.

Edit: though Laser is still fair game, though with TN mods for diffraction.

~J

Whatever you choose to do, just remember that a player will try to munch it out. For example, if a grounded crystal acts as a magical barrier (still part of mama terra), then I'm going to learn me a Shape Earth spell and whip up a magical and physical barrier ever time the lead starts flying. Two barriers for the price of one. Hooray!

Problem is, that only works near a (rare) large quantity of crystal that's still a part of the earth.

~J

And shape earth on solid crystal would be pretty tough to cast.

At worst I would only apply some cover modifiers since the final image would be distorted at least partially.

I actually had a scenario similar to this in one of my games once. The characters were hired to track down an insect shaman that was using a traveling circus to build a hive. The climatic battle between the shaman and the group's hermetic mage took place in a Fun House -- Enter the Dragon style, but with distorting mirrors. It was pretty interesting, and no one else was stupid enough to jump into the place with the amount of mojo that was flying as they kept trying to target each other but missing (due to random cover modifiers; I used a straight d6 roll with the result equalling the modifier for each spell cast).

And it all could have been avoided if only the mage had taken Laser...

~J

Laser is nifty that way. Also, Blast could've shattered all the mirrors. I think.

I was wondering why they didn't just send in the character with the Ares Alpha myself.

Yeah, a concussion grenade or some full auto would've been nice right there. After all, the enemy has only images and illusions behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy.