Has anyone had it come up where the spell caster waits until the end of the fall to cast the spell? The spell is good for successes * F meters of falling distance, but is it from the point the fall started or from distance still remaining once the spell has been cast?

I don't think I've ever seen it actually used, maybe not ever seen it even taken as a spell when levitation seems to create the same effect plus lots more.

Falling happens a bit too fast to cast i think O.o
As for wether or not it counts from where you fell or from where you cast, i don't remember that ever having been defined.
shocking right?

Well let's see what the Splat Calculator says.

Lets go with right around 3 meters to a story (it varies abit by type of building but I like round numbers for ease of math).

Not going to do a second story drop because really you could just hang over the edge and drop the rest of the way easier.

So jumping from the 3rd floor* you land in just over 1 sec while from the 7th floor you would hit in just over 2 seconds and 15th floor you have a whole CT (3 seconds) to enjoy the scenery as you plummet along.

Could you start casting Catfall halfway down?

In the case of the 3rd through 6th floor I probably wouldn't unless the mage was already reaction enhanced, but in the case of 7th - 15th floors I probably would but it would be tight (maybe a reaction roll?), while 15+ you should be able too so long as you are not otherwise distracted.

Regardless however I would still count the FULL distance of the fall for purposes of the spell as you have the total energy of the fall to disperse.
Remember the spell talks about the maximum distance you can fall safely and for greater distances the spell reduces this distance by the success* F formula.

So say you fall 100 meters and get the spell off while you are still 10 meters from surface, you are reducing the fall distance from the 100, not the 10.
But with successes x Force in meters reduction you can slash that by quite a bit
Edit:

*This is presuming US methods of counting floors, aka ground =1st floor, so this is 2nd floor for any Europeans.

And now we get to the point where i point out that i am going to be an asshole and not bother with that bulldrek and simply cast levitation instead of cat fall.

That would be the better answer yes, but some players have been fascinated with catfall for some reason.

only for a cat shaman, for obvious reasons . .

Ok, I was somehow reading it stupidly, trying to make it more useful. Trying to think if it could be used to negate running/driving into walls (or the dashboard/windshield.) I was actually thinking about events like thrown out of an airplane or helicopter? The person has a bit of time to contemplate things during the descent and time the casting and hoping the mere fact of when they actually fired off the spell would somehow ignore all the previous falling distance. Or there is a great probability of falling, like walking on a narrow ledge, so the player saves a held action, not wanting to incur spell sustaining modifiers to the task at hand. Yes, stupid.

It sounds like Sendaz is saying it depends on if the PC could react quickly enough to think of casting the spell. Or am I mistaken and you meant they need time to cast the spell? Either brings a follow up.

If the fall was part of combat, then the PC, or a spellcaster with LOS could cast with his next action if he has yet to impact. During non-combat, I would call for a Surprise roll, but Surprise rolls do not work that way. So I do not really see a rules reason to deny the PC taking an action. Perhaps it would be best to roll Initiative in situations where falling is a real concern? Then require a climbing test and count off movement? I don't think I've had anyone attempt to scale much more than a 3 or 4 meter fence/wall, so have not required an Initiative roll.

As to when the spell goes into effect, it goes into effect as soon as the character casts the spell.

Screw that, I cast Slow.

This thread is for 3rd ed, he has to wait for 4th if he wants Slow

But yeah, Slow is awesome sauce in its original writing, but didn't errata nerf it hard?

why?
Leviation is still the better spell in that situation.
Slow makes you fall down slower, levitation also gives you the option to not fall at all and go back to where you were before gravity had it's wicked way with you.

1. The rules on falling and subsequent damage in SR3 just utterly suck
2. Catfall - just like many other things - is a question of style (over substance). Yes, Levitation is the "better" spell due to its broader application scenarios and no an already falling character usually doesn't have the time to cast during a fall from a height where Catfall would be beneficial (nor would he be able to cast a Levitation spell in those cases).

With regards to point 2 I have to say that I both as player in a group and as GM would certainly prefer seeing a spell like Catfall on Cat shamans or Traceuer-themed magicians / adepts of the magician way rather than just another boring iteraton of "I'll take the optimized standaed list of spells". In my experience it certainly created more drama and a lot more of creativity in group interaction when people actually had to deal with situations where their tools fitted a certain theme but lacked the generic ability of being the "best" answer to a presented dilemma.

Most definitely agree with this sentiment. My last Magician had Catfall for the short distance stuff (Less Drain) and Levitate or Mass Levitate for other purposes. I far prefer a themed approach to Spell lists over the ubiquitous "Optimized, Most bang for your Karma" Spell Lists.

I've been considering having certain spells (such as Catfall) cost less Karma to learn for this exact reason. Adept powers have different costs from each other, so why is it assumed that all spells are equally useful?

The cost never really bothered me all that much. You could always resurrect the idea that you could reduce the cost of learning a spell with an Astral Quest for that specific purpose. I believe that 3rd used to do that, though Spells were priced differently in SR3.

That particular rule in SR3 however was one of the weaker spots within the magic rules, since it pretty much limited such cost reductions to full magicians most of the time. The relation between desired spell force (that also represented karmic cost) and required Astral Quest rating to achieve the desired cost reduction usually led to players trying to make lower rated Astral Quests on a very regular basis, preferably during "downtime" where they'd just make the required dice rolls (with not much chances of failing due to the low TNs) ... and there wasn't that much that a GM could actually do against it. Sure, he could try to force the player to play the whole thing through but for that he'd have to come up with a detailed Astral Quest and give the player solo spotlight each and every time.

Aspected magicians with spellcasting abilities on the other hand drew the short straw there unless they somehow gained regular access to a spirit with the Astral Gateway power. And I witnessed more than one occasion where an initial character design of an aspected magician was altered to full magician just because of that.

Adepts of the Magician's Way were initially in the same boat as aspected magicians but got their chance in form of the Metamagic "Limited Astral Projection" from SotA'64 ... However, I do seem to recall that many people considered both that Metamagic as well as the sourcebook as "liber non grata" for various reasons.


As far as the idea of reducing karmic costs based on the individual spell's "effectiveness": That could get quite a hustle in the long run. Particularly once players start using the spell design rules and create their own spells. The GM would then always have to determine whether or not the newly created spell represents a more or less effective spell.

And whether or not the research involved represents a discount or not.