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BitBasher
QUOTE
Neither your physical nor your astral body enter the room, and the spell, which is cast on you, stays with your body as well - so there's really nothing that actively "goes into" the room. Or is there? The description says the spell merely extends your natural senses of hearing and sight.
Anyone astrally percieving could make a perception test to see the spell, which would be fairly obvious.,
Neon Tiger
What would Drain be on a Telepresence (or Clairpresence?) Spell? That is, both Clairvoyance and Clairaudience rolled into one spell. I was thinking (F/2)D. Maybe this Telepresence or whatever you call it might even transmit smells, too. biggrin.gif

BTW, if you look at the spell descriptions of the Clair spells, you see their TN is fixed to 6, not "See table above" or "See table p. 192" as in Detect Life and similar spells. So I think it is still resisted spell, but if you get at least 1 net success, it works. And if a target has more successes you just fail to detect him/her/it.

Edit: Now that I think of it, Clair spells should not be resisted. The way I see it, they create a magical eye/ear that can travel up to F*M meters away from the subject and how do you resist that? Come on now, just think how stupid it is. Still, even if it's not resisted, I'd have the subject to roll Perception to notice hidden/not obvious things as normal.
Zazen
QUOTE (BitBasher)
QUOTE
Neither your physical nor your astral body enter the room, and the spell, which is cast on you, stays with your body as well - so there's really nothing that actively "goes into" the room. Or is there? The description says the spell merely extends your natural senses of hearing and sight.
Anyone astrally percieving could make a perception test to see the spell, which would be fairly obvious.,

On the person or in the room? Because I don't see why the spell would be visible in the room, not unless detection spells are visible everywhere in the radius of the sense or something like that.


To answer the question on how to detect that spell, the people in the room will be making resistance rolls. Whether you think that should be noticable by itself is up to you (I vote no), but if someone in the room is using spell defense they should definitely notice a spell at work.
Kanada Ten
I would think that the aura of a spell is apparent everywhere in the spell's radius.

Clairvoyance might appear as a ghostly snake covered in eyeballs, slithering from the subject's mind and coiling about the spell's area.
Zazen
Yeah, but then detection spells would be a huge sign that someone is around. That'd be a big change.


A kind-hearted old woman walking down the street with force 3 extended Detect Helpless Kitten would be the center of 40 million cubic meters of aura that says "Arrest Me". frown.gif
Herald of Verjigorm
QUOTE (Zazen)
... the center of 40 million cubic meters of aura that says "Arrest Me". frown.gif

No, the center of 40 million cubic meters of aura that says "Question Me".
A Rodent of Unusual Size
No she wouldn't. Spells of Force 3 or higher are perfectly legal with a permit and it takes a Security/Police Procedures (8) test to even stop to ask her about it, assuming a cop is around, assenses it, and succeeds at detecting that it's Force 3 or higher (at least five successes on an assensing test against a TN of 4... even then, you really only know what class of spell it is).

In fact, now that I look it up, I can't find any reference that tells you exactly what Force a spell is when assensing its astral signature... and that has to be done before they even know to ask for a permit.
Kanada Ten
Don't you assense the Aura and not the Signature? The Aura being present as the spell is sustained and the Signature simply left on all the kittens?
A Rodent of Unusual Size
Even then it requires at least five successes to detect the Force. That aside, it is the astral signature of the spell that needs to be assensed; that's what you'd be seeing. Unless someone can provide some page references and quotes that say otherwise; it's hard keeping track of rules scattered all over the place. :)

Oops, I found a reference to it on page 171. You do get to assense the aura itself. Cool. But like I said, it still takes five successes to detect the Force, then a Police Procedures (8) Test, and then it's just to check if you have a permit. 99.99% of the population going around with spells like that active are going to have a permit, too.
Kanada Ten
Yeah, I agree. I don't think we'd have many people getting arrested for Detection spells... like ever. Except maybe Detect Pig. That might piss them off.
Zephania
I never thought that detection spells were an active surveillance measure but with clairvoyance/clairaudience I can see how they would be.

If you take radar as an example, you can pick up radar emissions a lot further away than you can get a return on them from, this is how fighter pilots avoid air defence networks.

If you use detection spells like this, and you direct it at a certain area like a room, then the people in the room, if they have the ability to detect the spell, are going to be able to detect the spell.

You can light up the sky with radar, picking up anything from flocks of birds to parachutists leaving planes. If you put out enough power you can see everything, but everything with a radar detector can see you as well and if they have an anti radar missile they can knock you out.

The bigger the force of the spell, the more magic being used, the more noticable it's going to be on the astral.

I'm going to have so much fun using it like this
Zazen
You guys are missing the point. Giving detection spells auras over their entire sense radius would result in humongous, obvious bubbles all over the place. You'd automatically be noticed by anyone on the astral if you got within the same time zone, and in exchange you maybe possibly get to detect them or some other thing depending on the dice.

Even ignoring extended range, a normal mage with a force 5 spell would be walking around in a bubble the size of Epcot Center. It's just silly.
Herald of Verjigorm
That ball is the centerpiece and symbol of EPCOT, not the whole place. But it does give me the urge to cast fireball... often.
Kanada Ten
I don't really see the issue, Zazen. You don't have to play it that way, but I've always assumed the a Spell's Aura was present in the Area of Effect. It has never made any undue problems.
Zephania
I can understand why your annoyed with this one as it gives your position away and will really put a downer on certain activities but:

Spell are visible in astral space, so already you've got the casters position exposed.

Somthing has to be viewing the area the caster of spell is viewing and getting this information back to the caster, in this case magic not high energy radio waves.

If it works better in games that you have to be inside the spell to detect it then fair enough but a magician should know when they're the subject of a spell and therefore be able to detect it.

The rub of this is that you're going to have to be pretty sure their are no mages in the place you want to look in befor you cast the spell.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE
The rub of this is that you're going to have to be pretty sure their are no mages in the place you want to look in befor you cast the spell.

Actually, this is where Masking shines (I kill myself). A Force 1 Extended Range Detect Astral Forms (which includes dual-natured beings such as perceiving magicians) or similar can be masked unconsciously when one first takes Masking (as you must be Grade 1 to take a Metamagic).
Zazen
QUOTE (Kanada Ten)
It has never made any undue problems.

I guess I can't argue with that smile.gif

It'd feel silly to me, though, so not in my game.
A Rodent of Unusual Size
If you want really weird, consider Indirect Illusions. They, effectively, have no range limit. They can affect targets hundreds of miles away if they're using magnification systems. This is particularly odd considering Mana-based spells.
Kanada Ten
Yet, they don't have Auras that extend beyond the Area of Effect or leave Astral Signatures on the Targets, but rather the Subjects. That may have something to do with not requiring voluntary Subjects. But I agree, Indirect Illusions are a totally different type of spell than any others. They are "projector spells" in that they create data and project it into the minds or sights of observers. They break most rules of Magic. Someone on the Moon using powerful telescopes would be affected (and resist) Invisibility. I personally don't mind this, though I do lower the spell's Force if a Target is through a Mana Warp.
Zephania
Futher to my last post, if you want to give the more powerful force spells a bonus against being detected, you can make the force the target number for any astral perception test.

This could be sinilar to more powerful/advanced radar systems ie military, having better signal encodind to reduce their detectability.

This would put the balance back in for the more powerful detection spells - you get to see more without being seen.
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