So you believe what the person currently has as his wound level -2, not just what you heal? I can dig that.

yeah, the other part is kind of a stretch of creativity, heh. Probably a bit too much. Figured I should ask.

can you counterspell your own spell?

frex, the party is in melee combat with a swarm of thugs. Can you cast a stunball the includes the party, and protect your allies with your own counterspelling?

On page 178, it says "Spirits on remote services no longer count against the limit of summoned spirts".

On page 179, it says "Spirits on remote services and on standby count towards this total" [of the number of spirits a magician can have at once].

Whic way is it?

Thanks a lot,

==Ed

already argued profusely, no real answer as of yet. It's grammatical issues.

Admittedly, when I got answered on that question, I still wasn't sure if it was option 1 or 3 that I was told (not including your situation). ^-^;

I would suspect it to be option one, however, in both cases. The more traumatized the body is, the harder (in theory) it would be to heal, hence the risk in healing too much at once.

As far as your situation, IMO, you would do the full value as normal, however, your successes are limited to the point of the last heal. Fortunately, this doesn't caue too many notes or anything. If you heal all the spots, then you keep the mark of where your last heal ended. If you don't heal all those 5 spots, then you move the marker up to the new point. This makes it ideal to get some real rest at some point, since you can end up losing a portion of your monitor from too much healing/damage.

ANd of course, an attribute spell or two with sustaining foci can make recovery faster, lol.

Control actions and control thoughts

Is this the main difference?

CA:
If you don't command them, they're free to act
only bodily actions - no magic or otherwise that involves mental commands

CT:
THey don't act, period, while the spell is in effect and you have yet to give them a command
mental or bodily actions

If you cast a healing spell at fource 6 and get 4 hits, how many boxes would you heal, and how much drain? 4 or 2?

drain is already discussed a little earlier in here; you can find potential answers there. Otherwise, the force of a healing spell simply limits the successes you can get. They eitehr go towards healing or lessening the time it takes to finish the spell. So you could heal 4 points of damage if you wanted with that in 12 rounds (or whatever)

When they say "binding foci," does that mean that you have to pay karma even if you buy foci?

A binding Focus costs nuyen to buy as far as quality goes, but yes, you have to pay in karma as well to make it work for you. I never did quite like that - that's why some GM's let the mages donate money to build up extra karma - for things like that.

Although I've been trying to figure out a virtual karma option for such things. You know, so it's not a complete drain, but carelessness will still cost you.

You can start with foci bound for 1 BP per point of force in the focus. p85

That seems so weak to me...I mean. a Power Focus for a measely 2 BP? I think it means the karma cost in BP honestly. it makes more sense to the thing saying no more than 5x your magic rating or whatever.

Well, it's more like 12 to buy and bind a force 2. Foci are also, force for force, not as powerful as they were in SR3. You can't use the Power Focus to resist drain, for one thing. You're also talking 2 dice added to a pool of 10-12 as opposed to the SR3 model of 5-7 dice.

What can you use to cut down on the karma costs besides orihalcum?

True, I suppose it's not horrible in that degree...but the limit seems a bit high, unless they include the resource cost too.

and it does help with drain, actually, if you save them for that particular test. It doesn't increase your magic attribute as it did before, however.

erk...no, you're right. Any test with magic in it, which drain doesn't have. My bad.

It just sorta made sense to me, but even a super focus needs a disadvantage.

Looking up the rules on spell sustaining and I got a little confused. The book says (pg 147 Step 7:):
"While sustained spells do offer the opportunity to have an ongoing magical effect, they are also draining on the magician's magical abilities. For each sustained spell the magician maintains, she suffers a -2 dice penalty on all other tests."

Does this mean that:
1) The -2 is on ALL other tests physical or magical (excluding drain tests and damage resistance)?

2) The -2 is on magical tests only (excluding drain tests)?

PS- Does the penalty affect perception/assensing tests as well?
PS2- What about counterspelling dice?

I belive it really means all tests. True multitasking is difficult under the best of circumstances - even moreso when one of the things you're trying to do is channel weird energies through your nervous system. Or to give another game-related example, it's like trying to do anything in the meat world while you're jacked into the matrix - it can be done, but the conflicting sensory data makes everything more difficult.

Yep. it's essentially a magic wound penalty. It goes away once you're no longer sustaining the spell.

Although I think you can opt to drop it before doing some action. Might take a free action to pull off though.

Actually, i just checked it, the rule i was thinking of is actually in the magic section, and it is a free action, so you should be able to do it at any time.

For some reason, i was thinking it was "part" of the action of..acting..

I was hoping for 2) The -2 is on magical tests only (excluding drain tests).

I base my argument on the line preceding the somewhat vague game mechanic. "While sustained spells do offer the opportunity to have an ongoing magical effect, they are also draining on the magician's magical abilities."

does anyone know what happens if two spells like stunball are cast at once as per the multiple spell rule and there is an overlapping area. how do the spells resolvle seperately or as one.