[Jayde Moon]

So, looking at quickened spells I can see that they can be pretty damn strong.

What I am having a hard time seeing are the limits and drawbacks to them.

The simplest drawback is that it can be countered.  But an overcast of the initial spell and then dumping a handful of Karma into it will make dispelling it difficult, if not impossible, while also ensuring that the dispelling mage takes a heap of drain.

Missions limits quickened spells to buying hits and not using edge, but in RAW those are not limits.

Some spells (like armor) will be noticeable.  I suppose they would all add to your astral signature...

What else?  Am I missing something?

[Sendaz]

First downside is you can not turn it on and off like a switch.
You might not think that is a big thing, but wards like mana barriers will resist the passage of a quickened spell as per page 315 in Core.

The quickened spells are nice shiny lights on the astral, immediately drawing attention. 
Remember the phrase 'Geek the Mage'? 
Well you now are always highlighting yourself as one 24/7 so you can expect the opposition to focus a bit more love your way.

While a 'handful' of karma may not seem like a lot, it certainly costs more than the potential drain paid by someone breaking it.
Now have those quickened spells broken a few times and you will find replacing them over and over can get spendy.
And if you think someone is NOT going to try breaking said spells, especially if it is making you more effective, you are mistaken.

They can be strong and rightfully so, but like all things they have their time and place.

[8-bit]

While a 'handful' of karma may not seem like a lot, it certainly costs more than the potential drain paid by someone breaking it.
Now have those quickened spells broken a few times and you will find replacing them over and over can get spendy.
And if you think someone is NOT going to try breaking said spells, especially if it is making you more effective, you are mistaken.

I agree with all your points except this one. Assuming a Human Mage with 7 Edge (because he wants to survive the drain), let's look at some numbers.

Increase Reflexes - Drain = F

Force 12 = 12S or P Drain. Spellcasting 6 + Health Specialization 2 + Mentor Spirit 2 + Magic 6 + Force 6 Bound Spirit (Aid Sorcery) + Health Spellcasting Focus 4 = 26 dice to cast. Averaging about 9 hits. Using Edge to reroll, that's another 6 hits. Capping at the limit of 12, you now have a whopping +12, +4d6 (total of 5d6) to your Initiative. For forever.

Now, what about Drain? Assuming a Drain stat of 6 and a Willpower of 5, that's 11 dice to resist 12P Drain. Using Edge 7 to Push the Limit, you are going to get 6-7 hits on average. That's a mere 5P Drain. Easy enough to soak.

Your argument, then, is that it will be dispelled. Actually, since it's a Force 12 spell, this Human Mage decides to spend 12 Karma to quicken it.

The test to dispel it then becomes Counterspelling + Magic [Astral] vs. Spell's Force (12) + Caster's Magic (6) + Amount of Karma spent to quicken (12). Or, in other words, Counterspelling + Magic [Astral] vs. 30 dice. Assuming those dice roll completely average, that's 10 hits. A Magic 6, Counterspelling 6 Mage is only rolling 12 dice. And that's not the end of it. They are limited by their Astral Limit. A Charisma 9, Willpower 6, Essence 6 Mage only has a Social (and thus Astral) limit of 10. And you won't find that anywhere, really. If we were to take a Magic 10, Counterspelling 13 mage, they still only roll 23 dice. That requires at least 4 Initiations, and 366 Karma (126 to raise Counterspelling from 7 to 13; 70 from 4 Initiations; and 170 to raise Magic from 6 to 10). That's 366 Karma vs 25 Karma from the casting Mage. And no guarantee for the 366 Karma Mage to succeed. In fact, unless they spend Edge, it's nearly impossible to even touch the spell.

To top it all off, whether or not you were successful at counterspelling it, you have to resist 12P Drain. Fun, fun, fun. You don't even get rid of the spell until 12 net hits.

Basically, no. If someone is willing to invest the, quite appropriate, amount of resources into a massive spell, they can quicken it without ever worrying about it being dispelled.


Basically, yes, if used correctly, Quickening is broken as hell. That's why people houserule it all the time, in order to bring it's power down a bit. Hell, Harlequinn, while badass in his own right, is mostly what he is by the fact that he has a billion buffs quickened on himself (and his access to all spells, etc; that's besides the point).

[Sendaz]

That is a good point about trying to break the Force 12, I forgot the OP was overcasting the initial spell up.

[Walks Through Walls]

I agree with all your points except this one. Assuming a Human Mage with 7 Edge (because he wants to survive the drain), let's look at some numbers.

Increase Reflexes - Drain = F

Force 12 = 12S or P Drain. Spellcasting 6 + Health Specialization 2 + Mentor Spirit 2 + Magic 6 + Force 6 Bound Spirit (Aid Sorcery) + Health Spellcasting Focus 4 = 26 dice to cast. Averaging about 9 hits. Using Edge to reroll, that's another 6 hits. Capping at the limit of 12, you now have a whopping +12, +4d6 (total of 5d6) to your Initiative. For forever.

Now, what about Drain? Assuming a Drain stat of 6 and a Willpower of 5, that's 11 dice to resist 12P Drain. Using Edge 7 to Push the Limit, you are going to get 6-7 hits on average. That's a mere 5P Drain. Easy enough to soak.

Your argument, then, is that it will be dispelled. Actually, since it's a Force 12 spell, this Human Mage decides to spend 12 Karma to quicken it.

The test to dispel it then becomes Counterspelling + Magic [Astral] vs. Spell's Force (12) + Caster's Magic (6) + Amount of Karma spent to quicken (12). Or, in other words, Counterspelling + Magic [Astral] vs. 30 dice. Assuming those dice roll completely average, that's 10 hits. A Magic 6, Counterspelling 6 Mage is only rolling 12 dice. And that's not the end of it. They are limited by their Astral Limit. A Charisma 9, Willpower 6, Essence 6 Mage only has a Social (and thus Astral) limit of 10. And you won't find that anywhere, really. If we were to take a Magic 10, Counterspelling 13 mage, they still only roll 23 dice. That requires at least 4 Initiations, and 366 Karma (126 to raise Counterspelling from 7 to 13; 70 from 4 Initiations; and 170 to raise Magic from 6 to 10). That's 366 Karma vs 25 Karma from the casting Mage. And no guarantee for the 366 Karma Mage to succeed. In fact, unless they spend Edge, it's nearly impossible to even touch the spell.

To top it all off, whether or not you were successful at counterspelling it, you have to resist 12P Drain. Fun, fun, fun. You don't even get rid of the spell until 12 net hits.

Basically, no. If someone is willing to invest the, quite appropriate, amount of resources into a massive spell, they can quicken it without ever worrying about it being dispelled.


Basically, yes, if used correctly, Quickening is broken as hell. That's why people houserule it all the time, in order to bring it's power down a bit. Hell, Harlequinn, while badass in his own right, is mostly what he is by the fact that he has a billion buffs quickened on himself (and his access to all spells, etc; that's besides the point).

If your going to count the karma for the initiations the person goes through did you factor in the karma spent to bond the focus in your calculation of karma comparison.
Also you have the mage optimized for casting that one type of spell with every possible bonus but the counterspelling mage doesn't have any focus or help in his actions nor does he use karma in your example. So while yes it is possible the majority of characters won't be able to pull that off. I won't argue that by quickening a spell you can get a great bonus it isn't as lopsided as shown in my opinion.
Another thing to keep in mind as was mentioned earlier is you can't turn it off. This means any astral barrier you run into is an issue. Yes your spell will win most of these, but if it does it crashes the barrier usually only momentarily, but the casting mage knows that there is an intrusion the minute you do.

[8-bit]

All my Karma calculations in that example were after character creation. That 25 Karma is the cost of Initiation + Quickening (the 12 Karma spent on the spell).

Also, it's really not that much of a focus in casting that spell. That was to make a point. Take away the Mentor Spirit, and the Spellcasting Focus, you're still at 20 dice. That's still 7 hits average. Rerolling failures gets you another 4 hits, on average. That's 11 hits. So, only 11 + 4d6 (5d6 total). Not a big loss.

I'm not saying there aren't drawbacks, I even said I agree with all his other points. What I was pointing out was that the whole "dispelling the quickened spell" doesn't really apply, when put into practice. In theory, sure, people don't use 12 Karma to quicken spells. However, a smart player is going to do the above, because it's safer.

[psycho835]

Don't forget about lovely plot points that force you to dispel the quickened spells (or do it for you), costing you your hard earned karma. When we played "Dawn of the Artifacts - Dusk" I ended up losing more karma than I earned.

[Sabato Kuroi]

I guess one can always create a mage who specialises in dispelling quickened spells and disrupting foci :p

[Reaver]

Theory and fact are two different things.
I have had a lot of "number cruncherz" try this stunt.

They work out all the variables, stats and probabilities.

And then they roll....

My favorite so far was the mage who Edged everything, and still died of drain

[8-bit]

Theory and fact are two different things.
I have had a lot of "number cruncherz" try this stunt.

They work out all the variables, stats and probabilities.

And then they roll....

My favorite so far was the mage who Edged everything, and still died of drain

I've also seen people with such amazing luck with dice, that we've had to test whether they were loaded (hint: they weren't). People roll well above and below averages all the time. When you can safely perform something by rolling average, or even slightly below average; however, those are some pretty damn good odds that it will succeed.

Sure, the mage in your example just died. The point is, I've seen it work many more times than I've seen it fail, and usually when it fails, it's not always lethal.

[Jayde Moon]

You can also cherry pick the quickened spell, no?

Anyhow, thanks for the input, guys!

[ShadowcatX]

Theory and fact are two different things.
I have had a lot of "number cruncherz" try this stunt.

They work out all the variables, stats and probabilities.

And then they roll....

My favorite so far was the mage who Edged everything, and still died of drain

I don't see the point you're trying to make (beyond trying to put down people who crunch numbers). Bad rolls happen, sometimes they kill a character.

[firebug]

I think his point is just that resisting 12P drain is so deadly that even with artificial luck (Edge) it's never something you should risk.

The Mystic Adept player I have who would Quicken a F12 spell is a Dwarf with levels of Supernatural Toughness--  He can take 12P drain.  And he actually picked this before he knew about Quickening, he just likes being durable.

Allow me to post Michael Chandra's suggested houserules for Quickening to make it more balanced and less exploitable.

Rule: Quickened Spells cannot be overcast

Dispelling and Astral Intersection have something really important in common: The higher the Force of your spell, the tougher they are to do. Not only does the spell have a higher defensive dicepool, in the case of Dispelling it also raises the drain the dispeller has to resist.

In other words, if you often throw Wards and Dispellers at your player, you're encouraging them to overcast. While during a run this is dangerous, in downtime there's no real problem with casting a Buff spell at Force 12 (or even 14), since it won't kill you. Do so in a Valkyrie Module with a friendly player on standby and you'll be fine even if you screw up so badly (that's what, ~1% chance?) that you go unconscious.

Wards are a popular defense mechanism against Quickened Spells, not only because it means the player has to pay attention and will either have to slip through or set off alarms, but also because if they do not pay attention they may lose the spell and thus the karma they put into it. A Force 4 Ward has roughly 1/3 odds to take down a Force 6 spell, while a Force 6 ward is at ~60%. Note that this kinda is per spell: Each side rolls at the same time, so a single ward can cost you multiple spells even if the first spell disrupts it.

However, a Force 6 Ward versus a Force 12 spell has only 10% odds. Which means that even if a player with 5 Quickened Spells runs into one, without noticing it(!), twice per run, it costs them only 1 karma. And given how players will soon figure out how not to get completely ambushed by high-quality wards, such astral intersections will be extremely rare.

Meanwhile, the dispeller would probably have 12~15 dice versus 19 for the Quickened Spell, which gives them bad odds and the drain soak would then cripple them for the coming fight.

Short version: While Wards + Dispelling may seem like decent balance methods against Quickeners, they risk pushing the Quickener into Overcasting his Quickened Spells, setting off a hostile arms race.

So to prevent that arms race, one can simply disallow Quickening Overcast spells. Leaving potential fluff explanations aside (every GM should be able to come up with some rubbish about astral balance), this means that the GM weapons are still viable tactics. And if your weapons are viable threats, it means you don't have to constantly throw them at the player but can just use them occasionally instead.


Rule: Quickened Spells must buy hits

Aside from overcasting, one other thing unbalances Quickening, namely the amount of hits. We all know that an average roll cannot be counted on to happen all the time. Bad spellcasting rolls happen and usually players will risk the drain to try again. But they also get good rolls, and sometimes even miraculous rolls. For example, 12 hits on Increase Reflexes for +12+4d6 Initiative. This is how a player of mine managed to break 40 on his Initiative. That's 4 IPs even if he Full Defenses, so a guaranteed slaughter of the enemy team.

Since that's only around for a short time, it doesn't matter that much in the long-term, and during a run you won't be able to hunt for high rolls because the drain risks crippling you during the fights. However, a Quickener can easily make that miraculous roll permanent, and they can even afford to hunt for it during their downtime. It doesn't matter much for Increase Attribute spells, but spells such as Combat Sense, Deflection and Increase Reflexes quickly change the balance permanently if the player hunts for the perfect roll.

Let's assume the player has 18 dice due to specializations and what-not. We're not even taking Aid Sorcery in mind here. Their odds at 10+ hits are 1/23. Their odds at 9+ hits are 1/10. So all a player has to do is keep casting his Force 6 spell until he hits 9+ hits, then he Pushes The Limit and rolls a few more exploding dice, and bam. Quite doable in downtime, where a bad Drain roll simply means a 1h break without consequences.

So for a 5-Reaction, 5-Intuition player it's quite doable to quickly hit 20+5d6 Initiative and 30 defensive dice. Even if you limit their Edge use in downtime to 1 point, as some people do, it would still only take them 3 downtimes to get that far.

There's multiple ways of dealing with this, but the best probably is going the Missions way: Buying Hits. The same kind of fluff-explanations would apply here, so let's ignore that and get to the consequences:

Under this rule, Quickened Spells are weaker than normally-cast Sustained Spells. 12 dice would only get you +3+1d6 Initiative, whereas during a run you'd have 60% odds to score at the least +4+2d6. But those Sustained Spells have downsides over Quickened Spells, so that helps balance it out. You get a smaller bonus in return for

It also highly benefits Conjurers and specializers. Using various boosts, including Aid Sorcery, 20 dice is easy and 24 dice is possible but expensive, so 6 hits bought is doable at a price. Hunting a miracle would be easier for such specialized players but the outcome would be the same, a massive bonus. In this case, however, they will always have a significantly better Quickened result than an unbuffed 12-dicer.

So players who try their best expenditure-wise get rewarded for their effort without the reward completely unbalancing the game, plus even their best results are no different from what they can normally hit with recasting during a run. It will also cost them dearly every time they lose a Quickened Spell, rather than it being easy to replace with yet another miraculous result in downtime.

This houserule prevents the search for a massive success that the normal Quickening rules encourage, which once more means the GM has less need to throw their GM-weapons at Quickened Spells to help balance out the game. It grants players permanency and a lack of Addiction and Sustaining penalties, but for a price, making it something other than the only way to go without forcing the GM to get characters arrested and thrown in jail.


Rule: A character may only have their Initiation Grade in spells Quickened

To compensate for the massive boost Quickened Spells can give a player, one way to balance it out is to limit the amount of Quickened Spells a character can have. While their Initiation Grade already is a limitation as far as Extended Masking the spells is concerned, unmasked spells are unlimited and will only increase the average karma-loss and chances the cops arrest you for walking around Downtown with enough quickened spells on you to start a war.

For a GM who is uncomfortable with bringing in law enforcement like that, they may instead explicitly limit the amount of spells a character has Quickened. This makes Quickening less of an instant-massive-boost, making it less likely and less powerful as the first Metamagic a player picks. By the time they can have several active, they already have enough notches in their belt to deserve it.



Let me note my own personal opinion and experiences here.

Disclaimer: My current only Mage player has decided to avoid Quickening for now, because I frequently (0~2 per run) use Wards, so I have not yet implemented any of these rules. I also suspect he'd avoid the cheesy tricks these houserules prevent, as to not set off an arms race. However, all NPCs I design that employ Quickening, are already using the first two rules. I also apply the third rule to them, though more as a rule of thumb for a reasonable maximum. Corpsec with a single Initiation may still have 2~3 Quickened Spells for me, since I will not explicitly limit them like that.

While I heavily encourage using the first two rules, I suspect the third may not be necessary. If a player goes for multiple Quickened Spells from the get-go, they'll still face the astral consequences and have a bigger average karma-loss if they run into a ward by accident. The Extended Masking limitation already serves as a limit regarding astral consequences, and by the time they have both they're already at Initiation Grade 3 so it's not that important anymore.

However, as noted if the GM is uncomfortable with having to frequently assense the player as a consequence, limiting the amount of Quickened spells may be a good call. So I would advise to always use the first two rules, and put some thought into whether the third is needed. And keep in mind that you should apply the same rules to your NPCs.

[8-bit]

I think his point is just that resisting 12P drain is so deadly that even with artificial luck (Edge) it's never something you should risk.

That's the most extreme option. It's pretty easy to have tamer options.

Force 9 Increase Reflexes (max of +9, +4d6) - 9P drain (won't even kill a 3 Body human, if you soak 0 drain).
Force 8 Increase Charisma (using an Elf, for example) - 5P drain
Force 9 Combat Sense (max of +9 to Surprise and Defense tests) - 9P drain
Force 10 Deflection (max of +10 to Defense tests against ranged attacks) - 9P drain

It's just that the point is really moot. Force 12 is easily accomplishable, but if you really wanted to have enough safety margin to absolutely succeed without killing yourself, you can just lower the Force a little. It's not a big deal, you lose 3~ on numerical values.


As a note, Chandra's rules are really good. They limit it while still keeping it useful.

[firebug]

No, not the player resisting 12P drain.

He means the 12P drain you'd take from trying to dispell a quickened F12 Increase Reflexes.  Any NPC would be stupid to even try if they knew.