[Chalkarts]

I'm finishing up an Alchemist to play in SRM.
Magic 6
I was wondering what spells would be most useful as command preparations.

Just in general.
I was already planning on having heal as a command so as long as he can see you, if you get hit he can heal you.
But what kind of utility spells would you think highly useful but underused?
I was considering Intelligence Boost for deckers.
He'd have a large storage of buff items to pass out to the group before each mission.
What kind of buffs would you like to have when you go on a run?

[Michael Chandra]

Some random things:

- Combat Sense and Deflection, since it's a stackable combination that provides a significant amount of defense dice against ranged attacks.
- Initiative spell to boost people without Wired/Synaptic stuff
- Antidote in case you're tossing about toxins which focus mainly on bad effects (also very useful once combat drugs wear off)
- Detect Enemies Extended
- Mindnet Extended

[Beta]

Do keep in mind that your hits when the preparation go off will tend to be lower than the hits of a regular mage (spellcasting averages 1/3 Spellcasting pool.  Preparations average 1/9 Alchemy pool + 2/9 preparation force).  So any spell that faces a resisting dice pool tends to be a lot weaker as a preparation, so I agree that boosts are a good place to focus.

Michael Chandra’s suggestions are all good.  Here are few other ideas:

Increase intuition is quite a flexible one.  Helps perception tests of all types, helps judge intentions, helps initiative (and doesn’t conflict with initiative boosters), and even can help with drain for some traditions. 

Increase Willpower has some interesting uses.  They don’t show up as frequently as Intuition, but they are sometimes items that are hard to impact in other ways.  For example: increase firewall, drain resistance, justifies a repeated memory test with a higher dice pool, improves resistance to a number of opposing magics, help resist certain drugs/toxins, and with two successes can wake up someone who is knocked out (keep a teammate on their feet for a few minutes, wake up someone for questioning).

Improve Aim can be handy, depending on the team.  Each success adds 10m to your ranged weapon increments, which can be a big boon to pistol users.

Levitate, Barrier, and Gecko Crawl are all still useful at low hits.

Catfall can open up certain plans that would not otherwise be available (although not knowing how much height it buys you limits just how much you can count on it).

[Chalkarts]

Here's what I've got now,

Combat sense
Enhanced Aim

Heal
Increased Att: Bod
Increased Att:Log

Forboding
Vehicle Mask
Armor
Compel Truth
Ghecko Crawl

Will any of those just be completely useless as preparations?

[Tecumseh]

Enhanced Aim is situational since it affects range. If your group is running around with shorter-range weapons, like pistols and machine pistols, and engaging enemies at a distance then it's great. If everyone is rolling with assault rifles then it's of limited use. I personally think that it's drain is too high to be worthwhile, but that's just my opinion.

Combat Sense is great. So is Heal.

Increased Attribute is tricky. Increasing Body doesn't really help skills and is mostly good for soak rolls. You're already doing Combat Sense, so I'm not sure I would bother.

Increasing Logic can be useful but remember that the Force of the spell needs to equal or exceed the attribute that's being increased. If your goal is to boost a hacker that's already rolling around with Logic 6 (9) then you're going to have Force constraints, plus they're already going to be near their +4 ceiling anyway. Consider Increase Intuition instead, as this is valuable to almost everybody (improves Perception, dodging, and initiative rolls) and almost nobody has it above rating 6.

Foreboding is a good spell.

Vehicle Mask is a good spell but its utility as a preparation might be limited by how long the spell lasts before expiring. If you only need a vehicle masked for a few minutes, then great, but otherwise your illusion might drop in the middle of when you need it.

Armor makes you glow, which is not subtle. If you want to stack this on top of Combat Sense for ultimate survivability then that's one option, but I might recommend Deflection instead. That stacks with Combat Sense and helps you avoid damage altogether (ranged attacks, at least).

Compel Truth is good as long as you have ways to make the person talk (so they just don't clam up and not say anything). It's more for interrogations. Analyze Truth can be useful for less-antagonistic situations, depending on which you expect to find yourself in more often.

I've never used Gecko Crawl. I just buy gecko tape gloves instead, since they're ¥250. It's not a bad spell; it just has an inexpensive alternative that's viable.

[Michael Chandra]

Incidentally: The way it's written, Deflection works even when surprised.

Vehicle Mask seems a bad idea due to low hits: way too easy to pierce.