[wepv]

Do quickened spells fall under the "GMs should not witness rolls/always buy hits" rule? If so, that seems like quickening spells is rather weak. If not, how should it be recorded. Also, if quickened spells don't use buying hits in down time, what should GMs do about characters with excessive amounts of quickened spells? From what I've seen of the mods, there just isn't anything in missions that keeps quickened spells in check like in a home game.

And yes, I feel that buying hits is too weak and allowing edged, rolled spells is too good.

(as an example, last mission I played I cast a combat sense spell with edge and reagents. I have 3 edge, 6 magic, 6 spellcastng and a dog spirit for 17 dice. After exploding 6's I had 16 hits. That seems waaaay too good to be quickened.)

[Michael Chandra]

You'll want to check with Bull in his FAQ topic, but I myself would consider them part of buying hits. Yes, it's not a lot of hits but honestly, given how many spells you can quicken and that Missions will likely not often toss mana barriers your way to break them up, nor will a GM go "okay, a cop assenses you, freaks out and calls in backup," it's no more than fair that they don't get too big a boost.

Don't forget that Quickened Spells let you bypass Focus Addiction, after all. And it's rather easy to score 16 dice and thus 4 hits, which means you can boost attributes from 4 to 8 and get +4+2d6 Initiative. As such, Quickening has become a really big thing. Can you imagine a character with 7 Magic, 6 Spellcasting, +2 Specialty, +2 Mentor Spirit, +3 Focus? They can boost attributes from 5 to 9 that way, and all that for 6 karma, 5 for the spell and 1 for the Quicken.

Question: Why would you use both Reagents and Exploding dice? Exploding dice already let you break the limit after all, no need for reagents then. What you want to do is use Reagents, then use Edge to reroll failures when you've rolled a lot of hits.

[wepv]

I used reagents and edge because I wasn't sure if edge would allow me to break limits for a quickened spell in 5th and I didnt want to take any table time for casting my spell (and reagents are so cheap I dont care, and I had nothing to spend my last couple thousand $ on at creation so I bought A LOT of reagents). Obviously buying hits is great for increase attribute spells but non-minmaxed characters will really suffer from the rule. What if I want to play a mage who doesn't have max magic and spell casting? I now buy hits and only ever get 2 hits? That just seems like it punishes non-minmaxers so harshly and doesn't actually hurt minmaxers at all.

One character I have been considering was a magic 3, spellcasting 5  character. Even with a mentor spirit I need a force 2 focus to get 3 hits on a quickened spell (my build was not going to have any foci due to foci addiction at magic 3 being rough).

My issue is that without buying hits it is obviously too powerful but if buying hits has the biggest impact on the non-minmaxed characters and has almost no impact on the highly minmaxed guys that is obviously not the correct fix.

(as for Bull's FAQ we couldn't find an answer either way as quickening isn't a down time thing, which is what the buying hits is referring to.)

[Michael Chandra]

I didn't mean checking the FAQ topic for an answer, I meant checking with Bull in his FAQ topic. I made a post to doublecheck.

I understand a character who goes low on Magic and Spellcasting would not be able to score 5 hits but only 3 (assuming the same buffs the character I mentioned would need for Force 5). However, that still lets you boost Rating 3 Attributes to 7 while avoiding Focus Addiction and Sustaining penalties, and you can still overcast Force 6 spells and Quicken those when it comes to Detection and Manipulation Spells. If your Reaction and Intuition are low, you can boost them to 7 and have 14 dodge dice and 14 Initiative, a Force 3 Increased Reflexes spell still adds 2+1d6 Initiative, Combat Sense would still add dodge 2 dice at your base 8 dice, Armor would still add 2 armor, Levitation would let you levitate 400kg so yourself +300 kg in carried stuff, and so on. There's still plenty of tricks to be pulled and buffs to be obtained even at a low Force. Plus it's the only way for you to heavily buff yourself with magic spells.

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As for minmaxing without buying hits:

The minmaxer at 20 dice who uses Reagents to set a limit of 12 could take the spell and roll several times, until he manages to score 8+ hits at 1/3 odds. He then rerolls 12 hits and aims for the 60% odds at 4+ hits, has to resist 12P drain in the case of Increase Reflexes and Quickens them for +12+4d6 Initiative. Meanwhile, the 3+5 character only has a 25% at +6+3d6 Initiative with Edge, which means only 60% odds at being able to do that in a Session when they didn't use any Edge on other things. With normal casting, their best bet is 4 hits since any more would take far too many casts.

So the minmaxer scores an easy 12 hits, with odds at more if they use reagents and are willing to risk getting knocked out by the drain. (If they first quicken an increase to their drain dice and increase their body as well, even 15P drain has hardly any chance at knocking them out.) Meanwhile, the weak caster is still limited to just a few hits more. So the minmaxer can score an AWFUL lot of bonus and the weak caster only benefits a bit more.

At that point sorry, but I think that when both the relative and absolute impact are much better for minmaxers and minmaxers would become an absolute disaster, buying hits for Quickening is the only fair way to go. Otherwise methods have to be made to fight off people walking around with +15 Armor, +15 Dodge Dice or +15+4d6 Initiative, which also hurt the weaker spellcasters that want to use Quickening.

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As for not taking Foci: Why not? I can understand not taking Sustaining Foci, but why not take Force 3 Spellcasting Foci? You wouldn't need more than 1 active at the same time anyway, so you wouldn't have any trouble with Focus Addiction.

[wepv]

I'm not saying the min maxer isn't absurd either way. I think my biggest issue stems from missions not keeping quickening in check. I am playing a character with quickening and I am just unhappy with how unfair he seems if I quicken spells like I "should". I was really hoping to hear an answer that made quickening not completely absurd in any form.   

As for Foci, I dislike the idea that it is a tax. Why isn't it a reasonable option to not have foci?

[Michael Chandra]

Oh it's a reasonable option, but I don't see how having low Magic would be a problem with taking Foci.

As for keeping Quickening in check: Wouldn't Buying Hits already be keeping them in check? It still is plenty useful, offers great tactical advantages yet doesn't boost you to an ungodly level.

[wepv]

Save 7 karma from chargen, work for the people twice and after 2 mods you can have +4 to all of your stats, etc. but since we are buying hits outside of the game there is no risk of hurting yourself or playing the mod with damage on you.


The more we talk about this the more I think there just needs to be more things that punish or counter quickening in Missions. If quickening is a thing that exists in the game world, why are there not more mana barriers? I think there needs to be some kind of resource for GMs to handle Quickened mages, and this is coming from a player of a quickened mage. I am actively doing the least efficient thing and hamstringing myself so that the game is a challenge and I don't steal the limelight from other players. I don't mind spending karma on something that might go away, but as is, there is no chance for it to go away thus there is no real cost. I hate being at tables where one person hogs all the spot light but if one guys has 8s(or more) in all his stats, is invisible, can one-shot spirits (and summon his own that are much more badass), flies, throws fireballs and can read/control minds...why risk other peoples lives when he can do anything that doesn't require a hacker...though with enough money and some skills he can do that really well too....

[Tacitus05]

Am I missing something, because in fifth it only requires a single karma to quicken a spell. Additional karma only makes it more resistant to dispelling.
For myself, I just quickened a spell I cast in game and noted it on the debrief sheet and on the character sheet.

[wepv]

You are doing it right* assuming the GM witnessed the roll and marked it off on your log. It only takes 1 karma. If you are referring to the 6 karma/spell mentioned earlier, it's 5 to learn the spell and 1 to quicken it, since knowing all of the increase [ability] spells is pointless unless you are quickening them.

*although if we need to buy hits rather then mark the hits on the debriefing log you are doing it wrong

[Michael Chandra]

Did some math wrong: With 3 Magic and 8 dice you can only get a +2, but with overcasting it can be done on any stat ranging from 1 to 6.

"since we are buying hits outside of the game there is no risk of hurting yourself " The drain of Increase Attribute is F-3. This means that even when rolling inside the game there's no risk of hurting yourself.

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Look, I don't know how many Mana Barriers are going to pop up. If you want to know, you'd really have to ask Bull. If Quickening requires buying hits, the buffs aren't that big but a single mana barrier will still hurt and a GM can easily let an enemy mage dispel. So depending on what Missions supplies the GM, chances are there will be a bit of a counter against Quickening. But Buying Hits seems pretty essential, since otherwise your concern of one super-guy becomes even more a concern. It wouldn't take that much time to get a Force 10 Armor Spell with 15 hits Quickened, meaning the guy would have 18 dice vs dispelling and 20 dice vs mana barriers.

And besides: any balancing of Quickening hits the weaker spellcasters just as much as minmaxers, if not more. After all, the minmaxer can use high Force.

[Bull]

I'll clarify this for a future FAQ, but I'm going to say that anything that is an effect that will last between game sessions counts as a "Downtime Action", and is thus subject to the Buying Hits rule.

[wepv]

Thanks for the reply Bull!


I'll post my follow up question to the FAQ thread also.


Chandra: There is always risk when you are rolling the dice. it's unlikely, but it's always at least 2 drain (though pointless since we have an official answer now.)

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By my reading of mana barriers the force and net hits on a spell do nothing to help it from being disrupted. It only lists living creatures, barriers and objects as things covered under astral intersections. After reading it a few more times I am less clear on how a mana barrier even disrupts a spell. Is a spell an object?
You drive a van through a mana barrier with five spells on you,
Do you:
A: roll spell force x 2 vs barrier force x 2 for every spell on you? If so:
What order do you roll in? If the first spell beats the barrier, the barrier drops (forever or until the end of the combat turn, depending on the barrier) do you then not roll for the other spells?
B: Roll for the person (magic + cha) vs barrier force x 2? If so, on a failure to break through are your spells disrupted AND you are unconscious? Are you just unconscious? Are you only unconscious if you were astrally perceiving but your spells are still disrupted?

[Michael Chandra]

True, but a mere few points of stun drain is rather irrelevant when you do so after you scored your payment.

I'm guessing all the opposed tests are rolled at exactly the same time, so the barrier might break 4 while 1 survives. If on the other hand someone is at the front of the car with spell A and you are at the back with spell B... As for Spells, I assumed any Sustained spells that crash into a mana barrier participate as non-living object so at Force x 2, at which point the hits don't matter.

Note that if you realize the barrier is there you can try to press through, and failing doesn't mean the spells get broken. If you're not paying attention to the Astral however...

[KarmaInferno]

I will say that a few times already I've run into situations where having ANYTHING magially active, including quickened spells, would have been a major liability due to astral patrols.

Also, some of the CMPs assume you are arriving via airports.


-k

[Michael Chandra]

In other words, make sure your licenses are in order.