[wastedwalker]

So in the last game my mage had improved invisibility, increased reflexes and levitate running sustained through foci. With these three spell I levitated up with my shotgun and started firing. My GM wants to know three things and asked that it be put on the forums. *The foci mentioned are Sustaining Foci*

1) How long can spells be sustained through a foci.

2) Do you need to concentrate on the spells to maintain them, as in if you start doing something else will they fail.

3) Does levitate work like a flying type spell, since it can be cast on yourself does it work like you are flying.

As I see it spells going through foci are sustained by the foci and don't require any extra magic beyond the initial casting and should remain up for as long as I want. The limitation is that wards are a hindrance and the spells can be torn down.

Now for levitation, I think it should be just like a flight type spell, with maybe less freedom of movement. Since it allows you to use it on yourself or others and you mentally control the movements, well it just seems logical to me.

[Dr. Meatgrinder]

1)  There's no time limit listed for sustaining a spell, so you could cast one into an appropriate sustaining focus (each category of spell requires a different focus, and the force of the spell is capped by the force of the focus) and let it stay up forever.  Until something else happens.

2)  If you're sustaining a spell yourself, you suffer a -2 dice pool penalty to just about everything else.  You can still do other stuff, but you lose 2 dice.  But some things might break your concentration (SR4A, 184).  If a sustaining focus is doing this for you, there's no penalty or distraction.

3)  Yes.  But I'm not sure what kind of action, if any, would be required to move the target (you, in this case).  Maybe the sustaining requirement is enough of a penalty, or maybe some GMs will treat it like moving a spell effect as a Complex Action.

Incidentally, it is possible to use the Counterspelling skill actively to dispel a sustained spell (SR4A, 185, bottom right).  That's a problem if you're levitated a few dozen meters in the air.

[Mason]

1) as above
2) as above
3) Yeah, you can move yourself anywhere you can see at a rate of Force multiplied by net hits per 3 seconds, in meters.

[wastedwalker]

Thank you, that is what I told my GM but he doubted it. I think he was a little annoyed the Mage was flying invisibly with 4 IP's and using a shotgun to shoot at the enemies.

[kirk]

Thank you, that is what I told my GM but he doubted it. I think he was a little annoyed the Mage was flying invisibly with 4 IP's and using a shotgun to shoot at the enemies.

OK, so your mage was sustaining 3 spells (Invis/improved invis, levitate, and improved reflexes).

Did the mage remember to roll both success and drain on the second at -2; roll success and drain on the third at -4?

Did the mage remember to roll all shotgun blasts at -6?

Remember: "For each sustained spell the magician maintains, she suffers a –2 dice penalty on all other tests. SR4A 184"

[Dr. Meatgrinder]

Thank you, that is what I told my GM but he doubted it. I think he was a little annoyed the Mage was flying invisibly with 4 IP's and using a shotgun to shoot at the enemies.

That does sound like three sustained spells, though:  Levitate, (Improved) Invisibility, and Increase Reflexes.  Each requires its own sustaining focus (if you want to avoid the -2 for sustaining it), and each spell cast through a sustaining focus is capped by the focus' Force.  In turn, the number of hits (not net hits) on a given spell is capped by the spell's Force.  So you're looking at a minimum of:  a Force 4 Health sustaining focus (to get +3 IPs from Increase Reflexes), a Force 3+ Illusion sustaining focus (for a "reliable" Invisibility spell), and a Force 2 Manipulation sustaining focus (for Levitate at the lowest Force that would actually move you at a "flying" speed, assuming you're not a troll, since you need at least 1 net hit to get any movement speed).

Also remember there are limits on how many foci you can have bonded and how many you can have active at any given time (SR4A, 199); you're probably still under that limit, but you may be getting close.

[kirk]

Thank you, that is what I told my GM but he doubted it. I think he was a little annoyed the Mage was flying invisibly with 4 IP's and using a shotgun to shoot at the enemies.

OK, so your mage was sustaining 3 spells (Invis/improved invis, levitate, and improved reflexes).

Did the mage remember to roll both success and drain on the second at -2; roll success and drain on the third at -4?

Did the mage remember to roll all shotgun blasts at -6?

Remember: "For each sustained spell the magician maintains, she suffers a –2 dice penalty on all other tests. SR4A 184"

(sigh. forgot the foci. nvm)

[wastedwalker]

See the one issue I have is before I bound the Sustaining Foci I asked the GM *What type of Foci* to which I was told "It is a Sustaining Foci so it sustains any spell cast into it." Now going by the rules there is no generic sustaining foci but my GM is pretty much called the force 6 foci a generic. After the third time asking him I just went with it, I bound the foci and have been using it to sustain spells.

The three spells were all force 4 and I had more hits on my roll (Magic 7 and Spellcasting 6) than I needed for the force so I was set for all of them.

[wastedwalker]

From what I can remember the book he got the item from only lists it as a "Force 6 Sustaining obsidian ring" so since the book never clarified he took it as a power foci type and just had it work to hold spells.

[Mason]

You and your GM need to re-read the foci section. Foci come in the following types:

Spellcasting focus- one for each of the 5 categories of spells- adds dice to casting the appropriate category.
Counterspelling focus- works as above, but for countering spells of that type.
Summoning foci- one per spirit type- adds dice to the type of spirit the focus is for to summon
Banishing foci- as above, but for banishing
Binding foci- as above, but for binding spirits
Weapon foci- enchanted weapons
Sustaining foci- one for each of the five categories of spells- allows you to sustain a spell of a Force less than or equal to the Force of the Focus
Power Foci- adds Force directly to all dice pools where the Magic attribute of the caster is included.

To do what you have been doing, you need an Illusion sustaining focus of at least Force 4, a Health spell focus of at least Force 4, and a Manipulation spell focus of at least Force 4. Also, did you earn this focus you have in game? Because you can't start with a Force 6 Sustaining focus without the Restricted Gear quality IIRC.

[Zilfer]

If you obtained them in game and binded them to yourself I must say well done. If I remember right Focus' at the beginning of character building are quite expensive if you get the higher ranks. xD

[wastedwalker]

Got it from a boss in the Dawn series. As I said above the GM couldn't find anything beyond it being a straight up force 6 Sustaining ring. [spoiler]The blood mage at the end of the 2nd module, evidently he isn't supposed to be taken alive. We pumped him full of snick-n-shocks since the adept we had couldn't kill people. We recovered all his gear and the ring was part of his collection.[/spoiler] I know about foci needing to be specific, but when the books don't clarify...

[wastedwalker]

I have recovered a lot of stuff in game. When we created our characters the other GM running gave a limit of 10 as a max availability not 12. We were all running on basic items by the end of it. We have been playing every other weekend for over a year, we have done several of the missions, a few GM made runs, three of the Dawn's and First full of Credsticks was wrapped up on Saturday. Next game we start is the end of Dawn and who knows from there on. Only had one character in the group retire, the rest of us have been dang successful in surviving everything thrown at us.

[Carmody]

You are talking of 1 focus. Is it clear that you need 3 of them for your combo? You can only sustain 1 spell at any given time with a focus.
Furthermore, Improved invisibility need to defeat the threshold for non living objects, which may be pretty hard in some cases (3 or 4 for cameras, I cannot remember, 5 or more for drones at your GM discretion) which in turn require a powerful enough spell and therefore focus.

[Mason]

SR4A lists Object Resist for heavily processed stuff as 5.