Or.. Noob Questions revisited!
I recently read the following exchanges in another thread:
Targeting question: I cast an 8-shift push, but I only roll 5 to control. I take 3 backlash to get the spell off. My opponent rolls an Athletics defence of 6. What happens?
He defends. Any time the defense is higher than your targeting roll the effect is avoided.
Hmm, you're right. I think I like the idea of a targeting roll for this one. Though I guess there's some advantage to doing it the other way.
I like the idea of a targeting roll for this too, actually. These evocation pushes are very attack-like.
I like the idea of a targeting roll as well. Think of it as an invisible hand pushing in a straight line - if the target moved away, it will miss.
OK, the way things sound, I may be doing something
Way wrong. The way it seems here, targeting is totally separate from control on spells, instead of partially separate, in a way that only becomes obvious when splitting an attack. If taking backlash stress to meet the spell's control requirement doesn't also increase the targeting to that same level, there would be less of an incentive to take backlash, because you're going to have more of a chance of missing, anyway. Now I only did a small amount of digging, but I found the following passage:
Example: Harry Dresden is beset by a charging Red Court vampire intent on taking his fool head of. He’s not really happy about that, so he chooses to blast it of the planet with a fire evocation.
Harry has a Conviction of Superb (+5) and a Discipline of Good (+3). His player—Jim—decides he doesn’t want to mess around with this thing too much, so he chooses to summon up 8 shifts of power for the spell. Harry has a power specialization in fire magic, so his Conviction is treated as Fantastic (+6) for the purposes of the spell. That means that casting this spell will give him a 3-stress mental hit—one stress for everything up to 6, and then two more to get to 8.
The difficulty to cast the spell is Legendary (+8). That’s high, but fortunately Harry’s blasting rod gives him a +1 to control, so Jim starts by rolling his Discipline at Great (+4). He gets a +2, for a total of Fantastic (+6), and invokes Harry’s Wizard Private Eye aspect to give him +2 more. This controls all the power necessary for the spell, and aims the spell at his target at +8.
Harry yells “Fuego!” as he points his blasting rod, sending a column of fame at the vampire, an attack at Legendary rated at Weapon:8. The vampire rolls to defend against Harry’s roll of Legendary and gets a Great (+4), which means the blast strikes home and inflicts a 12-stress hit on him (4 for the attack, 8 for the weapon value). The vampire’s Inhuman Toughness reduces this to 11 stress, and the vampire takes a severe consequence of Extra Crispy and a 5-stress physical hit.
Wouldn't the stress output be 10 not 12 if Harry's targeting roll was only counted as 6, not 8? And had the vampire rolled +7, would it have still been a hit?
One more passage:
The Discipline roll also controls spell targeting and sets the difficulty for defending against it.
For the life of me I can't find anything in the rules of backlash that says that covering a failed roll with backlash doesn't also cover targeting, since it's intended to cover the Discipline Roll Deficit, it sounds like it covers the targeting roll, as well.
Can anyone find anything in the RAW that supports the Targeting Roll separation?