Is your character Happy ?
When you use it to attack vamps however, it becomes a different spell (rules wise) even though the in game affects are the same. If you want to do damage to them then it becomes an area of effect weapon X attack spell, that probably still satisfies the catch for vamps.
A spell that kills vamps like ants under a magnifying glass, but leaves everything else standing?
Boy, the White Council would have wiped the Red out years ago if something like that existed.
A spell that kills vamps like ants under a magnifying glass, but leaves everything else standing?
Boy, the White Council would have wiped the Red out years ago if something like that existed.
I think you can definatly increase the duration on attack spell, the only trouble is that an enemy can step out of a zone of fire making your extra durations useless. Thamaturgy can do everything Evocation can so it could also do solar area bonbardment.(click to show/hide)
It's not picking and choosing targets; it's using an area attack that is harmful to some targets but not to others. Sort of if you were immune to fire and threw a fireball at your feet or you're wearing a gas mask and you use sarin - only you just use sunlight that is mostly harmless except vs vampires and suff.
Oribus is the mixing of an attack and a grapple over a duration and it never says in the raw you cannot extend any magical attack or give any magical attack extra duration.
I can see justification thematically and in the fiction, I just can't see justification mechanically, but that's up to interpretation so I can see someone else running it differently.
I disagree, sinker. Damage over time is just as interesting as a single attack to me. There's nothing anti-story about it, as far as I can tell.
By the way, Venomous isn't that horrifying. You can concede to it, and medical attention counteracts it completely.
And conjuring acid/magma/whatever still needs to have some kind of mechanical effect. As-is, the GM is left to ad-lib what that effect might be.
On the other hand the maneuver creates a situation that the GM can create something great with. "The lesser vampires ignite, screaming as they try to dive for cover (taken out lethally) . One of them makes it under a car, his blackened and twisted shape shaking and moaning (taken out non-lethally). The stronger ones become a blur as they find the edges of the brilliant light and hide, smoking in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to strike (compelled to leave the zone, and/or possibly to deal with an attack of some sort). Some run from the bright light leaving the PCs alone (compelled to concede, accepting consequences, or simply failing at whatever objective they had).
I (and Fred for that matter) simply prefer the story focused method.
It does for me; a continious, relentless attack vs endurance that by the time you get to the antidote will have reduced you to a pile of goo is not good.
Venomous is definitely not just natural poison. It guarantees that you are taken out by a single bite due to unending attacks each exchange and a great deal sooner than most poisons. It works more like an engineered 100% lethal neurotoxin than most anything else.
Actually Devonapple, this is another reason why it's important to differentiate between the GMs ability to compel and the players ability to invoke for effect. The player isn't compelling all of those vamps (as the player technically can't compel at all), he's invoking his one aspect for effect once. That invoke however causes the aspect to become narratively important and the GM then decides if he would like to lay down all those compels on the vamps (technically compelling their high concept rather than the scene aspect, as it's usually tough to justify compelling aspects that aren't personal aspects). In my case I would compel the hell out of them because that's a) fun and b) giving the baddies a ton of fate (especially since in this case I'd likely transfer some of it from the mooks to the vamp who lost because his mooks were incinerated).
So, if I understand correctly, and I may be coming out of the woods on this:
Player A (currently sitting on 15 Fate Points) successfully places a Zonewide Aspect and Invokes for Effect (for free, as is right as the first tag) against the 15 Ghouls in the Zone; the GM takes it over as a Compel, and distributes Fate Points (out of his own supply) to the Ghouls who would plausibly survive/Concede/whatever.
Player B (currently sitting on no Fate Points) successfully places the same Zonewide Aspect, Invokes for Effect (again, for free) against the 15 Ghouls in the Zone; the GM also takes it over as a Compel, and distributes Fate Points (also out of his own supply) to the Ghouls who would plausibly survive/Concede/whatever.
Obviously, both have sadistic GMs (15 Ghouls? Really?). But is there no difference at all in how the situation should be handled for the Player with a hoard of Fate Points versus the Player without?
...what is the difference whether or not they have fate points? As I see it, one player uses his the other hordes his. The advantage for the player with 15 FP's is that if some of the Ghouls refuse the compel, in the next exchange the player can invoke the maneuver again while the player with no FP's can't.
The difference (for me) is that, per my understanding, one Invoke means one Target, and that any additional Targets require more FP.
I would be *happy* if there were more flexibility for things like this - I'm just not finding it in the RAW.
EDIT: refocus: Devonapple, how would you do this spell, both as the PC casting it and as the GM adjudicating it?
because this is thaumaturgy at evocation speed, is the duration based on thaumaturgy - so I could get it to last until the next morning, or are you still constrained by the durations of evocation - ie: 1 exchange and can only be extended in terms of exchanges.
Also, by the rules (I was reading the attack spells with duration thread), you can't have spells that do damage over time, so if I put extra shifts for duration, would they only apply to the maneuver and not the damage?
There was this guy named Gideon back in the days of old Israel, and wanted light to pursue his enemies. The day was ending and it seemed like his enemies would manage to give him the slip when he prayed and God made the sun stand still in the sky for several hours.Here's my take on this...
Now, obviously God did not actually make the sun stand still. He could have done so by moving the sun or stopping the Earth's rotation but that would kill just about anyone on the planet and that, I am told, is a bad thing. God probably just bent the rays of the sun as if using a really big prism or mirror and thus threw sunlight down to Gideon's area, making it seem that the sun stood still. (much like the Earth's atmosphere lengthens the duration of the day, only moreso)
Since magic can be used to pull meteors and satellites out of the sky, can it bend/reflect some sunlight so that a couple of zones in the dark hemisphere get it for a few moments? In theory, a manmade space station with a big mirror can do it - what kind of spell power would one need to do the same?
The GM should then deal damage to each vampire on the GM's prerogative. This damage is an environmental issue, it can be viewed as the Environment attacking the Vampire. I think the venomous rules give a good model but removal from the light should be an adequate antidote.
I think I like it as a maneuver. I can invoke for effect and the Bads can get FP's. If I were GMing, I might say that if they take the FP they'd start resisting environmental damage at "x" (I guess it would be dependant on how much power was pumped into the maneuver) unless they they left the zone or the spell duration ran out.
If they turn down the FP, all damage dealt in the zone would still meet the Catch.
Would that be a good way of doing it?
Thaumaturgy might not have an explicit range but I would still think that's pushing it.5 shifts can breach a barrier between worlds and open Gateways for you to travel. Harry does the Chicago-Edinburg trip in half an hour (2 miles) of walking when the real distance is 4000 miles. The Gatekeeper has been to the moon physically (though not on-screen). Summoning spells can bring in beings from beyond the borders of the Universe and a 32-shift botched one has done so on-screen. So in thaumaturgy distance matters not.
if you could do it with just 1k miles, you'll need a mirror significantly larger than the park, or you'll end up with an extra star in the sky.Not really. Sunlight produces natural light-beams like searchlights do. A 10 Kw searchlight can illuminate stuff 20 kilometers away, easy. Now consider that the sunlight falling on a small park (say, 80 yards across) would be 100.000 Kw. ;D Read up on light beams and sunlight beam divergence if you are not convinced.
"speeding up" or "slowing" time are essentially interchangeable terms. It's all relative after all.Common misconception not supported by facts. "Slowing" happens when an object's inertial mass (resistance to acceleration, effectively) increases and thus the object accelerates more slowly. The object changes more slowly but from its point of view the rest of the world seems faster. "Speeding Up" happens when an object's inertial mass decreases. The object accelerates (and thus moves and changes) faster and the rest of the world seems slower by comparison.
As for sending people into space... No. Fail. Sorry, there's no other way to put it.The objects' inertial mass would be decreased. Since E=1/2mV2, and the "m" becomes smaller, the objects are suddenly moving a lot faster (which is what we wanted). This includes little things like their own motions and the Earth's rotation. Sadly, it also includes stuff like the Hubble Flow. The Milky Way is moving at 600 Km/second. What happens if the flow of time is doubled for those in your zone and are suddenly moving at 1200 Km/second, which is 600 Km/second more than the Earth? Whoops!
I asked if *this*It works, I think. Well, except the "having god X" bit, that's more of a faith magic. Unless you're getting your soulfire directly from Him instead of an angel, in which case that's a GM call.
was a good way to deal with it. No-one has said one way or another, but I think you're agreeing with how I would deal with it.
As far as pulling rays of light out of space goes, I want to do this underground if I wanted. I saw it more like conjuring sunlight, or having god open a portal to Heaven and allow heavenly sunlight radiate out of the ceiling *angelic choir* AHHHHHHH! *angelic choir*
5 shifts can breach a barrier between worlds and open Gateways for you to travel. Harry does the Chicago-Edinburg trip in half an hour (2 miles) of walking when the real distance is 4000 miles. The Gatekeeper has been to the moon physically (though not on-screen). Summoning spells can bring in beings from beyond the borders of the Universe and a 32-shift botched one has done so on-screen. So in thaumaturgy distance matters not.Yes, portals make things very convenient. If you're using them then I can't think of any problems with range.
Not really. Sunlight produces natural light-beams like searchlights do. A 10 Kw searchlight can illuminate stuff 20 kilometers away, easy. Now consider that the sunlight falling on a small park (say, 80 yards across) would be 100.000 Kw. ;D Read up on light beams and sunlight beam divergence if you are not convinced.I'll pass on the extra research. I'm not in a physics research phase at the moment. I still think that the same reason objects appear smaller from a distance would cause the light to appear smaller by the time it reaches the park, but if you're convinced that there's a reason it wouldn't I won't argue.
Common misconception not supported by facts. "Slowing" happens when an object's inertial mass (resistance to acceleration, effectively) increases and thus the object accelerates more slowly. The object changes more slowly but from its point of view the rest of the world seems faster. "Speeding Up" happens when an object's inertial mass decreases. The object accelerates (and thus moves and changes) faster and the rest of the world seems slower by comparison.Very nice scientific jargen, it's pretty, and it happies me. Unfortunately we're not talking strictly science here. I can say that time "slows" when I am slowed, because, relative to my surroundings, time has slowed for me. I can also say that time slows when I am accelerated, because relative to me, my surroundings have slowed. In fact, when I am slowed, it may actually be the case that time, for the rest of the universe, has sped up. Or in the latter instance, I may be right and the universe's time has slowed. Okham might say it's more likely that it's just me that's slowed, but probability and reality aren't always the same.I can again say that time has sped up when I am sped up, or when my surroundings have sped up using the same logic.
The objects' inertial mass would be decreased. Since E=1/2mV2, and the "m" becomes smaller, the objects are suddenly moving a lot faster (which is what we wanted). This includes little things like their own motions and the Earth's rotation. Sadly, it also includes stuff like the Hubble Flow. The Milky Way is moving at 600 Km/second. What happens if the flow of time is doubled for those in your zone and are suddenly moving at 1200 Km/second, which is 600 Km/second more than the Earth? Whoops!