From: Rich McAllister (rfm@Sun.COM)
Date: Tue 10 Jan 1989 - 09:56:33 EET
> I was wondering how others have handled casting spells (upon willing
> recipients) which require that magic points must be overcome to
> succeed.
We've always, since RQ2 days, played that a character can choose not to resist a spell; then it automatically works. If the caster is in melee, and wants to do the spell in one melee round and go on to something else, the caster must roll 95 or better -- when you're rushed, you can always fumble. And nonresistance must be a conscious act -- if a random spell drops in out of the blue, you resist it. The usual warning cry is "Incoming, Fred!", which tells Fred you're about to cast a spell on him. Characters who cry "Incoming" and then Disrupt their friends have short lifespans. :-) If you don't use this rule, it's just too hard to heal people at the end of a melee when the healers are down on MP and the wounded newly-rolled-up PC is at full MP 'cause he doesn't KNOW any spells yet.
> For instance, say Bill the sorceror knows "shapechange human
> to eagle" and wants to cast it on his friend Joe who wants to get to
> the next town in a hurry. This requires that the intensity of the
> shapechange be greater than Joe's MP's,
Um, intensity not less than Joe's SIZ, right? [This is certainly the way we play it, and I think that's what the book says...]
[No it isn't, at least not in my edition. -acb]
> PLUS, Bill has to overcome Joe's MP's.
> So do you allow Bill to cast it with an intensity of one and
> ignore overcoming Joe's magic points since Joe is a willing recipient?
No, you always need intensity at least matching SIZ, but we do ignore overcoming MP since Joe chooses not to resist.
> While I'm on the subject, have others interpreted the shapechange spell
> to only affect living tissue (i.e, arms and armor don't shapechange also
> if they were being worn at the time the spell was cast)?
Or clothes, either... a favorite magic item among shapechangers is magically elastic pants :-)
BTW, we are pretty generous with MP storage crystals in our game, so the usual limit on a sorceror's abilities is free INT.
Rich
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