[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Wizard: "I summon a 'Boeing-747 designated Air Force One.'"
GM: "Erm, the spell succeeds, and the closest machine of that type is directly on the other side of the planet. It will take at least a day for it to get here."

Meanwhile, Air Force One flies straight down... and since the target is the plane itself, nobody aboard gets to resist the spell.

I'd rule this fails on two counts - you can summon a machine of a particular *type* not a particular *name* - in the same way you can't use an animal summoning spell to summon just your horse, useful as that would be - and that fly through the Earth isn't a legitimate movement option for a plane, so it doesn't attempt that, any more than summoned animals attempt to dig through hills or the horizon.

More generally, should attended vehicles (including vehicles such as sailing ships which might be left unpiloted even while being "manned,") be automatically excluded? My gut says probably, but a really good wizard probably should be able to take control of something being piloted by a novice without trouble.

I'd say it works fine on attended machines but if somebody is sitting at the controls you'd use the rules for the prerequisite - Machine Control - to resolve who got to decide which way it goes this second.

Hmm... there's still the problem when someone stands in front of an enemy corporation's headquarters or whatever and summons an ICBM. Give it five minutes of spell maintenence for it to launch, and then teleport away from the soon-to-be-crater

It retargets on wherever you teleported to. Unless you let the spell lapse, in which case it no longer attempts to home in on the target you wanted it to hit either and you'll be lucky if it hits the right city. Note that Machine Summoning doesn't let you arm the warhead either, so the final crater won't be too big.

This is still a fun (and quite powerful) spell for any TL; it can summon a reed boat to you up a river, and possibly drop a bucket down a well to you or slide a ladder along a bookshelf too. Not to mention allow you to duplicate Seek Machine for immobile gadgets.

The prerequisite chain includes Seek Machine, so it's a waste to use it for that.

Like most of the Tech college it's not very well thought out. Technically I suppose it doesn't let you move anything that doesn't have controls that cause it to move, so sliding that ladder is out, and the bucket is at best iffy - it might work if there is a release control on the winch - which frankly is ridiculous. On the other hand the ICBM launch controls aren't part of the missile either....

I suppose "the spell is almost always totally useless" could be said to conform to the description, but it's a pretty unfair thing to do to characters who paid points for it. If you allow any of the Tech spells into your game, you need to expect to have to decide what they do yourself - the "official" descriptions are all pretty poor.