Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Critical hits would interfere with Blocking Spells like Deflect Missile since crit hits prohibit active defenses, but Reverse Missiles doesn't use your active defense - it's a Regular Spell so I don't think a Critical Hit would interfere with how it operates in any way, unless you had it prepped via Reflex.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Critical Successes let you do the improbable, even the extremely improbable but not the impossible.

Each GM runs their own game of course but an 'archer's' skill does not negate a magical effect.

If an 'archer' rolled a 3 attempting to shoot a mage protected by a Force Dome spell I would not have the 'arrow' pass through and hit the mage.

I do not see a substantial difference with Reverse Missiles.

There are extant counters and tactics to deal with mages, this spell IMHO is no different nor do I see a reason to treat it differently.

But as always Rule #1 is it's the GM's game.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Even so it doesn't seem right that the defender could benefit in any way from the attacker's lucky roll which is why I think the attacker certainly wouldn't get the benefits of a critical hit and I would go so far as to say the arrow would go astray thanks to a bit of wind, a chance obstacle, or just enough unplanned movement on the attacker's part. It's not changing how the spell works, just the chance permutations of the arrows course back to its origin point.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Well the defender is not benefiting from the attacker's roll, he is benefiting from having cast the right spell at the right time.

Personally as a 'combat' spell I prefer Invisibility to Reverse Missiles. It is cheaper to cast and an Invisible Mage is generally safer than one under Reverse Missiles, can do a lot more offensively, and it is a much better general utility spell.

Of course I also 80+% of the time tend to take Luck to keep from being Frelled over by the dice...because it can happen. The case we are speaking of would be just one of many.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

(nods) With the 4th edition change, at this point, anyone who doesn't take Luck (except under the most extreme CP pressure, for RP considerations, or under GM veto) as immunization against critical failures is selling their characters badly short.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Meh. It's magic, not science. If you need a scientific reason for it to do what it does, here's one that couples magic with science and doesn't require any special aiming effect. The missile itself turns end for end in both the x and y axis so that it's pointy end is facing the shooter (more or less), everything thereafter is simply the missile remembering where it's been (essentially Law of Contagion), one point at a time. As part of its remembering, it remembers the velocity it had at that point and resumes it. In effect, the effect of air resistance on the return path is negligible because the missile is accelerating back to its original muzzle velocity (or equivalent) as it reverses along its course and arrives with full damage potential (i.e. 1/2 D range damage, not Max range damage).

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Yeah, that. Note that any kind of physical reversal process runs up against the problem of what happens if the shooter moved, and the more serious one that it would almost always fail to threaten the shooter even if he has not. The missile should hit his weapon, or smoothly return to his quiver, or pass through the point in space where the end of his sling was when he released the string....

The downside of the magic being able to hit the shooter anyway is that logic would suggest it should be fairly trivial to design a variant spell that uses a similar process to propel something the mage tosses randomly into the air so that it infallibly hits the eye slits of anyone he designates as the "shooter", possibly at hypersonic speeds at ranges over the horizon, given that the Reverse spell seems to work on such projectiles. Now you need a second justification for why magic does something that doesn't make sense to prevent that, which is likely to require a third and a fourth and...

It may be better to just call it from the beginning, it's magic, it doesn't make sense, and stop wasting time trying to figure it out or develop exploits. The downside there is some exploits are pretty cool, and it's a shame to lose them.

There really is no good way to balance all of those in a way that doesn't involve case by case arbitrary rulings. Mind you if magic is sapient, which a lot of evidence seems to support, the spell spirits or whatever might well [change their minds] from casting to casting and alter what exploits do or don't work from day to day.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

I should note here the post you were responding to was simply arguing for the returning missile to miss the attacker - I was the one who suggested there may be a chance for the arrow to pass through the Reverse Missiles (or possibly deflect into another target the attacker would like to hit). And it would be a chance, not a guarantee - I offhand suggested 1/6 just to make the rolling simple (roll 1d, penetrate on a 1, strike something else on a 2 or maybe 3, hit nothing of importance otherwise), but a full 3d roll could be used instead, perhaps needing a 3 or 4 to bypass, and a 5 or 6 to hit a different target.

For the case of Force Dome, I had thought there was an "Ignores target's DR" result on the Critical Hit Table, but apparently there isn't. With that in mind, it's probably inappropriate for there to be a chance to bypass Reverse Missiles - in a sense, Force Dome gives Infinite DR against everything, Missile Shield gives Infinite DR against Missiles Only, and Reverse Missiles upgrades Missile Shield's Infinite DR to have Reflective - but I'd still argue for the return missile to miss the attacker, so there's at least some benefit to having a Critical Success.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

Okay, that I'll buy. It still doesn't cover the missile's ability to track a moving shooter, but, as you say, it's magic.

Re: Reverse Missiles / not an "attack"
 

There is - for Critical Head Blows, and it's only on a roll of '3', so pretty uncommon.

I think I'd rule that a critical hit to someone with Reverse Missiles up would still bounce back and hit the shooter, but only as an ordinary hit. I've already established a ruling (it came up in play) that reversed shots hit randomly rolled locations, regardless of whether the original shot was aimed at a specific location or not.