[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

That only holds if the interpretation that a Missile Spell once cast is a tangible physical event (which fits most interactions of other affects) and that the ability to hold the Magical Missile were a spell.

Quite true. But then, it's hard for me to imagine how the mage could indefinitely hold on to a flaming bolt, shaft of electricty, beam of light, etc. Stone Missile, maybe. But most of the missiles don't seem the sort of thing you could safely hold, even if they were physically solid.

So something has to protect the mage while he's holding the spell. There's not another spell to be cast. So, I assume that's part of the initial conjuration. Your hand becomes immune, or the missile gets a sort of "magical sabot" that lets you hold it but which disappears when it's actually thrown.

The throwing itself also seems to be magically empowered. Damage isn't based on the mage's ST, as with completely mundane thrown weapons. But again the mage doesn't spend FP on a separate "Propel Missile" spell. It seems to be built into the original spell (if it exists at all).

Also, the physicality of the missiles ties into the reason Spell Walls don't stop them. There's also some 3e tradition in that notion (and Magic didn't really change for 4e, as is often lamented).

But those are indeed all just assumptions. RAW doesn't go into that kind of detail.

I don't think Suspend Spell should affect Magical Missiles at all (and Counterspell counters the very missile, not the target's ability to hold it).

Certainly a possible interpretation. Though the ability of Counterspell to stop a missile because it's magic doesn't match well with the inability of Spell Wall to do so. I suppose you could argue that the notional "Propel Missile" part of the spell can be disrupted, but that's all gone by the time the missile leaves the mage's hand, and thus Spell Wall has no magic to affect. But then it seems inconsistent that Suspend couldn't also affect the Propel Missile bit. Something is going to misalign, whichever bits we push around.

Originally Posted by Zwarrior

It allows a normal human to cast spells while holding a missile spell. Why wouldn't that apply to casting another missile spell?

Specific overrides general. The line in the Perk that allows casting of other spells is a general reference to hundreds of them. Only having one Missile spell at a time is a specific limit to the number of Missile spells you can have on -- even though normally you can have any number of spells on. If the Perk also wanted to change this exemption, it could have said so.

... holding 2. But now I'm out of arms to hold any other missiles, should I want to cast and hold even more. That's why I think the number of arms would matter.

What if the two-armed mage has Juggling skill? :)

I always thought of them as a single 'atomic' individual thing (redundancy intended).

Most games seem to treat them that way. That physicality is something of a quirk for Magic. I think it's fun to run with that notion simply because it is different.

Originally Posted by Ruien

I already rule {Suspended spells counting as on} as "yes"...

Mage A would therefore still have his spell "on" (it just doesn't do anything because Mage B's Suspend is counteracting its effects). Mage A does not pay maintenance, however...

To my way of thinking, the reason a "spell on" carries a casting penalty is that it does serve as a distraction. It takes just a little bit of attention to feed the spell its maintenance energy and correcting little wanderings from what it's supposed to do. Not enough to count as a Concentrate maneuver, or even as much as the little-c concentration requirement that gives you a -3. But something.

If Suspend just stops the spell, saving its state to be restored later, I think of that as taking it off the active list for the caster. It no longer needs that little bit of "scheduler overhead" to update the process, until the process is back in the ready queue. (Yes, I'm a programmer.)

Hang has the same cost as the spell you cast, lasts 1 hour and has the same cost to maintain.

You're correct. I mis-remembered the maintenance cost for Hang, thinking it was the maintenance for the Hung spell (apparently 0 for a held Missile spell; there's no cost to keep holding it).

However, I'm not sure about the idea of "get hit with dispel means that a bunch of missiles appear". I consider both spells to be running and Dispel might kill both.

Seems reasonable, especially given your view that Suspend means two spells actively running but exactly cancelling each other out. There's lots of magic there to stop.

But if you're holding a bunch of them, there's likely to be some for which the Missile resisted the Dispel but the Suspend did not.

Yes. You do need some convention to handle the reappearing Missiles. (Which you outline below.)

(3) I would say that Mage Sight makes it possible to "see" these suspended spell-pairs floating around.

I'd agree. Even if the Suspended spell were considered gone for all magical purposes, the Suspend itself would still be detectable. With the active-but-dynamically-countered interpretation, they're both there to be Sighted, Detected, Sensed, etc.

It would also be interesting if there were a way to selectively Dispel only the Suspends and not the Missiles themselves.

Counterspell lets you selectively target one of a mass of spells (as the description to Dispel notes).

If it seems useful, you could also invent a "Mass Counterspell" that can dispel more than one spell at a time. There might be a version or versions that can dispel any number of spells that (a) are all instances the same spell; (b) same college; (c) same type; (d) any spells at all.

That also fits with the concept of why missile spells can be thrown through a No-Mana Zone. But it would imply that a mage holding a Missile would drop it on himself if he walked into a No-Mana Zone. Is that really what happens per RAW currently?

An interesting question. I haven't really thought about it. But if you wanted to have the held missile just dissipate, you might fall back on that notion of the implicit "Propel Missile". Dropping them might not be dangerous with no magical propulsion or additional effects like burning.

Missiles also disappear after they hit. So while they may be physical in some sense, a battlefield doesn't get littered with used Stone Missiles or scorched Fireball cores. Perhaps that part of the magic takes out the missile as it fails, like a "dying gasp" from an electronic device that loses power.

(Or you could have the edge of the NMZ marked with a neat line of ex-Fireballs as a warning to the next party -- just in case all the skeletons on the ground on the other side next to staves and pointy hats weren't enough of a hint.)