[Magic] Loophole in the “Tickle” spell

[VIVIT]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

that's for an actual seizure, not something that mimics its effect, like Tickle.

I always figured that the seizure affliction was just the incapacitating condition representing uncontrollable full-body convulsions, not that it was a seizure in strict neurological terms. GURPS Magic already has a lot of ad-hoc description of spell effects, so if the effects of the spell were just, "you rotfl on the floor lol'ing and can do nothing," I don't think it would bother referencing a rule in Basic Set. The DFRPG version of the spell says “treat this as a seizure” even more directly.

There is nothing in Tickle that explicitly can be changed, and therefore no ability to break Concentration other than the usual being attacked or injured which impose a penalty to continuing to Concentrate.

This is a strange interpretation because it assumes that your attention is somehow transfixed by the spell while the effect continues, unless some event outside your control makes you involuntarily stop. Naturalistic intuition suggests that you should be able to just stop concentrating, and there's nothing anywhere in the text that suggests otherwise.

Perhaps, you could hold that implicitly, you are changing where the subject is being tickled, moving from under the armpits to the throat and then the soles of the feet, for example. However, it's just as likely that the subject is receiving an all-out tickle targeting every point on his body that is vulnerable to such an attack and thus there is no location to change to.

Again, I assume the spell requires concentration because the tickling isn't automatic—that the caster is performing some sort of Spooky Tickling at a Distance, and must take a maneuver in order to do so just as you would need to take a maneuver to physically tickle someone.