Understanding Missile Spells

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Another thing to keep in mind with Fireball is that there is still an attack roll and potential defense. It's easy to waste time and FP building up a massive missile only to have the opponent dodge. Explosive Fireball can help in this situation because you can target a spot on the floor (at +4 to hit) in which case the target will almost certainly be caught in the explosion.

That, and basic tactics. My wife's mage has been throwing Ice Spheres for nearly twenty years now, and her reaction to one of those "GURPS Missile spells suck because of defense rolls!!" was that the OP should have someone make a Tactics roll and then have the GM explain pretty please about elemental battle tactics. Such as "You don't throw a missile spell at a prepared target with a shield who is looking right at you."

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Taneli

When you stop taking consecutive Concentrates and take some other maneuver, you no longer have an option to increase the size of the missile on your following turns.

B240's "The turn after that, you have the same options" doesn't seem to say that.

Basically there's two opportunities to do an "enlarge" - the 2nd and 3rd second when the 1st was used to create the missile.

If you skip enlargement on second 2, it seems like you could still do it on second 3, but for some reason the window closest to enlarge by second 4.

Not entirely sure why, or how the "Continuous Ritual" perk from Magical Styles might possibly be able to change it.

Originally Posted by Witchking

If you are using a missile spell (in this example Fireball) it is a two stage process.

1- You are building the spell. You can continue to build next round. At any point you can just stop casting the spell any energy put into it is lost however the spell is ended with no additional cost.

2- The spell is the desired strength, stop building and immediately roll to cast (for a 1-3 pt Missile for a Mage with Magery/3 this would be at the end of first round of casting). Roll the Dice Critical/Non-critical Success/Failure all happens immediately. (Assuming some degree of success) The spell is *cast*, the process is over. You are now holding a Fireball of strength X.

I don't think that's how it works in 4E, B240 says "concentrate for one second. At the end of your turn, roll against your skill" so the skill roll is always made at the end of the first second.

You always put at least 1 energy into the spell and it always appears in your hand.

About the only exception I could see existing for that might be if you used Ceremonial Casting, then it might take 10 seconds to make the missile appear.

Where it seems to differ from normal spells (1 energy is lost on a normal failure, full energy is lost on a critical failure) is for missile spells you only spend energy on successful spellcasting.

- -

It's of course a bit unclear how that works for critical successes - can you just keep rerolling until you get one and then choose to spend the free energy for max results?

Originally Posted by gmillerd

It's not clear in the RAW, how cancelling a held spell works.
It's not a duration spell so the 1 cost doesn't seem really fair to some people. But you are literally summoning / conjuring a fire fire missile in your hand.

B241 Dissipating Held Melee and Missile Spells "You can do this as a free action at any
point during your turn; simply state that you are dissipating the spell and it “evaporates” harmlessly"

Doesn't even sound like it takes the usual 1-cost but I like the idea of requiring it, missile spells seem to get too many weird perks compared to other spells.

I'd like to see if someone wanted to dispel their fireball w/o spending 1 energy to have to get creative like cast Extinguish Fire, or cast Resist Fire on something and then throw it at that thing.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by gmillerd

It's not clear in the RAW, how cancelling a held spell works. It's not a duration spell so the 1 cost doesn't seem really fair to some people. But you are literally summoning / conjuring a fire fire missile in your hand.

You cancel a held missile spell the same way that people used to empty a musket - point it somewhere 'safe' and fire, or more likely you just let the thing fade out (M14).

Originally Posted by Plane

Doesn't even sound like it takes the usual 1-cost but I like the idea of requiring it, missile spells seem to get too many weird perks compared to other spells.

That's in return for being slow, especially if powerful, and requiring two rolls to create and land. Because they're a direct damage ranged combat spell, it's more correct to compare them to things like bows than to other spells when considering their function. Even with them being safe to discard, and able to be held indefinitely, they aren't all that compared to bows and crossbows. Bows have a similar rate of fire (faster if the archer is a specialist, especially if allowed cinematic options), but cost no FP and have vastly more range. Crossbows do enough damage that a comparable missile spell will almost certainly cost energy, have vastly more range, and are more accurate, but fire more slowly.

As it stands for most mages missile spells are a self-defence weapon (i.e. something that's not as effective as you'd like, but better than nothing), or something reserved for making huge 'alpha strikes' on enemies that are too tough for more normal levels of damage. Unless you're finding them abusive in your games I don't think missile spells deserve more annoyances in their use or nerfs.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That's in return for being slow, especially if powerful, and requiring two rolls to create and land.

Other stuff like Flame Jet (M73 regular) works that way, an IQ-based roll to activate jet, a DX-based Innate Attack to target it.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Rupert

As it stands for most mages missile spells are a self-defence weapon (i.e. something that's not as effective as you'd like, but better than nothing), or something reserved for making huge 'alpha strikes' on enemies that are too tough for more normal levels of damage.

They're also handy for setting fire to things - although Body of Fire is great for that - and for shock value if you happen to be somewhere that they aren't expected.

[Plane]

Also great hosts for that energy orb perk.

Someone seriously explain to me how crit-failing a missile or melee spell roll is supposed to work though, if you don't actually choose how much energy to invest until AFTER making the skill roll... is there a minimum investment of 1 or something? It doesn't say that but it's all that makes sense to me.

The other kinds of spells I think you choose your intended energy investment before making the roll. Yeah you technically don't find out how much you spend until after the roll (info spells aside that's full if critfail or normal success, 0 if crit success, 1 if failure) but I think you still slate your intended effect before rolling.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

Also great hosts for that energy orb perk.

Someone seriously explain to me how crit-failing a missile or melee spell roll is supposed to work though, if you don't actually choose how much energy to invest until AFTER making the skill roll... is there a minimum investment of 1 or something? It doesn't say that but it's all that makes sense to me.

I don't think it's stated, but I'd assume a minimum investment of one point (which might cost you nothing due to skill, of course). In the event of a critical failure I'd probably charge magery in energy, less skill reductions, unless the player had firmly stated before rolling that they were intending to make a smaller missile and not charge it. Yes, that means being more powerful makes your fumbles hurt more. Get over it.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Rupert

In the event of a critical failure I'd probably charge magery in energy, less skill reductions, unless the player had firmly stated before rolling that they were intending to make a smaller missile and not charge it. Yes, that means being more powerful makes your fumbles hurt more. Get over it.

Might be better to just make it mandatory to declare what your initial investment will be prior to rolling.

[StevenH]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

"You don't throw a missile spell at a prepared target with a shield who is looking right at you."

Good advice. Analogous to "Don't attack the armor. Attack around it, find chinks, or attack the parts with less armor on them."

[Plane]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

That, and basic tactics. My wife's mage has been throwing Ice Spheres for nearly twenty years now, and her reaction to one of those "GURPS Missile spells suck because of defense rolls!!" was that the OP should have someone make a Tactics roll and then have the GM explain pretty please about elemental battle tactics. Such as "You don't throw a missile spell at a prepared target with a shield who is looking right at you."

Stuff like 'Damage to Shields' could also make blocking missile spells dangerous, especially if it's a wooden shield and you're blocking a fireball since that would have risk of setting it on fire.

For something like ice sphere which 'vanishes out a gout of water' and can put out fires, I could also see stuff like maybe the water pools on the ground and the shield user might slip on it.