Resisting magic

[jabba]

On pg30 ( and more most likely) of the magic book Beast link is not resisted, is this right? i mean you are casting a spell on a beast and there is no contest. is not that a little extreem?

[Dustin]

If I was the animal involved, yeah, I'd try and wheedle a Resistance roll out of the GM :) However, for many typical uses of the spell (keeping a mount or animal messenger nearby), it's not worth going through the rigamarole.

If this violates your sense of how 'the physics of magic' works, then make it Resisted for your games.

[malloyd]

So you can cast it on an animal you are already able to get pretty close to (Regular spell), and that won't run away from you when you stand there babbling and waving your arms for the 5 second casting time, and then summon it back close to you later. Once. With no other controls on its behavior as (or after) it closes. Seems to have pretty limited abuse potential to me.

[Anaraxes]

And it counts as a spell on until you use the call, and there's no ill effects if the spell fails.

Beast-Soother and Beast-Rouser also aren't resisted, and they do affect the animal.

Analogous spells in the Mind Control college do have resistance rolls, and the "control"-type spells in the Animal college have resistance. But most Animal spells simply do not.

I suspect the idea is just that true animals will mostly be losing contests of IQ with mages, so there's little point in requiring the roll. The stereotypical GURPS mage with IQ 14, Magery 3, and base spell skill 15 will have a +10 advantage going into the contest against an IQ 5 animal. If I've done the math right, there is in fact only a 1% chance the animal will win the contest. There's a 4.63% chance the spell just fails. So, including the resistance roll bumps the animal up to a 5.63% chance to not be affected. This is less of a difference even than giving the mage a -1 penalty to the skill roll for being one hex further. Feel free to add a resistance roll; just don't expect it often to matter.