Sorcery: Machine Spells III

Sorcery: Machine Spells III

There are only 3 machine spells left. Animate Machine lets you summon a spirit to possess a machine. Schematic creates a mental blueprint of a machine. Rebuild rebuilds an object from a fragment.

Animate Machine

Keywords: Resisted (Will).

Full Cost: 53 points.

Casting Roll: IQ.

Range: Unlimited.

Duration: 3 minutes.

You can summon a spirit to possess and control a machine you can see or touch. To use this ability, concentrate for one second and then roll a Quick Contest: your IQ vs. your subject’s Will, applying the range penalties to the subject (p. B550).

If you win, your animated machine will obey your every command for 3 minutes. In effect, it temporarily gains the Reprogrammable disadvantage (B150), with you as his master. You do not have to maintain concentration to control the machine.

If you attempt to force the subject to act against its principles (e.g., commit suicide or harm a loved one), roll another Quick Contest. If the machine wins, it breaks free. Roll at the moment of truth – you can march it to the edge of a cliff, but it doesn’t roll until it’s about to leap.

If you lose, you cannot attempt to control that subject again for 24 hours, and he feels a sense of mental coercion emanating from you.

Statistics: Mind Control (Cybernetic Only, -50%; Fixed Duration, +0%; Independent, +70%; Sorcery, -15%) [53].

Rebuild

Keywords: None.

Full Cost: 57 points for level 1 + 36 points/level.

Casting Roll: IQ. Additional skill rolls are required.

Range: Touch.

Duration: 10 seconds or permanent; see text.

This spell totally rebuilds any object, from even a fragment. The caster must first successfully cast Schematic on the subject, and, while the schematic is still in mind, begin casting Rebuild. Schematic is unnecessary for simpler objects. With enough time and skill, you could rebuild a starship from a scrap of bulkhead!

The object re-forms at a rate of 500 pounds of missing mass per second, beginning after the casting is completed. Exotic materials may inflict a skill penalty or slow the rebuilding process. You can only rebuild anything, if you have the appropriate skill to do so normally. Thus, you will need many different skills to rebuild a starship for a piece of it’s hull!

On objects simpler than machines, ignore the TL modifiers. Magic items cannot be rebuilt.

The rebuilt object can weigh up to 10 x (level squared) lbs. – 10 lbs. at level 1, 40 lbs. at level 2, 90 lbs. at level 3, and so on.

Rebuilt object is unstable. Its magically created parts vanish in 10 seconds unless you use character points to “stabilize” it. Each point spent stabilizes a quantity worth 10% of the campaign’s average starting wealth. (This is just the tradeoff used for Trading Points for Money, p. B26.) The GM determines the cash value per pound of matter.

Points spent to stabilize matter come from your “Creation Pool,” a number of points set aside for the purpose. You can’t apply any modifiers to these points. Points used to stabilize matter are unavailable until reclaimed – which causes the matter to vanish. If the matter is crafted into an object, the item is unmade when the matter vanishes. If the matter is mixed with other materials (e.g., alloyed), you must separate it to reclaim your points; this can be a tedious process. If it’s destroyed (e.g., melts naturally) or transformed (e.g., eaten), you can’t reclaim your points – they’re gone. You can increase your Creation Pool with unspent points at any time.

Statistics: Control Solids 1 (Accessibility, Only to rebuild an object from a piece, -30%; Link, +10%; Magical, -10%) [21] + Create Solids (Accessibility, Only to rebuild an object from a piece, -30%; Link, +10%; Magical, -10%; Reduced Fatigue Cost 1, +20%) [36/level].

Schematic

Keywords: Information.

Full Cost: 5 points.

Casting Roll: IQ.

Range: Touch.

Duration: 10 minutes.

Creates detailed technical “blueprints” of the machine subject in the caster’s mind. The caster can browse through the mental schematic at his leisure or the same rate that he could examine actual hardcopy plans for the machine. However, this spell grants no appropriate skills to interpret it.

On a success, you create the blueprint. On a failure, you do not create anything, and cannot attempt to create a blueprint of that machine again for 24 hours.

The duration is the length of time that the image stays with any useful clarity in the caster’s mind. The schematic can either represent the current state of the object, or the ideal state of the object, at the caster’s discretion. Both can be useful. The latter use even gives plans for an object based only on a tiny fraction of it (at least 5% of the machine’s total mass needs to be present).

Statistics: Psychometry (Accessibility, Machines Only, -20%; Accessibility, Only to create a schematic, -20%; Active Only, -20%; Can create an ideal-state schematic, +20%; Maximum Duration, 10 minutes, -50%; Sensitive, +30%; Sorcery, -15%) [5].