FASA Games, Inc.

2nd Circle Nethermancer spell "Ethereal Darkness" creates an area of darkness impenetrable by sight and light to anyone but other Nethermancers. How can one target a character inside this sphere without super-sensitive senses other than sight? This is approximately 10 yds. diameter area, covering several hexes on the mat. I do realize that attempting to attack a creature inside this area will impose a -5 penalty (for total darkness), but the first problem is - how to FIND the target? How to determine exactly which hex it occupies? Or maybe it is irrelevant and we should just assume that the target is always findable and try to hit it with the -5 modifier? And is it still only -5 for archers/throwers trying to hit from a distance?

Cheers
S.

The -5 essentially represents guessing someone's position.
Note others can usually hear you, unless you try to be silent (that'd be Silent Walk and a PER Test, modified by Perception Modifiers, as appropriate, then).
Doesn't matter if you're shooting or hacking away.
Casting needs actual line of sight, though, unless you're in touch range

Thanks a lot.

S.

So what happens if you look at the caster with Astral SIght? Non living objects and mundane darkness don't exist so do you see their pattern so no negative? Or because its magical darkness and you can't see through magical barriers unless you get an excellant result (I think) they are still obscured and still a -5?

Ethereal Darkness is a spell effect, and so has a "living" presence in astral space. Since the purpose of the spell is to obscure vision, I would say that it does obscure attempts to use astral sensing methods as well.

The description of Ethereal Darkness in the v4 Players Guide notes that it "extinguishes all light, causing those withing the area to suffer a Full Darkness penalty..." It also says "no normal light can penetrate". But Astral Sensing doesn't use light, does it? The descriptions of astral sensing note that one sees objects by the light of their patterns themselves. Spells with area effects are described as clouds that mark the same area of the spell effect, so I would contend that if someone burns the Strain and activates Astral Sight (or someone travelling astrally) would see the cloud of Nethermancer spell, but see anything inside it as they normally would (active patterns like Namegivers or other spells would be bright and clearly defined, less active patterns like normal ground, weapons, walls, etc) would be dim. This would be in line with the way that Astral Sensing can be used to see mystical traps and other magically hidden things.

There are no set rules that describe one Pattern obscuring another or if one is inside another. What do you do when the magical MacGuffin is inside the magical chest of MacGuffin hiding? Or a character is inside a dragon?

The obvious answer is that each group decides that on their own, sometimes ruling differently due to nuances of the situation (as with the MacGuffin hider vs. the Player-eating dragon).

As a general rule (which could be used to create the MacGuffin hider), I'd argue you have to first sense the obstructing Astral Pattern, beating its sensing difficulty. For the Etherial Darkness spell, that's the dispel difficulty (11). If you get a 10, you sense nothing. An 11 allows you to sense anything inside its AOE that is 11 or lower.

This gives people a chance to overcome it while still retaining the spirit of the spell. As well, it sets up a general way to operate should future situations arise that are similar.

There was a function like this in the early edition magic/astral-sensing rules. The example of a magical mcguffin inside a magical box was, I think, the example used. This seems to have been cut out of the 4th edition, probably to simplify the introduction of ED's metaphysics for new players. Maybe a discussion for the Companion material? (oooh, ninja'd)