By Garry Handelman.
You may not take the Astral schtick unless you already have Divinitation, Fertility and Dimensionality.
A backlash on an Astral effect results in the delivery of 35 wound points to the caster, not reduced by toughness.
Astral effects deal directly with the degree of magical energy in an area, and are extremely potent. This schtick is primarily intended as something for bad guys to lord over PCs.
Whenever you use a magical effect of duration other than instant, you may spend three magic points to make the effect permanent. You must opt to do this before you roll any dice. If you fail, there is an automatic backlash (not astral backlash- backlash on the effect you are using). The countermagic effect disenchant is the only way to remove a magical effect made permanent with this effect.
Lets you step out of your body and walk your soul around. Your soul is just like you, except that it has:
Toughness +10, the creature powers of flight and insubstantiality, and ten times your movement.
And any damage dealt by your soul, even with guns, magic or other weapons your soul is wielding, is reduced to 0, but people you damage will still think they are damaged until they have about a minute to uninteruptedly think about it. Damage dealt to your soul counts and appears on your physical person, as if by magic. Your soul can produce clothes and other devices out of thin air (including guns), but they dissolve into astral mist when they leave contact with your person. Trancend the Flesh only works at all in areas with a magic action value modifer of +0 or more favorable, if you attempt to depart such an area for an area with a less favorable modifier you die instantly.
At the end of each hour you remain outside your body, you lose 1 magic point. If your magic points drop below 0, you die. If you have trouble getting back to your body.... well, see you don't have trouble.
If you use this ability in an area with a magic action value modifer of -1 or worse, you must spend magic points equal to the absolute value of the present modifier to use it. Roll a sorcery test with a difficulty of 15. For the next (outcome) days in an area around you of radius (outcome x 10) meters, the sorcery action value modifier is increased by the outcome.
Can only be used in a feng shui site to which you are not attuned. This effect costs 3 magic points to use. The difficulty is ten plus five times the number of people attuned to the feng shui site. If this effect is successful, the Feng Shui site no longer generates any benefits, and cannot be restored by any means except for the disenchant effect of the countermagic magic schtick.
Last modified: June 14, 1996; please send comments to durrell@innocence.com.