Things that make up the unfocus penalty:

Fatige, 1 per bonus (alternately, just make that 1 strain/lvl/bonus, eliminating the whole "straining" limitation entirely?)

Distance is no longer meaningful if things are just LoS.  Touching or eye contact may still convey a bonus...say 1 for eye contact, +2 for touch?

Location:  calmed astral space may provide bonuses (these might be negated by people using Mana Static).  +1 for a swiftly prepaired space (takes 1d6 minutes, uses common supplies), +2 for a steady space (kept for a week or more, requires some maintinance), +3 for places kept over 20 years (religious sights, often, for this an above).  +4 for 50 year old sites, +5 for 100, +6 for 500, +7 for thousands.  This is not something you can use on the street.

Materials:  mosly variable for divinations and summonings, things that effect things that are not here normally.  +1 to +3 for increasingly good materials, having the person present in your line of sight is +4.

Symbols:  magical emblems of the spells you use help focus...often, sybols are general enough to cover a power, somtimes two or more.  Up to +3.

Rituals:  spoken ritual is +1, jesture is +1, doing both obviouslt is +3, huge elaborate obvious stuff (usually takes more than a second) is +4.

Concentration Time: +0 for 1 second of concentration, +1 for 2 seconds, +2 for 4 seconds, +3 for 8 seconds, +4 for 15 seconds, +5 for 30 seconds concentration.  This is not something you can use in a firefight.

Preparation Time:  you may prep one (?) spell as much beforehand as you like.  All castings of that spell recieve the bonus until...another spell is used?  ...the next sunchange?  ...the next day (2 sunchanges)?  I actually kinda like this one, and it might be worthwhile to play it up more, even allowing multiple spells to be prepped at the begining of the day for use throughout...many mages, I'd expect, would then awaken at dawn, prep a few commonly-used spells as part of their morning ritual, and then have them to use until the next dawn.  (some of us had been playing this as "the next casting," but looking at some of the bonuses, that's just ridiculous.)  At any rate, the bonuses:  One Minute is +2, 10 minutes is +3, an hour is +4, 8 hours is +5.  (another possible unit of evaporation is "the next time you sleep."  This makes getting woken up in the middle of the night suck hard for a mage, which isn't entirely unreasonable.  Also, mages doing magicky stuff as part of their morning ritual just makes them that much wierder, which I like).

Actually...how muh is Costs Fatigue?  Limiting options makes things more limiting (not at the level we're at, especially if the new understanding of prep can help make up for the loss of distance bonuses), but say, requiring sybols or taking the penalty...would that be a 10% limitation?  This may have been answered for kat's SR character, if she had unfocus that could only be dealt with through singing.

Also note that if touch or eye contact is required, it's uncertain whether the unfocus bonus for those also applies.  According to the Pyramid article, it doesn't, which is reasonable, but the issue should be raised.



So, you'd done your standard 10 minute prep on your useful combat spell this morning.  When using it against an opponent who jumps you on the street, you're at +4 for Materials, +3 for obviously casting "I smite you now," +1 or 2 for symbols (you're a mage, you carry them with you always...the disadvantage of which is that other people may be able to use them on you too, like the penalty to magic resistance from old SR fetishes), and +3 for your 10 minute prep this morning, for a total of +11 or 12.  Take some strain to pump that up to 12 to 14.  If you hadn't prepped it this morning, you'd be at +9 or +11, but if you could make eye contact, you get a +1....15 levels of unfocus and one of straining seems reasonable for a net -80% (i.e. 1 point/lvl for most powers, 2 points/lvl for Spirit).

Let's see..if you're anticipating an attack at home, you're ritual space provides +2, you'll porbably have prepped some things for an hour (+4), you'll expect them to be there (+4), cast obviously (+3), have your symbols (+1 or +2, remember they deduct from your resistance), for a total of +14 or 15, so you're not taking much strain/fatigue at all...about half what you normally would.Extra seconds are hard to come by, but one could elimintate the penalties.

Of course, if you're astral...I think that you should be able to "touch" people not protected by an astral shield, you may or may not be able to cart along or find symbols, you can't gesture or speak...but you'll generally have more time to concentrate.


So..let's say the standard package on a power is -75% unfocussed (which strain can make up), and -5% for Straining.  If strain is nastier than 1/10th fatigue, then modify the numbers accordingly.

Things to note:  if you do have to buy off that -75% unfocussed for "reflexive" skills at, say, a -1 penalty for -15%, then lots of things get very hard, like, for example, Astral Shield (the magic resistance power).  It's supposed to be transferable, too, so you can't exactly take it with "self only."  On, no, wait...it's a flat effect, skill only controls it's switching states.  So unfocus does work, and it takes effort and energy to dole it out, but then it just acts as a penalty to all magic rolls against you (at what, -1 per 2 levels of power?  Much of the telepathy stuff involved rolling against Power + Skill, but I don't think we want to do that for most mage powers, so a -1 per level of power is just hideous.  -1/2 might also be hidious, -1/3 round up is probably more reasonable...depends on people's power levels, which I expect to be in the 3 to 12 range...mightl also make that particular facet dependant on the sum of Magic and Astral Shield Power, so that power changing doesn't skew it so much (say, Power + Magic/5...also makes doling it out limited...you have to hold onto two points yourself...hmm...need to tinker with this.)