Topic: Spell Enhancement, Spell Mastery, Spells from Items, and Haste

[doktorjoy]

I'm sure these questions must have popped up before, but I couldn't find them when searching, so here goes:

1/ If a character uses an item to cast a spell, can they use Spell Enhancement beforehand to alter the effect of the spell from the item?

2/ Likewise, can they use Spell Mastery, if they have a skill in Spell Mastery for the list the item spell effect is from? Example, they use a Wand of Fire Bolts to cast a Fire Bolt - can they also use Spell Enhancement and/or Spell Mastery to then increase range, damage, etc. of the resulting Fire Bolt?

3/ Can Haste spells be affected by the various Extension spells from Spell Enhancement? It seems clear that Haste I *can* be. But, Extension spells only affect spells with a set duration (and the rulebooks explicitly rule out 'concentration' and 'instantaneous'). Haste I has a set duration (1 round). Haste II and up have 'varies' as duration, so, can they be affected by Extension or not? - There is no clear ruling that I can find.

4/ Why am I asking all this. Well, after many years of adventuring, the group's Magician is now expert enough in Rapid Ways and Spell Enhancement to cast 100 rounds of Haste or even more. And he has an item that casts Haste X Daily I - so if he spell masters and spell enhances spells from that item, he can manage over 200 rounds of Haste across 10 targets. If he uses Greater Extension, then technically he can give 10 targets 12 hours of haste. The entire PC group go into most major combats effectively with haste-for-the-duration.

Yeah I know as the GM I can simply say "nope - I'm not having that", but a clear ruling would be useful (if, for example, Extension spells *don't* work on 'varies' duration spells).

[gog]

These are my views:

For q1&2: the answer would be No. They are casting "pre-cast" spells with the items, but would allow Spell Enhancement and Spell Mastery to be used during item creation.

As for q3 and q4, not sure

[tbigness]

As a GM myself the answer would be no as there are precast ready spells.

[jdale]

For #3, personally I would say yes. The Haste spells do have a fixed duration, it just says "varies" because you can split it between targets, but the duration is fixed for X number of targets.

Some options for limiting what the characters can do include dispelling their haste and running more combats without recovery time between them (or at least multiple combats per day). Also, if your characters are at the level where this sort of thing is possible, their foes probably are too.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

1) "Spell enhancement" spells has a range of self. In this case, spells being cast by the item, they won't be affected by "Spell enhancement" spells that would only affect spells cast by the caster himself,

2) See above. Spell mastery is for spells one casts oneself, not cast by others, so it'd exclude spells cast by an item.

3) Why not? However, remember that being hasted also makes one's body evolves faster. In other words, someone who spends half of everyday being hasted grow old 1.5 faster (for each 24 passing hours, he grows old by 36 hours).
Also, as suggested by RoCo III, with the stress criticals, "a common example is the use of Speed or Haste spells or herbs; a GM may apply a Stress critical after an extended period of Speed/Haste". So people are free to abuse such spells, as long as they're willing to deal with the stressful effects that comes along. Not to mention the effect on people around them as they speak twice faster (so I doubt any shopkeeper would want to talk to them for long) and they hear everyone around them as speaking twice slower and see them acting twice slower (which justifies probably the stress critical since, well, it'd be annoying very fast).