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sleekjag wrote:The description for this spell is a bit confusing. Was wondering how it worked. I took it as taking 2 actions to set up then the person could blast the spell everytime they wanted to use a combat action til it ran out. But the mage of the group didn't think that was how it worked she thought it worked like she could do multiple attacks each combat action with it. I stuck with my view on how it worked and she wasn't happy with that ruling but got over it after a bit of argument. Anyway i was wondering if i am correct in how it works.

You were close to being right. It only takes ONE action to set up. Casting times have been changed in Rifts Ultimate Edition. All spells level 1-5 only take one turn to cast. So you spend one turn casting the spell, then each turn after that you can throw a lightning bolt with it for as long as the spell lasts.

The confusing bit about having one for each melee attack/action is to show how it works if you want to do something other than throw lightning. It's not that you are limited to throwing lightning. So if you have, say, 5 attacks per melee, you can throw lightning on each of those attacks. Or you could do something else, like cast another low-level spell, you can't use it more than once a turn. So if you have 5 lightning bolts a turn, but you spend 3 actions doing something else, then you only get to use 2 of them, but hte duration dosn't increase on the spell.