Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Selentin on <12-21-15/0906:25>
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So I have a mage that, for various background reasons, isn't very adept when it comes to the physical realm (e.g., low physical attributes and skills). Probably not terribly unusual for a mage, but...the entire rest of our group are stealth monkeys (the lowest rating among them being an eight).
I'd thought that I could keep up with spells (e.g., invis), but every run we've been on so far, there's been something with eyes on the astral, so they pretty much auto-notice my character if I've put up any spells (and if I don't, my rolls in the meat world are so heinous that I'm pretty much auto-notice there anyway, since the opposition understandably has perception skills that might challenge the rest of the group).
I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do; the rules AFAIK don't provide me with any options. Unfortunately the players didn't make characters together, so we hadn't discussed a consensus approach; we just ended up like this. At this point I'm considering just telling the GM I'm going to retire this character and try again, this time conforming to the stealth-type approach our group have accidentally settled on. (Note we'd pretty much agreed beforehand that Mage/Decker PCs aren't going to use the "phone it in" approach where they hide someplace far away and just jot in via matrix/astral to do their part if there are specific problems in those realms).
Am I missing any rules/opportunities that a low-stealth mage could rely on given astral eyes are so common on our missions?
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There are quite a few ways to do this:
Get a chameleon suit w/ Thermal dampening and a ruthenium polymer poncho.
Teamwork checks help to raise your limit and give you bonus dice (sneaking might take longer that way)
Use drugs for improved agility and detox afterwards. There is even a BTL chip for would be cat burglars - get a hot sim enabled commlink and a trode net to slot one of those (preferably one that doesn't burn out) as a mage you should be able to withstand the compulsions and the addiction.
Initiate and learn the masking technique + a decent metamagic focus.
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Besides all that Jack Spade mentioned, there is another option -- although it is painful for a mage to put karma anywhere other than magic -- buy up your agility and stealth. If they are low now, the cost won't be too brutal.
To make it a little more palatable, look at it this way: at character creation it pays to focus on building your strengths, so pretty much everyone has weaknesses in one form or another, which they need to address once play starts. Sometimes you can live with a certain weakness and let the team cover you on that front, but sometimes not so much.
In the shorter term, spirit concealment power can help a lot, when you can get away with using it.
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Also, GM might want to consider whether always breaking your concealment spells is a fair way to treat you as a player.
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Thanks for the suggestions so far.
Get a chameleon suit w/ Thermal dampening and a ruthenium polymer poncho.
Teamwork checks help to raise your limit and give you bonus dice (sneaking might take longer that way)
Valid one; I'd actually been eyeballing this already and thinking it was probably necessary as long as I could find additional methods.
Use drugs for improved agility and detox afterwards. There is even a BTL chip for would be cat burglars - get a hot sim enabled commlink and a trode net to slot one of those (preferably one that doesn't burn out) as a mage you should be able to withstand the compulsions and the addiction.
I had considered this; while viable as a suggestion, neither are really "in character" for my mage to engage in.
Initiate and learn the masking technique + a decent metamagic focus.
Maybe I've misread masking. I know it can help conceal foci, but are you saying this can also conceal that you have a spell active? Or are you saying that, given casting invisibility isn't going to be an option, this is an important step combined with many others to get concealed?
Besides all that Jack Spade mentioned, there is another option -- although it is painful for a mage to put karma anywhere other than magic -- buy up your agility and stealth. If they are low now, the cost won't be too brutal.
This is true; but, to match the lowest sneak of the group (the others are much higher) would cost me 67 karma. This is a ways off - my mage has spent almost his whole life up until three sessions ago as an academic at MIT&T, leading a cushy life, until a serious of unfortunate events essentially destroyed his ability to get respectable work of any kind. His agility and sneak are as low as they can be. :)
In the shorter term, spirit concealment power can help a lot, when you can get away with using it.
Doesn't this suffer from the same limitations WRT astral watchers as with casting invis on myself? As I understand it, concealment is basically just a physical power that will show as very obviously active in astral space.
Also, GM might want to consider whether always breaking your concealment spells is a fair way to treat you as a player.
I dunno. Our GM knows SR pretty well, and the interpretation is that if you have active spells, then you pretty much glow like a lightbulb to anyone with astral vision. I'm just surprised that spirits, dual-natured guardians, etc, are so common as to make concealment spells dubiously useful to a runner.
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Also, GM might want to consider whether always breaking your concealment spells is a fair way to treat you as a player.
I dunno. Our GM knows SR pretty well, and the interpretation is that if you have active spells, then you pretty much glow like a lightbulb to anyone with astral vision. I'm just surprised that spirits, dual-natured guardians, etc, are so common as to make concealment spells dubiously useful to a runner.
I suspect a lot of it is that people have different views of how things work in the Universe. For example, my previous GM took the view that everyone would always run every matrix device silent, so my Decker tended to stick to guns rather than trying to do anything matrix a lot of the time. However, I'm tending to play things in the "lowest cost bidder" approach. Most people just bought their kit, or were issued it, and skim read the manual. Most corps want to keep track of their kit, so don't want it running silent.
Mages are rare, therefore expensive, therefore only used for high value targets. Some runs are against such targets, others aren't. Even when they are, is your Mage paid well enough to be constantly on alert, constantly looking at the place you happen to be, without ever getting bored or going to the toilet? My preferred hard targets are behind impenetrable defenses that become penetrable due to human failings. Maybe there are things you can do to find out where the astral oversight is, and what they are looking for ? Maybe you can arrange a diversion that will distract him long enough for you to sneak in.
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Another thing to keep in mind is you can still stealth against Astrally perceiving targets. Cast Invisibility and whatever other sneaky spells you need, then avoid the spirits/spells that are on watch while basically ignoring the mundane problems you've negated with magic. It still requires you to raise your Agility and Stealth, but at least keeps you in play.
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Also, GM might want to consider whether always breaking your concealment spells is a fair way to treat you as a player.
This. Have an OOC conversation. Lots of places have justifiable astral overwatch, but not all of them. Even places that do should have astral guard patrols or holes. And the astral is not just the mage trying to get in. The astral is overwhelming full of silhouettes, images, and mundane object bleed-over from the material. If the GM is playing it like you're the only hotspot on the astral for a whole corporate building, besides the security wagemage, he's Doing It Wrong.
Also you can do stuff like cast Improved Invis at Force 1 with reagents, which IIRC makes it much harder to spot even with Assensing, while not affecting its ability to work against mundanes noticing magic or seeing through the illusion.
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Make a new character. Your magician has been taking jobs for which he is ill suited. You're lucky that you aren't dead yet. If you try to find a way to be half assed at something, that will get you killed.
Basically, find a character that suits the jobs you're getting or find jobs that suit your character.
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Invisibility "affects the minds of viewers," so at my table it works against astral detection. Yes, it's possible to quibble about astral perception vs. single-sense spells, but it gives players a clear choice between Invisibility (good vs. magic) and Improved Invisibility (good vs. tech).
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Invisibility "affects the minds of viewers," so at my table it works against astral detection. Yes, it's possible to quibble about astral perception vs. single-sense spells, but it gives players a clear choice between Invisibility (good vs. magic) and Improved Invisibility (good vs. tech).
Frag me like a goat. That has NEVER occured to me. :o
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Stealth also works on the astral as do LOS. It would require you to use astral perception though but it should be possible to hide within the plane. I believe there is an option under masking (or a separate meta technique) that allows you to hide the auras of spells and foci under masking.
Also as mentioned the spirit power concealment doesn't work since it is Physical but as Mentioned below an invisibility spell cast in astral space should
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Make a new character. Your magician has been taking jobs for which he is ill suited. You're lucky that you aren't dead yet. If you try to find a way to be half assed at something, that will get you killed.
Basically, find a character that suits the jobs you're getting or find jobs that suit your character.
I am assuming that the GM approved this character for their game. At that point, it's on the GM to accommodate what they players bring to the table, not 100% (it's a common trope where you get hired for a job and realize you may have more trouble delivering than normal, and have to get creative), but enough so the player doesn't feel like a chump for building the character they wanted to play.
If the GM is constantly shutting down your abilities when they approved your sheet, and not giving you time to shine in your niche or with what you got, that's on the GM and not the player.
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"This spell makes the subject more difficult to detect by normal visual senses (including low-light, thermographic, and other senses that rely on the visual spectrum).
The subject is completely tangible and detectable by the other senses (hearing, smell, touch, and even taste, if it somehow comes to that). Her aura is still visible
to astral perception."
So would Kincaid's comment be houserule territory? Don't read this as argumentative. This is disussion, not debate. I'm playing a mage, and I'm teaching our GM as we go, so it is important that I understand because he pretty much goes with how I explain it. I've wondered about astral stealth before. The way we play right now is that avoiding LOS is the only way (moving behind things, watch for when they are looking the other way, etc.
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Also, this is why skill priority is so important for a mage. Unless you just take spellcasting and your other runner skills (perception, sneak, at least one social skill like negotiate, con or intimidate), you are going to need skills at B, definitely not lower than C. Even with an Agility of 2, and 6 points in sneak with an Urban specialization, you have 10 dice for sneaking. Add in the tech toys and you're doing pretty well. Ask him for a retcon and rework some part of your character. My mages don't start with a bunch of foci because I can't bring myself to create without using ABC priorities for Magic/skill/attributes.
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It is a houserule, just to be clear. The problem with Invisibility/Improved Invisibility and mana/physical distinctions is that you use your brain to see in any event, eyes just relay the information, so the in-game distinctions don't really translate. Is there a separate part of the brain used for astral perception? Could I develop a single-sense spell that affects that part of your brain? All of this probably gets too weird and granular for most tables. The distinctions the game makes aren't accurate, but are pretty intuitive and easy to grasp for players, which is more important.
Also, I hate the "Force 2 Watcher, you lose" aspect of things and wanted to give my players a way around it.
Now, with all that said, a lot of the normal ways of getting around guards (misdirection, etc.) will work on someone astrally perceiving just as easily. And mage guards are expensive! Not very site is going to have one hanging around.
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Do you allow players to use the sneaking skill on the astral (as in Sneaking+Logic (astral agility) vs Assensing + Intuition)?
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Could Manascape or it's single target variant be of any help here?
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Yeah a sam can easily be Skills D-E and not miss much, but mages just generally need more stuff.
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Could Manascape or it's single target variant be of any help here?
I had a mage use this to change the astral images of the group (that was otherwise physically concealed) to that of insects. I love manascape. Also a handy way of confusing enemy spirits if you've had a chance to assess to evil mage's aura beforehand.
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I had a mage use this to change the astral images of the group (that was otherwise physically concealed) to that of insects.
That sounds like it could make the group even more KoS than they would otherwise be...
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I had a mage use this to change the astral images of the group (that was otherwise physically concealed) to that of insects.
That sounds like it could make the group even more KoS than they would otherwise be...
Hah! Good point. They were tiny insects (the spell makes it clear that you can just reshape, so I include size in there), but I'll keep that in mind if it comes up again.
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Initiate and learn the masking technique + a decent metamagic focus.
Maybe I've misread masking. I know it can help conceal foci, but are you saying this can also conceal that you have a spell active? Or are you saying that, given casting invisibility isn't going to be an option, this is an important step combined with many others to get concealed?
I should have been more specific: You need to learn Masking and Extended Masking (SG p. 149) to hide active spells.
Oh, and now with Rigger 5 out there is another way to sneak - albeit a pretty ridiculous one: Get a drone wheelchair - to be precise, get a Transys Steed. Upgrade the pilot rating to 4 and get an appropriate autosoft for sneaking (maybe even a junk build RCC to have the autosoft at 6)
Instantly 10 sneaking dice for the guy in the wheelchair.
Total cost:
Drone: 4000
Pilot: 3200
Autosoft 6: 3000
RCC: 1400
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Also, I hate the "Force 2 Watcher, you lose" aspect of things and wanted to give my players a way around it.
Really depends on the Watcher's (or Spirits) orders. "Report Every Astral thing you see" will result in a lot of false positives. Devil Rats are everywhere, there have to be things like Awakened Squirrels and Bats and Moles and whatnot. Plus you'd get genuine false positives as well. An alarm that generates multiple false positives every night is a worthless alarm.
"Attack every Astral thing you see" and essentially just wait for the Spirit or Watcher to go *POP* before you investigate is a little more common. Downsides, every time a mage comes to visit their foci and sustained spells will get punched until deactivated.
"Report every Mage or Sustained Spell you see." You're counting on the Spirit to get enough Assensing hits to tell the difference between a Spell and a Devil Rat.
Recall that Spirits/Watchers are deliberately stooopid when it comes to these kinds of orders so they deliberately play dumb and actually make poor guards without very specific orders. Plus they're fairly useless indoors because a Spirit will need to perform an Astral Perception action in each room and could be evaded by characters.
And a Force 1 or 2 Spirit has a decent chance of failing an Astral Perception check. AFB, but check the thresholds of what it takes to spot an active spell. If it's a small enough Spirit you may just be able to chance it.
All else fails a PC can use a Spirit to deduce what the astral patrols likely orders are and figure out an exploit. Or toss a sustained spell on a handy stray cat or pigeon.
Remember the patrolling spirit is between hostile and indifferent to it's orders. If the GM has a Patrol Spirit behaving like low rent mage that reacts intelligently and flexibly to the PCs, he's handicapping the PC mages considerably.
And Spirits are expensive over the long term. Reagents twice a day to bind them, pay a mage twice a day to summon/bind/order them, and then 24/7 Astral back up. Very expensive. Hellhounds or other awakened critters and wards should be far more common.
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Contrary to what others have said I think you're GM is doing it right, assuming you are constantly going up against high value targets (as previously pointed out lower value ones will not have astral scouts and magical backup).
Regardless for an astral scout to see you he must be in the same room/ have unobstructed line of sight.
So if you are moving around inside a building for example that astral scout cannot see through walls, but only within the walls of the room his astral form currently occupies.
Mundane walls, windows, cars etc will obstruct his vision just like anything else.
If I were you I would go with stealth/sneaking skill of one or two, ensure your agility is at least 2, invest in a chameleon suit or similar and you should end up with about 7 dice.
Assuming you start with zero sneak and 1 agility this will only cost you 16 karma.
A *very* worthwhile investment.
If you can't do the above I would go with Citizen Joe, you're a round peg trying to fit into a square hole.
Time to reroll your character, change your team's approach or discuss taking different missions.
As a point of reference in our game:
1). most magical guards encountered are dual-natured critters. Spirits are reserved for high value targets. Many places have nothing at all.
2). we have a couple support characters who have very poor stealth, they tend to hang back until their presence is warranted. They still have other things they can do while the two or three stealthy folks are sneaking around. Everyone DOES NOT have to be in the same dang room all the time, this ain't D&D!
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2). we have a couple support characters who have very poor stealth, they tend to hang back until their presence is warranted. They still have other things they can do while the two or three stealthy folks are sneaking around. Everyone DOES NOT have to be in the same dang room all the time, this ain't D&D!
Mage in the van with a Spirit on the leash is very handy. Also handy, biofiber pockets and command activated alchemist Preparations. Zip in from the Van Astrally and activate the spells in your team's pockets. Astral mage can still deal with Astral threats and provide counterspelling.
Mages can remote contribute pretty easily.
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Uh... Hobbes, spirits aren't stupid, or automatically pissed off they've been summoned. I mean, there's an entire index as to where you fall on the spirit social ladder, there's qualities that make some actively like you, etc. There's also spirits wrapped around human concepts like tasks, guardians, etc... So saying they're stupid, or only enforce the letter of the order, isn't all that accurate. There may be situations or circumstances that cause it, but not all the time.
You also don't need reagents twice a day to bind them. Once bound, they're bound until their services are up. If you give them the right kind of order, you can have some long-term service from them that they won't mind. If you have a mage on hand just summoning spirits every 12 hours to maintain a watch, there's no inherent cost besides the mage (who may already be on your payroll, you just add a duty to his roster).
Really, spirits can be summoned for relatively cheap costs as compared to acquiring, training and maintaining paracritters. I mean, as of Running Wild your average security grade paracritter (Hellhounds, Barghests, Fenrir Wolves) all go for above 10,000 nuyen untrained. Specialty critters like basilisks, chimeras, etc. are no less than 37,000 nuyen apiece. Licensing adds 20% to the base cost (if you want to legally have them and all). Increase the cost by 50% if you want them un-sterilized. Then 200 to 500 nuyen a month for food and their specialized needs. That doesn't cover training, or the chances of the paracritter doing something wrong (fire-proofing your Hellhound's kennel and wherever they're patrolling is a wise idea, no?). Awakened Critters should be rarer than spirits; all you need for that is a sack of reagents and a mage to do the work before going to their next task. That said, paracritters are much more dangerous if used properly (unless we're talking overly high-Force spirits, of course).
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Pretty sure there is a specific reference in the main book as to spirits negative attitudes to typical patrol or remote activities. I'll track it down when I can.
The reagents are cheap, the mage isn't. A full time security mage likely runs low six figures, and you need multiple mages for 24/7 coverage. A spirit all by itself isn't particularly useful if the mage that summoned it doesn't give a crap if it gets blown away. A corp has to pay for the mage's time one way or another. Mind you one mage can maintain multiple Spirits, however this is an asset and a liability.
Depending on the useful life of a paracritter, you're looking at 5k to 10k a year. You can literally have 10 to 20 hellhounds for what you're likely paying a security mage.
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They still have other things they can do while the two or three stealthy folks are sneaking around. Everyone DOES NOT have to be in the same dang room all the time, this ain't D&D!
Splitting the party can be a huge pain in the ass, but you're right, if say the decker is riding a signal and going through someone else's PAN to wired-hack a door, that could be very doable!
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You don't need dedicated security mages, though (and they should be extremely rare, as-is). Every full Magician can summon spirits, on top of Aspected Conjurers and the occasional Mystic Adept. You have all of your mages summon their allotment of spirits sans whatever they need for their daily duties. You have them all give the orders to guard wherever is needed. For the price of the wage-mages you're already paying, you have 1-8 spirits per mage.
On top of that, you don't need the mage to be on hand as a part of the security. They tell their spirit to warn someone on site when something bad happens, and they aren't even needed any further. Or, if they feel their spirit get disrupted, the wage-mage calls into the office and goes 'hey guys, something is happening, send in the goons.'
Those paracritters are going to take more than 5-10 grand a year. Besides the constant food costs (a single Hellhound takes 6,000 nuyen in food a year alone), there's also a Lifestyle requirement to support them (High Lifestyle for said Hellhound) and the upgrade of your building to not catch fire when they start getting rowdy (I don't know how much neo-asbestos linings cost, but that's only a part of it). There's also training fees, medical expenses and other issues to keep in mind. Oh, don't forget to pay (and insure, egads) the Hellhound handlers.
A Hellhound or two is cheaper than a dedicated wage-mage, sure. They're not nearly as effective at astral security, especially when you can have a bunch of spirits provide the same service while you already pay their summoner. They're an option, but not really the cost-effective one in this situation. And that is the biggest concern of the Megacorporation.
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meh, you buy the dog and keep it fed.
more likely you would lease the dog from a company that specializes in breeding and training them (not many megacorps would bother to have their own breeding and training programs).
you have to pay the wage-mage every year, considerably more.
Insurance is not relevant as you would have to ensure the property against the wage mage and his astral servants in the same way you would for the hellhound.
Para-critters are cheaper in every way.
Nowhere near as effective, but deffo cheaper.
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Hell, a normal dog is actually a pretty decent foil to sneaking characters/invisible character and much cheaper than the alternatives.
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The two Masking metamagics combined with Flexible signature pretty much can make you invisible on the Astral.
I was playing an Astral Mage with all three, Magic 8 and 5 Initiation. I spent most jobs sitting invisible in the Astral counterspelling and banishing while my real body was possessed by a high force bound spirit.
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Yes, you just have to 'buy the dog and kept it fed.' That's the premise behind getting any pet or work animal, is it not? The reality is different.
It costs a lot to feed them, for one (500 nuyen a month, 6,000 a year). You also have to pay the handlers, maintain the dogs' kennel (a High lifestyle), and do a myriad other things. Shit, you'll need a janitor in bunker gear to go in and clean up after them. There's medical expenses for these animals (which are Awakened and take more specialist care). You have to modify the building for what you know the animal will do. You have to deal with making sure the dogs are properly socialized and trained, or it will get a whole lot worse than when your wage-mage gets their leave denied. Insuring the building is different from having to cover insurance when one of these animals goes after someone; life insurance pay-outs are expensive, and you're less likely to have a spirit cause that kind of ruckus.
Paracritters are not cheaper than spirits. They're cheaper than dedicated security mages, sure. There's a difference between having spirits on hand and hiring a dedicated guard wage-mage. However, paracritters, when used properly, are extremely effective at what they do.
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Just get Force 1 Watchers and make sure one of your wage mages initiates into Greater Ritual. Boom, instant Force 5+ watchers for a minute's work and likely no drain. Let's say we have five wage-mages so we can get the limit up to five on Force 1 watchers ... assuming 4-5 net hits, that watcher ends up lasting a day. You can poop out an hour of these to get 60 places covered by things that aren't bothered by patrolling. Since they're astral-only, you can basically do this from anywhere and they'll get there on time.
Oh, also, spend an additional 2 drams of reagents and you will never have drain on this plan.
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True dat, a well trained mundane dog will smell ya' regardless of how sneaky or invisible you are.
Hell, a normal dog is actually a pretty decent foil to sneaking characters/invisible character and much cheaper than the alternatives.
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So I have a mage that, for various background reasons, isn't very adept when it comes to the physical realm (e.g., low physical attributes and skills). Probably not terribly unusual for a mage, but...the entire rest of our group are stealth monkeys (the lowest rating among them being an eight).
I'd thought that I could keep up with spells (e.g., invis), but every run we've been on so far, there's been something with eyes on the astral, so they pretty much auto-notice my character if I've put up any spells (and if I don't, my rolls in the meat world are so heinous that I'm pretty much auto-notice there anyway, since the opposition understandably has perception skills that might challenge the rest of the group).
I guess my first question on this is if they GM has continuous astral patrols spotting you, how is the rest of the team not getting picked up by them?
Granted they still get to roll their stealth vs the spirits/astral projecting mage's astral perception/assensing, but then it's against their basic skill and any technological enhancements like a stealth suit/camouflage/dark clothes generally will not help with this.
While mages/spirits will be more on the lookout for awakened activity, if they are set to watch a particular area and report/stop anyone going through there they can and should be responding to more than just the mage.
Of course as Karmainferno is fond of pointing out, a very simple and cheap defense against stealthing/invisible individuals is some plain old fashioned doors at both ends of a corridor. ;)
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Of course the sneak skill work in astral space. You just can't tug your spells away unless you have the required metamagic techniques. But the patrols still gave to find you first to see said spells.
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Uh... Hobbes, spirits aren't stupid, or automatically pissed off they've been summoned.
P. 358 To set a spirit in a security role, it must be given a task that uses one of its services. Spirits are characteristically ornery and narrow-minded, especially when bound to long-term service, so the instructions given for the security service must be simple yet specific. A spirit could be used to report astral activity in the area, attack anyone in the restricted area during unauthorized hours, or other tasks with specific parameters and goals.
Emphasis mine. And under the conjuring rules p. 301 big red box with the title "Bad Feelings with Bound Spirits" Many words saying spirits generally don't like being bound to service. Yes there are exceptions, but those should be uncommon, and honestly should likely be PCs.
This goes back to First Edition Shadowrun, that drew from the standard fantasy trope of summoned things trying to twist the wizards commands around. Do what you will with it.
Paracritters are not cheaper than spirits. They're cheaper than dedicated security mages, sure. There's a difference between having spirits on hand and hiring a dedicated guard wage-mage. However, paracritters, when used properly, are extremely effective at what they do.
Spirits are the Alarm, the dedicated mage is the response. Having an Astral Spirit patrolling without having a mage ready to respond Astrally is like having the Security System sign in your front lawn without actually ever getting the service. It'll keep some of the hooligans out but it's not actually going to do anything.
Think of it this way. Runner Astral Mage rolls in and blows away the Astral guard Spirit. Mage heads to the macguffin, has a spirit materialize and pick up the macguffin, conceal itself, cast invisibility or mask on itself and then walk on out with the macguffin right past the "goon squad".
You need to have a mage show up when the Spirit sounds the alarm, or it really isn't doing anything. And yes, the Spirit is ornery and narrow minded and can be exploited by clever runners if they can figure out what the exact wording of the Spirits orders are. Either by trial and error or legwork, clever players should be rewarded.
My point here is that GMs that let a simple spirit patrol shut down PC mages aren't quite playing fair. Spirit Patrols should be only on fairly high value targets, and should definitely be something a Player can handle without "going loud".
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Mkay, generally ornery I can accept. Narrow-minded still doesn't equate to stupid.
Spirits are the alarm, yes. They can even be the equivalent to a sentient, magical drone. It isn't at all like having the sign on the lawn without the service, though. If that spirit reports, the corporation can send a team in. If they get disrupted, the mage knows and can call the corporation to send a team in. Either way, someone is going in. You don't need to have a dedicated mage on hand to respond to that alarm, though. Mages are both rare AND expensive. It is a risk and quite possibly a waste to have a security mage on site. (And really, keep in mind how rare those are. Around 200 full, trained mages per million people, and a good chunk of those are going to have the common sense to get jobs that don't involve undue risk of bodily harm.)
So back to my point, no, you don't need the mage on hand, because that alert will go out, and there will be a response. I mean, if spirit patrols are on high value targets, why would on-site security mages not be on even higher priority locations?
As far as spirit patrols shutting down PC mages? I never said they should. The great thing about stealth is that it still works against astral perception. If they can't see you, they can't cause a ruckus. Go around them, lure them from their position, get in when they're not looking, those kinds of things are all options.
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Yaah turning off your focii and dropping any sustained spells should let a competent person use mundane stealth to sneak around, assuming enough cover.
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So back to my point, no, you don't need the mage on hand, because that alert will go out, and there will be a response. I mean, if spirit patrols are on high value targets, why would on-site security mages not be on even higher priority locations?
If the response doesn't include a mage what are they going to do about something that is on the astral plane? Astral Spirit, ergo something on the Astral Plane. Spirits are there to protect against a magic threat, pretty much need a magic response. Apparently YMMV.
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What can a 'threat' on the Astral do, exactly? Attempt to investigate/reconnoiter? Mess with the spirit on watch? They can't affect the Material Plane or take anything... Wards and other resources should prevent overt problems caused by astral beings. There will have to be a 'ground force' of some kind if it is serious, which is the bigger threat all in all.
At that point, the spirit says 'hey, there's a dude watching this place' and then they can have spirits deal with the problem or send in a centralized team in response rather than hiring expensive help for every site. Perhaps some Aspected Sorcerers or Alchemists, or an Adept, who act on the warning given by some lab-mage's night-watch spirit. Or the lab-mage calls, still half-asleep, and says the spirit they had watching the lab just got disrupted. Cue the same off-site team heading to the problem zone, or more spirit backup being sent in.
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Yes Recon. Also listen in on every meat space conversation. Summon Spirits to do whatever physically needs to be done. Summon Spirits of Man to cast spells if needed. In short an Astral Mage can do anything that doesn't involve hacking.
Or if you need to hack the Invisible Decker can just walk right in if all the Spirit does is report and nobody with Astral Perception shows up.
At that point, the spirit says 'hey, there's a dude watching this place' and then they can have spirits deal with the problem or send in a centralized team in response rather than hiring expensive help for every site. .
The Spirit tells who exactly? If the Spirit is reporting to the mage that summoned it, that mage is on the clock. The Spirit really can't report to anyone else, and the Spirit won't exercise any Judgement or initiative. The Spirit will follow the one order it was given. Literally and narrow mindedly. If the GM is letting a Spirit sit back, observe, and decide to do "The smart thing" then the GM is handicapping the PC mage considerably.
Yes the response team can be centralized. Yes mage can be "on-contract". Yes a mage can cover multiple locations. These are all common practices that are cheaper for a corporation but could be exploited by clever players that do their homework. But the point is, you're presuming a Mage is getting reports from the Spirit and doing something about it. i.e. The corp is paying for a security mage.
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Just get Force 1 Watchers and make sure one of your wage mages initiates into Greater Ritual. Boom, instant Force 5+ watchers for a minute's work and likely no drain. Let's say we have five wage-mages so we can get the limit up to five on Force 1 watchers ... assuming 4-5 net hits, that watcher ends up lasting a day. You can poop out an hour of these to get 60 places covered by things that aren't bothered by patrolling. Since they're astral-only, you can basically do this from anywhere and they'll get there on time.
Oh, also, spend an additional 2 drams of reagents and you will never have drain on this plan.
And if the Runners, or the Johnson that hired the Runners, finds out that this is what they're doing the mage should be prepared to get 47 alarms in a space of a few seconds. Runner Mage orders a Spirit on a Remote service to fly by all these sites and trigger as many watchers as possible? Security mage has to sort out a couple dozen shouting watchers while the Runners do whatever it is they do.
It works as long as the Runners are never given more than a couple hours to do legwork and the Johnson doesn't have any security details on the target. "The five man Astral Security Boutique firm has a client list of 53 different sites? Whaaa.....????"
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Also listen in on every meat space conversation.
Considering how "sight" is distorted on the astral, as you "see" auras for living things and absences-of-auras for objects, but are not using your biological eyes as sense organs, it's really not reasonable to think you can overhear conversations using physical sound as a medium on the astral. You can probably pick up the emotional tone of a conversation, but not the actual concepts spoken of.
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Ok, this is second hand knowledge, I read recently on one of these forums that recent editions specifically made speech muddied but the emotional content was clear.
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Also listen in on every meat space conversation.
Considering how "sight" is distorted on the astral, as you "see" auras for living things and absences-of-auras for objects, but are not using your biological eyes as sense organs, it's really not reasonable to think you can overhear conversations using physical sound as a medium on the astral. You can probably pick up the emotional tone of a conversation, but not the actual concepts spoken of.
Never seen anything that explicitly says an Astral being is deaf to the physical world. Every table I've every played/run we've allowed talking back and forth. I swear in an earlier edition it was explicitly stated that an astrally projecting mage could speak and be heard on the physical plane.
I'm willing to be wrong as I can't recall where I would have read either way. Any guess as to if it's actually spelled out anywhere?
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Not deaf, but pretty close.
Back in the days of 3rd edition you could literally hear normally while on the astral.
Your astral form has normal human senses of sight and
hearing. You can also use assensing to read information from
auras. The astral form cannot taste or smell, although sensory
input that has no equivalent may be translated as such, and it
can only touch other astral objects and beings.
<snip>
Likewise, you
could scan a sheet of paper from astral space and get feelings
of love and longing from it, but you can’t read it to see that it’s
a love letter. Speech and other sounds are as easy to hear from
the astral plane as they are in the physical world.
This was changed in 4th to bring hearing more in line with the other senses as this was a loophole players were swift to pick up on.
It was a bit odd that a projecting mage could sit in on a boardroom meeting from the astral spying and still hear any conversation clear as a bellwhistle while only being able to make out the auras of the living members and unable to read the emotional content of any documents on the table. Remember you are there as a psychic presence, so no real eardrums or eyes there. Thus the change.
Following on this change, in 4th you could still 'hear' sounds to a limited degree, but they are fainter and warped, it is more the emotional content that carries across now just as the other senses operate.
It is also possible to eavesdrop
on the noises, communications, and even smells of the physical
world from the astral plane, but just like reading a physical
book, the assensing character will perceive the emotional tone
and impressions rather than the physical sensation.
This was touched on again in 5th
When astral projecting, you do not hear
the din of the physical world, nor can you read written
words. Technological displays and holographic images
don’t exist even as shadows on the astral plane. All
the lifeless objects in the physical world appear as dull
and intangible shadows to astral forms, allowing them
to easily pass through. Details on these objects (color,
texture, smell) are almost impossible to understand; a
book’s words are impossible to read, as is the context
of the writing unless it’s tied to some emotion that the
character can perceive. All life has intangible auras that
illuminate the astral world, while emotions can color
them. Emotions can also color non-living objects if they
have some significance to metahumanity (individually
or as a whole). Within the silence, the magician can
hear the crackle and hiss of mana being drawn into a
spell or the subtle harmonies or cacophony of aspected
mana as it flows through the astral plane.
Now if the astral projecting mage manifested to make himself seen and heard, I would not have a problem with him seeing and hearing a bit more in line with normal senses.
He is still astral, but one could handwave it as being more aligned with the material place, but your GM may still call it astral senses only, saying your are psychically speaking and hearing so always check ahead as YMMV..
Believe there was a thread somewhere where someone was asking if he manifested could he then stick just his ear through the wall behind a plant (to hide the sight of a ghostly ear sticking out of the wall) to listen in.
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Wow, thanks!
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Thanks for the citations, Sendaz!
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What is your charisma? A good way to get around with magic on you vs spirits is to walk and look like you belong. With ediquitte! The social stealth. A lot of spirits don't understand humans very well so when they see an another meta human walking around with magic on they go to the word of their orders. So with masking and etiquette you can get by with a invisibly in mundane vision while looking and acting like a normal Joe in astral. (Which a non manifested spirit can only see in)
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Astral space isn't empty (as I know others have said).
Everything that is on the physical world has a reflection on the astral. In fact, there may even be things on the astral that are NOT there in the physical! A beloved theater that gets torn down may still have its astral shadow... until it fades from memory.
So basically, if you can't see the spirit on the astral, it can't see you!
Spend the time on astral recon, learn the patrol route and plan your entry based on where and when the spirit isn't. And yes, while travel in the astral can in theory be at the speed of thought, the faster you move, the less time you have to notice something and react, so a patrol isn't moving at Warp 9 speeds ::)
Also, spirits are sapient. Meaning they still have individual thought and are susepible to all the standard ways of bypassing security. Create an astral distraction to focus its attention, Engage it in fast talk to bluff your way past, or any other trick that you use on a physical guard.
There are always flaws in every system, its your job to find and exploit them!