[shinryu]

interesting point from another thread: can you hear in the astral? i'm assuming here that beings with exclusive astral perception (projecting mages, manifested spirits without low-light or thermographic vision, etc.) shouldn't be able to hear conversations, gunfire, and other sounds. nor, presumably, smell the roses and taste the beer, or feel fine textures of nonliving objects. correct?

[Unahim]

Any speech and sound from organics is transmitted telepathically through the astral, so the spirit can hear it; that's how you give a command to a spirit who was lent to you by your Magician friend, for instance; however, electronics are definitely 100% unhearable, and I'm not sure about the others. I guess they wouldn't hear guns and such.

I believe the spirit may possibly be notified of all gunfire, etc by the mage. He doesn't "hear" it and perhaps can't react to it like a normal person (keeping in mind people generally don't use sound to dodge gunshots), but he does know "Alright, so mageguy says lots of guns behind me, gotcha."

[shinryu]

telepathy is not sound. it's a very important distinction. either a spirit can hear a bomb go off next to him or he can't, and i'm guessing it's the former. i suppose he might "feel" a shockwave, but does that translate into actual hearing? for that matter, if the security loudspeakers say "release the barghests", it's sort of important to the spirit whether or not he perceives those soundwaves as speech or not.

[DeathStrobe]

You can't hear a gunshot, but you can hear/taste/smell/etc the fear of someone being shot at. But you won't know its a gunshot, but you'll know fear, or excitement from the person shooting, or any number of other emotions.

And if you see someone pointing a gun from the astral, you should be able to be able to make out their aura and shadows of the gun they're holding, at least enough to be able to dodge with a -2 to the test.

[Kincaid]

You can't hear a gunshot, but you can hear/taste/smell/etc the fear of someone being shot at. But you won't know its a gunshot, but you'll know fear, or excitement from the person shooting, or any number of other emotions.

And if you see someone pointing a gun from the astral, you should be able to be able to make out their aura and shadows of the gun they're holding, at least enough to be able to dodge with a -2 to the test.

This is how I play it--it works essentially like Auspex 2 (aura reading) from Vampire.  Astrally perceiving in a mass shooting would be such an emotionally chaotic affair, I would probably call for a composure test.

[Unahim]

telepathy is not sound. it's a very important distinction. either a spirit can hear a bomb go off next to him or he can't, and i'm guessing it's the former. i suppose he might "feel" a shockwave, but does that translate into actual hearing? for that matter, if the security loudspeakers say "release the barghests", it's sort of important to the spirit whether or not he perceives those soundwaves as speech or not.

You misunderstand, it's not active telepathy by any person, it's just that the thoughts put into the communication travel onto the astral. But yes, it would not hear the security loudspeakers, because that's tech. It wouldn't hear the bomb either, I think. I'm not sure though, I haven't read the magic rules as closely as i did in SR4 yet.

[Psikerlord]

pretty sure u can hear, cant warchers convey messages, they would have to hear to do so.

[Unahim]

pretty sure u can hear, cant warchers convey messages, they would have to hear to do so.

They only need to hear people, which is the only thing they can hear ^^

[shinryu]

this has large implications for situational awareness for spirits, though. unless you rule that they've got 360-degree astral vision, they have no idea they're being shot at from the flanks until they get hit, and even then there's no event to tie that impact to. if you get behind a spirit, it's screwed. you can trot right up on it and shove whatever high explosive device you like directly in its spiritual ass; how is it going to notice your presence if it can't hear footsteps unless it has that "mana sense" adept power too?  which i don't see on the power list...

spirits of beasts are a specific exception, and i'd imagine so are spirits of man. elementals, not so much.

[Reaver]

Street Magic has this to say about Astral space and other senses.

[Street Magic pg 114: Other Senses]

Characters may converse and be heard in astral space, and language
is still a communication barrier there, but an assensing
character will be struck more by the emotive content rather
than by the words themselves. 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.

So if you are hovering there over 2 people talking, you would hear everything but would also "Feel" mostly.

So If Todd (who hates John) says to John

"Hey John, great to see you!"
You know that Todd was about ready to spit after he said that.

[Reaver]

[From Street magic, page 92. On the forms of Spirits <last paragraph.

Another intriguing aspect of a spirit’s corporeal form is
its senses. Despite having no nervous systems, spirits react
negatively to damage to their physical and astral forms—similar
to how a physical creature displays pain. Spirits frequently
object to being sent into positions where disruption is likely,
and when directly questioned about the phenomenon, spirits
have tended to describe disruption as an agonizing event
more often than as simple dissipation. Likewise a spirit’s sensory
perception is very different from our own. Even when a
spirit materializes into our world, it still exists primarily as an
astral creature. When observing an object, a spirit sees the auras
and shadows first and the physical characteristics second.
Physical details metahumans characterize as obvious are frequently
overlooked entirely by spirits. Interaction with technological
display devices and simsense such as commlinks and
simrigs is even more tenuous. The location of a spirit’s visual
ability is at the very least variable; and as there is no nervous
system to connect to, the technical difficulties of making such
an AR setup are far from trivial.

Stands to reason that they experience all the senses, especially if you take in all we read of spirits doing:
Removing, but not harming people from the SK headquarters before Hestaby leveled it.
Being able to follow command issued from several different people (not just the summoner) as per watcher and messenger spirits
can react to smells??? dunno....

AS to HOW they have all the senses when they don't have a nervous system, or sensory organs??

Dude: MAGIC!

[Unahim]

Alright, so they -do- have workable senses, but they're all so alien that it's pretty hard to get them to use any kind of technology. Thanks Reaver, that helps a lot.

[shinryu]

i would be intrigued to know what spirits they are describing, here. it sounds a lot like spirits of man and beasts. i would love to see someone strap an AR rig to a column of whirling flame, that'll work out well. i don't think this does anything to suggest that elementals have anything like the senses metahumans do.

[Unahim]

i would be intrigued to know what spirits they are describing, here. it sounds a lot like spirits of man and beasts. i would love to see someone strap an AR rig to a column of whirling flame, that'll work out well. i don't think this does anything to suggest that elementals have anything like the senses metahumans do.

No, it suggests that they have their own equivalent senses that are incompatible with our technology, but sufficient for the Spirit to interact with our world and generally detect sounds and visuals it finds there.

[Reaver]

i would be intrigued to know what spirits they are describing, here. it sounds a lot like spirits of man and beasts. i would love to see someone strap an AR rig to a column of whirling flame, that'll work out well. i don't think this does anything to suggest that elementals have anything like the senses metahumans do.

it doesn't have to be a column of flame, if can look like anything it or the caster looks like.

a fire truck? Sure.
a toy car? Sure.
a flame bear? sure
your 8rd grade science teacher that was a total babe?!?! Sure. Creepy, but sure.