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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Hiding from remote service spirits

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 19 2007, 08:54 PM

Basically what it sounds like. They have the search power, which is pretty fast, so if you can just keep testing a spirit will have found anybody in a major city in no time. Even if you decide to use the rule where you only get to try as many times as you have ranks in something (magic I suppose). A force 6 spirit or two will tend to get you anyone in a 20 km radius. It won't even cost the caster anything except having to take a nap.

I mean if a corp mage saw someones astral signature why wouldn't they send out a swarm of force 4's at least to canvas the city? (And this could be a while after the run, once the runners have left their warded hidy hole).

Currently I throw on negative modifiers like a crooked used car salesman, but they aren't in the book. My players aren't complaining since it makes life easier for them so far. But what do the rest of you do?

Posted by: HappyDaze Jan 19 2007, 09:18 PM

I don't add in th 'crooked' modifiers. Maybe they get caught, maybe they don't. In my game, well-planned high-end runs tend to succeed with the PC getting away about 60% of the time. They succeed but get caught/killed 20% of the time and they simply fail (usually getting caught/killed in the prcess) 20% of the time. Tough odds,but that's why more people don't run the Shadows.

BTW, profession criminals understand that jail time is just an operating cost of their business. Sooner or later it wil happen. I guess that youn eed to weigh the profits pretty closely.

Posted by: Jaid Jan 19 2007, 09:31 PM

iirc, the remote spirit loophole was closed. thus, you are looking at one spirit coming after you, unless you ticked off the corp enough to spend money (binding) on you.

furthermore, why does the corp care? unless you've hit them repeatedly, they have no reason to come after you. you don't know anything about who hit them, ultimately, and if you took anything than you have presumably either turned it over to your employer or haven't come out of your hiding place yet.

why does the corp care enough to remove a mage/spirit from security forces and put them to work tracking down someone who has nothing the corp values anymore? why is the corp going to send even 1 spirit after the group? what do they gain from it? it costs the corp money to send a spirit, even if only in the form of the wagemage's salary. that wagemage *could* be doing something to make the corp money (and should be, since mages are so rare, you can't afford to leave them doing nothing). furthermore, that spirit is wasted as well. it could be guarding a corporate facility, assisting in transporting people with it's movement power, etc. simply by not having the spirit doing something to make money, the corp is losing potential money. unless the corp has something specific to gain from chasing down the runners, they won't bother, because it costs money to find the team, it costs even more money to find them without the team knowing (presumably the team is using watchers or something to keep an eye out on the astral), and it costs a whole heck of a lot more money to ever do anything about it. i mean, let's face it, you know where the team is (or was, when the spirit found them). do you have a HTRT ready to go at a moment's notice? what if you don't find the runners? what if the team mage has masking? what if you do find the runners? do you send the team out, and risk their lives (which means you potentially need to spend money on hospital bills, life insurance, and training new HTR team members)

it's generally best to accept your losses and make an effort to not let that happen again.

furthermore, when did the corp mage see your astral signature? only the mage should be leaving one, most of the time. so unless the mage saw the entire team, in person, then he's not going to have enough to go on for an astral search.

Posted by: Cheops Jan 19 2007, 09:34 PM

It begins again!!! For the love of God no!

The question already established the framework for the answer. They dislike you enough to send a swarm of force 4's to search for you.

One thing you have to worry about is glitches on the search test. This happened when I ran "On the Run." Instead of finding Nabo they found a rich-kid look a-like.

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 09:39 PM

QUOTE (sunnyside)

why wouldn't they send out a swarm of force 4's at least to canvas the city?

That hardly sounds established. It sounds like he's asking why they wouldn't.

Jade answered, there' no margin in it.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jan 19 2007, 09:43 PM

So generally they won't. I agree with that. This just shouldn't be a problem most of the time.
But sometimes they will. What if you are targeting a corp repeatedly and they decide that they really do want to get you, so they really do take the time, spent the money and send out a swarm of force 4's after you? Ignore for a moment that you've probably made a few mistakes to get yourself into this unenviable position, assume you have, for whatever reason, gotten yourself into this situation. What can you do?
You could hide inside a strong ward. They're not looking in there. You could hide in an area with a strong background count, they might not be able to find you there, either. Obviously there's masking, but not everybody has that. Other possibilities?

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 09:47 PM

If the heats that hot it's time to run in a different oven.

Posted by: Jaid Jan 19 2007, 09:50 PM

well, if we're assuming the corp hates you enough to send swarms of force 4 spirits after you, then i believe we're assuming that you're screwed over no matter what you do. write up new characters, start from scratch, and this time don't blow up Aztechnology's new research facility with a ritually cast force 15 powerbolt, stupid.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jan 19 2007, 09:50 PM

Heh, that's probably true.

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 19 2007, 09:54 PM

Jiad where did the loophole closing business occure. I generally don't like the whole remote service thing as it stands now, so I'm eager to know what book/FAQ to look into.

As for the no margin thing. Now I'm not saying there isn't a point in that. That's a large part of the reason runners aren't generally crushed under the weight of trillion nuyen entities with grudges.

However in SR3 (or was it 2) Saeder-Krupp at least had a rep for going after runners more than sheer profit would dictate in order to disuade other runners from taking jobs against them(or at least making enemy Johnsons pay more for runners services against SK targets).

Now they might not spend millions at it. But a couple force 4s followed by a sniper team and some drones is pretty low hanging fruit.

Plus runners often go up against other targets like the Yaks.

They may leave a personal grudge (almost inevitable if they aren't using stun weaponry).

Finally if they happened to do something resulting in a pissed of Lone Star they very well might go about hunting the runners down. Heck that's part of their job description.

Now it's not that I think they should be able to get off scot free and not sweat it. But it seems like it'd just be too easy. Runners shoot out cop cars tires. Wagemage does a fly by astrally, not engaging them. Later they deploy spirits and it's sniper/swat/black mariah time.

Posted by: Jaid Jan 19 2007, 10:19 PM

QUOTE (sunnyside)

Jiad where did the loophole closing business occure. I generally don't like the whole remote service thing as it stands now, so I'm eager to know what book/FAQ to look into.

it's in the errata, found http://shadowrunrpg.com/resources/sr4/sr4_errata_v15.pdf

that should change a few things for you

anyways, if you've ticked people off to the point where they are sending tons of spirits to find you, then you crawl into a deep, dark hole where they don't want to go, and you don't come out for a long, long time. sooner or later, they will lose interest, or at worst one or two people will keep an eye out for you and do something if the chance comes up.

in other words, find yourself a high rating astral barrier (magical lodges are the easiest and are long lasting, but take a bunch of time to prepare), and live in it. get new fake SINs, maybe get some surgery, and make sure you don't leave any trail for the angry people to follow you through. anything they might know is attached to you should be destroyed, use only resources that you know are uncompromised.

hopefully, you won't be forced to come out due to lack of money before they run out of determination to find and kill you.

Posted by: DireRadiant Jan 19 2007, 10:20 PM

Let's take a look at what has to happen for a mage to know enough about a target to willy nilly summon up spirits to send after them in the first place.

Corp Mage has to see the runners. ( And realize these are people worth remembring for some reason, why not just sound the alarm to begin with?)
Perception test.

Corp mage must assense the runners and get a minimum of two hits, and three or is better.
Assense test

Corp Mage must remember the aura
Memory test

Corp Mage must summon a spirit
summoning test

Spirit needs to use search power
Magic + Int test (subtract from pool per kilometer)

Any step could fail
Any step could glitch
No step is automatic and risk free

If the runners were seen and studied long enough by a corp mage to remember enough to send a stack of spirits looking for them, they certainly were in place long enough for that same mage to have toasted them on the spot.

There's nowhere for a mage to store the aura the spirit is going to search for other then in their own memory. There's a severe limit to how many this can be.

Don't want hordes of spirits searching for you after a run? Don't be seen to begin with.

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 10:36 PM

QUOTE (DireRadiant @ Jan 19 2007, 02:20 PM)

Corp mage must assense the runners and get a minimum of two hits, and three or is better.
Assense test

Corp Mage must remember the aura
Memory test

Corp Mage must summon a spirit
summoning test

Spirit needs to use search power
Magic + Int test (subtract from pool per kilometer)

Well, I don't want to encourage the concept that it's likely to do it, but frankly nothing requires the targets be assensed. Th specific rule is:
"The critter must have seen what it is searching for before; spirits may search out anything that their summoner provides them with a mental image of."

So theoretically the mage could start the search with just a photograph, though that may be pushing it. Just having seen them is good enough.

It's not lost pool per KM it's increased threshold.

What is left uninterpreted is what happens if you move while you're being searched. Will the searcher just keep searching and the rhreshold changes as you come closer/further away from the epicenter of the search? Does the searching critter have to start over if you move significantly.

What happens if you move into a ward. Does his dicepool just go down from where it is, or what happens.

Generally the places where a runner spends most of his time should be warded permanently, even when you're not "on the run" and the concept of waiting until they are more visible applies.

If you can summon you can place a hefty ward anywhere you like if you don't care about being warned when it is breeched or attempted to be breeched. Magic 5 summon a force 10 spirit, ask him to create a force 20 ward. Now that is asking the spirit to effectively overcast and may be bad mojo, but even a force 10 ward is perfect protection from a force 5 or less spirit.

I guess you just don't get the freedom of spending a coupple hours in your favorite bar anymore, and now you have to club hop...

Posted by: Mistwalker Jan 20 2007, 04:18 AM

I don't think the spirits could find you if all they have is a picture given to the mage, of the runners, if the runners had used nano-paste for the run. Once it is gone, you don't look the same anymore, hence no link.

Any runner mage / adept should consider masking and/or flexible signature a priority for initiation.

You can have fun with flexible signature. Get a good look at some mages from different corps (and law enforcement), and use their signatures for the run. Spirits would go after the wrong person.

Posted by: HappyDaze Jan 20 2007, 04:21 AM

QUOTE (Mistwalker)

You can have fun with flexible signature. Get a good look at some mages from different corps (and law enforcement), and use their signatures for the run. Spirits would go after the wrong person.

How long can you remeber an Astral Signature? How many can you commit to memory? It seems like these would be pretty complex things to keep in the back of your head, similar to what Demerzel was saying about a magcian remembering your aura.

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 20 2007, 04:39 AM

The stuff DireRadiant and Demerzel are talking about are part of where I get the modifiers mentioned in the OP. Along with things like background count and so on.

The idea being that, it's easy for an astral mage to do a flyby at a distance without being spoted by the teams mage, but how solid a description can they then give the spirts?

It isn't RAW though that's all.

Actually is there any way to really change a mundanes astral signature? I mean cyberware does it right?

Posted by: Mistwalker Jan 20 2007, 04:45 AM

When you close your eyes, can you picture your loved one(s) in your mind?
The same way.

Similar to the way a mage "knows" how to assume another form with shapechange.

Add in the initiate power, that probably helps with your memory for certain signatures.

We are not talking about knowing millions of signatures, just a handful of them.

Demerzel was talking about a signature you saw in passing, not one that you studied, deliberately memorized.

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 20 2007, 05:37 AM

QUOTE (HappyDaze)

similar to what Demerzel was saying about a magcian remembering your aura.

I'm a little confused because I don't remember talking about remembering Auras, that must be DireRadiant you're thinking of.

Now signature and aura don't enter into it. Perhaps I should have puty that in as a quote:

QUOTE (p290 SR4 Core)

The critter must have seen what it is searching for before; spirits may search out anything that their summoner provides them with a mental image of.

You cannot use a signature to initiate a search. You could use your view from astral space, i.e. an aura, but there's nothing to do with assensing in the sense of trying to learn information from the aura. The rule is that you just need to be able to provide your spirit with a mental image of the subject.

Now that's either very over powered, or you just get close to what you thought. If my memory is flawed then the spirit will find something that matches my memory perhaps. I don't know. But as written the power only needs y ou to form a mental image.

The way I run this is search is really only useful when you're looking for something that is going to be unique over the range you're searching, or relatively so. Basically get clsoe and let the spirit do the rest. Over the whole of Seattle I don't care how good a look he got, you're not the image he thought of, you changed clothes, you took off the mask, stopped casting the spell whatever. I can't tell you that the rule says you can't do it. However you do not need a assensing or a memorized aura, just you have to have seen them and be able to form a mental image.

I'm thinking a corp wage mage would have troubble keeping his mind from wandering and his armada of spirits will bring him a a lot of hot blondes that he cought a glimpse of over at Dante's.

Posted by: ornot Jan 20 2007, 03:35 PM

Frankly any runner who doesn't wear some kind of disguise or mask when breaking into a corp facility is asking for trouble. Forget the mage seeing you and sending a spirit after whatever he recalls you looking like, and instead think about the many cameras in the sixth world and facial recognition software, not to mention biometrics held on SINs.

In an SR3 game I played in one of our team decided he was too good to wear a mask. After we stole a rare car from the compound of a guy with links to the mafia, security footage of this guy was used to track us down and then the mafia came after us and screwed us over but good!