If the spirit managed to beat her 18 dice on it's Astral Perception.

Astral Perception is a perception check, and is opposed by an infiltrators Infiltration. It uses different modifiers than visual perception, or audio perception, etc. It is still opposed. There where a number of good posts earlier in this thread about how the infiltration test is abstracted to cover how well the character avoids methods of detection - including those she is not aware of. At best, unseen observers would get a bonus to their perception, not automatic success.

That seems like a pretty reasonable explanation to me.

@Fatum: so basically, your point is that you find it hard to imagine infiltrating a properly designed secure facility is even possible at all? Not so much because of the game system but simply because it's easier to secure places than to penetrate that security?

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Regarding Detect Life: that spell has issues. You could get false positives: the spell description only says it does X, and then some example expands it to X, Y and Z. That's a real can of worms: do other spells also do more than their descriptions state? Why does Detect Life detect if lifeforms are carrying non-living weapons?

What I meant with False Positives: according to that example, if the magician/spirit doesn't win with at least 4 successes, he doesn't identify even familiar people. So if the Boss has good Willpower (likely, for an ambitious person), then there'll be a lot of false alarms. So if the ninja pretends to be the boss, then the mage might think "ah, just another false alarm", because false alarms happen a lot. A Cry Wolf situation - not good from a security design standpoint.

Also, since it's an active sense, it only works if you actively make the roll. So you'd be rolling a LOT, and that'll eventually start incurring glitches.

I am at 19 dice before spec and attribute boost. It looks like enough, although there are ways to get higher. There shouldn't be any security you can't circumvent with this, right? Everything else is either blindly stupid to sneak in, or railroading. I am currently investing my karma in pushing Exotic melee (Garrote), good idea for someone who can steak up everybody?

Use a real weapon. It is useful in other situations as well. If you are not very strong get the monofilament whip (if you need something exotic) or a stun baton. The garrote can only be used in an assassination and does STR/2P AP 0 damage. The monowhip does 8P AP-4 a stun baton 7S(e) AP -half. Both can be used in normal combat as well. All other weapons will be better as well since they all do STR/2+X P AP -Y With X, Y equal or greater than 0. You do the math.

What's especially weird about the garrote is that by RAW no one untrained can put a wire around an unsuspecting person and pull.

i am of course planing on getting a monofilament garrote. The problem is, I guess, that my mentor spirit won't allow me to engage in any fight anyways...

Which mentor spirit does that? The Care Bear?

Well he does not allow you to fight but murder is fine? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

Rat. And I am pretty good at Pistols already. Enough to defend myself.

Rat can fight, as long as you make your Willpower + Charisma (3) Test. Or when you are cornered and have no other option. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Not to tell you how to play but:
I neither see the need to go out of your hiding place to murder unsuspecting people necessary to survival nor do I see how fighting is strictly forbidden.
@Willpower + Charisma (3) Test: At least for a Shaman or practitioner of a CHA tradition this should not be that much of a problem. Still going around murdering people does not fit well with rat since you are always initiating the fight.

Definitely... Rat prefers not to fight (The assassination thing is a bit odd for a follower of Rat, but *shrug*), but when he has no other choice, he can be quite lethal, and often tends to try for the immediate kill, so as to end the fight quicker and get back to the shadows where he is most comfortable. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Hence the Stun baton or Monofilament Whip, good weapons for weak mages if they feel the need to get into melee. A Stun or Powerbolt should do the same trick. Better invest skills into getting out of melee range.

You as GM are setting the target numbers, setting the modifiers, and choosing to gimp your players characters because you have made that choice. They are not failing because of the skill level they made for their character. They are failing because you are not adjusting the target numbers to match the level of success you require. That's your choice, not theirs.

You need to think of that PC sheet and skill, that one word Infiltration (4) as that players character ability to circumvent all that other stuff.

Infiltration skill and the die roll, and it's relative success = PC ability to overcome security, no matter how many words are written in the rule books about all the cool security there is.

The weight of the words you as a GM are struggling with is not countered by a comparable weight of words by the players and the PCs. It's resolved with a die roll.

Here's a few scenarios for you to think about.

Player A knows absolutely nothing about Shadowrun, hasn't read the books, has no real world knowledge of security practices, yet has a character(Super Ninja Cat Burglar!) who has Infiltration(6). They say they want Super Ninja Cat Burglar to sneak into Stuffer Shack and steal that bag of Nuke It Burritos. Are you going to make them fail because they can't describe exactly what uber security avoiding techniques Super Ninja Cat Burglar is going to use? Are you going to make them fail because they can't describe a counter to every cool uber security technique described in each and every Shadowrun rule book? Or are you going to have them roll a simple success test versus a threshold of 1 or 2, and then describe the results to them in a cool dramatic fashion embellished by the thousands and thousands of words you know from all the books you've read and enjoyed?

Player B is a Super Ninja Cat Burglar in Real Life, they've read all the books, they know all the real world and shadowrun uber elite security techniques and ways to evade them(Don't worry, they will kill you after you GM the game to keep their true identity secret). They make a character(Fluffy Bunny) who has Infiltration (1). Fluffy Bunny wants to steal that bag of Nuke It Burritos from Stuffer Shack as well. (Fluffy got addicted to the ones Super Ninja Cat Burglar shared earlier!). Does Fluffy Bunny succeed because Fluffy Bunny Player can describe every security technique and how to over come it? Or are you going to roll a couple of dice and describe the utter failure of Fluffy Bunny to shoplift a bag of nuke It Burritos from the corner Stuff Shack in some amusing fashion?

The weight of the body of knowledge about Infiltration is completely irrelevant to the chances of relative success or failure of using that skill.

Let's flip it around. Imagine as a GM you know nothing about security protocols, there are certainly many shadowrun skills I know nothing about personally (I got Assensing down though....). You have Player A and Player B again, does your resolution of the success of Fluffy Bunny and Super Ninja Cat Burglar change? No, it shouldn't. But what does change is the richness of the experience. If both the GM and Player A don't know much about it it becomes a simple die roll lacking in any cool exposition.

The body of knowledge, all those nifty gadgets, equipment, techniques, the thousands and thousands of words you've read, they are all there to provide a rich background to support the outcome of the skill roll. Succeed or fail.

Your GM knowledge of the rules, and content is there for both sides of the resolution. Not just the GMs.

It's all in your hands as a GM, you have been deciding your knowledge of the game content is weighted in favor of PC failure, rather then supporting the outcome no matter which way it goes.

It's your game, you are choosing how you run it.

WOW... That is the best explanation that I have seen yet, DireRadiant. Well Done Indeed... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

Agreed, guess we can close the discussion now right ... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

But we should sticky DireRadiant's explanation for the next time someone asks about social skills.

heh... There is that... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You're making a lot of powerful enemies with that kind of approach. And making powerful enemies without making powerful friends most often means becoming very dead, very soon.


Sure enough you're not helpless, but without a mage close at hand you're not sneaking anywhere (for the reasons listed above), and you're not sneaking anywhere without leaving a trace even with magical support - at least with the plans listed.


My point is that I can't design a compound that'd have security design which would make sense, and that'd not frag my players over.

*shrug* The whole magic system has issues, if you ask me. But the spell is explicitly said to work like that.
Even without going into the argument of whether you can willingly fail the test to resist a friendly's spell, detecting your boss crawling through an air duct at night is hardly inconspicuous.

It's active since it "actively analyzes or seeks out certain information" when you're sustaining it. And glitching on a roll of even 10 dice has a negligible probability.

I see my job as a GM as making everyone's time and effort invested in the game worthwhile, and the whole gaming experience enjoyable. For that, I try to limit my player's possibilities as little as possible, basically making my campaign as sandbox-like as possible. Now, obviously, any sandbox needs the whys and the hows of its internal workings covered, for it to be usable. The hows - just how do the players' actions affect the world around them, - are covered by the rule system (and that's why it's so important for the rule system to be consistent and working the same way for everyone). The whys, however, - just why the things are the way they are, and why they move in the directions they do, - is covered by pure logic. The only logic I can provide for that that'd not twist everyone's brains in a knot is simple RL logic, which forms the connections between the elements described in the fluff.

It works like this.
Player: "What happens when I let go of a gun I'm holding over my head?" GM: "It's not explicitly said in the rules, but it falls on your head, and when you touch the place it hit, there's a bump there".
Player: "Can I use that stolen copter to fly to the meeting with that drug cartel boss?" "GM: "Sure you can, but it's said in the fluff that the flights over Seattle are all monitored by Seattle Air Authority. Now, it's not in the books, but common logic tells me that you can either try to hack SAA's host to get a fake clearing, or try not to be spotted by its radars by flying really low, and of course your pilot PC knows all that". Etc.

Since simple day-to-day logic is generally the same for different people, it allows the players to make more or less the same predictions based on the same sets of facts as the GM does.
That is precisely why I can't just handwave incompetent security system designs for the secure facilities the players want to penetrate. It ruins verisimilitude, it removes the sense of accomplishment, after all, it just goes against aforementioned common sense.

tldr; I am not "gimping" the PCs any more than the laws of physics "gimp" them.

This, now, is a question of effort gratification.
When a player arrives with no in-game knowledge whatsoever, or without at least reading anything inspiring for his character archetype, in no way am I arguing that resolving in-game conflicts, even complex ones, with a single die roll may be appropriate, and make for a fun light-hearted game (let's leave the question of why exactly am I playing with that player, spending hours upon hours reading up on fluff, designing the adventure frameworks, drawing maps and player handouts etc out of the discussion for a moment).
However, most players seriously interested in the game are no less willing to munch on crunch and read the fluff than I am. Thorough depiction of the in-game universe makes a big difference for those players' immersion. This is exactly the kind of players who spend hours on their side making infiltration plans, calculating optimal loadouts or what have you. Rewarding them with a simple "roll Infiltration against the facility's Security Rating, good going, you've completed the run!" is hardly adequate, and I do not believe it makes for satisfying gaming experience.
And of course, it is their knowledge that makes their plans work, not the number near the word Infiltration on their character sheet. When we obviously don't share the same logic, or when they seem to operate on false premises, or when their knowledge is not enough - sure, that's where the character's skills and knowledge come to light. That is, their characters of course know more about the in-game universe, the way it works and its precise details, but the only way to transfer that knowledge to the players themselves is the GM (after a successful roll, of course).

Yes, that does mean that if your players A and B are both part of the same group, and player A tries to rob a Stuffer Shack at high noon, guns blazing, shouting "I'm a runner everyone down" - no amount of good rolls is saving him if he doesn't listen to the forewarnings (if the whole group is made up of As, okay, we might just roll with that).

I feel it to be my job as a GM to read on the fluff in the books thoroughly enough to provide satisfactory in-game descriptions for any of the players' actions. They are not playing to see the dice roll fives or sixes, are they? They're here to be cyberpunk heroes, to act out their ideas of cool, to breathe a full chest of the poisonous air of the 2070ies, after all. Saying that all those are just secondary additions to rolling dice is turning a roleplaying game into a boardgame, at best, a set of calculus problems, at worst.

Roleplaying is a shared storytelling experience by definition.
See the first part of my answer - I am not some kind of magical omnipowerful being behind the scenes to toss anything I want at the player characters without any reasoning visible behind that. I have to abide by the same logic the real world does for any hint of players' independent initiative to be possible.

One thing to keep in mind with the mono-garrote is that the thing is often really messy - even if you hide the corpse, there will probably be a rather large pool of blood from the severed carotids.

Fatum...

In the end, a real design (your goal) will work out fine. Design it as you would if you were the security consultant. However, there are several things that you have to remember. The first is that people have to actually work there. Security is only going to be as invasive as workload allows. If the employees are going to be moving through security for half their day, it is too tight. There have to be tradeoffs for work vs. security. Most, if not all, companies err on the side of workload. Even in the Military, the Security is not so invasive as to impair work at the facility. Secondly, most places do not have unlimited budgets. Each and every department has to show profit. If the Corporation is showing a loss due to the security division, the corporation will move to correct that.

Keeping those things in mind, you will find that a natural security scheme develops. One that makes complete sense, and is cost effective and workable for the employees on site. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Tymeaus Jalynsfein, as you can see in the thread above, the whole problem is that even a non-obstructive security system like a single mage with a single sustained spell makes infiltration a hell. Adding wireless-inhibiting paint and some decent sensor suites makes it almost impossible, to the point of complete failure after a single failed roll in a couple dozens of those, even after careful planning.
And realistically, sure it's all rather expensive, but as an AAA, wouldn't you prefer spending a couple hundred thousand nuyen on tech, paying three wagemages extra and buying them binding materials to losing your latest multimillion nuyen R&D toy?

@Fatum: At this point, I'm thinking you are being obtuse, or trolling.

You've seen several descriptions of how to run stealth in a fun and effective manner, yet are unable to accept the arguments. If you are really looking for a better way to run this, step back from the keyboard, stop thinking about this topic for a couple days, then come back and re-read the entire thread with a fresh perspective. It might help.

One last comment on rules elements: Astral Patrolling is an Assensing + Intuition vs. Infiltration test. A force 6 spirit in a small facility will have 14 dice for detection, opposed by the runners infiltration skill, at maybe -2 to -4 dice...without magical backup. With magical backup (say...concealment) the Infiltrator gets substantially better. Hardly impossible.

Minding that the arguments so far are either basically "use GM fiat to make things easy, even if that ruins internal consistency", "use GM fiat to give the opposition the penalties you don't give to runners" or "replace Stealth with Influence for infiltrations", eh, I admit it's hard for me to accept them. Oh, right, let's not forget the all-powerful "use more abstract conflict resolution, with the bare minimum of dice rolled", that one's sure to make stealth fun and effective. Especially fun.

Okay, even if we go and allow Infiltration against observers a character can't detect, don't forget that his infiltration equipment is useless against Assensing, and his skill spec is most likely not "Astral", too. So that leaves a runner with his Attribute+Skill vs a spirit with his Attribute+Skill, and the spirit has both his Attribute and Skill well in the top margin of character-attainable values.
Sure, success is not impossible per se (just as a runner might just win that Willpower(+Counterspelling) vs Magic+Spellcasting for Detect spells), but failure is highly likely.

Agility 9, Skill 4 (Doable at Character Creation) is more dice than a Rating 6 Spirit, which is likely rare at most facilities. Remember, the average Magic Rating in Shadowrun is a 3. I think that you are putting the cart before the horse. It seems like you are trying to set ultra high levels of security, using ultra highly qualified participants, that may not actually be as skilled as you think they are. If you remember that Proferssionals probably have somewhere between 8-12 Dice, you should do okay. Use Common Sense. What do you think of for Security Measures? Remember that each piece of security must serve a function, and not impede the normal functioning of the facility to any heavy degree. If it seems unreasonable, then it probably is. You can go absolutely crazy designing a security procedure, but it has to be workable. There are many things that make such procedures unworkable. I think that you are giving the Security Procedures you are looking at too much credit.

There are always ways around every obstacle... And any Intrusion expert knows them. They should have an equal opportunity to recognize any potential security issues, just as the security expert who designed the system used those same potential issues in his security plan.

I do not think that a single failed roll spells immediate failure for the Intrusion. All it does is alert security to a possible "something". They will likely investigate to verify. Rarely will a facility go to immediate lockdown with a possible alert. Most places investigate first, because there is a high probability for false positives. Systems are not infallible. If you lock down a facility each time you get a ping, you get absolutely no work done, and the facility gets a new security director in short order.