So my mage goes to scout out a local Tempo house in the astral. As he floats through the wall, he comes upon 5 tempo tripping gangers. They rush him, defaulting to Will to attack him, but he taking -1, -2, -3 and -4 to his Intuition roll to avoid those attacks.

My question is this: Can they subdue him ala the standard combat rules so he can't float back out of the wall? Can he cast a manaball after he is subdued?
How would you run this and what other astral nastiness can I fit in this den on inequity?

Oh, you're asking about Tempo. Cool. Where do I find the description of it?

1st Question: No not really, since he can easily adjust his astral form (which does not have to be humanoid), they can still punch him. Plus, though painful a dual natured person can pass through an astral only one due to realworld conditions (IIRC).

2nd question: Yes. This is not the game that causes cancer.

Ghost Cartels

Tempo makes mundanes duel natured, which is the only pertinent part of it to my dilemma. I'm asking something more akin to Astral Combat, namely if a group of duel natured goons ganged up on a 100 Karma mage, what should be their plan of attack? More specifically, if they dog piled him, could they incapacitate him?

For posterity, it can be found on p. 58 of Ghost Cartels.

Keep in mind that being dual natured (temporarily or otherwise) means you're still stuck in your physical body. An astrally projecting magician can move in all three dimensions in ways a person can't; what's stopping him from peeking in through the roof, or something like that?

And yeah, magicians can still cast spells even if someone DOES manage to tackle and/or subdue them, tie them up, whatever. Unless they've got Geasa requirements or something that specifically says otherwise, line of sight is half the battle.

Their only real hope is to gangpile him with regular melee attacks and hope they get lucky - otherwise he can just float above their heads and zap them to death.

Don't forget modifiers like "friends in the melee," by the way. But they are probably screwed - being dual-natured without a way to make ranged astral attacks is dangerous for this reason.

He's going to want to search the whole building for a thing and while nothing would prevent my mage from peeking in and then peeking out subtly, he won't. Knowing my player like I do, he'll rush in in astral form spells a blazin'. Plus the thing he's looking for is in the basement, so he's gotta go through the whole house.
While the astral form can move in three dimensions, the building's dimensions make doing that and keeping LOS difficult.
Maybe give him a superior position bonus?
EDIT: He can't just float above their heads because the ceilings are like that of any other non-NYC apartment building, about 10 to 8 feet. I guess he could shift his form so that only his head is showing, but then the folks on the floor above could see him.


So there is no grappling in astral combat, only striking? The only reference I can find in SR4a is that astral combat is resolved the same way as regular combat except for...and it goes on.
While I believe you, I'm going to be asked to provide a page number and reference during the game and I'll be expected to know it off the top of my head.
God forbid one of my players cracks open a book.

Oh god. I read about Tempo. You're going into a Tempo house? Flipping junkies are the least of your problems, muchacho.

He can still run. Go through the floor, now the guys he was fighting need to find the stairs to find him, and by the time they do, he's in the basement.

No, I'm the GM. I'm running the Tempo house. It is my duty to make it as imposing as possible, hence why the mage shouldn't be able to look around without trepidation.


True, but he doesn't know where the thing is. He's got to search the whole house for it. Heck, the thing is mobile so depending on time of day it may not be in the basement.
That's the motivation, to make scouting astrally harder so and and all searching problems aren't solved by "I turn into an invisible ghost and go through their cupboards until I find it."
To inspire critical thinking, if you will.

Why is astral scouting for an object he can't see the colour, detail, or writing on so easy? What is he looking for?

It's not just the finding, but the scouting which should have an impediment, else it becomes easy and then it becomes boring.

For the record, it's a guy. The politician's son in the third adventure seed of First Taste in Ghost Cartels.

Alright. Well, I don't really have an answer for you. My usual answer would be, that even after things could change, depending how long they wait before going in. In a recent run I was doing, the group needed to infiltrate an apartment complex pretty much owned by the gangers. There are "innocents" in the building, little kids, and I told the astral observer what she found. When they finally showed up to hit the building, there were two guys on the roof getting high on Cram and watching the lights slow down (from their perspective), who weren't there before. Really put the screws to their plan, especially since the human mage couldn't see anything in the partial light (no perception skill, intuition 2, wound modifiers from previous drain). Resulted in both getting shot and alerting everyone else in the building someone was coming before they could even get inside.

Ooooh, it's the player who's royally screwed then. GC, page 133. I doubt the guy will be able to snoop around if the shadow spirit pops out of a hapless junkie and chases the mage around basically for shits and giggles only. That, of course, kinda breaks the suspense and mystique of Tempo, but if we consider that according to RAW, flipping junkies can do exactly jack smack shit to him. They can raise alarm, try to find his physical body or simply freak out, but direct attack on an astral form won't work.

Since Astral Combat is meant to be resolved like normal unarmed combat, I'd let them grapple the astral form. While it's tempting to say "he can just shift his astral form", there are two major problems with that:
1) While astral forms are not directly analagous to mundane forms, they also can't be shifted willy-nilly. They are a shape based on the magician's idealized sense of "self", not a matrix icon you can just re-load. You don't go from being a hulking 12 foot troll to a cat to a flying cupcake just by willing it.
2) They are, as I said, idealised self-images. This means that in almost every case, they will look like how you see the "perfect" you - which means you'll be metahuman shaped.

The other thing to note is that I'm not sure you can deal stun damage in Astral Combat. So "subdue" can only mean "hold the guy there", not "punch him unconscious."

When dealing damage in astral combat, you can deal stun. You make the choice when you attempt the attack.

Edit: SR4A page 193

I really like your puns!
especially when discussing duelling dual-natured critters!
I don't know if it's still the same in SR4, but in SR3 shapeshifters (which are dual-natured) have an astral form that always appears like their true animal, no matter what form their physical body is in at the time. So I agree with Adarael - if astral forms could be changed by choice and at will then shapeshifters would get to change their astral form to humanoid to match their physical form.

Alright, this is the 3rd or 4th time I've seen this reference. Forgive my newbism, but what's everyone talking about when they talk about the game that causes cancer?

Oh, sweet! That's great, then. I must have been confusing myself with an earlier edition.

It's what some folks call d20 games.

Ah. Thanks for that.

Double-checked what I wrote yesterday. My point still stands: according to RAW, dual-natured characters and critters can't harm an astral form directly - astral forms can be attacked only via Astral Combat, a skill that cannot be defaulted on. However, seeing an astral form wandering in and out of the crackhouse WILL put the junkies on full alert and/or cause them to freak out. So, "how would I run this"? Decide how high the junkies are and can they tell an astral form from a hallucination. If they can, they should freak out, grab weapons and split up - one group drags the hostage out, other one searches area for the mage. Unless he acts fast and manabombs them all, things are going to get ugly. The best course of action for him is hauling ass to his physical body and warning the rest of the team of what's going on, as he will most probably not be able to sling enough mojo to take the junkies out singlehandedly.

Dual Natured characters may use Unarmed instead of Astral Combat.

Also:

I take it you've never seen Stunball put to proper use?

Had he the opportunity to assense the target's aura before ? Otherwise he is likely to have a hard time identifying it using astral perception only.