That has its own issues. Even with a willpower of 1, sooner or later the victim will roll enough successes to break the control. If you take their willpower to zero, they can't taken any actions at all.

Can and will pass on her fake SIN(s), address(es), biometric data, photographs, known associates, etc to any and all enemies the mage may have. Including and especially the police. And can do it untraceably - or s/he's not worth the "hacker" title.

Another thing: Alter Memory is explicitly not actually permanent.

If she openly mindfucks people in front of her team, sooner or later the team will have to off her out of self preservation - who guarantees that she doesn't secretly alters their memory and influences them all the time? Is their share from the run really their share, or did she collect 90% of it?

Well...
Burn the witch! Burn her! Burn! Burn! Burn!

Yea, Im an enabler

More of this.


True, but any good mindmage won't use just one casting. A proper mindmage will use multiple castings of Alter Memory, Compulsion, and Suggestion, and they'll refresh these often.

I'm not sure but I don't think anyone's mentioned the biggest magic-equalizer out there - Backround Count. Any good GM would have potentially 1-2 points of BC over the majority of the SR game world, and higher when needed.

That's hard to do unless you've got someone under your thumb for a long period of time. In the short run, it's not actually worth it.

That's because randomly throwing around background count is more than a little unfair. It's especially unfair if there's other awakened members of the team who aren't causing issues. You want realistic responses to the mage, not arbitrary ones. Now, background count on select facilities is fine, but not in general.

Yeah like I said next game unless something occurs to change it, the world is crashing down from every direction on this mage.
the only reason it hasn't happened sooner is
1. my inexperience
2. my inexperience

I have learned a lot since then, like how licensed mages have tissue samples on file so their signature is on record. As a sinner, they should have found her in a few days. But yeah that hackers ratting her out. He's not going to do it anonymously because he also has a bookey out to get him, so going into protective custody is his way out of being killed for debts unpaid.

The way I have it planned in my head is the hacker will lure her to the group's usual meet up, and outside the place she'll get ambushed by SFPD SWAT, who order down on the ground. Immediately LoneStar Swat arrives and orders the same, while arguing with the SFPD over who has jurisdiction (my game's in San francisco). While the SWAT argue, Yakuza show up to kill her out of vengenace, A large group of gangers led by the girl who's neck she tried to have snapped show up to kill her. If the mage tries to cast anything it gets counterspelled, if she tries to run she gets caught/killed. She'll get constant calls from The Mayor, a massive AI, syndicates, and megacorps all offering to get her out of trouble for a price. the price is basically "you work for us now, have a free cranial bomb."

Though I might just keep it simple with SWAT showing up.

as for the mage to come after...
one of the things mentioned was certain spells being restricted, and I like that idea. So I think I'm going to add availability ratings to certain spells. Alter memory, and the control spells will be at least a rating 14, so you can't start with them without the restricted gear quality.

And what is background count?

Keep it simple, you don't want to turn your message into a comedy routine.
Have an (unidentified) armed force surround her home and barge in without any warning what so ever. Force her down on the ground hands on the head. Full magemask and cuffs on. Then lights out. Any attempt at resistance is met with a bullet to the forehead.
After that have the character gone from the game (keep the sheet) only to potentially return as as opposition down the line. Either as a obedient puppet for the man behind the curtains or completely fallen into whatever corrupted path she invoked to break out.
Once a character is that far gone, redemption is not the way to go.

Background count is a modifier to describe the ambient mana available in a certain region, it's influenced by the history and emotional imprints of the place, aswell as any manipulation of mana that occured.

Making the spells harder to get is not going to make much difference, if you don't deal with the issue at hand. Enforce the limited duration of manipulation spells rigidly and take notes of what they do with them. So that when they tick of the wrong people, they'll feel it.

Basically, astral static that dampens down magic. It can be caused by a lot of things, and can even be aspected towards certain paradigms. It's covered in detail in Street Magic.

Go with simple. Cops will let their HQ fight out who gets her and no group of criminals is going to pick a fight with a deployed tactical team. Criminals who want her dead that badly will simply arrange for someone to quietly garotte her in a jail shower.

Enemies with Astral Hazing, just the thing to mess with mages.

Astral hazing, arcane arrester and high willpower = yeah, you were trying to cast what exactly?
Or: Cyberzombies. Lots of Cyberzombies.

Step one, TALK TO THE PLAYER IN QUESTION.

Tell him or her what you have learned here, and give them a chance to modulate their character's behavior accordingly. If they don't ... drop the hammer. But if they do ... problem solved from the other side of the coin, right?

Let's not go there shall we *shudder*

Astral Hazing is a Negative Quality. I would ADD the background count from the quality to the Force of any offensive spell used against such a target and subtract it from the Force of any "buff" or healing spell.

Completely forget the fact they're rather new.
Yes, talk to him. Dropping a hammer from a clear sky only does one thing and that is breeding bad blood.
However! If you let him continue to get away without consequence, there's a very good chance he reverts to his old behaviour.
Talk to him, then give him a small dose of what he have coming to him.
Like having the gangers find him, break his arms and hang him up on a public square.
He'll live... But he'll know that even lowly gangers can retaliate... and he'll need new arms.

That isn't how it works. It's a 4 pt background count. Always. It's negative because it is really inconvenient to a player and especially the other players. It's a lot like being dual natured, which is also a negative quality.

Which is all well and good, but that is not what that particular Negative Quality does. *shrug*

It makes it negative (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

By the sidebar on page 121 of Street Magic, much of Seattle would be between a R1 and R2 BC. The OP stated his game is in San Fran, and I'm sure that dozens of years of Pride Parades have made the sort of "steady emotional influence over a long period of time" for a R2 BC.


1) I am completely against limiting spells because of the availability of the formula. You are not required to get a spell formula to start the game with a spell. There are other ways to handle a game than to resort to charging extra BP for spells in chargen.

2) Street Magic, pages 117 - 122.


This is a house rule and does not follow the RAW for what BC is or how it functions.


No, it makes it arbitrary. The quality itself is already a negative quality.

Keep in mind... Neraph has a sparkly vampire who likes to mind rape people repeatedly and has argued in the past it doesn't have any negative RP consequences and even makes them willing victims. Cast it multipe times... yeah right... just where and when? It doesn't change the fact that each spell degrades just as fast as the first one does since the rolls aren't cumulative. And keeping tabs on what exactly you cast on who and when...


Tashiro:
You completely missed my point in the second paragraph. *ALL* methods of attacking something non-magical directly from the astral were REMOVED. Then possession was put back into the game and introduced a new way to attack things directly from the astral after the abuses were removed. This is one of the main reasons it's so problematic... and many GM's ban it from players and restrict to NPC only use for bad guys.


Astral Hazing:
Actually... the quality states specifically that the BGC is aspected. It never states aspected to what... but against the character makes perfect sense.

In which case the reading is proper... traditions/spirits aspected against the astral hazer would benefit from it while those in line would suffer. Aspecting used to be pretty broad and some of the GM's I play with still use the old definitions... such as an area aspected towards spirits and summoning... where other spells are cast at a penalty but summoning and binding is easier... (nasty if you fail the binding check and the spirit goes uncontrolled and decides to take a piece out of you). But yeah the current rules only tend to go towards aspecting it towards one tradition or another... and bugger anyone else.

*blinks* Is Falconer actually agreeing with me? I'm scared... Maybe the End of the World was just delayed...

I find that term extraordinarily offensive. My nosferatu has absolutely nothing in common with Twilight, and the fact that you liken the monster I play to a hundreds-year old emo vampire that has nothing better to do with eternity than to trawl the local high schools for "meaningful relationships" extremely unfitting. What I played was more akin to a Deathknight meets Sith Lord, not an unrealistically-obsessed character who is obviously the result of a trashy romance novelist.


Yes, the BC listed is aspected, but, as you pointed out also, to what is left blank. Theoretically it could be aspected to any number of things, but instead of going into a strange, rambling, speculatory paragraph I'd suggest simply going "GM's discretion, Street Magic, page 118-119, Aspect and Flexible Aspect sidebar."

And I don't care Neraph... playable ghouls/vamps/whatever... they're all sparkly. They don't act like monsters and expect others to cater to them. All aspects of the HMHMMv are laughable once you start going with PC characters... such as infecting the rest of your team and also dooming them unless you handwave those things away and ignore the infection rules..... similarly ignoring the numerous bounties which are still outstanding even in the CAS/UCAS on infected...

Yes your vampire is sparkly deal with it. Now back to the channel topic of the thread.


Flexible aspect is exactly what I was referring to... I was just remembering the older version of same from older editions. But flexible aspect would be something to have some fun with as a GM in actually turning astral hazing into an actual negative quality... hey look... I get +4 dice to attack you and +4 dice to reduce drain because I'm somehow aspected against you and your background count helps me. (BTW: astral hazing's background count is positive... not negative... it's an excess of mana not an absence of mana). Hmm... if I could somehow just turn this guy into my own personal gimp... chop off the arms and legs... cut out the tongue... put him in a backpack and cart him around with me as my own personal aspected portable domain... ohh we could even turn 'astral hazing' into a hunted quality for the production of your own personal gimp.