While yes, the OR is now 3 and not 4, it still raises eyebrows. At OR4 you just go "bwut?"

At OR of 5 (6) for drones it means drones have some innate property of not being fooled and that very few mages would ever be able to sneak past one.

As Sensors have an OR of 3, even drones will be fooled.

Yeah, it's Powerballing the drone that's going to give you problems ^_^

That's why I like Lightning Bolt

Ah ha! No they won't. Synner has explicitly stated that senors are not treated separately from the drone.

On the contrary.

Not that I disagree but putting a link in would strengthen your argument.

I find it interesting, then, that when a team approach is used instead of a "Unilateral decision", plus massive amounts of player feedback, a different result is achieved. So, while you stand behind your decision unto the death, a more balanced and playable result came out. I'll wager that if you had stayed Line Developer, the change would not have happened.

I think he's saying that a camera's high tech nature allows it to see flaws in a poorly cast illusion. Obviously, the flaws that appear on this image would need to be perceived by someone on the other end. The person on the other end would notice an illusion's poor refresh rate or translucence, and thus know it was an illusion. The illusion would not be erased from the screen.

As for hollywood being boned under either interpretation, this is absurd. You're saying that Hollywood couldn't find a mage that consistently scores 3 hits? They could find mages who score 4 or more in their sleep.

In terms of camera glasses... seriously, how would that work? First, you're looking through the glasses and seeing with your eyes, and then you're also seeing an image link of the exact same thing projected over the glasses. If there was any delay in the image link whatsoever, you'd get a monstrous headache, if not get dizzy and fall down. But again, you're assuming that mages who can't even score 3 hits to beat a camera are somehow a big threat. Because anyone who can score 3 hits and beat the OR will unconditionally fool every camera in the world, cameras get no resistance test once you pass the OR threshold. I think a facility's normal cameras would be sufficient to spot really inept illusions, there would be no need for camera glasses. Security invests in technology that repels actual threats, hopeless noobs are going to get snared by basic security measures anyway without wasting money on bizarre camera glasses. Facilities are going to be kitted out with ultrasound, infrared, motion sensors, pressure plates, and possible astral surveillance, all of which make illusion a nullity in the first place. To suggest that they'd further add cameras to every employee just in case a really shitty mage tries to sneak in with invisibility (which is basically worthless in the first place thanks to all the sensor types that ignore it) is kind of absurd.

Two whole paragraphs and no explanation as to why it should work that way.

Exactly.




While I personally favor Clearsight+Sensor or Pilot+Clearsight, I can live with that reasoning.




The problem is OR 4 is "electronic equipment" and OR 5 is "Drones, Computers".

So, unless a huge clarification (like the one you posted) ends up in errata, anyone not coming to dumpshock will need to roll vs. OR 5 for illusions against drones Which is still exceedingly hard.

Even on these very boards, where you've explained RAI as Invis working against the drones sensors and not the drone itself, people are still confused.




For the record is great, if it ends up in errata. Otherwise it doesn't exist for many people.




Neither the SR4A book, nor the SR4A Core Rule Book changes document contain an explanation on this. Neither states that when you use Invis vs. a drone, or trid phatasm, or any other spell that you roll vs. the Drone's Sensors and not the drone itself.

It doesn't matter how often it gets posted on dumpshock. Not in errata = Does not exist.

QFT

I'll also add that there's a lot of gamers who don't religiously check the internet for errata. If it's not in the book, it doesn't exist.

As one of the justifications a GM might use for the difference in fooling artificial sensors and fooling real people...

LINK

LINK

LINK

Machines and humans think differently. Humans notice things that seem wrong. Machines notice things.

Actually, current SR4A RAW lists Sensors explicitly. It's OR 3, BTW.

And by RAW, there is nothing protecting Objects from having their parts targeted seperately.

And that's exactly the reason why on both Falling Damage Resistance and Gymnastic Dodge, in my games, only Skill Dice from Gymnastics (even if Augmented Skill) add in - and not Bonus Dice from Synthacardium and the like.

I just double checked the SR4A Changes pdf and you're correct.

Good catch. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)




Unfortunately by RAW there's nothing saying you can either.

So it's basically left to GM ruling.

If RAW listed everything you can do, it would be pretty extensive, don't you think?

They don't need to list everything, but in this case they need to be more specific.

Otherwise there wouldn't have been endless pages of debates on this very issue here on the boards.

I don't like 'the rules don't say I can't', because you can use 'the rules don't say I can't' to try and justify all sorts of shenanigans.

More specific than making Sensors separate, multi-purpose Sensor Packages, and those Sensor Packages being installed as exchangeable modules in Drones and Vehicles?
Then listing a separate OR for Sensors?

I think not.

Keep in mind that particular dragon is an excellent magic user. Not to mention that he's a fraggin' GREAT DRAGON! If he wants technology to bother him, he'll get an iPod and set the alarm to annoying.

I find it laughable that you are suggesting that he'd be even slowed down by a drone or dozen. Not only is he incredibly powerful as a magic user, he's also physically very powerful. Drones to a dragon are like ants to humans.

Actually, there are several spells that target a specific piece of something, like the Destroy (Object) spell. The description says you must choose an object and that each object requires a different spell. It goes into detail with some suggestions too. Like walls, doors, etc.

So apparently we *CAN* target pieces of things, just not people/living creatures.

No, not according to Synner. According to the way he states things, the exact same illusion is perfectly noticeable when looking through a camera, but perfectly unnoticeable when looking with natural eyesight. I asked why that was, twice now, and havn't gotten an answer from him yet. Probably because it doesn't make any sense.



Did you even read what I wrote? First, I was talking about this in the case of sensors actively filtering images (one possible interpretation of Synner's explanation). Second, I was talking about "unrealistic" illusions, which have no OR threshold because they're always automatically fake-appearing, and thus would automatically get filtered out of any self-filtering camera. I wasn't discussing the other case (viewers automagically detecting illusions when looking through a camera) with that example at all.

And, anyway, I think you over-estimate the number of magicians in the world who can consistently beat OR4. You need to throw 12 dice for an average roll to get 4 successes, which is already Magic 6 + Spellcasting 6 (or 4+specialization/mentor spirit). And that's just to get an average of 4 successes, which is hardly consistent. You want to go up to 15 or 18 dice to do it consistently. To do it "in your sleep" you'd need to throw 20+ dice. Outside of Dragons, there are only a bare handful of mages that strong in the world, and I seriously, seriously doubt any of them would lower themselves to working for Hollywood. We're talking highly Initiated mages here. They'll be working as the heads of magical research divisions of AAA corps, or working for Great Dragons, or other similarly exclusive jobs. Not as the special effects grunt for the latest B-movie.



If it's a choice between being fooled by 10% of illusions or 0% of illusions, for the cost of 50 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per guard (batch discount), which is basically the cost of a good meal, why WOULDN'T every security force in the world use them?

There is only so much power a dragon can have before even I consider it silly. Even if they are physicall poweful, they are still living, breathing, bleeding organisms. They don't instagob tanks, Autocannon rounds do not bounce off of them. Not without magic anyway. And if magic cannot reliably affect tech, dragons are toast. There is no reason to fear them, really, beyond initial contact.

Also, drone is not the same as small, the are not by default to dragons what ants are to humans. Also, ants are very much superior to us and there are several species that are plain scary.

It doesn't make any sense because it's magic. Technology is inherently resistant to it, people resist it too, but they have to roll. That's just how it is, and just how it's always been. I think it might be hard for Synner to explain a legacy game mechanic that has always existed in the game, that he didn't invent in the first place, which has been tossed around the forums forever and still not been answered. I am dumbfounded that people are treating all these inherently illogical aspects of magic as somehow Catalyst's fault. Remember guys, they didn't invent Shadowrun. They didn't even invent Shadowrun 4th Edition. This is a game with a long history of bizarre game mechanics that, in many cases, exist for the expediency of dice rolling rather than any sort of dedication to realism. And again, it's magic. It can't be unrealistic, because it's not a real thing. It follows strange, illogical rules and can't be pinned down by science simply because it is magic. For those who object to the entire idea that technology is supposed to be the opposite of magic, you'd best go back in time and give FASA an earful, because that was their idea back in the 1980s. If we change it, we'd be changing part of the bedrock of Shadowrun.



Well, I first explained that this interpretation is wrong, according to Synner. Why would an illusion disappear through a camera just because it's designed to be unrealistic? The answer is, it wouldn't. Whether the illusion is obviously an illusion depends on OR, but it doesn't vanish through the camera, it just looks, buggy, translucent, or whatever.



12 dice should not be very hard. It can be achieved pretty easily through a large spellcasting focus even by an average skill magician. I don't find support in the fluff for the proposition that most mages most everywhere are terrible at spellcasting. The fluff seems to describe them as dangerous when encountered on a run, and they wouldn't be if almost all of them had to throw less than 12 dice at you. Furthermore, Hollywood is rich as hell, they can hire magical experts to do their magical effects. And we shouldn't necessarily be talking about Hollywood the place -- this is about entertainment in the 2070's, which may not be centered in Hollywood. The point is, there are very powerful media corporations and they can hire magical personnel and buy them foci for money that, to them, is even less than pocket change.



Because it would be a lot more effective to have ultrasound glasses. Those pierce invisibility regardless of how well it is cast, and they also let you see in the dark and through glare and such. Facilities already have cameras and other invisibility piercing sensors all over the place, it just doesn't make sense to put them on guards on the off chance that a weak mage will fail at casting improved invisibility. Because there are already cameras all over the place, we're not talking about increasing the chances of detection by 10%, it's more like increasing the chances by nothing. Plus, if someone is casting invisibility with less than 3 hits, then ordinary people have a good chance at resisting the illusion anyway. We're not talking about 10% versus 0%, when a mage that weak tries to sneak in, he's probably got a 90% chance of being apprehended with no wacky camera glasses involved.

I would suggest that you reread my previous posts, because I did in fact answer that question. Just so there's no confusion here it goes again:




I again suggest you reread my posts. I have not at any point suggested any active filtering of any sort (several other people have). I have in fact explained a couple of times now that SR4 (and not SR4A) didn't go with actively resisted Physical Illusions exactly because the illusion is autonomous of the observer (and any active filtering it might do).


I believe this is where we're having a small but important disconnect, and it seems to have to do with the use of the terms real/realistic and unrealistic/fake. So let's walk through an example I hope will make this clearer.

If I cast a Physical Mask that places a clearly cartoony anthromorphic head over my features and walk into a lobby, for all that the illusion looks "unrealistic" if I get enough hits, the camera itself will register the illusion as a flawless real person with a cartoon animal head walking into the building. Now, a human looking at it would do a double take and assume it's an illusion of some sort (or a really bad SURGE), so would a security guard on the other end of the camera feed, and probably an analysis software would too. However, the operative elements here are that the illusion itself would be flawless and realistic - regardless of the fact that the chosen image is fantastic and fake enough to be a giveaway to the fact that it's an illusion.

Should I have failed to achieve the necessary OR the camera would have registered (for instance) an obviously illusory semi-transparent cartoon animal-headed individual walking into the lobby (regardless of the fantastic telltales of the chosen image itself).

Were I to attempt the same thing with an illusion of another person's face instead of the anthromorphic cartoon animal head, in the first instance, the illusion itself would have been perfectly realistic and complete and there would be no voluntary giveaways to its illusory nature. If I had, in the second instance, failed to reach the necessary OR the illusion would be visibly flawed.

Or to use the Hollywood example that's been bandied around on this thread, if the special effects magician is casting an illusion of a neon purple great dragon for the actors to interact with on the set and he fails to achieve the OR, the illusion itself will be visibly flawed and/or incomplete (hence unrealistic). This is regardless of the fact (and beside the point) that a neon purple great dragon/image is itself unrealistic. Should the staff magician accomplish the spellcasting the neon purple great dragon would look perfect and realistic, even if the image itself would be a giveaway (to most people) that something is off.


I will direct you to my post above and reiterate that at no point did I mention any filtering of images (see response to Mack's Pilot + Clearsight query). I specifically noted that Physical Illusions were devised the way they were because they function regardless of who or what is viewing them (or even if no one is viewing them). They are in fact independent of any observer, which is why the choice was made when SR4 came out to make them OR-based.


Allow me to disagree, two points:

First from my previous post: "the OR of 4 was deemed acceptable because it represents a good if not automatic chance of success for a Spellcasting dice pool of 12 (without Edge use), which is well within reach of a non-maxed out starting magician (even if it means he now has to pick up a spellcasting focus) as well as representing a steeper grade in the magic affecting technology aspects of game balance."

As I noted in one of my very first posts to this thread: A magician with Magic 4 + Spellcasting 5 needs only a Spellcasting Focus 3 to achieve a 12 dicepool and 4 successes on a regular basis, that isn't even close to an optimized build (which might include specializations, power foci, mentor bonuses, spirit assists, and several other tricks - all of which would be perfectly justified for a special effects wizard character). No one here would bat an eyelid about a samurai spending 45k on dice pool-boosting gear or picking a weapon specialization, why would a magician having to invest in a focus be any different? Yes, it does make magicians less versatile. That was partly the point.

Second, the fact that player characters and NPCs are used to having it easy when fooling sensors, doesn't mean that's the way it should be or that it reflects the setting's metaphysics. For a very long time it has been exceptionally easy for magic to augment, boost, affect, and damage technology while the opposite is definitely not true. It's a key element of the setting that Magic and Technology are diametrically opposed, and that they don't interact well (which explains the OR mechanic that has always been in the game in one form or another). The adjustments to OR were intended to reflect a rebalancing of that equation (across a number of spell categories and, contrary to what has been said in this thread, also affecting certain spirits).

So instead of actually fixing the problems of magic vs tech the idea was to just conceal them a bit under a larger OR threshold. This was just dice inflation without actually looking at the core problems. I'm not sure how big of a change you guys felt you were capable of making for a 4A edition, but I guess I would of been happier with a 4.5 edition that actually looked at core problems and tried to fix them.

I'm not sure what you mean with the "conceal" comment (or whether you missed the point).

One of the key measures of how well magic affects technology in Shadowrun is and always has been Object Resistance. Therefore it makes every sense to raise OR thresholds if the intent was to make technology harder to affect by magic (to match the setting's metaphysics). It would not have made sense to make technology more effective against magic because the intent was never to lower difficulty but make it equally high on both sides of the equation. The two were to remain polar opposites. Obviously, the level of this OR threshold increase is open to debate (and has been debated to no end), and I'm willing to discuss the reasoning behind my development decisions. The Catalyst development team has opted for a compromise with the latest revisions to SR4A, however I still believe the 1,2,4,6 increments better reflect the setting metaphysics.

There were several constraints to working on SR4A rules changes and one major one was that this was not to be an SR4.5. It was not to introduce rules that cascaded into fundamental changes to other core books and significantly changed advanced rules (therefore forcing additional errata and cascading corrections). In fact if you look at SR4A you'll find it translates to less than 3 minor errata to the advanced books. In the case of the OR increase this had little or no relevance though.

As for dice pool inflation, all I can say is that it is ultimately a matter of opinion. However, I will point out that numerous threads and examples on Dumpshock and elsewhere (which parallel playtest feedback btw) do demonstrate that "typical" character dice pools (including those of magicians) in their primary field(s) of focus are usually in the 12-15 dice range.