Astral Hazing a FLAW!?, why is astral hazing a flaw? Most Powerful flaw in game? Options

[Bushw4cker]

Why is astral hazing a flaw? I might be able to see it as being a flaw for anyone who likes to conjurer spirits force 4 or below. Otherwise it's ridiculously powerful especially when it comes to hostile npc magic users, critters, spirits. Sure you wouldn't be allowed in any Magic Bars or Groups...EVER,and but even if they tried to kick you out, they would have hell of time sticking spell to you, and sure Awakened team members aren't going to want to carpool but..... Any spirit force 4 or below goes poof if they get within 5 meters of character. Dual Natured Critters get -4 DP to all actions against you. How is this a flaw?

I look forward to reading feedback.
Thanks

[kzt]

Why is astral hazing a flaw? I might be able to see it as being a flaw for anyone

The flaws and advantages part of the rules have always been very weak. If you don't like it just change it.

And it is a flaw for a mage or adept, but it only comes up if a player is mighty dumb.

[Faraday]

Why is astral hazing a flaw? I might be able to see it as being a flaw for anyone

Good luck being awakened with that flaw, not to mention dealing with anyone who's awakened. Any awakened team mates will pretty much ostracize you.

[Stahlseele]

There's one line missing from this Flaw to make it a Flaw.
"Only available to awakened Characters"
right now, it's perfect for all mundanes who cyber down to 0,something Essence.
At least, if they want to be guarded from magic. On ther other hand, it means no healing, no invisibility or anything like that.

[Blade]

I agree that it has a lot of uses and abuses.
Isn't there a metamagic that lets you aspect any background count in your favor? In that case, an Awakened with that flaw could get extremely powerful.

But it also has its flaws:
- You can't get help from the team's mage (no invisibility, no magic healing, no levitation...)
- You might impair your team's mage magical abilities if your Essence is too high. (can be avoided by getting a lot of cyber)
- You raise alarms every time you enter a warded place. I don't know about your games, but in my games there are a lot of these.
- You're an astral beacon that can be tracked very easily.
- You can't hide from an astral observer.

Sure, some of these flaws can be circumvented one way or another, but that's why the character has to be approved by the GM (it's part of the RAW character creation process and as important as any other character creation rule). If a negative quality is turned into a positive one, it's the GM's job to refuse the character.

[Stahlseele]

No, the Metamagic does not let you aspect your own background count to yourself. Technically, you allready are a domain in your own right. And you need to stay stationary to use the metamagic. As soon as you move, poof it's all gone again. And you have to get your own Magic up through your own Hazing too. First your magic attribute gets lowered from for example 6 to 2, and then the force 4 spell you can cast at maximum with overcast fizzles because your hazing is bigger than the spell.

No getting possessed by a good spirit to boost yourself up to do inhumane things with your body for example.

With wards, if these are Less than Force 5, they just outright vanish. They don't crash, they just go poof. Never existed.

There's the Astral Beacon flaw for the one, which is another thing all together. Meaning no, you are not automagically an astral beacon. You could even get astral chameleon to go with your astral hainz i guess. I can't remember the points and wether or not there's something in the text of either of them disallowing this.

And there is the fact that for astral perception looking into/through background count could very well be like looking at one of those heat shimmering thingies. Or maybe fog or something.

Furthermore, Astral Hazing does not keep fire created by magic away from you. And heavy things levitating above you and dropping on you will still hurt.

[Ol' Scratch]

First of all, it's not actually a negative quality (aka, "flaw"). It's a metagenic quality. That means it's only available to changelings. Don't much care for it? Restrict changelings in your campaign. Either by disallowing them, increasing their cost, or -- just as the rules suggest -- step in as the GM and oversee the selection of qualities. If they're taking Astral Hazing, that makes them either a class II or III changeling, which means they're going to be pretty freaky one way or another. Don't let them take pretty-happy-smiley positive qualities if they go with Astral Hazing. Hazing means their very presence corrupts the flow of magic around them. They shouldn't have Glamour or Thermographic Vision as a result. They should tend towards more grotesque changes to reflect that corruption.

If you're letting players choose things willy-nilly without doing anything to rein it in when you see something that you perceive as a balance issue, you have only yourself to blame as a GM.

[Stahlseele]

Hmm, how does Astral hazing affect Critters by the way?
Things like Ghouls, Vampires, Pixies, Centaurs?

[Sengir]

Any spirit force 4 or below goes poof if they get within 5 meters of character.

Look at it like this: You very presence kills or severely harms every spirit in your vincinity, it warps the manasphere and leaves it broken even after you are gone. You are the astral equivalent of an unshielded reactor core, and everybody with the slightest bit of awakening will treat you accordingly. Most will just shun you, but some people (and other entities) dedicated to keeping the astral world clean might just decide that both worlds are better off without you.

[Bushw4cker]

Look at it like this: You very presence kills or severely harms every spirit in your vincinity, it warps the manasphere and leaves it broken even after you are gone. You are the astral equivalent of an unshielded reactor core, and everybody with the slightest bit of awakening will treat you accordingly. Most will just shun you, but some people (and other entities) dedicated to keeping the astral world clean might just decide that both worlds are better off without you.

Disrupts not kill, and there are many natural occurring background count phenomenon

[Shinobi Killfist]

First of all, it's not actually a negative quality (aka, "flaw"). It's a metagenic quality. That means it's only available to changelings. Don't much care for it? Restrict changelings in your campaign. Either by disallowing them, increasing their cost, or -- just as the rules suggest -- step in as the GM and oversee the selection of qualities. If they're taking Astral Hazing, that makes them either a class II or III changeling, which means they're going to be pretty freaky one way or another. Don't let them take pretty-happy-smiley positive qualities if they go with Astral Hazing. Hazing means their very presence corrupts the flow of magic around them. They shouldn't have Glamour or Thermographic Vision as a result. They should tend towards more grotesque changes to reflect that corruption.

If you're letting players choose things willy-nilly without doing anything to rein it in when you see something that you perceive as a balance issue, you have only yourself to blame as a GM.

Well sure but its still not really a negative metagenic quality. Its effects will be mostly positive to a player, so while miss phrased the point still stands. And yes the GM can control it is true, but that is true about anything. Still the rules should make sure negatives whether flaws or metagenic qualities are actually negative. A bad rule is a bad rule whether or not the GM can fix it, because the GM can fix anything.

[kjones]

Sure, but most of those don't walk around on two legs. A mage knows where the bad places are, and where to avoid them, but when the "bad places" can move around, it makes life difficult.

[Omenowl]

Astral hazing plus magic resistance makes perfect sense. It does depend on your essence so a very low essence character is mostly self affected. A high essence mundane can cause all sorts of issues. It is also an astral beacon of a dead zone. Pretty hard to hide when the mage is trying to track you. If you hole up for a couple of days trying to stay low much of a city block is affected. It is a big advantage for a mundane on the go, but not so good if they are laying up in a hospital as most magic doctors wouldn't heal them even if they could let alone keep them in the hospital. There are more drawbacks in the daily life than people realize.

[Bushw4cker]

Is Astral Hazing Like an AURA or is like those bikes in Tron where ever you go you leave background count. I would say it's aura and only leaves presence if you stay in place to long

[Sengir]

Disrupts not kill, and there are many natural occurring background count phenomenon

OK, you just destroy the spirit's astral form but he can still come back. Still most spirits would consider it rather offensive...

[Stahlseele]

If you stay still, it just extends out and out and out.
At a rate of Essence Meters per Day i think.

[Ol' Scratch]

Well sure but its still not really a negative metagenic quality. Its effects will be mostly positive to a player, so while miss phrased the point still stands. And yes the GM can control it is true, but that is true about anything. Still the rules should make sure negatives whether flaws or metagenic qualities are actually negative. A bad rule is a bad rule whether or not the GM can fix it, because the GM can fix anything.

It's not really a bad rule, but maybe one that could use some tweaking. It's certainly not the player's fault that a background count is an effective countermeasure against the overpoweredness of magicians. There are negative consequences for it. You're all but immune to receiving an ally magician's help; be it a Heal, a Physical Mask, or Invisibility, as other people mentioned.

If anything needs to be done to "fix" it, it's adjusting the actual value of the quality. Instead of a flat background count of 4, why not make it equal to your (absolute) Essence, or at least base it on it? Mundanes with 0.x Essence don't get a benefit from it, and those with an Essence of 6 will be an absolute hazard to everyone in the area, their allies especially. It reflects the whole cyberzombie thing, too; the further their Essence gets from 0, the worse the effect.

I bet it would get a lot less love if that were the case. But, regardless, there's several negative qualities that aren't really negatives. Extravagant Eyes? How on earth is that worth five BPs? A Biased Prejudice has a threshold of 0; all you have to do is roll Willpower + Intuition and not glitch in order to ignore it... yet that gives you 5-10 BP. A mage with Sensitive System isn't going to really see the effects of that quality (especially if he just focuses on bioware), yet it's worth 15 BP for street sams and holistic mages alike. Elf Poser and Ork Poser only come up in games where GMs put a lot of stress on racism, which isn't a very common trend. SINner gives you all kinds of perks (free legal licenses, travel permits, etc.) that you can ignore by using fake SINs and only ever comes up when a GM decides to use it as a story seed, yet you get free points for that, too. Hell, there's positive qualities that come with more baggage than most negative ones.

There's tons of bad rules in the game. Dismissing one's responsibility to keep them under control as a GM is foolish. If you do that, why bother with GMs at all?

[Draco18s]

If you stay still, it just extends out and out and out.
At a rate of Essence Meters per Day i think.

1 Meter per hour, IIRC.

RC says:

1 meter (radius) per 2 to 3 hours (GM discretion).

[Stahlseele]

Well, okay. That's a bit worse then.

[Harbin]

Astral hazing + Symbiosis would make for an interesting character, I think.

[Stahlseele]

It depends on how you want to read this.
Technically, Astral hazing and Background Count have no affect on the Symbiosis stuff.

[DireRadiant]

It is useful for a PC to be able to have awakened friends and not be as easily distinguishable to the magically capable community.

With astral hazing you are easily identifiable, tracked, and could be considered by the world at large "bad" in the same class as Bugs, Toxic Spirits, Infected, and other Awakened nasties.

It's a negative quality that you can get some awesomely effective mechanical advantages, but don't think there isn't a downside. The world hates you.

Some negative flaws are like that. They get the always in play and affecting you BP points.

[Harbin]

It depends on how you want to read this.
Technically, Astral hazing and Background Count have no affect on the Symbiosis stuff.

Absolutely, but think of the expanding field of Background Count. It would make for a sort of vigilante who covers his area with this field of astral hazing and 'protects' it while also simultaneously kind of destroying awakened stuff there. Better as an NPC, but somewhat viable as a background story for a character.

[Voronesh]

What i dont like about this flaw is the fact that its worth too little points for an awakened char. 15, i wouldnt get it for 20 points? And your magic goes from 5 to 1, yeah? Pretty much a major flaw right there. Close to screwing the whole character concept.

But for your cyberguy, its very funny. If youre at 0.xx essence, you are hard to heal anyway. Why not make it downright unfunny for anything else magical to harm you.

So i think they hit the middle ground for the two parts, but didnt get enough distance between the point values.

[Stahlseele]

Absolutely, but think of the expanding field of Background Count. It would make for a sort of vigilante who covers his area with this field of astral hazing and 'protects' it while also simultaneously kind of destroying awakened stuff there. Better as an NPC, but somewhat viable as a background story for a character.

You know, that is actually a nice angle that i did not consider yet O.o