Summoner terrorism, the "single spirit theory": oswald summoned alone! Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Switch to: Outline Switch to: Standard Linear+

[shinryu]

i posted this in somewhat more fragmented form on the official boards, wherein i encountered great resistance from the infalliable rules hivemind*. since the saner players and freelancers seem to hang around here, i thought i'd throw it out and see if this bothers you guys as much as it does me.

disclaimer: this is not to do with anything but security and military implications of overpowered summoners. no actual endorsement of mass genocide is intended.

so, in 3e, your odds of summoning a force 12 spirit successfully and surviving are about 1 in 1000. other people have run the numbers on this board, but i think you can safely say they're between 25 and 50% depending on exact circumstances. while the sr3 force 12 spirit was definitely a worse deal since immunity was way powerful, there's a good argument that a force 12 spirit in 5e is basically the equivalent of a teleporting light armored vehicle you can undetectably smuggle with you almost anywhere you want.

oswald's really not the right assassin for this, as this tactic is most likely suicidal, so let's go with osama bin summinin. our plucky awakened terrorist reads from his own version of the koran where suicide tactics are totally permitted and dealing with the djinn is a valid method of jihad, and for whatever reason he decides he's going to kill a VIP giving a speech regardless of the cost. were he to attempt to suicide bomb the vip with actual bombs, he has to deal with chemsniffers and other excitement. drone and car attacks can be stopped with firepower and smart planning. i submit, however, that osama bin summinin's best bet for wiping the VIP if he doesn't care too much about survival is to summon the biggest spirit he can and tell it to sic balls on said VIP. assuming he can get close enough to get a look at the guy, he can do it, and there's not a single way to spot that he can do this for a mundane. if he's learned masking metamagics, even the awakened might have a problem.

again, i won't run the numbers on summoning this beast, but suffice to say the odds are indisputably better than 1 in 1000. if he successfully gets his murder-djinn, the summoner merely has to have one service to say "kill that guy" and security is in some deep, deep shit. they have about 3 IPs to do something about this: IP1, summon, IP2: command and manifest, IP3: kill. if security isn't right on the ball, they may not even react before their VIP is butchered like a hog.

physical security is a bit fucked anyway. with a 24+ defense dice pool, 24 hardened armor and between 6 and 12 automatic successes for damage resistance, they need to be able to hit this thing with massed grenades, assault cannon fire, or missiles to even annoy i. i submit this is not an optimal tactic under many circumstances. you could suicide bomb the thing with drones carrying explosives, and this is probably your best bet, but again may not always be viable. you can also shoot the summoner, if you know who he is. is that guy gritting his teeth in pain summoning something, or experiencing last night's delicious meal from stuffer shack? you want to guess and shoot him?

magical security ain't much better off. mages are going to have a bitch of a time banishing this nasty if they aren't themselves willing to take a big hit of drain, and they better get it right the first time before the spirit lets loose. he's fairly resistant to direct combat spells and can dodge indirect spells easily with a 24+ dice defense pool. any astral mana barrier that doesn't basically incapacitate the mage casting it is going to get disrupted simply by the spirit flying up to it, though it may provide visual cover. about the only viable tactic i can think of for defense is to have several other spirits there to try to gangbang this thing into submission from the astral, but that's iffy as well. it is going to be twice as powerful as most of them.

the killer spirit? well, it just needs to land one 24P engulf or elemental attack to pretty much put the VIP down in one. with 24 dice to attack, hard for it to miss and not do assloads of damage.

result: VIPs need massive, massive amounts of dedicated magical security to feel safe from these types of attacks. viable for actual presidents of countries and vice presidents in megacorps, probably less viable for other people with good reasons to be paranoid. i wouldn't leave my warded arcology without a magical bodyguard if this sort of thing could happen.

now, a not-normally suicidal summoner might try to pull this shit if, say, emotionally distraught, pushed too far, or in an otherwise no-win situation like the Red Samurai bearing down on his ass with a vengeance. since a force 12 isn't a virtual guarantee of explosive death by drain, he may find the win or die button his best choice, or he may not give a shit anymore.

result: law enforcement always, always has to assume a magical perp might summon a tank on a moment's notice. assault cannons and grenade launchers are standard issue weapons, since you have to assume you must go loaded for worst-case scenarios. beat cops probably regularly straight-up shoot street people dead if they blink at them funny. it's not "i thought he had a gun", it's "i thought he was casting" that gets knight errant off from the huge number of officer-involved murders of harmless homeless orks gone off their meds in the wrong part of town.

oh, hey, what if your terrorist or temporarily crazy summoner lets this thing loose in a mall, or in an airplane... oh shit. roll 1D6 x HTR response time and figure out how many people it can kill before people that can even start to hurt it show up, if they can (ok, astral response is faster, sure, but that's still on the order of minutes). i think that's a lot of people, yes.

result: pretty much everybody is kind of worried about this sort of thing if it happens, oh, ever.

historically, the shadowrun universe actually owes a great deal of its political order to an act of what would politely be called magical asymmetric warfare (less politely, magic 9/11) where a couple dozen shamans broke the back of the biggest military machine on the planet, killing themselves in the process of doing so. i cannot imagine that the threat of awakened fanatics unleashing tanks from the ether is not something that is taken very seriously by security experts, if not least for the ability to stoke the paranoia of the masses.

i leave the results to your imagination; suffice it to say that i'm a little surprised summoners aren't burned out with ware as soon as their abilities manifest in many places, let alone that there haven't been magical holocausts and constant shoot-on-sight pogroms against unregistered mages. it does, however, make a lot more sense why really important people live in mana voids like orbit,

am i missing something here? an easy security strategy that makes this less viable? i don't think "shortage of suicidal mages" works as a way out; hell, if you're a poor teenage conjurer in a magic-repressive culture like the middle east is described as, being raised by kindly strangers to go blow your brains out for god against infidels is probably one of the few viable career paths you have. plus the losing their goddamn mind or having nothing left to lose types of incidents. i think this is one of the reasons the easier high-force summoning rules cause serious setting problems for 5th edition on top of the game balance issues.

*not unique to the shadowrun boards. it seems like any official forum for anything is filled with prolific posters that defend their product to the death even if it's obviously flawed. doesn't seem to matter if it's a small issue or a giant problem, must defend product with forum lives. defense force assemble!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Some rumors even say TJ is Damien Knight when he wants to do some runs to keep his hand in the game. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Shhhhh.....
Note to Security Coordinator: Check our Files on the Shadworunner known as Sendaz, evaluate whether he has become a security risk. If so, remove him.

[shinryu]

i assume in the example that the summoners have enough of an idea of where damon knight is to get the spirit there. body doubles and such are all a great solution to that issue, but it just exacerbates the idea that if you're not so stupidly rich as to have absolutely top-end security mages and body doubles and warded and armored cars, then you are pretty much a pissed mage away from being scraped off the sidewalk.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

i assume in the example that the summoners have enough of an idea of where damon knight is to get the spirit there. body doubles and such are all a great solution to that issue, but it just exacerbates the idea that if you're not so stupidly rich as to have absolutely top-end security mages and body doubles and warded and armored cars, then you are pretty much a pissed mage away from being scraped off the sidewalk.

Most people ARE just a pissed mage away from being scraped off the sidewalk. That is one of the reasons, if not the biggest reason, why Mages are feared.

[wepv]

First off, Hi! I'm new to the boards. Would have posted two pages ago but sign up process slowed me down.

I think spirits are too strong in sr5. That said, I don't see spirit terrorism to be much of an issue. Spirits only become too strong past force 6, with the truly unanswerable levels in the 10+ force range.

Assuming Shinryu's number is a good guess of the number of magic 6 population, what percentage of them are adepts? And what percentage are aspects mages that can't summon? Lets say that it is an even chance that you are an adept, an aspected Mage( 3 different types), or a Mage of mystic adept. All mages and mystic adepts and 1/3 of aspected mages could possibly summon. What percentage of them will actually have summoning 6 with a specialization? What percentage of these have min-maxed drain stats and high enough damage boxes to stay awake/alive to finish the summon? What percentage of these have summoning foci? And then what percentage of these have edge? Then what percentage of these have the mindset and world view to push them to commit terrorism?

So 6000 people have magic 6. Maybe 50% of them can summon. So 3000. 1/6 of these might have summoning 6(ignoring specs right now). So now we have 500 people on earth that could do this. I have no idea how to figure out how many of these will have the needed drain stats but even if half of them have the drain stats that still leaves us with only 250 possible spirit bombers. How many of these 250 people would have edge? Not many. How many of them would be willing to commit terrorism?

I think this is why it's not an issue. It is just too rare. Is it possible? Yes, but it is more likely that one of his body guards is actually a dragon decker possessed by a toxic spirit.

[shinryu]

we are having an exciting discussion in the military magic thread along these lines. according to a couple of freelancers, the number of mages in the world in no way supports the complete ease of generating death-machines at chargen. i had made my assumptions based on a world where 1% awakened meant 1% of the population were adepts and mages, but even that number is too high. shadowrun: where internal system and setting consistency just doesn't matter.

tymeaus:
related to the discussion of too few mages and everyone being afraid of them is that an awakened pogrom really does start to be a plausible idea. if only 10 out of 1000 awakened are actually as dangerous as this, then the idea of a population killing all the awakened is actually possible, especially if the government helps take out the really dangerous ones (and keeps its loyal awakened alive as valuable collaborators). this sort of nightmare scenario only makes it more likely that the political elite would want to push for such a thing. for every damon knight, there are two dozen junior VPs with not nearly enough mojo between them and a force 12 elemental. so i think that this could happen at all is a big problem for the setting.

[wepv]

How many mages able to summon such a spirit are not working for a megacorp?

[shinryu]

How many mages able to summon such a spirit are not working for a megacorp?

exactly! if you go by the canon numbers of awakened, not only are there no mages to pull this trick, there are basically no mages that would be working as shadowrunners at all, period. it's a bit of a problem for the game as it is.

[wepv]

I would agree if the majority of shadowrunners were not deranged adrenaline junkies, incapable of holding a real job.
So any awakened who is mentally stable, yeah they most likely work for a corp or a government. But all of the others are likely gangers or shadowrunners.

[RHat]

tymeaus:
related to the discussion of too few mages and everyone being afraid of them is that an awakened pogrom really does start to be a plausible idea. if only 10 out of 1000 awakened are actually as dangerous as this, then the idea of a population killing all the awakened is actually possible, especially if the government helps take out the really dangerous ones (and keeps its loyal awakened alive as valuable collaborators). this sort of nightmare scenario only makes it more likely that the political elite would want to push for such a thing. for every damon knight, there are two dozen junior VPs with not nearly enough mojo between them and a force 12 elemental. so i think that this could happen at all is a big problem for the setting.

There was a jihad started with that exact goal. Aden responded by razing Tehran.

In other words, if anyone did decide to attempt it, the dragons would intervene. We know this, because someone decided to attempt it and a dragon intervened.

[RHat]

I would agree if the majority of shadowrunners were not deranged adrenaline junkies, incapable of holding a real job.
So any awakened who is mentally stable, yeah they most likely work for a corp or a government. But all of the others are likely gangers or shadowrunners.

There are plenty of mentally stable runners - they just have their own reasons for not going corporate.

[shinryu]

There was a jihad started with that exact goal. Aden responded by razing Tehran.

In other words, if anyone did decide to attempt it, the dragons would intervene. We know this, because someone decided to attempt it and a dragon intervened.

point taken, though i would suspect that it largely depends on what subset of awakened are targeted. if the ayatollah had said "god is great, he gave us mages to fight for allah! smite the infidel demon worshippers" and started smiting the (admittedly small) population of christian and sunnni awakened, i don't know as it would have prompted the same response. as another example, i'm not sure lofwyr would give a second thought to ordering the cleansing of the non sader-krupp awakened in a small african country that displeased him. if they don't have a dragon on their side, that could go poorly for the native magicians. this is especially a scenario if one ethnic group allies itself with sader-krupp and the other resists, in which case we have something like a hutu-tutsi war with a little awakened genocide on top.

[RHat]

point taken, though i would suspect that it largely depends on what subset of awakened are targeted. if the ayatollah had said "god is great, he gave us mages to fight for allah! smite the infidel demon worshippers" and started smiting the (admittedly small) population of christian and sunnni awakened, i don't know as it would have prompted the same response. as another example, i'm not sure lofwyr would give a second thought to ordering the cleansing of the non sader-krupp awakened in a small african country that displeased him. if they don't have a dragon on their side, that could go poorly for the native magicians. this is especially a scenario if one ethnic group allies itself with sader-krupp and the other resists, in which case we have something like a hutu-tutsi war with a little awakened genocide on top.

If he'd done that, the Church would have gone after him - you don't want groups like the Knights of St. Sylvester (think that's the one) on you. The Sunni Awakened might hav e a similar group.

There were probably a LOT of small conflicts shortly following the Awakening, which would have contributed to the balkanization that occurred.

[shinryu]

If he'd done that, the Church would have gone after him - you don't want groups like the Knights of St. Sylvester (think that's the one) on you. The Sunni Awakened might hav e a similar group.

There were probably a LOT of small conflicts shortly following the Awakening, which would have contributed to the balkanization that occurred.

well, that's why you have to kill them all, isn't it? i'm not saying this is a good idea, as i think history has generally demonstrated these things only result in simmering century-long feuds with intermittent huge bloody incidents. i'm just saying i think people are stupid enough to try it. then again, perhaps they have learned from the balkanization period that this doesn't go well.

[RHat]

well, that's why you have to kill them all, isn't it? i'm not saying this is a good idea, as i think history has generally demonstrated these things only result in simmering century-long feuds with intermittent huge bloody incidents. i'm just saying i think people are stupid enough to try it. then again, perhaps they have learned from the balkanization period that this doesn't go well.

And I'm suggesting that people may have tried it, and failed.

[shinryu]

And I'm suggesting that people may have tried it, and failed.

plus ca change. it didn't work for germany very well, but that didn't stop the serbs from trying 60 years later.

[RHat]

plus ca change. it didn't work for germany very well, but that didn't stop the serbs from trying 60 years later.

Maybe, but at this point the people who might do it REALLY aren't in a position to do so.