Dealing with Magic, It ruins things Options

[rackrmnn]

One big problem I'm having as a GM is dealing with magic. The mage player in my game has loaded himself up with an array of spells that can make my life painful, including Levitate, Improved Invisibility, Clairvoyance, and Influence. All of them he can manage to cast without taking any drain most of the time.

Do people have tips for designing runs that cannot be "ruined" by these spells? I like it when my players come up with interesting solutions to problems, but too often I'm finding spells like these make it possible to just avoid the problem entirely. I want to try to keep the gameworld as reasonable as possible and not make it so the character feels like I'm putting stuff in place just to stop him, but still... It's kinda annoying when an improved invisibility/levitated character just flies by every guard in a building thus avoiding any interesting encounters I had planned.

Also, how prevalent should astral barriers and other magical security measures be in Shadowrun? Right now I kinda have it so labs doing secret research usually have some kind of strong magical security, but your standard office building has little to none.

Thanks

[Tiger Eyes]

In our world, most 'interesting' places have magical security, even if it is just a watcher spirit. Actually, those darn watcher spirits do more to hinder us than anything else, I think... just the threat of being seen by one makes us much more cautious. I wouldn't think Bob's Auto Rentals keeps a watcher spirit on duty, but most office complexes do - at least at night - as part of their contract with Night Errant or Lone Star. Wards are common in executive offices, and any mid-level business is going to have a mage on call as part of their security contract. High level businesses and secret research facilities will have a mage physically on duty at all times. Casinos, too (darn it!).

Another trick is to make sure that ALL the team needs to get into the building. It takes a pretty talented mage to sustain invisibilty on herself/himself, a hacker, and a street sam or two. And, if he or she is doing all that, it only takes a single warded hallway to screw everything up...

There are passive magical deterents, too... plants that react to astral activity, walls covered in ivy, not to mention barriers composed of bacteria and the like. Some of those are expensive, some are not. Having pay data on a secure server in a basement, with the only access by elevator, and an astrally aware plant sitting next to the elevator doors... or a ward on the elevator... or a watcher spirit in the hallway... fairly cheap, but effective.

Of course, if they just want a free rental car, then let 'em go after Bob's and don't worry about it. But the fun stuff isn't going to be at Bob's, is it? :D

[mintcar]

Shadowrun is a gameworld were vast resources are available to even the most modestly designed character. In the form of magic, but also in the sheer fact that information is so readily accessable on the matrix. The thing to remember is that all those things are available to other people also.

As a GM, I'm pretty fast to take advantage of magical spells and spirits—as well as high tech forensics and hacking—to make the lives difficult for my players. As a result, the questions you ask yourself has been asked the other way around in my group.

What you need to solve this is to have an understanding between players and GM of what is possible, what is common practice and how it is usually countered. There is a status quo, or else there would be no crime- or no law, respectively. Knowing that there IS supposed to be a status quo, all you have to do is decide how it is manifesting itself. For example; in previous editions of the game, astral projection was "discovered" by players to be extremely exploitable. In SR4, it is often stated that astral snooping is recogniced by companies and governments as a serious problem, and that vast resources are being spent to protect from it.

[rackrmnn]

Watcher spirits bring up another thing. I guess I'm not as up on magic rules as I really should be, but is there any way for players to neutralize a watcher spirit without the mage which created it knowing? Or do they just have to sneak around?

[fool]

contain it within an astral barrier spell. Poor little thing cant do anything then, 'course it only works temporarily.

[emo samurai]

You could sustain it; you wouldn't need a very powerful focus for that.

[Kremlin KOA]

best magic counter In my experience
use every magic trick they use on you, on them
let your players invent the counters for you

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

[rackrmnn]

Well, to tell you the truth the invisible levitating thing never actually happened. That was an exaggeration. Flying invisible people have been used a couple of times, though.

As far as countering improved invisibility in general, I guess I could increase the number of pheromone and ultrasound detectors. As is, I was considering them on the rarer side.

For clairvoyance it's occured to me that most people turn out the lights when they leave a room. Doesn't do you a whole lot of good to look through a wall if it's pitch black inside.

What's also kinda annoying is that it slows down the game, too. Like I said, this guy almost never takes damage from drain when he casts these spells. When paranoia sets in he starts clairvoyancing everything.

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

Is he not taking drain because he casts at a low Force, or because he has killer Willpower and Magic (and a focus)? If the former, keep in mind that the number of hits on a spell are limited by its Force, so no matter how many hits he actually *rolled* for that Force 3 Improved Invisibility, it's not stronger than 3 hits. Someone might make a Perception roll good enough to spot that.

[Zen Shooter01]

Magic in the 6th World isn't a secret, and professional security will at the very least be briefed about spells like Mask and Invisibility. They might also have Hell Hounds or bound spirits or their own magician. Don't feel guilty about putting things in to stop the players - security doesn't feel guilty about putting things in to stop the thieves.

And don't forget that NPCs get Edge. Use it to bust through that Invisibility spell. And don't forget that the PC can still be heard, which is just a perception test.

[hyzmarca]

You can never have to many Barghests. When invisimage gets to resist paralyzing howl he'll learn to be more careful. When he has to resist 20 paralyzing howls at the same time he'll die.

[arcady]

[emo samurai]

Can you only mask yourself if you have the metamagic? Plus, air-borne DNA sensors would sort of break the game utterly. There's no way to defeat that without a bomb or something.

[nick012000]

Or hacking it.

[hyzmarca]

[emo samurai]

HOW much would it change? The thought's kind of scary.

[Red]

How expensive is DNA testing technology? How much time and lab equipment does it take? Are these factors necessarily reducable, and to what degree? Not everything follows Moore's Law. (And even Moore's Law shall inevitably break)

Even if it is possible to reclaim DNA from dust, just how intensive would the lab work be to organize and screen all that data? I can imagine that unless the atmosphere of an office was hermetically sealed, you would have DNA from everyone who passed by that building as well as anyone who came in contact with an employee. Even if you could screen it all, the data would not necessarily be meaningful.

Collecting DNA from blood or hair is far more effective because you can trace the who/what/where/why of how they got there in the first place. And in an area with enough traffic hair isn't necessarily that useful. But blood is almost always more effective due to the uncommon, or unique circumstances by which it is left behind. Its presence is more meaningful.

That said, game wise things should be utilized in moderation. The power of forensics and Big Brother is best left in the GM's hands.

[hyzmarca]

[neko128]

[arcady]

That's an odd step backwards then, because DNA tech today is accurate and used in court routinely.

Likewise, a sniffer today can accurate determine all of the chemicals in the air around it.

Surely in 70 years these two already existing technologies can be combined.

Dust might fall, but that is why you use air conditioning fans to get air to move. And you can also just put the filters on the floor. Run them for about five minutes after people leave the office, and the bulk of particles will be cleared out.

DNA cells might mutate, but when you are sucking them up by the hundreds of thousands and running samples, what you get is a pattern that is foreign, and that tells you to send in the dogs and security.

Mutation of my DNA will only wander so far. You don't need an exact match to 'smell a rat' in the building. If from a sample of 100000 cells that I suck up, 80000 register over a 40% probability of being from people not known to have been in those parts of the building on that day, I send in cyber dogs and a security guard / drone to see if something is out of place. I match that with a quick sonar, radar, electromagnetic, and thermal scan of the area, and if the probability of foreign DNA is above 75%, maybe I keep the samples for later analysis.


Oh, and I was wrong about my fishtank pump. It actually does 40 gallons per minute, and that using a fan that has only a 1cm diameter. Air conditioning in a modern office can likely recycle the entire air of a typical floor in the span of an hour or two. So, speed it up after hours, add filters, and so on... and you can collect an amazing amount of data.

[Ophis]

It isn't that accurate, CSI really over states the case on it's accuracy. Mostly it can show that a person could have left that sample, it is not accurate enough to go yep thats bill davis I'm sure.

DNA is considerably more complicated by many chemicals, a sniffer may be able to spot nucleic acids, but even in in 64 years time I doubt it will be able to analyse the exact structure, plus dna is huge and analysis takes time.

It would almost certaionly be easier to have your scans running and when they trip off send in the dogs. Then collect DNA samples to work out who it was.

Then there is the simple way to beat your system, full body suits. Even if the technology is available it is beatable with a simple peice of clothing not worth the price.

The best security in a magical world is a good range of scanners, and astral patrol spirits, remember invisibility doesn't cover you astrally, nothing does not even masking (which just disguises you).

[Edward]

Adding ultrasound vision to a non cyber visual augmentation system costs only 1000nuyen retail (les to a corp. that is buying boxes of 100). This is not cheep so not every guard will have it, only the ones that get called out when the presser plates, ultrasound motion detectors and door access panels notice something when the cameras say nothing is there.

I do like the MAD idea. Given the structure of a human body at short range it should show up on a MAD. If MADs are built into entry and exit points right up to the sealing then anybody floating threw invisible should be detected, any time the MAD doesn’t mach the camera all doors lock and the sight mage looks threw his spy fiberoptics into the room. Same response if any of your astral aware plants start to glow

Laser tripwires, even pulsed wouldn’t work. The extra time it takes to travel the extra 5cm will be so small no instrument would be able to detect it. (they tried to find the speed of light like that but its still to fast today, and that is with obscenely expensive apparatus)

DNA tests are no longer effective in 2070 because DNA masking was invented and it became easy to produce undetectable fake DNA samples. Strangely it is still used as a form of ID buy banks. the problem with dust DNA is that it is a mix. If you out flakes of skin from 3 people into a test apparatus together you will get gibberish.

Edward

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Cyberware Scanners will catch an invisible mage every time.

[Apathy]

Low cost counters to magic:

• Watcher[s]
• Guard Dogs/Bloodhounds (primary sense - smell)
• Biomonitors on any Guards/Critters, notifying Security if they go unconscious (also ensures they don't sleep on the job!)
• Area effect weapons (smoke, chemicals, etc.) that hit they mage even if he can't be seen.
• Background count (facilities in Barrens, etc.)