How do you sneak past a spirit?, The ultimate burgler alarm? Options

[ShadowDragon]

For those of you who didn't read my last post, I'm a new GM to Shadowrun. I'm extending the On the Run module since my players screwed up securing the disk. My team is going to be sneaking into a corporate building to steal the disk back. They face opposition from a shaman (amoung others) who I want to use spirits to guard the building. The problem is that I've been looking through the rules and I can't find any way to sneak past a spirit who's watching the door. Is there any way for my players to infiltrate a building without fighting, when a spirit is on guard duty?

[Dv84good]

I have heard you can infilitrate. Someone previously said they gain a bonus to their roll. If you search under infilitrate you should be able to find the post.

Also, I did on the run this last weekend and we were one stunball away from losing the disk. I the gm may have fudged the roll but being he increased the enemy it seems fair.

[ShadowDragon]

But even infiltrate doesn't help you open a door unnoticed.

It just seems like a no brainer to put a watcher spirit on all entrences, set to report to the mage if it opens. How do you get past that? (assuming the windows can't open :P )

[Dv84good]

maybe a decoy?

[Abbandon]

Well if your team has made then you can ........of not they can hire an npc mage to help out...

Have the mage use either manipulation magic or illusion magic on the spirit. Killing it would notify the enemy mage.

There is a optical device for mages to look around corners and stuff and be able to cast spells in the gear section of sr4. You would porbably have to sneak the good mage close enough to do this.

Can a mage mask somebody elses aura?? I would mask the aura of the infiltrator and cast invis and silence on him and then summon a watcher spirit with the help of a mage.

Then the infiltrator and the watcher go through the door the spirit is gaurding at teh same time. Hopefully the spirit will be so focused on what he can see that he wont bother checking for other targets. The watcher spirit could just be used to harass the spirit and get slaughtered or make the spirit chase him which the enemy mage would probably tell him to stay at his post.


I'd be going for an all out assault though. Have the good mage try to summon a spirit of equal force and then just plow your way through and tell your spirit to kill the other one and the good mage can try to battle the evil mage while the runners get close enough to whack him


Whats the layout of the building. If the disk is near an outer wall i would just blow that baby up with shaped charges.

You could always gaurd the disk with something else and let the runners grab it only to have to fight the spirit and mage at someplace else. Or better yet i would make them try to do an intercept mission where the disk gets moved with a large convo and the runners have to intercept it and get the disk back.

[ShadowDragon]

What I was planning on doing, was keeping the disk at a small, five story office building. It's going to be kept in a safe in a large, corner office on the third floor. The office building is going to have a ward around it, and the large office has another ward (along with wards around two other large offices on two other floors to serve as red herrings and in game practical reasons). The NPC shaman is going to have three spirits guarding the three entrences in the front, back, and roof, set to report to the shaman if the runners enter the building. There's also mundane serviellence cameras/mics and maglocks in logical places. The building is painted with signal blocking paint. In addition to the shaman there will be two sams, an adept, a hacker, and a rigger, though I may adjust this. The hacker and rigger will be in the security/server room on the third floor, and the rest will be in the office with the safe. The NPCs have pictures of the runners from a serviellence drone from when they took the disk from them.

The players are a hacker/rigger, mage, adept, sam, and face/sam. They will have the option to go during the day when wage-slaves are present but security is a little lighter, or at night. The man in charge will be flying into Seattle the next day to get the disk, which I'll tell the players to put some pressure on them to act.

[Samaels Ghost]

Sneaking past a watcher spirit isn't that hard. It's really a misnomer since they only roll two dice for any of their skills ([force] skill rating + [force] attribute). Watchers are a sham. Even their search power can be used more efficiently by just about any Force 2 spirit. If you're worried about the Watchers being too hard then don't, just check out those stats of theirs. If you're using higher Force spirits (4 and up) then they might have trouble.

[Lilt]

[Samaels Ghost]

My point is that with a distraction and a good infiltration roll the watcher could easily be duped.

Or you could just go through the wall :D Watchers take things VERY literally.

[DireRadiant]

As long as the players actually do something to deal with the watchers, just as they would for the cameras and door sensors, they have a chance. On some level something as simple as a distraction using a charisma based skill from the Influence group would work. The watcher is only going to have a couple of dice to resist whetever active effort the players use to distract it. Think of things you might do to distract a guard dog for example.

[Red]

I don't have too much to add here, but I would like to remind everyone Watchers have an extremely limited lifespan. They live for 1 hour for every hit on the summoning test, and the summoner suffers drain equal to the duration of the summon (not based on resistance of the watcher). In order to maintain watchers on a given facility, arrangements have to be made personnel wise to make sure that a mage is constantly available and not suffering from perpetual migraines.

While one could maintain a perfect "door" watch in theory, when it comes to the actual practice of the matter I am sure there are windows of opportunity. Maybe the mage takes too long to carefully instruct his new watchers for the 30th time this week, and thus a door is left uncovered for five minutes. That sort of thing.

Given the stress involved, I'm sure the average wage of a watcher-mage is quite a bit higher than a ward maker. And ward makers already pull 100 nuyen an hour. Ward makers pay drain at the end of multi-hour sessions. Watcher conjurers must pay drain dozens of times per day in order to cover any reasonably sized area.

Extra thought - for those interested in the idea of spirits resenting abuse, is it possible that Watcher spirits might resent wage-mages that perpetually summon them to keep watch day and night over mundane, everyday doors? Maybe the watchers just stop caring after a while?

Just ideas. YMMV.

This post has been edited by Red: Jun 23 2006, 01:14 PM

[TBRMInsanity]

With spirits there are two problems that need to be overcome:
1. Not all PCs can see them so they won't know they are being watched
-> This is where the importance of a mage/shaman/... in the group comes in

2. If you banish the spirit the person who summoned it will know
-> This may buy you some time but in the end you run is going to be harder

I find if there is a spirit guarding a door I use watcher spirits to try distract it away long enough to get in. If the spirit won't budge though you have to be unorthodox and use a window, the roof, another door, or come through the front door disguised as someone who is allowed in.

[booklord]

In the astral you can pass through physical, non-magical objects but you can't see through them.

Take off a wall panel.
make sure the wall panel blocks the view of your entire body.
Keep the wall panel between you and the spirit at all times.
Walk around the spirit.
Make willpower roll to resist laughing
Get the Disk.
Walk around the spirit.
Make willpower roll to resist mocking spirit
Leave Building.

Next Day:

Magician: I told you to stop anyone who came down this hall!
Spirit : But I didn't SEE anyone!

Remember 95% of cases, bound spirits won't lift a astral finger to do more than they are ordered to.

[James McMurray]

Of course, assuming you know what those orders are isn't always a good idea. You could walk down the hall with a wall in your hands and find yourself getting nuked by the spirit's innate spell (electicity ball) because the orders were to destroy anything coming down the hall that isn't the summoner. the orders are "anything" because the summoner doesn't want drones to be able to stride past.

[Nim]

[Kyoto Kid]

[stevebugge]

Another one piling on for the position of in SR4 wathers are dumb as posts camp.

Watchers really are pretty dumb, even if they are guarding something even a decent attempt at being sneaky (read anything that makes the watcher have to perform a perception check) is likely to work. Higher force spirits are more of a problem, but may be fooled in other ways. If you have a mage with you this opens up some more options, but even a clever team of mundanes (assuming they have some awareness of the spirit) should be able to get by the spirit.

[knasser]

[ShadowDragon]

Alright...I appriciate the replies but you guys are getting too hung up on watchers being dumb. If watchers are that dumb, the shaman wouldn't be stupid enough to use them in this situation. Lets say he uses regular spirits instead. How do you sneak past them?

[DireRadiant]

A summoned spirit, that isn't a watcher, used to guard a door is just like having an extra security guard. So some of the creative tactics used against security guards would apply, except it might be tougher, or at least different. One major thing to look out for is if the summoner is in range, then there is the telepathic link to deal with. If the summoner is not in range, then the spirit is on remote service and the telepathic link isn't immediately available. While the summoner may notice they can have more summoned spirits, they might not necessarily know which one got disrupted or finished their service if they have several spirits out and about.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I got an idea for you.

How about you only guard SOME doors with Spirits...

Guard the others with drones. Like Steel Lynxes or Strato-9s.

Give the players a choice of a magical or a mundane entanglement.


And yeah, Watchers are so dumb they're comical. You could probably interrogate them on the Astral and they'd spill their stupid guts. Like Knasser said. :)

[ShadowDragon]

[ShadowDragon]

[ShadowDragon8685]

And if he summoned something that has Immunity to Normal Weapons, he's probably going to have blood leaking from his ears unless he burned two Karma to do it. I don't love any fucker's money enough to burn my Karma doing his damn dirty work.

[ShadowDragon]