How do you deal with Invisibility?, I.e. Improved Invisibility + Silence=bad Options

[Ol' Scratch]

The guy you quoted just told you they exist. And they existed in previous editions, too.

[X-Kalibur]

[Hank]

Ah, yes. He did.

[Lagomorph]

I'm suprized no one said this yet, since they're great against spell stealth.

Wards.

And since watchers (by the rules are only ever force 1) they get 2 dice for perception (force + skill), if you add a half decent infiltration skill they can't see you either.

[Tarantula]

Also, I did note that there is no technological equivalent of thermosense organs.

[Adarael]

Listen, if a PC wants to buy and cast (and sustain or have sustained for him) Improved Invisibility + Silence + Levitate, plus get two levels of initiation devoted to being sneaky, AND have a high enough infiltration to bypass things like beings seen by astral mages and watches... I'm gonna let him be pretty freaking sneaky and not get seen or detected by much of anything.

Expecting that the above PC can be detected by certain unassailable security measures is like being confused when the troll adept who has Smashing Blow + Strength 12 + Unarmed Combat 7 + the knowledge skill "Structural Engineering" is only mildly inconvenienced by things like walls, and can wreck a car by punching it.

That's what the character is built to do.

[Tarantula]

The best part about it, is even with all those tricks, a radar sensor in the middle of the base can see for 100m, and pinpoint mr quiet floating mage no problem.

[Adarael]

Hence why I said "Much of anything". There's always something.

[Sunday_Gamer]

I feel the need to preface all my posts with "Not yet fully versed in SR4" however...

The many different things that used to cause me and my improved invisibilitied ass problems:

Astral Security, that includes, watchers, dual creatures, wards all that good stuff. Yes you CAN get masking high enough to cloak both yourself and your invisibility spell but then you have to use the astral landscape to hide and sneak around so really. just because a spirit/astral guardian doesn't see you as a mage or you're spell up doesn't mean it won't stop you. These things are intelligent, they might actually KNOW who works on the premises, who's allowed, what security wears, who's in charge... plenty of room for mischief there.

Ultrasonic vision... nasty stuff that. Any security device that operates on similar parameters, motions sensors, ultrasonic hearing...that kind of stuff.

Physical security, tightly controlled doors and elevators.

Disturb ready surfaces, sand, sensor wires, water... let's see what else...

[Tarantula]

Watchers are worthless. Cloaking yourself is a fantastic thing. Especially since then you aren't shining brilliantly on the astral, and thus can hide easier. (Less worry about non-astral people, as they invisibility spell takes care of that.)

Ultrasonic vision is pretty hampered by silence/sound barrier.

Doors and elevators are the biggest problem, thats where thinking outside the box is useful.

Disturb ready surfaces are nice, but levitate fixes most of those.

[KarmaInferno]

[kzt]

Wards. Use an alarm ward behind a regular ward, so as to keep out pesky spirits who might casually set it off. Putting a force 8 ward in an elevator shaft would be kind of cool also. I don't think the invisibility spell will make the test vs 16 dice of ward.

The other clever thing about a ward is that spotting it forces the mage to be astrally perceiving, which is easily noticeable by spirits and such and is kind of unusual. It would seem likely that a bound spirit would quickly know and recognized the auras of the few astrally active people in a facility.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Tarantula]

Masking again lets the mage appear not to be astral while astrally perceiving. It also lets him impersonate the aura of the ward creator, and waltz on through (provided he takes the proper time/prep/spells to do so).

[kzt]

[hyzmarca]

[Tarantula]

First, "(provided he takes the proper time/prep/spells to do so).". That'd be, before you're at the door, while you're in the legrunning stage. Find the name of whoever set up the ward via hacker, then find out he likes to go boozing after work, slip in, assense him, and bam, you have your key.

As far as the astral perception goes, masking lets you get around it. SR4, 190, "A character who learns masking can change the appearance of her aura/astral form to do the following: look mundane,"

If you are perceiving, but mask to make yourself look mundane, then you look mundane, even though you are entirely active on the astral plane.

[kzt]

[X-Kalibur]

[HappyDaze]

It should be possible to make a spell that allows you to step through a (closed) door or even a section of wall. It doesn't break the 'rules of magic' as set forth in Street Magic. As a Sustained Manipulation spell, you could render a touched object immaterial with no visable chage to allow passage through. It might be best to limit it to Touch range and base the maximum hardness effected on hits. I'd have this make the object immaterial NOT the person, otherwise you have too many other uses for the spell.

This could be done even while invisible to bypass doorways.

[Hank]

[Paradigm]

I'm curious, since the improved invisibility spell more or less bends light, would a sort of laser system that, instead of a single constant beam, shoots out a hundred beams or so a second and then measures the time delay between between 'transmission' and reception not be an excellent tripwire to detect invisible intruders. I.E. An invisible mage walks through the tripwire, the light gets bent around him and thus takes about 20% longer to reach the receptor on the other side. Tripwire system detects the anomylous delay, sounds a silent alarm to summon guards.

I'm quite sure I've heard of a system like this before, as I highly doubt I'm making it up on the spot. But since we know the speed of light, can measure time in basically millionths of a second and could very easily calibrate something that'd measure the time it took a beam to go from one part of the hallway to the other, isn't this an excellent (theoretical) detection tool?

[Hank]

[Paradigm]

Oh, this would never be something I'd use as standard, but in a high security run I'd definately do it. I'd not implement it without some warnings to the PCs though. (as in shadowland/shadowsea/jackpoint mention, something the decker'd fish up while researching the security measures. A KE security manual that got leaked, or whatever). It's the sort of thing one might run into at a secret corp research site, not just any office. It'd have to be built into the wall, for one, integrated with the design of the building and it's security system. It'd be spoofable, provided the decker can break into the node, etc.

I don't go out of my way to screw players, but tactics using a few standard and commonly available/known spells like that should never be infallible. If a runner can get a hold of it, you can be sure that any AAA or AA knows of it's existance and has been looking at countermeasures.

Edit: There's also always the inert magic detection clouds, I forgot what they were called. Perhaps someone remembers off the top of their head?

[Falconer]

I'd say for simplicities sake... improved invis bends all light from UV down to longwave IR (heat vision). Which means no nonsense bout pit vipers seeing through it. If they're looking for infra-red improved invis blocks it.

If anything... the authors aren't consistent (or don't bloody understand Infrared is infared... it doesn't matter if you stick an infrared camera at it, or an infrared intensity detector... Do you get an image out of the device or number saying how intense the infrared is inthis direction? (also those alarm systems are based on infrared as well... pyroclastic infrared sensors are at the heart of a lot of them).
Wavelengths on radio are too far, so it has no effect on radar and the like. (really radar in augmentation is rediculously good. Use it... and if it's being jammed... it's almost as good of an alarm

Wavelengths on radio are too far, so it has no effect on radar and the like. (really radar in augmentation is rediculously good. Use it... and if it's being jammed... it's almost as good of an alarm


I'd have more respect if the sensors actually picked up say the spectral lines of the hot CO2 constantly produced by living critters. That's another idea for an interesting sensor... one which scans the room for concentrations of CO2, almost guaranteed to be from exhalations. One thing those crazies in the environmental lobby don't tell you is that the mean free path of a photon in CO2's is measured in feet... so it's possible to measure concentrations w/ some kind of LIDAR system.

If it really bothers you that much, you might be able pick up some kind of 'heat shimmer' like a mirage in the area of a mage in the case of a poorly cast ImpInvis w/ some special image processing software on the camera. (say if mage casts it and splits up his dice pool to multiple targets, or casts it while maintaining other spells). In which case, a special camera might pick if there's not enough successess on the spellcasting test. Just suggesting as a house rule if it helps.

Or how about, nanotech... dust everyone who comes in w/ some kind of nanite w/ a very small tracking transmitter that only transmits when it can 'steal' power from the bodies natural bio-electric fields (I utterly hate that explanation... your body doesn't produce that much... I'd rather some well they activate the genes that make electric eels electric, so you generate electricity from sugar/oxygen in your blood directly). Instead of tracking the people... track 'activated' nannites.