How to hide gear with spells? Options

[Knight Saber]

Say a mage has a sword weapon focus. It's hard to hide, but hey, she's a mage! What spell would allow you to walk around with such a thing? Physical Mask, to change into "Myself, but with no sword"? Can you cast Improved Invisibility on an object for such a purpose? Would there be dedicated versions of those spells that only work on objects?

What about Manipulation spells... something like Fashion to make your pal's Ares Alpha look like a banjo?

Has this been addressed anywhere?

[ornot]

Casting invisibility would work.

Mask, I think not.

One could spend the karma to know a spell specific for hiding weapons, but you would still run into a problem with any sort of magical security, and I suspect a MAD scanner would work just fine on an invisible weapon - it's not using the visual spectrum to see it after all. If there was no magical security, chances are security is sufficiently lax to smuggle in weapons mundanely.

Fashion works on clothes, not equipment, but perhaps you could make a manipulation spell in the same vein. Of course, the banjo would no longer function like an Ares Alpha, and if you have a spell that can turn a banjo into an Ares Alpha, why bother with the Ares Alpha in the first place? Just take a banjo with you on runs, and hope the mage doesn't pass out before you need a gun.

Generally security will be as tight as it needs to be, and if it is tight enough to exclude mundane smuggling means, it will be tight enough to exclude magical means too.

[masterofm]

I would say you would need extended masking and physical mask together might work. Are you wondering about how to fool magical and mundane at the same time or just mundane? You might be able to mask the weapon itself to look like something close to it, but have it not be a weapon. Like a club into a glow stick, but you would need to have extended masking to fool any magical means, and they still might see you carrying a sword even if it is well hidden. You might be able to fool a spirit that cannot see on the physical, but a mage would probably cut right through it.

Two metamagics just to sneak a weapon into a club though? Might as well just use that karma to raise your magic and explode the front door. ; )

[ornot]

masterofm brings up a valid point. I didn't think of casting masking specifically upon the sword. That might work, but I've not got the spell description to hand. IIRC it is multisense, so could be considered to work on MAD scanners, etc. Without masking you're not fooling any magical security though.

[masterofm]

Yes, but if a mage looks on the physical and sees you carrying a glow stick, and looks on the astral and sees you carrying a large sword? Yeah... enjoy some pain. But since extended masking is not really all that clear on how it changes auras you might have a chance of it looking like a glow stick on the astral as well. If so then extended masking and physical mask would get you where you need to go.

[Knight Saber]

If the MAD scanner is going off and there's no visible reason for it, that's when you make a Con roll and tell the guard about pins in your legs from a broken arm. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It'd be more of a dedicated smuggling effort than a "walking around" one, but you could put a gun in a bag and run through an industrial punch press, smuggle it through as "modern art" or "something for a project" and use Fix to get it back together on the inside.

[masterofm]

Physical mask will fool the sensors so unless the MAD scanner is crazy good and gets really really really super lucky you won't have to make the con roll. Oh and if it cuts through the MAD scanner will pick up that the object is a sword and talking about pins and needles will probably not get you very far.

I always thought that fix is like heal though. You are already having to beat the weapons OR which will soak up hits willy nilly, it might be a high threshold (highly processed materials maybe 3-5,) and like heal you might only get one shot at putting your weapon back together (also it is totally up to the GM when dealing with successes needed to "heal" a gun - see the BBB repair table.) If you are transporting a foci and you punch holes in it and cast fix, you just broke your damn foci and casting fix won't bring it back. Fix is risky, and it was generally meant to "heal" items that have a P track, like drones and vehicles not guns which don't have a track.

Personally using a actual physical manipulation spell, like turning metal into goo would just mean that you would need to sustain a spell and carry around a jar of liquid, drop it and you have your weapon again... but physical mask + extended masking on the item is just easier to do.

[Jaid]

the quality of the scanner is not a factor in penetrating physical mask. either the scanner is affected (physical mask has enough hits to beat the OR threshold and the scanner will detect only what your physical mask shows it) or it is unaffected (physical mask didn't have enough hits to beat the OR threshold). it does not matter if it's a rating 1 scanner or a rating 5 scanner (unless your GM rules that a rating 5 scanner is more processed).

if you pass through a rating 1 scanner with a physical mask of yourself with aluminum pins in your leg, the rating 1 scanner is simply less likely to pick up on your illusionary aluminum pins than a rating 5 one.

[JeffSz]

Ask your GM to create a spell that conjures up a magical sword. No weapon to be found by MAD scanners or magic, and you'd have your sword when you need it.

GM would just have to decide whether it's a Physical effect or Mana - which would determine whether it's useful against inanimate objects or if it works in astral...

That could get interesting, actually. Imagine trying to hit a cyber-sam with a Mana blade... go for the meat-parts!

[Hagga]

You could do both physical and mana. It's be more a very mobile, very specifically shaped barrier effect than anything.
Given how sharp you could get it, maybe give it an ap of your secondary drain stat/2.

[RedeemerofOgar]

I always thought that fix is like heal though. You are already having to beat the weapons OR which will soak up hits willy nilly, it might be a high threshold (highly processed materials maybe 3-5,) and like heal you might only get one shot at putting your weapon back together (also it is totally up to the GM when dealing with successes needed to "heal" a gun - see the BBB repair table.)

Ah, but Fix use the phrase "each hit scored." It does not use the infamous phrase "net hits." In specific it notes "the caster... muist achieve enough hits to beat the item's Object Resistance threshold... Each hit scored repairs 1 point of Structure Rating or 1 box of damage." You may have some success showing this distinction to your GM, as otherwise Fix really is a very ineffective spell. I don't know which way the Devs intended it, but it seems to be a choice between "effective spell that never heals less than 3 boxes due to Object Resistance" and "ineffective spell unless you treat it as Vampiric Engineering, and take lots of physical drain when casting it."