Infiltration vs Astral Perception, Looking for a bit of a clarification... Options

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You are infiltrating a facility. Inside of the facility there are spirits patroling the area. There should be no one walking around or only few people, let's take a look at the numbers:
Taking a look at SM page 114 we have a table for astral visibility.
The usual background ilumination of this facility would be +1 or +2. The aura noise would be +2 (+1, at best).
The spirits are actively looking for suspicious movements (+3).
In the end we have +5 to +7 as bonus to the spirits.
Even a crappy Watcher Spirit would have a 7 dice pool to roll. An average spirit of beast would have 13 dice (Int 3, Per 3 +7 bonus). The average infiltrator will have what? Stealth 4, Agility 7? Considering that a spirit of beast has 2 IP's, it could be 4 rolls against your single stealth roll for the spirit find you.
An "astral" chameleon coating would only level the game.

The character I play rolls 13 Dice for Stealth, before Tacnet Bonuses if applicable... So fairly comparable to your Spirit Example... So even odds on a single roll to go unnoticed.

As for a Lone Person infiltrating a Barren facility with no human presence around... Not too very realistic is it? How about something a little more common...

A facility that has Workers, Executives, Researchers, and Security Guards, is not 100% sterile, so there will be micro-organisms as well, Possible background count, and then you still have the facility walls and whatnot casting their opaque astral shadows. Things become a bit easier for the infiltrator don't they? And that assumes that the Mgical Guardian knows EVERYONES Astral Signature, which is not guaranteed in the least, especially for a large facility.

It still boils down to Infiltrator vs. Perception... and I would not allow additional rolls (those 4 rolls mentioned against the Infiltrators Singel Roll) to perceive without applying the -2 Dice cumulative penalty per additional roll...

Keep the Faith

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

and I would not allow additional rolls (those 4 rolls mentioned against the Infiltrators Singel Roll) to perceive without applying the -2 Dice cumulative penalty per additional roll...

Keep the Faith

Tell this to my GM, this is how we have been doing it.

Anyway, if it has another human presence around, them you would have two problems. Hiding from the human and hiding from the spirit at the same time.
And again, you only need two hits on Assenssing to recognize an aura. So yes, the spirit could realize it is an unknown aura quite easily.

EDIT: changed recognize for realize, to be semanticly correct as pointed by tagz.

[tagz]

So yes, the spirit could recognize an unknown aura quite easily.

Actually, that's an oxymoron, you can't recognize something you don't already know. Though it COULD know that it's one that it DOESN'T recognize. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Though, that brings up the question of "In your game, does an NPC or a PC know when they didn't get as many hits as they could have?" What's to keep the spirit from thinking he may not have assessed well enough, or does it just know it should be able to recognize it and can't? It's an interesting concept as it could spill over into lots of different rolls.


As for the -2 for retrying, I'd say that the security force has to be looking in a manner that's more specific then just "on duty" to incur that modifier. But the same is said for the +3 for actively looking.

The actively looking bonus and -2 for failing should really only come into play if the security actually has a good idea of where and what to look for specifically. Also, since the guards ARE looking, just not specifically, they shouldn't really get the distracted penalty.

Just my thoughts.

[Yerameyahu]

Yes, that's RAW: you only have to Observe to avoid the Distracted -2 if you're doing something *else*.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Actually, that's an oxymoron, you can't recognize something you don't already know. Though it COULD know that it's one that it DOESN'T recognize. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Sorry, it is one of those "lost in translation" thing. The correct should be "realize". I'll correct my post.

[tagz]

I know what you meant, I was mostly just kidding around.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I know what you meant, I was mostly just kidding around.

I know that you know what I meant. I just wanted to make it crystal clear.

[Yerameyahu]

I know you know he knows what you meant.