[X] My Assistant

[Udoshi]

"That's odd. There's an Invisibility spell over there. I wonder what I can't see. Eh"
*Hits the area with Force 6 Fireball*

Pretty much this.

However, like i said, extended masking hides the spell, the spell hides you.

Which Turns your strawman example into

"Thats odd. I don't see ANYTHING on the astral."


Just because any given conclusion is reached, doesn't invalidate the steps taken to get there - which is expecially relevant when things happen and change before the end.

[Yerameyahu]

If that works, it still requires a custom 'Astral Sense Cloak' spell.

[Udoshi]

If that works, it still requires a custom 'Astral Sense Cloak' spell.

Why, exactly?

We already know that Astral Perception is a Sense that can be affected by existing spells that let spellcasters borrow senses from others.(borrow sense/animal sense/eyes of the pack/passenger We even know that Astral Perception is a type of Perception test, and recieves bonuses from things that add to it (perceptive, reception enhancer), despite not rolling the Perception skill for it.

Multisense Illusions work on all Senses.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me: Spell hides a target from astral sight, but not itself.

A seperate trick, unrelated to the spell's composition, is used to hide the spell.

[Yerameyahu]

Because invisibility is for optical light vision only. Unless the masking is already hiding your astral presence entirely? I thought the premise was that the spell is hiding your astral presence, and your masking is hiding the spell. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I don't deal with mages that much, so I could have misunderstood you; did you mean that the goal is combo astral/physical hiding?

[Fikealox]

Why, exactly?

Unless I'm mistaken, Yerameyahu was saying that you were mistaken in saying that 'regular' Invisibility should hide its subject from Astral Perception, since it is a single-sense spell (and the single sense it affects isn't Astral Perception). He's saying that you still need a custom spell: either a multi-sense mana invisibility or a single-sense mana invisibility targeting Astral Perception.

[Udoshi]

Because invisibility is for optical light vision only. Unless the masking is already hiding your astral presence entirely? I thought the premise was that the spell is hiding your astral presence, and your masking is hiding the spell. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I don't deal with mages that much, so I could have misunderstood you; did you mean that the goal is combo astral/physical hiding?

Try to keep up, I've been suggesting Multi-Sense spell designed Illusion Spells for several pages now.


Normally you are right.

[Yerameyahu]

Psh, I've specifically commented on your custom spell three times. People keep saying 'Invisibility', so I'm re-pointing out that it's *not* Invisibility. It's one that affects Astral Sense. I guess I was responding for Draco18s' benefit, though you said this:

On the flipside, because its a Mana illusion, Regular Invisibility works on the astral

[Fikealox]

Try to keep up, I've been suggesting Multi-Sense spell designed Illusion Spells for several pages now.

Sure, but you weren't talking about multi-sense spells when you said:

On the flipside, because its a Mana illusion, Regular Invisibility works on the astral. Against spirits.

"Regular Invisibility" isn't a multi-sense illusion, and it isn't a single-sense illusion targeted to Astral Perception. Yerameyahu's point, if I followed it correctly, was that Regular Invisibility therefore doesn't work against Astrally Perceiving spirits.

Also, must you always post in such a hostile and condescending tone?

[Summerstorm]

I will just enter this conversation here.

I am almost always on the side of "What is reasonable within the rules and description".

So yes, it SHOULD be possible to have a spell passively cloak you in the astral space. I am also thouroughly against it. I am also absolutely against a spell which makes you absolutely undetectable for all physical means.

Such a spell(s) would elevate every one last magician who can build up a few net hits in that test into "Can never be beaten" category. It is INSANE. Even normal invisbility+silence is harsh enough. But if NO one on the street can detect you... the only way to beat you is grenading everything around you and hope for the best. And the ONLY way to stop you is a closed door (which has to stay closed).

The game would really not be fun anymore if your infiltration team is just four mages, while all others (the technomancer) waits in the car.

I always go in my games with: To have a spell affect something, you need to completely understand it. Must be somehow able to experience it, somehow. Which blocks them at least from fooling radar and millimeter scans. (But somehow allows them to block thermo-vision... ah well). And since the astral world is not "natural" to you - eh... just ignore the dual-natureed ones *g*- you can't cloak yourself from it either. This is of course all complete bullshit and totally a crumbling wall for me. But the balance just NEEDS that.

[Udoshi]

So yes, it SHOULD be possible to have a spell passively cloak you in the astral space. I am also thouroughly against it. I am also absolutely against a spell which makes you absolutely undetectable for all physical means.

Such a spell(s) would elevate every one last magician who can build up a few net hits in that test into "Can never be beaten" category. It is INSANE. Even normal invisbility+silence is harsh enough. But if NO one on the street can detect you... the only way to beat you is grenading everything around you and hope for the best. And the ONLY way to stop you is a closed door (which has to stay closed).

I'd also like to step in here and chime in:

Masking always get an opposed Assensing test. It is by no means foolproof.

[Whipstitch]

I think it's these statements that is throwing people off:

On the flipside, because its a Mana illusion, Regular Invisibility works on the astral. Against spirits.

Not specifically true.

The AURA is visible. Specifically, the spell is visible, not its target.

If you have a means to cloak the spells aura - such as Extended Masking - then you're golden.

I say that because the book says this:

This spell makes the subject more difficult to detect by normal visual
senses (including low-light, thermographic, and other senses that rely
on the visual spectrum). The subject is completely tangible and detect-
able by the other senses (hearing, smell, touch, etc.). Her aura is still
visible to astral perception.

Which leads me to think that if "her" is meant to signify that the aura of of the spell rather than the aura of the subject of the spell than frankly it takes the cake for the most tortured sentence I've yet seen in SR4, which is saying something. I simply haven't read anything here that convinces me that a vanilla Invisibility spell is hiding the subject's aura while simultaneously blowing its cover. Which, frankly, hits me as kind of a wacky scenario.

[Yerameyahu]

Actually, both the character's aura and the spell's aura are visible on the astral. Spells have their own auras. Invisibility (the visual illusion) certainly does not block astral sense (your aura).

The specific premise here (if I have it correct now) is that you can custom-design a spell that cloaks you from *Astral Sense*, and then use Extended Masking to mask the spell's aura. If the GM lets you make an Astral-Sense-cloaking illusion, then that'd work.

I think it perhaps should be impossible for balance reasons, but there's not particular reason it isn't possible by RAW (whatever *that's* worth, heh).

[Whipstitch]

I understand the multi-sense argument. What I don't understand is how "regular invisibility" is supposed to work against Spirits unless you mean that they can't "see" you but they can still assense you, at which point I'm not sure why people even bothered bringing it up, since at that point you're merely saying that the spell is happily chugging along on its merry useless way and have muddied the waters for nothing.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I appreciate the faith in crash tests, but the drone would need to be moving at supersonic speed to die from one crash test. For example, a medium drone would need to move in excess of 200 meters per second (600 meters per turn) to score 12 DV on that test. This results in a reasonable chance of one-hitting it. For certainty, you would need it to move at 2000 meters per turn (about double the speed of sound).

I think in a situation like that you don;t need to adhere to rules that closely. Context is appropriate to add in. A roto-drone in a confined space which gets levitated into the ceiling should have a bad day. Its blades just got shoved into the roof, I don;t think a pure speed/damage test really fits.

I will just enter this conversation here.

I am almost always on the side of "What is reasonable within the rules and description".

So yes, it SHOULD be possible to have a spell passively cloak you in the astral space. I am also thouroughly against it. I am also absolutely against a spell which makes you absolutely undetectable for all physical means.

Such a spell(s) would elevate every one last magician who can build up a few net hits in that test into "Can never be beaten" category. It is INSANE. Even normal invisbility+silence is harsh enough. But if NO one on the street can detect you... the only way to beat you is grenading everything around you and hope for the best. And the ONLY way to stop you is a closed door (which has to stay closed).

The game would really not be fun anymore if your infiltration team is just four mages, while all others (the technomancer) waits in the car.

I always go in my games with: To have a spell affect something, you need to completely understand it. Must be somehow able to experience it, somehow. Which blocks them at least from fooling radar and millimeter scans. (But somehow allows them to block thermo-vision... ah well). And since the astral world is not "natural" to you - eh... just ignore the dual-natureed ones *g*- you can't cloak yourself from it either. This is of course all complete bullshit and totally a crumbling wall for me. But the balance just NEEDS that.

Yeah I kind of think while the spell creation rules are cool for guidelines anytime the perfect spell seems to be created especially obvious things like multi-sense invisibility I probably wont allow them. They weren't in the base game for a reason IMO. Some spells are designed with flaws with a reason, just removing the flaws via the spell creation rules breaks a lot of spells.

[Yerameyahu]

Responding to Shinobi's quotation: (I wasn't aware that Crash/Ram damage scaled up after the 200+ m/t category (Body*3)?) In any case, yes. Crashing isn't usually fatal, and drones in particular have relatively excellent Body:Armor ratios, and they don't tend to be moving very fast. On the other hand, that low Body means they're very easily forced to make Crash tests. *shrug*

I can certainly see the GM dramatically fudging things a little, but you probably don't want to make crashes massively lethal. Drones are powerful now, but that would be a major balance change.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Responding to Shinobi's quotation: (I wasn't aware that Crash/Ram damage scaled up after the 200+ m/t category (Body*3)?) In any case, yes. Crashing isn't usually fatal, and drones in particular have relatively excellent Body:Armor ratios, and they don't tend to be moving very fast. On the other hand, that low Body means they're very easily forced to make Crash tests. *shrug*

I can certainly see the GM dramatically fudging things a little, but you probably don't want to make crashes massively lethal. Drones are powerful now, but that would be a major balance change.

True, but I kind of think if you decide to fly a roto-drone(they are pretty big after all, I'm not sure I'd let one go through a window anyways) through someones window into a apartment you kind of accepted a high risk maneuver. I might not destroy the drone, but I may ground it by having it get stuck and need minor repairs.

[Yerameyahu]

Sure, depending. I feel like I might more make it lose a turn (righting itself), or damage the rotors (reduce speed/etc.). Of course, we *are* talking about magic (Levitate), so things are more flexible.

[Hayate]

Dare I ask if one can crash a drone into a Trid Phantasm? For example, a wall made by Trid Phantasm?

[Dakka Dakka]

Dare I ask if one can crash a drone into a Trid Phantasm? For example, a wall made by Trid Phantasm?

No. The drone will perceive the wall and try to stop. if it does not stop in time, the drone will register a crash and shortly afterwards that nothing has been damaged. You could however box a drone in. Unless it has been programmed to try to ram every wall that impedes its progress, the drone won't move.

[whatevs]

No. The drone will perceive the wall and try to stop. if it does not stop in time, the drone will register a crash and shortly afterwards that nothing has been damaged. You could however box a drone in. Unless it has been programmed to try to ram every wall that impedes its progress, the drone won't move.

Clever. Me likee.

Maybe someone can riddle me this: If a rigger was jumped into said drone from the example above at the time, what would the test(s) be like? One to beat OR of the drone's sensors, and then an Intuition + Counterspelling <sr4a208> for the rigger to be 'affected' by the illusion of being stuck in a wall/box all of a sudden?

[Dakka Dakka]

The rigger shouldn't get a perception test, but he could still act as he wanted. All he can perceive is the senor output from his drone. For the drone it appears real and so it does to him too.
Walls appearing out of nowhere reek of magic. He doesn't know however whether a real wall (shape element for example) or an illusionary wall (trid phantasm) was created, unless it was was a brick wall or similarly complex structure and he knew more than average Joe about magic.

[Mayhem_2006]

During our last session a rigger placed 2 rotordrones into my mages flat and started shooting at me. I didn´t have an energybolt and i thought i would toast myself with an fireball. So i have chosen to flee and jump right through a window...but is it really that way? I have a LOT of spells, but none of them seemed to fit to this situation. Imp. Invis. didn´t work because they had a sensor package including radar, levitation caused no real effect and if these spells don´t work...please what is left for a mage? Is there no real way to f**ck these buggers?

If they were actually rotordrones, then levitating a blacnket or throw into their rotors ought to be enough to screw them up.

Or even if the rotors are ducted and grilled, draping a blanket over a drone will screw many of its sensors.

[Lantzer]

To be honest, although the OP didn't much care for his chosen action in that circumstance, he still did the wisest thing.

If someone dislikes you enough and knows you well enough to send rotodrones into your apartment, get the heck out of there. Staying and fighting, even if you win, just gives your opponent more time to do something that _will_ get you.

[whatevs]

To be honest, although the OP didn't much care for his chosen action in that circumstance, he still did the wisest thing.

If someone dislikes you enough and knows you well enough to send rotodrones into your apartment, get the heck out of there. Staying and fighting, even if you win, just gives your opponent more time to do something that _will_ get you.

Agreed. Great little scenario to discuss though. I have new respect for trid phantasm.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Just curious has anyone used the chaff spells in play. I've never taken them but theoretically this is what they are there for. The sensor rating drops by 1 for each hit over the OR threshold of the device. Now assuming you use the OR threshold of 3 you have to be a decent mage for this spell to do anything. Kind of off I guess if you get enough hits for it to really do anything you are probably better off with a high force powerbolt.