Some help with Astral for an inexperienced GM? Options

[Lord Ben]

I've run SR a few times in 3rd and 4th. Always had fun and I think the players did too but most of the time it's essentially been Sopranos with metahumans rather than a magic filled world, etc. I haven't had much experience running with any mages or anything that uses astral space, etc.

I'd like some intro DM tips and tricks to dealing with it in a fun manner. I don't want to just flat out block it from being useful but I also feel like I don't really know what's going on. It always seems "cheap" to me to have guard hell hounds and such guarding areas or mage bodyguards working the door which seems to make spying, etc far too easy.

If the mission is to stake out an abandoned biological research facility (toxic spills, mutant plague humans, etc but also mundane squatters maybe or a bunch of urban explorers) and find out who or what has been breaking in then what type of security measures would "realistically" be in place?

Is there any good articles written about the topic I can read?

[Mantis]

Sounds like an ideal hang out for a toxic path follower of some sort. Maybe the odd mutant critter and some toxic spirits conjured by the toxic magician. Remember such a place will also have a background count making magic difficult to use for those not on the toxic path (the PCs).
As far as worrying about magic making things too easy, don't.
High priority place have wards or spirits on patrol with a magician on call. One of the easiest ways to stop magic spying is a simple ward. Break it and the magician who made it knows it happened and will send something to investigate. You can use metamagic to sync your aura with his but you need to see his aura first, which often isn't possible within the time frame of an adventure.
Places that aren't so high priority might have security with glow wands to detect astral presences. Guards can be taught to sense when an astral presence goes through them (but only if it goes through them). Watchers are cheap and annoying and easy to summon. Hell hounds are fine but expensive. Also, at least for our games, unless a place is doing magical research or particularly worried about magical eavesdropping, they don't go all crazy with magic security.
Think about what a place is for and that should help you decide the kind of security it has. Night clubs? Not much beyond a bouncer. Aztechnology magical research site? Crazy amounts of security. Everything else? Somewhere in between.
Arsenal has some good mundane type gear to detect magic (glow wands and esprit de brume grenades), wards are cheap to put up (relatively), watchers are easy to summon even for low magic summoners.
Honestly, it is easier and cheaper to rig up a micro drone with cameras and microphone to infiltrate a place through the vents than get a magician to bust down the wards on place.

[Midas]

Some good advice from Mantis there. Wards should be reasonably common (hell, even a trendy nightclub might have one on the door to stop astral voyeurs getting in for free), especially for particularly secure areas. Patrolling watchers and spirits should be quite common around warehouses and facilities, and dual-natured guard critters could be a possibility as well.

Basically, astral projection should never be an "I win!" button. There are times astral recon should prove invaluable to the team (although read up the introductory blurb on how astral perception of things is different from visual and other senses for the quality of information the astral scout can get), and times when switching to astral perception suddenly opens you up to attack from whatever is astrally guarding the site.

For your abandoned facility, to some extent it depends on how long the facility has been abandoned - from the parent corp wards can last for up to a year without being renewed, and spirits can also be bound to long-term service (again, anything up to a year after abandonment). If the corp wants the spill to remain a secret, they may astrally protect the facility from prying eyes after abandonment as well. If a toxic mage has set up residence, he/she will probably have built wards as well, and the Background Count will be aspected in their favour (+BGC Magic to them, -BGC Magic to the PCs). Other magically active denizens may also have taken various astral snooping countermeasures as well.

I guess the SR4a chapter on Magic, as well as the Street Magic supplement will be your best source for write-ups on the subject. You can see how discussions on wards and spirits keeps us Dumpshockers busy using the search function as well. Happy reading!

[Lord Ben]

Thanks for the help guys.

There are SO many books it's hard to know what is going on without really delving into the insane amount of technology and equipment in the books.

[kzt]

You may already realize this, but common issues I've seen from people who post your kind of question are that they don't understand what an astral metahuman can't do:

You can't read anything, you can't see colors or fine details and you are mostly seeing emotions and feelings. You can't effect anything on the material plane either.

[Lord Ben]

It's the astral projection type thing I have the most issues with. In a home game years back I was a street sam with a few other mages and spent a good chunk of time guarding bodies while they scouted locations, watched people's movement patterns, etc. Almost all the scouting and such was done via astral. But the GM had issues and that was a feature of the game all the players save me enjoyed... heh.

Another question I have is scouting the room for people. If you have a pile of dice in mundane stealth and you're hiding while a mage looks for you is it considered hiding in astral too? If I'm bright and vibrant no matter how many points I put in to stealth it seems kind of a potent ability compared to dumping karma into perception. If taking cover with techno-camo can't work against astral perception it seems like a cheap way to make perception tests against hidden assassins. But perhaps we've been playing it wrong?

Like physical perception, a character using astral perception
should not need to make a test to see things that are immediately
obvious (and since astral forms are bright and vibrant, this means
that most astral forms are easily noticed). An actual test should only
be called for when an astral being is specifically trying to hide, or
when a character is trying to astrally observe in detail; in both these
situations, an Assensing Test is made.

[SpellBinder]

As far as I know, yes, you still make the Assensing test to try and spot the techno-camo using character that's hiding. You just don't suffer the DP penalty that said techno-camo gives to normal visual perception tests as it has no impact to the astral.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Hard objects are opaque on the astral.

Hiding in a cardboard box is hiding in a cardboard box, so unless you make a habit of sticking your astral head into every container you see, or into every little thing that could be cover, then hiding is hiding. Things which make you harder to see on the physical don't make you harder to see on the Astral, which is probably why they reduce the perciever's dice pool instead of increasing yours.

[Lord Ben]

To continue with your example, a hole in a cardboard box where you stick your eye out of. Would you roll against the stealth or would it be a "bright and vibrant" astral light emitting from the box where your living eyeball is that anyone can see?

Personally it seems fine to roll vs stealth... right?

[ShadowDragon8685]

To continue with your example, a hole in a cardboard box where you stick your eye out of. Would you roll against the stealth or would it be a "bright and vibrant" astral light emitting from the box where your living eyeball is that anyone can see?

Personally it seems fine to roll vs stealth... right?

Yes, you'd have to roll against the Stealth. It may be a bright and vibrant eye... But it's being viewed through a hole. If you don't see it at the right angle, you can't see jack shit.

[shinyjam]

I always think of the aura like a lightbulb in astral, it's just a colored turned-off lightbulb for a mandane person, but a mage with f3 sustain spell would shine like a turned-on lightbulb in a room, so that if he is hiding in the box with the hole, wave of aura color would spill or ray out of the hole and whatever gap the box is not tight-sealed. I guess that would be why you need a Bio-Fiber Compartment for the Shielded Smuggling Compartment in vehicle to block astral scan.

Is this correct?

This is also what I concluded when looking at the astral image on p.192 of SR4a, which the yellow guy at the counter is literally shining while everyone else is not.

[SpellBinder]

Anyone with a spell on them is gonna show up more brightly, mundane or no. Also, I'd expect bio-fiber to show up brightly too. Think to the cop programs when they show a heat shielded room on IR, it's glowing solidly bright but you can't see past it. To quote Sherlock Holmes, "It's so overt it's covert." Of course, then, it does draw attention to the "Why?".

I also think that the auras of living things, awakened or enchanted or not, don't radiate like a bright light through a peephole would. Unless the person's got their face right up to the side of this cardboard box, you're likely to miss it, as ShadowDragon said.

And don't forget, general consensus around here is that glass is also opaque on the astral.

[Midas]

Another question I have is scouting the room for people. If you have a pile of dice in mundane stealth and you're hiding while a mage looks for you is it considered hiding in astral too? If I'm bright and vibrant no matter how many points I put in to stealth it seems kind of a potent ability compared to dumping karma into perception. If taking cover with techno-camo can't work against astral perception it seems like a cheap way to make perception tests against hidden assassins. But perhaps we've been playing it wrong?

By RAW the Infiltration skill is treated abstractly as an opposed test against the opponent's Perception (or Assensing if they are astrally perceiving/projecting). The DP is modified according to visibility modifiers (and astral visibility modifiers on the astral). A good infiltrator might take countermeasures to reduce their astral visibility (such as the afforementioned cardboard box), and (even if mundane) can specialize in Infiltration (Astral).

Trying to Infiltrate past an astral observer in a deserted warehouse might be difficult, but things should get easier if you are in a woodland/grass plain (plants will glow on the astral too) or in a crowded train station (lots of people also giving off auras).

An assassin who holes up to lie in wait for a mage uses Disguise (and perhaps specialization in Camouflage) to build his hide. Most professional assassins will use materials for their hide that also hide their aura from the astral.

[LurkerOutThere]

You may already realize this, but common issues I've seen from people who post your kind of question are that they don't understand what an astral metahuman can't do:

You can't read anything, you can't see colors or fine details and you are mostly seeing emotions and feelings. You can't effect anything on the material plane either.

Kzt kind of hits the nail on the head. Astral recon is great for determining the number of guards and critters in an otherwise empty facility. It can't for example tell you anything about what the guards are armed with, or their drones, or whether that person is a guard or the production floor supervisor. It can't let you listen in on conversations, read signs, cast spells, or anything like that. It can't tell you if the person inside is crying because their held prisioner against their will or if it's because they got word their grandmother died this morning and they had to work instead of being at her bedside.

Most places don't need a lot of astral security, because all the things you could do from the astral to trouble such a facility are fairly overt. The times you'll see astral secrutiy are to compliment or extend physical security.

[shinyjam]

Also, I'd expect bio-fiber to show up brightly too. Think to the cop programs when they show a heat shielded room on IR, it's glowing solidly bright but you can't see past it. To quote Sherlock Holmes, "It's so overt it's covert." Of course, then, it does draw attention to the "Why?"

But won't that ruin the point of Smuggling Compartment if I have a big box that radiate like a force 10 on a astral scan when I'm storing a couple of illegal force 3 foci? That's like saying the wi-fi negating compartment would show up as a big data mess on a box in my car's compartment or the Lead compartment that block radioactive scan would show up on the scan as a big box of radioactive signal just so it can overshadow whatever I am hiding inside.

The text does say that Shielded Smuggling Compartment are specifically design to block sensor from detecting it. I guess the key word 'block' might be debatable...

Anyway, it's from p144 of Arsenal

[Bearclaw]

I think that the word "glow" does not mean the same as "radiate". A guy hiding in a cardboard box is invisible on the astral. A guy hiding in a cardboard box with a small hole in it is still invisible unless the observer actually looks through the hole. The cardboard box does not become a flashlight, with aura light leaking out of the hole.

[shinyjam]

I think that the word "glow" does not mean the same as "radiate". A guy hiding in a cardboard box is invisible on the astral. A guy hiding in a cardboard box with a small hole in it is still invisible unless the observer actually looks through the hole. The cardboard box does not become a flashlight, with aura light leaking out of the hole.

But then what's the point of having Shielded Smuggling Compartment when Normal Smuggling Compartment would be better because the normal box won't 'glow' like the Shielded version? And all these are inside a car, so it's a box inside a bigger box.

If it's that easy to hide an aura then why not just make a 10 layer compartment that consist of thin boxes to completely block out the aura instead of cashing 1500 for a bio-fiber box.

[Bearclaw]

But then what's the point of having Shielded Smuggling Compartment when Normal Smuggling Compartment would be better because the normal box won't 'glow' like the Shielded version? And all these are inside a car, so it's a box inside a bigger box.

If it's that easy to hide an aura then why not just make a 10 layer compartment that consist of thin boxes to completely block out the aura.

Good question. Is there anything in the actual rules that says magical stuff actually radiates light? Light that would actually go through the walls of a cardboard box? I don't remember any, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

[shinyjam]

Good question too. I won't say they can go through the wall, but I also recall that astral sensing is not just about sight. Just like the example on the FAQ about blind magician that "could feel their presence" like using smell or something to sense it, so let's say the mage can 'Smell' the the aura, then it would make sense that a box with a hole would leak the aura smell (with stronger aura being stronger smell) or even 'hearing' the aura noise.

Disclaimer: I am just speculating, and might be wrong.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I would say that, honestly, there isn't much point to a biofiber-lined smuggling compartment. And by that I mean it would actually be counterproductive.

Sure, lining it with biofiber would prevent a Watcher or an Astralized magician from poking his head through, but it would be plainly obvious "Hey, under the right passenger's seat there's a biofiber container, cavity-search the driver and crack that sucker open, we got us a smuggler!" And against simple astral perception, line of sight would block it anyway.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I would say that, honestly, there isn't much point to a biofiber-lined smuggling compartment. And by that I mean it would actually be counterproductive.

Sure, lining it with biofiber would prevent a Watcher or an Astralized magician from poking his head through, but it would be plainly obvious "Hey, under the right passenger's seat there's a biofiber container, cavity-search the driver and crack that sucker open, we got us a smuggler!" And against simple astral perception, line of sight would block it anyway.

Where are you getting your rules to support your statement, though?

[Bearclaw]

Where are you getting your rules to support your statement, though?

I would think some one needs to find rules that say an aura would leak through an astrally opaque barrier, like a cardboard box, or else it doesn't. Some fluff suggests that it does, but I can't think of any rules that say so.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I would think some one needs to find rules that say an aura would leak through an astrally opaque barrier, like a cardboard box, or else it doesn't. Some fluff suggests that it does, but I can't think of any rules that say so.

Which is again my point. There are a LOT of assumptions running around here, and absolutely no proof. Fact: Stealth works against an Assensing Magician in the Astral. It is more difficult, but it DOES work.

[almost normal]

Where are you getting your rules to support your statement, though?

I don't like that argument for Astral. How things work on Astral is *entirely* fluff. We know that daylight has better conditions then night, because it's brighter, and that rain and clouds make it darker. How about the astral though? Each raindrop can have microorganisms living in it, so is it bright? The earth itself has an Aura, how about the moon? Or back to the earth, do the oceans glow? Rivers? Puddles? If the earth glows, and you can't pass through it, then would clay armor work against astral attacks? Or at what point does the aura of the earth cease?

There's dozens of unanswered questions, and to just write something off because of poorly written rules holds up thoughts on Astral against unfair scrutiny.

[almost normal]

Which is again my point. There are a LOT of assumptions running around here, and absolutely no proof. Fact: Stealth works against an Assensing Magician in the Astral. It is more difficult, but it DOES work.

Counterfact : Now with 100% more rules!

Like physical perception, a character using astral perception
should not need to make a test to see things that are immediately
obvious (and since astral forms are bright and vibrant, this means
that most astral forms are easily noticed)

It'd have to be your house rule to ignore that.