Dealing with Search power Options

[sunnyside]

So I'm basing the question on the Anniversay edition specifically , but this has been an issue since 2nd and likely continues in 5th.

It wasn't a problem in my past campaigns, simply because everyone ignored it. At least the GMs, myself included, resisted using it.

But as written it should be exceedingly easy for corps or anyone with even modest funds or magical ability to find their stolen prototype or any person they have a picture of or have assensed. At least if they know what city the target is in.

It's kind of sticking in my craw for the moment because it's messing with creating a character's backstory. Essentially you shouldn't ever be able to run from people who know you unless you want to change cities any time they get a hint on our whereabouts, and that would spoil the campaign.

[bannockburn]

It's really not that easy to roll the required number of hits before the dice pool is zero. Remember, it's an extended test which may suffer from -1 dice pool per roll at your discretion.
Being a few kilometers away, even in the same city, and taking a precaution as simple as being behind a ward (and anyone who can assense can create one pretty easily), or a magical lodge rapidly reduces success chances. If it's a thing instead of a person that's being Searched it becomes harder still.
Background count also reduces the dice pool, as it lowers the spirit's Force, or a critter's (which would also have to have seen the object or person in question) Magic attribute.

Watcher spirits are nonsensical in that they only ever have a dice pool of 2, and can't even beat the threshold with the one power they have, even if the SR4A rulebook retained the sentence

Watchers excel at astral tracking, thanks in part to their one power: Search

On reflection, I would allow watchers to not be subject to the diminishing dice pool so they could actually perform this task, but they would still be stumped by a magical barrier of any kind:

For example, if a watcher sent somewhere finds its path blocked by an astral barrier, it will most likely simply remain there until its time runs out and it dissolves.

Stuff like that is advanced, of course, and street trash would not necessarily be aware of taking these precautions, so it's a good tool to raise the stakes with rising experience, and having to adapt to new threats like this.

If you're still iffy about the success chances, you could also introduce other modifiers, such as -2 dice pool modifiers or +2 threshold modifiers for the spirit summoner only having seen a video recording of a person being searched, or for changed appearances of either persons or objects: there's nothing mentioned that an aura is being used for the purposes of Search.
Similarly, you could give bonus to dice pool or reduced threshold if the aura of a person has been assensed by a spirit summoner.

[sunnyside]

Thanks for the reply.

I think the watcher example you list means the diminishing pool wasn't assumed by the devs. But it could be added in.

But even with it added in, if a spirit is starting with pool of 10, that's still 55 dice on the table, and goes up quickly with force.

Background count might help a lot. While it may lower wards too, it ought to lower both the spirits Stat and skill.

Though unless someone or something is stationary in a guarded spot you can't keep such protections up.

Though I guess one could rule disguises might work, sort of how you mentioned. Like if the character puts on mustache they technically wouldn't look the same. I could see letting the player roll and adding hits to the threshold.

I think it would be hard to argue that assensing wouldn't work for identifying someone. But I suppose auras can change too somewhat, and in any case you can't have a photo of an aura so it would have to he the exact spirit or spellcaster that observed them or it in Astral.

[bannockburn]

I was more referring to a specific summoner having assensed a person, and then sending out a spirit (giving them the mental image of the aura) to find this specific person, and I'd give the spirit a bonus of some kind because that should make it easier (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Taking your example of a dice pool of 10 for a rating 5 spirit, finding an item that's 5km away, the threshold would be 15, so in very very napkin math, equalling 45 dice, before anything else comes into place. Should be doable, but just add one more variable in that situation and it makes it noticeably more unlikely to find said item.

Another factor to consider is the fact that lower dice pools mean higher chances of glitches, which can take off 1d6 already rolled hits.

And yes, a stationary, guarded spot to lie low is much easier to hide in. Obviously, it would also be smart hiding as far away from the spot you hit as possible. The Seattle plex is pretty big, so 20km should be entirely doable in most situations: 25 for people, 30 threshold for items, and that's before astral barriers or any custom modifiers.

Or ... get rid of whatever you stole as fast as possible and let Johnson deal with the problem (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Nath]

The watchers' astral tracking rule in SR2/SR3 (it wasn't even considered a "power", it was a rule that applied to watchers only) was broken in a similar way (how much broken exactly depended on the summoner's Intelligence attribute). I guess the person who designed that rule thought it would be cool to have heroes and villains resolve some situations with that power, without realizing there was no reason for every organizations in the world not to use it as well, all the time.

The nature spirits' Search power was a lot less impressive (basically rolling twice their Essence as a Perception roll, instead of Intelligence, to find something inside their domain, which was assumed to be limited by whatever distance made sense for a Perception roll.

I don't know what happened when they wrote SR4 rules, but I wonder if it's not the result of one person deciding to redesign watchers as Force 1 spirit and astral tracking as an Extended roll, and another person deciding to merge astral tracking and search, without realizing that merging these two design goals would be broken. Again.

Watchers, as Force 1 spirit with a few hours of service, are basically unable to make a decent use of the power for searching anyplace bigger than a building or a houseblock, while spirits, no longer restricted to a single domain can even search the whole world if bound (which is a significant upgrade from their Perception boost).

It's not a bad rule because it's overpowered or unbalance character roles. It's a bad rule because it makes telling some stories impossible in that setting.

Mechanically, I think the problem is the combination of an Extended Roll with distance in kilometers as a Threshold modifier. Replacing it by a standard roll would be hard to tweak because of Concealment and mana barrier modifiers. Using distance squared as the Threshold modifier instead would remain quite simple, but probably scale a bit too steeply. The best idea I could come up with was to cap max range as equals to Magic attribute or Magic x2, which is afterall who Detection spells work. That way, a watcher spirit can search someone in a crowd, and a great form spirit can search a city (and you can still extend range by restarting the use of the power from a different point).

[pbangarth]

Here on DS I am playing (SR3) a shaman who is on the lam from Mitsuhama. I am thankful that elementals don't have the Search power and that nature spirits are constrained to exercise their powers in their own terrain.

[sunnyside]

Here on DS I am playing (SR3) a shaman who is on the lam from Mitsuhama. I am thankful that elementals don't have the Search power and that nature spirits are constrained to exercise their powers in their own terrain.

I don't know where the assumption of limiting range to the immediate vicinity for SR2 search came from. Though that would '"fix" the power immediately.

Though there is an implications of an opposed roll which could be stealth based. One could imagine something similar for a hidden or concealed person or object in SR4? There are other cases where threshold abilities can be modified.

[sunnyside]

I haven't looked at 5th edition at all yet. Anybody know what happened to the Search power? It'd be a lot more tempting to switch if they fixed a few things like that.

Edit: I tried googling the answer for my own question. It appears the power is essentially identical in 5th edition. Additionally that people really don't seem to like 5th edition, which isn't even the current edition anymore, despite dumpshock not having a tag for 6th.

Edit2: I can't quickly find an answer on sixth. Though it sounds like rules on spirit powers are sort of missing in 6th?
https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/hyp...sixth-world/#11

Also that article specifically mentions the "grognards" on Dumpshock. So I guess you're famous but apparently don't like 6th much (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[bannockburn]

I haven't looked at 5th edition at all yet. [...] It'd be a lot more tempting to switch if they fixed a few things like that.

I mean, if you want to cut off your head to deal with the pain in your nose ...

[Sengir]

But as written it should be exceedingly easy for corps or anyone with even modest funds or magical ability to find their stolen prototype or any person they have a picture of or have assensed.

That requirement already complicates things a lot. It does not matter if a corp has an elite wagemage squad on call or a rich guy could hire the best magical investigator, because those have not seen the target. Sure, a corp could have their mages memorize prototypes and likely extraction targets, but that would make the mages themselves extraction targets, so...


But yeah, stealing or hiding from somebody with a decent Summoning pool would still be far too hard. As an off-the-cuff houserule, how about taking the square of the distance as modifier because the area to be searched increases with the square of the distance?

[Lionesque]

Also that article specifically mentions the "grognards" on Dumpshock. So I guess you're famous but apparently don't like 6th much (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I will likely never read a word of 6th edition. After the dumpster fire that was 5th edition, I will never, ever spend any money on a product from Catalyst again. Does that make me a grognard? Or a customer, who's learned a painful lesson about a particular company?

[sunnyside]

But yeah, stealing or hiding from somebody with a decent Summoning pool would still be far too hard. As an off-the-cuff houserule, how about taking the square of the distance as modifier because the area to be searched increases with the square of the distance?

I'm still curious about 6th. But if things have gone downhill it's tempting to use a houserule, and I like the rational for that one. It's still quite powerful. But you at least need to know vaguely where they hang out. Again a decent force spirit puts a whole lot of dice on the table. But in conjuction with other reasonable modifiers in this thread you might get enough of a number.

[pbangarth]

Hey guys, wait long enough and sales of SR6 will drop off. Then 'fixes will be needed' and SR7 will appear to address them.

[Nath]

For the record:

Shadowrun, First Edition, page 178 - SEARCH
The being may seek any person, place, or object within its terrain. Its rating for perceving hidden objects or persons is equal to twice its Essence. Use the Opposed success Test described at the beginning of this chapter.

Shadowrun, Second Edition, page 219 - SEARCH
The being may seek any person, place, or object within its terrain. Its rating for perceiving hidden objects or persons is equal to twice its Essence. To remain undiscovered, a character or object must make a successful opposted test, as described at the beginning of this chapter.

Shadowrun, Third Edition, page 265 - SEARCH
Type: P • Action: Exclusive Complex • Range: LOS • Duration: Special
The being may seek any person, place, or object within its terrain. To find the target, the creature must succeed in an Opposed Test between twice its Essence and the person’s Intelligence. If the target of the Search is an object, the critter must succeed in rolling twice its Essence against a target number equal to its Object Resistance (p. 182). The concealment power directly opposes search by adding the concealing creature’s Essence to the target number of the searching critter’s test.

Shadowrun, Fourth Edition, page 290 - Search
Type: P • Action: Complex • Range: Special • Duration: Special
The being may seek any person, place, or object. To find the target, the creature makes a Magic + Intuition (5, 10 minutes) Extended Test. Apply modifiers from the Search Modifiers Table. The critter must have seen what it is searching for before; spirits may search out anything that their summoner provides them with a mental image of. Critters with the Astral Form power may use Search in astral space and do not have to materialize while searching.

Shadowrun, 20th Anniversary Edition, page 297 - Search
Type: P • Action: Complex • Range: Special • Duration: Special
The being may seek any person, place, or object. To find the target, the creature makes a Magic + Intuition (5, 10 minutes) Extended Test. Apply the dice pool modifiers from the Search Modifiers Table. The critter must have seen what it is searching for before; spirits may search out anything that their summoner provides them with a mental image of. Critters with the Astral Form power may use Search in astral space and do not have to materialize while searching.

Shadowrun, 5th Edition, page 400 - Search
Type: P Action: Complex Range: Special Duration: Special
Seek, and ye shall find, but it goes a lot faster with this power. To find a target, the critter makes a Magic + Intuition (5, 10 minutes) Extended Test. Lots of things can make this harder; apply the appropriate modifiers from the Search Modifiers Table. The critter must have seen the thing it’s searching for at some time before the search begins. Spirits may search for anything for which their summoner can provide them a mental image. Critters who can enter astral space may use this power there and do not have to materialize while searching, even if the target is in the physical world.

Shadowrun, 6th Edition, page 227-228 - Search
TYPE ACTION RANGE DURATION
P Major Special Special
You can find your lost keys really fast with this power. To find a target, the critter makes a Magic + Intuition (5, 10 minutes) Extended test. Lots of things can make this harder; apply the appropriate threshold modifiers from the Search Modifiers table. The critter must have seen the thing it’s searching for at some point before the search begins. Spirits may search for anything for which their summoner can provide them a mental image. Critters who can enter astral space may use this power there but still need to materialize while searching for an inanimate target in the physical world. Living things with auras can be searched for from the astral plane.

I don't know where the assumption of limiting range to the immediate vicinity for SR2 search came from. Though that would '"fix" the power immediately.

Though there is an implications of an opposed roll which could be stealth based. One could imagine something similar for a hidden or concealed person or object in SR4? There are other cases where threshold abilities can be modified.

I think it would make sense to interpret the word "terrain" in the description of SR2 Search power as referring to a spirit's domain, and the verb "perceiving" as an indication to refer to the Perception rules.

The later is not saying much, because the Perception rules themselves actually say nothing about limiting range, for any type of character. I guess you're supposed to assume metahumans have standard human sense range for sight, hearing and smelling, but you're left to figure out what sense range would to reasonable for a dragon or a spirit. Like, it would make sense for a dragon to have sight on par with birds of prey, rather than mere human sight, but the rules are completely silent about this, and obviously there is nothing you can compare to to assess what perception standard range ought to be for a spirit. While it's eyeball structure, horizon level, soundwave attenuation or odorants concentration that ought limit sense range, we have absolutely zero indication about how far a spirit can detect an object. Guess we're supposed to apply "common sense" to a supernatural being but we could have endless arguments about this because the books are silent (and actually, the situation is exactly the same with the range of Astral Perception). SR3 Search power does explicitly mention range as "Line of Sight" which at least suggests the power should not work over the horizon.

On the other hand, Search power limitation to a spirit's domain would put a limit on range in SR1/SR2/SR3. Spirits of the land could not search someone in a city, while city spirits could not search outside of the city they were in (and if you're wondering, no, spirits of the sky did not have the Search power). But that cannot work in SR4/SR5/SR6 as spirits no longer have domain.

That requirement already complicates things a lot. It does not matter if a corp has an elite wagemage squad on call or a rich guy could hire the best magical investigator, because those have not seen the target. Sure, a corp could have their mages memorize prototypes and likely extraction targets, but that would make the mages themselves extraction targets, so...

SR4 rules does only require to "have seen" or "a mental image" which does not rule out simply having seen a picture of it. But I wouldn't find it entirely unreasonable to interpret/alter that requirement as having seen its astral form at least once.

[sunnyside]

Thanks Nath.

Looks like they did the best job in 3rd edition with the power.

In some ways you could argue it isn't so unclear in 4th. Just broken in terms of the stories you could tell if you don't ignore it.

I bet 80%+ of the SR novel's plots would crumble if the writers had to factor it in.

[Sengir]

SR4 rules does only require to "have seen" or "a mental image" which does not rule out simply having seen a picture of it. But I wouldn't find it entirely unreasonable to interpret/alter that requirement as having seen its astral form at least once.

Admittedly this is a little RAI of what constitutes "seeing", but it fits right along the usual requirements for spellcasting.

I bet 80%+ of the SR novel's plots would crumble if the writers had to factor it in.

My rule of thumb for any "investigative" stuff: Shadowrun requires Shadowrunners being able to exist. If anything makes it too easy to track down criminals, it shouldn't exist.

Of course, that requirement reqularly clashes with players having to be able to solve a whodunit/whereisit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Lionesque]

My rule of thumb for any "investigative" stuff: Shadowrun requires Shadowrunners being able to exist. If anything makes it too easy to track down criminals, it shouldn't exist.

Of course, that requirement reqularly clashes with players having to be able to solve a whodunit/whereisit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I wish you'd expand on how you make this work in practice. I (we) have the same problem with many aspects of the rules.

[Nath]

On that topic, my first advice would be, do not assume corporations are rich enough or simply willing to fund extensive investigations. Security budget ought to go into guns, ammos, and repairing camera to protect against gangs and internal theft, which are their most frequent problems, rather than the lab equipement and specialists required to test every hair and saliva drop for DNA or astral print for a remote chance of catching shadowrunners after the damage have been done.

Also, many people assume corporations should attempt to track down the runners because it will lead them to M. Johnson. The idea here is that the shadowrunners are the cutout, while everything story-wise make them bad at it (they meet in him or her in person, could record his face and voice with cyber, and so on). Chances are there are additional levels of cutout besides the runners, with the corporation having all the papertrail readily available to prove that M. Johnson is a rogue employee that divested funds to conduct a personal vendetta against a competitor.

This is a bit like how nowadays corporations could spend millions in network security products to defend themselves against Chinese state hackers, but once they have been breached, there is basically no point for them in spending additional millions to find the names of the Chinese hackers that did it and who their boss is (diplomatically, the US government currently does find it useful to publish names to make their point, and cyber security company to prove their skill - but even if they could arrest them, they know they will be replaced, just like shadowrunners would, and it won't do anything to prevent further attacks).

[bannockburn]

Similarly, remember the Corporate Security Handbook back from SR2 days or Arcology Shutdown?
If you use everything in these books, no shadowrunner will ever make it into any facility or survive even a modest encounter in the arcology. Instead, pick and choose what seems sensible for a given location.
Is it a matter of policy to let a security mage with very good summoning skills scan every item of possible interest? I hope the facility is big enough to justify such a budget item. Or isn't it simply easier to slap on an RFID-tag, and smart runners run everything under a tag-eraser as a matter of course?

On the other hand, there might be a vindictive security chief, who, because his career was ruined, will make it his life's work to enact revenge. Story hooks are everywhere.

[Iduno]

Similarly, remember the Corporate Security Handbook back from SR2 days or Arcology Shutdown?
If you use everything in these books, no shadowrunner will ever make it into any facility or survive even a modest encounter in the arcology. Instead, pick and choose what seems sensible for a given location.
Is it a matter of policy to let a security mage with very good summoning skills scan every item of possible interest? I hope the facility is big enough to justify such a budget item. Or isn't it simply easier to slap on an RFID-tag, and smart runners run everything under a tag-eraser as a matter of course?

On the other hand, there might be a vindictive security chief, who, because his career was ruined, will make it his life's work to enact revenge. Story hooks are everywhere.

I always had a reason for why the security design was imperfect. New building going up and the security wasn't up yet, budget cuts means everything needs to be approved by accounting and you end up with lots of bad security devices, changeover from wired to wireless means things aren't all interconnected, tradeoffs for preventing deckers from using the security system against the company (I liked the Maginot line of uni-directional wall-mounted turrets), security being more relaxed in some areas because employees need to work there without constantly setting off alarms, head of security is upset and they sabotaged things before getting themselves extracted, power outages, someone on the inside helping you, etc.

Legwork isn't used like it should be, so nobody but me knows, but that means I can tell the players what type of security is in a given area by how secure it needs to be, how many employees go through the area (lowering security), and how the building was designed (usually lowering it again).

[sunnyside]

On the note of Corp resources and tracking down players generally there are a couple points I keep in mind:

- As part of setting up a run, they are often given helpful Intel or otherwise given a hand. Making it easier for runner to do their job than to just randomly steal a helicopter.
- the corp will generally hunt the runners for a bit, but once the handoff is done and the dust has settled there isn't any margin in getting them
- an exception is if the target feels a need to send a message. This is more to keep runners from solving all their problems with high explosives.


However all the budget talk goes out the window if you can just flash a mage a picture and a spirit tells you where the prototype or runners are, which is the problem with the search power RAW. Some good thoughts in this thread.

The particular thing I wanted to mention is that I was reading the 4th Ed rules on free spirits, and in the section on the extended test to construct a spirits formula after assessing it, the text says:

"It is recommended that the gamemaster enforce the limit on the number of tests possible before failure."

Anybody know if anywhere it mentions a limit other than the -1 per attempt?

[Nath]

The only thing I know about are the advice (not exactly a rule thus) to use the Dice Pool also as the maximum number of rolls, and end an Extended Test if glitching.

Shadowrun, 4th Edition, page 58
The gamemaster can also limit the number of rolls under the assumption that if the character can’t finish it with a certain amount of effort, she simply doesn’t have the skills to complete it. A good limit is to allow a maximum number of rolls equal to the character’s dice pool (so a character rolling 6 dice has 6 attempts to get it done). A character can also fail an Extended Test by glitching (see below).

[sunnyside]

The only thing I know about are the advice (not exactly a rule thus) to use the Dice Pool also as the maximum number of rolls, and end an Extended Test if glitching.

Huh. I thought regular 4th Ed and the anniversary edition were the same for rules. But SR4A has the concept of -1 dice per roll instead. Which has the same number of rolls but fewer total dice. It seems appropriate for things like coding a lnd magic where you eventually get wound around problems you don't know how solve.

Maybe they're different because they aren't the firmist rules in either case.

[Sengir]

I wish you'd expand on how you make this work in practice. I (we) have the same problem with many aspects of the rules.

If you mean the part about too effective investigative techniques not existing, just remember that the corps have more skeletons in their closets than runners could ever have. Classic example, if there was a possibility to "reverse search" a SIN based on fingerprints or DNA samples, runners would be pretty screwed -- but corps even more. Extracted a scientist? Old employer can simply search for their new SIN. Sent a black ops team? Every beat cop can just google their identities based on a tiny DNA sample.

I you mean the part about the above clashing with PCs playing investigators -- good question, I don't claim to have a good answer besides lots of handwaving (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Lionesque]

If you mean the part about too effective investigative techniques not existing, just remember that the corps have more skeletons in their closets than runners could ever have. Classic example, if there was a possibility to "reverse search" a SIN based on fingerprints or DNA samples, runners would be pretty screwed -- but corps even more. Extracted a scientist? Old employer can simply search for their new SIN. Sent a black ops team? Every beat cop can just google their identities based on a tiny DNA sample.

I you mean the part about the above clashing with PCs playing investigators -- good question, I don't claim to have a good answer besides lots of handwaving (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I see we're pretty much on the same page. Even if there are rules for tracking down people based on DNA or an astral signature, it's not really a thing, because if it was, shadowrunning wouldn't be a thing. Technically, it is possible to spray bleach over every single surface in every location a runner has ever been, and erasing astral signatures is also, in principle, super easy, but how does that make the game fun for anyone?