No, it is a Physical spell. Therefore does not affect a projecting mage. It does affect dual natured, but only because they are using their IP of their Physical plane body.

More actions doesn't nessasarily mean "faster".

Good catch; it's still working for VR, though.

Yup, it's still working and comes into effect when you concentrate and suppress the VR to act in the meat. However the matrix initiative system overrides your physical initiative while you are acting in VR.

Yes that is incredibily difficult to reconcile with Adepts gaining the benefit of Improved Ability: Technical while VR (or maybe they weren't intended to, i forget the entire string of stuff that allows that, has it been confirmed?)

True, but the spell doesn't say it adds to your physical initative. Just your initiative (if you're a physical target).

Physical inititative is implied. Maybe, but I doubt very much it was intended to include the Matrix initiative. *shrug*

A dangerous word.

Yet extremely important.

Seriously, do you really think that 3 IP were allocated with the intention of having it augmented with Increase Reflexes? You get the 3 IP because you ditch all the goodies (wires, bio, powers, spells).

Overclocking good!

Yes, you can twist the reading of the RAW to have them influence VR. I suggest that if you find yourself in a room with someone that insists that they do you rip off their arm and use it to beat them to death. The gaming world, and perhaps even the world at large, will be made a much better place for it.

Now, to fix up my sig.....

I'm afraid I don't follow your logic on that, can you explain your reasoning blakkie?

Raw speed doesn't always mean extra actions. The extra action can come from more effeciency in your actions than actual speed. Also the faster travel rate of astral doesn't nessasarily translate to always having more, or at least as many, actions.

Another example are Trolls compared to other metahumans. Faster movement rate, on average later to act, and given same gear they have the same number of IPs.

When the subject first came up, it was more of a case of not ever finding any book reference that said that they don't.

After explicit declarations of what doesn't count when operating a vehicle in the previous three editions, the curious absence of any such prohibition in SR4 appears to be a philosophy change for the new edition.

Ya, it has all this fluff about being cut off from your meat, and that your physical initiative is replaced (replacing Reaction attribute with your commlink Responce). But it doesn't bother to mention the general substituting of mental for physical Attributes. Although that might be partially because it is rare that Attributes, much less physical Attributes, are used in a dice pools in VR. The only case for physical Attributes seems to be when "jumped in" to a vehicle.

Not that that is directly related to Paul's original statement since he was talking about driving without VR.

I will now illustrate the merits of citing reference material. Emphasis mine, and self-correction mine.

Since Increase Reflexes is a Health spell and a drone is not a living body, it does not apply.

There's still a grey cloud of "iffy" around VR use, though. If you subscribe to the idea that the spell will speed up your mind to keep up with your accelerated body, then it seems like it'd apply (for instance, you can now Observe in Detail more times per second). However, if you believe that the spell works on only your meat or it's actually the commlink making the actions, not you... then it wouldn't apply.

The problem is though, that there are different maximums for different character types, riggers have a 3 maximum, technomancers can get 4, bio or cyber users can get 4, mages astrally only get 3, but mages physically can get 4. Is there anyway to explain or solve this difference?


Looking over my book (now that its with me), it seems that "the speed of thought" is only 3 IP

So does this mean wired 3 makes you act more often than the speed of thought?

Wired doesn't enchance one's reactions so much as override them. A Wired character is, on a very basic level, controled by computer. This is why wired characters tend to kill fast moving children and people who hold their credsticks the wrong way if they don't have a reflex trigger.

Yes, you act more often than your concious thought. Which is also what Technomancers apparently do since they can get their 4th IP through immersion, as can anyone spending a point of Edge. *shrug*

You used the Bad Word. That is exactly what i was trying to get at, thinking of the extra IP in terms of "faster". I think you even demonstrated what i was trying to get at much better than i did. By putting the word "moving" in front of it you show the use of "faster" that i saw as the trap of falling into.

I wouldn't be overly worried about it, as a GM. Keep in ming that Wired-3 is like 100,000-200,000 nuyen (depending on whether or not the PC wants to sac 5 or 4 essence). Given that, a character PLAYER going in this direction is going to be severly limited with what he makes with the rest of his nuyen and essence. A character making that many actions in a round arn't going to be able to do a whole lot with them.

I would sort of want to allow astral mages or VR hackers to use their spell/cyberware initiative if it is better, but I am not sure if that's how the rules work. For magic, I sort of am okay with the idea that a mage with a "speed" spell on can act more often than a mage without one (on the astral). Same thing goes for Cyber. A hacker in full VR with a 100 grand of "processing" cyberware back home should have some advantage over a hacker whos moving at the speed of his (relativly slow) meat-brain.

In my mind, the main problem with this was the original definition of 3 IPs = "speed of thought", which is really only a necessity because of the Astral Plane. In my opinion, the Matrix could be (re)defined as "information flying at the speed of thought, minus meat-brain lag". For the astral plane, I think I would have a harder time with this.

Anyways, like I said, I can deal with it, but as a DM I think I would play doen the 3 IPs = speed of thought, and maybe try playing up the Wired-3 = computer controling most of your actions/reactions.