Ok, so here's the situation: We get hired to take out a guy. All we know is that he's hiding out somewhere in the Barrens, and has a fair amount of security. We do a bit of investigation, and after many trials and tribulations (Involving, of all things, the theft of two cars and one dessicated corpse with a background count, as well as a devil rat shower. Don't ask.), we locate a safe-house we believe he's going to be transferred to. There's something on the order of a dozen armed men in there, led by three or four semi-professional types.

My B&E specialist sneaks in, dodges people with ultrasound imaging equipment, scopes out the place, finds out when the target is going to arrive (we don't have a rigger at the moment, so hitting him in transit is basically a no-go) sets a grenade booby trap in a place likely to cause massive confusion once shooting starts, and a remote-detonated Neurostun device in another part of the building in order to cover his eventual retreat or serve as a distraction, and waits (with the rest of the team outside, ready to hit once the target arrives). About half an hour before the target's due, a mage shows up, and has a conversation with the guy in charge of the security. The dreaded words "astral search" are mentioned, and my character climbs out a back window, and hides for half an hour in a Barrens sewer drain outside the building - wedged spread-eagled between the walls, trying not to actually step in any of the filth - figuring there are some limits on where people or spirits are likely to look, and trying not to hurl. He comes back to the target building with a couple minutes to spare, and just as the damn target arrives (and before he's in a good firing position) he gets spotted by a damn watcher spirit. Session ends on a cliffhanger...

Now, I think that, all things considered, we still stand a good chance of pulling this one off, but the spirits are driving me up the wall. It's only fair that the enemies use them, since we certainly do (one of the characters is a conjurer) and they come in extremely handy - but is there any way to get past the damn things reliably? We're not a team geared towards frontal assaults, so we rely on stealth to a large degree, but spirit-based security just has a way of really blowing things. Is there any way to hide from the miserable buggers?

Aside from Craig Sanchez' token?

You could have your mage send a watcher to go play with their watcher, or you could come from a direction the watcher wouldn't be watching - after all, watchers are dumb as bricks.

Most approaches will make use of this last fact. In particular, not having your astral signature be identified and staying in crowded areas or areas where people are supposed to be are good bets—Watchers need to identify you as someone not supposed to be there, and that can be difficult. In particular, stay calm and uninjured—"find someone nervous" will probably bring a lot of false-positives, but can work. If you've left a firefight after having gotten winged, "find someone injured" has a pretty decent chance of working.

You may want to review the Assensing Table and try to make sure that as few of the things on the 1-2 success rank as possible will distinguish you from the opposition. I wonder if there's a corporation somewhere that infects all of its personnel with a minor but rare disease and commands its watchers to "find anyone who isn't sick"…

~J

I generally have my watchers make an intelligence or stealth roll to pick out hiding characters (with a bonus because it's looking on the astral). With a reasonable stealth roll, that means watchers still won't see you. If you feel the mechanic is unfair, discuss this with the GM.

Can mages mask someone else?
It would be cool if your mage could make you look like a spirit, cat or tree or like one of the guards that are there (astrally of course).

Is there an astral invisibility spell or chance change aura spell?

Can you get a spirit to "alienate" you for a while till the watcher looks somewhere else.

You could also drop in a few cats into the building, that will serve as distractions.

Stealth skill
Have spirit use Confusion power on it
Confusion Spell
See Me Not Spell from Silver Angel (semi canon)
or its cousin
Disregard Spell from Shadowland (further from canon)
or design a similar spell.

You say it has already seen you.

Your blown, attack now or run and come up with a new plan that accounts for the fact that there on alert (and will probably move the target), you don’t have time to implement the suggested plan to make yourself look like your target (to a dumb watcher)

If you have conjuring you could command the spirit (steal it from its summoner) I don’t believe this automatically informs the conjurer, but your not the one with conjuring anyway.

Mental manipulations on the spirit would also help

if I was summoning a watcher to guard something like that I would introduce it to all the people that should be there (a safe house shouldn’t have more than 5 -8 people) and have the spirit report anybody it doesn’t know.

My biggest question is how do you know it spotted you, watchers rarely manifest without orders (and the summoner won’t have wanted it to because that would reduce its tactical value). This may give a clew to a possible solution.

Edward

As a GM , I have similar frustrations. In one segment of the last campaign, the main NPC was kidnapped which should have precipitated the legwork phase. There were numerous clues in different areas (basically I work up 3 to 4 possible scenarios that the characters are likely to follow in digging for clues). Unfortunately astral search tends to make much of this moot (particularly in a mage heavy group which as I dealt with) After reading the rules (& discussing the subject in FAQ), the only defence was basically to have the antagonist mages throw up wards on several buildings in parts of the city and of course post astral security to confuse or derail an astral search. The only thing is this can still tip off the searching team - "gee a lot of spirits & a big ward - that must be the place" Basically instead of hide and seek mission, it became more of a shell game with the kidnappers continually moving the subject. every time an enemy watcher appeared.

In a way, I see watchers as mosquitoes - small, insignificant, yet very annoying. pests. that can really mess things up in the right (or wrong) situation

Astral static could be of some use. A watcher would probably still sit there since it's intellect is severly limited. The spell won't easily work on more intelligent spirits, bust it could slow them down as they attempt to find thier way back to thier master.

In addition to mental manipulations and spirit powers, hiding behind astral barriers of any sort will confuse the watcher. Having other spirits come and astrally buzz the watcher works well. And simply killing the silly thing in astral combat is always an alternative; watchers aren't very tough. Remember that watchers don't have a telepathic link to their summoner, so they won't know if their spirit was killed, or if it just got confused and wandered off.

I know the spirit had seen me, because it manifested and started to scream its head off in order to alert everyone in the building. (which is faster than going back to the summonern and have him give orders to the security mooks)

Fortunately, I'm on the 3rd floor (they were using an abandoned commercial building) while most of the enemies are on the 1st floor, the 2nd floor just got filled with Neurostun as they tried running up from 1st, and the stairway door for the 3rd floor is booby-trapped with an IPE HE grenade. Which means all I need to do is find a window that gives me a shot at the target's car (which had pulled up moments earlier), fire a couple of grenades into it, and then get to safety before whoever survived my booby-traps comes after me.

The question is more what to do in the future to avoid this kind of trouble, and there have been some good suggestions in that respect... Thanks.

Or SR3…

~J

Were the antagonists government agents or did they just have very good contacts. Or did the government not know that they were there?

These players were walking around invading every warded building in town? I don't know where, exactly, you were playing, but in any real kind of city you're going to find god knows how many buildings secured with wards and watchers, if they've got any kind of money and any interest whatsoever in security. Wandering around the astral blasting every ward you find is a quick way to draw a lot of unwanted attention to yourself.

Wards and spirit guards can not be used as indications of your marks location.

Most magicians ward there own resiance as powerfully as they can, and there are companies that will ward your building for you and sell you astral security patrols.

Edward

Why exactly do you have so much trouble hiding from Watcher Spirits? Objects that are opaque on the physical are opaque on the astral. Suddenly the cardboard box from metal gear looks like a good idea, or at least the ruthinium poncho looks even better. The real problem is the B&E character can't see the watcher. This is a serious problem, but just as there can't be a guard watching every corner, there probably isn't a watcher at every turn. The GM has to decide, really, how good watchers are in any situation. Also, consider background counts as areas that give watchers some trouble. Ultimately the only way to be certain is to have an adept with astral perception or mage also skilled as your B&E character.

you could say that the aura is an area around the target and the spell casting ties to their aura, not their body. That's what we say at least.

Actually the watcher problem *I* have is having a mage create a battalion of watchers to overwhelm anything active in astral. And when you get high initiation, you can start having batteries of 10-12, starting comparisons to football teams.

And I don't care what you say, even dumb watchers are nasty when they're force 6.

Can we say friends in melee if NPC is dual-natured, magically active or magically aware? *wince*

Right, well, the solution to that is oh look a three-headed monkey!

~J

There is a spirit combat "quick resolution system", in which you subtract their Force from each other.

~J

Strange. Most quick resolution systems produce results that are at least theoretically possible under the complex systems.

Not that I’m saying your wrong, just I’m surprised, where is it published.

Edward

I'll check a bit later—I failed to find it, but I'm positive it's in there (had too many people who aren't me refer to its existence).

However, one thing I did find was that apparently Watcher Spirits are quite good at seeing the physical plane, so they're harder to defeat than I thought.

~J

Think that rule was SR2, not SR3.

Heh, I knew you would chime in at some point Lina.

I too have never heard of those resolution rules - they sound kinda hinky to me, and as Lina said, it's easy enough to resummon a fresh batch...of course if you get the mage engaged in combat, the resummoning a fresh batch isn't easy. (How fast can you summon watchers in combat time?)

The only other way I can think of is high power, high blast radius area mana spells like powerball/manaball/stunball. But if you do that in a swirling combat you affect friends as well as enemies...

True, but you can assign spell defense to your allies.

No, I was just saying, if they're low force then use a low force area effect spell, assign spell defense to your allies, and nuke the whole field. Your allies will shrug off most or all of the spell, and the spirits will be mostly or completely destroyed. It's a great idea. Kind of like the Troll tank who gets the devil rats off him by dropping a grenade at his feet.
Of course, if the football team is higher force, you're as likely to do as much damage to your team as you are to them.
But if you're asking how to deal with over a dozen force 6 spirits, watchers or not, I'd say either hide, run, heavy weapons, or geek the mage, as appropriate. There've been lots of good ideas here.

Area effect spritbolt (whatever the name of the spell was, Spiritball maybe. SHould clean out the spirits and leave everything not answering to the description of spirit untouched.

stevebugge: Oh yeah. That's even better.
Of course, I don't generally like solutions that lead to - every team needs to have this gear/spell/skill/etc. to survive.

DocMortant: How many people can you assign spell defense to at a time? Can the opposing mage shield himself and 13 allies?