Watchers have no value.
I mean almost completely useless.

Going threw the list of watcher tasks.

Tracking, using search power. Well a watcher can /never/ successfully search, they have a dice pool of 2 using there search power for an extended test with a minimum threshold of 5.

Astral alarm. Having a dice pool of 2 for assessing and 0 for perception there not exactly likely to notes, les recognise the thing there supposed to be rasing an alarm about.

Attack dog, most targets will ignore them, they may have some value in numbers.

Courier, will work assuming it doesn’t get lost, considering its low dice pool for navigation (0) and the failure of its search power this is a distinct possibility.

Irritant, well they can’t search out the target but they could follow somebody around making loud noises if you pointed the person out to them, there is however an appreciable chance the watcher will loose the target in a crowd.

Shadow, the watcher will likely loose the mark in a crowd, if the watcher keeps with the target with a perception dice pool of 0 he isn’t going to pick up enough of the conversation to be useful to you.

So what are they good for?

Edward

As attack dogs they can get annoying in numbers because of the friends in melee bonuses.

For the most part, they're pretty weak. That's a good thing. In past editions they have frequently been too good.

So although they are called watchers the only thing there any good for is backup fighting.

This makes no sense.

I agree they where over powered in SR3 but I can’t think of a circumstance where I would actually summon one in SR4.

I would propose some changes. Add the perception skill.

Allow force to be higher than 1 (require conjuring threshold of force, extra successes go to duration and drain now force + duration)

Make assessing, perception, intuition and magic (for the purpose of searching only) equal to force. All other skills and attributes remain one

Edward

It was also proposed at some point that you use a cluster of them to augment one of them or yourself and treat them more like bonus dice for certain checks, which by the rules is plausible.

They probably should just get some extra dice (random watcher bonus) for their search/perception tasks.

Bigger Force is not a good idea, since that's where the problems begin (when watchers become powerful astral combatants). Force 1 is just right for them.

Spirit Skills should not depend so heavily on Force in general, I guess. If they just had fixed values, or a base value + half Force, or something like that, it would probably look more reasonable.

Bye
Thanee

They wouldn’t become powerful astral combatants if there combat skills and attributes remained one regardless of force. Or you can just give them a 3 on the attributes I mentioned

I wouldn’t want to have watchers helping with a task. For every glitch they raise the threshold buy one, there going to cause more harm than good.

Edward

No, for every glitch, the watchers found a dirty old Buzz cola can instead of your target. They are not your average glitchers. THey are easy to fool, you are less so.

Or does it say they increase the assisted's threshhold when they screw up?

As I understand it if a helper glitches the threshold for the primary task is increased buy one.

I haven’t seen this rule but it was much quoted in the army of agents thread.

Edward

If a helper critical glitches it raises it, but yes, that is a problem.

Watchers rock because they can be ignored and thus track someone, or you send it out it "pops" and you follow the trail to where it popped and find the threat, or avoid as applicable.
You just need to think outside the stats.

Watchers cant track somebody. If they try using search power they have 2 dice and threshold of 5, if they try using perception they have 0,if the target is astraly active they have 2 dice which still means a high probability of failure.

In response to your second suggestion most threats wouldn’t notice the watcher so all you will do is encourage a sense of complacency. Any magical threat would be well advised to leave the watcher alone, knowing that destroying it gives the summoner almost as much information as being spotted buy it, and there is a high chance it wont notice them.

I guess you could use it as a ward detector, but that is a very limited application.

Edward

Watchers can't materialize, but I'm 90% certain the rules say they can manifest. Not that there's any reason they need to if you don't want them to.

hmm, a treshold of 5 with a time of 10 minutes. with 2 dice, how long will it take to find someone?

another question is, how easy is it for the watcher to loose track of someone ones they have located the person?

i would allways keep a watcher around as a astral alarm unless it would be a social no-no to do so where i am...

the rule that you can't roll more times on an extended test is a houserule, iirc (though a fairly common one it seems, much like -10 HP being death in second edition D&D). since it is a houserule, by default watchers can find things, it just takes them quite a while.

if you don't like the fact that watchers can't find stuff because you're using the houserule, then hey, guess what? it's not even an official rule, and so if you allow them to break it as a 'special watcher power', then you're not even letting them break an official rule.

they do still suck at perception though

The suggestion to limit rolls on extended tests to the size of the dice pool is pretty official, though not a hard rule.

Actually, is it an official optional rule .

That would be the optional rule to limit extended tests at all.

How's this:

"Watcher Pete, your job is to hide inside Bob the Samurai. The moment Bob is injured in any way, affected by any spell, or says the word 'foobar,' your service to me is done and you may leave."

"Bob, that faint chill you're feeling is Pete harmlessly riding shotgun. As long as you keep feeling that, you'll know I'm still alive. Also, if you get into trouble, there's a good chance that I'll know immediately. Say 'foobar' if you want to hit the panic button manually."

That's darn clever.

well, a watcher cant find anything with search faster than 30 minites. average time would be about 75 minutes.

a watcher can manifest. it can talk to its boss via telepathy. it cvan wander around teh astral and look at things.

i would think a dice pool of 0 means you cant roll normaly, but there will be modifiers, and there will be times when no roll is needed. So a mage being sneaky in the astral, will get in undetected. a mage that pays no attention to being sneaky... hes going to be noticed. I dont care it the watchdog is asleep, it will bark if you step on its tail.

75 minutes of watcher searching might be a hell of a lot faster than spending a few hours trying to figure out how to get into and out of the site yourself.

It's a toned-down force 1 spirit, folks. What do you want? If you're trying to accomplish something big, summon an actual spirit. Watchers are more like mini-helpers to do the kind of random-ass tasks you'd feel silly asking any serious spirit to do (like "go over there and tell the guy with the glowing sword to take cover").

ok the limit on extended tests was an optional rule, (I forgot that) although it is a often used optional rule what was the effect of every glitch the thing gets, that’s going to make things take longer.

I don’t want something big, I just want it to be moderately reliable at watching things, tracking people and delivering messages. That’s supposed to be what its good at. Id like it to have all the non combat usefulness it had in SR3

Edward

@ Azralon

Another idea stolen! I loves me teh forums! Viva la Dumpshock!

Actually I’m liking Pete.

So long as bob doesn’t get lost (I would say no roll required to stay /inside/ Bob) it works.

Of cause you haven’t been very efficient. Instead of letting Pete go have bob give you a telepathic message and stay in Bob.

Edward

thats realy the big question when using watchers to shadow people. outside of wards and the person projecting into the metaplanes, what can confuse a watcher? seems to me that when they have first found their target, they will stay on him no matter what...

As soon as the target rolls Intuition + Shadowing (Tail Evasion).

And I don't think most people who can astrally sense will walk around doing it all the time, because it is a big pain in the ass and leaves you vulnerable in the real world.

But as is stated, if you think they are underpowered, change them. Several of us don't believe they are, so we won't.

They'll have to have a reason to roll it though. Some folks will because they're paranoid.

Yeah - the question is whether you are paranoid enough.

Ah, the memories... of GMs letting an entire team being shadowed without asking for perception tests at all - teaches you to roll perception and stealth at random to kill their plot device.

Perception tets are reactive, not proactive. A GM not asking for them is either rolling them himself, cheating, or knows something you don't that would prevent perception tests.

It was plain cheating.

There aren't many things that 'prevent perception tests', too... and, interesting enough, there's nothing preventing proactive perception tests.

An astral shadower with a non astrally perceiving target prevents it, as does being above the clouds and following using scanners or similar means of tracking someone without being within ear or eye shot of them. You can't prevent them from saying "I look around" and making their roll, but you can make it so that their roll can't possibly detect the person following them.

Cheating to railroad is actually worse. I don't mind if a GM cheats every now and then to make things more exciting or less anti-climactic, but doing it to ensure that the plotline gets fulfilled just makes my characters start doing crazy shit to see how much havoc I can wreak while trying to escape the shackles of Fate.

by the way, running the maths on thhe 75 min scenario
in that time frame the watcher has less than 18 percent chance of NOT rolling a critical glitch and permafailing in the search

now by the 120 minute mark (by which, ignoring the gritical glitch rule, you should be 90% assured of success) you have a 7.5% chance of not having already gotten a critical glitch

once you factor that rule in, your watcher has about a 11-14% chance of succeeding in a search at all
now assuming 12% chance of success a magic 5 char can sic 5 of these guys on a target and have a 48% chance of finding it... not too bad

or I use a force 4 air or man spirit

get my answer 99% sure within 30 mins, and don't get ridiculous glitch odds

yeah watchers are really good searchers

They're not supposed to be really good, they're supposed to be really easy.

they were always good for a few things, like looking for things

now they suck at EVERYTHING

...So one potential answer is to just rule that Watcher spirits are immune to critical glitches on searches, right? Maybe their stupidity works both ways - they're too stupid to fail given enough time?

Not really.

Limiting their Extended Tests only by their lifetime makes them fairly useful, while not as good as real spirits.
Properly used watcher were so powerful that one had to start task-lawyering to keep tem in check.

not any more rotbart
Remember the point,onecrit glitch and the extended test ends

and they have 2 dice for a search test and ZERO dice for perception tests

watchers cant watch drek

actually noticing something, whether or not you are in the astral, is Intuition + perception. examining details about an aura or astral form is Intuition + Assensing

nowhere in the book, that I have found, does it give assensing as the astral replacement for perception.

So Watchers still get 0 dice

although anything that is OBVIOUS they can try to assense with 2 dice