Yep, they would be.

Nope. I'd have to look at Mana Static again, but I doubt you can aspect it.

I think this is my bad. What you wish to do would be acceptable and I'm not sure I was clear on that. The rule about wards extending outwards from the physical anchor is to prevent ultra-thin or tiny wards. As long as the area you are warding is of a decent size (at least 1 cubic meter, I'd say, since that's how much the 1 meter in every direction limitation entails), I feel it is totally fine for one side of the ward to lay flat against the physical anchor.

I'll admit I was intentionally vague with this limitation in order to allow for some flexibility, for examples like you gave. Typically, I'd say the movement restriction is relative to the physical anchor and the warded space. So if a ward is attached to a physical anchor of a statue within a warded office in a skyscraper that sways a few feet in the wind, that is fine, because the statue is not actually moving within the warded space. But if the janitorial crew came in, lifted up the statue and moved it over to another room, then the ward would collapse, because the physical anchor has moved in relation to the warded space.

An ocular drone has two functions – one as an implant and another as a remote controlled drone. In the former it works like any other cybereye and having been paid with Essence works as normal. However, when used as a drone it requires a commlink /wireless interface and hence no longer provides the LOS benefit (same as any drone).

Basically they impose different limitations on a character. Obviously taking the Adept Quality opens up all the adept powers not just Astral perception (meaning with the others you can never develop them). Picking up the Adept Quality makes sense if you intend to explore the options all the other adept powers provide.

Astral Sight provides a limited access to the astral plane and no other abilities, additionally in its basic form its easy to lose to Essence loss.

Finally the Astral-aspected Magician does not forfeit any of his magical abilities (he can spellcast, conjure and enchant just in a more limited fashion) so while picking this option the character us more versatile than the previous two options, most of his (non-astral) magical abilities are weaker than the average magicians.

As a GM I’d rule no but it is definitely a possibility under the rules.

No. The effects of Cleansing are too temporary to affect long term aspecting through Geomancy. However, if the GM allows it I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to use Cleansing to facilitate the Geomantic rituals.

Yes.

That would be telling.

A possessed vessel combines the natural abilities of both spirit and host. As such it shouldn’t affect its perception/senses. Access to AR regardless of whether the spirit is materializing or possessing is pretty much impossible since not only can’t a spirit perceive arrows but it doesn’t understand/comprehend the digital interface/simsense (a side-effect of being dual-natured/astrally percieving since the artificial stimuli have no material component for the astral senses to latch onto).

Yes, yes, and yes respectively.

I’d definitely rule this as mistreatment but ultimately its left up to individual GMs.

A set of services simply means that a character can provide the spirit with a list of services to perform instead of giving commands one at a time. All the rules for standard services apply to Long term Binding.

As written no, there are no limits on spirit powers that can be Endowed. However, I suggest GMs apply whatever restrictions they deem appropriate to avoid abuse – not that I believe this will be an issue. Great Forms with Endowment are risky and expensive to summon and the higher the force of the spirit the more limited the number of services you can count on.

No. Great forms are not part of the spirit types a tradition can conjure, they are enhanced forms of the basic spirit types. (ie. “read spirits his tradition can conjure” as “basic spirit types his tradition can conjure”).

Yes.

Having the character at hand should suffice (if the character is resisting keeping him “at hand” may prove difficult). However, keep in mind a spirit formula need not be obvious or evident.

It would likely dissipate since the only thing keeping it “in” is the Pact.

Yes. Though a GM may decided to be more lenient when it comes to Earth spirits.

Difficult one this, and something we should have foreseen. Mana Static was intended to generate background count where there is none rather than enhance existing BC. Pending an official ruling I’d say that the BC generated by Mana Static is indeed aspected, but is not cumulative with natural background count unless the results exceed the natural/current background count (ie. 3 hits on Mana Static in a Domain of BC 3 have no effect, but 4 hits elevate the Domain’s BC to 4).

It is possible to have adjacent wards, but they may not be nested or overlap. The situation you’re posing above isn’t really an issue unless the rooms are smaller than 2 meters across. The anchor is symbolic and need only be placed somewhere within the ward – a mandala in the middle of the room, an incense burner, or in your case a circle of hermetic warding sigils in the center of the room (the anchor itself) symbolically reinforced by sigils painted on all warded walls.

Movement is of the anchor relative to its original position with regards to the warded space. So if the room/building/warded space were to move the anchor’s relative position need not necessarily change - What Demonseed said.

To be perfectly correct it should read:
Note: Insect Shamanism is a Inhabitation Tradition

Nope. The spirit’s Mental and Special Attributes dominate the merge, meaning Resonance does not carry over. I believe this is specifically mentioned in the book.

This is a mistake for future errata. Spells do not allow for the independent targeting of implanted cyberware. Unlike a gun or a piece of gear, there is nothing to target but the individual himself (since he’s paid Essence for the cyber and it is now part of him).

No. It's important to remember that you are not actually warding a car, you are warding a volume of space. If a car is sitting in that volume of space when you place the ward, then it is warded. But if the car moves out of that volume of space later, it no longer is. If the car takes the anchor with it when it moves out of that volume of space, the ward collapses.

In the building example, the anchor is still sitting in the volume of space, even if the building sways a few feet (note that if the building collapsed, that would be an entirely different story, even if the physical anchor survived the collapse). Similarly, if the anchor were painted on the parking space under the car, and the car drove away, the ward would still be standing on that space.

The limitation is designed to have some flexibility, to account for all sorts of things (swaying buildings, earthquakes, a physical anchor tipping over, etc.) but there are no such thing as portable wards in SR4.

OK this promps the following question:

"If you are warding a volume of space, and the relationship of the walls of the ward and the anchor are important in they must remain in a fixed relationship to one another for the ward to be maintained, then from what frame of refrence must the movement of the anchor occour to cause the ward to break?"


Oprions, one or more of these may cause the ward to fall:
1. From the frame of the anchor, looking at the "walls". - We know this one breaks the ward, with the excepton of movement "within a few centimeters".
2. From the frame of the earth looking at the anchor. - This one is iffy given the building example, as a swing of a few feet (possible on the top floors of very tall structures) is more then "a few centimeters" but the definition of "few" is loose enough to allow it. However, does this make wards on non geosyncronus space habitats impossible (neglecting the mana void, of course)?
3. From the frame of the Sun/Core of the Galaxy/Universe/ect.. - These don't not work since the earth frame is is constant movement.

There may be other frames and relationships to consider. In which ones will relitive movement break the ward.

Why were those take out of the game?

Warded crates were about the only way of transporting hazardous magical materials and warded vehicles were the only things protecting the average exec from a fire elemental manifesting in his helicopter.

Magicians just became a lot more effective on big battlefields as tank killers. One service from a fire elemental in tow of an astrally projecting mage to take out a 10M+ nuyen piece of equipment immune to most man portable weapons? Or capture it later by using an air elemental? Sweet deal. And with past indications that tactical military mage support is one per battalion, that's one dude to defend about 40 tanks/APCs. Good luck with that if brigade/division doesn't give you some of their mage corps to play with.

As I see it the only serious problem wth movable wards is how you've conceived their metaphysics, not any real game imbalance. You want ward fixed by a combination of their spacial relation to the earth and the anchor, not any walls or other physical structure. Which makes sense, because you can ward open air by putting the anchor on the ground. What, then, is to stop putting a ward on a car that's bigger than the car? Driving it down the street and forcing disruption on spirits/spells/foci?

I propose a specialized form of ward that requires some form of metamagic, probably quickening, to attach it a physical enclosure like a car or box. You can then move the ward, but it's confined to the physical dimensions of the car or container, and can't extend outside. You probably also shouldn't be able to combine this Movable ward with other fun effects like Charged or Masking wards. (Edit: Also, maybe limit the ward to protection of the interior so that a powerbolt into a warded car isn't pretty much always wasted.)

A bigger problem is that I can't for the life of me find the SR4 rules that attacking or pressing through a ward (successful or not) alerts the wards creator. Did they take this out of SR3? Terrible, if so. I assume I'm just not finding them. Otherwise what's to stop repeated attempts to press through a normal ward until you finally make it? And if that's an option, plain wards of reasonable force are still vulnerable and we're going to see terrorists blowing up semiballistics with near impunity.

I see what you're saying. In a way, there is not only a connection between the anchor and the ward walls, but also between the ward walls and astral space. I don't want to say it's between the ward walls and Earth, because that's not really the case. But the ward, once placed, is defined by a certain point in the metaphysical cosmology (how's that for magical gobbledegook!) and can't move.

There are many reasons, most of which I can't even recall off the top of my head, but that came up during SM's development. One example is that because wards can't cover the same space (the layered/overlap restriction) a portable ward would be engaging in astral combat with every other ward it came across. Not to mention engaging in astral combat with every astral form or dual natured creature that it passed through. If you put up a portable ward around a car and made it twice the size of the car, you could play bumper cars with spirits. Which is not really the intent of wards at all.

Another example is that portable wards would overlap roles with anchored/quickened armor/barrier spells, which really should be filling the role of protecting movable objects and beings.

Nope. Astral armor only protects against astral combat. It doesn't prevent astral entities from passing through or provide defense against spells. It does nothing you need and does something you don't need.

Now a quickened mana barrier would work if you let them be mobile, but if you do that you have to let physical barriers be mobile, too. Uh, no. And anyway, a quickened mana barrier is going to be too weak to really keep anything serious out.

I suppose you could have a custom spell that makes mana barriers that attach to cars, but at a barrier force of your hits on the spellcasting test, they just aren't useful enough.

Can't move relitive to what? Astral Space?

Can you have a ward on a Moon base? (again, neglecting mana void effects)

Can you have a ward on an orbiting space station? (again, neglecting mana void effects)

Can you build a ward while astraly projecting, and if so what does it use for an anchor?

Can you have wards on metaplanes?

What woudl be the effect if the anchor for a ward was moved "just a few centimeters" through an astral gateway?

Sorry for all the questions, but I have a player who is creating a former MIT&T astral research professor turned shadowrunner. His described goal id to invent a teleport spell. (Yes, he knows he will almost certanly never be successfull. )

As I stated above, I fail to see how armor spells have any intersection in utility with wards. Even if you permit mana/physical barriers to be mobile, almost no one will have enough spellcasting dice to make them reach a useful enough force to prevent mass terrorist attacks.

In my semiballistic example, I suppose you can (very expensively) ward the runways or provide half a dozen guard mages during flights ops and then rule that for some mysterious reason astral fast travel can't be slowed down enough to match speeds in the air. Otherwise you're going to have magical terrorists blowing them up in midair with fire elementals or crashing them into Saeder Krupp HQ with a spirit of man.

For instances other than mass transit, I guess not having astral barriers during travel isn't that big a deal. If you can kill a corp exec on a stroll through a park with your elemental, why not while he's in a personal vehicle? You just need to have a tame magician follow you around all of the time. More reason to keep your key people isolated to corp facilities except for the really big guys with really big protection details.

Yes, the 'no layered wards' restriction is something new, too... which made one big ward outside the building and extra ones for sensitive areas are now impossible, too...

Like foki or other dual beings, yes...

Come on... the whole Ward-Chapter looks like you tried to kill any form of creativity:
No astral art anymore? Meh.

Quickend astral barrierer spells are extremely costly - you can't put those on vehicles except some few...
Basically, there are no problems ward has that an astral barrier spell wouldn't.

Honestly, all new rules (Immobility, Exclusivity, Geometry) open a big, ugly can of worms.
It's cheaper and more secure to let vehicles or buidlings be posessed by spirits, now.

Or useing a task spirit to Possess the aircraft...

This is why I used the approach of: "What happens if..."

Indeed... that's why one uses inertial frame of reference.

BTW it is implicitly stated that astral beings can't interact with the physical world through dual objects.
Thus, a moving ward would only be able to knock away astral spirits.. which move way faster than any object-bound ward ever could.

out of curiosity, why? i can't imagine why it's ok to have the spirit patrol for a year and a day, but having it sustain one of it's powers for a year and a day is such a horrible fate? i am just really having a hard time seeing the problem here... i mean, technically, the spirit can do whatever it wants, provided it doesn't intentionally go someplace where the sustaining of the spell would be interfered with... that's an awful lot better than "walk around this 100m by 100m area and report any intruders you see" if you ask me.

what, you mean like summoning them in the first place? great, so now we don't dare summon spirits because that will interfere with our ability to summon spirits... remind me to be an aspected sorceror if i ever play in a game you GM, would you?

once again, why is it not a problem to bind the spirit to patrol the same area for 1 year, but binding it to sustain one of it's powers (and yes, it can go just about anywhere... you don't need line of sight, line of effect, or even to be on the same plane as far as i can tell in order to sustain spells/powers) is such a horrible, onerous duty?

for comparative purposes, which sounds worse to you:

walk circles around the same area for 1 year. no breaks, no leisure time. all you are allowed to do is walk around that area, looking for people. oh, unless you see someone i haven't told you is allowed, in which case you can come tell me.... and then go right back to that same area and keep on walking around looking for people who aren't allowed.

OR

you can do whatever you want, as long as you keep this 5 pound rock with you. you can watch TV, read a book, speak with your friends, or argue on DS, or anything else that doesn't interfere with you having the rock, for one year.

now don't get me wrong, i'm not saying spirits are gonna be lining up for the privilege of sustaining their increase reflexes innate spell power on you... but it sure as heck sounds a lot better than patrol duty.

who can say which is worse to a spirit? (I'm about to assume the spirit would have the same dice pool modifier as char sustaining a spell without double checking) Maybe concentrating on sustaining a spell for a year is annoying and distracting and any spirit would give it's left metaphysical arm to be the one who gets to walk around all day. Also, mistreatment doesn't mean the spirits stop showing up immediately. If it's abused over a long period of time (or perhaps multiple times over a short period), especially by casters summoning high force spirits, then it should probably be a problem.

I'm pretty sure for continuous operation of one power a service is used at each dusk and dawn for bound spirits.

The real reason this is dumb is because it's more efficient to get Quickening and make it last forever, not just a year and a day.

This is only partially correct.

Currently wards are fixed to objects (those objects being anchors) and those objects are what are attached to a certain "space" when the ward is first raised. The logic being that wards are astral constructs kept in place by an anchor to the physical plane, this is where they are rooted and this is what allows them to persist in a balance of forces (like any human construction). It's not so much the ward constuct is fixed in space, but that it is fixed to a stable anchor/reference in physical space. If the anchor is moved from its original place, you disrupt the balance of the entire construct/ward by moving the reference point it's forces are balanced on. What matters is whether the anchor moves with regards to the ward and not whether the ward moves.

Think of it as a big metaphysical cornerstone at the bottom of a brick wall. In a quake, strong winds, or even thru the normal passage of time it will move and shift slightly—but the wall should hold. However, were it to be purposefully moved more than a few inches out of its place the wall will start to crumble for lack of support.

The remaining uses of warding (ie. containment, protection, vehicle) were deemed easy to replace with spell-effects—namely the various area and personal mana-barriers but also other spells designed specifically for the purpose.

So, really, there's just not much reason to take Astral Sight over the others, unless you happen to be of the strange breed of player who gets paralyzed by having too many potential avenues for character advancement? After all, any of the metamagic techniques Astral Sight opens to you are also available if you were to take Aspected Mage(Astral Aspect), and if the Adept-only metamagics are more to your liking, then you take Adept and buy Astral Perception.

If Astral Sight were cheaper than the other two, then it might stand out more, but 5BP is probably the absolute minimum you'd want to charge to allow a character to see into the astral. I guess it's there because of the rules about GMs only allowing Adept/Magician be bought if that's what the character is "intending" to play, but I've always viewed those intent lines at the end of those qualities as more than suggestions than anything else. I suppose it still supports the rare corner-case where a character is so maxed out on either Positive or Negative qualities, that they can't drop the 15BP for Magician or get the 10BP back from Aspected Magician, so it serves some purpose. Still, if they have that many qualities that it's actually a problem, and they want the character to be able to see into the astral on top of the rest of that, then I'm already a little wary to see what kind of min-maxed monster has been created.

Which leads me to another set of questions: When performing ritual sorcery, if the background count increases in the middle of a ritual (due to the effect of cleansing wearing off, someone dropping Mana Static into the lodge where the ritual is being performed, etc.) then the participants will have different effective magic attributes during different parts of the ritual. Is it safe to assume that when it comes to the drain check, you have to use the lowest value that the ritual participant's magic attribute was at any time during the ritual to determine whether the drain is physical? And if an increase in background count happens when Great Ritual metamagic is being used, and the reduction in magic attributes suddenly results in either a spell force or a number of participants that is no longer legal, the ritual aborts, spell fizzles, and all participants suffer drain, correct?

So, on a site that has a natural background count of 4, that's been cleansed down to 1, the threshold for the ritual would still be 8 (twice natural background count), and not 2 (twice the site's background count at the time the ritual is being performed?) I can live with that, since once the effect of a cleansing goes away, suddenly the token effort you put in when it was artificially lowered turns out to be not nearly enough to actually get the job done. And it's not like the cleansing is doing nothing, it's still lessening the hit the background count imposes on your magic rating, making the geomancy ritual less draining then it would have been had you attempted it without Cleansing.

Still, it might be something to flag for errata/subsequent printing, to add the word "natural" in front of "background count" for the threshold of the ritual and for the number of months you must repeat the ritual, just to make it explicitly clear. You'd sacrifice some whitespace at the end of two paragraphs, but it other than that, it wouldn't impact the formatting on that page.

Fair enough. I'll save such tricks for when I want to have the player characters run across a cult of Night One Elf toxics who follow a twisted and matriarchal version of the Adversary Mentor Spirit. The Location Geas will be "underground."

It was my understanding that in their most basic form, image-link capable glasses/goggles/contacts did not actually create a simsense signal, but instead, merely overlaid the image over your actual natural field of view. Essentially, it's a miniaturized LCD screen that's transparent except where the image of an AR Object is being generated (an alternate method described by the book involves colored lasers projected onto the retina, but the end result is the same: actual photons hitting actual rods and cones and generating a real, not simulated, sensory signal).

However, I can buy that regardless of whether or not it's AR via simsense, or AR images on your lenses, the fact that it's an image of something that has no astral shadow, confuses the spirit to the point that it has a metaphysical blind spot.

However, goggle images that directly correspond to the real-world (i.e. low-light & thermographic overlay) should be fine by the same reasoning, correct? Being Dual Natured, it should never actually need such a thing, but I'm just curious if they could see it, or if the blindspot would apply to that situation as well. Finally, when it comes to image magnification, optical scopes would be required, wouldn't they?

Given that when in a Formula Pact "the character’s aura is visibly tainted by the spirit’s signature," can you clarify what you mean by "need not be obvious or evident"? I know signature doesn't equate to formula in this case, but if you come across a character who's aura shows such a taint, then you pretty much know that all you need to do is have that character "in hand" and then concentrate on your summoning. Is it pretty much a given that a Free Spirit will only enter into this pact with a character capable of at least rudimentary masking?

As a semi-related tangent, when a spirit has been summoned by someone possessing the spirit's formula, they then can begin the multi-hour binding ritual. If some other character were also in possession of the formula, could they attempt a summoning of their own, thus interrupting the first binding ritual? (If so, not only would someone attempting a summoning using a Formula Pact character would not only have to have the pact character in hand for the summoning, and in their possession throughout the binding, they'd have to keep the pact character unconscious, since the pact character can always use themselves as the spirit formula.)

Elegant. I will certainly be using this at my table.

So when the anchor isn't an object inside the ward, it's a surface defining the edge of a ward, you just have to have a meter of space between that edge and the opposite edge? Absolutely reasonable.

Now for the other type of wards, where the anchor isn't co-existent with the edge of the ward, the one meter in every direction is measured from the object's center of mass, correct? And the minimum volume that could be warded would be a sphere 2m in diameter?



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Let's see. Summon and bind a Force 3 spirit with innate spell. Have it overcast the spell at Force 6 and sustain it on you. Spirit resists drain, maybe gets a little hurt in the process. Spend 3 Karma to place it on long term binding. Alternately, you could Quicken that same Force 6 spell yourself for 6 Karma, or pay the binding cost for a Force 6 sustaining focus at 12 Karma. Note that to use the Quickening option, you also had to pay some karma to learn the metamagic in the first place, where as the sustaining focus and the long term binding can be used by anyone. Yeah, some GMs would certainly call it abusive.

How many spirits out of your limited allotment of bound spirits are you willing to tie up this way? Spirits on long term binding do not count against that limit. Either way, if long stretches of spell sustaining are going to be somthing a spirit is going to resent, they're going to resent it whether directly bound to their summoner or placed on a long term binding. The method chosen shouldn't negate any summoning penalties if it's something a spirit legitimately objects to.

I can't seem to find that in the book anywhere. The only references I can find would be when a spirit that hasn't been bound is in the middle of performing a service when it's time for that spirit to go. Everything I've found on bound spirits seems to say they'll keep at a service no matter how long it takes. Can you find a page reference for bound spirits' services expiring?


====================

I don't mind having wards tied to locations, even if it means we have to be a little metaphysical about how we define a location.

In my games, I'm going to define the frame of reference for determining movement as follows:

If the ward is outside, then the aura of the Earth will be the frame of reference.

If the ward is inside an immobile structure, the aura of that structure will be the frame of reference. Any distortion or minor motions of that structure significant enough to break the aural wholeness of the structure will cause the ward to drop. (You pry a brick from a building to be able to cast ritual sorcery on it. The next day, an earthquake topples the building, breaking it into several pieces. Since, despite your material link, the building no longer has a single contiguous aura that can be targeted by ritual magic, any wards that were inside the building have also dropped, even if those wards' physical anchors remain bolted to the exact position of the floors in the rooms they were in, and the rooms themselves are still intact.)

Since I disagree with the assertion that it's easy enough to replace mobile wards with spells, I am going to allow wards to be placed on vehicles as well; frame of reference will be handled similarly to how I handled the frame of reference for structures. There will also be a drawback. Anytime the vehicle crosses into a area covered by a location-based ward, the vehicle's own ward goes inactive until it leaves the warded area.

It's not explicitly stated, but it makes sense and is how bound elementals just hanging around were treated in SR3. It shouldn't be possible to tell a bound earth elemental to dig a canal between LA and NYC and then just check in after a few thousand years.

Actually, it was 1 service expended for every full 24 hours spent on the Astral or Physical plane, whether or not other services were being rendered at the time. Not quite the same as the service ending at dawn/dusk. But I can't find anything in the SR4 about one service per 24 hours spent away from the metaplane either. Much as it would be nice to be able to carry over old rules like that, given the extensive overhauling conjuring got in the transition, it could be that the designers took it out because they meant to.

That was never the point. The point was balance of magical firepower.
The problem is: There are not enough magicians to sustain such spells, nor initates to quicken them.

As it is now, magical assasins rule the world.

BTW - why are there no costs for biological astral security in SM?

Magicians don't have to be present to sustain a defensive barrier. A corporation able to afford a magician will easily pay for initiations, and will have security and wagemages around to provide any necessary sustaining foci, quickenings and anchorings (and all that at a reasonable discount compared to street value) - not that that level of security is needed in that many cases or any regular basis, plus its cheaper than assigning magical staff to permanent security teams.

Initiates are by no means rare. Any magician plying his trade for more than a year will inevitably initiate.

Shouldn't a dual natured critter be able to access its physical senses by spending a simple action to shift perception?

Of course LoS doesn't need to be maintained. But you still need them... and most of the time they won't sustain more than five barriers.
Given how many vehicles must be protected on a daily basis, that means withdrawel of serious amounts of magical assets... is this intended?

That's official? Nice to know.

It in there. In Wards with a Twist, or so.