Yeah, if the ghouls are already on ya trying to chew your face off. I'd rather the mage hurry up and cast that spell and be knocked out by it rather than spending another turn yelling, 'Oh gawd, oh gawd, get it off!' Hoping that it won't eat my liver or turn me into a ghoul.

I thought switching to astral perception is a simple action. Although mechanically speaking it doesn't really matter since spellcasting takes a complex.

Er, how so? Just because one guy with the Fireball spell turned out to be a crazy bastard doesn't mean every guy with a Fireball spell is a crazy bastard.

very true. We ended up being the crazy bastards.

It depends upon whether you happen to have a dead body with you. Ghouls want it, Wendigos don't. And Master Shedim want the dead body an they want to eat you anyway.

What that means is that you can probably throw the Ghouls a corpse and move on your way, while throwing a corpse at a Wendigo is a waste of your time. And while throwing a corpse at a Master Shedim will make it happy, it is also a waste of time because it'll try to eat you anyway.

You gotta think in the big picture. Ghouls are people with goals that don't always involve your death. In fact, with a more equitable corpse distribution system they wouldn't want you dead in any immediate fashion. The number of deaths is one per person, ghouls really have nothing to gain from ending your life now except surety of food supply. If they are well stocked with supplies they don't give a fuck about you.

Wendigo though... they want you to go into their belly and they'd prefer it if you ate pieces of your friends first. There's essentially no possible compromise there.

-Frank

What?

You mean that that doesn't cross your mind?
shakes his head
barbarian

Good lord. I just wish right now I could join Blackie and SL Jame's Games and make a sammy that fires suppressive fire into every conflict. Then we will see how smugly they will look at me.

In my games, I prefer at least a semblance of roleplaying, you guys are welcome to play your way, but don't condemn me please.

Edited because it was offtopic and I am not in the best mood tonight.

After having seen the complete picture, I would probably congratulate the Shaman for his "good tactic" but I would warn him not to do that again if at all possible. I might have been a little harsh earlier, sleep deprivation does that to me. I still think it's a bad idea to magi-nuke your comrades but if there is no other choice then I guess it's alright. Case by case though, definitely not a good backup plan.

The related question would be: Would ghouls attack [especially out in the open in broad daylight, without firearms or a defensive mage of their own] if they knew the party had mage on hand? Their astral perception is always on, so unless the mage was an initiate with masking they would have immediately seen him for what he was.

What's the assensing skill of the average ghoul, and how many successes do you need to know someone is a mage?

I wouldn't worry so much about whether or not they could see that there was a mage (although that is a very good point). Another thing to wonder is if they noticed the armed and cybered Street sam.

I'd wonder why they are working so hard to get a meal.

Most predators, people included, prefer an easy life. They also don't need _that_ much metahuman meat. Occasional lone homeless people are easier to snatch than folks in cars, or teams of armed passers-by. They can get by the rest of the time on dumpster diving, or waiting downstream of the Mafia's favorite pier.

All in all, that was a silly situation, artificially set up by the GM.

As a GM, I'd only have ghouls attack someone if they actually thought it was a good idea from their own point of view. They don't go out of their way to get shot up. A nasty wound, even if not immediately fatal, could be fatal in the long term. It's not like they have Docwagon accounts.