I think this is the least of the Corp's worries. Persona-fix chips or Psychotropic IC can do wonders in adapting the vic ... subject's frame of mind to a more appropriate viewpoint.

Of course then you have a team that breaks into the building without damaging or activating the ward in any way...

Magicians are mostly needed for magical threats, but wards are not the be all and end all of security. Especially since they are only effective against people on the astral plane.

Sure, but there are cameras, locks and other security options for non magical threats. And it seems that very very few runner teams have no magic ability what so ever, so the likelyhood of interaction with the ward is high for when it will matter.

To a team with a competent mage, basic wards may prevent astral scouting and make magicians waste a service or two getting their spirits across it if they aren't currently on standby.

Cameras and locks are par for the course. All teams should know how to deal with those, wards are similar.

What sec mages are more valuable for is conjuring and binding spirits in order to patrol a facility.

Spirits can think, spirits can react and most importantly, spirits can see people who aren't currently dual natured/astrally scouting.

And of course, there are alternatives to wards for magical security.

The most interesting trick I remember seeing was the plant (or was it a fungus) that luminesces when an astral presence passes through it. You have a wall which is made up of bricks with a light, a light sensor and a nutrient feed for the plants inside. At any time half of the bricks have the lights on inside (to provide the light the plant needs) and half of the bricks with the sensors on. If you want to ensure no gaps at all, then have 2 layers of bricks next to each other. Instant alarm for astral activity. And if the magician is not paying much attention and just zooming straight through the walls they may not even notice it. Certainly not until it is too late.

Then of course you have the flowers that create mana ebbs, dual natured ivy, various things that do not require a sec mage.

This is of course why most corps sec forces are guards that are at most lightly cybered with the possibility for combat drugs. And the occasional sec mage and hacker serving as spider for the site.

Lets say that after recovering from VITAS and whatnot the world population is 6 billion again.

I remember in an earlier edition that S-K was quoted as comprising about 20% of the world's economy. Assume by economy here that they mean the Earth's GDP (no GNP since we don't have interplanetary trade yet--habitats and moon/mars not counted as too small).

Now, all the mooks in the third world don't really count since their labour is largely unproductive compared to SR's advance automation and educated labour. So lets say that technology and education create and x2 multiplier on S-K's labour. That provides a simplistic amount of S-K accounting for 10% of the non-SINless world.

(Note since GDP doesn't include the black market or any non-citizens in its count the SINless don't count in any of these calculations).

This means that S-K has access to 6 million awakened individuals. However, depending on what you count as awakened some of these might be very weak. I'd go so far as to say that anyone who can see astrally or has any Magic rating is awakened. So this includes SURGE and awakened who only see into the astral as well as lay mages who awaken late in life. Neither of these are very useful for S-K as security. I'd say that probably 10% of all awakened are full mages and know from a young enough age. So those move into R&D to make money for the corp. Lets say another 50% are too weak to be useful for anything too involved. That leaves 40% of the population being suitable enough for security work. That means 2.4 million magically active security personnel worldwide (although you can assume that probably some of the R&D and security grade candidates will be used offensively but we'll disregard).

Now, anyone who is alive can be made into security. Probably only 10% are really good enough to qualify for cyber enhancement due to aptitude, intelligence, creativity, and physical prowess. That gives S-K a pool of 60 million potential candidates. Cyberware is more expensive for S-K to produce (Corporate Download 3rd edition, rating 4 compared to rating 6 for mystic goods) but they have about 25 times the pool of candidates. These cybered candidates get the same training as any other security guard to fulfill basic functions so there is no cost there--just additional training and cyber.

I'd say 60 million people with abilities that can be mass produced (including installation--cyber implant farms are fun!) are a lot cheaper than 2.4 million people who need to receive advanced, specialized training from childhood.

Throwing up some modern day examples, google tells me that the United States Military (And really, we're talking about a corporate military in the above scenario) maintains a standing peacetime force of about 1% of the population. Since futuristic Shadowrun is a more militant setting, and additionally countries like China and Israel have mandatory military service across the board, multiplying that figure as high as 15% may not be uncalled for.

Which would leave a larger pool than suggested, of 90 million world wide corporate SK applicants. However, even then, we're still only considering individuals tailored for militant service. This is no way indicative of actual, combat ready corporate soldiers, as there are many secondary roles that modern day soldiers fill, instead of just grabbing a rifle, and a rucksack. Nor, have we begun to hone in on the demographic of individuals ready to not only be cybernetically augmented, but -massively- cybernetically augmented, and biologically overhauled. If half the total number of applicants (Still a large pool, maintaining a much larger ratio of modern day Special Forces vs. Standard Combat Arms) were more than just prepared for light security, and observation, we've shrunk your suggested 60 million, from 90 million down to 45 million.

And of these 45 million, are really -all- of them able to psychologically adapt to the chillingly soulless life of a cybernetic monster? Probably not. Ten percent is sounding pretty generous, if this corporation wants to use these as more than throw-away assets, and utilize them for long-term corporate aims.

But for sake of argument, let's bump that up as much as 20%.

That makes 9 million, of our original 90 million, Honest-To-God CyberMonkey material.

If we have pools of 9 million CyberGoons vs. 2.4 Million Mages, that means that for each potential Mage, there are 3.75 potential CyberGoons, or, if cost were not an issue, of every 19 XTreme corporate forces, 15 would be Cybergoons, and 4 would be Mages. If wages based on rarity were the issue, then for every 1 Nuyen our Corporate Mage would be payed, those 3.75 Cybermonkeys would earn 26.667 Nuyen-Equivalents-of-a-cent each.

Would it be fair to guess that after paying the salaries of dedicated surgery experts, using corporate access to modern medicine, and medical assets, and actually producing cybernetic and bioware augmentation equipment, they are perhaps paying 10% overhead of the total cost of the equipment being implanted? If that were the case, and then considering that these cyberzombies will be augmented with deltaware, it is reasonable to believe that for every 1 nuyen a normal end user would spend on purchasing a standard grade cybernetic product, the corporation is able to produce and implant a deltagrade equivalent of that product, in a surgery overseen by top scientists and doctors, into a prime specimen of a human being.

I'm eyeballing the numbers here, but I'm guessing that a pretty solid, cultured and deltagrade Cyborg could be put together for around 350k a pop. So, after factoring the available pools to draw from, strictly based on availability, that means that somewhere around the neighborhood of 1.3 million yen can be spent to completely outfit those 3.75 available cyborgs.

So, moving onward... Does anyone want to dispute, or modify those numbers, before the cost analysis is taken farther? I'll be the first to admit, that I'm playing this a little hard and fast. If someone has something more concrete, we could definitely adjust our scales.

And if you actually look at the stats shown in the Shadowrun rule book. You'd notice most corp guards have little to no cyberware.

Only the Professional Rating 5 and 6 could actually be called cyber soldiers.
Even then your going to notice they use standard ware not alpha or better.



OH and this is qouted right out of the rule book from the mage security grunt.
"Because magic is still a scarce resource, security detail is usually an additional assignment to be pulled in addition to a mage’s normal work duties. Full-time security mages are rare except at the most sensitive of installations.".

So those mages working in R&D often pull double duty. And very few mages.

If you would also read the friend's and foes section you'd notice that most corp security is trained and equiped just enougth to handle street violance. Should shadowrunners break in there trained to keep them pinned down long enougth for stronger reinforcments.

I agree with Jack Kain on this point. While I wasn't clear in my original post I agree that cybered security wouldn't just be cyber-death-squads, it would include all the people who had some security or military grade implants put in. Delta zombies would only comprise maybe 1% of 1% of their available personnel if that. Remember that my analysis doesn't account for SINless since they aren't included in any demographics. Much better to use non-people for that sort of stuff.

As far as the overhead for installation and maintenance for all these cybered individuals I don't think it would be as expensive as the equivalent for mages.

So you think it's more cost effective for Corporation's elite soliders to be awakened?

No I said that it'd be cheaper for corps to use cyber. Life is cheap in shadowrun omae!

God. Yeah. Sorry, it was nearly midnight when I read that. Too tired to effectively -read- apparently.

Just as an aside, while these low grade awakened wouldn't be useful for front-line security, they're very handy for erecting wards. (All you need for warding is astral perception.)

Not really related to the topic at hand, but something I just wanted to point out.

No prob's man.

I seem to live in some sort of wierd time/space warp whereby none of my FLGS have gotten Street Magic yet so I don't know how those Qualities work. However, my guess is that you probably don't have a magic attribute or else have it at 1 (at least until the lays raise it) so wouldn't erect any sort of meaningful ward cause all sorts of problems for them?

Ironic

I get that line sometimes. It always seems to take an extra month or two for me here. I just got Drops of Corruption about 2 months ago, GM screen two weeks ago, RH and SM 3 weeks.

Pretty much, any method of obtaining astral perception gives you a Magic atribute of at least 1. If you only have a Magic of 1 you can create Wards of up to Force 2. The drain will be physical, but it'll also only be a drain value of 2.

Sure, Force 2 wards aren't that tough, but can still be a deterent against low level spirits and a protection from random astral vandalism/spying. Won't keep out anyone who's really determined to break in, but then again, neither do locks on doors in meatspace, and people still consider them meaningful security.

They used to focus quite well. Back when being aspected meant you could start with 1,000,000 =Y=, and a slew of more spell points. 4th Edition seems to have really nerfed that up, though.

They're fine! Just don't take the 'Aspected' Quality, don't take the unwanted Skills, and maybe even scatter in an Incompetence or two in the above Skills, and you're good to go.

There's not too much in the way of changes if (big if, but still ...) you totally ignore the existance of the Aspected Magician Quality. You take the approriate Incompetences, gaining the BP benefit, and also save BP by not having to purchase the Skills in the first place, and emulate the Sorcerer or Conjurer from previous editions. That's quite a few BP that can be put to use in other ways, where the Full Magician is still buying all his Skills. The biggest change is a bonus for the Aspected Mage, in that he would have Astral Projection. Maybe you could take a Quality (Incompetence: Astral Projection?) that limited an already Astrally capable character to Perception, but not Projection, at say -5BP, that would emulate the previous edition even better.