in my game it seems as though the mage is overpowerd in the 'legwork phase' of our runs, he always seems to be able to go into astral and find out whats going on inside of any building/meet/facility. I normally only use wards on the 'treasure' room, the final objective, since i got the impression they were rare/expensive, am i correct or should i ward off whole buildings?

also i will try to use watchers, but i am fuzzy on whether watchers automatically see a runner or whether he can do astral stealth tests to sneak by them and observe, or whether he just has to count on them failing their intelligence test to report back or whatever. Is there a way to use watchers without making them totally screw over his astral recon like some sort of deus ex machina?

also what info can i limit? obviously he cant check digital data, nor read, but how about listening?

the current situation is that another team is going to be raiding the building the runners are in, and id like the ones near the buildings entrance to have a chance to hide from the other team, but they may think im softballing if the other guys dont astral recon, but if i have them do so without my players even knowing they are coming how to make them not auto-detected by the astral scout?

You can still use stealth to sneak past astral guards like watchers and spirits. Remember though that the more there are, the better the chances to spot them. A corp worth it's salt would spend the money to ward some of the basic places, like the security room, entry points, as much of the building as possible depending on it's size. Leaving lurking astral guards in hidden places like a vent shaft watching a hall is also a nice trick. Then there's FAB...

Don't forget that in the sixth world, anybody having a discussion probably knows there's a chance they're being observed by an astral presence. teleconferencing would screw-up an observing mage, so would simply talking in guarded or coded language "So, that... thing is set up for tonight? Good."

Eavesdropping in a crowded place would be just as difficult in the astral as in the physical, maybe harder in certain places, depending on how you treat background count.

Also, security doesn't just mean site security. You could reduce the number of astral guards by putting them on sensitive people instead of trying to prevent entry to a large area.

And, like always, astral recon works both ways. "Hey, I just astrally projected into the coffee shop next door and there's a bunch of tough guys talking about Jim!"

Besides, there's also such a thing as Matrix recon...

If all the legwork needed is a scouting of the facility then astral recon is going to take over from all mortal systems. I tend to have watchers do it so I am not at risk (telepathic link with watchers is grand).

There are things that make it problematic however. Wards are not cheep but nether are they prohibitively expensive, any moderately sensitive sight could have a force 2 alarm ward over the entire site. It wont stop anybody getting in but getting past without being detected is hard and when you are detected a flood of watchers and several elementals show up from the on call magic security provider (if the PC has masking and notices the ward he may try to slip threw it. If the person that set the ward has masking the ward can be masked (more expensive).)

Also in many cases astral recon will get you no more than a floor plan, you cant reed, you cant access digital media, even pictures aren’t much good to you. And it is somewhat unlikely that anybody will be talking about the chips your trying to steel for the short time your there. (even a single force 1 watcher will find you if you stay long enough).

there are plants that glow in the presence of magic, these can be used to tie astral security in to the physical system for a reasonable price.

If I come up with any other tricks I will post again. Just remember, if you use all the tricks you will be being unfair to the character and some places have no astral security at all (althow high end runners don’t attack those plases often)

Edward

First, the mage needs to remember what he saw. A large map contains much more information than any sane person can reproduce without error in one go. Multiple attempts increase the danger of discovery by spirit and watcher patrols. Don´t give out maps for astral recon, give out descriptions. If they want a map, they´ll have to do it the mundane way.

Second, the information gained is limited. You´ll never know about that secret bank account on the caymans if you never hacked into the financial data of the site manager. You´ll also never learn about the secret owners of the corp.

Third, on astral security. A mage not possessing a map beforehand will run into the secured areas by design - he´s searching for them. And just gave out a "warning. shadowrunner attack pending."-sign in case of "active" security. Elementals are better than wards for this purpose.

Remember also that if they run in to an elemental while scouting, their choices are to run away, and let the elemental alert it's summoner, or destory it, which alerts the summoner. A mage can bind a spirit in to service over a year and a day with karma equal to force, so it's liekly that any site that would have a astral security would include at least a few force 3 or higher elementals on patrol.

I personally have greatly decreased the distance a character can travel astrally through the earth (to about 0), which means underground facilities or underground portions of existing facilities are basically everywhere. I also reduced the costs of warding because whoever figures out how to make wards cheaper would be an instant billionaire. So every building of note is warded. Most communication is electronic. Wage slaves regularly spend most of their day doing their work through a datajack. High security information will be triple encrypted or will be hand delivered in a written letter. Also keep in mind that in a large enough facility, the mage is unlikely to even get a floor plan. My building is 6 levels and with full three dimensional movement and without being able to read signs, I imagine it would be very easy to lose myself. I could not possibly find a given target or room without having taken time beforehand to memorize the map and floor number. I imagine a sixty story corporate headquarters building would leave the mage so twisted around all he'd be able to say is 'it's pretty crowded in there'.

Use matrix meetings, astral people can't spy on those.

Background Count.

Perhaps this makes the case for injecting more random Lovecraftian horrors into the astral? "Sorry, but Moonwalker the erotic magical daydream whom you secretly want to be was EATEN during astral recon by Cthulu."

[plug]Use my PTSD thread for rules![/plug]

So now the intelligent and most capable Watcher does the recon? *sarcasm*

Photographic memory could be a problem, if you handle that one to generously. By the rules, you can remember fine details better. What you don´t gain (in my interpretation) the ability to remember anything you´ve ever seen for free. Thats were the threshold reduction applies. A mage with photographic memory will indeed make less mistakes in his description of what he saw. It will still be very hard to produce a semi-reliable map from memory alone.

Shedim

I have to strenuously disagree with your reading of the rule.

Speech and sounds are as easy to hear from the astral plane* as they are in the physical world. = while you are on the astral plane, speech and sounds are as easy to hear.

Because the section is on interacting with the physical plane, the implied meaning is sounds on the physical plane are as easy to hear.

I can only assume that your reading is
[Speech and sounds] are as easy to hear [from the astral plane]
becomes
[Speech and sounds] [from the astral plane] are as easy to hear
(And I assume this because you bothered to put your asterisk to define 'while on the astral'. That's what 'from the astral plane' means, while you are on the astral.)

Speech and sounds are the same to the astrally projecting magician as they are to the person that's standing there physically.

That is the SR3 ruling from the core book.

This is what you get an orientation systemfor., you can still interact withe things you paid essence for. So, just like you'd be able to get read outs from your cyber gps while on the astral, you can make maps using your cyber orientation system.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is no radio from astral recon guys. If they run into a problem you don't know about it unless they send a spirit, come back and tell you, use the ally spirit -> radio hookup, or used the mindlink spell (or similar) before setting off.

SR4, pg. 181, right column, heading "The astral world" - physical sound is indistinct, what can be read is emotion. Might be anger, fear or boredom in a business meeting, but no clear meaning.

I still stand by my original statement. The paragraph starts out with "Abstract information is more difficult to percieve there. Written information blah blah bla, but you can't read it to see that it's a love letter. Speech and other sounds are as easy to hear from the astral plane as they are in the physical world."

The subject of the paragraph is an astral mage sensing the physical world. Hence, we can infer the speech and sounds are on the physical and the mage is on the astral, and said sounds can be heard.

Also worth noting, every sense is mentioned and explained fully if it is anything other than normal. Taste and smell are listed as non-functional, touch is listed as only interacting with other astral things, sight is described in much more detail. All the exceptions to normal behavior are listed out carefully. Hearing is only listed as "as easy to hear", which would seem to imply there is nothing different about astral hearing compared to normal hearing, otherwise it would have been grouped with touch above.

Yeah, in SR4, Ryu is correct. In SR4, physical senses have no meaning to perceiving things in astral space. Sound is as meaningless as text. Emotional impact is what carries through and can be sensed by someone who is in astral space. So while you can't hear the words someone is saying to someone else in physical space, you may be able to get an impression of the conversation's intent.

In SR3, however, none of the above necessarily applies. I know things were a bit fuzzier in previous editions.

strain III

Strain II.

~J

SR4 was the best I could do, and thankfully the answer was not "bow to the mage".

When I next see my girlfriend I´ll check the SR3 magic books she´s hogging since she wanted to do her own magic tradition. We always played it as "emotion yes, clear information no", but that might have been a house rule. SR2 quite is quite explicit in the way of SR4 (general "astral space"-chapter again).

Yes, horrific spirits that could tear you apart at will but can't materialize for some reason are probably the best deterants to astral recon. If your astral space is empty then recon will be easy. If there is a Force 35 Free Loa on every street corner people will think twice about percieving or projecting. Of course, they don't have to be that powerful. The scariest thing on the astral plane is the Watcher Attack Pack. Sure, they're weak, but they're easy to summon and you can't beat their Friends in Melee bonuses. While they're rolling astral combat at TN2 and your rolling astral combat a TN8 and this is happening 4 times per pass you're pretty much screwed.

Slamm-O, what sort of information are the astrally reconning magicians getting? Can you give us an example?

Calm down hyzmarca, calm down. Just a few enterprising buddies looking for ways to limit astral recon. If you need some soothing thoughts, remember that askenning a target will still give you information no mundane will ever get so easy.

Remember also that not all buildings actually have astral security? Why should they if eavesdropping is not so easy?

Better now?

(Just kidding, no offence intended)

Why not have astral security everywhere? In my mind astral security is like matrix security if your company doesn't have any you've put yourself at a serious disadvantage. Not everyone is going to have top of the line security, but wards at minimum.

One of the most memorarable astral scouting missions I was invovled in was the time I was scoping out a warehouse which strange "people" were coming in and out of, while we were looking for a missing person who was last seem in the nieghborhood. Went through a wall and found myself in the middle of an antspirit hive

Not advocating stuff like that all the time just every once in a while throw an "oh shit" at them.

Astral security does achive nothing if you are not in danger of astral attack. Espionage is the greatest issue here, and you´ll not get far with that in the times of virtual offices (for matrix clerks).

Most engineers will not leave VR on a normal work day. The paperless office will be real. You just need to protect meeting rooms and exec divisions. And the execs themselves of course.

I think you'll find that the statement you are quoting refers to the sense of touch. Physical things are intangible, meaning that your Astral Form can pass through walls. It is not referring to sound, which cannot be touched in the physical sense in the real world, or in the Astral.

This thread has a lot of different facts and interpretations so I feel it needs an executive summary.

The summary should be entitled HOW DO SCREW OVER PLAYERS and it should just be a bullet listing of the most un-favorable interpretations of the rules listed on this thread so that an aspiring GM can get the most bang for the buck in stomping the local mage into the ground.

So far, I have:

*all data collected in the astral is emotional rather than practical ("the building feels cold and unwelcoming...it probably has security, or maybe just a grumpy receptionst...you feel that the Age of Aquarias has been offended")

*If the players complain that there are Force 35 Lovecraftian horrors on every block, pelt them instead with packs of watcher spirits

*FAB is fab

*Every corporation wards their buildings since not doing so would be absurd

And true to tradition, the executive summary is basically right but missing significant details...

I suggest reading the SR3 rules with consideration of the clear statements of both SR2 and SR4. Discussion of whats physical and whats not will be fruitless due to the undefined status of mana.

The assumption that if physical matter interacts with astral light then physical matter interacts with astral light isn't that far of a leap at all. In this case, "sound" and "sight" are simply two different ways for physical matter to interact with the psychic glow from living auras, one by direct reflection and the other by inducing vibration.

The lightbulb analogy is quite meaningless since physical light can be dismissed as beingan electromagnetic wave and/or a massles particle while sound iscaused by massive molecules and it has already been established that massive molecules interact with astral light.