If a magician has the Cerebral Booster bioware, is the increased Logic retained by the magician's projecting astral form?

Likewise, if the magician has the Mnemonic Enhancer bioware, is the bonus to Knowledge and Language skills available while projecting?

Is it possible to create mana-based Improved Attribute spells for Mental Attributes that will be retained by the projecting magician's astral form? The normal physical improvements are ties to the physical form and are thus useless for an astral magician.

I'm not sure I agree that the physical spell cast prior to projecting would not count.

As a general rule, from past memory, enhancements paid for with essence count for all aspects of magic.

I don't have any pages or anything, but that's my first impression.

I agree. Paid for with essence, so you keep it.
Not sure about the spells.

IMO: cyber, yes; spells, yes, but I wouldn't know if it needs not be physical...

Cheers,

Max

I think the key point is that a physical spell can not alter the attributes of your astral form, not where it is cast. I would think that mana-based Improve Attributes - for the Mental Attributes only - should be fine in both the astral and the physical realms.

You can't? Shoot. Okay, I'm back to being confused.

I was under the impression that there is no difference between harm to the astral form and harm to the body. They share the same condition monitor. It's not that attacks against the body also affect the astral form; it's that there's no difference between the two once the damage is suffered.

Well, that's my interpretation anyway :-/ They definintely share damage before projection - if you have 3 boxes of damage when you project, your astral form has 3 boxes of damage on it - but if you say they share damage while separated, then I don't see how a projecting magician can live for Magic X 2 hours if the body takes two rounds in the heart or something. The projecting magician floats around with all the boxes on its condition monitor filled? I don't buy it.

From that While You Were Out box I refered to:

Ahhh, mental tranquility.

Aaah, cognitive dissonance!
Well, if the body is dead, and thus the link to the body is severed, then the body is no longer forcing the astral to be damaged. So it ceases to be damaged.
A cop-out? Perhaps. But hey, it mostly only matters to PCs anyway, and probably makes a better plot device this way.

Back to the original topic, though, I don't think the Increase Attribute (Mental) spell would work for increasing astral stats by casting it on the mage's physical body. It's a sustained effect happening on the physical plane, and the mage's mind and spirit are no longer on the physical plane. Hence, the spell ceases to affect him when he projects.

Would you allow an Increase Attribute (Body) spell cast on the astral plane on a projecting magician's astral form to affect his body on the physical plane (if it was a mana spell)? of course not.

And would you really let someone cast Heal on a magician's body and have it heal their astral form?? I think that's crazy talk.

Well, first off I would suggest casting the increase stat spell prior to projecting, when it's affecting the whole rather than the body or the astral form seperately.

However it is not clear that an effect on one such as a spell does not affect the other, while it is clear that there is a link.

As to allowing healing on the Body to affect the Astral form I'd have to say that it's a two way street, if Damage works why can't healing?

I think it's probably easier to just go with the blanket statement of what affects one affects the other. If you hurt/heal/affect one, the effects will be felt on the other, through the link.
Death is the singular exception, because all of the above works because of the link, and death is the loss of that link, so the rules are a little different. Why not just have the astral form instantly dissappear if the body dies? Because the persisting astral form is a great plot device, that's why.

The difference between physical and mana spells is that a physical spell can affect nonliving things. So you don't need P type to affect your physical meat. Just like a manaball can still fry you if you don't prohect.

I'm not sure there'd be a good reason to say that a Mana based increase attribute spell does not work unless you project...

Once upon a time there were physical and mana spells for increasing attributes, one was increase attribute and the other was increase cybered attribute...

Wait. Do Heal spells cast at an Astral Form heal it? I was under the impression Heal only heals Physical Damage and the Astral Form, if anything, was linked to Stun.

You still have a physical damage track and a stun damage track while astrally projecting. Heal only affects the Physical Damage Track.

Hmmmm....

Would an astrally perceiving adept be able to use Pain Relief on an astrally projecting person to remove Stun damage?

From whence does this pain relief come?

If you mean the spell in SR4 Resist Pain it does not remove damage just eliminate the modifiers. That should work with no problem, it is a Mana spell and therefore targetable on an astral form.

Sorry, it is the Pain Relief Adept Power on page 179 of Street Magic.

It "allows the adept to dissipate fatigue, muscle tension, and pain -- effectively healing Stun damage.... healing a number of boxes from the Stun damage track equal to the number of net hits achieved."

Ah yes. Physical contact. That is a bit of a problem, isn't it?

Well it is also 5 minutes per hit.

So it is not THAT much faster then 'resting'

Not to mention that sometimes you just need that one box healed to get rid of the dice pool mod.

Never said Pain Relief doesnt have a use;however I will state it is not 'that much faster' then normal healing for stun and thus not too overpowered IMO.

Also note:

Threshold of 2+ (essence loss). Means atlrast three hits to heal a box of stun. (more if cybered). Magic+Agility means (barring agility monkey cheese) 12-14 dice? (as agilty is likely to be high even if not a pure agility build). means 3-4 hits on average. with two hits (plus) lost automatically. Not going to cure the near unconcious stun and just like 'healing' it can only be done once. (and actualy worse then normal healing, taking more stun isnt the 'fix') but "until the remaining stun damage is healed naturally".

So if it doesnt cure all the stun, then no more massages until you have zero stun.


While usefull personllay I find other things a better spend for the full power point. (now a well made physical therapist, could make alot of money)

Implants cause a dice pool penalty not an increase in threshold. That's a big difference...

Thats right my bad from memory there.

So a fixed threshold of 2.

Still that means you need an average of 9 dice to get one box of stun healed. So again unless you want a very silly Agility monkey maximizer, you are looking at 2-3 stun healed (4-5 hits total).

If you can stop for 10-15 minutes to give yourself a massage in the middle of the run, I dont see anything overpowered with that.

I WISH my players would take 15 minutes of downtime during a run