Whie living being a generally fairly easy to define 'An Object', non-living are greyer.


Is a 'car' and Object, How about the door on the car?

Now if you say the car is an object, but the door is part of the car; then what if the car is part of a roller-coaster ride? Is the Car now a part of the whole and you would have to affect the 'roller-coaster'.

In short if you cant target a 'pices' of an object, what defines a seperate object versus a 'piece'

Is it a stone, or a stone garden? (since tree and tree forest is an easy to define since each tree clearly is a life of its own).

So for example:

A machine gun (an object?)

What if it is permantly attached to a drone?

That is permantlly mounted into a pilon on a building.

That is a part of a floating ship/sialnd (think Mexico City which literally is one big boat).

So do I have to Power Bolt: Mexico City?

The building?

The Drone?

or can I just take out the machine gun?


The rules says you cant target part of an object, (which for living is easy to define) but for non-living gets harder.

Personally a 'tire' is certainly an object so I would say a tire is a legitimate target. Now I would also say a 'car' is a legitimate target. The difference being (usually) visibilty modifers on the car are going to be considerable less (you can see a much larger porition of the car's aura then you normally can the tire. (now if you a in a sewer looking out the grate with the tire parked directly infront perhaps not).

The more important question to ask, is the briefcase being attacked by an AoE attack or by a direct targeted effect?

Eleazar:

[quote]Cars do not have aura. As far as all of your other questions, I think they are rather obvious.[/quote]

Scrap 'aura' but what ever it is you need to see (directly with your own senses) to target. to effect.

[quote]If a machine gun is attached to a drone it is part of the drone. It is the same as if a person was carrying it, this is rather self-explanatory.[/quote]

How so nothing I can see says the machine gun carried by a person, isnt a far target. It is NOT part of the person, and certainly could be targeted. yet you state a drone with a gun is all one object. How so?

[quote]It doesn't matter whether it is permanently attached or not. Why do you think this would change anything?[quote]

[quote] The door becomes a separate object once its removed from the car[/quote]

Being attached seems to matter!



[quote]If it was attached to a building it would most likely then be a gun turret which would then be its own target.[/quote]

Yet this is not true?

If it was attached to a drone it would most likely then be a gun turret which would then be its own target.


[quote]The question about Mexico City is just absurd, now I think you are exaggerating. I find it hard to believe one could actually ask such a question seriously. It would be like saying I could target the Earth because it is a planet in the Solar System. Thus, since I can define the Earth as a target, it is a valid target for a spell. What's your next target, the Solar System?[/quote]

If you actually read there wasnt a 'question about Mexico City', rather there was a question about is a Gun a target, that had multiple parameters and when did it become a seperate item.

To you Gun+Drone equals one object.

Gun+building seems to equal a seperate Item, yet a building can be 'a drone' so how are these differnt items.

Likewise how is a Building + Turrent two items, yet Buidling + Door a item?



[quote]You get negative modifiers for targeting specific things on a target. It would also be nice to know what pages in the SR4 book you are pulling object from. This is one of the few things in SR4 that I think to be rather cut and dry. Just use common sense here.[/quote]

Several places but in general Targeting Spells. (since you can shoot the tire of a car).


[quote]DJINNI: What do you mean by contact? I am going to guess you mean the degree in which the door is attached to the car. If that is the case, then as long as it isn't detached, it is attached, thus being a part of the car.[/quote]


Ok so lets try a running example again.

A car with a door. (the door is part of the car and couldnt be targeted with a powerbolt).

A car, but somebody has taken the bolts out. Gravity still has the door 'in place' but it is not fastened to the car. (still part of the car or a seperate item?)

A car somebody has yanked the door off but the wiring still attach it to the car, in fact the speaker is still playing and the computer can still lock/unlock the door and or open the window. (still part of the car or not part of the car).

A pickup truck that the door has been yanked off then tossed in the bed of the truck and tied down. Seperate object or part of the car?

A Car that has a string of beer cans dangling behind (think Just Married), Are the beer cans part of the car? Part of the 'string of beer cans' or an Object by itsefl?

If you think the above example is clear cut, lets try a slightly different one that is more obtuse (IMO).

A fishing trawler with its nets out. The nets trailing behind the fishing trawler? part of the trawler or a seperate item? (how about when they are pulled in and stored on the ship).

A fishing trawler with its Anchor deployed. The Anchor a seperate item, or part of the trawler. If it is a quarter of mile away (large ship, deep water) and the only thing I can see is the anchor (but perfect visiblity as I am sitting on it) Can I power bolt it to destroy the ship? or do I merely destroy the anchor?

Can we get some page numbers here besides random (mostly smartass) opinions? It just doesn't make any sense to me that you can't target spells on doors, tires, or walls. We've all seen it in the movies...

Buster: you might have a point.

While is appears to be a misconception (though one widely stated here) but I can find nothing that says you can not target a part of an object.

Powerbolting the lens of the persons camera is a perfectly valid target from the best I can find.

Or Powerbolting the tire of a moving car.


I would have sworn that someplace it stated that you couldnt but in my printings of the PDF (1.4) the FAQ nor the errata can I find anything.


Have to admit that is/was one huge misconception I had on SR4....

I swore canon didn't allow targeting a part of an object, but nothing says otherwise. (that I can find)

Hmm to take this to the other extreme (especially since to the minutiae has been dealt with.

How broad can a caster go.

Can I 'Ignite' the Archology ? If so whats its Object Resitance threshold


Can a sub-orbital plane be targeted?

A train (or even a train car).

When does size/mass/multiple parts/multiple functions break 'a thing' into a group of things?

P181 cotinued to P182 SR4 under auras & astral forms

Living things that are not active on the astral plane still cast a refelection of themselves there, called an aura. Any non-living objects appear as a faded semblance of their physical selves gray and lifeless, while the aura of living things are vibrant and colorful.

And thus Eleazar we have conformation that lifeless things aka objects do have an aura.

Personally I would allow targeting �within reason�. Powerbolting the door or window of a car would be perfectly allowable and you would still have the same OR threshold. The difference would be what damage you would do. The car would survive but the window would be destroyed. If you target the whole vehicle the whole vehicle might go up in a huge explosion as the entire car might be blown to pieces and anyone in it might be torn to shreds by debris.

A mounted weapon to a drone would be considered part of the drone, the difference would be as with the car, the difference in damage and effect.

Targetting an object in a persons hand might require a resistance test from the person in question if one tries to levitate said object, powerbolting it to scrap will not. Neither would commlink, clothes, holsters, ammunition or grenades. Most of the time it isn’t worth the effort as you most of the time just bolt the person instead of his gun. After all, destroying one gun might just make him reach for his secondary one.

Ok, powerbolting a grenade might sound cool, but remember, there is no guarantee that the grenade will go off. The powebolt might just reduce it to component atoms or disassemble it.

Now, getting into the more obscure areas of magic when we powerbolt the Arcology or a continent…This is where the GM says “sure, no problem.�

First of all there will be a threshold, then there will be loads of counterspelling, and I’d imagine that if a building containing at least ten different shielded labs then you pool their counterspelling together as they are all one target. The same would apply to earth as you pool all existing spell defenses together in one pool since ALL of them are the same target.

Trust me, your player will NOT have that kind of dicepool, to be more accurate, the GM might have to take the players dicepool to get enough dice.

After you have powerbolted something that huge…how many mages will start looking for your signature…

I'm agree with Jobb.

Targeting certain parts of an object should be OK.

Blowing open a door with a powerbolt is as good, in my book, as launching a rocket at it.

I'd use the body and armor of the rest of the wall. It's just as tough to get through as any other section of the wall.

Same thing with targeting the door of a car. I'd use the body and armor of the rest of the car. Cause it's just as tough as the rest of the car. If he was targeting the window of the car then I'd change the body and armor as it's obviously different from the rest of the car.

It all comes down to on the fly making numbers up.

And probably if the same thing happened in a later session I'd invent new numbers cause I forgot what the old ones I used were.

Notice how none of the ranged spells have an attack roll required to hit? ( Touch spells are the exception but wrap the attack into the complex action itself.)

Just a note: If you're powerballing, it doesn't destroy everything the mage can see. Area spells affect an area of magic meters.

What constitutes an object, a part of an object or a separate object is a difficult argument, which will ultimately break down to "what does your GM think?" and case-by-case rulings. The best I've seen this concept handled was back in Mage: the Ascension. It's hard to explain, especially because I don't have the book anymore. But basically, it's this concept of patterns. A thing has a pattern, which is basically the reality of the thing. A gun is a gun, and this is inherent in its pattern. The trigger is part of the gun's pattern, and thus it is part of the gun. It's more of a spiritual or existential concept. A gun is a gun. Its parts are parts of a gun. Physically separating the parts breaks the pattern. Breaking them up enough causes it to cease to be a gun, and instead it becomes several different patterns.

These concepts don't jive perfectly with SR metaphysics, but it works for me; it makes things make sense, it keeps rulings simple.

It might not make sense to anyone else because I suck at explaining it, though.

My input to this is that any noun (person, place, thing) can be targeted.

Targetting a drones gun would have visibility and cover penalties that you wouldn't have if you just attacked the drone. If you could see the bullet in the barrel, you could powerbolt that too. Its just that thats all it would affect. It wouldn't affect the "containing" item.

The effects will be limited in the case of extreme micro and macro scale.

If you want to powerbolt the earth, go for it, do it until your eyes bleed, nothing will happen. You couldn't possibly compete on the magic or body scale of the earth.

If you want to set up an optical microscope, and powerbolt bacteria, go ahead, zap them one at a time, they die, roll drain for each bacteria you zap.

I think this thread perfectly illustrates the reason we (as a society) dumped Platonic ideal forms as a basis for reality...if you think about it for more than a few minutes, the whole paradigm breaks down. Freakin' Greeks and their lousy paradigms.