Yet again my gaming hobby and my real life are crossing over a bit. I have been working on getting hired as a deputy sheriff locally, and to that effect I have spent this weekend doing tests, patrol ride-alongs, and a tour of the county lock-up.

So, while out last night (this morning? ugh.. I knew I forgot to do something... like sleep) I started to talk to the officer I was riding along with about exactly how the law works in certain situations. That got me to thinking about Shadowrun, and what sort of hoops the corp and security mages have to go through to use magic.

In this situation, my players are going to be DocWagon HTR. One is likely to be a mage. While all of the 'standard' security types are forced to use non-lethal force (tazers, narcoject weapons, gel rounds, etc), what would they do with the mage?

One of my players seemed to think that there was no real way to PROVE that magic had been used. I didnt think that was accurate. I was under the impression that when you cast a spell, there is a 'finterprint' left on the target that can be traced to you. Not traced back to you, but some sort of energy that can be used to prove that you cast that spell. Problem is, nothing in any of my books seems to back this up.

Being the GM, I am just going to say that DocWagon prohibits the use of physical damage spells except for the same circumstances that also allow lethal force with the others. But, just like with real weapons... if they use a direct damage spell to someone, they have to take that person back to the clinic with them, willing or not.


I guess my question is... how is magic handled from a legal standpoint? I know spells and foci over a certain level are 'illegal' but how do they prove it? I mean, how can you be convicted of knowing too powerful of a spell? How can they know how potent a focus is? I mean for sure.. I know you can sense the power, but how well would something like that hold up in court?


Anyone else think about this? How do the powers that be enforce magic related 'laws'? How about adepts and their powers? How do you license and regulate such a thing?

It's called an Astral Signature...and...it's...covered...on (flips, flips, flips)...p. 172, SR3.

Oh good.. I am not loosing my mind. I KNEW I had read that somewhere. I will check that out later.

Thanks!

The "Missions" scenario with DocWagon spells out the rules for the team. One of the main ones is that if they use lethal force they must recover the target, willing or not, and bring that person to the clinic for treatment. Its good PR, and it also keeps the lawyers happy... so it says in the book.

Thats ONLY for lethal force. If you hose down a whole group of people with gel rounds or such, they are on their own.


Can you remove the magical ability from a person?

...Great Britain has laws in place to preserve privacy and prevent snooping, in the future? Seriously? Great Fucking Britain, of all places?

pg. 33-34 SR Missions

Kagetenshi - I know about NAGRL and all of the DocWagon info in there. As Angelone posted, some of that is old data... at least using the adventure from Missions, which I am. At least for real ammo and lethal force.


Ancient History - Problem is... how can you know what someone knows? Its illegal to learn a spell above rating 2, but how is anyone to know if you actually KNOW that? What if you already know it, or learned it where it was legal? If you heal someone with a Treat-5, how can they know how powerful of a spell you are using?

Two two are not mutually exclusive. Doc Wagon would limit their own use of lethal force, but encourage others to use lethal force indiscriminately.

In 3rd edition; good luck. Getting enough successes on that particular assense to know the actual force is no easy roll. You're pretty safe casting at whatever force you want, as long as you don't cast it at a force equal to or greater than the assensing person's magic rating.

That's why smart runners wipe the spell when they can. Cuts down the chances you get busted for casting illegal spells, gets rid of your astral sig., and cleans up astral space iirc. So you aren't only getting rid of evidence you're doing your part to fight astral pollution.

You need at least 5 successes with Intelligence with Aura Reading being a complimentary skill. The Intelligence 6 guy with an Aura Reading skill of 8 might pull it off IF he's there when the spell is being cast and happens to be watching.

If they go into a lab and take their time trying to figure it out, 5 successes only tells you the 'general class of spell', nothing about force is given. And since signatures last a number of hours equal to the force of the spell, they're not really having alot of time to be waiting between assenses.

No, you're pretty damn safe casting at any force you want, as long as you're not being watched by someone who is assensing (that's an action, not a random perception check because you're in his LoS) you directly, and even then, he's gonna have to be one heck of an assenser to figure out what force you just did.

But 3 successes is enough to tell you it exists. If it exists now, and it exists two and a half hours from now, it has a minimum Force of 3 (except for that one Flaw, but Lone Star has never been the type to give people the benefit of the doubt. They don't have to, they're the cops!). One can assume that some imprecise version of that knowledge is possessed by Lone Star and other in-game entities.

~J

You mean, assuming you assensed at roughly the time of the casting, as well as assuming that the aura disappears at that time, vs simply becoming unreadable/assensable. I don't know if it's intended to be like that, I know in our games, 24 hours after the casting we (who as runners often also investigate) still see an aura, but any rolls simply fail to extract any useful info after a couple of hours, and we -never- know when the info is no longer useful. I think you're making way too many assumptions, there simply is no mechanical way to know at what force a spell was cast, after it's been cast. And I'm sure it's not intended that you be able to calculate the force based on when an aura suddenly disappears (my own assumption).

Not seeing this false negative rule. I see a loss of a signature, but not of the aura itself. There's a pretty big difference between signature and aura, and I see it more akin to trying to notice exactly when the sun has set behind a cloudy sky. The sun is there, and with enough successes, you might be able to see it for those 2 hours as it sets, but no way to identify the exact moment because it's hidden behind clouds (behind the aura of the object). So, even after it's set, you could be convinced it hasn't set yet because of the light level. A signature isn't much different I think.

I was going to try to delve into the sunset analogy, but it breaks down quickly. The basic idea is that as long as you know that someone was able to see the signature with all of its identifying information, and someone else was able to do so n hours later, then regardless of the time the spell was actually cast, it was at a minimum Force of Ceiling(n) (again, except for a certain flaw). If you come upon a Force 6 spell 4 hours later, you'll know it was at a minimum of Force 2. If you come on a Force 7 spell that same 4 hours later, you'll know it was minimum Force 3 and thus illegal without a permit.

~J

And what I'm saying is that you don't know that. Once that signature is gone, you don't know if you're just getting 2 or fewer successes or the signature has disappeared. The fact that you can get 2 or fewer successes supports this, after all, if the signature was that visible, it would only need a single, not 3, successes to even see it.

Right, you don't know that. But with a few people who should be getting 3 successes, it's pretty easy to cut the chance down pretty dramatically.

~J

Or, dependant on how the game is run, run into false positives instead. However this is turning into a "yeah it is" "no it ain't" conversation. I'm pretty sure it was never intended that investigators know the force of a spell based on the game-mechanic of how fast a force dissipates. If you wanna play that way, great, but it still doesn't change the fact that 5 successes (pretty much the best you're gonna get) won't get you enough information on a signature to be useful, and if 5 successes don't do it, cheesing it by a dissipation mechanic surely isn't suppose to give you the info either.

Ancient is pretty dead on here. I can tell you as a GM I've never really worried about players casting magic and getting busted. Sure you can't just walk into Merlin's Lore in the Arc and buy a Hellblast Force 6 or pretty much any spell that will do physical damage beyond a Force 2 without a permit. Hell I don't think you can buy much legally, magic wise, without a permit.

Really it's just a method for the government to keep track of mages and people who deal in magic because it’s something really powerful that they can totally control. So they try to monitor it.

Honestly if you're doing something that requires a LS cop to assense you if he sees you doing it then it was probably pretty bad anyway. If you kill a guy with a spell the murder rap will be much worse then casting without a license.

I guess my whole point was just the non-lethal DocWagon restriction, and magic users being on a HTR team using spells that could possibly be of a lethal (and illegal) nature.

Then again, if DocWagon doesnt ask too many questions about the level 2 wired reflexes and the light machine gun being carried (as long as they are gel rounds!), I cant see them being too concerned about magic. Just wanted to see what resources might be available to an internal investigator should our mage friend decide to take the kid gloves off and mind-nuke someone that had gotten on his nerves (rather than a stun spell).


Thanks!

Just look at magic when it comes to lethality like you would any other weapon.

If you're a DocWagon employee and you toss a HellBlast in the center of Downtown Seattle Financial District and cook a few bystanders along with the guy you wanted to kill then you just committed murder and LoneStar is going to be pissed, as will the Governor, and any Corp people with influence.

Now you toast five ork gangers in a Z zone in Redmond. I don't think LS would even get a dispatch call on that one. Of course you might have a pissed boss when you get back to HQ because the mage has to rest 24 hours after casting so many spells and it's the middle of his shift.