And yet some of us don't know this.

Strange.

Frank mentioned movement in his first statement of tactics and assumed everyone who was reading his other posts had also read the beginning.

Chris

I would think that developping tactics how to counter dragons and other high-level threats that use powerful magic would have been a priority for any military for the last 40 years in SR, but then, what do I know.

I'm sure it is, though none of them will begin with: "assume it's a fair fight" and "money is no option." It's much more advantageous to maximize every military unit, thus distributing your weaknesses against all threats. The amount of damage a dragon can inflict before you mobilize the standard forces needed to effectively deal with it will be less costly than keeping a single unit of the caliber needed on constant high alert.

Great Dragons are more dangerous dead than alive anyway: you never know what they put in their will.

It's easier to put a gun to their lawyers head than the GD. Selective changes can be made then.

The exercise was to see if there's a force availabe by the rules that would force a GD into using its brain, experience and subtle means by making it suicidal to simply attack.

On a tangent:
There's deepweed that forces anyone magically capable - if they have astral perception or not - to astrally perceive. Then there's the new drug that enables anyone, mundanes too, to astrally project.

Given those two drugs I don't see many years before soldiers (especially gunners) will be able to pop a drug dose and use astral perception to target dual-natured but concealed targets. Their greater vulnerability to astral threats can be countered by astral cover, wards, or simply going at a speed no spirit can match. So, I'd say Dragons won't be flying around in restricted airspace much longer than a few more years, at most.

Considering that no Great Dragon has ever "simply attacked" a target with magical resources, I don't see the point of the exercise. A military response to a Great assault would assume the dragon has been planning the attack for some time, and thus would be wary of direct assault, as the attack could be just a diversion or trap.

Additionally, the damage a Great can cause "in a simple attack" is minimal compared to briefcase nukes, biological weapons, natural disasters, foreign aggression and even a Crash Virus, all threats you need forces to respond to, quickly and with flexibility. A force that would probably include adult dragons, free spirits, etc.

It was said in another thread that a Great Dragon would not need to use subterfuge or planning, since there was nothing that could hurt a GD anyway. So I made this thread to find out if that was, RAW, true.

oh. psh. no, that's crazy. given that GW went directly to the scattered pieces of the spirt of Denver, it's obvious that even he did some planning.

I think one could defeat an unprepared Great, it's jsut a matter of numbers.

However, I believe RAW prevents Astral Spotting for all but ritual sorcery:

Sr pg 184: "Because manifestation is a psychic effect, manifested characters cannot be detected, recorded, or affected by technological devices."

Sr pg 182: "It takes a Simple Action to shift one's perception from astral to physical, and another to shift back again (it is not possible to see both at the same time, though almost everything in physical space is reflected on the astral, albeit without detail)."

Sr pg 182: "Astral perception is a psychic sense that is not linked to the character's physical sight."

By my reading, not even a simrig allows you to record Astral Perception. Though you could use some kind of triangulation of three or more spotters to achieve similar effect, IMO.

Unfortunately for continuity, that is not true. Hestaby "simply attacked" Tir forces, Ghostwalker "simply attacked" Aztlan, and Alamaise "simply attacked" S-K. Of those, only S-K gave out the smackdown that such an action would surely entail given the actual rules for great dragons and heavy weapons.

-Frank

Yes, which we mentioned, like, 5 or 6 pages ago. All it takes is a few astrally perceiving spotters either holding a target desiganter into the direction the dragon is, or their cybereyes simply transmitting what direction their head is facing.

Well, it's rather clear that Great Dragon's are the Dev's pet, right before immortal elves. So, "continuity" will reflect this, counter to rules, and common sense.

(There's a reason I haven't used any continuity or plot from the offical books since corp war.)

There's no indiaction that their head would be facing in any one direction. Nothing to do with the eyes, at all.

And, Heastby had CFS forces helping, and probably had the entire battlefield that Tir rolled into ambushed with masked anchors and nasties.

Ghostwalker had UCAS, CAS, and PCC forces as support, not to mention his intial assualt against security forces lasted only a few minutes at most. [edit] And Denver Datahaven/Otaku messing up Aztech communications, not to mention the possiblity of sabotage to Aztech forces prior to his "simple attack".

There also no indication their head can't be facing where they are looking. They are astrally perceiving, but still in their bodies.

And that tells you how far away the astral form is how? Without the abilty to combine "direction" with depth in real-time, targetting doesn't work, neh? You need at least three spotters using astral, coordinating their location to keep the dragon as close to center as possible. This is doable, I think, with paracritters more easily than people, due to mobility. This is a vaild tactic for lots of intruders, and likely corps could have trained dual-hawks or devil rats patrolling in formation around a complex, then fanning into triangles to alert secuirty forces to both an intrusion and the location of the intruders.

I already posted way, way back that I assume a platoon of spotters, to triangulate the dragons postions from the vectors.

yes, and has been said, using multiple spotters and trigonometry has already been suggested multiple times, and explained several times over as to why it would work. it's the exact strategy for spotting the concealed great dragon that has been proposed repeatedly, and which some continue to insist it won't work without being able to provide any reason why it won't work.

and using critters is ridiculous... whoever it is needs to be able to ignore distractions, and needs to be able to follow instruction. unless, of course, you're considering ghouls to be critters, in which case i suppose it would work just fine.

i've never seen any sources indicating the amount of planning--or lack of planning--that went into any of those incidents.

Not even close.

As has already been mentioned, Ghostwalker's campaign was pretty much an insurgency, albeit the kind that uses weapons of mass destruction. He didn't just "kick out" Aztlan. He forced the six parties running Denver to the table where he made them all an offer they couldn't refuse, which included the other five deciding to kick out Aztlan.

Hestaby had a rather impressive strategic advantage in the region, and also had her own support assets that were also in the area. And she didn't have to destroy the Tir. They sent in a relatively small force, and all she had to do was stop them or slow the advance enough that it would become militarily and politically untenable to continue advancing south.

That's the main thing. No Great Dragon is ever going to pick a fair fight with a military. They use force as an extension of narrow and deep political maneuvering. Look at the one big loser: Alamaise messed with Lofwyr on the worst possible terms, and paid dearly for it. But in Night's Pawn, he did what any creature with a lick of sense would do in the same situation. He ran. And he tried another tack. Not that his subsequent activities were any more successful.

What, on the first page or something? There were people on this page talking about "DNI ripping from the mage brain", which I was responding to. And now we suddenly have platoons of soliders opening themselves up to astral attack for targetting? And my suggestion of trained paracritters is ridiculous? HA!

page 297, core
"Finally, a great dragon using Twist Fate can take points from its own Edge and give them to other characters in the dragon’s line of sight. Th is can even increase a recipient’s Edge above its normal full level, but these additional Edge points do not refresh. (In other words, use them or lose them.) Once expended, these points return to the dragon that granted them."

Once expended, these points return to the dragon? I know I am probably not reading it right, but it sounds like free edge for everyone and as long as they use it, the GD will get them back and can still use the edge.

Isn't the GD more likely to quicken defensive spells and maybe set some anchoring healing spells? Or are we assuming the GD doesn't get karma?

quicken:
increased reflexes
increase attributes (body, reflex, agility)
deflection
armor

that could potentially boost the GD's DP some more


and while the astral perceivers might see the GD, is it possible for GD to set up a trid phantasm or shadow as to block the targetter's sight? Or do we just say it doesn't matter whether the devices can't see the target. The astral perceivers see where the GD is exactly, they can adjust the device so that they will be pointing in the general direction. I guess with enough astral perceivers, you can triangulate and home in on the location..




I guess if I was the GD.. I'd try using Shape Earth and slowly advance toward the city 8D

There is nothing in the entirety of Shadowrun that can cast an Increase Body spell on a Great Dragon. It's just not even possible.

-Frank

not even force 24 spirits?

but then even if they can, i guess they can't quicken the spells

The problem with force 24 spirits is sometimes the drain is just going to kill you even if you are hestaby because 48P damage is unhealthy - she really does have an ~2% chance of dying every time she tries. This makes summoning force 24 spirits what we call 'high risk'

Even with Twist Fate?

I didn't factor in edge actually, the dragon's ability would significantly reduce the chance of death to sort of 0.2%, except that the spirit has an edge pool of 24 and isn't really going to notice spending a point of edge to negate that ability.

Incidently, if it wasn't for the dragons ability to negate the use of edge, the spirits chance of killing the dragon by using the rule of sixs edge spend is about 70%

Don't even bother with any Force 24-spirits, guys. Such things would be more powerful and smarter than every Great Dragon, and such uber-spirits would find it beneath them to be summoned by anything at all. Nobody, nothing, can ever summon a Force 24-spirit, and binding is outright impossible.
Keep it at a more believable level, guys...

Rules as Written, Twist Fate is almost entirely worthless. It takes actions to use, which means that it's virtually a non-issue.

All it can really do is spend its Edge to cancel other edge expenditures, so it's not going to really change its capabilities much.

Which of course brings up the problem of hard caps, something that a fraggin' dragon shouldn't be subjected to. I mean, c'mon, Max initiate grade of 6? Period? Ever? Even after 15,000 years?! The hard caps on stats and magic are a balance factor, but it's nigh impossible to apply them to a being of the dragon's power.

There is no hard cap on max initiation, dragon or not...

A GD (western) has body of 25

B: 25
A: 10
R: 11
S: 50
C: 13
I: 13
L: 13
W: 13
EDG: 6
M: 12
Init: 24

conjuring 8
sorcery 10

I was under the impressiong you need force 26 increase attribute to boost the body of a GD, which you can get from a force 13 spirit that overcast, is that right?



If we are just taking a GD straight out of the box, there's no foci of any kind, no army of bind spirits, and no metamagic. That doesn't seem quite realistic in terms of a well-prepared dragon. Since the opposing side get mages with initiation grades (and thus metamagic feats), maybe the OP could tell us if GD has access to foci, metamagic feats, and the highest force spirit that it can summon/bind?


As a side note.. i wonder how well a possession-tradition GD would work..

GD by the rules of the books.

Then you should also only use soldiers by the book, with the equipment they have by the book...

Prime runners, yes.

But as I said - Great Dragons get by by Dev Fiat. Same for immortal elves. So, the discussion usually ends in "THey would do that" "would not" "would too".

I know I know ... resurrection from the dead. Please forgive me.

One question came up in a similar discussion on a german board.

Assuming that a great dragon has masking and extended masking, he has the power the change the type of his astral form/aura.


What does this mean in detail?
1) His astral form, that of a great dragon, while flying or astral projecting, can be changed to the astral form of a dual natured human, which would mean that he cannot be identified as a great dragon at at the astral plane?
2) His astral form can only change the type of astral creature (to be identified as a fire elementar of very large proportions for example), not the size or the shape of the astral form.

In SM page 112, the astral form of dual natured beings seem to be tied to the physical body, so I assume #2. If #1 is true, can a astral projecting human mage change his aura into a dual natured mouse and never be identified as a human mage?

SYL

As I see it, he can look like anything on the astral, human, cat, whatever, but the shadow of his body will still make the masking not very convincing. Unless he is projecting. Then all bets are off and he can pass as long as the masking is not broken.

I think one of the examples in the BBB was even an projecting form masking as mundane. Of course, this is easily broken, since no body is present, but it shows what the intent of masking is.