In SR3 the spell design rules specifically had Detection spells with a lowered Drain Level, relative to other spells, to reflect how they don't actually affect targets. Catalog, for example, would not have the same Drain Code as a Medium Powerball, for example, as one just saw things and the other blew them up.

Clairvoyance no longer works with vision mods that you paid Essence for or are natural for your type (low light vision, etc).

Needing five or more successes to detect a drone seems a bit harsh.

Anyone here have a character specialize in Detection spells? Do they seem to be a bit less useful than before, or am I out of my mind?

I've noticed that Mind Probe isn't as useful as it used to be - the target always knows about the intrusion, and has a good chance of keeping stuff secret.

I think detection spells have potential to be tweaked via spell research. Detect Enemies detects hostility; how about a spell that detected sexual desire? Suits would pay highly for a Detect Ms Right Now spell, and the drain would be lower given you could make gender specific versions. A good way of earning money between runs.

I don't understand your reasoning fully here.
Why five or more successes? What spell are you using to detect and what counters is the drone using to remain hidden?
Drain is not bad for detection spells. that I can tell. The base for most detection spells is half the force, or half the force modified, sometimes even lower. I think SR4 just tried to clean up the rules some, in SR3 the rules contradict some, as it claims normal vision can not be used, but that "other" vision enhancments can, including natural ones. I don't think this neccesarly means natual low-light or thermo, but maybe adept powers and cyber mods only.

Oh, I think I see the problem.

You yourself are the subject of most detection spells, most of them being passive. Reread the description of detection spells in the grimoire part of the book.

Combat sense is the king of self-buffs. With the primacy of surprise and defense, nothing makes a mage more combat capable than a big boost to both. Say what you will about other detection spells, but combat sense is amazing.

Catalog (my favorite spell from 3e) now requires 5 successes to see a drone, because it was decided that it was an Active, Area sense so you have to beat the drone's OR even to notice it. 5 successes (thus Force 5) gets you the most basic information ("You see a drone"); you need more to figure out what kind of drone it is, or what it's doing.

The Drain is F/2 +2, the same as for Manaball, Increase Reflexes, Mob Control or Shapechange.

The same as Combat Sense, in fact, which would indeed kick ass if the act of sustaining it didn't negate 2 Force worth of the spell.

I've only playing SR 4 so I can't talk about if/how detection magic got nerfed. I am playing a Combat/Detection mage right now and it's so good I have to rein in it's full my full potential, because I just can't take the cheese. First off. Combat Sense is in fact as amazing as izombie says. Don't forget Analyze Device, it's hits bonus dice to using a device, like oh a vehicle, a gun, or anything test you can make only using one object. Clairvoyance type spells are similarly amazing as they are basically unstoppable. Remember that the caster is the target so there is literally nothing for your target to see. You Never have to walk around a corner blind. You can find where everyone is hiding and they don't have a chance of knowing they are under surveillance because the actual spell is in another room. Spacial Sense isn't quit the win like the rest, but knowing all the entrances and exit and how secured they are hundreds of feet out is still really good.

I think what people are saying is you don't cast the spell on what you want to see, you cast it on who you want to see it. Thus drone OR is a non issue. Sort of backwards thinking, but seems to work better.

WeaverMount mentions a lot of the detection spells I like.

With Analyze Device in particular, there is no weapon or machine with which you are not 'skilled', hence it gives a lot of flexibility to the character.

Street Magic has Catalog as passive spell. As it should be.

Whoa! Good call on analyze device. I always just read over it, like "who the hell wants bonus dice to analyze a device?" But it's bonus dice to using it too...

As for clairvoyance though, meh. It's cool and all, but you can get similar results with radar vision or a periscope. Or you could astrally project and poke around that way, too.

ixombie you are right that the effect of clairvoyance can be duplicated any number of ways. The only amazing thing about the clairvoyance spells is that that they are totally undetectable. Yes you could send a drone into the room, but they could see it, find the node, or identify the signal. Yes you could send a watcher but it will be spotted instantly by anyone one on the astral. Similarly the vision mods aren't that hard to come by, hell some races get thermo. Unless you have done tons of leg work, it's not a safe bet to think that you have a vision mode they don't Compare those options to the PoV of the clairvoyance spell- an undetectable non-entity. Surely you can see how useful that is.

Did they errata it? The book I have lists it as (Active, Area), with Drain of F/2+2, the same as Manaball and Shapechange.

But yeah, Combat Sense and Analyze Device are pretty awesome. Do you generally count the sustained spell against the specific action the spell was cast for? For example, do you get the -2 to Reaction when dodging if the spell you cast was Combat Sense, or the -2 for using the device you cast Analyze Device on?

German First Printing.

Hm. We seem to have some important differences then:


I note that I did miss that objects don't win ties, so you only need four hits on a drone to know there's a drone around, but you still need 6 or more to determine what it is and even more to figure out what it's doing.

How different is the German version?

Analyze Device and Combat Sense are also spells that I have a hard time with, because they're active, and thus your bonus dice depend on a resitance test. Note that targets are the ones who resist active detection spells; and passive detection spells are unresisted.

This means that for Analyze Device, for example, you have to meet or beat the threshold to get any successes at all. Most things that a runner would want to Analyze have a Threshold of 3-4+, so that's 2-3+ bonus dice right off the top. Then you have to sustain it; Sustaining foci above Force 3 are unavailable at chargen, so, unless you're planning on a maximum of 2 bonus dice for most very simple (OR 2) or 1 die for most modern objects (OR 3), you also have a sustaining penalty of -2 dice. Meaning that, until you can either buy that Force 5+ sustaining focus, you're better off not using magic and just defaulting unless you can cast Analyze at force 6 and get at least 6 successes.

Combat Sense is a little better, but it has some of the same oddities that it had in SR3. It's an Active, Area spell, so everyone in the area makes resistance tests, and your net hits are your bonus dice for Surprise and defense against that particular person. This becomes a bit of a logistical nightmare when you have more than 1-2 opponents, doesn't it? You have to note your net hits against each enemy, so you know how many bonus dice you get against that person?

Clairvoyance is okay, though it is more limited in SR4 than SR3, and could be more limited still. Is the "visual point" meant to be LOS only; in other words, can it go through walls? In SR3 this was an open question; it doesn't look like SR4 clarified the matter much, to look at the spell description.

Or am I just way off here?

Wait, am I on some kind of alien planet where Area Thought Recognition, Detect Enemies, and Detect Life don't exist or something? Because they are awesome sauce.

...bleh.

My thoughts exactly.

How different is the german version? I looked up the spell table, its passive there. The spell description has it active, as the english version. I guess we found an error for the errata.

It is listed as 'Active' in the Street Magic spell tables.

Not in the german version.

If in doubt, the english version is always the correct one.

If in doubt, group consensus has to be used. Knowing the english RAW is pure chance for us, but would certainly influence our decision. We are using the english errata for the german RAW, for a long time by now, but that can´t catch translation errors.

As most mages will have no problem generating the required successes, if need be by recasting, I´ve got no problem accepting that Catalog needs to beat OR.

True, but don't forget Edge; successes from Edge aren't capped by the Force of the spell.

Also, a Spirit of Man can cast the spell on you so that you don't need to maintain it; or you can cast it on another runner (especially useful in sniper duels).

Yeah it totally makes sense why you should only need one or two hits to detect a drone when it has no astral signature, does not actually have any intent to shoot at you (it's just told to pull this servo here and target A goes down,) so after all that is taken into account of course you should just face palm drones with detection.... It is a good spell but the fact that you are hung up on drones as to why it is a crummy spell is kind of silly, since drones are about 20 times easier to detect on the mundane then lets say an adept infultrating sniper. Drones just can't pull out the wammy sauce the way a human or meta-human can.

There should always be a counter to anything in the game. Nothing should be the win, because if it breaks the game why even play SR at that point? And you can do pretty crazy insane things with mages right now anyways.

Well the big utility of detecing drones would be finding spy drones, little tiny buggers who are designed not to be seen. A fly spy might be every bit as hard to detect, if not harder, than a metahuman using mundane senses.

Of course, there are plenty of ways to do it using technological sensors, and there's no rule against mages using sensors.

But as for the drones that really scare you, you're right. Rotor drones are loud, and dangerous ground drones are usually pretty big.

In my opinion where detection spells get to be really helpful is when used as ritual magic to overcome range restrictions.

Absolutely, especially Thought Recognition. Detect Enemies and Detect Life aren't particularly useful by themselves, but combined with other spells or even a decent gun are very good.

Are you talking about Detect Enemies? Because that's a mana spell, and can't detect a drone at all anyway.

As for Catalog, well, it can't detect people in the first place.


I guess what's bugging me is that the dabbler has even less a place here than he did in SR3. In SR3 you could pick up a secondary focus in sorcery for 31 build points (25aspected mage +6sorcery -5to trade-in most spell points) plus a decent willpower (necessary in any case), and expect to throw up to 6-9 dice plus sorcery pool at spellcasting with a couple of spells. And that was fine, because variable TNs gave you the opportunity to hit a success or two even on OR 11+ drones. Now, unless you're gaming your options with spirits and/or tossing ~15-18 dice on a spellcasting test--and the only options I've been seeing for that are expensive--you're pretty much not going anywhere fast.

I'm hoping that I'm just missing something about the system, but it seems to me that thresholds and fixed TNs have killed the dabbler and the "dual-class", which I find sad.

I haven't had that problem at my tables. The dabbler and the "dual-class" are alive and well, for me.

I'd say that 4th Edition rules are probably more firendly than ever to the multi-function character than any previous edition were. Sure you can still hyperspecialize and just run-over everything in your specialization. However if you can put together 8-10 dice in a test, most of the time you can get by usually fairly effectively, and in the new system that's fairly easy to do over a fairly wide range of skills.

I know you can't use detect enemies on drones (because there is no intent on the drones perspective to harm you,) but drones are not organic in any way shape or form so they should be really hard to distinguish (spell wise.) Perception should get you so much farther when looking at a drone, but using a detection spell against a drone makes sense as to why you can't rock all over it with detection spells. I just feel like if you want to be able to see drones or be aware of them get the skill perception.

You don't have to be throwing crazy dice at only 1-3 spells, and being a multi purpose mage can have its uses over a twinked out build. There are so many different types of mages someone can be and tons of different spells that have different uses it seems odd to think that there is only an either or situation. If a mage twinks for combat then any situation that does not call for combat then they have shot themselves in the foot (which is the same for any other SR character.)

I definitely see what Eyeless Blond is saying. Just because you can throw together 8-10 dice on a lot of different tasks doesn't mean a whole lot, if you're dealing with thresholds of 4+, because on average, you're going to need to throw 15 dice to get net hits.

But then, in SR4, more than in previous editions, I get the idea that magicians need to back their mojo up with other things. If you want to focus on detection spells, that's great, but it won't make you omniscient; for that, you need to have a Perception skill, some sort of vision enhancers, crazy sci-fi scanners, etc.

Maybe Crow is helping you detect that drone by giving you the urge to go to Radioshack and buy a laser mic.

Seriously, what would a mage be doing that they need to routinely hit a threshold of 4+? If it's using a detection spell to find drones it might really be the case that the mage needs to defer to the teams Hacker to find the drones.

I meant that more specifically the system allows characters generally to be more successful using fewer dice. Figure in most opposed tests most of your opposition will be in the 4-6 dice range most of the time, and most tasks can be accomplished with a 1-2 Threshold. There are some pretty difficult tasks that require more but they should be infrequent enough that having 2-3 Edge should cover most of the instances where you need extra dice, well at least for characters straight out of the gate.

While I am firmly in the detection = awesome sauce camp, I'm not actually all that big on Detect Enemies. First off it is one of the few detection spells that can give you a "false" positive. Consider a rigger and there drones. If the area of your detect enemies is big enough you may well be able to pick up the rigger with the spell, but it's the drones you need to watch out for. I'd much rather take cover in relation to the drones and not the rigger. Also I play a very very cautious character. I sneak. I hide. I run. In my ideal run Detect Enemies never goes off. Even once the team is made the troll and drones are the one drawing enemy fire not my mage. Hell with a force 6 concealment and a camo suit most people CAN shoot at me.

Range is going to be the big problem here; a flyspy or stormcloud might be a mile above you.

And unless you've got extended range, a Demolish Drone spell would be as good, and also potentially useful in combat.

I just got a very interesting idea, and I would love responses from both a strictly RAW and mindful view.

All the detection spells give the target a new sense. May of the detection spells are P spells. Could you target a drone and give it the new sense? Could you cast catalog on your comlink and have it dictate a list and e-mail to another device before it forgot it? If you think that isn't possible what would it take to pull it off?

It would take installing a living brain as the commlink's CPU.

Of course, I'd allow a DNI connection that was paid for with Essence to work as well.

Now that I've been reading the rules more thoroughly (I kinda made a beeline for my favorite spells first), I think I know what's bugging me: the presence of a "double threshold" for some Detection spells, that doesn't really exist for other spells.

Analyze Device, for instance. Before you get any bonus dice at all, you have to beat the object's OR, which for anything worth using the spell on will be OR 3+. That's two successes right off the top. But, since you're sustaining the spell, you get essentially another 2 successes taken off the top, such that you have to get a minimum of 5 successes to be any better off than just defaulting in the first place. This is of course discounting other resources like a Spirit of Man or Sustaining Focus, neither of which you'd have to use to, say, cast a Powerbolt or Mob Mind.

Or Catalog, which I mentioned above. Again, OR 3+ for most relevant things (guns, computers, cameras, drones, etc), so 2 successes off the top. In addition, getting a single success on a detection spell only gets you the most basic information, barely even useful information, so you need more just to get the bare essentials. Sometimes not getting the minimum successes can even be worse than failing altogether; note the results on the table where SR4 first describes the results.

Neither of these problems apply to Combat/Illusion/Manipulation spells. There the first threshold is the important one; after that the extra successes are gravy. It's only with detection spells that you can succeed in casting the spell, and yet still fail with it.

This isn't really a problem limited to SR4. SR3 was the same way; you cast the spell, then you had to make Perception Tests through the spell to really see what you were looking for. But in SR3 you at least had reduced drain codes to deal with; in SR4 the drain code for Catalog is the same as for Manaball or Shapechange, both of which get more "bang" for their successes.


As for the Catalog thing, just record it all in your datajack or commlink. If I were GMing I'd limit the quality and quantity of what you could write down, even in DNI, if you only have the spell up a couple of turns, but other than that you're fine I think. That was one thing I loved about the spell in my SR3 days, doing bug sweeps with a DNI-enabled pocket secretary.

Kneejerk response - Sprites. In most magician's worldviews, Sprites are 'spirits of the machine' and spells can definitely be cast on spirits.

Physical Illusions can affect machines, so a spellcaster can communicate with a machine via spell; so using a spell in this fashion would be theoretically possible. And if possible in theory, research magicians are going to try and find a way to do it in practice.

The downside is that just because the machine is getting the info doesn't mean that it will understand it. You'd probably need to write a completely new program to interpret the data that the spell is providing, and most hackers wouldn't know where to begin. So I suspect that you'd need to cast the spell on a a technomancer and then get him to write the program; you might even have to give up on programs completely and use Complex Forms.

Magic definitely can't affect sprites. They exist entirely within the matrix. And to magic, the matrix is invisible. Magic can operate on the circuits, chips, fiber optics, etc., that make up the matrix, but it cannot perceive the matrix itself. Sprites are creatures of Resonance, they have no astral forms like spirits. You can't analogize them to spirits and use that to say that spells can be cast on them.

@Eyeless - Remember that this is SR4, not SR3. -2 dice != -2 successes. It's -2/3 of 1 success, statistically. So it only knocks one hit off of your pistols roll if you're using analyze device on a pistol.

What I meant was that the successes on the Analyze Device spell itself were canceled, since the successes on the Analyze Device spell translated into bonus dice for using the device. The -2 dice sustaining penalty you have while using the device and sustaining the spell essentially cancel 2 of the successes you got back on the spellcasting test itself, just like OR cancels 2-3 of the successes you had on the spellcasting test. This means that, on an OR 3 item like a gun, you need 4 successes minimum--or other assets invested--to get a total net +0 dice to pistols, 5 for a drone or commlink.

And that's fine, really. It's even necessary, because without it a high-grade mage is going to be able to essentially do Technomancer-Threading, but on every skill in real-space, with one spell. The problem is that the existence of double thresholds usually meant a reduced drain code in SR3, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I guess it's not that huge a deal though.

You're right, though, that it's a discrepency that doesn't seem to quite fit. I mean, with Analyze Device, which seems to keep coming up as the most dramatic example, I can see why it would be gimped. Even in it's gimped state, I want to get that spell for my shaman, load him up on the Psyche drug, and have him sustain it on the sams before they go into the firefight, and on the decker while he runs backup, and on whoever it is that's about to use the medkit to heal my drain. But with a spell like catalog, it kind of ruins what the spell was meant to do in the first place, which is let you know about things in the room. The fact that you can do most of it other ways just kind of means the catalog spell is made useless, which shouldn't be the case.

From what I have seen in my players, they don't ever cast a sustaining spell without some sort of focus so they don't pay the -2 dice.

Also no one uses detection spells as they consider the range to be fairly short. It does make my life easier though.

Well I happen to like the fact that magic isn't always the best option to get something done, technology does and should have the things that it is simply better at as well.

They would if you enforced the rules for Focus Addiction in Street Magic.

But then again I've houseruled sustaining Foci to be able to hold any spell, but to also count more towards Foci Addiction.

Frankly, they could gimp it a different way, though, and still make it somewhat effective. You can borrow a common idea from SR3 and only grant one bonus die for every two successes. The other cap you have is that augmented cap of 1.5 times skill; should that factor in here?

Yeah, in this case I vote that catalog be passive, and thus OR doesn't really apply.

Oh I didn't even look at range! Is it still Force * Magic, or is it just Force now?

As for sustaining foci, that's fine for most spells, where 3-4 successes (and thus rating 3-4 foci) are all you ever really need, but many detection spells--certainly all the ones I'm interested in--have tougher thresholds. Which is kinda my point.


While this would be true if it were more consistently applied, what we really end up with is a small number of spells that are unreasonably gimped, with the rest essentially unaffected. That, IMO, doesn't fit the "tech vs. magic" dochotomy so much as stress how gimped a few spells are.

It is force * magic (or force * magic * 10 for extended) in meters.

Thing the mage in my group feels that (5 force + 6 magic) 30 meters really is not that far.

He was thinking about taking an extended version but the thought of having a seperate spell for each type of thing he wanted to detect just frustrates him to no end.

Mostly this comes from the fact that spells in D&D are more versitle then in SR