Hi all, I'm new to SR4 and just had my first game session last weekend. Our next one is coming up tonight. Last game session, I was scouting a site we're going to be making a run on (I'm an adept infiltrator/thief, adept part is important, you'll see in a second) and broke into the place to scout the inside. My char has the Ruthymer Polymer Coating (sp?) on his armor and all the guards failed their perseption checks. HOWEVER... the had two Dual-Natured guard dogs that were being walked around the fence. My GM is new to SR as well, so he said since I'm and adept and don't actually work magic, the dogs couldn't see my astral signature. This is where my question is. Most players would say, "You mean I get a free pass? SWEET!" I'm not most players though, I've been running games for the last 15 years and I'm worried that my GM might have made a mistake and allowed me unfettered access to the entire compound when he shouldn't have.

As an honest fellow (well, out of character) I feel the need to ask the public...

Do adepts show up astrally as bright glowing beacons since the have a magic attribute? I sunk bookoo points into mine (Magic: 6) so I'm guessing there's a good chance I light up the night in astral space. Now, I DID take Astral Chameleon, so I think that masks me SOME in astrall, but if I don't show up anyway, I'm considering asking the GM to get those points back, but that depends on the answer I get here.

If I DO show up in astral, is there a way I can hide from things that can percieve astrally? Or am I pretty much screwed by that?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

The astral signature shows life, not just magic. Every living person has an astral signature, therefore your adept, the party's sam, decker, etc. all have astral signatures as well a dual-natured creature will see. The rigger's drone is the only thing that'll be exempt (and, if you argue right, if the same is down to less than a point of essence, he might be harder to see as well).

So is there any way to hide/stealth in astral? Does the infiltration skill cover astral perseption?

Welcome welcome.
Just to get a little nitpicky, the Astral Signature is what's left behind for a few hours when a magician uses magic, and is sort of a magical fingerprint that can be used as an identifier. The aura is more what we're talking about here, and is what the dual-natured beasties would be able to see without any penalties from the suit. He glows on the astral because he's alive, not because he's magical. (although active magic would be brighter still) However, your ninja adept still gets to roll Infiltration to try to sneak by, so he's not totally boned.

The dogs have pretty much the same chance to notice you as the guards. Since they are dual-natured they just have another level of sight to possibly see you on. Hiding behind a wall so the guard can't see you, will also keep the dogs from seeing you astrally. But IF you were an astrally projecting mage, or a spirit on the astral, the dogs could spot you there where the guards would have no chance.

So if you out stealthed the guard, you probably outstealthed the dogs as well. Being awakened or not doesn't really matter to the dogs so much, they are just to monitor astral space.

End Answer: GM ruled correctly in you being able to get by, but explained it incorrectly. Your "astral self" could be seen, but its not a glow that radiates any further then your actual body, so if you're hiding your fine.

The astral plane is not a big dark room where everyone is a shining beacon of light. Objects are opaque, you can hide behind other auras (trees ), and you can alyways try to stay out of the field of vision of someone you don't want to spot you.

In short: Yes, Infiltration should work.

Astral perception can suffer penalties as well, so if your stealthy and use cover from LoS this can help. Dual natured critters can be confusing somtimes existing on both planes at once, really using same perception rules for both situations.

It's always been my understanding any living things aura will stick out against the shadow like appearance of the astral plane. Now active spells,foci and active use of some adept powers will make you stick out more.

Excellent information. Thank you all for the replies. I was just wanting to make sure I wasn't screwing my GM over. He's a nice and honest guy, and I try to be as well. I'd hate for his lack of knowledge (and mine) to allow me to get something by him, intentionally or not. My infiltration roll on that got me a total of 6 successes (was a lucky roll on a dice pool of 10) so I'm guessing the dog wouldn't have seen me anyway, knowing what you all have told me now. I actually don't think he even rolled for the dogs, so I'll point all this out to him and see if he wants to re-do the scean.

Thanks again to all of you

pfft - even if the dogs couldn't see him, they probably should have smelled him.

Of course, it's possible that their (intuition + perception + bonus for enhanced senses (scent)) pool was laughably small.

Nah, I dropped a lot of money on my armor. Thanks to the fact that armor mods don't ADD to the availability of armor, I've got (names might be wrong):

Full Body Suit (from arsenal)
Ruthyrmer Polymer Coating
Chemical Seal 6 (I think, char sheet's at home) with small internal oxygen tank and hermetic seal.

I don't smell, I'm air-tight. The GM okayed this and we all felt it made sense that if gases can't get in, gases can't get out (ergo, no body oder).

ah, well - that's a bit different, then...good thinking there.

The only thing that would have changed is the Dual Natured Beings would not have been folled by your Chameleon Suit, or at least that's how I would have ruled it

Yeah, I'm one of those guys that a lot of GM's hate, I think of almost everything and find a way around it.

I have a combo of contacts and goggles that give me:
Flash Comp
Thermo
Ultrasound
Vision enhancement

I'm an ork, so low light is natural

I have earbuds that give:
hearin enhancement
high and low frequency
the hearing direction indicator thingy
damper

I actually wear two suits of armor (legally, gotta love the rules for the full body suit)
Full body suit give what I listed above (chem seal 6, ruthymer coating)
I also have a leather suit that I wear over that, it gives thermal damping, ruthyr coat again (darn both suits needing it) and electrical grounding.
The leather suit also has the full SecureTech PPP System from Arsenal.

Total armor added together is 10/13
Since the full body suit counts half against encumbrance for stacking, the values I check against for encumbrance are 7/12. My body of 6 allows me to be able to wear it with no negative effects. I am all "ninja'd" out, I even too ninjutsu from Arsenal. My character really is supposed to be a ninja. I didn't want to go with that cliche, but everyone in the party really wanted me to, so I figured I'd entertain them

Very true, since he didn't even roll for them, it never came up. I'll include this in the discussion I have with him about it tonight. I'm a real oddity... I'm actually telling my GM he needs to go back and screw me up...

We've always been using things like Infiltration, Shadowing, Navigation in the Astral. Some Chars even have a specialization in that field.
This might be house-rule territory, but works fine for us.

I'm one of those myself, always telling the GM rules that screw us over as players. He just expects it though, since I'm our acting rules lawyer. Anyone has questions with the rules they come to me. If he does something against the rules that is screwing us over I usually don't mention it until outside of session (I just think to myself some way what he's saying would work).

Example hacker manages to spot me with my stealth 10 Technomancer, but I failed to spot him even though I had rolled 12 on some analyze tests. Reasoned to myself that since I was only in at Security Access level (tried to save time, on the fast hack, as well as less chance of getting caught), his Admin level account provided extra information that helped his finding of me, as well as prevents lower levels from having access to his online status. In this case I knew he was working outside of the rules, because how else do you deal with the rating 10 stealth?