So Manascape would easily allow you to disguise yourself and as many active spells and foci as you like as a single aura that matches that of a Ward's creator.

So has it just made Masking obsolete?

Discuss...

masking still allows you to pass through wards, properly applied. nothing about manascape says it does that, iirc.

I second that.

Nothing about Masking or Extended Masking explicitly allows you to bypass Wards either.

o it is like that.
manascape is a spell and therefore can not pass the ward. hows that suit you.

Except that in street magic they very specifically mention that you can use masking to mimic the creators signature so that you can pass through their ward without allowing them to see you.

Besides, masking can be always on, sorcery comes with all sorts of limitations.

Yes, indeed.

However, this is not in the descriptions of either Masking, Extended Masking or Aura Masking it is in the section on Fooling Wards.

The ability to penetrate Wards is not the function of those abilities it is a result of their function. Their sole function.

Which is to disguise your (or the aura of foci/spells) aura as a different one.

Which is different to the function of Manascape how?

Masking is a versatile and inherent ability which can be expanded upon by other abilities or used as the basis for further abilities, while False Impression and Manascape are spells and subject to the usual limitations on sorcery: the obvious fact that a sustained spell is affecting the target, the spell is dependent upon the skill and power of the caster, the spell may be dispelled or eaten by FAB, etc.

Agreed.

(Did you just agree with me? I can't really be sure and I don't think it has ever happened before... )

Funny, I just had this conversation with my GM yesterday about this. I made the same arguments as AH, glad I understand the rules well enough to see the negative of a really useful spell.

Uh... how did you read any of what AH said as agreeing with you?

I mean just to be clear here, you were arguing that Manascape made Masking obselete, right? Whereas AH just listed a dozen reasons why Masking was still superior to Manascape. At what point was he agreeing with you?

None of those reasons were you can't fool wards with Manascape. Which is what I was being forced to argue about at the time.

Your logic is flawed. The fact that he didn't address that point does not constitute agreement.

Gah.

You know what, I'm not going to get into this any further. If AH wants to clarify what he said then he's perfectly capable of doing so. If he doesn't care then there's really no reason why I should.

Really?

I submit to your airtight logic.

Not.

If AH disagreed with me, believe me, he wouldn't hesitate to do so loudly and directly. As he has done about three times in the last 24 hours.

I wasn't directly addressing the Masking-can-fool-wards argument, I was just making a general statement toward the point of the thread.

As far as Masking and wards go, then I would agree that the point of Masking is not to fool wards - but by the same logic, the point of a hammer isn't to smash someone's skull open either. In both cases you have a tool that can be put to different uses based on the situation and your ability to apply it. It is nearsighted to ignore the uses of Masking beyond those expressly listed; why limit yourself to a narrow definition when there are other uses expressly spelled out in the rules? I assure you the game designers have to keep those other uses in mind as well (and what fun we have keeping track of them all, too).

Give you an example: an adept with Magic Sense and a full magician with Sensing walk past a room which contains a quickened Manascape spell; the purpose of the spell is to give the impression that the room is in fact a place of power aspected toward Santeria ritual magic.

The adept will sense the impression the spell gives, but will also sense the spell - as far as he knows, the room is a place of power and there is a quickened or sustained spell in the room. The magician, if only using Sensing, would only detect the false information generated by the spell; if using Assensing she would detect both the false information and the spell itself. If either end up in the room while actually Santeria ritual magic is going on, they might draw some conclusions based on the fact that the obvious power of the room doesn't seem to be "helping" the karcists.

Hmmm.

I'd definitely be inclined to argue that the spell is more than capable of concealing it's own aura.

If you create an Illusion of 'A room Aspected towards Santeria that does not contain any active spells' then that is the false impression that will be received, yesno?

Frankly, a spell that creates an Astral Illusion but that does not alter it's own Aura is pointless.

The unexplained spell would be massively suspicious in every circumstance and a decent Assensing test or a Mana Static would reveal the truth.

It would be akin to an invisibility spell that caused the area around the target to glow like the Ready Brek kid or caused you to be followed around by a Watcher Spirit singing your theme song.

My take on the spell was the it would hide it's own aura, otherwise as just stated it fails at the very thing it is for, which is absolutely stupid.

Ruling in my game on this was that the spell functions very much more like flexible signature, more then masking per se.

Number of hits raises a threshold on assensing required to see "through" the spell.

The weaknesses, at least in how we will be using it are:

The spell whilst capable of hiding it's own aura, is incapable of fully masking anything else, only altering it. Where as, for example, improved masking allows you to hide the aura of your foci within your own. Also ruled that the act of casting the spell is about as subtle as marching through the astral with a brass band whilst Great Dragons provide percussion.

It is a spell, and as such cannot pass through wards, full stop.

Of course also affected by background count, and will not impart background count.

soo . . cast spell into focus to keep it, conceal spell with masking?

By that logic, the Invisibility spells are also useless and stupid, as they too do not hide the aura of the spell.

yes, on the astral, you're STILL visible while invisible . . allways been that way, allways been the ONE weakness of one of the arguably best spells in the books . . to balance it out a bit i guess

I have no problem with that. Just as I have no problem with the presence of an aura with the Manascape spell.

Invisibility is designed to hide you from physical sight. It does precisely what it is designed to do.

Manascape is designed to alter your appearance in astral sight. If you can see the fact that it is doing so astrally then it fails at it's design.

Umm...

In Visible

as in light.

The correct allegory, which is the one I gave above that you must have accidentally missed, is of an Invisibility Spell that itself creates a soft glow in the visible spectrum.

i.e. A spell that is designed to hide or alter one thing that creates more of that same thing itself and fails to hide or alter what it creates thus rendering itself pointless.

I never said it didn't.



No. Just the mere existence of a spell is evident. Exactly what spell is active is not apparent without an Assensing test.

so.
if i cast improved invbisibility and then manascape while using masking or extended masking, i am completely impossible to be noticed?
probably not.

With an appropriate penalty? After all this spells very purpose is to affect your ability to do just that.

Sound and Smell my friend. Never forget that the biggest flaw in the Chameleon suit, Concealment, Improved Invisibility, and all of the other snacky tricks is that they can still hear you.

Have you ever tried to sneak up behind someone without making any sound at all? Someone who wasn't wearing headphones or otherwise seriously distracted?

To be honest, any good security detail is using their ears more than their eyes anyway. Inside a building most sounds will carry through walls, whereas line of sight is severely limited.

That's not counting what happens if they have watchdogs, enhanced olfactory, or, god help you, Barghests.

doing so on a daily basis. only to annoy my coworkers really ^^
wasn't there something like olfactory camouflage?
sealed chamaeleon-suit or chem-suit with ruthenium and then the spell?
ok, put in silence too . . with the Heightened Concentration thingie, an magical adept would be impossible to find if he wanted to . .
now i have a picture in my mind of waldo doing shadowruns and vanishing in plain sight once someone is turning their eyes away . .
stealth hi/bye like batman does . . Carmen San Diego would be too copy cat, as she's allready doing stuff like that anyway ^^

It's doable, but no stealth setup will ever be perfect. Silence is a radius effect, which means that anyone you move too close to will immediately notice something wrong when everything goes unearthly quiet for a moment. That and the questions about whether the manascape hanging spell can still be spotted on you. Also, you'd still have to avoid stepping through a ward, which is pretty difficult when trying to get into any reasonably secure facility.

False Impression and Manascape can alter the sensory impression of a spell, but not remove the fact that it's there.

I believe it's a been a magic inability to alter auras. I don't have the digital grimoire yet, so I don't know if they've said anything to change that, but IIRC, it's be that way since SR1.

ahem, masking/advanced masking? O.o
you can willingly shift your aura to hide foci and spells on your persona . .
you can even copy the aura of another mage to the extent that his wards accept you as their master and commander. .
just a quick in between question:
after having thus crossed over into the warded area, will every spell i cast have the astral signature of me or the signature of the mage who made the ward?
i am using his aura to get through, so do my spells use his aura sa a basis for their signature too?

they will have your signature.