Aural (sound) Perception specializations. Olfactory boosters/sensors. Radio signal scanners. I've seen a number of people suggesting Perception (visual) specialization, and that got me to thinking: A bonus to hearing someone coming is much more useful than one to notice visual cues from a combat perspective. If you can see them, they can probably see you. Similarly, an olfactory sensor can tell you when there are explosives or ammunition around (assuming no vacuum seal), not to mention the unwashed bodies of the gangers around the corner. And so on. One of the biggest advantages of most Infected, to me, is their improved senses - ever try sneaking up on a ghoul?

I was wondering if anyone else had thought this through.

Most of my players make excessive use of millimeter radar, ultrasound, advanced audio options, Olfactory boosters, etc. I agree it is very hard to sneak up on people who have very extensive sensors that cover a broad range of data. Specially when they link them together with a Tacsoft and have auto-alerts setup well.

I just don't see it mentioned much on DS. Tacsofts are awesome, esp. with cryptosense modules

Personally I really dislike Tacsofts. When you take into account how cheap pirated software is any bunch of gangers with a matrix connection would be packing one at which point it's just pointless DP inflation.

Edit - And on topic smell is a bit unreliable. Cities, crowds and your own gear are going to cause problems. Sound however is totally under-rated. You can hear people moving through doors, behind you and if you're in the right situation very handy for tracking down people with stealth suits or invisibilty spells.

All right, let me clarify: I like the CONCEPT of Tacsofts

Keep in mind that a) Tacsofts have pretty high Availability, and b) they have a minimum number of sensor inputs that each member of the network has to match.

There's a fun bit in Feral Cities where we got to talk about the bats in feral Chicago, how people with ultrasound vision can walk around at night fairly easily just based on the bats' cries...and how Mihoshi Oni likes to lie down and watch them flitter around like big firebugs with her thermographic vision.

Yeah, people forget that ultrasound systems can be used passively. That's why I get them, actually; Thermo + Low-Light is actually better for anything but invisible things, but ultrasound can be used to avoid motion detectors

Keep in mind that anyone with Hearing Enhancement levels will simply hear motion detectors - HE provides high and low frequency capability, making by default. (Yes, the implant from Augmentation, accordding to Synner, officially redundant, just cheaper than hearing enhancement).

And, sure - clustering all your senseware and putting a tacsoft and sensorsofts on top is the way to go.

The general advantage of indirecte senses like the aural one, is that it does not only work 360, but also around the corner. Combined with ultrasound to an active sense it can for sure compete with the visual sense in terms of localization. It outperformes the visual system in motion direction and speed detection (due to the doppler effect) but it underperformes in perception of details. As a passive sense it will "just" give you a lot of information from all kind of sources (vibration of engines, speach etc) at any time of the day.

Ah, and you don't have to blink and you don't have a degraded resolution towards the periphery. I'd say is a very nice sense and heavily underestimated.

An ultrasound system is a visual system.

Nope, it is an aural one, it is just for the sake of simplicity described as "seeing". Seing involves electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths.

Ultrasound is hearing, as it is about the detection of pressure changes in the air. It only creates a vision-like perception.

EDIT:
This is for the sake of imaginability as we can't imagine "what it is like to be a bat", thus to "hear" space. This only a few synesthets and one blind guy that trained it for years can do.

The ultrasound vision mod actually composes a visual image for the user to look at. Of course it depends on the way the tech is implemented. 'Ware is far more likely to work like a bat or a dolphin's echolocation, but from a metagame point of view it makes no difference.

I think the reason why people tend to focus upon visual perception is because we tend to use our vision more, and it is pretty easy for most of us to envisage (heh) situations where a given PC could see something, but describing smell or noise is not as immediately obvious.

This is the same reason why astral perception is almost always described in visual terms. I try not to use visual descriptive terms when telling a mage what they perceive magically.

Actually it does make a difference: You have to see something to target it with certain spells... thus ultrasound might not qualify. haven't thought about that.

That is a fair point. And quite pertinent to a situation I find myself in.

Can ghoul mages cast spells at mundane stuff? Seeing as they are blind an' all.

Thing is, not only do players often fail to think of ways to aply enhanced senses, but also most GMs tend to simply forget about them - which is understandable, as it can be hard to keep track of what mods and sensors each of the players is packing. So many (not all) GMs don´t take into account PCs augmented senses most of the time, unless the player is actively telling them, he uses them for a specific task.

Once upon a time, I had an Adept (back in 3rd), with almost all of her Magic spent to buy each and every augmented sense available in the books (she followed the 'Way of the Watcher'). None of it ever came into play unless I specifically said, 'I use my this-and-that power to look for this-and-that' *rolls-dice-gets-no-tangible-result-75%-of-the-time*

Same with my Characters Dangersense-Power in another game - the GMs just keep ignoring it.

Still I´m totally in love with senseware, powers and gadgets

and c) that active data link between the members makes for one fat juicy target for any combat hacker

Point C is largely the reason I use for any of my SR characters to avoid being in a Tacnet. It's not generally a problem against lower end opposition, but against anyone roughly even in terms of skill with a runner team they're a disaster waiting to happen.

That's why you have your Hacker or Techno run the tacsoft and have everyone else slave to him/her

In SR3, they could; one of the few advantages of dual-natured beings was being able to use Assensing to target mundane objects via their astral reflection providing the caster was not projecting. I imagine blind parabats could also use echo location to cast spells or use critter powers, as well.

Yes. Assensing is considered seeing in regards to spell targeting, & you can target spells on anything you can see, as long as you are active on the same plane. Ghouls are active on both the Physical & Astral, so can target Physical or Astral targets equally (but not both with a single spell).

Thanks. That was bugging me. My players are kinda drone heavy, and while I gave all the mundane ghouls they are fighting cybereyes (they are running a bodylegging organisation, so i figured it wasn't too great a stretch), but the mage I left intact, so I wasn't sure about him being able to target any of the PC's flying gunnery platforms.

I don't want to be a dick to them, but equally I don't want to make it too easy, especially since they chose to go in heavy. I had considered giving the ghoul a sustained sight spell (there is a lowlight vision spell), in place of one of the sustained spells he is written as having.

What about a ghoul targeting an enemy in melee? If I can see their aura, do I get the vision penalty for attacking a hidden target?

Astrally Perceiving characters receive a -6 Perception modifier to see anything physical, & a -2 modifier to any physical action. Dual Natured creatures, such as ghouls, do not suffer from this penalty.


Yes, the ghoul magician will be able to target the drones through Astral Perception, but there is a significant modifier for "seeing" non-living targets. I believe it was -6; it should be in Street Magic. Remember that visual modifiers (or in this case, astral perception modifiers) also apply to spellcasting dice pools.

So a ghoul would be able to target living targets without penalty, both at range and in melee? I would make a houserule that gave a -1 visual penalty for each full point of Essence the target had lost (not counting cyberzombies; they light up like a Christmas tree on the Astral iirc).

Actually the players don't normally link their Tacsofts together, just run it internally along with a bunch of other sensorsofts. Of course, they got pockets full of RFID & micro-sensors, along with some "Pingers" (the ultrasound noise generator).

Tacsofts are also very nice for drones; the main drawback, hackability, is already present, so you might as well take advantage of it.

You know that DareDevil is not a real person, right? Kidding aside, as far as I know, that guy tought his method to some other people and the basics seemed quiet easy to pick up - I saw him on a TV show. Besides that, however, blind people have used echolocation before, by tapping their stick on the ground, to detect obstacles in their path.



IIRC Tacsofts give no mechanical adventage unless at least 3 users are linked together - which I personaly don´t like, because I loved Tactical Computers.