Nope because you're directly observing him (similar to how mages work and can cast only on things they directly see (electronic vision enhancement fails them)).

If you pull out a camera on the end of a fiber optic line and watch a monitor instead of directly observing, he'd need to be OR4.

If you called in a drone to scan for people other than you, he'd need to beat OR6

So in other words, a guy watching a mage turn invisible can't see him, so the guy pulls out his cheap cell phone camera and voila, the mage shows up clear as day.

I only swallowed that bull drek for it picking up ghosts on Supernatural because it was funny. They even had an entire episode dedicated to how stupid it was (the one where they end up on a movie set for the filming of some horror movie).

If the mage failed to beat the OR of the Cellphone camera, yes.

In that case if said guard wants to shoot the mage, there's a significant penalty for trying to use a cellphone camera to aim a gun.

For that matter, if you used electronic vision enhancement on your contacts, I wonder if that wouldn't require an OR4 to beat them since you're not using your actual eyes, but the display link from the contacts or glasses.... hmmm.

Certainly Cybereyes would be affected because you paid essence for them. And since mages with cyber eyes who paid essence to get them can use them to cast spells, it would make sense that the OR is ignored for cyber eyes because they're now part of your aura.

I'm not saying it makes sense, but that appears to be RAW/RAI... which makes me scratch me head.

Enter the smarklink (its a camera...on the end of your gun)



See?



Object Resistance is FUBAR.

I'd go to a different result.

the Magic rules are FUBAR... Direct Damage spells with no resistance rolls, OR period, Improved Invis, etc...

Theres more magic that makes no sense than magic that does.

It's magic

that's fair to a degree...

But it would be nice from a game perspective to have it be consistent within the rules framework, and consistent within itself.

in other words, mages suddenly find that the spells they had cast the same way for years now suddenly behave differently. would not be the first time magic throws a curveball the moment you think you have it figured.

basically people, stop trying to make the rules fit the fluff when both are as stable as runny jello...

its not like the shadowrun world has any kind of stable physics, least of all the magic part...

The fact is that OR was designed to simulate how hard is to affect/manipulate/sense technology with magic... but then, they forgotten that many spells don't directly affect the technology, but external elements (like the target person, or the light), and OR stayed as the "general rule". That's the case with Imp. Invisibility and Physical Mask (to name a few).

If RAI intended that you can use cellphone/smartlink/camera to see a person with Imp.Invis. using the OR, then at least they need to do an errata of the magic description... with no more "warping the light" mambo-jumbo. Or else your cellphone/smartlink/camera have some kind of magic that "un-warp" light from your Imp.Invis.

Or move Improved Invisibility out of Illusion spells and into Manipulation spells since it's actually manipulating the real world and not just creating fiction.

Well. The reasoning behind the increased drain didn't make sense because the result wanted from it was gained by the increased OR.

The increased OR however, broke/made useless other spells, ones specifically designed to circumnavigate OR, but had to deal with it anyway (think about "Shape Silicon" as a form of the spell "Shape [Material]": it's a spell specifically designed to FUBAR computer circuitry, yet has to overcome the OR6 of computers rather than the plain OR4 (OR3?) for manufactured materials!)

I have half a mind to fiddle around with the self-proposed change to skill caps (olympic level skills are rating 12 rather than 6, which puts a heavy emphasis on skills than attributes as intended by the attribute change and I didn't have to change karma costs! Though they would be lowered under this system--char gen still caps out as normal, as this is to allow places for the characters to grow). Spellcasting 12 being the epitome of casting, with magic 6 would give you 18 dice: the best mage ever now can hit an OR of 6.

Now. What kinds of things should the best mage ever be blowing out of the sky on a 50-50 basis? Fucking helicopters (as brought up in one of the Wreck/Demolish threads: "OR4 seems low for a heli"). Extrapolating down from there it would seem to me that OR should be based both on size AND complexity:

OR0: small rocks, sticks
OR1: a living plant
OR2: a tree, simple electronic device (wrist watch), boulders (full cubic meters of natural material, including refined ores*)
OR3: small simple objects (security camera, micro-drone), processed materials (full cubic meters of plastic and other man-made materials of low structure)
OR4: larger machines (washing machines, small drones), advanced materials (full cubic meters of reinforced armored plastisteel)
OR5: simple vehicles (your average sedan, motercycles, large drones, etc)
OR6: complex vehicles (helicopters, small aircraft, semi-trucks)
OR7: large complex vehicles (747s, rockets, etc)
OR8: small buildings.
...

You get the idea. Using Imp. Invis and beating a comlink would be OR3: doable at low magic, but difficult. Drones are OR4 to OR5 depending on size (an iBall droen would even be OR3 due to it being the size of an eyeball).

*After eating lunch I figured I should be a little more clear: I'm referring to bulk raw iron, etc. rather than deformed sheet metal that would make up a more complex object. Unless the spell is worded otherwise: Wreck Sheet Metal would blow holes in the side of a white paneled van (at OR2) because you're pushing your magical force against a part of the overall machine: no need to overcome the complexity of the internal combustion engine (OR5) at the same time.

You know, that's the kind of OR table I've been mentally using for YEARS.

Because no way is a semiballistic OR4.

Right. Though that was based on a skill maxing out at 12. If a skill caps out at 6 (and 6 in the attribute), then we're looking at a "best mage ever" at 12 dice (not 18) though unspecialized and without any equipment. So I might squeeze my 8 level of OR into 6. OR3 and OR4 would combine as well as OR5 and OR6, another possibility of OR1 and OR2.

OR1: plants/trees
...
OR4: large machines/small drones
...
OR6: vehicles

I wrote something on this a while ago. It's here in its original form, but basically the idea was to use multipliers. It's a lot more elegant than an ever expanding table.I wrote it with a view to handling Possession, but it's based around OR and works very well for other things too. it doesn't make quite as much sense with Illusions ("the bigger they are, the harder they are to turn invisible to?") but it's the best fit I could come up with short of reworking the spells themselves. What do you think?

K.

Looks pretty good. I will agree that in some respects it doesn't make sense to be Invisible more easily with a smaller object, but in terms of computers a small drone has less redundancy and lower quality cameras (a pinhole camera on a dragonfly drone is not going to capture images the same way: they'll be distorted, so distortions from magic would go unnoticed; likewise a handheld camcorder isn't going to get the same image as a professional quality movie camera). Your small drones will have small cameras, your large drones are going to have more sophisticated cameras and more of them.

Ooo! Good rationalisation! *yoink*

I'm a digital media arts major. I can look at a picture and tell you how good of a camera you had taking it. Ok, that's a lie. But I did have much experience with both still and moving pictures: taking them, editing them, and such. The higher quality the camera, even slightly, made a huge difference when mucking around with the image in photoshop: less grain, more pixels, higher color depth (we scanned our black and white film at 16 bit grayscale: most monitors can't display that! They're stuck at 8bit color).

Same thing with film. Having used a professional level camera (both as intended with lights and in poor light) I know that the image quality comes out better. Now, when I didn't have the lights it looked ok on the LCD screen, but turned out like shit later because likely the camera was still expecting those lights and they weren't there (I was under a short time schedule and was rushing, I paid for it, fortunately it wasn't important and just something I was doing for myself).

I have a digital SLR. The lower end of the range but still as good as I could make use of. It's 12.2MP and some would look at that and think that a 10MP compact is close to it in quality because of the numbers. Doesn't work like that at all. I took some pictures of mist rising from a pool at night and it captured it wonderfully. I would never have got that fine detail or that colour with a compact. I'm still learning all the details of colour balance etc. Full respect to anyone who knows what they're doing with all that.

K.

SLRs are good cameras already. +1 Karma to you for owning it.
MP numbers have also gone up a lot since I last looked at cameras, but yes it's pretty easy to tell the difference between cameras with a significant MP difference. There's also other factors, such as the quality of the lenses.

The CCD in digital cameras is nothing else then the film was in classical analogue ones.
They are important but by far not as important as the ads make them.
Unless you want to produce big posters from your photos the MP of all modern digital cams should be enough anyway.

The silliness here is that a computer is OR6, and that cellphone camera is integrated into your commlink (re: portable computer). It's harder to affect that unmodified Metalink than it is to fool a security camera.

This is quite true. You do need sufficient pixel depth (number of MP) in order to match analog film quality (though for most applications you'll be scaling the image down in order to have the "best" pixels represented), but the shutter speed, aperture variability, and lense quality all have an effect (one of the things that drives me nuts about modern digital cameras is that my aperture settings are very restricted, 2.2 to 5.2 is the widest I've seen; come on people, I want an f0.5!).

Then why not allow cameras a perception test against the hits achieved by the spell caster to see if they detect it, as a R1 camera likely doesn't have the resolution, and a rating 20 camera likely couldn't help but spot the inconsistencies?

That would better model the effect you claim is occurring, making the effect of the spell actually believable. Because making a stealth check with ruthenium polymer armor in front of a camera does NOT require you to beat it's OR with your stealth check, but to beat its perception check with your stealth skill.

Of course, most current consumer and cellphone cameras going for MP alone are best classed as visual noise generators.
If you ever need a random seed in your cellphone - there is one.

All the time. How do I access it?

Ask the manufacturer...

I wouid argue they are NOT affected by the spell, but affected by the light the spell creates. The photons striking the optical sensor are not in fact magical, just like a lightning bolt a mage casts is no longer magical. It was created by magic sure, but it, in and of itself is not magical.

Both are, as defeated by Counterspelling.

Right, but the reason you have to overcome OR is not because of "magical light" but due to your ability to make the observed image be correct: that is, if you make yourself look like a blue whale, then you're not invisible. The spell worked, but no one is fooled.

Unfortunately not. The RAW disagree directly with the fluff and, of course, common sense. Near as I can tell, there was a stupid mistake in writing the original one where the bit about making tech invisible got editted into making drones automatically see through invisibility at about 3AM, and now people are too stubborn to admit it.

For extra points, why are mana illusions (which only affect minds) not mental manipulations, and physical illusions (which play with actual light, by fluff and, y'know, logic) not physical manipulations? I'm seriously considering just making mental and physical manipulations different groups, seperating Illusions and mind control spells between them and calling it improved. It doesn't affect the clear holes in the system RAW, but then that's so easily HRed away than it may as well be.

Because they wanted a 5-Category spell system.

Indirect Combat spells should also be included in Physical Manipulation, while Direct Combat spells could fall in either Manipulation or Health.

The magical theory is a little muddled in Shadowrun. Physical illusion spells ought to be Illusion spells (capital 'I') because thematically you want to be able to lump them in with the rest of the illusion spells. You don't want Coyote blessing his shamans with enhanced trickery ability except where a commlink camera is pointed at them, you don't want to force your character concept of an illusionist to merge being good at illusions with being good at telekinetically throwing things. At least most don't. So the spells are organised along the lines of magical concepts rather than scientific methods of achieving them. Unfortunately the temptation to insert a little scientific rationalisation into the spell description created a conflict with this. It's like how in 2nd Edition, I had a Manipulation specialist who could flatten anything in Combat with his "Spark" spell. All the spells that are Indirect Combat spells now were Manipulation spells then on the basis of trying to use a scientific explanation to order spells. Now they are more properly rolled into Combat and that works out better to my mind. Illusion were already in their correct thematic category but the attempted scientific rationale makes it seem like they shouldn't be. But really there's no reason why spells from different categories can't use similar principles so Illusion spells can use physical manipulation just the same as Manipulation spells can. It's a thematic breakdown not scientific methodology, just like the Navy has some aircraft even though they're not the Air Force.

IMO.

I was actually suggesting that illusion and manipulation get merged and then divided, still leaving five categories (Mind Games and Physical manipulation, perhaps). The difference between combat and health and physical manipulation is ... chancy at best.



Whilst I know this is their intent, it doesn't mesh with the system very well. Coyote, after all, is more concerned with fooling minds than photographs. If you want to specialise in making illusions a camera can see, why are you learning spells to throw things? If the intent is for thematic differences to matter then the system should support themes, which does lead you down the path of D&D's spell keywords, but there you go. The current categories aren't doing the job well - Fling, for instance, is clearly a combat spell. ::shrugs:: It's playable, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Now ask yourself the logic in that?
It says the spell alters light.
The description of physical invisibility says it bends light around the target of the spell.
So the trajectory of the photons has been changed, but it is still the same nonmagical photon.
The spell is NOT affecting the sensor in anyway shape or form, it is altering the path the light takes to get to the sensor.
The RAW of physical illusion spells does not make any sense. How could the camera possibly see the target if there are NO photons reflecting off the target for the camera to detect, and the camera can ONLY see light?
Using you logic, if I cast invisibility in a pitch black room the camera can see the target just fine because it somehow breaks the OR and just as many photons are headed from the target to the camera as there would be in broad daylight, ie NONE.

Then why is it as easy to fool a R1 camera with a R1 clear soft, as it is to fool the highest possible rating camera with the highest possible best software. According the chart, BOTH a just cameras.

These sorts of questions are why if/when I start up a group of my own that illusion based spells will give a visibility modifier to perception tests. Force 5 Improved Invisibility? 5 Hits? Great. -5 DP penalty for people & objects to detect you. Objects that can detect you will get a DP bonus equal to OR since the more techie it is, the better the hardware is likely to be. GM adjustments as needed for consistency (high tech drone with a crappy camera for example).

I knew it was trouble when they gave a scientific explanation for a Magical effect. I think Improved Invisibility would be far better served to just say "it's magic" than trying to give scientific rationalization. Otherwise one runs into problems such as this, or the Vampire that wants to get around his Sunlight allergy by casting Improved Invisibility on himself ("The sunlight isn't actually hitting me!"). The other problem is that if all light photons are being bent around the subject of the spell, they would not be able to see anything either.

Questions like these are why I'm building a conjuring and health-spell focused mage, probably with some mind-control thrown in for good measure O.o
If he gets a direct-damage spell, it's going to be lightning bolt. He probably won't bother, though.

I never said it was an explanation I liked.

This is a wee bit belated, but I felt I needed to comment on this, especially in regards to the changes to Attribute costs.

I've sat down and done some math, comparing raising attributes in the previous rating x 3 system, earning 5 karma on the average run, to the new system where attributes cost rating x 5, earning an average of 9 on a run.

Basically the results were that attributes in the new karma payout system will actually increase at a slightly faster rate, assuming you save up the karma per session for them. Example, to raise a troll's Strength to 10 in SR4 costs 30 karma. Assuming 5 karma per run, that's 6 sessions before you can afford to raise it. In SR4A, Strength 10 costs 50 karma. Assuming 9 karma per run, it works out to be 5.56 runs, rounded up to 6. You'd do the same number of runs and wait the same amount of time in order to raise that same attribute. This was the case in all instances where I did the math between attributes and metatypes.

However, assuming you could get your attributes where you wanted them to in chargen, the increased karma awards mean things that use up karma (aside from attributes) will actually increase FASTER now assuming you don't divert karma into them. Skills will increase faster, you can put more karma into complex forms and spells, ally spirits won't take quite as long to save up karma for, bonding foci will be faster, etc. While attributes cost more and keep up with the increase, nothing else does, and thus they are actually cheaper in the new system.

Given Synner's revelations to us, his stated intentions of putting the missing karma adjustments into the book and PDF, and how the numbers worked out, I'm hereby recanting my position at being opposed to the new karma costs for attribute raises. This doesn't keep me from disliking alot of the other changes in SR4A, but now at least the biggest problem I had with it is no longer an issue, and I can concentrate on trying to enjoy myself now.

Man, I turn away for a FEW HOURS and pages appear in this thread!

For those who believe OR changes in SR4A have nerfed spells that affect objects, please take a look at the discussion in this thread for evidence to the contrary.

I'd like to object to your assertion that your thread shows evidence to the contrary, or at least, that it is conclusive evidence to the contrary (as you seem to imply). What it does show is accurate statistics concerning the issue that we've been discussing. However categorically calling a statistic proof of your argument is flawed, at best. They show that a person with a die pool of 12 has a chance to succeed with a threshold of 4 and a very low chance for a threshold of 6. This chance increases quite a bit as you move toward 20+ dice. No one claimed the contrary. What we did say, however, was that 12 (or 14 as you asserted was our claim) was an investment in being good at that sort of magic, 14-16 dice was an even greater investment, and that this cost was well worth being able to consistently affect even the most complicated of technology.

I have asked, repeatedly even, why people think OR4 was "trivial" (and this was the exact term used). As your statistics show, and as I claimed, an OR4 is not trivial by any means. I've never said that OR4, or OR6 even, was impossible to reach. Having such a die pool represents a significant investment in karma and nuyen. My argument has never been that mages should be good at dealing with technology, or even moderately good at it. My argument has simply been that this claim that something is "trivial" is obviously wrong and doesn't take into account any of the costs involved. I've invested several days in this discussion and have yet to actually have someone give a responsive answer.

I finally read how bows were capped in damage. Um whatever, why did they even bother. Str min 12 is the max??? x1.5 str min is the cap to damage. Um wow caped at 18DV I feel so much better now. Why didn't they just I don't know fix the damn thing and make it work like all other muscle powered weapons and be str/2+2. It would still to good damage for strong people, it would work within the given system better, oh and it would not make every other muscle powered archaic weapon look lame.

Were those last 3 points of troll strength really that scary.

Dunsany, there are many people posting on this issue who are not as careful about what they say as you are. I don't recall actually trying to argue against anything you said. Many have indeed referred to the 14 dice pool, which is why I arbitrarily selected that one. And many have argued that Illusion and other spells are no longer effective against complex objects. I provided evidence to the contrary, showing at least one example in which the assertion of ineffectuality is not true.

I used words such as 'evidence' and 'my conclusion'. I did not use the word 'proof'. When a writer 'seems to imply', it is sometimes the case that the reader infers.

However, since you bring it up, in order to prove a categorical statement such as, for example, "With the new OR rules, illusion spells cannot affect drones unless the PC has crazy dice pools" is false, one would only need to show one example in which a non-crazy dice pool is capable of affecting drones. The example I provide could be used in that fashion.

My purpose was to bring a concrete example into the discussion that would temper wild claims that have less basis than their authors assert.

I agree that concrete examples are better, what I disagree on is what you claim your concrete example shows. The argument has been that OR4 is "trivial". To counter this, I and others have said that OR4 is *not* trivial. None of us claimed that it was impossible, thought perhaps some people did overstate our position. Your statistics show that OR4 (and OR6) is *possible*. But as this doesn't counter our point, it has little relevance except to give us numbers that we can use in our various arguments. Which is good, but not conclusive.

I maintain that the new OR rules make illusion spells effectively useless for all but magicians with extremely high investments in a specific type of magic. Keep in mind that the examples given have only been good at casting the spells in one group, like illusions, while the objections to magic as a whole have been that "mages can do everything." You've shown that people with high die pools have the only reliable chance to even be successful in casting spells useful against OR6. I've still seen no arguments that counter my argument that having a die pool that reliably gets 4 successes isn't "trivial."

To use concrete examples:
It currently takes 11 dice to be successful better than 50% of the time (52.7% actually) on spells that require only a threshold of 4 and no other hits. Under the new system it will take 17 dice for the same action (this comes out to 52.2%). My conclusion from this is that a strong mage currently has an okay (but not great) chance to use such spells on drones/computers. A specialist, or someone with a decent amount of karma and the resources to have branched out a bit, can do so reliably. Under the new system this same strong mage has a 12% chance to use this spell successfully (keep in mind that this mage would still suffer drain for even trying). The specialist doesn't even have the "okay" chance that the strong mage had previously at least not until they *really* specialize, at 17 dice, and need 20+ dice to be as reliable as that specialist was before. If 20+ dice isn't a "crazy" dice pool in your game then what is a "crazy" die pool? Perhaps my definition of reliable doesn't equate with yours (I'm looking at about a 70% success rate)?

That thread actually shows evidence that spells that affect objects HAVE been nerfed. I have no clue how you can figure otherwise. In all cases, you are less likely to affect cameras, drones, or higher-tier objects in SR4A than SR4. That is the textbook definition of a nerf.

No, no, no. You don't get it. It's not a nerf, you can easily increase your DP (simply add a few dice and voila) to achieve the same results as before. So, that's not a nerf, see? Really conclusive.

Yes, this annoys me to no end right now.

So they were nerfed. Okay. Who cares? Oh, I get it. Those that hate it that a change in rules might impose a change in a character build to reoptimize it. Well, nevermind.

Or maybe those, who have heard of a magical word called "consistency". Now that regular people/mages are excluded from achieving difficult tasks, powergaming will reign supreme. I dislike powergaming. If I see a change that enforces it, I'm not happy. At all.

Your lack of perspective does not mean the rules/changes are fine.