Yes. and it's good, IMHO, that those have troubles with drones.

"Sorry, I cannot lift your commlink. That 13 ton weight over there? No Problem." Yeah, that sounda really good and makes really sense.

Really? So if a security guard is watching a bank of screens (AR though they may be) and a man with a three hit Physical Mask walks into view of one of the cameras, what does he see? Does he need to make a perception check to see that the illusion isn't perfect? Does the camera automatically fritz the image and show static? Does camera reveal the hidden face?

A camera cannot tell if an illusion is a good one or not - it will report a Watchmen smiley-face as well as a perfect reproduction of Damien Knight. The software looking for people, however, can note that there's something wrong. And it's limited by the resolution of the image, the Sensor rating. Your own argument does, in fact, argue that the sensor software is what matters. Which, frankly, is nicely balanced since it means you can stroll past a dumb terminal and get caught out by the advanced security drones.

How about a Force 7, 7 hits Physical Mask making you look like a leprous ghoul - now that the camera has spotted no flaws in your disguise, should the software then automatically let you pass?

I'm beginining to think of an houserule fix for this. Something along the lines of, "living things have good auras and are easy to affect, and the further from living and more processed you get, it gets harder. The bigger something is, because spells affect whole targets, the bigger the OR much as with Levitate and the mass scaling. Thus a +0 (living) to +3 (circuitboards) threshold modifer, and +1 per 200kg of target. As with reducing or increasing radii of combat spells, you can fiddle the dice-pool accordingly to affect smaller parts of things eg. Shatter-ing a hole in a door. Physical illusions are resisted by Sensor+Clearsight."

What I can say is that this was my intent with the change in ORs of illusion spells. The fact that most drone and vehicle sensor packages were already sufficient to pierce most illusions when combined (per the standard SR4 rules and Arsenal) also factored into the equation. In practice, the high-end OR increase to drones and vehicles should changes very little as far as Illusion spells are concerned. Yes, they are significantly harder to fool, but they are/were inconsequential in the face of basic drone sensor packages that include radar and motion sensors.

I think (as I said) that the more complex something is, the harder it should be to affect it with magic directly. That gives magic a nice flavor.

Save that complex things are easier to break, yes. Levitating a comlink should not be harder than levitating a rock of equivalent size - they have broadly the same composition, after all. Fixing, a comlink, however, should be damn near impossible with magic. Magic's area of excellence is in the way it interacts with minds and bodies, and that's where is does things that tech can't.

There we disagree. More complex things are not easier, but harder to break with direct magic use (as opposed to dropping a dr0ck on said commlink), in my opinion.

You don't need to overcome the OR of an object to affect it by Levitate or Fling. There are few Manipulation spells that you need to overcome OR for (Fix, Ignite and Pulse if I remember correctly).

With all the dued respect I have to say that the reasons presented sounds to me as an attempt to just tell us "the things are just fine this way" executed in a lame way; yes I know I have been blunt, and not particulary diplomatic, but seriously speaking your post does address the problem of a treshold of 6 but doesn't make sense from a logical point of view, a spell that doesn't alter how the sensor processes the feed but alters the feed itself shouldn't require to beat OR unless ti does so by creating the effect within the sensor (for cameras it wolud be projecting an hologram on the lens), and you have said that invisibility creates an hologram around the person/thing that it is meant to be concealed, making the OR non relevant (logicaly speaking).
My suggestion (and not mine alone) is to make the spells treshold for perception/sensor tests, in this way high sensors and softwares will pose a better challange than Joe Average's setup, and invisibility won't be an all or nothing thing that goes from no way to fool the sensor to no way to get cought with nothing in betwen (even a sensor 2 clearsight soft 2 will have a chance of spotting a target protected by a force 4 improved invisibility, even if the chance is a meager 1,24%), just think about how this approach could make illusion spells and stealth skills complementary instead of redundant combo.
Personaly I think that you underastand our points but can't acknowledge them for economical reasons, you have already sent the book to the printer, making the changes now would mean having books going unsold because the costumers are aware that another updated/better version will be out soon and will prefere to pay just once obtaining the best deal possible, unsold books would cause problems for retailers (D20 docet) which would in turn cause problems to you to find/keep retail channels for your products; in the end a such development would harm you, and considering that you make a living publishing SR material it's understable if you try to tell us that it's just fine this way, even if you want to tell us that we are right you have to tell us otherwise to not endanger the source of the income that feeds your families, even at the cost of pissing off some fans (kind like shadowrunners, doing things that they don't like in order to make a living). Due to this convinctions I'm sure that it will take a while for you to aknowledge what we are saying (maybe the time for another printing) and when it will happen it will probably be under the guise of a "twiking the rules" section; I just hope that for future cruch books you will send the books to the printers only after some community based betatesting trought the PDF (a thing asked in a petition recently), it will be better for us that will come to have printed versions that are closer to the concept of final, and for you that will be able to commercialize better products without the risk of finding yourself with outdated books that you can't sell (PDFs are easier to replace than printed paper).

Peace.
AllTheNothing

While this method would be reasonable, I don't see how anyone would come to it through what is written in the book. I'm glad that you've stated you'll clarify this.

However, I have one concern: If this is the proper way to handle drones and illusion spells then when, exactly, would you ever need to deal with an OR6? Computers and Drones can only sense things outside of themselves with sensors. If the sensors are considered separate from the computer or drone using them, then there will be no time where an illusion needs to "beat" the computer or drone.

Frankly, this method seems overly complicated for no gain on the part of your system. If the intent was to make a certain subset of spells harder to use on technology, why not just change *those* spells. This change not only affects all spells (and some in ways seemingly not intended) and forces you to redefine what the difference between "sensor" and "computer" is within your game setting, it also makes the GM decide on every individual basis whether something is a "sensor" or a "computer" in its own right.

Now I'm confused.
Would it be possible to add 'Sensors' to the examples listed in the OR Table with Errata?

I'm not entirely sure if most Drones have large enough default Sensor Packages to fit in Radar, though.

Only if one follows the fact that first a Sensor Package is created, then installed in a vehicle...

That's a very interesting point - there is no Essence protecting non-living objects to be treated as a whole, so you should be free to target individual parts, at a lower OR, possibly: Destroying only the windows or tires of a car, etc.

The OR table is a broad abstraction, listing only few examples.

And the Levitate spell has a treshold of 1 every 200 kg, so 13 tons has a treshold of 65 that would require something like 195 dices to have a probability around the 50-60% of not failing.

EDIT:
according to the table at the end of Street Magic (blue edition), the manipulation spells that need to beat OR are:

Animate
Fix
Glue
Glue Strip
Lock
Mass Animate
Pulse
Shape [material]
Ignite is classified as resisted with Body but requires beating OR for non living targets

The OR table lists drones and computers at a specific threshold and electronics at another threshold. The book doesn't really say what a drone or computer is for magical purposes. I'd assume that most people's intuition would be that when the book says a drone they mean the entire drone and when they say a computer they mean the entire computer. I don't think that most people would differentiate between parts of a drone or computer's hardware, whether it's the flight mechanism on the drone or a camera attached to the computer. At least not when referring to something as a "drone" or a "computer." So, if the intent was that you would be able to affect the parts of a computer or drone instead of just the drone or computer then I maintain that this isn't explicitly stated, nor implied, in the book.



While I agree that people should be able to target separate pieces of non-living objects there is no clear answer as to how this works in the book. This would have been a fine thing to clarify in an errata, I think. On a side note, while I also agree that the magic of the setting implies that you cannot target parts of a living whole (cyberware "purchased" with essence included) I've never been able to actually find that rule. It may be somewhere in the book and I've simply missed it, but no one has pointed it out to me when I've asked either. If you know if it, I'd love for you to point it out. And if it isn't there, this would also be something that I'd have loved to see clarified in an errata (or future supplement).



I agree that this is true. I'm not sure how this addresses my claim that the change is unnecessarily complicated for its stated goal. I'm not saying that the OR table isn't complicated to some degree (there's certainly room for some disagreement as to where a specific technology should fall on the table). But it's a decent guideline and, I think, given the appropriate amount of space in the book. It could, perhaps, use a little more description of what exactly "electronics equipment" means, or some of the other terms even. But that's not really a priority since different games can have different ideas and they *probably* won't vary that much. But the new change adds complications in order to meet a goal that could be met in a simpler manner. This is usually defined as "needless complication."

I was addressing the "can't levitate a commlink" error rather than the "can levitate 13 tonnes" error.

And I choose to add some spice.

We are actually discussing two different things here. On is the interaction of Physical Illusion spells and sensors of various sorts and the other is the raise in OR.

Part of the explanation I offered details the rationale behind the functioning of Physical Illusion spells and sensors, regardless of the actual OR to affect them (so regardless of whether you're referring to SR4 or SR4A). In essence that part of my post is simply a clarification of the function of Physical Illusion spells as described in either version of SR4 (p.201, SR and p. 208 SR4A):



From your response above I have the feeling you are also misunderstanding part of my explanation, or otherwise I was unclear. What I was saying is that a Physical illusion isn't cast at the sensor, but rather it is cast on something the sensor then "senses". In the case of a visual illusion the spell doesn't affect the "lens" of the camera at all, it simply drapes a "magic hologram" illusion (in the case of Physical Mask a mask, in the case of Imp. Invisibility an image showing empty space) over the body of the person that the camera is seeing. The sensor then percieves it normally and either the illusion is good enough to pass scrutiny or it isn't - hence my comment on detail, realism, versimilitude, etc.

Also note that at no point does the spell type description or my explanation say it's an all or nothing affair. The description above only states what happens if the viewer/device fails to resist. It could very well be that the illusion still works to some degree but the sensor is still able to identify it as an illusion.

Please note that whether you like this part of my explanation or not has nothing to do with changes in SR4A, since it works the same in both versions of the rules. WHat was changed in SR4A is the diffi


In both SR4 and SR4A the developers (in the latter case, me) opted for the streamlined approach of maintaining the mechanics of Mana and Physical Illusions identical, rather than making them (unnecessarily) mechanically distinct.


You are mistaking my intent, for one I am no longer Shadowrun Line Developer, not that that stopped me from posting something to this effect about a week ago. I am merely explaining part of the rationale behind the functioning of Physical Illusion spells and OR (in both versions of the rules).

Regarding the actual changes to the ruleset, notably the OR situation: I do understand your position(s) and acknowledge what you (and others) are saying, I happen to disagree with them. I stand by all the changes made in SR4A including the changes to thresholds and OR.

The changes to OR especifically were meant to change the balance of several aspects of the magic system across the almost all the spell categories (Combat, Detection, Illusion, and Manipulations) and generally address what I continue to feel is a setting inconsistency in the imbalance of Magic and technology (where the former is able to affect, complement, and boost the latter with far too much ease, and the opposite is hardly true). Several threshold/OR alternatives were playtested (1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,5; and 1,2,4,6), after analyzing feedback on the impact on the various magical systems, I opted for the one I continue to feel best represents the inherent difficulty mana should have in affecting highly complex technological devices (regardless of spell type involved). This choice is entirely my responsability.

Now, you may find my successors may not agree with me and you may indeed find changes in some elements of the SR4A rules in the final release and the relevant PDF update. In fact, I'm absolutely sure you will find changes since many of the problems (such as the Karma Awards Table that wasn't updated) and errata detected since the original SR4A PDF release were in the process of being fixed before I stepped down as Lead Developer - whether these changes will extend to a revision of thresholds and ORs you'll have to wait and see.

Thank you very much, but that was not really my point. I try to ridicule this with a different approach, then.

So, a good camera cannot see a mediocre illusion, which is basically just a picture. If the picture is not "pretty" enough, the camera does not percieve it. Does that mean, if I showed a camera a crude picture, would it go unnoticed? What about people? Do complex cameras not see ugly people?

I really see no reason why any spell that creates an image should compete with OR to determine if it will be recorded, or not. It just doesn't make sense.

Again, I want to reiterate that this aspect of the rules has not changed from SR4 to SR4A..

Regardless, I believe you are laboring under the erroneous assumption that Physical Illusions either work or they don't. This is a mistake.

I refer you to the relevant section on Physical Illusions (in both versions of the rules). At no point does it say that the illusion fails if it is resisted (or, in this case, that the camera fails to percieve it or record it). What it says is that if it/he resists the spell, the observer determines "that the illusion is not real."

In the case of Physical Illusions the camera (and a living observer) cannot fail to see the illusion. There's no way it cannot see it, since the illusion (better or worse) is actually manipulating light (and/or sound, and/or potentially other senses) to alter what the observer is seeing (as opposed to altering what the observer thinks it's seeing, which is what Mana Illusions do). However if the Spellcaster fails to be the OR the camera whether its a digital marvel or a primitive photoplate version is simply able "to "determine that the illusion is not real." And no point does it say that the spell has no effect and that no Physical Illusion is generated. What it does say is that the illusion is obviously "not real" to the "perceiver" (ie. maybe the camera catches light refracting off the real person under the illusion or shadows he puts off and isn't fooled, maybe the magical hologram isn't solid enough and the camera sees it as slightly transparent or incomplete, it might fade in and out, etc).

Synner, did anyone ever considered the hypotesis of making a book with otional alternate systems for the ones that are less on the streamlined side of the spectrum? something that allowes GMs and players cater better the rule set to their liking?

Yes. "Mr. Johnson's Companion" was/is the working title. It's one title I'm sorry I won't be around to develop.

I'd just like to point out that an OR of 4 for the purposes of resisting an illusion is the statistical equivalent of about 11 dice and OR6 is roughly 17 dice (~50% probability of N dice making R or more successes).

Is technology supposed to be that good? Most people have all of 3 to 8 dice and people are harder to fool than machines (spam vs. spam filters: spam can still get through the filter, but the user won't be fooled).

Besides, what kind of logic indicates that it is just as hard to blow up (Wreck [Security Camera]) something as it is to fool it with an illusion?

It's not a question of technology being that good. To put it simply, it's a question of the mana in those magical holograms having a hard time making them "believable" to technological sensors (just like its hard for the mana in that Wreck spell to affect the technological device). This has always been the case, SR4A just raised the OR from 3 to 4 and from 4 to 6.

But let me reverse the issue: how good is technology at affecting and measuring magic, magical constructs, spirits, alchaera, etc?

Ahem, this:



Seems to imply some kind of image analyzation software specifically designed to find magical illusions in real time. I'm sorry, but my willing suspension of disbelief just failed.

Yes, technology will get better in 60 years, but do you have any idea how hard it is to get a machine to recognize a bright pink BALL? If you math is off, it starts picking up WOODEN DESKS! Trust me. I've done this (fortunately not my homework). For me to swallow your proposition about technology being super good at picking up the flaws in an illusion you're going to have to explain how a computer can be programmed to detect very subtle differences that would vary from casting to casting and mage to mage.

For example, if I show you a real-time-speed movieclip of a guy getting blown up and then asked you as you were watching it the first time if you could pick out the frame where they made a cut and the guy leaves and the bomb explodes, could you do it?

Knowing that it was done is very different from being able to, while watching in real time, go "There! That bit is off!"

In the same vein, if magic is that easy to detect than looped film footage created by the hacker would be even easier to detect as that film loop is plainly obvious to any human observer after about 3 minutes (and they subconsciously suspect it after the second loop).

I made no mention of image analysis software or even of an observer on the other end of the camera feed. I simply indicated that the illusion that reaches the camera isn't perfect (is obviously "not real") if you failed to meet the OR. My post above also offers some possible examples:

"maybe the camera catches light refracting off the real person under the illusion or shadows he puts off and isn't fooled, maybe the magical hologram isn't solid enough and the camera sees it as slightly transparent or incomplete, it might fade in and out, etc"

All I meant is that anyone sitting at the other end of the camera feed or an image processing program will be able to see what the camera sees, and that is that the illusion is an illusion.

I want to reiterate that the issue being discussed is not-directly related to the OR increase issue since this was the system under SR4 basic rules too.

I know that. It was stupid before and has become more stupid with increased dificulty.

Really? So if I don't hit the treshold, the illusion still works? Why, that's fantastic, I will never again have to roll for illusions then.

Seriously though, if there is a treshold and I don't manage to beat it, the camera will not see my illusion, meaning it does not work. Telling me the camera sees it, but know it's not real is plain silly. The guy watching the cameras feed should not see a diffrent image, just because the camera decided "it's not real".

So what about looking through a camera makes illusions obvious when the same spell cast at the same force with the same net hits would not be obvious to the same observer NOT looking through a camera?

Who knows, it's not like there was much talk about mana tech in the books. And while technology get's better at interacting with magic, magic's grasp on technology degrades rapidly. Way to go in a setting where both co-exist, but one get's suckerpunched because of some moronic munchkin wankers with abnormal dicepools.

To add onto this:
Drones do not have a human observer behind them, they have a computer, with autosofts. The autosofts are doing the analysis and thus are a fillin for the human observer. Enter Clearsight + Sensor Rating vs. Spell.

It's stuff like above that has me looking at making the OR for sensors be equal to the sensor rating. Couple that with the Illusion spell's Force + Hits in a resisted test against the Sensor + Software.

I cast the spell at Force 5, get 3 Hits. That's 8 dice.

The Sensor is Rating 3 & has Rating 3 Software running it. That's 6 dice.

Roll both sets and see who has the more hits. Get enough hits to meet / exceed the OR, and voila! You're golden. If you only got 1-2 net hits, it's still a success of sorts but you may have someone investigating the sensor ghost depending on the operator. If the sensor wins, you are made. Expect resistance or at least a security alert.

The above means against poor / low quality sensors, it won't take much to sneak past them. Against the high end stuff, you need to bring your AAA game and be ready to play. I wouldn't want to go against a Rating 6 Sensor run by Rating 6 Software. That would suck.

Truly, OR should be used as a form of resistance test rather than some benchmark to exceed. Otherwise, you get into some really bad / illogical situations.

Excuse me while I get all (meta)philisophical here.

I think part of what is being argued is the nature of magic in the Sixth World. Since 1E, Magic and Technology have had an almost adversarial relationship in Shadowrun. It may be that we need to insert a bit of illogic into our understanding of what is going on here - since in the end, that is effectively what magic is - a breaking of the logic of the physical universe.

A mage casts his illusion spell on himself, then tries to waltz past a camera. The camera will pick up something, but if the spell fails to generate enough successes, the average observer watching the feed - or even Sixth World analysis software which likely is programmed to watch for this sort of issue - will identify that something is clearly wrong. Perhaps the image warps, or as Synner described, it fades in and out. Meanwhile, the wage slave that passes or mage in the hall is completely fooled.

Now as a GM, I might make my Security guy watching the feed roll to see if he identifies the glitch as an illusion, or if the poor sap just writes it off as "those crappy cameras the management never replaced." Either way, the lack of successes IS registered as "not right" by the camera in the form of some sort of failure to properly reproduce the illusion on the other end.

And entertainment magic isn't a big challenge either. Picture this:



He isn't overcasting - it's just stun. It might take a few tries and the number of takes will be limited by his stamina, but most likely he can get the spell off eventually and sustain it for the shoot.

Applying real world physics like "it's light - the camera should pick it up regardless" fails to take into account the "magical" aspect of magic - the fact that it isn't bound by physical laws and won't "follow the rules" of physics and frankly, doesn't interact well with technology.

I still argue that it depends on the quality of the camera and the software behind it. A drone isn't suddenly less susceptible to magic because it's a drone. It still has to follow the same rules as everything else: If a PC doesn't take the Perception skill, they're penalized for it. Same goes for the drone!

Tangental, but amusing:

What's the OR on a spy satellite in space? OR8? I guess MageBob'll never cast his illusions that well...I wonder who's looking...

So when you decided to take the streamlined approach with identical mechanics, then why did you write the unnecessarily distinct version into the book?

Metahumans roll Willpower+Counterspelling to resist, Objects Sensor+Clearsight.

There, perfectly streamlined. Same mechanic for both.

Hear, hear!

How is this not better handled by having the hits on the illusion spell be the threshold to see it?
People with eyes need to make the test... not sure why it would have been so hard to say camera's act the same way?

Yeah, I agree.

That's my favorite solution for Illusions in terms of mechanics, balance and just plain making sense.

Yep. I agree.

There's that 50% idea again, being used to justify an opinion about how hard it is to beat an OR6, and it's just wrong. A pool of 17 or 18 dice has way more than 50% chance to get 6 hits.

Now there's an argument that's hard to resist.

This has not been changed between SR4 & SR4A. Provide me a quote to the contrary. Spells (all spells, not some spells) targeting a non-living, non-magic object are subject to OR, by RAW.

A dice pool of 18 has a 58.7757% chance to score 6 or more Hits.
A dice pool of 17 has a 52.2335% chance to score 6 or more Hits.

(both numbers rounded normally to 4 decimals)

Willpower + Counterspelling should be the mana version, the one that affects the mind and forces it to ignore the spell's subject; the physical version should require the observer to spot the inconsistences in the illusion in order to disbelief it, so it would be an Ituition + Perception test for living creatures and a Sensor + Clearsight Software test for sensors.

I was just about to post exactly this - a mage counterspelling himself makes himself harder to affect with mind-influencing spells (aka Invisibility) but this shouldn't affect his view of the illusions made of bent light at the far end of the field he's standing in.

I really don't understand the fondness for the argument that physical invisibility affects the camera. Unless you're making the camera invisible, you're targetting something else and making changes. By their logic, a camera's OR must be beaten to see a Shapechange'd mage. And as for magic not following the laws of physics - it doesn't have to *except* when it causes things to happen which then do. Mana spells can do all sorts of funky stuff which is mindbogglingly complex, but once you start interacting with the physical world, things have to work properly. Otherwise it'd be trivial for magic to affect technology. You just target any spell at an item, the normal laws of physics are suspended for a moment and the tech fries itself as it catastrophically fails. And that, frankly, is a different setting. Possibly even a fun one, but it's not Shadowrun, which has complicated, whimsical and poorly understood but ultimately objective magic.

Now to me ( a relative noob I'm afraid) that makes infinitely more sense then to say that both a rating 1 visual sensor and a rating 6 visual sensor have equal ability to notice errors in a visual illusion.

I hate to bring logic into things but a comparison would be with a cheap low res picture you cant see the lines around someone's eyes / mouth so they look younger with a high end high res pic you can and it suddenly adds 10 years to their age. Doesn't matter if its real or magic the image is seen that same way and should be reflected in the rules.

Indirect Combat Spells.

Incorrect. In fact you quoted one of the very things that showed the mistake yourself.


This is repeated under the description for Manipulation spells:


This isn't quibbling. If you look at the spell descriptions you find that some of Physcial Manipulation spells specify that an OR must be overcome (such as Ignite, Pulse or Fix) and others make no reference to it (such as Levitate and Fling). Those that do are those that affect the thing in some fundamental way. Those that don't are things that affect it in a secondary way, e.g. imparting movement to it.

Magicians are absolutely fine to throw commlinks at people so long as they don't mind the rather low DV.

K.

EDIT: You are correct that this has not changed in the errata. It was always this way.

They don't target the object though. The name says it all. They target the thing they create and *it* affects the object. Fireball creates fire. The fire then burns things.

Except that I'm right this time.

Right or wrong, I don't think it is the same thing.

Let's say you want to create the illusion of a dog walking down the hallway. If you get enough hits to beat the OR of the camera, anyone viewing the feed will definitely, without question, see what is very clearly a dog walking down the hall. The only thing they'd need to make a PER test for is to notice the dog in the same way they'd notice a REAL dog passing by. The dog IS real as far as the camera is concerned. Any analysis of the data will also confirm - that really is a dog. Now this doesn't stop a person from saying "What the...? There are no dogs in here?" and disbelieving based on logic and deduction, but it will still appear real.

Now, let's say the mage fails to get enough hits. Anyone looking at the film will very clearly see that the thing that just went by was NOT a dog. They may not know WHAT went by, but they will know someone is jerking them around. Now the gamemaster may still require them to notice the 'fake dog' just like they would have to roll to notice anything else, but the dog - once noticed - is VERY clearly not real.

So I see that as the big difference - you aren't hiding in the shadows - you are either creating an effect that from the POV of the target IS real, or you fail to make something that is real. The reaction of a third party viewer to the illusion (successful or not) is something else entirely and unrelated to the spell.

Explain how this applies to drones then. How is a drone computer "better able" to distinguish one illusion as "not a real target" from another "better" illusion?

Key phrase:


Data analysis of a video feed is never in real time.

So say there's someone in the corridor with the "dog", who has very little Willpower, Intuition, Counterspelling or Perception and his identical twin is watching the monitor. Why does the guy in the hall *who can actually see the illusion* and not a low resolution image of it on a screen from an odd perspective, get fooled by it and the chap who sees it second hand not?