In 4th edition can you read physical books and text from astral space? I believe that you could not read text; instead you'd only get emotions. Is this true for pictures? Street signs (text and iconography)?
And the second part to this question is if you can not read or see pictures, why not? Is the astral world really that featureless when it comes to displaying non-magical stuff?

I'm not to magically savvy with the new rules but all that non alive materials would show up as like cold stone would through thermal I think. Objects of intense art might radiate something but i believe only magically active, alive, or natural materials are able to be distinguished not to forget background count.

If you manifest I'd say you can read just fine.

That aside, if you Assense something with enough hits, you'd get emotive auras from it.

I did not think you could read words from the astral-people cannot read street signs to see where they are. A hand wirtten note should give you the emotions of the reader but most books are mass produced by machines and would have no carry over from the author. Though a well loved book might have the emotions of the reader.

Astral Sense <> Vision

It's a sixth sense, not one of the other five.

A blind person with astral sense can still astrally perceive.

While almost all the text and descriptions use vision as a basis for describing astral perception, that's only because vision is our most used and descriptive sense that we can use to describe other senses, it's not how astral perception actually is.

So you will be able to tell that there is a street sign, but not what's written on it. That there is a book, but not what's specifically written on it.

Previous Editions basically said that you cannot read the text but you can pick up the emotive content of said text.

So if you were reading a hand-written note, say a passionate love letter, you'd pick up all the emotional qualities that went into that letter. But you'd not pick up any of the details of the text.

Think of things like so...

You have two realms... a cold, rigid logic world where everything is precise and mechanical.

The other realm is one of life, art, passions, and emotions.

The first one is the Physical Plane. The second one is the Astral Plane.

I've always likened the effect to be like an epileptic who's had the halves of his brain bisected, or staring into the 'blind spot' in your vision:

You can tell there are words, or a design. You can tell they have meaning, and what the general emotive meaning is. You may even be aware that the emblem or words are familiar, but your brain is unable to tell you what you are seeing in any detailed sense. An epileptic who's had a bisecting operation basically now has a brain whose functions MUST be bridged by certain senses. For example, if you show them a roll of tape, they will say, "That's a roll of tape" and then they can draw it. But if they close their eyes, they CANNOT tell you what it is if they hold it in their left hand, though they can draw it with their right while they hold it. If they hold it in their right hand, they can tell you it's a roll of tape, but cannot draw it with their left.

Um, manifesting GIVES you nothing. All it does is allow a living being to see a pale and ghostly image of you and be able to hear you. You are still on the astral plane, and still "see" as such. You have not changed anything about your perceptions at all.

Believe me, my game went through a whole argument on that, and I as GM had to freakin' PARSE my way through the whole text on manifesting. Unfortunately, my ruling broke my own tactic I screwed the players with (doh!) where I had a manifesting mage casting spells at them. Turns out I hosed them, since despite being manifested, my mage was still on the astral plane and unable to cast spells against Physical Plane targets. I had to do so much handwaving to get past that little error, and ended up with a very unsatisfactory retcon. DAMN!

just give him a great form guidance spirit... astral gateway is pretty evil if you use it right

Well, use magical Ink and you are good to go O.o

Oh I like that! go to a person's private libary and see what books they're particularly attached to

Previous editions made it pretty clear that you could not read on the astral. I don't think thats been formally changed, but it isn't clearly stated in any SR4 book thus far.

I can't tell if Stahlseele is joking or not, but he's totally right either way. In arsenal there is magically active ink made for the purpose of being legible on the the astral which strongly implies that regular ink is not legible.

I would personally say you couldn't read it unless the text was particularly large, to the point where you could see the difference from the astral shadow. That said you could pick up the emotional content of the book, especially if it is an emotional piece or has a lot of human interaction. You could tell if it was a dramatic epic or an instruction manual, but not any of the content. Kind of like how you can tell what two people are talking about, but you don't know the exact words.

I know my GM never allowed it. One time we were sent a thumb of a hostage as proof that the bad guys had her (they were stupid kidnappers) and so I astrally followed the trail back to her (via astral projection). But I couldn't read where I was. I had to stop and ask a local free spirit (good thing it was friendly) which street I was on.

Too bad they don't make street signs out of stamped steel any more.

If you could read braile, you'd be able to make it out from astral. That's a lost art too.

Ahem.


Edited. And also:


So what does that mean? It means manifesting mages can freaking cast mana-based spells on targets on the physical plane. The window works both ways.

It hasn't been changed (AFAIK )

HougH!
Medicineman

Interact means talking and stuff. Not channeling mana to a plane where your astral form has no footholding. You are vulnerable to mana based effects because you channel a little bit of mana to create an illusion of yourself like those nifty mana illusions which don't interact with technical stuff.
It's not stated that it goes both ways and there is no implication that it should in your quoted text.

In the shortest answer possible to this question:

No.

Only of the Book was not written using magical Ink.

Interesting thought. My first inclination was to say "No you can't!!!" but the stamped steel part is the key.

How would stamping the steel make it legible? Are you saying that if it were stamped deeply enough, one could see the astral 'shadows' of the raised text?

I think he was implying that raw stamped steel would still have something of an astral form, so it might be tangible...

Which is, of course, completely wrong.

The non-anniversary rules, as far as they go, says

It could be argued that if it's written big enough, or "spoken" using time-based encoding (such as morse code), an astral projecting mage can understand it. But touching is right out, and so does reading braille.

asteral perception has no more a sense of touch than it does a sense of vision. so how would brail work in asteral space? to say steel is living apart from the "earth mother" herself is a pretty big stretch, and would lead to a lot of grey areas.

What they are saying is that the raised steel lettering's astral shadows could be distinct enough from the other astral shadows around it to be read as text. Which is possible, depending on the situation, but normal braille would be too small to be discerned from surrounding astral shadows and a typical book's text would be unreadable.

This is all completely separate from the idea of assensing an object. If the book had some sort of psycho-emotive impact on the Astral Plane, it's possible to gain information from it without being able to "read" it at all.

It's also like drawing lines in the sand. It doesn't matter what the picture is, what matters is the sand is displaced, allowing you to see what the image is. Like crop circles. We see the image, not because the image is designed on a surface with inks and colors, but because the image is on a different altitude from the backround.

Now, if they put blood on all the dots of braille (albeit fresh blood), you could feasibly see it.

Stamped steel would have the text as part of its shape and this would reflect its astral shadow (how much this is evident is debatable, probably an assensing test is required).
For the idea of seeing while manifesting I would say that even if it wasn't like described in the errata and you were dualnatured while doing it (which would make the magician vulnerable to manabased effects and anything with an aura while being untouchable from anything that has only an astral shadow) you would still be astrally perceiving, after all your eyeballs (natural or otherwise) have been left with your shoes.

Just a little bit of a crazy idea:
Ink containing a colony if bacteria?

Or magical Ink, yes, that was the original Idea . .
Problem with the Bacteria is the fact that they tend to either die or not stay in the shape of the letters, but spread out to consume everything they can reach.
Like the Pages of the Book or something. And the Bacteria would have to live through the Ink first. And if they would eat the ink, you could not read the book anymore.

I think on closer reading the stamped steel braille would not work.


So even if one were to argue that the stamped metal (steel is probably too processed) was "living" enough to maintain an aura, it would still be insubstantial if it were not dual natured or astrally active. Same goes for crop circles, drawings in the sand and drops of fresh blood on all the braille dots.

As far as bacteria goes it could be done. Make the paper out of a nutrient rich matrix, then impregnate the blank spaces of the page outside the print with an antimicrobial agent (a la the Ames Test). The bacteria will grow where the text are, but only for a limited time (limited by lack of nutrients). The problem would be one of resolution- the text would have to be large and distinct enough to be identified- like on the order of one giant letter per page. Which makes it a little useless.

{edit: another test showing microbial inhibition...)

Hehe... what about a streetpost with the letters embossed in orichalchum? Ori shows up bright, flaming orange in the Astral.

And, about spellcasting while Manifesting: ask yourself these questions.

1) Can you cast Mana spells while astrally projecting?

2) Can you draw LOS on the Physical Plane while Manifesting?

If you answer yes to both of those, you can cast mana spells on targets on the Physical Plane while Manifesting.

The Answer is a resounding: NO!
And for those wanting to argue: HELL NO!
That has been done away with.

Also, Street-Signs with Orichalcum?
Are you bloody nuts? O.o
Even a Dragon has to work for quite some time to get a usefull ammount . .

Why not? can you actually list me a reason other than 'NO', or are you just saying no?

Really? because I remember a thread on here not too long ago about being able to generate a lof of Orichal a month, not to mention some places like that island that some megacorp didn't want (which Dunkie left them in his will), which later turned out to be pretty much made of Orichal.

Don't forget that that computer you're playing on has GOLD threaded throughout almost all components. Gold is a rare resource (which is why it is worth so much; 1 ounce is right up around 1,000 USD). I'm not talking about plating the signs in Orichal, just putting enough in there to be read from the astral.

And besides, that was hypothetical.

The NO comes from the rules.
Separation of Worlds and all that.
And that thread is, like many other threads, merely a wondering about some WTF? O.o
Spelling out that Fluff and Crunch do not play nice with each other should not be neccessary any more ^^

Hrm, i guess the bloody elves in the tirs would be willing to do something like that . .
But in a Plex like Seattle?
Once you put those up, they are taken down and molted into something usefull, like a weapon focus ^^

Can you quote a page or anything? Because as I understand the rules, if you can cast spells and draw LOS, you can cast spells at LOS (allowing you have a LOS spell). So if you can cast mana based spells while projecting, and if you Materialize you can draw LOS on the Physical, you can cast mana spells on the Physical plane.

Who in their right mind is going to waste orichalcum on a street sign? And why wouldn't have someone stolen that sign yet to sell the orichalcum?

No, you are still on the Astral-Plane. And you are not materialized, but MANIFESTED.
There's a fine but distinct Distinction.
One is a Spirit-Power, the other is something a MAgician can do to make himself seen and heard on the Mundane Plane.
But he is STILL on the Astral-Plane.
Been that way since SR3.
In SR2, there was still something called grounding, where an astralla projecting magician could channel a spell through something like an active focus or a materialized(thus DUAL NATURED) spirit.

my point exactly ^^

I meant manifested.

In any event, what page number does it say that? I don't care about SR3 or SR2; this is SR4. New rules.

I saw something in the book that said Manifesting was like Assensing. You extend your senses to the physical plane. But with Assensing you become Dual Natured.

I'm headed off to work. I guess I'll just re-re-re-re-read the sections and type something up.

Assensing is a Skill.
Astral-Perception is you standing on the real ground but looking at the astral sky and makes you dual-natured.
Standing in the Astral Sky but looking at the real Ground does not make you dual natured.

i AM at work on easter sunday, i don't have any rules handy.

*sigh*
p193. There. What is Manifesting? The paragraph there answers it. It's a psychic effect that allows an astral form to make itself visible and audible on the physical plane through an act of will. It does not create a physical form (unlike Materialization) and you can't interact with anything physically (unlike Materialization). You can't be detected, recorded or affected by technological devices (like a Mana Spell). You are still vulnerable to astral attacks. Wow. All There In The Manual.

Dot. Nothing more. It is standing there, clear for everyone to read. You want to view the material plane while projecting? Buy a plane ticket, cast Clairvoyance, hell, just paradrop there if you want. Manifesting is just a means of communicating and distracting. You just see some auras, but those auras can interact with you, which means: talk and react to the horrible sight some mages must present on the astral plane.