I think this question is big enough that it needs it's own post. In SR4A what happens to a mage that gets knocks unconscious in the astral? Some people think they port back to their body, which doesn't sound right since it seems so dangerous to have your body moved. Otherwise you could just fail enough drains to be autoported back to your body. Seems kind of cheesy. Also, does anyone have any references?

Nope.

Pick what you think is most fun or dramatic for your game. Even vary it per mage, tradition, or each instance. Sometimes it's much more fun to not know the answer.

This has been discussed before

I think the titel of this one is nearly identical to the old one as well... Eerie.

It doesn't appear that this issue got resolved in the other thread either. This is a pretty basic mechanic that should have been addressed in the rules. And yes, I think it needs to be addressed otherwise I wouldn't need a rulebook. I could make up everything and tell a story sans rules if I wanted to, but I don't. I'd like an actual rule so my players know what to expect so we can establish a consistency of sorts.

This is a tricky issue indeed. On one hand, the rules are clear that damage to the body manifests on the Astral form and vice versa. The section under Astral Combat states that damage can be either Physical or Stun (attacker's choice). However, this seems to be in conflict with the "While You Were Out..." sidebar that talks about a Magician's Astral Form continuing on after the body has died. If all Physical damage to the body affects the Astral form, you would think that the Astral form wouldn't be able to survive its condition monitor being filled up.

If one removes the "or Physical" part of Astral damage then things start to make a little more sense. All damage done to a Magician's Astral Form is recorded on the Stun track. Damage to the physical body is "felt" (vaguely) by the Astral Form, but doesn't affect it (since it is a purely "mental" manifestation). Thus, if the Stun Damage Track of a projecting Magician is filled his Astral Form would dissipate. Then you have a choice: does the Astral Form teleport back to the body, or you can make a Natural Healing check and see how long it takes the Magician to "wake up" at that point his Astral Form re-appears where it last was in the Astral, forcing the Magician to find their body again.

Conversely if Physical damage is done to the body it will not affect the Astral Form, and if the Physical Damage Track is filled, the body is dead, but the Astral Form (the "spirit") will live on for Magic x 2 hours.

<not serious>
The real answer is that they become "Magenomancers" in the great astral crash.
</not serious>
DireRadiant's answer is pure win. I especially like that he mentioned Tradition. I can't see that word enough when it comes to the astral.

I see where you guys are coming from but the "who knows" and "it's up to the GM" answer doesn't help. I, as well as others, need a "Here is what usually happens" answer. If a GM chooses to throw the character in an astral hell that they have to fight out of to get back to their body then he can choose to do so but we need to know what USUALLY happens.

Pick one and do that for your game. I promise the SR4 gaming police won't knock down your doors and take you in for reprogramming.

Though they are watching you.

Yes, yes we are.

I think found the freakin answer. In Arsenal of all places. Check page 66 and read what MageCuffs do. Here's a bit of info for you:
"Should the magician attempt any magic, including astral perception or projection, the incandescence from the glomoss triggers the shock system, and the magician resists 12S Electrical damage. The shock is designed to knock the magician out and jerk her astral form back to her body."

And to back that up check out Street Magic page 115 in the paragraph talking about tunneling throug the Earth:
"If the magician rolls a critical glitch, his astral form is disrupted; he is sent immediately back to his physical body and is knocked unconscious (fill in the character’s entire Stun Condition Monitor)."

So... it appears that when your astral form is disrupted or you get shoved back into your body, unconscious. It's a shame they couldn't just say this in the main book.

This does open up the door of intentionally disrupting yourself if you find your physical body has been moved.

On the one hand, you are guaranteed to find your body that way, but on the other hand you will be unconscious for a while when you do and are therefore helpless and at the whims of whomever has your body. Maybe thats not so bad as I think of it. Body snatching just requires things like magecuffs to keep the kidnapped mage out if they use that approach to return to their body.

I'll have to think about this some more.

Excellent Safety hack. Many kudos to you good sir.

So no worries! Instead of the paragraph in the "While You Were Out..." in the core book, just go unconscious and automatically snap back! Why bother having that paragraph if you could just do that?

BTW, I don't find any of the things mentioned mutually exclusive. For example, if the astrally projecting mage was knocked unconscious, but the body was moved, I would rule that the astral form is not returned to their body, but to where the body was.

The mage gets back to find that his body is facing the wrong way, has been moved six inches to the left, and has a mustache drawn on in permanent marker.

Oh, wait, you were asking about the astral body...




-karma

If it's indeed disruption then I don't believe the location of your spirit in relation to your body matters anymore. It simply "snaps back".

And yes, it looks like you can chain cast till drain knocks you out. That has brought up some questions in our group but I'm willing to just accept it if it means that we've got a semi-solid ruling.

Meh, it's not like stealing a Projecting Magician's body was some kind of Great Game Equalizer or anything.

Considering the "unification" of game methods in 4th Ed, I would think it would be great to make mages just like technomancers. That is to say to remove the immobile body requirement.

My group used a projecting mage in a chase scene but he didnt go far enough that it would be hard to find his body.

I say keep it just because it's another way to mess with the players.

Then again I mostly GM, so I may be biased.

Plus, as I joke above, my players tend to like pulling practical jokes on the projecting mage.

Like imitating that story about punching an unconscious victim's bunghole a few times and then dropping a used condom down his pants.



-karma

You could rule that doing damage to the mage's physical body (magecuffs) drags the astral form back. Messing up the astral form doesn't necessarily snap it back, though. Traveling through the Earth and critically glitching doesn't just disrupt the form, it effectively means you've stopped convincing your astral form to exist where it shouldn't and you get shoved back into your body.

This makes the rules a little more interesting, I think. Your astral form is consciously projected and can't find your body if you don't do it. If you're knocked out, your astral form has enough spiritual inertia to keep existing, but if it's destroyed, you (eventually) wake up in your body. Just having your astral form mangled (by drain, for instance) doesn't destroy the form, so you don't end up back in your skin.

That's just my long-winded excuse for not liking the idea of having mages who are knocked out wake up in their astral form where their body used to be. I don't see why there should be any mystic link to the place they projected from. Especially if they were in a moving car at the time—it's come up!

sounds good to me, and if a mage in your group intentionally knocks himself out more than once in a blue moon, I'll buy you a coke

I too like the answer/option provided by DireRadiant as well...

Not saying that it could not happen, but I have never seen a mage intentionally knock himself out...

If the mage can't find his body and is running out of time to get back, knocking himself out to avoid dying sure seems like a good idea. How often it happens depends entirely on how often in your campaigns bodies go missing while the owner is out and whether the GM allows and the players know about the trick. Make it known and you'll have astral mages diving headfirst into walls all the time!

With the mage cuffs it makes me think of Decker watching in previous editions when it wasn't all an AR happy fest. Now in mage watching instead of pulling the plug in dire circumstances, you slap on the cuffs at 5 hours and 45 minutes or as a risky move when it looks likes the mage might lose a astral fight. as wounds start to manifest. I kind of dig this.

Not to judge but that seems a great way to lose a valuable asset.
jerk "Hey Bob astrally project and scout this area. "
Bob " Why don't you go frag yourself."
Being an asshat to fellow players rarely works out well.

That wasn't what I had intended by that, however that does add something to things. I figured that a astral form that lost its physical self would KO itself via magic. And that it meant anyone kidnapping the helpless mage would have to take the extra step of making sure their victim didn't suddenly wake up. Then again, they'd probably have to do that anyway so that doesn't change much.

Your idea of babysitting the astral mage is nice. That way you can put them into a PMV like the full VR hacker, and still take care of them no matter where you move your buddy to.



Of courese, if the mage is as much of an asshat to the other players then its all good. Some groups of people (in RL especially) thrive based on a certain amount of shared dysfunction.

Hmm... and with a biomonitor you can shock yourself out of astral space when you take too much damage. Of course wiring it to some sort of autodoc would probably be smarter, it's not like you're moving around.

Yeah, if that is what everyone does its fine. But usually this kind of crap just escalates until someone gets shoved in front of a train.

Seeing that your in Sacramento I'm suddenly craving all the eateries I went to while I lived back there back in my college days. Like Los Jarritos, Fanny Anns, Sudwerk, the Korean Restaurant across the street form the Korea House, but since I can't find it probably doesn't exist anymore, oh god and Mongoloan BBQ, its hard to find any here in Sacramento there wer elike 3 near where I lived. I loved the dude at this one who would tell us if we crapped out at 5 bowls each, "You Big boys eat more" Damn I think that place is gone as well.

Hypothetical:

A non-initiated mage projects, bad guys find and move his body to a secured, heavily warded location. Think the magical equivalent of a faraday cage. Assume the mage gets to panic time, and knocks himself out to return to his body. What happens? Short of a jaunt through the metaplanes to bypass the wards (which the Mage can't do cause he's not initiated) is there any way to return to your body? Or are you totally fragged?

Well, given that you auto-return if you are knocked unconscious (fill stun track) while projecting, you bypass those wards and you insta-blip back to your body.

Of course, you are unconscious at that point.

But you can't bypass them without a metaplanar shortcut, right?

The power of my "snap-back" theory knows now boundaries or limitations! It mocks your puny ward theory!

Honestly, I have no freakin clue. I'm going to start flipping coins when I come across these "uhh... wtf" questions from now on.

how does a mage sustain stun damage in the astral? I'm pretty sure that all drain is physical, although i might be misremembering a previous edition.
I'm crueller than most of you it seems. I rule that any damage you take while astral goes on your stun track, but when it's full you're dead. We are talking about your naked psyche after all. You could burn edge to 'snap' back if you like. Wound penalties imposed on your meat affect your astral form, but when your physical track is full it does not prevent your astral form acting. I'd also rule that stun damage does not affect the meat. Yes that does mean you can use the mage's body for target practice if you use SnS.

I found the answer.

Street Magic page 114. The section starting with "The Living Earth."

Somewhere through the passage it talks about pressing through the astral form of the planet and how it feels lie Molasses. One of the possibilities of glitching while performing this test is being disrupted, in which case the astral form gets sent back to the body.

While re-reading the section on Wards in SR4, I also came across the section that mentions if a dual natured, astrally perceiving magician or mystic/adept gets pushed through a ward, they are disrupted and knocked unconscious (and foci are deactivated).

So with those two above examples, we now know that astral forms, when disrupted, (either physical or stun track) return to their body.

On the other thread, I was the original poster asking the opposite question though. What happens if the stun track is filled in on the body while the astral form is projecting.

After reading a few of the arguments here's what I've been ruling. We know that if a physical body dies while a form is projecting the form can keep projecting (as stated in SR4 and confirmed in a mission in the back of "Corporate Enclaves" (the fox singer's astral form hiring the runners to track down her killer)) for a number of hours equal to the magic attribute x 2. If a form isn't disrupted when the body dies, then it isn't going to be disrupted if the body goes unconscious. Hell, the body is already in a state of unconsciousness.

Let's say Bob the Magician is projecting. When he started, both his physical and stun track were clear of damage. While he's out, his team decides to dump his body with some ghouls (they're a bunch of fuckheads). They decide to rough up his body real hard-like and slap him around a bit. He takes 10 stun which fills up his stun monitor. He isn't returned to his body as this isn't going to make him "more unconscious," but he starts taking the modifiers (-3) from damage and when he realizes he's got a killer headache, he decides to check his body. Well, it's not with the team and he needs to track it. After some time he finds it surrounded by the ghouls and decides it's better to not get close or try to stop projecting because the one of the ghouls is a stronger magician than he is and will roast him if he comes close on the astral.

Bob decides to chance it and actually makes it to his body. Too bad his stun monitor is filled because he actually can't wake up due to physical blows that stunned him into unconsciousness. But, after an hour of rest, some stun goes away and he wakes up. He still has a mondo headache from the beating they gave his body, but at least he's conscious. That is, until a ghoul sees him stirring and goes to drug him. Right before the drugs kick in, Bob projects again.

Now the ghouls start carving up Bob's body for Tamanous. He takes all his physical damage, starts bleeding out and dies. Bob curses his team and decides to use his last few hours on the astral to find some powerful magician or spirit to wipe out his dickwad team for revenge.

Several questions still remain though:

Since the astral condition monitors are the same as real world ones, why wouldn't the astral form be disrupted when it was beaten unconscious? Technically since we filled in a damage track, Bob should have disrupted and shot back to his body. Do we differentiate between "astral damage" on the tracks and "physical world damage?"

If we have an astral form that is remaining until it dissipates because it's physical body has already died, can it still cast spells or summon? It's damage tracks are technically all the way filled, so would one point of drain disrupt it into oblivion? Would someone be able to rip this astral form to shreds in astral combat or with spells to make it dissipate or go away for good before its time (magic x 2 hours) is up?

Note on magecuffs, since glomoss is dual-natured, a magician can't project at all with a collar of glomoss around his neck or body because astral forms can't travel through each other. Any attempt to project is inhibited by an astral forms inability to project through the collar's astral from, effectively trapping it to the body.