Look at Geomancy, it specifies that the area being aspected is in fact an area, a location. Locations (last I checked) don't move around.

Actually, the key word that I see is "site," defined as a "domain," which is used in describing Astral Hazing as well. There's some fluff in the fluff sections for it that suggest a physical geographical area, but when it talks about just rules, all it cares for is a backround count. Which Astral Hazing is.

In fact, Astral Hazing makes the character a domain by RAW.

Looking again at the description of Astral Hazing in the Runner's Companion I noticed that it says:

"Whatever the ambient mana conditions are, the character always stands at the heart of a Rating 4 background count (see p. 117, Street Magic) that extends a number of meters from her body equal to her Essence; this background count also impairs her own actions if the character is Awakened."

I'm reading this to say that if you somehow aspect the domain of the Astral Hazing character to work with your style of magic, then you set the ambient mana conditons immediately back to a state of impairing your own actions. Basically, if you could use Geomancy to aspect the domain to your style of magic, it would be instantly aspected back to hazing before you can finish counting your Hits.

Augmentation has one extra line explaining the rate of the domain returning to normal (1 point per day), so the best you could hope for is 3 days after the Cyberzombie has left and you currently have a Background Count 1 Astral Hazing, you could use Geomancy to Aspect it towards your style of magic for the remainder of the final day before it finishes returning to a background count of the original location.


Filtering is really the way to go when dealing with Astral Hazing.

That is an excellent point. I don't know how I missed that.

...wasn't that my original point?

It may have been, but you were using fluff and not crunch to back up your argument. For example, I could say that my tailored pherimones smell like candied apples, but the game only cares that my smell gives me +3 dice. It wouldn't by RAW give me a penalty to someone who hates apples, although the GM might rule it that way. In the same way, saying the descriptive text of a power works one way, yet not quoting an actual rules section of a power, is not an effectual way of persuading a reader.

Actually, upon secondary reading of that myself, that is not what that line of text says. It talks about the ambient mana conditions returning to normal after the cyberzombie leaves. If the CZ has an aspected BC to onions, then that onion BC will fade when he leaves, not onions will fade from his BC.



So you can still Geomancy Astral Hazing, given enough time and preparation, because it is treated as a BC. The only thing that makes it different from normal BC is the fact that it follows you around and grows when you stop.

Ahem

"Whatever the ambient mana conditions are, [...] this background count also impairs her own actions if the character is Awakened."

Under normal conditions, certainly. However, the Geomancy metamagic has rules that involve backround count. THAT is the point I am trying to make.

It's like saying that since you don't have a hand, you can't use things. Well, yes, certainly that is right. However, if you get a cyberlimb replacement, then that changes things, now doesn't it?

Quite frankly that whole section is an utter mess. Classic case of fluff authors shouldn't write rules.

Things should have been stated such as the maximum size it can reach. And it would have been far less problematic if it functioned as a mana void modifier to the local area (can't aspect a void).


Background count itself is a little tough to put down. As background count is simply the absolute value of the ebb or void.

And whoever wrote that the hazing is 'aspected' should be shot. Unaspectable would have made this entire line of silliness disappear.


My biggest problem w/ geomancy here is you're suggesting that it can be changed... I'd argue it can't. Geomancy involves doing things to color the mana and the effect of the local environment on producing that coloring. The things which geomancy influences (ley lines, filtering etc) which normally produce the background count aren't present in this case. You have a single unadulterated source. (maybe we could do feng shui surgery on it and rearrange it's organs).

That much said... if I make a quadriplegic elf w/ this as a 6/6 contact... put it in a full VR lifestyle. Then raise up a cult around it. That count will surely expand every year and it won't move. Now if I craft the tradition correctly, it is aspected to the tradition. I did this in another thread a while back... it comes out to something like a few km a year.

Talking strict raw silliness... given a few hundred years of this... and her BGC would automatically supercede all other counts provided she doesn't leave the area and start the sequence fresh. And her area will keep growing until it encompasses the entire planet.

That's what I've been saying; you'd have to do some body modifications, like piercing, branding, tattooing, and all of it would have to match your tradition. Refer to my paragraphical story a few posts ago.

However, You are still trying to take a Negative Quality and make it into a Positive Quality... I call foul...

At 1 mile radius a month...
(See earlier post)

12 years to reach Portland, if the elf is in Seattle
80 years to reach LA.
200 years to reach New York.
400 years to reach London.
1037 years to cover the whole world, assuming the haze expands along the surface of the planet. 660 if we assume it travels through the ground as well (above numbers, such as London, would be impacted due to the distance across the sphere being longer than the chord distance).
19485 years to "touch" the moon (estimate assuming the closest distance the moon is to earth, and counting from those two closest points).

Hence why I said it'd require some serious feng shui rearranging your internal organs.

No mere cosmetic detailing for you... said reorganization is probably fatal btw.

Also, your idea isn't new, search... back when it was first published, I pointed out this exact thing as an explicit abuse of a negative quality.

Ok, so we have 2 cases of people saying "no because its too powerful" as opposed to "no because of sound rules-based arguments."

For example, just because this is possible doesn't mean the person is immune to magic. Lone Star's magic division would jump on this "magical terrorism" in a heartbeat. Rival mages attempting to capture the person in question, keep them sedated, and use their aura. Drones.

There are in-game responses that don't make this break the game.



I highly doubt that, since, first off, if just building a teepee on a field is enough, than a simple tattoo is enough for your body, and two, that if people can have their brain removed from their body and survive, I think the doctors would be able to work rearranging some organs around as well.

We've already quoted the only slightly related rules that there are on this subject, and you think that a few worth of tatoos and body piercings are enough to turn a highly detrimental flaw ("I'm a magician who has an effective 0 or 1 magic, but fortunately, I'm otherwise immune to spells") into the outright most over powered positive quality to ever exist ("I am a magician who has an effective magic that rivals great dragons, and I'm still immune to everyone else's magic").

Cost to do this? 10 karma (or 1 third the cost to buy off the flaw).

Acutally, it's 29 karma for initiating twice, and another 75 karma, or the cost of raising a 6 Magic to an 8. So for a total of 99 karma, or over three times the cost of buying off the negative quality, you can turn it into a positive quality. Because remember, you have to be able to "cast" Force 8 Ritual spells in order to do the ritual at all, and assuming you're starting at a Magic 6, you'd need to Initiate twice and raise your magic stat to an 8, because until you geomance the domain your Magic rating is at -4.

Not to mention the time and resources in-game.

So, in short, yes, I think that for paying more than three times the cost of just removing a negative quality you can actually do something to make it beneficial.

EDIT: That's assuming you don't have help Initiating, otherwise the cost might drop a whole 7 points or so, down to 92.

Point to where it says you must be capable of casting a force 8 spell. Geomancy says, "treat the geomantic ritual as if she were casting a spell with Force equal to twice the BC." I see no mention of needing to have magic high enough to actually cast the spell. It's treated as a force 8 spell, it isn't a force 8 spell.



And add 5 for becoming part of a magical group. 97.

If you treat it as casting a F8 spell, then you'd need a magic of at least 4 to be allowed to effectively overcast the F8 "spell". Otherwise, what does "treat the geomantic ritual as if she were casting a spell with Force equal to twice the BC" mean?


For one, that would only make it slightly less difficult, if you lose 7 points of requirement but gain 5, you'd end up 2 less. But I was referring to ordeals. Sorry about not being clear about it.

For example, take a Geasa and a Sacrifice, and initiating your 2 points becomes easier. You could also say that that one point of Sacrifice is directly related to the Geomantic re-arranging of the player's character. Or make them take two Sacrifices in order to represent it.

But basically, it comes down to using Geomancy to aspect Astral Hazing into a bonus takes a lot more work than just buying it off.

It seems like you're starting to argue for argument's sake. First you don't want to be able to geomancy at all, and now you're arguing about the process to actually do it.

Other people can help.

Limit on how many people can be involved.

Here's a better idea (before I admit that you're right), and one that's far more karma friendly:

Get someone else to aspect your domain. Any rules against that? Any geomancer can do it....

It'll only hurt for a second.


You could, but if you do it yourself, and prove why you can with the rules (as I have), your GM can't just do something like "You don't find anyone to help you geomance your Astral Hazing." For self-reliance, mostly. And because if you foot the bill yourself, your GM is more willing to go through with it.

Also, the geomancer in question would have to be the same tradition as yourself, otherwise it'd be worse than just having Astral Hazing. Imagine a shaman getting a mage to geomance hims AH, only to find out that it only works with Hermetics now. Now nearly every run that involves wage-mages will turn into a slaughterfest against the poor guy.

How would someone else be able to aspect your own personal domain for you? That strikes me as a rule-bending a bit too far for many GMs.

Why not? Imagine sitting down in one place for a month and covering a 1 mile diameter area of a city. I bet every corp that has mages would get pissed off REAL fast and try and aspect the domain encroaching on their building so it doesn't effect them.

If they can do it, then why couldn't you hire someone to do it for you?

Heck, you might even be able to get your chummer over there to do it.

I must be missing something here... Negative Qualities are just that... NEGATIVE... You should not ever be able to turn the negative to a positive... if you want to go that route... buy off the negative quality, initiate a few times and get Geomancy, and then aspect yourself a positive BC aftarwards... you should not EVER be able to do so while the negative quality is in place...

Want to have a positive benefit from BC, craft it yourself with Geomancy, but don't buy the negative quality and then "aspect" it to a positivbe bonus... To this, I call foul...

Of Course... that is my 2 nuyen, but really, does this not smack anyone else as powergaming at its finest?

That's my feeling as well. The only true positive nature of astral hazing is that magic doesn't work on you, at all. This does keep you alive when mages start tossing fireballs (and my group did make heavy use of the one character's immunity on at least one occasion) but you also can't be buffed or healed by magic either. He was a non-mage, so it wasn't as twinkish.

I never read it a never affecting you at all, but you do get the benefits of that magic being reduced by the Hazing... it is heavily balanced out by not being able to truly benefit from the positive applications of magic though, yeah...

NAh, they would just track you down and kill you or "volunteer" you for some "completly harmles" expiriments
I really don't think that it's a good idea to stay in one place for long if you have astrall hazing.

That's what I meant, really. -4 force is nasty. God forbid the caster is inside your emenation area too.

Oh No... MUCH WORSE THAN THAT... It is a -4 to Magic Rating... Much Worse...
Whether he is inside or outside from the way I read it... it reduces the effect of the spell by reducing the Magical Attribute, not the force of the Spell, that is cast into the area of BC...

Unless I have completely read it wrong

Thats why the saying goes
"Good combat mage can kill you with a mere thought, great one knows when to use his trusty predator instead"

My point was that after the Cyberzombie has left, the condition of overriding the ambient mana conditions goes with him. I got the impression that the now fading Astral Hazing he has left behind does not carry the quality of overriding local ambient mana conditions, and should be treated as a normal aspected domain. (But one aspected towards no known style of magic.) This domain is fading away at the rate of one point per day, so only on the last day could you perform the Geomancy Ritual, to get almost 20 hours of a rating 1 domain aspected towards your style of magic.

And yes, given enough time and preparation you could reaspect the domain of a cyberzombie even while he's still within the domain, you just need to do a ritual that takes about 4 hours, wait one month, do the ritual again, do it 2 more times over the next 2 months, and then have the Astral Hazing again instantly change the aspect back.

Normal domains don't have a special rule about overriding anything you do to change the aspect of a background count. Astral Hazing does have that rule.


Now lets assume that you or your GM says that if the aspect of an Astral Hazing could be changed, and that the overriding ability of an Astral Hazing
to set things back now instantly changes the domain back to your style from now on...

Quoting Street Magic:

"This ritual must successfully be completed once each lunar month (28 days) for a number of months in a row equal to the site’s background count for the aspecting to become permanent. Until that time, the background count retains its original aspect."

This implies that you can indeed take 4 months to reaspect a Astral Hazing Domain. But...

"To ensure that the imprinted mana does not dissipate between rituals, and to maintain an aspect once changed, it is necessary to ensure the site itself observes the geomantic lore of the initiate’s tradition. If the site does not already correspond to such criteria (an ancient stone circle would correspond
to the Druidic tradition’s criteria, but not a wujen’s feng shui), the site may need to be “re-sculpted.� This may require altering the immediate landscape, constructing a building from scratch, rearranging the furniture, performing regular religious observances, or offering sacrifices to local spirits. The nature and extent of each tradition’s criteria are left to the gamemaster to define as appropriate to the situation."

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I can't quite imagine a magical tradition that has Geomantic lore involving having a Cyberzombie polluting Astral Space sitting in the middle of your ritual clubhouse. Well no magical tradition besides the ones on those horrible Disney TV shows the kids are watching while we're trying to play Shadowrun. I mean talk about toxic!

-4 force for casting into your area. Worse if they are inside the area as well in which case, it's -4 magic AND -4 force.

Negative Qualities is just that. Those qualities are called Negative Qualities, they do not necessarily need to be negative. Everything can be a weapon and be made to serve you if you know how to make it, and everything can be made to hurt you, if your enemies know how.

By my reading of RAW, I do not think that Geomancy can work with Astral Hazing of either form, however, but I think I can see how a GM might read it such that it can be.

I'm not sure what to think. The negative quality Gremlins is VERY VERY SPECIFIC that it is NOT in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM something to be used as a weapon. Is that A. a comment on dev thinking about negative qualities, or B. a specific exception to the principal Toturi is suggesting?

Perhaps weapon was not the best way to describe it but the idea was that you could figure out some way to make the quality work for you or at least not work against you. You could engineer a win-win situation for the case of Gremlins, if it kicks in, great, if it doesn't kick in, great too. Then whatever it does, it works for you.

I think what they mean is that a character with gremlins who attempts to use a control console to a nuclear reactor, in an attempt to make it go critical would merely short out the control panel, thus screwing themselves.

The idea is that you can't interact with technology in a way where you intend to break it in such a way to be beneficial to you: no matter what you're trying to do, the gremlins interfere.

/Hijack
What happens when a Magician with Astral Hazing astrally projects? Does the emanation stay at the body or does it follow the projecting mage?

Oooh...good question. Based on the fluff, I'd say it "goes astral" and follows him. It'd only mess up Astral Space (astral mages would encounter a background count, physical wouldn't unless they're astrally perceiving).

The idea is it doesn't matter what your character is actually trying to do, as long as the gremlins interfere, the result whatever it may be will be beneficial to your PC instead. The difficulty is lies in finding such a situation or engineering such.

See, the thing is, you end up spending 99 karma (if you don't use initiatory ordeals or join an initiation group [not worth it]), so yeah, pretty much you're allowed to. Especially since you follow the RAW very closely.

Compare 99 karma to geomance it to your tradition to the 30 karma to remove it. You pay just over 3x the cost for a benefit. Sounds good to me.

Not to mention that now that you are a moving domain, you're now hunted. Or that someone could mess up the ritual. You mess up one ritual you have to start over. Just because after 99 karma you're able to start geomancing yourself doesn't mean that you'll succeed.

You can't mess up. You'd have to critically glitch the ritual check in order to actually move backwards.

If someone else starts aspecting your domain too, then whoever scores more hits gets progress that month. I doubt it makes a difference as to who gets to 4 months first. The book doesn't say what happens when someone finishes aspecting it and the other person continues. I would assume that they'd get knocked back to 0, but....

Excellent point. If you fail the test 1/month without critically glitching, you just stall progress. Thank you for challenging me on that point.

My math was off.

Final, correct numbers are thus:

Initiate 2, Raise Magic from 6 to 8 = 104 karma.

If Ordeals are done = 99.

If Ordeals are done and you joined an Initiatory Group = 98.

Seems to me that your math is still off... only a Single point difference between Ordeals Only and Ordeals with a Group? Something does not scan correctly...

Initiate Twice: 13+16 = 29
Magic 6 to 8: 35+40 = 75
Total 104

Ordeal Costs: 11+13 (Discount of 5 Points) for a Total of 99 Karma...
Ordeal + Group Costs: 8+10 (Discount of 11 Points) for a Total of 93 Karma...

There you go...

And even though you are spending 3x Karma to obtain positive effect from a negative quality... it is still wrong, you should NEVER gain a positive benefit from a negative quality, kind of defeats the purpose of the negative quality don't you think?

You should purchase the Negative quality off first... if you still wanted the benefit of a rating 4 moveable background count... THEN you could find some way to create such though geomancy and initiation...

Just Saying...

Keep the Faith

You need to factor in the Karma to join a Group first.

Oooooops, Forgot about that....

's okay, most people do.

Yeah, I remembered the 5 karma from joining the group, but I didn't annotate it.


Except that, as I've shown, Geomancing Astral Hazing is completely legal by RAW, and even hinted at by RAI, and there currently exists no ability through Initiation to create a mobile Backround Count. It costs a whole lot of karma to pull this off, not to mention the time required. Also, it should be noted that opposing mages, from not only the Geo-As/Ha mage's own tradition, but others as well, now have perfect reason to capture the Geo-As/Ha and feed off his BC. Or they don't like the idea of it, thinking its "unnatural", and hiring Prime Runners to assassinate them. Or drones. Just because you have BC 4 and are very effective against other mages and spirits doesn't mean your neccessarily any better against drones, especially if you don't know they're there.

A sniper can still kill a mage before he even knows the sniper is there. It's really easy too.

There is no doubt the Astrally Hazing character will become a massive pawn in everyones games... No doubt... It is just MY Opinion that the reasons for this should be story related... Turning a Negative Quality into a Positive Quality goes against everything that the Negative Quality stands for... Yes, you spend a lot of Karma to do so... but Still, it feels wrong...

And yes, It is extremely easy to kill a mage, or anyone for that matter, with a Sniper... It is not even a real challenge, assuming the Sniper is patient and competent...