All I really need is a page number, but I've looked in the core book and Magic in the Streets and can't find it. I see how a barrier effects quickened spells and foci, but not how an astral form can attack them. Also, if an adept is astral perceiving, can he use his appropriate melee skill to attack an astral form (not that the astral form can't flee easily, but that aside). Every place where I see astral combat, the skill astral combat is used and I want to make sure this option is still available for my adept.

Danke


EDIT: I've found my answer, it's in the rules-- I'm guessing the core book, but I found it days ago.

Sustained spells are now attacked using counter spelling. For each net hit, you reduce the force of the spell by one. This screws the Quicken spell pretty good (though it get's the karma used to bind it added to it's defense). For other foci, since it's not spelled out, I'd assume it works like Ally spirits-- you disrupt them (weapon, power, whatever foci) and they shut off. However, the mage should be able to just reactivate them. This follows the core rules to the best of my understanding.

Will give it a go. At work though, so no book page numbers.

While your Adept is astral perceiving, he is dual natured yes? Something dual natured can effect both. As long as he is attacking with his body or a magic weapon, he can hit things that are on the astral while using astral perceiving.

Also, all active spells have an astral signiture. Actually it is closer to a big flashing sign with 20' letters if it is a powerful spell. Spells are by nature dual-natured.

Got that-- and if we use the "accidently walking through a barrier" section, a foci would defend w/ twice it's force. That section is an all or nothing test, and I'm not sure an astral projecting mage would be the same thing. Maybe it is now-- in 3rd you used to be able to reduce the force of the foci before it "snapped". In SR4 a barrier is attacked that way also-- and after a whole combat turn of not being attacked, it's at "full life", so to speak, again. I just can't find anything concrete in the rules.

You cann't attack focuses from astral anymore.

Wrong, in Street Magic foci are spelled out as being "dual natured constructs" and as "dual natured contructs" they are perfectly valid targets for Astral Combat.

However with that said, we are not actually given any hard and fast rules for how "dual natured contructs" defend against Astral Combat or what actually happens to a focus that is defeated in Astral Combat, which is why the agrument is whether or not they are jsut deactivated or if they are destroyed.

I was wondering that myself. I have a PC mage that has 5 foci (i also would wonder if i should force some Addiction tests on him), and i wondered if they could be attacked astrally as well. Would they have a Body + Astral Armor = 2x their force?

Personally I'd give them ( Force *2 ) just to keep things simple.

As for whether or not you should call for addiction tests, I think the question is would you ask a mundane who used the equivient amount of addictive substances to roll for addiction? Then do the same for the Mage.

Well, the guy uses 1 spellcasting Focus, 1 Sustaining Foci , 1 Counterspecalting Foci and a Foci to help him with Drain.

Aye, but how often does he use them and how powerful are they when compared to his total limit? And then pretend that the character was a Street Sammy who used four different but related drugs of similair "dosage" (A judgement call sure, but it can't be avoided.) just as often as the Mage uses his foci and make your call based off that.

*EDIT*

Edited slightly for clarity because although foci are different, the power they provide are similair enough that they are lumped together in a single addiction.

Hmm, the more I think about it, pretend that the Street Sammy only used one drug instead of four different ones.

Right, was thingink of grounding spells trought foci

No biggie, although sometimes I have to admit that I wonder if Grounding should be brought back or not.

For the moment, there aren't any explicitly spelled out. The Disrupt [Focus] spell from Digital Grimoire can be used for guidelines.

Ravor... as Ancient just pointed out. There are no rules for attacking foci.

The disrupt focus spell strongly suggests that anything which can attack them (only a direct mana spell at that), can't do permanent damage and then they self-heal.

Quite frankly... the only focus which explitly comes out and says about it being truly present on both planes is the weapon focus. The rest are like a spell signature on the astral... present but insubstantial like smoke.

In previous editions to SR4 the foci were suceptible to attack on the astral, as well as spells (not possible in 4E, I do miss the spell grounding rules though!). But in 4E it is unclear-though based on the fact that only mana spells work on the astral, I would assume that Foci are not attackable as they are a construct and require a physical attack to be affected.

I think the guideline given was:

IF [Cumulative rating of all active foci] > 2 x [Magician's MAGic Attribute],
THEN [Test for addiction],
ELSE [Don't worry about it];

I hope that helps.

If foci can be affected by direct mana spells, then should they have to all roll for damage when they're visible and within the zone of an AoE spell like manaball? It potentially adds to the book-keeping - potentially you might hit several mages within the target area, each of whom had several foci, and have to roll 20 resistances from a single spell.

Are you thinking about a Direct Mana Spell on the phyiscal Plane? I Always considered that the mage´s lifeforce would attract the spell more than the Foci. So, to me, if the mage has foci, he would "take the hit for the team" of foci. And thinking like this, you would not be able to "target" the oponents foci.

But in the Astral Plane, i think they could be targetable when active and the mage is NOT astrally projecting. Thoughts about that?

Attacking foci on the physical plane is easy. They are just as resistant to damage as their mundane equivalent. Hitting a bracelet made of horsehair with a fireball or other fire based attack surely destroys it. A metal or ceramic bracelet has a better chance to withstand such an attack.

The problem is that physical properties are more or less meaningless on the astral plane and there are no rules how foci resist mana spells and astral combat. For simplicity's sake I'd say Force or Force*2 depending how fragile you want the foci to be.

Of course foci are dual natured as soon as they are activated. As such it does not matter on which plane the user is active.

Falconer sorry, but per Street Magic; page 112 all active foci are present and "solid" on the Astral and thus are perfectly legal targets for Astral Combat. And I've already mentioned that despite this fact there aren't any actual rules given for attacking foci.

meh, dropping a spirit from astral is bad enough, now that they can be insta-summoned...

grounding was a headache to read back then, i cant see it improve in any way...

hell, there is enough trouble with indirect combat spells as it is...

You're correct on that point Ravor, now that I've looked at street magic again. But even so they lack one VERY IMPORTANT ITEM.

Anything which is attackable or manipulable on the astral has SPECIAL RULES to do so.

Foci and other astral constructs have no such rules. They aren't wards so can't be attacked like wards.


The only existent example in the rules is a special duty spell again w/ it's own special rules, which at best only temporarily deactivates them (and forces the mage to spend time reactivating, and recasting spells... or return to his body to reactivate them if projecting).



Quite frankly... I'm against any special spells which break things for a very simple reason. Game balance... here's an adept he doesn't have astral perception... he only has a nice sword... ohh how nice the sword just snapped in two because something HE CAN"T EVEN INTERACT WITH OR ATTACK (can only attack astral entities if you're also astrally percieving, even w/ a dual natured focus). See my point... sunder at will abilities like that are very bad form and not fair to the player, or to the NPC's.

Oh noes, I just shot your sword-adept in the knees. From across the room. With my gun. I am a cheater!

No, seriously: if someone is willing and able to spend the 3 BP on a spell that might, if they get it to go off, turn the tide if the circumstances are right, I say go for it.

I have to disagree, "sunder abilities" are fine provided that they work both ways and the DM doesn't just "buff" his NPCs with no regard to what is realistic and reasonable within the setting. The adept in your example has a huge gaping weakness and paid the price for it. The Sixth World shouldn't be any more fair than real life is.

Uh...what? Seriously, you've completely lost me here. It's not like the Disrupt [Focus] or Wreck [Object] are NPC-exclusive, and the latter is older than dirt in SR terms. There's nothing stopping your magician characters from taking it and blowing up the enemy's guns, swords, etc. Granted, non-magician characters have limited ability to defend against that kind of attack, but turnabout is fair play: the same thing applies to NPCs. If your problem is a GM that uses those sort of abilities to depower the PCs, that's a problem with the GM and not the spells themselves.

RAW aside, I wonder if the ability for Foci to be 'popped' from Astral space is actually a positive thing for SR4's magical system. It seems to unnessasarily penalize Foci use (on top of the rules for Focus addiction). I was just getting used to the idea that it was just something you couldn't do anymore (like you can't beat a spell to death anymore either) and I was starting to like the idea because it makes Astral projection/perception a bit more of a big deal.

Zapping Foci from Astral really is only useful for ganking people without a way for them to easily retaliate, and I admit I think it might be better if it was gone, RAW or not (I haven't read it enough myself to try and say which was RAW falls). As a GM attacking the PCs is already easy enough for me, and it's not really a tactic I want to encourage the PCs to do. Simply being able to see active foci from the astral is enough for me, from a security standpoint.

Ancient History if your post was aimed at me, I was disagreeing with Falconer and started replying before your post showed up.

Alexand I disagree, I view foci as being quite powerful and as such I feel they need the ability to get popped in order to keep magic on par with everything else. I've never liked it when anything becomes a "must have", with the notable exception of datajacks and cyberware of course.

Darn screwy posting shenanigans.

Well that plus my typing skills are getting decidely slower in my old age.

It's not so much that Ravor, in that I find as GM that if the PC has a foci or not is pretty much irrelevant to my ability to threaten them magically or otherwise.

For example, an Adept could get his foci popped from the astral, but I could just as easily threaten him with a wandering security spirit or something else.

And dispite it being poppable or not, a Power focus is gonna be a 'must have' in any situation. You can after all, deactivate it if your smart and worried about it being popped. But it is simply too useful to spellcaster/conjurers, but after all it seems pretty deliberately designed that way.

But I've been playing with the same group of people for the past 4-8 years (depending on the player) so I kind have a leg up on what to expect from them, and how to deal with it

What kind of problems did you run into in your games?

Gah, you two are whippersnappers compared to me in typing speed apparently.

It isn't that I've had "problems" per say, it's more of a change in the feel of the setting that I don't like. I do agree that even with them being poppable and causing addiction foci are very desirable, but I've found that Mages no longer use them all of the time as opposed to just when they think they need that little bit extra to get the job done which is what I think they were intended for.

Basically it's the same problem that I have with The game that causes Cancer, a character's equipment becomes just as important if not more so than his natural abilities are and I don't like the feel of it. Cyber/Bio tends to get a pass on that aspect from me because it fits the Genre in my opinion.

Astral Combat is resolved the same way as Physical Combat (SR4A, p. 193) Astral Objects (foci) can only be affected by Physical Damage (not Stun).

That's about all we have--it'd be possible to extrapolate from the Barrier rules, rules for damaging objects. This of course wouldn't be an official solution.

My solution is to use (Force x 2) to resist. If net hits exceeds Force, the Focus is disrupted--deactivated. This doesn't sunder the object, though a Simple Action will need to be spent to reactivate the Focus and, in the case of Sustaining Foci, possibly recasting a spell.

This has served as a balanced approach at my table, is fair to everyone and draws from information currently available in RAW.

----------

I've seeded rumors in my home campaign about a magician with a Wreck (Focus) spell--which does permanently destroy foci. So far, the PCs have never interacted with the magician, but some of bat-shit afraid and others curious. YMMV.

hey, got to love when a simple gear eating monster can make the high powered group cut and run

Ancient History:

I have zero issues with the spell. I think that spell was really well done in fact. I like the mechanic it has in it for interacting w/ foci.


Lets say the sword adept activates his sword, and an astral mage he doesn't know about zaps the sword... the sword simply deactivates until it heals itself then he can reactivate it a few combat rounds later (too late to matter for most fights)... it's not a broken wreck of wasted money & karma. And even while deactivated, he's still got a sword in his hand, just isn't getting extra dice for having an activated weapon focus. Not fatal, a real pain if the focus is a crutch though.


My issue here is that
1. astral perception power is EXCEEDINGLY EXPENSIVE... and shouldn't be viewed as a gaping weakness for an adept.
1a. lets look at the costs... one 1power point just for the ability to go dual natured and astrally perceive...
1b. now you need ranks in assensing before you can even make sense of it (not usable untrained)
1c. and you still can't defend yourself from astral attacks!! (astral combat trained use only)
Quote: "Astrally perceiving and dual natured characters use their physical attributes and skillts to fight opponents with a physical body, and their Astral Combat + Wil TO FIGHT WHOLLY ASTRAL ENTITIES).
1d. They're still utterly boned if their astral tormentor is a mage or spirit w/ spells and floating out of reach.


You see why I don't think astral perception is suitable for all adepts and that they shouldn't be overly penalized for not having it? It should be handled on a player concept by player concept basis.


Now, please explain to me, how allowing any astral mage or spirit to screw over any non-astral capable adept by BREAKING (not deactivating) his foci at will with no way for the adept to retaliate and with no way to tell that they're even there?

That's why I place the idea of breaking things from astral up there in the last of bad ideas along with grounding out.

( 1 ) Alot of things are very expensive and yet are weaknesses if you aren't able to somehow compesate.

( 2 ) Sure, Astral Perception is an expensive power, but it is also one of the most useful ones that most adepts should be willing to give their right arm for, and if not there are always drugs.

( 3 ) If I'm remembering correctly you do not in fact need to have the assensing skill to be able to use your astral sight, although I can't really fathom why you wouldn't want the skill for the extra information that assensing grants you.

( 4 ) And your point is? If the adept's choice is not to learn to fight on the astral than that is yet another huge hole just waiting to be plugged.

( 5 ) I actually agree with you on this, I believe that Astral Combat should be changed to be LoS. However until it is thems the breaks and life isn't fair.



As for your last point, tell me, do you also bitch about the inclusion of snipers? After all, a good sniper can one-shot a character without there being a realistic way for him to retaliate or even necessarily tell where the sniper was? Being dead is worse than having a broken sword.

For that fact, do you whine when other cyber or mundane equipment is "sundered" or is this just reserved for foci?

Snipers are a wholly different thing.

And the player can deal with them by spending edge (or burning it).

Defending a broken idea w/ another potentially broken idea does not make an argument. Please explain how that's even relevant... it's a non sequitor.



Here's another point most people forget. Most foci only have low ratings (force 1-3'ish... sometimes better, especially coming out of chargen). Most wards have higher forces of 4 or even twice the casters magic (the drain is pretty low for overcasting). Attacking a ward only termporarily creates a whole in it which heals a combat turn later. Now people use that low threshhold on an even weaker strength setting for breaking things... no I don't think so. The rules for wards and foci are not compatible in any way. (excepting the passing through portion, which is quite explicit if the focus loses it deactivates... it isn't broken, it deactivates).

This leads to another problem... people take a mechanic for creating a temporary hole in a ward, then warp it into a mechanic for arbitrarily breaking valuable gear at will.



And now for RAW... without assesing skills YOU CANNOT MAKE ASTRAL PERCEPTION CHECKS (and even threshhold 0 tests require 1 hit). You can't default a trained only skill. Hence you can see, but you're effectively little better than blind as you don't know how to understand what you're seeing. (I know I make sure I have infiltraiton skills and use them liberally on the astral).

I agree with you a bit, but I'm arguing straight RAW here. Not what should be a house rule. (if it was up to me... any adept who bought assensing could get astral for .25PP... 1PP is rediculously overpowered given all the disadvantages). And frankly, I disagree strongly that astral combat should be ranged. I think that's a suitable drawback to not being able to project given all the advantages that astral can grant. (but only if you're willing to invest a LOT into it through the supporting skills).

I disagree because we are talking about the "fairness" of two different situations where the end result is that the character very well might have to spend Karma in order to become "whole" again afterwards and very well might not have any real defense against.

And tell me, how can people without the preception skill and "average" stats survive in your world since they wouldn't have the dice necessary to make the ( Theshold 0 ) tests that would be needed every three seconds in order to understand what they are seeing? That is what you are expecting people to believe about astral sight.

*EDIT*

Aye, don't get me wrong, I do think you are making some good points, I just happen to disagree.

Because quite frankly... Your analogy is not the same.

The sniper can be localized and attacked in meatspace, the sniper is at some risk. Any player concievably provided they edged and survived and got the hell out can turn around and exact retribution now (or later when they hunt the bastard down). There are mundane means at their disposal both to escape the situation and deal with it.

I agree, that a sniper can be a hand of god mechanic for a GM and a bit heavy handed. And quite frankly it doesn't even have to be a sniper... what happens when the gun adept just walks up on the street and quickdraws a round into your head before you even know what happened. Any time surprise is involved, things get deadly. (and people wonder why I max out perception skills all the time).



An astral mage or spirit... is pretty much invulnerable in the astral plane except to another magician or spirit. That is my issue w/ the grounding out rules of old. Here let this purely astral mage not even have to present himself on the plane where others can attack or deal w/ him. Yeah I'm just going to summon a fire elemental and have it materialize... now I'm going to use the spirit to ground out fireball spells at deadly force (to which it's immune).

Adepts aren't helpless in astral space though from attackers... most things (such as possession spirits) must be within reach to interact w/ other things in astral. Ranged direct spells are the only exception to that. So they're quite capable of attacking and driving off spirits which are attacking them. However, it takes a lot of skill points to actually pull this off. (as their normal agility+weapon gets replaced w/ wil+astral combat). So it's far from cheap and shouldn't be expected that all (or even most) adepts will be astral combatants.

And again, based on the above very low threshhold of putting a temporary hole in a ward. I disagree w/ people talking about permanently destroying foci. IMO: just like all other astral interactions it will need a special rule to handle it.


Threshhold 0 tests are only generally required when the character is distracted btw: such as to notice something during combat. So you missed my point... for general use there is no test... but the player won't have any idea how to interpret the auras around him w/o assensing. However, if the other guy is using stealth.. he's helpless (can't oppose the stealth roll). Or if he needs to

I still disagree, I believe that the two situations are close enough to compare, the "mundane" solution for the adept is not to have his focus active unless he actually needs it. And what defense does a character without computer skills have against a Decker? Hence my comments about the Sixth World not being fair, there are times when you don't really have a choice other than to drop your pants and grab your ankles.

As for perception rolls, I disagree given what we are told about AR usage, almost everyone should be considered distracted nearly all of the time, and stealth works equally well on the meat as it does on the astral.

I do see your point though, it is fragging expensive to be able to operate on two planes of reality, but I consider that the price that the Awakened pay for their abilities, if you don't want to have to worry about the Astral then stay completely away using dual natured objects, in the case of an adept, stay away from external weapons and instead "focus" on your internal ones.