Well, i noticed that adepts are quite powerful (duh) and therefore the law enforcement has to have a way to keep them in arrest and containment. So... is there something like a Magecuff and Hood for an adept, something that gives them a nasty shock if they even try to use his adept powers? Would Magecuffs work?

Put it this way. Adepts really don't do anything DIFFERENT than what a non-awakened street sam with a bunch of ware does. He just does it differently. And on top of that, an adept comes in all sorts of flavors, from gunbunny adepts to the pornomancer, who you wouldn't have arrested, because he's too persuasive.
Thus, you'd deal with an adept like you would any other person in that role - a physical or gun adept you'd stun, disarm, cuff with the plasteel restraints or the cyberware-limiting restraints, and so on. A social adept you'd shoot before he opened his mouth. A mystic adept you could deal with like a mage, with a magemaks and magecuffs. But realistically, I don't see that you'd need to 'shut down their magic' or whatever. Maybe fill their cell with a mana static at force 2 or 3, to limit their options.

Adepts do have some unique powers that can't be replicated with 'ware, but for the most part they're really not overpowered compared to the street sam. Like Bugfoxmaster said, it's just a different mechanic to achieve a similar result. A lot of the adept powers are always active and simply give a bonus to certain things, so rather than just disabling those powers, put the adept in a stronger cage.

It's the magicians you really have to worry about, because they can do some pretty damaging stuff regardless.

Is there a way to detect them beforehand then? Sammies can generally be detected by MAD scanning.

They are magically active, which means they should give off an aura on the astral plane. Then you have assensing.

i Don't think mages are common enough to be garrisoned at each higher security checkpoint... or are they?

1 % is Awakend
> than Half is an Adept,less than 0,5 % are Mages
about 1/3 of these are Hermetik,1/3 Schamanistic and 1/3 for all the other Traditions
A Lot only have limited Abilities (MAG <3)
Some never developed their Talent or became Insane
Most of the Awakened work for the Cons .....
So there are a very,very Few of them

with a seldom Dance
Medicineman

This site says that as a percentage of general population medical doctors make up around .29% (~3/10ths of one percent). So the number of doctors is probably comparable to the number of full power mages (magic stat of 3+).

Also, you don't use mages at security checkpoints, they have much better things to do with their time. You use critters with astral perception like awakened geese (for nice and fluffy checkpoints, and stuff like hell hounds for the tougher and scarier checkpoints.

If necessary, an astral mage can then respond quickly to the scene after something interesting is detected.

Don't most if not all living beings have auras? IIRC it is astral signature that the magical active leave behind when they use their powers. Depending on GM, it could mean that adepts always leave a trail of astral signatures or they hardly ever leave an astral signature.

My impression was that someone with stronger magic projects a stronger/more vibrant aura, but I can't quote anything to back it up.

You can tell someone is awakened with just one hit on assensing. How powerful they are requires somethign like 3 or 4 hits. See P183.

From what I remember, external adept powers like killing hands, natural spell, etc leave a signature. But 'internal' stuff (as most adept powers are) don't.

I've always interpreted it as Adept powers leave a signature where the power was in effect. Killing hands thus would leave a signature on the target. Rapid Healing would leave its signature on the adept's body... within his own aura (good luck seeing that signature IMO). The same would apply to things like enhanced senses, Improved attributes, Attribute Boost, etc.

Just my 0.02

A MAD scanner wouldn't detect the difference between an adept and a bio-augmented sammie.....

FAB would.

Do it the Jesus Way. Cross him up something fierce.
Else break thumbs and bind together

*BLAM!!!! BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!!!*
He was resisting arrest.
There are time when I realise I'm not playing the same game as some of the other people here... this looks like one of those times.

What I'd have most police do to "restain" an adept character that is resisting is the same thing they do to anyone they run into brandishing a weapon of unknown calibur (could be a toy, could be sporting cop-killer rounds), aim for centre mass and pull the trigger. Repeat until satisfied with results. In the 6th world "Shoot first and ask questions later" isn't a grim joke, it procedure.

Even using mudane martial arts today there are people out there the police cannot arrest with out resorting to firearms if they resist. Persons who can casually kill or cripple with their hands the same way I causally type this or drink a beer. I'm not sure what the police procedure is for these kind of run ins but I'd suddenly like to find out.

Once they are under arrest the magic gets it a bit trickier of course, the pornomancer is only allowed to testify over closed circuit camera and is not allow in the same room as the jury, the guy whos hands are on fire is going to need special handcuffs, and the ranged killing hands guy with delay damage gets a blindfold and rigged with remote controlled tazers, but past that it not going to be TOO much trouble until you run into the guy custom built to escape anything. Wall running, double jointed, Str of OH NOESE! etc etc etc.

He got shot escaping.
While you can certainly make a Troll adept who can make mincemeat out of any handcuffs you can think of and an Elf that call all but walk thoguh plasticreet walls on escape artist, I'd have the police put him in the flimsiest cuffs they can find in the first place, call a pile of armed back up and HOPE this bugger tries to escape. Cause its going to cost the corp (just remember the police are corperate and like any corp, watches its costs) an arm and a leg for the special containment for him. 6 guys at medium range with pimped out assault rifles should make even the most dedicated tank think twice.

And remember, in the UCAS any crime you commit could be immediatly upgraded to pre-meditated, you did use magic after all. Cop killing isn't just a bad idea and manslaughter, it's murder one and all that assault is pre-meditated assault with a deadly weapon (attempted murder? my legal-fu is weak).
All the martial artists I know activally avoid getting into fights for this "deadly weapon" reason. I can't immagine its gotten any better since the advent of Magical Kung-Fu.

For actually co-operative adept criminals and those that get "non-leathaled"? Ankle mounted high explosives? Nothing tricky, just a guy watching him on camera with a button to his left. Or just into the general population. He's got the same rights as anybody now and maybe he'll thin the numbers out a bit on the lifers before the swarm takes him down. Heck hire him if you can get away with it and have jusidiction. Just don't forget the clause in the employment contract that allows the instalation of a cortex bomb.

Are we talking the kind of tank with treads, dual layers of armor plating an a 100mm cannon?

No, the kind with 2 Arms and Legs

Ah, pretty boy elves. Gotcha.

I believe I am refering to an adept who has desided that being able to take damage in the double digits is the way to win the game

Or the kind with horns and a scary face?

Yeah, elves. Scary faces, point ears (horns). Elves.

Somehow I think that there's a little bit of internet tough guy leaking through here. Cops, when dealing with an unarmed opponent (such as your martial arts expert in the above example (and they're not all that likely to get into confrontations with law enforcement anyway, but that's another story)), will typically attempt to apprehend them hands-on first and, failing that, move up the force continuum to non-lethal options such as tasers, batons, pepper spray, etc... Failing that, the next step is less-lethal solutions - things like rubber rounds from the shotgun and so on. Only after all of these other means of attempted control have been attempted do most police use lethal force in order to deal with an unarmed assailant... needless to say, it doesn't often come to that. Now, that's the real world, but I really can't imagine the 6th world being all that different - police procedure isn't going to change for the .5% of people who are adepts, and I'm sure that most people who have obviously combative cyberware (from cyberarms on up) would probably be treated as armed suspects in the first place, automatically escalating the force continuum.

Of course, all of this goes out the window if they're attempting to apprehend a suspect who is known to have combative adept powers, and probably just as much so the instant that the police find out that the suspect is using combative adept powers - at that point, they're no longer unarmed, just differently armed.

As for restraining them, I'd say that magecuffs and/or a magehood would probably do the trick. Otherwise, just make sure that you have an incredibly high background count cell waiting for them to spend their time in...

I don't know in which reality you live, but i remember news about cops arresting 5 year old kids with chains and balls and all that . .

I think that you'll find that what you see on the news isn't congruent with 90% of the cases that exist in the world. This is largely because the only thing that's newsworthy is the sensational and the exceptional.

Really restraining an adept is easier than a Street Sam most of the time (assuming the same specialties, Sams can be ninjas too), and is probbally dealt with best the same way you deal with most Magicians:

Toss em in a cell with a Mana Static spell/Background count of 5-7, proceed to laugh at the mundane who likely has few non-magic skills to get themselves out of there.

There will always be exceptions (Adepts & Magicians who are also real escape artists, or who are intiated enough times to blow through the Static) but that really will stop most people according to the rules.

A Quickened Mana Static, is much easier to create than finding an equivilent background count area -mostly-. Some really messed up places *ahemChicago/Lagoscough* have a lot easier time finding such a toxic manascape.

Jail, especially Lone Star Jail, should have some background count to begin with.
By the way, how do you restrain someone who can simply pop off his hand to get out of manacles and the such?
I once for shits and Giggles made a Character in SR3 that had a -6 to Escape Artist TN. And that's without detachable Cyber-Hand, which should make it an automatic success more or less.

Yeah, like I said, the Street Samurai is the one to worry about restraining. NOT the adept.

In addition to popping off hands/feet to get out of restraints, he could have hacker/invader nanos to pick the lock on the cell, or all manner of other nasty tricks that are much harder to counter than the Adept's powers.

Edit: Second mistake on magic today! teach me to post without my Street Magic book handy (I was at work). Mana Static is a permanant not sustained spell, so you can neither quicken it, nor just cast n forget it (it fades at 1 point an hour). However I see nothing about not stacking it, so you just have the Magician Jailer come back and recast it at force 2 once an hour till his shift is over, or at less frequent intervals at higher force.

Once the Background Count rises to 6+, most of your Awakened criminals are just regular mundanes in there, and should be able to be restrained easily by 2070 prison tech + cybered guards.

As I said there are always exceptions (Smart PCs & Prime runners), but that's realistic and good for the game too.

Yes, they are.

As written, Adepts (with the exception of a few nitch builds) are vastly inferior to mundane counterparts. Said nitch builds can be superior to mundane versions, at significantly greater cost.


As written, Quickening a Mana Static spell is an act of stupidity (oh look, I used 5 Karma so I don't have to sustain it for 30 seconds before Permanency kicks in).

Also, note in terms of numbers, that .1% of the population is magicians with a decent magic score. That's a LOT of magicians.

For the number impaired who disagree, remember that with a world Population of 6+ Billion, that means there are more than 6 Million Magicians out there, and those are only the ones of 'Usable(read PC-level)' Magic levels. There is an additional 60 Million Adepts of variable power levels & Low power Magicians (with Magic scores in the 1-3 range). All of whom are aggressively head-hunted by Corps looking to beef up magical security.

In the 6th World, Magical Security is BIG business.

An arrest is valid if words such as 'you are under arrest' are used while at the same time touching or taking hold of the arrested person so that it is clear that he or she is being arrested.

However the police do not need to use these words to arrest someone. They ought to inform a person why they are under arrest and a person can be under arrest even if they are not touched, if the effect of the police action is to stop a person from doing what he or she wants. An arrest is only valid if the police reasonably suspect a person of committing an offence.

Most importantly, the person should be told of the right to remain silent, to have a friend or relative told of their arrest and to speak to a lawyer and have an interpreter present if required.

The person should also be told the reason for the arrest, even if it appears obvious from the circumstances, although the omission of this information does not necessarily make the arrest unlawful. However a court has a discretion to exclude evidence flowing from the arrest (such as a record of interview), where it would be unfair to the suspect to use it, or where for public policy reasons the court excludes the evidence.

Generally an arrest will be lawful if the officer who carries it out is acting as a result of an honest and reasonable belief in the relevant facts. The arresting party may be mistaken as to the facts, and the person later released. Provided, however, the person had an honest and reasonable belief in the relevant facts, then the officer has acted lawfully. For that reason no attempt should ever be made to resist arrest. Civil action can however be taken for damages or compensation if a wrongful arrest is made.

A police officer may use as much force as is reasonably necessary to arrest the person. Unreasonable force is assault. It is up to the court to decide whether the force used was reasonable in the circumstances. For example, force that is likely to kill or cause grievous bodily harm has been held reasonable if the person could not be arrested in any other way [R v. Turner (1962) VR 30]. Handcuffs or a similar restraint are reasonable force where the person has physically resisted arrest or attempted to run away.

It is an offence to resist or hinder a police officer in the execution of his or her duty - including the making of a lawful arrest [Summary Offences Act 1953 s 6]. The resistance to the arrest must be active. Merely lying down and refusing to co-operate is not resisting nor is running away from a police officer before a valid arrest. A person can hinder the police by passive actions that render a police action more difficult, but not impossible.

A person innocent of any other offence can nevertheless be charged with resisting arrest or hindering police in the execution of their duty. The police are entitled to proceed with a charge of resist arrest or hinder even if the evidence later suggests that the original offence that the person was arrested for should not proceed. The exception to this is where the arresting person knew or suspected there was no offence being committed.

There are a lot of ways to deal with adepts that way.

If you ever saw Nightmare Before Christmas you'ld have a catchy example already playing in your head.

Seriously, adepts are like normal people in most cases as I understand, just with special abilities, so unless they can break the cuffs with strength, then you're good treating them like normal people, for example.

Remember this is the Sixth World, not today, if the fragger is SINless than they can simply shoot him in the head and sell his organs on the open market, or let him go after "fining" him. Or anything inbetween.

As for keeping them in check, I've always been partial to drugs or BTL Grade simsense.

Well, yeah. There is that whole SINless factor, but I think that that's an understood caveat on the whole discussion =P

I mean, if they're SINless, of course Lone Star gets to do away with procedure and do whatever they feel like to the poor sucker... better hope you don't get the sadist Lone Star cop that day >.>

What's the difference between a SINless physical adept in Shadowrun and a dopefiend who swallows PCP to avoid arrest in real life?

Nope, that's wrong.

An arrest is valid the moment you communicate your intention to take away your target's liberty in such a way that a reasonable person would assume that you are taking away that liberty.

It kinda sounds complicated, but think about it and it makes sense. You don't have to actually ever say "you are under arrest," if a cop grabs you and holds you down, then you are under arrest, whether they say so or not.

I'd kinda like to see a Lone-Star procedures manual and/or a set of sample penal codes published for some of the main cities. I went through the police academy, if anyone else has a legal background, perhaps we can collaborate and come up with an e-book?

The only problem is that Lonestar isn't really any better than a common street gang, with the possible exception of in the higher rated sections.

Besides, if I remember correctly, the Lonestar book has already been done.

Off topic but I read how to retrain adepts and I imagined a sammy hitting an adept with a newspaper saying "No! Bad we need a stealth adept not a pistol adept." Then I lol'd.

's okay, it's funny ^^

The obvious solution to the adept containment problem is redundancy. So your physad can rip through plascrete manacles like kleenex. Try going through 12, fragger. And if he's a pornomancer then you have my permission to have his character be hit by a bus. He deserves it if he's gaming the system that badly.

For me redundancy would be going to the hinge or the solid metal handcuffs, the second redundancy would be tasers, pepperspray, batons, and guns. Slap patches outside of police custody.

Addendum: Or go with the shock glove handcuff. Works via AR.

Explosive collars...?

Nice idea, but it just sounds, "messy".

It deploys a plastic bag over the head before exploding.

Ok this depends how dystopian you like your sixth world as there is gray area in a material but the SIN portion of the constitution does not supersede the other rights there in. A sinless person is untracable that means that a lonestar cop that shoots one in the head is signifigantly less likely to get caught for it, but they are still commiting a crime. They do not have the right of life and death over the sinless any more then any other citizen. The same goes for the corps, the rule for shadowrun is as alway "Don't get caught"

As to the commonality of magically active people at checkpoints, well their present on your runner team arn't they. ANything a shadowrunner has the corp has more of. Anything higher security checkpoint will likely have some sort of magical support.

As for my fix for containing an adept. Drones with guns, if the adept leaves the assigned area or attempts to escape the drones administer pain or lethal force and call for backup.

Sorry, but the fluff has made it clear that the SINless have no rights, they can and do "disapear" at the whim of officers.

A law enforcment officer is going to be indicted for shooting a SINless in Shadowrun similarly to being charged for shooting a drug fiend in RL. Cynical, but likely. As for the sixth world, if played dark, Lonestar officers are thugs with a badge and a gun. They are "cleaning" the streets.

Italics mine...
This is fairly close to the way I run with it. Yes there are idealisitc Lone Star police officers, but then again there are (albeit rarer) idealistic Mafiosos and Yakusa. I like the feel that Lone star is a rather clean cut and above board syndicate that takes protection money from the state instead of the shop keeps (some also takes protection money from the shopkeeps to but that's another story). The more you pay (better secruity ratings), the nicer your hood gets treated. I like the intence contrasts in neigbourhoods it makes (which incidently has promted several charcters over the years desiding to fork out the extra dough of a smaller pad in a good part of town if only because if they do get busted they may actually get arrested rather then shot in the back repeatedly "resisting arrest")

I know its not everyones taste but I like the scenes it makes.

IF you are running a less "dark" game... an injector that inserts a RDIF tag under the perps skin for tracking (probably standard on most criminals owing to their inexpence and ease of removal), I like the remote shock cuffs (sure you broke the links but they are designed to break first, the cuff part is fine *ZAP*) and am taking the idea (a crooked cop probably has more use for them anyway). Again I can see little reason for this not to be standard. Anything that works to take down a Sammi will take down an adept, you just cannot shut down thier power after the fact. Background count in a prison would help and I suspect there would be a "special prison" for potently magically active persons with appropiate defences and staff in place, mana static everywhere at force "WHY!", wards etc. or maybe just built on an astral "yuck" site (nuclear testing site, death camp, what have you), at least there is in my game now... and its going to be a bad place.... and part fo an evil plot of a Shedim or some other threat... yes...

Neck manacles. I'd like to see you pop off something to automatically escape that.

How would those things work?
A Collar around the neck stops people from fleeing how?
If it's not instant death if you try. And that's a bit overkill.
If i have one hand free to use, i can get most everything
else that's keeping me chained off of my body in shadowrun