It's probably more accurate to say that they do, but it doesn't amount to jack squat from Force 6 on, sadly. If you're casting at Force 12, you just put on a light show, and nobody really cares if you didn't so much as blink while the fireworks were going off. Like I said though, that's why I just do everything in my power to make that show count the first time. Well, that and just use a Predator instead.

You see, I would not make the Bum even roll the dice in this instance... book says that anything deemed obvious needs no roll to be noticed (Paraphrased obviously)...

If it is obvious, why even ask for a roll? of course, in the above example, the interpretation of the drunk street bum may be quite interesting or even hilarious based upon the level of intoxication and the personality of the bum...

as for the hidden mage, I agree with it... it you cannot be reasonably spotted (for example: you are behind a cover, using your mage sight goggles and an extrememly inconspicuous optical hidden within the shadows of the rubble ) why ask for a roll...

I tend to give rolls based upon the ability of the opposition to notice something... sometimes I call for a roll for no reason, on the off chance that something may be noticeable, sometimes I make that decision on my own, and sometimes I just give it to them as noticeable, whatever makes the story work...

Anyways...

Keep the Faith

Do you have a quote for that?

No, but the amount of "skill" that 1 die represents vs. what 0 dice represent is quite larger. A nearly unconscious drunk would have more than 0 dice (incapable of noticing anything) and 1 die (capable of driving safely).

See, I disagree. I would simply hold that some tasks are a given, or at most, have an effective Threshold of 0. If you have functioning eyeballs in your head and are conscious, you can find the sky.

There IS a precedent, after all, for the game deciding that one simple task that requires no test whatsoever turns into a task that does require a test given a particular set of circumstances. An unwounded character, for example, may stand as a simple action. Now, on the other hand if you've been shot recently, you need to roll body and willpower.

So is a great dragon casting a force 12 clairvoyance spell more, or less, obvious than that?

I dunno; I kinda figure it's irrelevant once I throw something in the "obvious" pile. Although in this case the drunk probably wouldn't be able to tell you if it was Lofwyr unless they're on speaking terms for some reason. But the big fraggin' lizard part casting the serious mojo? Sure.

Alright, great dragon in metahuman form casting a Force 6 spell vs. a high magic non initiate mage casting a force 6 spell.

Which one is more obvious? Assume spell has no component that gives a visual effect (such as clairvoyance or borrowed sense, but not fireball).

Hint: the dragon has had a few thousand years practice and 12 magic before initiations (look at RAW, they have 12 ESS), the mage is pushing as much mojo as he can without hurting himself.

Obvious pile.

I can do this all day.

Dragons tend to be powered by plot though, so if I was throwing one out there I'd say he could hide it if he really felt like it. They do after all have their own tradition and routinely pull deus ex machinas right out of their scaley rears, after all. Greats are even worse. That'd just be rules sanctioned GM fiat though.

At least as I understand things, common sense would suggest that there is a difference.
RAW does not. Early in this thread, someone suggested using the MAGIC rating as the base for subtraction, instead of a defined 6. That would seem to match what you were getting at. But it is a house rule, so players need to work with their GMs.

Yours,
Joel

If people just want to argue that the RAW is pretty goofy sometimes you'll get no argument here.

Push.

Why are dragons Cataloguing street bums?

EDIT: And wasn't there a rule somewhere that if your dicepool has been reduced to 0 or less it's an automatic failure?

Probably, but if the threshold is 0, don't you also succeed?

I mean, if you have three dice and roll 2, 4, 3 (0 hits) vs. threshold 0 means...?

If I was just sleeping out a drunken stupor and someone started channeling the amount of mana represented by a Force 12 Catalog spell, it'd certainly wake me up.

Detecting magic isn't just a measure of wether the mage made any gesture; moving around a lot of mana (high Force) itself simply draws attention, it causes showy light effects. Having a high Magic doesn't change that you're impacting the manascape heavily.

Sure, great dragons probably have a metamagic (plot device) for that. What can't they do? Those crazy wyrms.

For the rest of us, we can't get away with Force 6+ without it showing.


Also: gesturing and other flavors to magic are typically the sign of someone using Centering metamagic; it's not just for show and paradigm. It's kind of Mage the Ascension backwards; really good wizards use "foci", while beginners don't

AFAIK in any other situation Mana cannot be seen. Unfortunately SR4A introduces the sparkles. As soon as the spell is cast, the spell is invisible as it doesn't have a visible effect, but the Mana is still there.

As above this is the only situation, besides Manastorms and other anomalies where the mundane (or mundanely perceiving) can see Mana, not just the spells possibly visible effects. This irks me.

Why should they? Mana sparkles visibly when it is manipulated. This is a property of Mana not of dragons.

Ah... no. SR3 had the rule as well. 6 - (Spell force) = Target # to see the spell. For a mundane no less. And they get a bonus if the caster was a shaman. SR4 just made it a threshold test and bonus dice. Unless the spell itself said there was little effects to see that is, like Deflection.

The difference between SR4 (possibly SR3) and SR4A is the reasoning for allowing this test. In the older edition(s) it was based solely on signs of exertion and actions of the caster. SR4A introduces the idea that "the gathered mana [is] normally appearing as a disturbance or glowing aura in the air around the caster."(SR4A)

If it makes you feel better, you could imagine the visual effects aren't the mana itself, but rather the secondary effects of all that energy suddenly hitting the physical world - perhaps it heats the air and causes a shimmer, or even a mirage effect; perhaps it causes particles in the air to emit a harmless glow like Čerenkov radiation. The mana itself remains intangible and invisible, but it is being forced into our plane of existence, and our plane is bleeding.

I also take some comfort in knowing that any advantage I lose (e.g., casting Force 12 spells undetectably) is an advantage my enemies lose as well. As a GM, whenever my players pull out a particularly exploitive rule interpretation I have to resist the urge to simply use it against them at the first opportunity. If I may paraphrase a quote about Hell:

Shadowrun is great; you can do anything you want here. Unfortunately, so can everybody else, and some of them may be bigger then you.

I suspect that houserule about Magic - Force = Threshold was the intent behind the mundane perception of a spell being cast. The rules are rife with circumstances where the words used mean one thing but were clearly intended to mean something else.

I never really read it like that. For me it was more like the perception test that mundanes get when a purely astral form passes through them. They get an odd sickly feeling or a feeling that they are not alone. The physical manifestations of the spell are more like a mundanes interpretation of the local mana field since they can not see astral. Their brain fills in where it can as to understand whets going on. The spells don't actually have a flashy side effect but the mana interacts with the mundane mind like a false color thermographic image. But that's just me...

No one ever read it like that until they added that text.

SR4A pg. 179 Noticing Magic
Noticing Magic
Just how obvious are magical skills? Not very, since most spells and spirits have little, if any,
visible effect in the physical world (unless the magician prefers to have flashy effects, or her
tradition calls for it). An observer has to notice the magician’s intense look of concentration,
whispered incantations, and small gestures. Magicians of some traditions display a more
visible change when practicing magic known as the shamanic mask. The shamanic mask
typically changes the magician’s features temporarily to display characteristics appropriate to
her mentor spirit or tradition—an eagle shaman, for example, might seem to have feathers
or beaklike features while spellcasting or summoning.
Noticing if someone is using a magical skill requires a Perception Test (p. 135) with a
threshold equal to 6 minus the magic’s Force. More powerful magic is easier to spot with
the gathered mana normally appearing as a disturbance or glowing aura in the air around the
caster. The gamemaster should apply additional modifiers as appropriate, or if the perceiver
is Awakened themselves (+2 dice), astrally perceiving (+2 dice), or if a shamanic mask is
evident (+2 dice).

Do drones "see" a shamanic mask? Do drones "see" any of the non-elemental spell effects? I don't think so. Maybe that's just me then. I read the above passage as a sixth sense perception. But to each his own I guess.
Except for spells with an elemental effect I would think that no drone could see any spell when it is cast. Could a drone see the look on a mages face, yes but it is harder for a drone than a person. A person (any living being?) however, has a psychic sense. They get bonuses to "see" the mana. This is written into the books in multiple locations. Hey, whatever... I play my way, you play yours. This is a trivial thing for me.

*EDIT* This interpretation also goes along with the Dev's separation of magic and technology.

Ahem.



This has always been there



This is new with the SR Anniversary Edition which addresses the question on why the rules said "6 Minus Force" rather than something that scaled relative to the mage's power.

That is, the rule was rationalized rather than being made rational.

True, but I don't like the sparkles.

I don't either.

WAIT.

Does this mean that a vampire who walks outside and casts Alleviate Allergy at Force 6 is a sparkly vampire? D:

Die in a small fire....
or
Drown in a small puddle...
or
Go play in traffic...

It's not my fault! D:

So I was thinking, back to "solutions";

Maybe clarify a few things? With the following redefinitions, things would be fairly clear I think.

- AP only works against normal Ballistic/Impact armor. It does not reduce Insulation, Fire Resistance and so forth, nor does it reduce Hardened Armor.. (but if a spirit or dragon had an Armor spell as well, that spell would be reduced, being "normal" armor for AP purposes.)

- Immunity to Normal Weapons is best redescribed as "Immunity to Nonmagical Damage", since it also protects against things that aren't really weapons. It provides the usual Hardened Armor.

- Immunity is trumped by Allergy as usual

- Spirit allergies are different for Possession and Materialization based spirits; in the case of Possession, the allergy may only apply when the spirit is possessing something that can be affected by the allergy (insecticides to insect spirits; good luck dragging them into the astral plan to spill on a purely ethereal spirit.)



For balance purposes then, you'd want something that can hurt spirits without requiring a mage or adept in the party (Adepts with Killing Hands+Critical Strike or a Weapon Focus can usually wipe the floor with a spirit that has only Force+X Body to protect itself with.) Attacks of will are nice, but a bit too hard for most people to really pull off.

- Spirits generally depend on healthy life and mana; toxic waste and particularly radiation damage the astral world. Depleted uranium bullets might hurt them.

- Thematic allergies for all spirits are nice, but the system of what-hurts-what varies from tradition to tradition; compare traditional chinese with the traditional western ones (air vs. earth, water vs. fire). The use of elemental rock-paper-scissors is a good idea, but there are a LOT of spirits, and every tradition has different ones. Would you set up different allergies for a spirit of the same "class" from a different tradition? Also, what about the non-traditional spirits (toxic, blood, shadow, shedim etc.)?

I still like giving every spirit some allergies, but it's a bit tricky. Maybe something that represents the death of the particular part of life/manasphere that generates that class of spirits?

Five Element Theory (which is either Wu Xing, or is based on Wu Xing) is very interesting in this matter, as not only is there a destructive cycle, but a constructive one. For instance, attempting to hurt a fire spirit with anything based on wood (baseball bat, wood tipped bullets, etc) would just make it stronger.

Ascalaphus, those redefinitions would simply make the game more complex, which is something that I figured Shadowrun was trying to avoid. I see no problem with the way the rules are, except that Elemental Immunities are halved against that element (IE: An Immune [Fire] creature getting hit with a flamethrower has his Immune [Fire] "armor" halved because of fire's -1/2 AP).

What should be added into Immunity [X] is that its treated as [X] Resistance armor mods (you know, like the fire retardant mods we can give armor--those aren't halved).

Maybe then it's best defined as follows:

1) AP does not apply to a defense measure that has special proof against that attack form (fire vs. fire resistance)
2) ItNW is special proof against all nonmagical attack forms
-> ItNW is not reduced by elemental damage

However, any other armor the spirit may have can still be reduced by the fire; only the armor granted by ItNW is immune to it.

And rephrase Hardened Armor to:
HA reduces damage against which it protects by its rating.



Yes, this makes spirits pretty scary; but it's simple and makes sense.

(Which is why giving every spirit an allergy to make injuring them possible might be a good idea.)

Looks good IMO.



This doesn't really break anything. It makes hardened armor more powerful, but very very few things have it. Not even vehicles have it, they have normal armor and are immune to stun (which is NOT the same thing as hardened armor, it is mechanically identical to Hardened Armor).

What we end up with is the following:

Spirits get tougher, significantly, but have a listed weakness making them easy to overcome (if the weakness can be exploited). Force 4 spirits can still be taken down (8 armor isn't that much when compared to large caliber weapons--sure it reduces damage by 8, but you're still knocking boxes off).

Dragons suddenly jump a rung or three on the "big, unstoppable, mofo" scale. This is double plus good. Non-greats have Hardened Armor 8, which makes them quite durable beasts instead of "about as tough as a family sedan." Great dragons have Hardened Armor 20, which is neigh indestructible, which is also good. They're metaplot devices for a reason and really shouldn't succumb to a few kilos of explosive (a few kilos of well placed explosive on the other hand is just fine: bring the whole building down on top of them).

Drakes (and other PC race options with hardened armor) now actually have a reason to be in that form. An automatic "I take 4 less damage" compensates for "I just broke my kevlar vest." Instead of getting squishier (hmm 4 armor dice, or 12?) in their non-metahuman form, they actually get a smidge tougher (on average), as they rightly should.

If your intention is to houserule it as such, you should specify that positive AP is added to ItNW. Otherwise flechette gets bonus damage for nothing, unless this is your intention as well.

Hmm. That might be odd, OTOH, flechettes also do bonus damage against unarmored people, so..

I think I'll agree. Flechettes wouldn't "add" armor to HA targets unless they have one of the various normal armor variations (worn, power, or spell).

Of course, it should go along with "only shotguns get flechettes." A shotgun vs. a spirit won't be ideal, but it makes sense that it'd be pretty darn effective compared to other fire arms.

Ah, now I remember; flechettes will indeed do bonus damage, as long as the spirit has no other armor. Or perhaps you give the spirit some normal armor based on the AP+ of the flechettes. But it makes no sense that their HA would increase.

So now we're at two additional houserules as to not make the first one unbalanced. let's see how many there will be in the end.

@Ascaphlaus: IIRC there are no spirits who have inherent armor besides ItNW. Whether materialized spirits can wear armor is unclear, at least for Fire Spirits it should be out of the question. It does make possession spirits even more powerful.
Oh and I didn't mean to increase the hardened part of the armor but to add the 5 dice if the spirit is forced to roll at all. However both is the case by RAW for negative as well as positive AP

I wouldn't make shotgun flechettes different from others.
Also, RAW is already "unbalanced"; many people assumed that elemental damage was somehow different from regular damage in how the AP interacted with HA - but by RAW it's not.
Taking the logic that fire resistance isn't halved by fire damage to its logical conclusion (which is NOT RAW!), ItNW isn't APed by any nonmagical attacks. Applying the same rules to equivalent situations is keeping it simple as possible.

As for balance; I can live with spirits being powerful. I do think there would be a manatech countermeasure, either through allergies of the spirits, or by using awakened materials to make (expensive) bullets. The market would demand it.




A Spirit of Man could have an Armor spell, for example. And there's fluff about spirits picking up a real katana; so why not armor (if it makes sense for the spirit, of course.) Only if they have armor does AP apply. So only then are flechettes a bad idea, and AP rounds "useful" against spirits.

I don't really have any problem with spirits requiring specialized tactics to defeat; so does everything else (no Neurostun for drones, you don't want to go to melee against cockatrices, etc.) Manatech bullets are a bit of a must, but I can certainly imagine making them from Radical Metal reagents or something like that. Expensive stuff; HTR troops would have some, common security guards wouldn't.

I agree. It works just like any other nonmagical attack with negative AP.

So SnS is not expensive enough in your opinion? Making magical ranged attacks is very difficult. just throwing magical components at the spirit wouldn't work. Additional Allergies need additional houserules.

But what happens if the absolute value of the AP is greater than the worn/cast armor?

Unless you introduce new fluff this would not work AFAIK. All magical attacks, which the manatech bullet must be to overcome ItNW, are based on the wielders power. Items can only enhance that power not grant it.

Physical damage. If its less, then stun. HA merely counts as auto-hits on the roll.

Oh we are talking about another houserule.

How HA and NA "stack" is not addressed by RAW, and given that we're house ruling what HA does, we have to explicitly say how it stacks with NA and how it interacts with flechettes. It's not Rule 1, 2, and 3. It's rule 1a, 1b, 1c.

It's not magical enough.

Besides, as a nonlethal attack mode that deals well with mundane armor and can stop drones as well, I don't think it's in any way underpowered.



Yes. Additional allergies are an option if you think spirits are too powerful. I don't think it's bad that mages and adepts are superior at handling spirits - nobody complains hackers are good at hacking either.

And as houserule complexity goes.. it's a chart of the spirits and an allergy for every type.




The same thing that happens to anyone else if the AP exceeds the armor they're wearing.

Basically, nothing; AP reduces armor, nothing else. It doesn't reduce body, it doesn't reduce HA.



We have other magical effects that do not require an active magic user; Awakened drugs, mana-luminescent moss and so forth. The production process probably involves magic, or background count that's "soaked up" by the ammunition.

The stats would probably go something like this:

Mana Bullets
AP +0, Damage +0, cost 200 , Availability 12R, These bullets ignore ItNW

This is blatantly incorrect. It is addressed by RAW.

I QUOTE "A critter with this power has a natural Armor rating that is cumulative with any external armor worn. Critter armor is divided into Ballistic and Impact components, the same as character armor."

Hardened armor has no special text allowing it to stack with anything. It is also innate in this case and neither 'external' nor 'worn' if the critter has the power. Same goes for spirit... spirit grants hardened armor. They do not stack. Hardened armor by RAW reading is it's own special type of armor which does not stack w/ any other (highest total applies... all damage subject to the hardened armor threshhold).


The possessed mage earlier in the thread is also doing this incorrectly... he doesn't add his ItNW to his worn armor, nowhere in RAW does it say to do this. Point out specifically where it says the two are cumulative. (possessed mages are still very nasty, in that their body scores go up so they can wear a lot more armor w/o encumbrance).


As for the house rule... it's one way. Though I think SR4's way of doing it is more realistic and I like it. With good armor the shot doesn't work the vast majority of the time, but when it fails it fails spectacularly. (just like armored vehicles today). I also don't like it's effects on high force spirits... they're already tough enough, they don't need that added to their mix.



As for magical ammo... no it doesn't work like that. Some mage somewhere is going to need to enchant it (and spend either ritual materials or karma to do it). Doing so is going to leave his astral fingerprint all over it. Any ammo he produces could be used as a ritual link to him. Even putting a magical barrier on bullets can have some fun theoretical effects but it's still a very risky move for the mage. (the ammo wouldn't be able to go through a barrier for one w/o taking it down). Rather than further extending this thread, there was one a short time ago where the possibility of a fireball bullet and the like was brought up (anchoring)...

And a lot of the examples given are of dual-natured critters, not things that a mage has enchanted.

So, in other words. If a F4 spirit (with hardened armor) was to wear a flak jacket (because it can) then it's armor rating would be...8/8 HA + 8/6 NA = 16/14 of what type? Hardened? Normal? What happens if it takes 7 DV? 9? (with no AP)

If there's -2 AP then what?

This question comes up very very easily when a player (me) makes a drake adept and takes the Armor power.

In drake form I have how much armor of what type and at what point do I take stun instead of physical?

This.

Is.

Not.

Addressed.

By.

RAW.

Incorrect Draco...

1. spirits would require specially tailored armor if at all. Also this assumes that spirits are flesh and blood entities and would be armored in the same way as a plain vanilla metahuman. (not necessarily true given the nature of magic and spirits... where is the spirits vital points... they have them, but they're not necessarily the same as the flesh and blood individual). (all this is rehash of other threads)
2. armor always states if it's cumulative in it's description. Hardened is not cumulative with anything.

Your spirit... assuming it could take barding...
Would have 8/8 hardened armor, and 8/6 WORN armor (not natural armor).
If it was a critter... the critters barding (worn armor crafted for animals), would be cumulative w/ it's natural armor, but it's hardened armor would not be modified and would still be tracked as a separate total. (or if it were a troll wearing armor and adding it's 1 point natural armor).

For damage tests, the worn armor wouldn't matter at all (unless ItNW was bypassed by something like a weapon focus).
It's armor would never be higher than 8.

You hit it with a weapon focus melee weapon... 6 points impact worn armor would apply. But not the hardened. If it was hit with a bullet for 7 impact (not all bullets do ballistic)... then the 8 points hardened would fully stop it. If hit for 10 points... the spirit would roll 8 armor + body to resist the damage.


I originally read this the same way, until people pointed this out... as I was stacking it then trying to figure out how to apply AP and the like... then I had to recant and agree, they had the correct reading.

Exercise for the reader... look at the armor and tell me where in there it says hardened is cumulative w/ anything... All hardened does is set a damage threshhold... if that threshhold is not overcome, don't bother w/ the damage.


If spirit were hit with a shotgun... the +5 AP on the flechettes would give it 13 hardened impact, and 11 normal impact. The 13 hardened impact would win out and you'd ignore the normal 11. (yes this means you'd need to do at least 14 damage w/ a shotgun to touch said spirit w/ flechettes). If you were hit by AP-2... then 6 points hardened and 6/4 normal... hardened still wins.

And I repeat myself, this is addressed by RAW.

In your drakes case... it has 4 armor power, 4 mystical armor, 4 hardened armor. It has 4/4/4 armor (ballistic, impact, astral) and hardened 4... if it wears anything specially crafted to fit it's drake form it is cumulative w/ your armor power. The hardened just means anything which hits you for 4 points or less doesn't even need to roll resistance.

BTW: this is one reason people consider drakes underpowered (compared to SR3 where drakes and shapechangers were badly overpowered for their cost). Low amounts of hardened armor are almost useless against anything except untrained fist-fighters.

Again, I argued exactly what you were arguing a while back ago... you'll just have to read this for yourself. Seriously, read what I said, then look at the RAW and see if anything I said contradicts the critter powers, armor section, anything.

Actually ItNW and other hardened armor is added to the resistance test should one be called for:

Only with worn armor there is the rule that only one layer counts.

The drake from above can ignore any damage from the material plane up to 4P/S and could soak any greater damage with BOD+8 +/- AP dice. Astral Attacks below 5P/S bounce off as well, since his Mystic Armor (Critter Power) is hardened as well.
If the property named "armor power" is the adept power, which unfortunately is named Mystic Armor as well, then he can soak more dangerous astral Attacks with WIL+8 +/- AP dice. Should it be the armor spell, this does nothing against astral attacks.

Dakka... exactly, it says it's treated "as normal armor." Normal armor does not stack... It nowhere says this 'normal armor' is cumulative w/ any other type of armor. EVERY and I mean EVERY source of stacking armor has that cumulative phrase in it. (I know I looked, when I was taken to task on this... trying to disprove the counter-argument. I couldn't disprove it.

I tried my search fu, but the original thread where I was taken to task on this is lost in the pre-crash time as best I can tell. Believe me, I originally argued the same thing...
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...armor++stacking


The hinging phrase, is 'as normal armor'...

Quite frankly, this makes a lot of sense, and if you think 4 points hardened from a drake is bad... tray dealing with 16 points on a possession mage... who then is wearing obscene amounts thanks to his +8 body score... (good for 16 points more of worn armor!). It's ludicrously easy to get armors up into the 40's (not including body)... if you do not apply the stacking limitation. This is quite often one of the biggest problems I've run into.

Once I viewed it in those terms, then it started to make a lot more sense... and made things much more sane. It also avoided one of the biggest problems in games doesn't come from powergaming, but from disparity. EG: the only way I have a prayer of denting this thing is to hit it with something that is guaranteed to one shot kill any other player. Now once you've brought said weapon onto the field... you need to A. keep it out of players hands and B. how do you justify not turning it on the other players once it's present. (I don't believe in using kid gloves)

And if you think keeping it out of their hands is trivial... you're channeling yourself... just order something like a force 6 bound/summoned spirit to possess the street sam which is packing it... now you got two problems. Street sam is possessed... you see how this starts to go...