I'm pretty sure I read about the audio/visual effects of magic some where but can not seem to find it off hand. I was wondering how everyone else handles this as well?

You can't find it because there are none. The visual effect of a manabolt is that someone collapses like a puppet with his strings cut.

There is the vague "you can feel it" and "mask" bit, but that's what darkened windows are for.

And the "mask" bit only comes from those who are "shamans"... which I think now includes everyone who has a mentor spirit.

Actually, there can be visual and audio effects with spells (for the most part, there aren't, but it's possible), but these are determined by the GM and your magician's tradition/style. See "Noticing Magic" in SR4A p 179. For most magic spells, you just have the magician's intense look of concentration, but some traditions have a "Shamanic Mask". Regardless of tradition, you have a Perception Test to notice spellcasting with a threshold equal to 6 minus the Force.

We let the Perception threshold give us a general sense of scale and fill in special effects pretty much however the caster wants... Of course, we had a mage who liked to forget about this and cast really high Force spells (negative perception thresholds), and resorted to describing his spells as raising a mountain of skulls and blotting out the sun for three days to get him to understand why people always knew he was casting.

The page is 168 for SR4 (for those who don't have SR4A) with the added note that most spells and spirits have little, if any, visible effect in the physical world unless the magician prefers flashy effects (so it is partly choice) or her tradition calls for it. There's rules to notice the mage's look of concentration, hand gestures, etc. but there is no requirement for the spell itself to have a visible effect (i.e. a manabolt may only be noticeable when someone drops from it) so the group getting on their mage for not describing his spells is bad.

i disagree. a -6 threshold to perceive something is more obvious than a 40 foot tall color-changing neon sign which is strapped to your eyeball and has live wires hanging off it that brush against your skin every few seconds.

Except, you know, that is not a -6 visual Perception Threshold.

Unless the spell is clearly an exception (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, most Illusion spells), the spell itself has no visual effects whatsoever unless the caster desires them.

Even if the caster does use visual effects for their spells, camera's will not "see" them unless the spell is Physical.




Oh, and on a side note - spellcasting does not require the 'gestures & chants' described under Noticing Magic, unless the caster has the appropriate Geas. Such techniques are commonly used to center focus for spellcasting (regardless of if the caster has Centering or not), but again are in no way required. The Perception Test to notice spellcasting, because spells do not require visual or audio effects (during casting or otherwise), is best described as sensing the influx of mana being channeled by the magician - described in any number of ways (gut feeling, spinal shiver, etc - suggest you let the player determine what precisely their spells feel like).

As Muspellsheimr said, it can be anything.

It can be a severe case of goosebumps or a sense of impending dread..or a extreme case of the giggles (if trickster shamans are around).

It can be that someone walks across your grave kinda feeling.

Personally I usually go with the flashy effects if it fits the spell.

All magic is pink.

Or Pies...

Bozo The Clown Trickster Shaman

Powerbolt: 10 Ton Weight (Falls down from the sky)
Stunbolt: Throws a pie
Acid Wave: Water Squirting flower
Stunball: Giant Pie falls from the sky
Powerball: Whistling sound...pause...giant bomb falls from the sky

Additionally, the Flexible Signature metamagic can further reduce how easy the magic is to notice. (At least I assume it can also make it harder to notice on the physical plane, not just astral)

And to think i have been making all PC mages say "bippidy boppidy boo"...
like others have said though, it's really up to the casting magician and maybe the mask effect when it
comes to physical display of casting.
Personally, i like magical effects-
but i wouldn't knock a character who was playing a stealth mage or similar character concept who didn't want his
spells to appear.

Nope, Flexible Signature only alters the signature that magical effects leave on the objects they have touched. It cannot alter the clues left by casting.

As an addon, SR4A has unfortunately introduced sparkles to every spell there is. so even if the spell does not have a visible effect and the magician does nothing obvious, the pooling mana will be visible

They don't have to be visible, but they DO have to be noticeable. When you dual-cast the Force 14 Suicide Bomb, people will notice. It's not your look of concentration or some goosebumps. People up the street, around the corner, sleeping in their beds will notice this happening. If you don't like a mountain of skulls and blotting out the sun, Demons howling into the world through a rent in the universe or rippling waved of thunder sucking existence into a whirling vortex of power are equally viable. The point wasn't forcing a certain special effect, it was to remind him that this shit is not subtle.

Edit: Sparkly magic is stupid. It will never be included in any game I run.

As long as these sparkles aren´t looking like girly-fireworks, i can live with it. ^^ But besides that, magic is not very secret (as long as you can see the mage) because most of the spells have to be cast at high-forces (between 5-6) to get a usefull effect, which leads to a noticing-treshold of 1 or 0. Not very stealthy in my view.

doesn't much matter if it's visual, my point was that if you've got a -6 threshold to perceive the effect, then it may as well be a gigantic neon sign attached to your eyeball that zaps you every few seconds. you're going to notice it, and precisely *how* you notice it is beside the point. it isn't the fact that it was specifically visual (although i would argue that having the kind of AC current required to power a large neon sign passed through your person is not particularly visual at all, that is also beside the point), the point was that a -6 threshold to perceive something means it's really really really really obvious. precisely what it manifests as is irrelevant, it still lets everyone in the area know that someone just cast a force 12 spell.

as such, making it emphatically clear to the player that everyone can notice the spellcasting (regardless of what it is, in this case visual) is absurd. the player may be able to have some degree of influence on what sort of indication there is, but enforcing that there is some sort of painfully obvious announcement that the spell is being cast is not unreasonable when you're discussing a -6 perception threshold. sure, it didn't have to be visual, but by making it visual (the sense which we as humans rely on most) you can really make it clear to the player just how obvious it is when a spell of that magnitude is cast.

Only 3 of a human's 5 senses have range. so unless the observer is within the spells area of effect, the clue has to be visual, auditory or olfactory.

The other problem that there is no rule describing what happens if the threshold is 0 or smaller. If you stack the applicable modifiers, Joe Average may not even be allowed to roll at all even if the threshold is -6:
Perceiver is distracted –2 This is usually the case
Object/sound not in immediate vicinity –2 or Object/sound far away –3
Interfering sight/odor/sound –2 Since we don't know how the clue manifest this may be the case

Object/sound stands out in some way +2 Does not apply IMHO since magic is by definition not very noticeable.

So Joe Average is at -6/-7 dice to notice magic. With anything less than 8 dice he isn't allowed to roll in most cases.

I'd say it's pretty trivial to roll more than -6 successes on zero dice. Look: *rolls no dice* I beat the threshold by six. Critical success!

well, if you want to make it especially punishing to have all those negatives, you could have them roll their negative value and that's how many hits less than 0 they have. they'd still have really good odds for a critical success, but a small chance of not making the threshold. a really, really, really small chance. close to 1 in 45000 if they have 6 dice (if my math is right), presumably more likely if they're at -7 dice. plus, i suppose if they were to roll more than 50% ones it would be a critical glitch.

well, if you want to make it especially punishing to have all those negatives, you could have them roll their negative value and that's how many hits less than 0 they have. they'd still have really good odds for a critical success, but a small chance of not making the threshold. a really, really, really small chance. close to 1 in 45000 if they have 6 dice (if my math is right), presumably more likely if they're at -7 dice. plus, i suppose if they were to roll more than 50% ones it would be a critical glitch.

Here's an idea, for every point the threshold is below 1, give the perceiver +2 dice, but leave the actual threshold at 1.

So a -6 threshold would actually work out to +14 dice at a threshold of 1. Followed by the -7 and a base 4 (3 INT, Perception 1) leaves us at 11 dice, threshold 1.

Yeah. I think they have good odds to notice that.

Even at only +1 die per lower threshold, you're still talking 3 dice threshold 1. Someone is going to notice.

Nitpick - -6 Threshold to perceive the casting.

It lets everyone in the area know that something large & unnatural happened. A successful Perception Test allows someone to notice the casting, not identify it as magic. To recognize it requires previous experience/knowledge/etc - something Joe Average likely does not have (although Joe still might panic, or assume magic because of how unnatural it feels, despite not knowing).


No, it doesn't.

If the Dice Pool is 0 or less, they cannot succeed, regardless of Threshold. Threshold 0 or less means it is blatantly obvious, meaning if they can roll, they automatically notice it. People miss neon signs all the time.


Interesting idea, but if you use it, I suggest the following modification:

Noticing magic use becomes a fixed Threshold (probably 5), and each point of Force provides a +2 Dice Pool Modifier to the Perception check. Joe Average buys Hits.

They wouldn't be able to succeed (by buying hits) until Force 14.

F14 -> +28 dice -> -7 for perception mods -> 21 -> 4:1 -> 5 hits.

Yes it does, unless you assume that the clue emanates from the caster for which the BBB gives no indication.

Read the fucking rules. Perception is in no way limited to the five 'standard' human senses. It also covers gut feelings & picking up ambient mana, for example (realizing you are being shadowed, noticing an astral form passing through you).

And noticing the use of magic is not a Visual, Audio, Olfactory, Tactical, or 'I lick it' test.

This made me giggle. "I lick the spell!"

While you may not consciously acknowledge that you see, hear or smell something that leads you to believe you are being followed it is still a reaction to a stimulus of one of the five senses. Anything else cannot be perceived. The passing astral form probably is a tactile sensation.

If the test to notice magic is not a visual test, why does the BBB give several visual example for what the clue could be?

Sorry double post. First one ever.

While gut reactions are based on input from the five senses, we are not consciously aware of what that input is. There's a section of your brain that makes snap judgements (the fight-or-flight part of the brain) and it clues you in to changing your behavior, or warns you about something (you think you're being followed, so you take an unexpected detour into a bookstore to test the hypothesis). What we're aware of is the idea but not the input.

The Getty Kouros is subject to debate on its authenticity because all scientific analysis showed that the statued was indeed as old as it was claimed to be, but every art expert who looked at it had the first impression that it was wrong, that there was some aspect that they couldn't put their finger on that was making alarms in their head go off. The first words out of one person's mouth after hearing that the Getty paid for the statue was "I'm sorry to hear that."

Thanks for all the info everyone. I had totally forgotten about the perception test based on the force. That will help me a lot as I have a mage who likes to stay invisible most of the time. Now I realize I simply have to add the thresholds from the casting to the invisibility and wammo there is the invisible mage! hehehehhehe

I think you misunderstand something there. The perception test to notice the casting of the spell has no impact whatsoever on the spell resistance test once the spell is cast. Even if you do witness the invisibility spell being cast, it does not help you find the target of the spell. It is just as invisible as it would be if the spell was cast half a world away

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but this seemed relevant...

The test is to notice the spell being CAST, right?

Is there anything mentioned about noticing that a spell is being sustained?

Like, a mage sustaining phantasm - does a person get a chance to notice that the mage is sustaining the spell?

Nope.

I'd say no, but. While there is no hard rule on it sustaining a spell imposes a 2 dice penalty to all your actions due to concentration. That level of concentration should and IMO would have visual cues, but how hard it is to notice should be up to your GM. Also bluff/disguise could be used as a skill to counter people noticing it. Sort of like if you are injured but patched up so not bleeding out, people can still notice you limp or favor your right side etc. There is no rule for that, but it is common in both reality and fiction to notice these things and that is one of the things the perception skill is for.

If I were to handle it I'd say there is a threshold of 2 to notice this, a person can use bluff or disguise to actively try to hide the strain of sustaining a spell each hit reduces the hits from the perception check by 1. Also all this would tell someone is they are distracted and focusing on something else, it would not tell them they are sustaining a spell though that might be a logical conclusion given the world.

Cool thanks ya'll

I couldn't find any rules for noticing sustaining spells, but like you say Shinobi, it seems like the concentration required (-2) would be noticeable. But then again, with the amount of AR and whatnot whizzing around, I guess someone might notice you're distracted, but wouldn't automatically realize that you were sustaining.

Magic is pretty much the "I win" button in SR by RAW.

Agreed, telling if someone is distracted is a standard social/perception test, but you wouldn't know why.

I would also add (the level of the quality) the focused concentration quality to anyone trying to perceive a magician casting or sustaining a spell.