Am I missing something in SR4 and just getting clueless in my old age? I recall in SR3, when initiating you could change your astral signature instead of grabbing a metamagic.

I looked through SR4 and Street Magic, but nothing jumped out at me. Was this removed in SR4?

I believe now its a metamagic technique. Lemme see if I can find it real quick.....yep, here's some:

Flexible Signature Allows you to altar your sig. at will. This allows you to essentially forge your signature to look like someone else's. You can also make it fade faster.

Masking Change the appearance of your aura...making it look like some else altogether, whether it means that your magic is higher or lower, mundane, or whatever. So instead of forging a different sig like flexible signature, your "disguising" it as something else.

Both of those are on pg. 198 in SR4a

SR4A p. 198 Flexible Signature " ..the initiatite can choose to alter herl astral
signature at will, disguising it..."

On the subject of astral signatures, if a spell is cast via ritual spellcasting, who leaves the astral signature? The team leader only, or every single member of the team?

This is about to pop up in our game - one of the mages has the flexible signature metamagic signature, but the other does not. And of course neither wants to be tracked down!

I'd say, the leader. He's the one shaping mana, after all.

I would say it would leave an amalgam of all the mages signatures. If would be +1 difficulty to pick the leaders sig out, and +2 for the members, with the normal roll for just detecting a sig you would only recognize it if that group cast gain.

Well, too perfectly fine answers, which both make sense, yet are contradictory! I just love Shadowrun

But thank you both, I will forward it to the GM so he can choose.

I like the idea that all the participating members leaves a signature, even if the leader is easier to detect.

But why don't they just erase the astral signature to prevent tracking/evidence?

I had always thought that the astral signature is left on the target of the spell. So, to remove the signature, the caster would have to be where the target is - which is not the case with ritual sorcery, where only the spotter is close to the target.

And, I don´t really think it is too wise to return to the crime scene, once the spells goes off with all the fleshy effects (in this case, the spell to be cast is fireball - I think somebody WILL notice that!)

Disregarding a possible sub-optimal spell to use with ritual casting... I've always assumed a magician can remove an astral signature while projecting into the astral plane (or using astral perception).. thus a few seconds after the fireball (at most) one of the mages can go there and spend a few turns removing the signature. Unless there are hostile mages and/or spirits there however...