1. Can infiltration be used in the astral space?

2. Can a pixie's conceal (self) and a spirit of man's concealment power be used cumulatively?

1. I don't have the book on me, (so I cant quote a page number or anything) but I'm pretty damn sure you can use it, except it isn't as effective as in the meat. (Everyones aura is bright and flashy, kinda makes it hard).

2. Not sure sorry

1.) Yes.

2.) Yes, as it explicitely says in SR4a p293: "Concealment also allows dual natured critters to conceal themselves and others from astral detection."

According to the FAQ




So it would appear that you can, but you must be astrally projecting or perceiving.

I think you misread that.. that's for hiding while you're astral yourself.

On the matter of hiding from astral entities (while purely physical): we've been discussing this at length the last couple of months. Not everyone agrees, but it seems to be like this:

- Yes, you use Infiltration to hide from everything. You also don't really get modifiers to your Infiltration skill; the modifiers are all on the observer-side.
- Astral perception uses Assensing instead of Perception to counter Infiltration, and has slightly different modifiers, to be found in Street Magic.

The reasoning behind this is as follows: the astral has terrain features that can be used to hide behind. Anything that lives, like plants, people or heaps of garbage. With Infiltration, you're able to use them to limit how visible you are. This is much the same as using Infiltration to hide from cameras and other technological detection, as well as guards. It's all about limiting how exposed you are.

As for why all the modifiers are observer-side: it's neater that way. The infiltrator makes a single roll, all the differing observers make rolls modifier according to their particular advantages. This prevents accidents like getting 5 hits to infiltrate past the elite guard, and only 1 to bypass his apprentice standing next to him

Don't forget those modifiers to astral perception in Street Magic. Lifeless, sterile environs give a bonus to perception (like a clean corporate facility!), while a lot of garbage and clutter make it harder (the Barrens)

He did ask about Infiltration IN astral space, so the FAQ does answer that.

As for Using infiltration against entities on astral space is like trying to hide from ghosts. You have no idea they are there, you can't anticipate their area of vision. Sure you can try to move behind cover and auras, but I'd give an astral observer a huge bonus at the very least, if not automatic success in some situations.

First, the FAQ is a collection of house rules. Nothing more, nothing less. They're about as official as anything you'll find here. Errata is used for fixing rules or adding new ones, not a FAQ. Considering how many blatant errors are found in the current batch, it's obvious they're not even double checked let alone cross-referenced with other rules or investigated to see how they affect the rest of the game.

Second, it is a subject that the rules never come out and address in a straight forward manner, and I can't think of a single instance where they address a mundane character trying to sneak past a dual-natured being. Even the astral visibility section in Street Magic (p. 114) is sorely lacking, though it's a good place to start and discusses many of the things that will come up when attempting it. Shadows, glass, and living beings all have grossly different properties on each plane, for instance. So trying to hide in a darkened area in the physical world might be a bright, well-lit area on the astral.

The biggest rule missing is what kind of a modifier a mundane character suffers when trying to do this. There's two major things to consider there. 1) The strength of the character's aura and their own awareness of it, and 2) their personal knowledge of how the astral works. When it's come up in the past for me, I've just applied a negative modifier on the Infiltration Test based on the absolute value of the sneaking character's Essence. It was a quick and dirty ruling, but it worked for us and no one had any complaints. If the character also has a relevant skill that would help, such as the active skill Arcana or a knowledge skill like Astral Studies, it would make sense to allow that to help offset the suggested Essence penalty. It's a bit more complicated, but it makes a lot of sense. Characters who are dual-natured or who are using astral perception wouldn't have to worry about either of those mechanics, however, since they'd be able to see both planes at once and would know how to pick and choose the places to hide behind.

My bad



If you did that, you'd have to give bonuses to any guards the infiltrator doesn't know about, invisible guards, well-hidden cameras, RFID motion sensors and so forth too. I generally interpret Infiltration as not only sneaking past known observers, but also in anticipating where they could be.
But yeah, I'd give a situational bonus to invisible observers too. I'm just a bit leery of automatic success.

That said, there's a large gray area in the rules regarding stealth; how for will a single Infiltration test take you? At what point is Infiltration useless because there's no way to pass undetected? Can a spirit's Concealment power make someone invisible? Even if they have to shoulder aside a guard to get to a door?



I'm also having trouble determining the precise uses of Disguise (with a listed possible specialty of Camouflage), Shadowing and Infiltration. It seems they overlap, and it also seems weird that a sniper would use Disguise to hide stationary, but Infiltration to move about.

I tend to divide it thus:
- Disguise is looking like someone else (camouflage isn't an acceptable specialty under this interpretation, because Disguise is always a form of camouflage)
- Infiltration is about remaining unseen
- Shadowing is about people not realizing that you're tailing them; but not exactly about remaining unseen

I'm curious if other people have a different delineation of those skills that makes sense?

I like the Essence idea. I don't really like the "awareness of the astral" thing though; I think it's messy to assume the Awakened know how it works by nature, while others have to take a knowledge for it. Either everyone needs the knowledge, or no-one does. Otherwise you're still stuck with a messy sliding scale; at what level of Awakening, what level of magical power do you really understand the astral? 1? 4? Perhaps if you let people substitute Astral Combat for Astral Theory/Arcana.. it's not spot-on, but it's the most "Astral" skill there is.

This issue comes up every other month and the only suggestion I give is: hide inside a cardboard box and walk around. This way, no astral perceiving creature will be able to see you. Solid Snak was right after all

The idea is that the mundane character simply can't see where these vulnerable areas are. They don't know if they're in a background count, or whether or not that troll there is bright enough to conceal his aura. It's like trying to sneak around with a blindfold on. But if you have some training (and my suggestion wasn't limiting that training to just those two skills; they were just examples), you'd have a much better chance of knowing what to do despite that.

It's certainly not something any Joe Blow on the street would know, and characters who can and are seeing the astral plane at the same time don't have to worry about it for that very reason. They don't need that special training since they can clearly see what they need to hide behind and whatnot.

The FAQ does have the sentence about Dual Natured Characters, they are in physical world, not purely astral.

The FAQ doesn't have the explicit qualifier of "Has Astral Vision". But, since it does refer to astrally projecting, and Dual Natured characters using Stealth skills, both of those have astral perception, it could be argued only astrally perceiving characters can use stealth. Though I will point out that the FAQ does not explicitly preclude characters without astral perception from using infiltration. My personal opinion is to allow Infiltration skill for mundanes against astral perception, though it may be fair to allow penalties for the mundane.

Seems to me Stealth is Stealth especially for dual natured creatures. Spirits can get around more but they are dealing with an alien world and are likely to discount the mundane any way.

Best way to hide from some one in the real world is hide behind a tree. Best way to hide from a Dual Natured creature or a spirit is hide behind a tree (or be in a box).

Most of the time when you are sneaking around you have no idea where a camera or guard might be and all you do is hope you see them first.


So for Spirits and Dual Natured, you use the the Astral Visibility modifiers in SM 114, rather than the light modifiers.

For Background Illumination, it ranges from +2 for a clean room to -2 to a Forest or jungle.

For Aura Noise, it ranges from +2 for Devoid of life to -2 for Packed.

Shadow Clutter is listed as -1 to -4 which sounds like cover modifiers for living and non living things.

That means reading someone in a really crowded night club where you you are having trouble getting a clear view of him might be a -4 (-2 Aura Noise and -2 Shadow Clutter) before figuring any background count.

Also a glass window or even a curtain provides total blockage for a spirit or dual natured creature's astral sight.

The biggest difference is that Chameleon and camouflage gear would be of limited use.



Finally if you are going to use Essence as a modifier, someone with a full 6 Essence would have to be considered the zero modifier level for any Essence Astral Visibility modifiers.
Looking at the mods that Aura Noise provide, I'd say at most someone with a very low Essence would receive a -2 modifier to be seen Astrally.

Perhaps a -1 mod if someone was under 4 Essence and a -2 mod if under 2 Essence, but no more than that.

Essence Loss is not easily astrally visible – it takes quite some hits assensing it correctly.

Yeah maybe I handle Stealth in a different way. I've never bought into that CRPG "I enter stealth mode" thing. Yes you can hide from people etc., but there are times where you just cannot hide no matter how good your stealth is. On a tactical level, you need cover or concealment to prevent you from being seen, unless the enemy is preoccupied with something in another direction.

So for example, if a Shadowrunner tries to sneak through a security checkpoint in the entrance of a corporate building in bright light, then yes he will automatically fail.
same thing happens if there is a watcher spirit gazing at that door and having being told to report any auras going through it. Astral stealth just isn't gonna cut it.


But if said spirit was patrolling a whole area, then yes I'd allow an Infiltration test given that the PC was aware there might be watchers. If said stealthy character has astral perception or just good knowledge skills regarding the astral plane, he could probably do it just fine, but otherwise I'd give him a penalty or give the spirit a good bonus (in addition to normal perception bonuses of "actively looking for something."

Dr. Funkenstein...great ideas! I very much agree that mundanes can counter their penalty if they have some kind of skill that reflects knowledge of the astral and that any typical Awakened character would "by default" have Arcana, Astral Combat, Assensing, Knowledge Astral Planes/Magic Theory. Should an Awakened not have any of these capabilities I guess the mod could apply to them as well.

By extension, I laughed at the idea of a materialized spirit being skilled at Infiltration but "clueless" about using it on the physical plane.

"Why is that spirit crouching behind that rose bush?!!?"