Please don't ever post house rules for squeezing cyberware out one's pores.

I agree with James; diss not the SFB. It was my first wargame (I was six, it was many years ago).

I agree with you too; games are supposed to be fun. However, it's important to exclude rules that are bad or have nasty loopholes in them, since one person exploiting them can walk all over another person's fun. Consider the tragic crash of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle when the unbalanced Sabbat expansion was released, or the addition of bonus stacking rules to or the removal of critical threat range bonuses from D&D, or the illegal defense rules in basketball, or the infield fly rule in baseball, or the multiple rules that were changed or abandoned in Magic: The Gathering. Game design is a science and an art, and the inclusion of sloppy, unbalanced, or easily abused rules is simply bad game design.

My first urge is to be snarky. Instead, I'll ask that you please read my previous posts and either respond to the good, logical, entirely feasible explanations for why material linkage would/should not be possible and included in the Magic expansion, or offer good, logical, entirely feasible explanations why my explanations are not good, logical, and/or feasible.

If your argument is coming from the "there's magic in that universe, and so material linking should exist," please say so, but we're not going to be able to debate. I'm coming from the meta-game level of playability and game balance.

Very true, but it's still a concern. A team has to spoof their datatrails and maintain a level of computer security or be screwed. Material linking presents the same concerns just in a different manner, just as astral signatures do for mages.

But, just as there are ways around getting burned by your datatrail or astral sig, I would include some ways to get around being burned by material links too. Have biological material degrade (for linking purposes) at the same rate as an astral sig, for instance, and/or allow a mage with astral perception to "wipe clean" a biological or sympathetic link in the same (or perhaps slightly more difficult) manner as wiping an astral sig. In this fashion, game balance/runner survival could be balanced with concerns regarding continuity. Just because I want material links to remain part of the game doesn't mean I want them to be all powerful

More complicated like a fire-and-forget Track program?

Things that have plausible explanations based on the continuity of the setting (ie Unified Magic Theory and other SOTA developements in magical theory) even if the explanations aren't given outright. There's a large difference between making changes that can have pluasible explanations and ripping out parts of the setting's history just because the rules don't work or seem unbalanced. If the rules don't work, fix the rules but don't throw out the whole concept.

Which is an excellent example of what I was talking about above. In 1st and 2nd edition grounding worked, all of a sudden in 3rd it's gone. Why? Because some developer thought it was too powerful? If that's the case, then change the rules for grounding to make it harder, but don't just dump the entire concept. I for one still house rule grounding into both SR3 and 4, like so:

Sorry, but that explaination flies in the face of what the comet's effects actually were. For instance, the genesis of astral shallows and constructs (as well as other general magical weirdness) points to a weakening of said barrier, not a strengthening. Same goes for the idea in SR4 that magicians apparently no longer take physical damage from casting spells while astral projecting (if that's right?).

We both know it does. But as a GM, I would rule that those emotions are not strong enough or (more importantly) specifically focused on individual casings, grenades pins, etc to create enough astral resonance to create a sympathetic link. Except of course in the case of true gun nuts as Brahm noted

If it's that good I may have too

Yeah, that would be my guess.

True, but just because the rules don't work doesn't mean the concept has to be thrown out. Just fix the rules. After all, the rules for decking never really worked (in that they created a dungeon crawl for the decker and pizza time for the rest of the group), but they didn't throw the concept of decking/hacking out - they just changed the rules to make it work.

Same here, although I tend to be more draconian with such things if the players are being overly cocky or idiotic in how they go about a run.

I totally agree. Like anything else, if you don't want to use it you don't have to, but it should be there for those who want to make use of it. It's the same situation as with technomancers/otaku. Personally, I've always hated them, but I don't mind that they're in the core rules now - I simply ignore them.

It is sort of like the Traveller RPG meets wild west post-American Civil war. But with better writing.

P.S. I noticed last week locally that the TV series went on sale for something like $25CND for the 4 disk set. Indigo/Chapters (a Canadian bookstore chain) has it for that online too. Not sure if that sort of pricing is available in the US right now (works out to about $20US), but definately check around.

Here's an argument that uses the SR4's description of how all this magic stuff works. Neither the material link or (in most cases) the person to whom it is tied actually exist in astral space. They have no astral presence at all. At best, you can see an aura from astral space, but even that is a hit-or-miss proposition. Magical phenomena not only have an astral presence, but they exist in astral space as well. Those phenomena are by far stronger than the non-astrally existing person or link to that person. Their effects last for hours after they occur. Auras don't. So what, exactly, are you using to link the object to the person?

Yep. There's no such thing as a fire-and-forget Track program. Either you or an agent has to actually do the Tracking; it's an extended test. And if I stop transmitting while you're tracking, you're done.

Piffle. The astral is created by life and living beings, ne? So why would it be different than life? Ever worked out? You build muscle by ripping the muscle you have, so that more muscle grows in its place.

Sure, the Comet mucked with magic for a while, but afterward, why wouldn't the magic continue its progression toward coming back stronger? And why wouldn't it take a giant leap, having just been jumbled up, and then allowed to settle back into where its natural progression would leave it, or further along, like a Boggle box that is shaken to get all the dice to settle into their little boxes?

It's true that magicians in SR4 don't take physical damage in astral space. That plays into my explanation, though. The astral is stronger, and can now support more and stronger magic without having to pull it out of the magician and her body.

Decking/hacking is an integral part of the setting. Removing it would change the setting to the point of avoiding copyright infringement. Not so with material links.

Also, some rules are best balanced by removing them, like the illegal defense rule in basketball.

You are aware that Material Linking isnt actually an easy process at all, right? You are aware that, according to SR3 rules, you use dice from the Ritual Pool to actually perform the linking, and the target numbers for the linking are ridiculously high, right?

The main difference between SR3 and SR4's ritual casting is that in SR3, the ritual pool was equal to the combined sorcery skill ratings of the ritual members, while in SR4, the pool is that of the leader's, plus hits from a similar test by the others. If they throw material linking back in with Street Magic, I suspect they'll use a flow similar to that of the flow in SR3, and I can only imagine that the test will get much harder.

Material linking is a lot more difficult than a computer tracking program. Track is an extended test with a low threshold and an interval of 1 initiative pass. Barring glitches or optional rules, you cannot fail this test - even if the target used a redirect, it only raised the threshold, giving them a few more initiative passes before you track them down. Even if they disconnect, you still have logs and more which you can use to attempt to find out where they from, and even if they tried to spoof, that doesn't necessarily make them successful. And considering how easy it is to trigger an alert an SR4, and how a Trace is usually the first thing done in such a case, chances are you've been traced within a few minutes of logging in, unless you'rereally good. The really skilled hacker playing in my game almost always gets traced, because the rules just seem to be stacked in favor of the computer system.

Ritual spellcasting takes several hours (12 minus leader's Magic, minimum of 1 hour), is not guaranteed to succeed, requires a drain resistance test, and if the spell is an opposed test, then so is the ritual. RAW shows a process that can be rather lengthy and difficult, and if the SR4 material linking is anything like that of SR3, the process is extended a few more hours and made a lot more difficult.

So you're wrong. Tracking a commlink is not more difficult than ritual casting with a material link. Ritual casting by itself requires more rolls, more time, more calculations, and higher chances of failure. Add in material linking, and the time and chances of failure will only increase.

Additionally, even if all this were to succeed, you'd have to have one damn powerful magician with a lot of drain resistance willing to cast a spell that could even possibly be guaranteed to kill a typical shadowrunner with a single casting. A spell's effect is limited in hits by the spell's force. A typical runner (Body 3) has nine physical boxes on the condition monitor. You'd have to get at least 9 net hits after a damage resistance test (provided he hasn't been hurt, and by the time the ritual is finished has has had plenty of time to be healed by himself or his chummers) to even consider killing him with one single casting of a spell. After allocating dice for the material linking, your ritual pool is going to be significantly decreased, so that's not likely. And even then should the ritual be successfully cast somehow by a ritual team of extremely powerful magicians, chances are you won't be dead, your chummers can heal you again, and you have plenty of time before the next spell to find a magical shelter and possibly do some astral tracking of your own, using the astral signature from the spell that was just cast.

If the corp has a buttload of mages powerful enough to succeed at a difficult material link test, succeed at a difficult ritual test, easily kill you with one casting of a spell, and willing to do all this with no concern about drain from possible overcasting... well, I think this group of extremely powerful magicians has better things to do than track down a leeding runner who shot up a lab - things like using extended detection spells and strike teams to do it much sooner.

And one last thing: Shadowrun magic is not fire-and-forget. Once you fire it, you can fire it again, and the drain afterwards makes damn sure you don't forget it.

Easily killing someone with a single casting of a spell is incredibly easy, especially if you're doing it at a time when that person isn't with his mage buddy for the bonus spell defense dice. This is true in either edition.

Dangers of overcasting are low, especially now that it's a lot easier to heal wounds. Roleplaying issues may stop them from overcasting, but rules issues won't. It's easy to get a spell's force up high enough to kill someone without risking death. Force 12 on a mana bolt, IIRC, is at most 6 boxes of drain, which cann't possibly kill a metahuman that isn't already hurt.

I could be misremembering the ritual casting rules. If they make drain higher then nevermind that last part.

Given the above, those mages can do it much faster than a strike team. The team has to travel, find a good spot to ambush, and then wait.

Either way though is annoying as hell to play, because if taken to their logical extremes they both usually result in "bang! you're dead." Either the mages with the link kill you, or the sniper with the rifle kills you.

It's pretty easy to make a build that almost never suffers drain. Most of the time spells really are fired over and over and over with no consequences.

But that's a big "If" situation, and the ritual casting mages have no current knowledge of their target aside from the scrap of blood he left behind. Ritual mages, knowing nothing else, and told to cast a spell and kill this guy now, would most likely use a high power spell to guarantee as much damage as possible.

If we're going to make assumptions of conditionals, then I'm going to assume that, if they're a good team with a mage, and they know that the blood left behind can provide a link to poor Timmy the Samurai, then they're going to set their magicians to providing spell defense dice for some time, and put the guy in a Lodge/Circle of high force for added defense against the tracking (in SR3, a magical barrier, including lodges and circles, added it's rating to the target number of the linking test, making it fairly improbable). Additionally, they're going to heal him.

Yes, but not in ritual casting. One spell takes HOURS, and linking takes a few hours more. They cast, they resist drain, and hours later they cast again. In that time, Timmy gets medical attention, and get's out of town, making the linking even harder.

I already stipulated that. Force 12 is enough to kill just about anyone. If it's not enough, the odds are good that the primary caster is higher initiate grade and can cast higher force.

Are they awake 24/7? Does the mage follow the sammie to the bathroom and watch him pee? It's not gauranteed, but the casting can definitely happen when there's no defenses.

They don't have to cast again if they ill him the first time around. Or perhaps they split into three smaller groups and hit him with three spells at close to the same time?

No, ritual casting is not a death sentence when you know it's coming. Yes, it is a death sentence when you don't. In either case I'd rather spend the game time having fun then hiding in my room.

I still support material linking coming back if they can make sure it's balanced, but still will probably never use it in my games.

Unless they are really really wanted by the corps, I just can't see magicians that high being used. If the GM is the kind of person who would do that against a runner for getting shot, then he's also the kind of GM who would just send a dragon to gobble them up, of bomb them with a Thor Shot - and not the kind of guy I would play with.

There are many rules that can be used to fuck up runners, and I hardly see this one being abused, nor have I ever seen it abused before in any games in which I've played.

Yes, and yes =)

Although you've just given me an idea for something in my game, which is run like a TV show. Of course, the danger only happens when someone goes to take a leak =)

That would be more likely, or better yet, using a ritual link to cast a detection spell, then keeping someone else spotting him for the next spell. But still, it's all a matter of effort. Unless the runners were of particular importance somehow, I just can't see this happening in a game. I can, however, see the mages ritually tracking them, then the corp somehow approaching them, offering them a deal of some kind, maybe a trade: your lives for info on who hired you. That would make a much more game-conducive event, and could spawn a multitude of additional adventure sessions. And hell, you could just not use it at all, but let the players think you're going to, and then have them spend several adventures just in the process of trying to stay alive from the unknown, ever-present threat of astral death. That to me sounds a lot more fun and torturous than just ritually nuking them.

If they're doing their jobs well, they'll eventually land the big gigs. If they're (meta)human they'll eventually screw up. You don't have to be the type of GM to throw Thor shots at your PCs to be the type that will eventually find it logical to kill a character with a sniper or ritual magic.

Also, you don't need damaging spells to kill them. A single net success on Mind Control and they're as good as dead (or equal to it if that's your goal).

Edit: The following is all opinion: my primary problem with it is that it doesn't lend itself to good stories. Chasing down a bunch of leads to find your lost little girl makes for abetter story than "I grab her teddy bear, where is she?" Working your way through security setups to get into a position to assassinate or otherwise affect your target is a better story then "I found his ___, now he's dead as soon as he leaves his building."

From the other end of the spectrum "you're dead because of the ___ you left" is not a fun story to play in. If they're just using the material link to track you down, that's a behind the scenes GM occurrence and could be done with all sorts of things, with material links as just one option.

Basically, I don't think they're necessary, or even really useful, when it comes to playing a fun game. To reiterate: this is all IMO, so please don't take it as me trying to refute your points and "be right." Rather it's me trying to counter your points to explain my point of view.

If they're got magic ratings and initiation that high, I personally assume that they've already landed the big gigs =)

Still, looking from an entirely system-specific standpoint, consider the team required to cast such a spell. Such a team would definitely be considered elite, at the least, with capabilities far beyond the powers of the runners. This team of magicians would be considered The Opposition, and possibly would be considered Superior or even Superhuman on the Prime Runner scale. As a GM, you have a responsibility to the players to not be a jackass, and part of that whole "not being a jackass" thing is to not throw the runners up against completely impossible opposition unless you think they'd have fun trying to survive it. You've got to throw some bits of reality aside in order to facilitate a fun game. Obviously, if a player like Aaron were in my game, I would not abuse that rule, because he would not enjoy it and would get angry and leave, and I like to keep my players entertained.

If you're a killer GM, then go ahead. But if you're a killer GM, I'm positive you could fill notebooks with a whole slew of other, easier, more clever and fun ways to kill your player characters.

Aaron is right: if you just nuke a character because he left a blood sample behind at the scene of the showdown, then it's unfair to the character and not at all fun. But if you do that, then you as a GM are being a jackass, and are not doing your job well. That has nothing at all to do with a rule in the game, and everything with your (the GM's) willingness to abuse it.

I think material linking is fun, and I'd like seeing a system for it that does not allow (much) abuse. I think if they include it as-is in SR4, then it will be hard to abuse, because the ritual team has to split their ritual pool to cast it - and SR4 ritual pools are a LOT smaller than SR3 ritual pools. Sure, big powerful teams can abuse it, but if you're sending big powerful teams against unprepared shadowrunners, you are guilty of being a munchkin GM, and the problem lies entirely on your shoulders, and not the rule's.

What I'm saying is that in order for the opposition to successfully abuse ritual sorcery and material linking, they have to be rather powerful, and in a large number for the ritual group(s). If you, as a GM, have designed your opposition to be that unbalancingly powerful, then it's your fault, and not the rule's. The rule is only abused when the GM abuses his power, and that can be said for any rule in the game. If you send a group of superior and/or superhuman prime runner opponents after the players, regardless of how you do it you are being unfair.

What say you?

EDIT: I should say that the reason I am assuming the ritual team is more powerful is because I gather that this whole time, we've been assuming that the runners are not prepared for the ritual linking, and/or skilled enough to handle it. Should that be the case, and the runners themselves more advanced, skilled, and capabale, then I see the situation as being pretty balanced, especially if the runner has a good fallback plan and SOP. In that case, the ritual team would most likely be considered Equal.

Why? A group of magic 6 shamen can do ritual sorcery. A group of magic 4 ones can do it. They don't need superior resources, just superior numbers. that can be done by hiring temporary help (it's how the PCs would probably have to do it).

I agree. I tend to think that most thing that let someone affect you without chance of retaliation, including sniping and material link rituals are close enough to completely impossible opposition to not be bothered with.

Rather than continue the quote and reply I'll jump straight to the "what say you?" at the end. IMO material link sorcery is either too powerful or not realistic. There's no reason for a corporation to not hire a few extra mages if they really need to find the guy. If the spell they cast is a mental domination one they've quite possibly killed one or more party members for a few hours of payroll.

They can use weaker stuff, like just finding the person and sending a hit squad, but that doesn't, IMO, make sense most of the time. Capturing and/or killing someone is much safer when done via ritual sorcery.

For those reasons, and afew others that have already been mentioned, I ignore material link ritual sorcery in my games, and will continue to ignore it if Street magic comes out with rules that are as undetectable as previous rules have been. Spirits doing searches and then normal ritual sorcery offers the same in game dangers of ritual magic, without the "bang! you're dead! (or otherwise royally screwed)" finality.

YYMV. IMO. etc.

Sorry for the one last quote, but I figured the statement and response were linked. GMs are not the only ones that abuse rules. Material linking can also cause problems from the PC side of the screen, and they usually don't have the built-in "don't screw people without chance of avoidance" safegaurds that GMs should have.

What exactly are you using to link to that person? You are using the 'Threads that Bind Bones.'

Everything is connected. Some things have stronger connections than others. The connection between complete strangers or between a person and a generic object is not strong enough to support ritual magic. The stronger the emotional and physical relationship between two objects or persons is then the stronger the threads connecting them are. This is why your living blood and flesh can be used to track you. This is why you should never date any woman named Chantrel.

These threads form the basic of Thread Magic. The most basc form of Thread magic i the bonding of foci. Bonding a focus creates a thread between the owner and the focus that continues to exist even when the focus is not in use. The focus can be used as a link to the owner and the owner can be used as a link to the focus.


As for Nightmare X's suggestion, in SR3 there was a Metamagic called Severing. This allows one to damage or destroy the threads connecting material links.

Actually, there are several limiting factors of ritual sorcery, and resources are entirely part of it.

I'll list them.

1. All magicians must be of the same tradition
2. All magicians must know the same spell
3. The force of the spell cannot be greater than the force of the lodge, meaning you need at least a lodge equal to or greater than the force of the spell.
4. Each member of the team must have a skill rating at LEAST equal to the number of participants.
5. The Lodge must have a rating at LEAST equal to the number of participants.

Rules as is, you can have at most 6 members in the team, provided that each of those 6 have a score of 6 in their ritual skill. Remember, Shadowrun considers skill 6 to be "the best of the rest" (p. 109 SR4), so the just the societal chances of getting six of the world's greatest magicians, all of the same tradition, all with the same spell, in the same room, to cast a single spell on some random runner who bled a little at the scene of the crime - the chances are slim.

You MIGHT be able to get seven members, provided each had an aptitude and a maxxed skill, effectively making them seven of the world's most legendary magicians alive. For a corp to pay these guys their deserved prices all at once to cast a spell that might not entirely succeed on a target that they cannot actually see, I'd say they would only do this in the most dire of circumstances.

Considering the collective Karma costs for raising a skill that high, acquiring the initiate levels to make the spell less draining, and more, then yes, I would definitely consider these the elite of the elite.

As for players abusing this, I just don't see it ever happening, given the already restrictive rules for ritual casting.

Well considering the SR3 TNs for material links, the rules for availabilities of marigal materials, and the fact that finding a ritual team was often quite hard, I never saw it abused in the previous editions, and I can't see it abused now.

Let's look at the math here.

Let's say, your fairly-skilled group of corp mage-slaves, Magic 5, Ritual Skill 5, all with the same detection spell, and a lodge of 8. Five of them total get together to find out where this runner is. I'm choosing detection, because I can guarantee you the corp would much sooner locate and capture them then just outright manabolt someone they knew absolutely nothing about.

Chosen spell is a Force 8 detect individual spell, Drain Value of 3 Physical. Casting time is 12 - leader's magic, so 7 hours.

Ritual Pool starts at 10 (lead guy's Magic + Ritual), add an additional average of 5 dice from each of the four additional participants, gives a ritual pool of 30 dice.

Problem here is that all they have is a blood sample, so they have to allocate some of those ritual dice to the linking test. Linking TNs in SR3 were pretty high, especially if the target's location was unknown, so I'd be willing to bet the threshold for the linking test is high too. Just for kicks, let's say they devote half the pool (15) to make sure they get a good link, and additional hits beyond the threshold reduce the time. They have no idea what kind of opposition they are against (the target could be a magician, could be in a lodge, could be behind an astral barrier, could have magical help, hell it could all be a big trap), so they can only guess at the right amount of dice to pass the required threshold.

Let's say they succeed despite the lodge the target is hiding in and the spirit providing concealment, and maybe even do it only in the span of an hour. Time to cast the spell. 15 dice, let's give them 7 hits, and all of them thankfully resist drain.

The target, however, does get a resistance test, using straight-up willpower. Since we're assuming these are fairly skilled mages, we have to assume the same for the target. Guy has 5 willpower, and his mage friend is providing 4 counterspelling dice, so he rolls nine total, gets 4 hits, giving the casters 3 total hits.

As a detection spell, this tells a fair amount of info on the target, especially his location. Now they can send a strike team, a spotter, or whatever. If this were a combat spell - say, manabolt - then they would have only done 3 boxes of damage, and had a little higher drain to resist.

But even so, let's say the target had no magical help whatsoever. The linking still succeeds, and the test is still rolled as above. Target only gets 2 hits on his resistance, giving the casters 5 total hits. On a detection spell, this would be awesome, and a combat spell would do 5 boxes of damage.

But tell me, would you spend several hours and risk the blood and constitutions of your retainer mages to cast a ritual combat spell on someone you knew absolutely nothing about? What if that guy havd powerful friends? What if he turned out to be a relative of a powerful person? What if it was a trick? I would personhally go with a detection spell first. It is a foolish man who shoots first without knowing who or what he is shooting.

And what if you DO kill him? Will that give you back what he stole? Will that lead you to his employer?

This does not take into account initiation, foci, or spirits. These magicians are, by the descriptions in the book, considered to be capable, and what I would expect a corp to use on such a test. Higher-caliber magicians have more important jobs than tracking down Joe Q. Runner.

It should be noted that any magician working overwatch can notice the ritual spellcasting, as per rules on page 175, as the ritual progresses. If noticed, magicians can choose to provide additional magical defense as well.

Not 5 DV, Force +5 DV. At Force 5 that would be 10 boxes. However, you still have some problems. Characters can have more than 10 boxes of damage and there is such a thing as overflow. All the character needs is a single trauma patch and someone to apply it.

Ah! I see you are correct. Doh!

But still you're right. Casting a high-power spell is not guaranteed to kill a target, especially one about whom you know nothing. Considering one of my players has a character with 18+ dice just for non-armored damage resistance, I'd say casting against the unknown is fallible and possibly dangerous.

With a mental manipulation they can find him and all his teammates simultaneously with a single net hit.

Damage is the one of the dumbest things to try and do for just that reason. All you need is one net hit to kill someone with control thoughts, or wreak major havoc with influence.

Nope, but I'd do it to take over his mind and control his actions, bringing me his location, the locations of all his team members, everything he knows about who hired him, and what he did with my stuff.

Unless their job description includes hunting down Joe Q. Runner.

Interesting idea, but there are several flaws in your logic:

1. Control thoughts does not let you read someone's mind.
2. Control thoughts does not let you see what they see.
3. Control thoughts does not let you hear what they hear.
4. Control thoughts ONLY lets you DIRECT everything they do. You cannot make them grab a gun that you cannot see, and you cannot read their mind to find out if there is a gun in their hand. You cannot have him call you and tell you his location, because YOU are controlling the mind, and if you don't know the location, then neither does your meatpuppet.

You yourself earlier said that we're sticking to the RAW, and the RAW do not allow any of that. I would never allow that spell to be abused in such a way.

Granted. Well argued, although you've left out a couple of things.

First is a question of scale and efficacy. If you track a commlink, you get that commlink's location to within fifty meters. That's all. If you use a material link, you can hit them with any spell in the grimoire. There is a substantial difference.

Second, you haven't addressed my other points.

But well argued, all the same.

Thanks.

You're right. you can indeed hit them with any spell. But since you're using direct pool dice to attempt the link,

1. If you fail the linking test, no link, and you still have to resist drain without even beginning to actually cast the spell, and
2. If you succeed with the link, you still have much less dice to actually cast the spell then you would have had in the already-complicated ritual spellcasting process..

Personally, I think it all balances out. With a tracer program, you track their location within 50 meters after a handful of initiative passes. With a ritual linked spell, you can cast any spell on the target several hours later. Again, I stand by my assertion that no well-organized and logically-minded corporation would ever cast a combat spell on someone they knew nothing about. Since targets can detect ritual casting with astral assensing, I think it is a functional and well thought-out system.

"Living things that are not active on the astral plane still cast a reflection of themselves there, called an aura. Any nonliving objects appear as a faded semblance of their physical selves, gray and lifeless, while the auras of living things are vibrant
and colorful." - SR4 page 181-182

Thus, mundanes and non-living things have no presence on the astral, but they do have an effect on the astral. If they didn't, then mundane activites could not cause background count, which we know is not the case.

How is seeing an aura hit or miss? The rules clearly state otherwise.

"This ability is called astral perception. It is the primary sense used in the astral plane; it shows auras, allowing magicians to examine living creatures in the physical world as well as creatures who live on the astral plane." - SR4 page 182

Interpeting what an aura means, yeah that's hit or miss, but the aura itself is plainly visible.

"Non-magical and non-living objects have only gray, lackluster shadows rather than auras, but pick up impressions from being in contact with living auras. Assensing can read any impressions left behind on an object." - SR4 page 182

What hyzmarca said, albeit in Earthdawn terms. In SR terms, you're using the psychic resonance of living/once living material to the person that said material came from (in the case of a biological link) or the psychometric residue of that person's emotional attachment to the item (in the case of a sympathetic link). Basically the minute background count that the person has formed surrounding the item.

Well, it looks like Phasmaphobic handled this one for me (rather nicely too)

I don't get it. You're saying that the passage of Haley's Comet created a jubbling effect (astral shallows, general weirdness, etc) but afterward had the net effect of strengthening the barrier between the astral and physical? If that is the case, why isn't magic in general now more difficult rather than easier than in SR3 (as shown by easier overcasting, easier summoning, somewhat lesser drain, and magicians no longer taking physical damage from astral casting)? The comet created a world wide mana spike, something that we know weakens the barriers between the astral and the physical overall. The Great Ghost Dance had the same net effect, and created a long term weakening in the barriers between the astral and physical. You said it yourself "The astral is stronger, and can now support more and stronger magic..<snip>". So how does all of this translate into stronger barriers between the astral and the physical? If anything it points to weaker barriers.

PS - I'm not trying to be an ass here, I just don't see how you can get the complete opposite conclusion than the setting's "evidence" points to.

Copyright infringment? How so? But yeah, you're right in the fact that material links aren't vital to the setting. They are a part of the history of the setting though, and I for one would like to keep some version of them around if only for that reason. Enough of the trappings of the good old days of earlier editions have already been lost, we don't need to loose any more IMO.

Sorry, but sports analogies mean little to me. I get your point though, but I really don't think the concept of material linking is so broken at it's core that it needs to be removed. It simply needs reworking to make counters to it and ways around it more accessible IMO.

Doh! Forgot about that.

But in any case, if material links do show up again, I would prefer a system by which biological links would detiorate in metaphysical value without intervention and/or allow any magician to "clean" them wihtout have to resort to a metamagic. Why? For the same reasons Aaron and James have been talking about.

Precisely. The threat of ritual magic via material links serves to further increase the level of paranoia, something which I see as a vital element of the overall mood of SR.

You keep saying this despite people giving noncombat spell examples. I think it's safe to say that you've made your point with this one and that combat spells are bad ideas for ritual spells. That doesn't mean ritual spells are useless or underpowered, just that the casters have to step outside of the "nuke the bastard" mindset.

Personally if I were to kill someone with a ritual sorcery spell I'd go with something like Ignite. A sustained damaging spell cast at a distance using ritual sorcery. Now that's nasty. Unless the guy can find a friendly magician to dispel it or an environment (water! water!) to counteract it then he's toast. A toxic(messy!), cold(brrrr!), or electric(I didn't know he could dance!) sustained damage variant might also be nasty.

How about as an object lesson to other shadowrunners not to mess with this corporation? Some corps like Saeder Krupp are draconian enough to sign off on that.

Also sometimes it's not what you stole so much as what you know.

The company men are already there. But the corp wants soften up the runners first. Particularly good in a situation where the corp has the runners cornered but don't have the firepower on hand to force them out of where they are hiding.

Sorry, but I can't agree. When the problem is "this ability is unbalanced and easily abused," the solution is not "let's make it harder to do." The solution is to remove it.

Technically, we don't yet. Background count rules haven't come out yet. Even if they come unchanged, though, there's a difference between having an effect and being present. There are rules for tracking things that have been present in astral space. Aura's aren't present, they're just visible.

How does this refute my point that auras don't have an astral presence? How about instead I offer something that supports my point:

"Anything active on the astral plane has a tangible astral form—projecting magicians, spirits, dual-natured beings, and so on. Astral forms are more colorful and brighter than auras, as they are astrally 'real.'" (Boyle et al. 182)

See? Auras are not astrally present, just visible. Now, spells and spirits and the like are present in astral space, and their signatures melt after a few hours. How could something that's not astrally present last even an hour?

If you need an analogy, I'll give you one. Let's say I'm in a room singing "Rock Me, Amadeus." I am present in the room, and my singing is detectable within that room. When I leave, there is evidence that I was there (that'd be like the astral signature): slight indentations in the carpeting, perhaps a stray hair or fleck of skin. The song, however, is undetectable (that's the aura); it wasn't actually physically present, just a series of waves propagating through the air at the time. The notes persisted after the song was sung, but for a very short amount of time, certainly less time than it took for me to leave the room.

Aren't background counts attached to places, not things?

Let's say that auras and such were astrally present and could remain after the fact. What is the Force of an aura? Certainly less than one. 0.1? 0.5? So then any attempt to use it or read it would last six or thirty minutes after it's gone? That's way too short for even the briefest ritual magic.

The problem is that you're assuming that astral space is the cause of magic, and not an effect. There's a difference between the mana flow and astral space. Astral space is not where magic comes from: "Mana, the essence of magic, saturates all three realms. It is everywhere, connecting everything—one big mana field linking all life together." (Boyle et al. 166) The barriers between realms are separate from mana itself.

As to not taking physical damage in astral space, what I should have said to be more specific is that the mana flow in the astral is stronger, as with the rest of the world, and so can support more effects without relying on as much energy from the magician's body. Additionally, I could argue that taking stun damage from drain in astral space indicates that there's less of a connection between the astrally projecting magician and her body, which is evidence of a stronger separation.

Because if one removes the Matrix, one could argue that it was different enough from Shadowrun to not be stepping on WizKid's copyright.

Bah. It's still got the trolls and the spells and the ghouls and the deckers and the street samurai and the salarymen and the wage slaves and the polution and the corporate feudalism and all the stuff that makes it Shadowrun. If you still can't let go, throw a grizzled old wage mage into your campaign who likes to say things like "I was a forensic magician once. When I was your age, we used to track people through their posessions. But then that comet came through, and it was never the same again. Now I'm stuck collecting astral evidence from magical crime scenes. It's just not the same."

This would be all and well if I saw any other evidence to support your claims of the comet strengthening the division between physical and astral. The entirety of Year of the Comet left me feeling that, if anything, the barrier had been weakened, allowing stronger, more powerful magic (which personally I would interpret to make linking even easier). Then again, I can't reference it now, as I mulched my copy of YotC as the disgusting infectious waste that it was.

But here's a better suggestion: If you still can't let go, then don't.

My evidence is all the other ways magic has changed. Go ahead and list them yourself, and put them into "Stronger Barrier, "Weaker Barrier," and "Barrier Neutral" categories. Then tell me there's no further evidence.

Beware of taking this next part too seriously:

Denial is only the first stage of grief. I've also seen on this thread Anger (stage two), Bargaining (stage three), and Depression (stage four, in the form of bitterness). We'll make that breakthrough yet.

Concealment (the critter power) and mana barriers reduce the pool. Distance and non-living state increase threshhold.

In SR3, Symbolic Linking required a metamagic. Only body parts and foci could be used as links without this metamagic. The former decays with time and the later can be severed by the magician. In the case of Symbolic links such as your favorite stuffed bear or your best friend, it takes an initiate to defeat an initiate.

It isn't like a background count. It is a bond. The links between you, your friends, your family, and your prized possessions are the same as the links between a magician and his bonded foci. The only difference is that the bonds connecting the magicians and the foci are stronger than natural bonds.

If that were true, how were such emotional bonds possible when the mana went away?

How come people still had skills and sttributes after mana went away?

First of all, mana never went away. There was always mana, there just wasn't very much of it. The most powerful magicians could still work magic during the downcycle and spirits occasionally interated with men.

Second, these bonds are not made from mana. They are made from karma. There is a relationship between mana and karma, certainly, but the nature of that relationship is unknown. What is known is that karma allows mundanes to learn skills and improve themselves and it allows magicians to bond foci, strengthen spells, create magical artifacts, and many other things. Karma is the metaphisical building block of the Shadowrun/Earthdawn universe.

Third, there is some connection between these emotional bonds and the "soul." Shadowrun provides only indirect evidence of the soul, death due to essence loss. The soul seems to be distinct from the astral body and cyberzombie fluff suggests that severing these links makes it easier to cage the soul. Blood mages will sacrifice persons close to the subject and destroy objects dear to the subject as part of the cybermany ritual. Exactly what this means is unknown. But, it is clear that 'souls' and essence existed before the Awakening since both are ntegral parts of the individual.

Wow. You read all of that into the SR4 rules? 'Cuz that's where I'm coming from.

Let me see if I'm getting this straight. Auras can be read in astral because of the mana there, and they stay around as long as or longer than astral signatures (ostensibly made of impressions in the mana). But they're not made of mana, but rather karma, which is entirely either a game mechanic or part of a philosophy/religion, but is not mentioned as a force or phenomena in the canon or the novels. You also bring up the soul as evidence, even though the canon specifically says that we still don't know if that's true or not, since auras go away on death (or astral forms fade away), but there's no evidence of a hereafter.

Um ... I'm no logician, but your argument seems to be a bit of a stretch. Care to elaborate? And maybe hint at a source?

I already did that when I mentioned that you shouldn't date Chantrel. James McMurray got it right. SR4 rules for material linking don't exist yet but the SR3 rules fit perfectly into the fluff framework of Earthdawn Thread Magic.

True, but I think it's safe to assume (ok, hope) they'll be similar to the fluff regarding backcount count in previous editions if not the mechanics thereof (or we'll be having this discussion again about background counts)

I already agreed to that - auras don't have an astral presence. But they do that an affect on the astral, which this quote proves. You originally stated that the astral sigs of magical events "last for hours after they occur. Auras don't." This quote shows otherwise - that living auras leave impressions on the "auras" of objects. Basic psychometric theory.

They are, I was just using background count as an analogy since the concept is similar to that of psychometric residue on a conceptual level.

Actually that is not what I'm assuming. Astral space is reflective of mana, and historically access to the astral has become easier or harder depending on the level of ambient mana on the physical. Thus the whole cycles of magic concept, the Fourth and Sixth worlds, the Scourge, etc. Thus, the comet causes a mana spike = access to astral gets easier = weakening of barriers between astral and physical.

Makes sense, but it could also be interpeted that more ambient mana ("the mana flow in the astral is stronger, as with the rest of the world") is a result of the natural progression of the Sixth World which would point to weaker physical/astral ultimately lead to another Scourge (as per canon). So I guess the casting in the astral bit can go either way.

Ah, didn't think of that angle (damn real world, mutter, mutter)

Ultimately, I guess that's my point. Yeah, a lot of the stuff that makes Shadowrun unique is still around, but sometimes nostalgia slips in and I find myself missing simple little things like shadow talk, shadow slang, Denver as a free zone run by incompetant beaurcrats instead of an "almighty" dragon, well defined spirit-to-tradition roles, calling the "computer guy" a decker instead of a hacker (It's incredibly annoying to mention "the decker" in game and get nothing but blank stares around the room except for the one guy that's been around through previous editions), and other little things like that. I guess that's why I'm arguing for material links remaining in the game, because loosing them would be one more little thing chipped away.

But ultimately this discussion really is pointless. To my understanding Street Magic is already written. If material links are included or not is not something we can have any effect on, but if they're not it's ultimately just one more thing to add to the house rules

Don't intend to. That is, after all, what house rules are for