It's actually a warp, not a void. It's sort of like the opposite of the Cyberzombie Astral effect. Instead of being a cold spot in the astral caused by life being drained, it's like a hot spot where the astral is in a swirling flux of raw emotional force.

It makes no significant difference from a game perspective, but I like to keep it straight for the purpose of in game description.

With rating 4, it's neither a warp nor a void.

Actually, the real benefit of astral hazing isn't so much the force drain, although that is nice, it's the extra drain it causes to any spell cast on you, including area of effect spells. Background count gives +rating drain to spells cast into it and unless the mage you're fighting keeps his Astral Vision on all the time he can get completely blindsided by it. I had a character with Astral Hazing in a car once who drove out from under an overpass and a mage in a helicopter tried to lightning ball me. Poor sucker knocked himself out from physical drain. Astral Hazing is really an offensive magic defense because of that.

Also, @Dr. Funkenstein, I agree with you on this point but you really do come off as pretty argumentative. You'd get more people to agree with you if you toned it down a bit.

I assume this is because the caster of the indirect physical spell was inside the area of the astral hazing at the moment of casting the Indirect Physical Spell? Otherwise tossing that ball of lightning into the astral haze should not increase the drain for the caster.

Yeah, yeah, domain vs. ebb. Point being negative vs. positive. Void and Warp are just easier for me to remember.

I think the mage knows when his ward is under attack or someone is forcing his way through it. Being disrupted due to Background Count is neither.

Actually most negatives are about being found. Whether it is distinctive style, sinner, or day job it is that you are easily found. It only takes assensing of 1 to gain information that the character is the cause of the disruption (general emotional state). You have a hell of a time hiding. I don't think any shadowrunner carries around a 1-6 meter globe of light when trying to infiltrate a facility. This is exactly what you are dealing with with astral hazing. The shadowrunner cannot hide in a crowd and even in a jungle his aura may show up just like a bonfire (minus the smoke). This may not mean much to you, but if you are with a non magic group this is a boon, but if anyone is magically inclined then you hurt the entire party. Ok, ignore camouflage, attribute increases and invisibility on said shadowrunner.

I view the shadowrunner with astral hazing as a magical D9 dozer with rock music blaring. Maybe in your games this a advantage, but in my groups it is not exactly what I want running around.

While I agree this is probably the biggest problem with it, it is something you know about and can deal with. Until the PCs are capable of masking they aren't really subtle just by virtue of being mages, or by having excessively heavy cyber aren't subtle to assensing or physical sensors, and yet people find out how to deal with it. Other than giving them a penalty to infiltration tests I'm not sure what else can be done about this, its a flaw, but I don't think its insurmountable. I am not about to change my game world and makes assensing checkpoints everywhere in order to make this a flaw.

Why don't you have assensing check points anyway? It seems like most mid level installations would have some kind of mage watching the front door at least.

Eh? Mages are way too valuable to have them sitting at a door with astral perception active. That's the duty of watcher and/or full-blown spirits if anything. A simple ward will do the job in any "mid level installation" as well. The world doesn't operate at red alert 24/7.

Modspeak:
First off, cut the bashing. Please. There, I asked nicely... It is a roleplaying game, open to interpretation and manipulation. Every person is going to view their Shadowrun universe differently. Everyone is going to interpret the rules differenty. If someone gets it wrong, politely provide them with your interpretation. If someone offers you an interpretation of the rules, politely either take note of what they have to say or ignore it. Slamming on each other because of how you interpret the rules and what you think of others' interpretations only makes the parties involved look like raging idiots.

Playerspkeak:
In our Shadowrun group, we follow the mantra that magicians are still very rare and valuable assets, which they are. I typically have corp and gov magicians spending a vast majority of their time in their on-campus caves experimenting with magic, summoning spirits, researching through ancient tomes (and datachips), and awaiting their 'on call' signal that the fit just hit the shan.

I will have to agree with Funk on the point of them being too valuable to be sitting in a check booth where a sniper a click out can pop their cork with one well-placed BMG round. Better to have the spirits and wards run the routine grunt work in the astral and call in the magicians when the situation requires a more 'personal' touch.

While one hit on the Assensing test tells you what the person's general emotional state is, I am not sure if that is the same as knowing he is responsible for the background count.

Furthermore, it is the background count/astral hazing that is easily recognisable. Whether the aura of the person can be found is another matter. In a crowd or in a jungle, the person's aura should be no more obvious that any other person's. What could be immediately noticeable is that there is a background count in that area.

If a flaw is insurmountable then the character unplayable. Like everything else all you need is enough magical security to notice the astral hazing (a few watchers or bound spirits). After that you call in reinforcements to deal with it. Again back to my D9 dozer statement. A facility may not be ready for it, but they can react once they know it is coming. Once it is has been spotted you can track it down very easily. This makes it hard to escape. Couple this with psychometry and the investigator gets a +3 die bonus due to strong emotions.

It is one thing to track back a data trail, but when they find your meet form it is near impossible to lose them. If anything if I was in a group I would toss out said changeling and say you are on your own as we try to make our escape. At least there are spells to mask vehicles or hide signatures.

As the player is emanating his emotions and he is the cause of the background count due to his emotions I would say a mage could pinpoint. Also a localized effect with a radius means if you could see a fire of a similar size you could see it with assensing. Not a big deal in dense forest or jungle from the ground, but from the air it is much harder to hide. Reading about aura from Street Magic would indicate you know exactly where the source is and who is causing it. No matter how you want to describe it as if by sight, hearing or some other sense normal people are about as loud as a whisper while our astral hazing is screaming. It doesn't take much to figure out who is the source.

One comment: Any flaw can be turned into an advantage. You just have to possess the right idea for the flaw.

I've had Astral Hazing in my games. The player thought it was a disadvantage but I would admit this is a poorly designed flaw for something like Missions.

BlueMax

Different GM styles I suppose. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard for any company that employed mages at all to set up a fiber optic security system that allowed them to monitor major entry and exit points for suspicious magic activity, or at least as you say have a spirit do it. It still follows that something with the Assensing skill is going to be keeping track of the entrances of most secure places and that anyone with Astral Hazing is going to be tagged as suspicious within seconds of coming near almost any building in Seattle.

No, casting INTO an area of of background count gives a + in drain as you channel mana into an area that is devoid of it. See rules for background count SR4.

Knowing the character's emotions is different from knowing that it is the character who is the source of the background count. Assensing detecting a background count is not an issue, I agree that it is easily recognisable as a background count. OOC we know that the character is responsible for the background count through his emotions, it should not necessarily follow that another character knows that, even if he can assense the astral hazing character's emotional state.

Further I think there are 2 cases to consider:

1) Aura with Background Count - Both items of information are available to the assensing character.

2) Background Count without Aura - Only the fact that there is a Background Count is known to the assensing character.

Whoa, wait. Stop right there. Fiber optics allow you to cast spells and grant counterspelling through an extended line of physical sight. It does not, in any way, extend your ability to assense.

I had a short list of things that happens to someone with Astral Hazing (or long list...)

Magical Critters/People VS Astral Hazing
Caster Suffer +4 Drain Value
Caster Magic Rating is -4 [If within range of characters Essence in meters]
Dicepool -4D6 on assensing tests on changeling
Critters loose magical abilities at F0 (due to -4 within essence meters)
Critter Powers Force is at -4
Spirits at F4 or less gets disrupted
Watchers always disrupt due to F1
Wards pop at 4 or less force

Changeling With Astral Hazing Drawbacks
All friendly spells cast at a +4 Drain
Highly visible on the astral as a disturbance
Disrupts friendly magic users
Magical Hazard in a residential area (disrupts local security spirits who patrol the local neighbourhood)
Might get attacked by awakened critters/spirits who perceive the character as a threat
Astral mages flying past (Astrally and not looking where they are going) the characters might be thrown back to their body
Constantly pops innocent watcher messengers
Changeling with less than 1 essence cannot affect magical beings within essence meters (yes, that IS a drawback)
Magically Active Changelings gets a -4 magic

Situational modifiers
Changelings are RARE
Magicians are RARE

Magician changelings are VERY VERY RARE

The chance of a changeling with astral hazing being discovered and be calculated as an occupanional hazard is miniscule except for the team mage who gets annoyed

Astral Hazing would be a very sought out ability amongst corps as it would be an ideal ability to hunt any awakened being right up to Dragons and Horrors and blood spirits.

The domain/background count is easily recognisable for what it is on the astral plane. Detection of the changling's aura or astral form on the other hand should be no different or any easier than any other aura or astral form.

Now imagine what would happen if the background count were connected to the person within and especially his emotions.
Now factor in mood-chips. It's a party on the astral!

Add in drugs and getting high. Oh wait, make that mundane drugs and getting high. Ultimate Party Pooper - doing Tempo and finding out that your own Astral Hazing cuts out the Tempo's Magic 1.

"Da Tempo, ze does nothings..."

Agreed, but actual assensing of the aura in question would incurr a -4 dicepool modifier.

Of course. What I mean was that assensing the aura would be no different than assensing another aura in the same background count or another aura in a background count of the same magnitude.

Hmm, other question popping up:
FAB III eats magic right?
But people with Astral Hazing don't actually have magic IN THEM.
But Background Count is a concentration of RAW Magic.
How would one affect the other? O.o

FAB III is a magical creature with a Force rating. It would affect them just like any other, and since there's nothing there for them to feed on, they'd avoid it like the plague to begin with.

You can actually be a pretty good Anti-Magic mage with Astral Hazing with specialization on Counterspelling and Banishing.

Magical oppossition will have problems attacking teh team through magical means.

Well, at least if you can overcome your own background count . .
And this would probably be the best solution to the complete problem too.
The hopefully only magical active member of the group taking this upon himself.
No conflict with anyone else in the group. Now imagine someone taking this for a character for playing dawn of the artifacts for example.
Rating 4 background Count close to Jane Foster and some magical mcguffin. And all of those ghouls go completely blind due to losing astral perception ^^

I cannot imagine that counterspelling would have a -4D6 dicepool as it is by it's nature designed to disrupt magic?



Still; when it comes to astral hazing i would give awakened characters a "only" limited maximum magic of 2 instead of Magic -4 for starting characters. They become gimped as it is with this quality. That would mean that for magic 2 they would pay 10+25 for magic rating 2 instead of 10+10+10+10+25.

This!

Being a Ghoul hunter with Astral Hazing is damn useful as any Ghoul with less than magic 4 would go blind whenever they get close.

The trick is that even in the Counterspelling skill itself is unaffected, the background count surrounding you deprive you of 4 Magic points and you need at least 1 Magic left to be able to use the skill, meaning you need to buy it up to 5 (but be able to use only 1) thus turning the whole concept into a rather expensive proposition in term of BP or Karma...

Unless, y'know, you hit some intelligent and connected ghouls with cybereyes and other enhancements. Then you're probably in for a world of hurt.

Unless you yourself are wired to take care of intelligent Ghouls as well...

Or even more fun, you are a cybered up Ghoul with Astral Hazing who hunts other ghouls for food.

But Indirect Physical spells specifically create the magical construct at the casters location.

Thought experiment. I cast an Indirect Physical Spell, I am outside the hazing. There is a big glass barrier between me and the hazing. The glass barrier is not in the hazing. The spell hits the barrier, does not overcome it and explodes. Do I still get drain affected by the astral hazing? The spell never entered the hazing. I never entered the hazing.Is the mere thought of casting the spell into the area of the hazing what causes the extra drain? I suppose making the mystic link might be the reason, but still.

Consider an Indirect Physical spell that has a large enough area to be targeted at something outside the Hazing and reach into it, what happens then?

There are qualities that have explicit BP costs and an explicit mechanical advantage or disadvantage. These are relatively easy to make value judgments on. Then there are qualities that have BP values that aren't counter balanced by an explicit mechanical number. These require a value judgment based on comparison to th game world at large. This can vary a bit. You can use the BP cost to identify what the relative hindrance that should be applied to the PC taking that quality regardless of the variance in each persons game world view. A X BP quality with a mechanical number should have the same relative cost/benefit as a X BP Quality without a mechanical number to the players in that game world. It's the Gm's job to make that comparison match, however it happens, so that the players feel Qualities of the same levels are relatively equal choices.

Congratulations, you figured out how to cast a spell into a mana ebb without taking increased drain.

Hint:
Indirect spells do stuff like hitting creatures you can't see, right? So it makes sense that they could "waft" into areas of mana ebb and still work (the effect itself would lose force, but the magician wouldn't take extra drain).

Actually, no.

Spells never loose force, only the mage would suffer +4 drain.

This means that indirect combat spells function perfectly against targets within a mana ebb and the mage suffer no additional modifiers.

It's possible. There's no explicit explanation.

One thing to consider is that even Indirect Physical spells still require the Targeting step, which does establish the Mystic link between caster and target. So in that case if the target is in the Hazing, I could see the argument for the caster incurring increased drain.

So it boils down to if it's the manifestation of the spell construct that is the reason the Mage gets drain, or if it's the drawing of the spell towards the target from the caster that causes it. Personally I prefer the concept of the energy of the spell that causes drain rather then the targeting process, so I would choose to have Indirect Physical spells to not incur the Drain modifier for Hazing since the energy to create the spell is done at the caster location.

Nobody finds it bad to leave a 4 day existing Background Court trail all the time??

cya
Tycho

This only occurs if she stops moving right?

The TMs in the groups setup a drone medical bot and the hazer was sent on random loops as he slept. I think that was their walk around.

BlueMax

but the target of the indirect combat spell is not the person or people that are hit by the damage, because you don't have to see them (and you do have to see the target of your spell). it's the <element*> bolt or <element*> ball that are the targets.

* (strictly speaking, indirect combat spells are not explicitly required to have an element. but then, technically speaking, nothing explicitly restricts you from casting an indirect version of the slaughter and slay spells either, and that just seems too silly)

Aside from the little fact that Mana Spells can't be indirect, if i am not mistaken somewhere O.o

i don't believe those spell restrictions are limited to mana spells. after all, you can make a ram (guns) spell, which clearly must be physical, and is restricted target.

*technically* you could come up with a formula for an indirect, non-elemental, restricted target spell. of course, *technically* your GM can just drop a cow on you from orbit at any time, and deliberately trying to abuse 'loopholes' in the system may antagonise your GM slightly... which is probably not a very wise idea.

Well, the RAM and Destroy Spells are still LOS(A) right?
So a Weapon that you can't see won't be affected at all.

stupid doubleposting. IGNORE ME HERE!

Actually, you're probably right about that. Forget I mentioned the fiber optic cabling.

In the case of the thunder ball out of the overpass drain thing, me and my GM weren't thinking about where the drain came from or what caused the force drain effect of spells, we just knew that background count affected spells being cast into it, and that background count increased the drain of spells it affected. But maybe Indirect spells do work differently. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to anything that gives them an edge over direct spells. I would like to point out, however, that Indirect Combat spells are in fact made of mana, and so should be affected by the force drain of a background count, if perhaps not the drain increase when cast from outside the radius of the background count.

*sigh*...

Firstly... yes the quality is badly broken... magical groups everywhere should give all creatures w/ it the effective 'hunted' quality as they pay a bounty for every astral hazing freak to be shot down like rabid dogs. The problem is it's a huge positive for the player, and only if the GM goes out of it's way to make it a negative can it ever be a negative.

Personally, I'm a big fan of... if you take surged... you pick the good stuff, but the GM picks the negative qualities as he sees fit.


Now background counts....

Case 1: Mage OUTSIDE casts direct (or indirect) force 6 combat spell into a BGC4 onto a valid target(s) inside and outside the BGC. (manaball)
Calculate drain and dicepool as normal. The spell will have it's effective force reduced by 4 inside the BGC. It's force 6 outside, but the AOE inside the BGC is effectively force 2. For a single target spell, it wouldn't matter the drain and dice pool would be exactly the same if you calculated the drain as (force2+BGC4), or as (force6) then reduced the effect by the BGC afterwards, but for an AOE spell you need to do it after to handle mixed targets inside/outside the area.

Case 2: Mage INSIDE casts direct (or indirect) Force 2 at another target inside the BGC4.
BGC reduces magic by 4.. to 2. (-4 dice, and changing casting/overcasting limits).
Effecitvely...
1: the effect is almost the same... Drain == (Force + BGC)/2+draincode. Exactly the same as if he cast it outside!!... 2. The magician takes a -4 dice penalty from the loss of magic.
EG: an alternate view, effectively the mage is casting at his full magic rating of force 6 w/o overcasting, reduced immediately by the BGC, w/ a -dice penalty equal to the BGC. Though his overcasting limit is still only 2*(6-4)==4... not (6*2)-4==8.

Casting out of a BGC... IIRC the force isn't restored... it was cast at force 2. (magic6 -> Magic2 temporarily)

However if you sustain a spell, walk into the BGC... it has it's force temporarily reduced... but it restores when it walks back out. (note force limits hits... but BGC are a temporary reduction in force, not hits... so it's a grey area for the GM whether the hits on the spell are retained or lost, though the book makes it clear that anchored spells/wards/etc. restore themselves after leaving the area even if reduced to 0). I take this to mean that if you had say a force 3 spell inside a force 5 sustaining focus... entered... the spell would be suppressed while there, but since the focus hasn't deactivated... it will restore itself upon leaving. (hits on spellcasting test don't change... only force of the spell... force doesn't change hits, only limits how many of them you can use).

Something a lot of people don't realize... aspecting doesn't change the magic attribute!!! It only provides bonus situational modifier dice similar to a power focus. Though unlike a power focus aspecting also adds dice to drain tests as well. Aspecting doesn't change your casting limits, only makes them more effective by giving you more dice to more easily reach those limits.

Since an Astral Hazing character is a domain in his/her own right, and a Rating 4 background count is a domain (not a Rating -4 background count, an ebb), wouldn't that mean that there's an excess pooling of mana around the Hazer in [essence] meters for a creature that feeds on mana?

No?

If for no other reason than it could never give birth to another one, since it would die instantly. And only the most powerful ones (they can only reach Force 6 before splitting) would be able to approach to begin with, instantly dropping to Force 1 or 2.