1. Sustaining spell modifier---is Drain dice pool affected? So a magician that normally resists Drain at 11d is sustaining a spell and casts another...so Resists Drain at 9d? Or 11d?

2. A magician is astrally projecting and accompanying friends on a run and combat ensues. Who can the magician target with Mana spells out of the following:
a. Another magician/adept that is astrally perceiving
b. Another magician astrally projecting
c. A dual-natured ghoul
d. A fire spirit

3. Same as above but Physical spell.

4. A magician has a Magic of 4 and -2 Essence from cyberware (so Magic of 2). The magician wants to raise Magic to 3, so is the cost 3 (new value) x5 or 5 (new 'real' value) x5.

5. Ballpark this for me...how long should a probed/hacked admin account go unnoticed if the hacker was not detected on the hack or perceived whilst doing his digging? Hours? Days? Longer?

a,b,c and d : all of those have an active astral presence that can be targeted. The projecting magician is entirely astral, the other three are dual-natured



none - in the astral physical spells smply don't work as they're no physical realm for them to take effect in or upon

.

as far as I know it's 3 - probably to make things simpler

Resisting Drain is a damage resistance test and as such not subject to the sustaining penalty.

Okay thanks so far!

Two more...

6. Does the subject need to stay in LOS for a spell to be sustained on him?

7. I am confused about the "access ID" portion of Spoofing. How does one go about the Matrix Perception test to look at the access ID?

Here's the background...on a Missions run, our team had a rigger, but not a dedicated hacker. He had excellent Electronic Warfare capability in the form of Spoof and ECCM (and decent Common Use programs), but no Exploit or Decrypt. So he's faced with...a closed security gate. Just focusing on the Matrix aspect here, what are his options?

He needs to hack the gate to Log On to the node to "see" an icon and make a Matrix perception test to view an access ID?

Capture Wireless Signal to trace back to the spider controlling the door is impossible in this case because the signal is encrypted? But this step would be necessary if the gate was slaved to the spider's node and a hacker wanted to try this Spoof?

6. Does the subject need to stay in LOS for a spell to be sustained on him?
Nope ,you need LOS only while casting.
(or else Invisibility wouldn't work )

with an invisible Dance
Medicineman

25 (5*5).

That's not right.

It's 15(3*5), becouse you are rasing magic from 2 to 3

It would be 15. The essence loss in an actual attribute loss. As such, the actual magic attribute is 2 with a max of 4.

This one is a bit fuzzy by RAW, and you'll see different opinions on it (No surprise there). Personally I think you would use the 'real' value of 5.

Just like when raising your agility when you have muscle toner, you base it on the 'pre augmentation' value, or 'natural' value. Similarly I would think that raising magic would cost you the same amount as it would to raise the 'pre augmentation' value, or the value it was before essence loss came into play. This is why the book stresses writing the augmented values separate. For example, agility 4(6), because the 4 is really important to know for the sake of advancement.

Unfortunately no example characters have magic and essence loss, so it's hard to say if magic should be written 4(2) or if it is just 2 because the loss was permanent.

Like I said, I generally follow the 4(2) style for magic, both because it is consistant with how other attributes are handled, and because otherwise you're making it exceptionally easy for awakened to get wear (or rather, karma cheap) since they can just sit at low magic and keep dancing between 1 and 2 until they get all the ware they want.

And where exactly would be the problem with that? A magic user with a magic attribute of 2 ain't gonna do much. And even if they cramp 4 points of essence into their bodies, they had to pay 40 points of karma, just to get there with a magic Attribute of 2. Which means they still suck donkey balls in the magic department. Then they'd have to shell out another 59 Karma points to get their magic attribute to 4 (unless you allow them a magic group) for a grand total of 99 karma points. Do you really see a balancing problem there?

I suppose I'm thinking less along the lines of absolute cost, and more along the lines of relative cost to someone trying to add 'ware when their magic is high. In other words, if your magic is at 2, it costs you 10 karma to add an essence worth of ware, but if your magic is 6, then it costs you 30 karma to add an essence worth of ware. If you use modified magic stats 6(2) for example, then it costs you the same amount of karma to get to magic X with essence X regardless of if you became a powerful mage and then crushed your soul, or if you tinkered with your soul while barely keeping the spark of magic alive.

I mean, maybe there should be some reward for being willing to sit around at a low magic value for a while, but it shouldn't be to the tune of 20 karma per essence. I guess I'm more interested in having an awakened play an awakened than having them play a mundane that has a tiny spark of magic. *shrug* like I said, the rules are somewhat fuzzy, and so you'll have people on either side of the fence.

I suppose RAW likely leans towards the 'your magic is now 2 with a max of 4, and it'll cost you 15 karma to raise', but I still like the 'your magic is 4(2) with a max of 6(4) and it'll cost you 25 karma to raise' version. It makes getting ware that much more of a real decision for awakened, and keeps things consistent as far as advancement with different strategies of 'raise magic/drain essence' goes.

No, it's not. Magic Loss due to reduced Essence is not an attribute modifier. The attribute value is literally changing. Rules as Written, you use the post-reduction value, as that is the only value.


That said, I run reduced magic due to Essence loss as an attribute modifier.

Hmm, that's true. Suppose I was thinking it was because they never spell out how to handle a permanent change, though I guess it is fairly obvious. Thought there was something else out there that made it ambiguous, but I can't remember it now. So yeah, RAW you use the 2, there is no 4(2) for magic (Unless maybe you want to use that method of writing it if you are in a background count or something).

Right. After all, if it was 4(2) that would mean you get magic back after restoring essence with the therapy in Augmentation.

Very true. Although that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing I think.

I doubt it would reverse a total burnout, thought.

Agreed. Once magic hits zero from anything but background (And maybe some other very temporary magic loss I'm not remembering) it's gone. Kind of like fire and wind. If the wind is strong enough to blow the fire down to embers, when the wind goes away the fire will still be able to build back up, but if the wind blows it out completely, then even when the wind is gone, the fire is still out.

I would only allow a reversal of a complete burnout if the character spent the karma to buy the quality again and started at 1 magic. It's not like his genes changed after all and if he gets his essence back up to 6...

But awakening is more than just genes, as clones of awakened people aren't necessarily awakened.

1. Check

2. A magician is astrally projecting and accompanying friends on a run and combat ensues. Who can the magician target with Mana spells out of the following:
a. Another magician/adept that is astrally perceiving YES
b. Another magician astrally projecting YES
c. A dual-natured ghoul YES
d. A fire spirit YES

3. Same as above but Physical spell. NO

4. Thanks for the replies!

5. Ballpark this for me...how long should a probed/hacked admin account go unnoticed if the hacker was not detected on the hack or perceived whilst doing his digging? Hours? Days? Longer?

6. Does the subject need to stay in LOS for a spell to be sustained on him? NO

7. I am confused about the "access ID" portion of Spoofing. How does one go about the Matrix Perception test to look at the access ID?

Here's the background...on a Missions run, our team had a rigger, but not a dedicated hacker. He had excellent Electronic Warfare capability in the form of Spoof and ECCM (and decent Common Use programs), but no Exploit or Decrypt. So he's faced with...a closed security gate. Just focusing on the Matrix aspect here, what are his options?

He needs to hack the gate to Log On to the node to "see" an icon and make a Matrix perception test to view an access ID??? Or is a Matrix Perception test allowed without a Log On?

Capture Wireless Signal to trace back to the spider controlling the door is impossible in this case because the signal is encrypted? But this step would be necessary if the gate was slaved to the spider's node and a hacker wanted to try this Spoof?

There really isn't anything about this in the books. I'd say if it was a long hack (The kind that takes several hours) then it would remain until they do a complete upgrade of their system (Likely several months or longer), or at least receive a patch that fixes whatever exploit you used (Which might happen every few weeks). On the other hand, if you run a quick hack, I'd imagine it would last on the order of a few hours or days. Because the exploit was done quicker, it is more likely to be noticed. Perhaps oddities in the logs, perhaps some part of the code that will correct itself on each reboot. Whatever the case, I wouldn't expect it to last beyond one business day (Hacks over the weekend might take longer to notice if the system isn't being monitored much).




I'd imagine you just need a success on a matrix perception check against the person who's access ID you want. It isn't going to be that hard to see, because it has to be fairly freely available so that the systems the person is accessing will recognize them properly. This can prove to be a real problem if they aren't online at all for you to perceive them.

That's close or exactly what I'm thinking. It would be silly to have to hack to spoof. Maybe I need to go read the rules-based part of the SR4a story of Slammo! vs. Netcat. He iirc Spoofs the drone.

I'm just very curious about this situation because it stymied our group in real time for over an hour and I can't believe that Spoofing is supposed to be that onerous if one has the Spoof program...

In that story Slamm-O! gets the Access ID by using his reflective shades to shine sunlight into the drone's camera, the drone then messages it's rigger as it does not understand what is happening to it and needs info, and Slamm-O! uses his Sniffer program to listen in on the communication.

The idea is fairly simple, just make the node ping back for instructions and listen in on the wireless for the Access ID. The fun part is making up creative ways to make the node seek instructions.

Agreed. I've always thought it was kind of silly to have to go find the access ID (Which is likely to be fairly hard, though I like the sniffer idea), and then with that access ID, still have to spoof. It's kind of like having to go get a legitimate user ID before you can hack into a system.

Just going by RL times, when it comes to Admin accounts in the systems I provision for the company that I work for, if they are not supposed to be there, it takes less than two or three days for it to be brought to someones attention. The recon people get only two days after that to identify the who, what, when, where, how, and why for the account. After that time, if it is still an unidentified account, it is terminated. So, that's just about a week before said login would be found and trashed. This is assuming of course that someone didn't go through the process of falsifying records to make the account appear 100% legitament. So the real question is, does creating these accounts assume that these records are created to, or does it just make the account? If the records were created, a falsified account would last 3 to 4 months before it was noticed when they did quarterly access certifications. I work for one of the biggest finicial companies in the nation, which I think would be a good modern day representitive of the megacorps of the future.

Now, this is assuming you are actually using a user account. If you are actually exploiting a hole in the system, then I agree with Karoline, it could take a good amount of time before it's found.

Well, one of the other fun uses of spoof is to take actions above your access rights. If you hack in with user rights and spot a security spider then you can get his Access ID and use spoof to do anything that has security rights (or maybe even admin) requirements without having to hit the higher threshold when hacking in. Great for on the fly hacks when you're worried about your stealth getting noticed on a long extended exploit.

Even better, log into a PUBLIC node owned by same corp, etc, and look for a spider or someone with clearance. You shouldn't be the only person on a public node, ask for "Help" and someone with User rights might come along to ask how they can help you (sell you NERPS or whatever the corp makes, etc). Use the Access ID of that person to do tricks with your spoof to get even higher access IDs. With an admin or security, you could likely just spoof a new user account, or maybe higher for yourself. All without exploit. Just some ideas.

Well, just because you have their access ID, doesn't mean you know how their command protocols are configured. I suppose the Spoof program (and the skill to use it) is the technomagical way of fabricating false commands so that they are acceptable, and not discarded out of hand.

And obtaining the Access ID isn't that difficult (an intercept wireless test?), especially giving how useful spoofing is.