I was reading through Street Magic today and crossed the following line:



Ocular drones are drones, but they are purchased as modifications for cybereyes, which are paid for by Essence. On the other hand, the "Ocular Drone" modification in SR4a has no Essence cost listed.

Do people think that, as modified cybereyes, ocular drones should count for purposes of casting spells through them, or that because it's fuzzy whether or not the drone actually costs Essence per se they should not?

If for no other purpose than game balance, I would rule that a magician cannot cast spells through an ocular drone. Magic is already enough of an iWin button without giving spellcasters the ability to sit in another room (or potentially on the other side of the city, if they can get the drone delivered to the target) and nuke the enemy with impunity through a small and unobtrusive sensor.

Man, not even if they held the eye-drone in their damn hands! If they had an eye implanted *in* their hand (I think they removed that from the SR3>SR4 change, though?), then that'd be okay. *Maybe*.

No, you cannot use a detached Ocular Drone to target spells.

As soon as the eye leaves your body, it is no longer an implant you have paid Essence for - it is a drone you have a remote feed to & control of (essentially it's no longer an optical feed, but a digital one).

Once it returns to it's eye position, it is again the implant you 'purchased' with Essence, and works normally.



On this particular subject, Rules as Written can be argued either way (meaning they aren't), but 'common sense', along with developer input, places the correct interpretation as I have stated (if not actually explaining why it doesn't work, they do say it doesn't work).

Your point actually raises a question for me: would ocular drones count as being "alive" for Astral and magical purposes? Does the essence in them leave every time they're tossed, then return when they're plugged back in?

Do you lose essence if you pop a normal cybereye out of its cybersocket? I think the answer is no, and the same goes for the eyedrone.

well to be fair this is what the coconut bomb is all about. Mailing your target half an innocent target and exploding it with impunity.

If the drone has a spool of Fibre optic cable then yes, by all means and welcome to it. but I don't think you are getting more than say 10 metres with the small supply that can be spooled in the thing.

If you are asking if the drone, when separate from the body, can be targeted by things like Manabolt because it's linked via essence cost then I would say no. As I read it, once it is out of your body it is no longer part of your cyber; but rather a drone.

If you are holding the eye drone in your hand*, then I would say you can cast magic through it. The reason I say this is because it is still connected to your aura.

* == maybe you would want to have it skinlined so that you don't have to deal with wireless transmission and whatnot.

Still in 4th, though you have to go to augmentation for it. Don't recall if it mentions anything specific about being able or unable to cast spells. Likely not, the books dislike being specific about anything when it can be helped.

An ocular drone is a drone, the socket is the actual cyberware. Once said drone is plucked from it's cozy essence costing home, it is simply a remote controlled camera.

My take on this issue is: the base cybereye was paid for with Essence, but all upgrades which you pay for in Capacity can't be used for magical targeting.

Mages do better with bioware eyes and perhaps a few (non-Capacity) cyberware enhancements, and nobody has to come up with silly justifications for occular drones.

Really? This again?

You nailed it.


What? No. They most definitely benefit more from cybereyes than any of the bioware options. Vision magnification, thermographic vision, low-light vision, and sometimes even microscopic vision are all awesome choices for a mage, and you can get all of that for only 0.2 or 0.3 Essence (I don't have my books handy to check) without even having to pay extra. And no silly justification is needed for ocular drones.

Any enhancement obtained through Capacity is part of the augmentation it is placed in - which is typically paid for with Essence. A magician can very much use Capacity vision augmentations in their Cybereyes for targeting.

See Dr. Funkenstein's reply above.

The only issue that I have with this statement is that the Ocular Drone is an enhancement to the Cyber Eye, and is part of the Capacity that has been payed for with essence...
It is in direct conflict with what you posted earlier...

I do agree that you cannot use the Occular Drone to target outside of its socket though...

Just wanted to point that out...

Keep the Faith

No. It's the drone rack that's taking up capacity; even with the ocular drone out of its housing and scurrying about, the eye still has the same amount of capacity consumed. It's simply a cybereye modification that comes with its own accessory. If the drone is destroyed, you could replace it with another with ease. Because it's not an implant in and of itself.

i could have sworn the description of the ocular drone specifically mentions this scenario.

and i was wrong...

ah, the faq.

Bingo.

Cheers, -- N

And again: It's not the drone that's taking up Capacity, it's the drone rack (the implant itself) that is. The drone just hooks up to it when it's docked. You don't regain Capacity the moment it leaves your eye or when the drone becomes lost/hijacked/destroyed. You just go out and buy a replacement, toss it in, and you're good to go. Just like any other situation involving a drone.

Actually, you would gain capacity. You have a completely hollow eye socket to work with, unfortunately the only thing that would useful to fill that space would be a new iBall.

No, you don't. (Not that it matters, as you say. )

No more than you lose Capacity when you place an item in a Smuggling Compartment, or take the item back out of it. The hollowed out space is what's taking up Capacity.

The hollow space used by the smuggling compartment is the capacity you've "used up." It has a limit on how much it can hold, yes?

Exactly.

Now, put 2 and 2 together.

*Sigh* which is why I said the only thing useful to put in the empty space would be a new iBall.

You could put whatever you wanted to in there, but none of it would work without the eye itself.

Nope. Count the same as blood/hair/severed testicles for astral linkage purposes, though. I'd be inclined to give it 24 hours before it could no longer serve.