Long time lurker, first time poster.

How do you guys deal with astral kiting in your games? I'll clarify:
astrally projecting mage comes up against dual natured critter or NPC. The critter or NPC is limited in speed by its physical body. The astrally projecting mage is moving at the speed of thought. Is there any reason the projecting mage couldnt kite around the critter, nailing it with manabolts. He can do this as long as he can take the drain.

You could deal with it by introducing enemy spirits. But that may not fit the plot or be realistic. You could deal with it by making the space fairly restrictive, lots of mana barriers or wards around. But if we're talking about a mage who's scouting ahead for a party in the wilderness...I really don't see a solution. Maybe there doesn't need to be a solution. Maybe this is one of those scenarios in which the mage simply has the upper hand and nothing can be done about it. But i feel like a single mage shouldn't be able to deal with an entire pack of wild hellhounds all on his own.

Thoughts?

Yep. Especially if the mage flies upwards where the hellhounds can't reach. Just keep in mind that all objects have an astral equivalent that blocks LOS.

Same way I deal with people with guns firing on people without guns.

The people without guns suffer.

*shrug* Jetpack rifleman beats a melee guy on foot.

Jetpack riflemen are vulnerable to a much wider array of attack types than purely astral forms are, however. That's part of why I've tended to argue that the game is a bit over-centralized around Magicians. Adepts with Astral Perception, high damage values and Mystic Armor sound like fun in theory, but unless you're at least a Mystic Adept, you're really only so much meat if a Magician shows up.

Heh, I just meant in the specific context of 1v1 against a melee guy on foot. It wasn't a general-purpose metaphor.

I have been toying with the idea of allowing Astra Combat against any Astrally active being that you can perceive if using the Astra Combat skill. So the Astrally perceiving adept can launch his attacks against the mage across the street. After all the astral plane is all about thought, emotion and perception. No reason to limit things to meat ranges.

This would empower the dual natured beings greatly and improve the effects of Astral Perception.

But the Astral Plane is a direct 3D shadow of the material plane, and dual-natured things can't get out of their skin. The great utility of Astral Perception is perceiving the Astral. Don't steal the utility of Astral *Projection*.

Are dimensions the same in the Astral? Does the length of a ruler (or the shadow of the physical ruler) have an actual length or only a perceived length due to the importantce attached to its label as a ruler?

I don't think (and my astral combat experience is pretty rusty) that the rules talk about movement (in the local combat type sense). Wouldn't it make more sense that your weapon focus polearm has reach in the Astral due to its identity as a weapon with reach rather than any physical properties in the material plain?

I think some things have different sized shaped auras in the Astral, I might be thinking of Drakes.... can't really remember. Does a thing that has a different size or shape have the ability to use that altered shape and size on the Astral? Does the drake have claws or reach?

I am just sort of rambling along, but I need to air out the idea before submitting it to my group anyhow.

Why shouldn't we? Astral Projection still has advantages like allowing people to use mental attributes instead of meat attributes (not a small thing for a Magician, particularly human ones), investigate/manifest in areas that their physical bodies cannot reach plus they can always just run the hell away far quicker than a dual-natured form could hope to travel. Further, magicians get both astral perception, astral projection AND access to the Conjuration and Sorcery skill sets for 5-10 build points more than an Adept or Mystad. Adepts, on the other hand, pay out a full power point for what boils down to access to assensing, since dual-natured combat vs. purely astral forms is a fool's errand compared to just fighting things off when they materialize or come at you meatside. The deal Magicians get on the Astral is already arguably superior to that of an astrally oriented adept even before you factor in cost and the ability to curb stomp melee forms with no risk.

Don't forget that awakened metahumans can switch off astral perception. After the first manabolt, they can just leave the astral and be safe. Free spirits can drop their materialized or possessed form to get on an equal footing with the mage. This only leaves permanently dual natured critters who are not also mages as vulnerable targets.

Well... there is always fleeing into a small room. So when the magician want to target him, he has to go in... and is in reach for a second or so. Enough to get a astral paw to the face. Other than that... dying. Or hoping they have a natural spell or something which works on astral.

Your post boils down to "physical adept suck it." and I quite agree. I'm working on fleshing out a set of houserules that I've been using for years to fix this problem. I'll post it when I'm done with it.

The right tactics can cover up a lot of things, true, but the advantage spells have over dual-natured Astral Combat still hits me as a touch over the top when you consider that Mana Bolt and its ilk double as an excellent meatside tool. As it stands right now, most dual-natured critters really only make sense as a Magician countermeasure if you take them out of their natural habitat and stick 'em in a good ol' fashioned dungeon crawl. That's some irony right there; Darwin probably just hit 1,000 RPMs.

And anyway, I'm not necessarily all up in arms about getting PhysAds equal representation on the astral or anything; they're called Physical Adepts for a reason, I suppose, and as a thematic choice I can see why people would stick with the status quo of Magicians being 100% better on the Astral. I just think that the situation is one-sided enough that you could easily cut the dual-natured guys a break without them dethroning Magicians. Like I said though, I can see why people aren't in a rush to change it. Personal taste and all that.

Free spirits don't need to drop their physical form. They're also Magicians, and can therefore throw overcast Stunbolts right back at the mage.

The rule books most certainly talk about astral movement, and speed. The dimensions in astral are pretty much the same as physical. SR4 page 183. astral "Walking" rate is 100M/turn. Running rate is up to 5k/turn. No dual natured creature I can think of could keep up. Some of the flying creatures could keep up at their flying speed, as long as the pojecting mage isn't "running." If the mage were very very poor at plotting their movements, they might choose to cast a spell too close to an enemy, and find themselves in range of an attack on the enemys next turn.

Dimensions are more or less the same

Longer weapons also have increased reach as a weapon focus on all planes

AFAIK only drakes have this exception.

I favor a lack of distance on the astral in combat. Removes reach and other wonky things about spirits, force, adepts, animals, etc.

Basically the only thing that applies is LOS obstacles. You get 2 distance either too far or you can fight.

so, sod the rules why even try? I guess I can get on board with that...

A normally non-dual natured adept that is Astrally Perceiving can turn off his Astral Perception and the mage is left with playing with himself in astral space. A Dual Natured being like a shapeshifter would not be able to do the same, which is why being dual natured is considered a 2 edged sword.

Doesnt sound all that much like dual edged sword to me... sound like a really good shaft.

Dual Natured means you are all the times vulnerable to Astral entities you possibly cant reach. So Dual Natured should be very endangered species.

You can also try to understand why they are dual-natured in the first place... what is their advantage ?

I guess someone with no grasp of gamemechanics equated their awakened status to a dual nature. Well ghouls have to be dual-natured or blind but all others, I don't know.

I would surmise that Dual Natured creatures that are not Mystic Adept/Magicians are swiftly eliminated from the gene pool. Hence we would tend to see (and assume incorrectly) that all Dual Natured creatures like Shapeshifters are bad assed mages, when it is an evolutionary necessity for them and we only see the ones that survive.

Take for example a Mystic Adept Shapeshifter. Against purely astral entities that cast spells, he has access to Magic Resistance (as an Adept power), can learn counterspelling and he doesn't need to buy Astral Perception.

I was more thinking about movement. If the projecting mage casts his spells while moving from cover to cover, an opponent anchored to the physical world cannot keep up with the speed, but another pure astral being can.

Applying real world logic to game mechanics and trying to create a world model does not work, if you did, we would be playing Ghoulpocalypse and not Shadowrun. The Other Game would be Wraithpocalypse and not D&D.

I am sorry but that is a point of view I am deeply against.

Real world logic MUST apply in large part to any fantasy world because 90%-95% of the social, biological and physical interraction are still the same and applying real world behavior and logic is the only way not to have to use rules books of several thousands pages to describe how anything interract with anything.

The rules are there to supplement when real world logic cease to apply but they can be lacking and need to be adjusted as it is the case now.

There is a real problem with dual creature. There is a game play problem and a logical problem, and the rules need to be amended and clarified.

If the astral and physical body of dual creature have to keep being at the same spot it open lots and lots of question (what if one is hindered in the move but not the other ? did an adverse effect on one body produce the same movement on the other ? how can thoses kind of creature survive against astral beings ? especially some of them that are supposed to prey on astral being for sustenance but cannot rulewise get them ?).

IMDNSHO, the Astral and Physical body of dual creature can support a modicum of separation, they are deeply connected and tend to stack but for a few instant they can support being separated.

Rulewise, dual aspect only make sense for unmoving barreer like plants as soon as you gave it move it cease to make sense.

I agree that you should be able to apply logic to the fictional setting, but experience shows that this produces results that contradict the fluff. You now have several options:
a) change the fluff, play in a different setting (Ghoulpocalypse for example)
b) change the rules. This will be a whole lot of work and will probably produce just as many inconsistencies, just different ones
c) Understand that the SR rules and possibly those for all other RPGs are not meant to work as a World Simulation. They are just rules to govern the microcosm around the PCs.

It is quite odd that some critters supposedly feed on spirits, but according to the rules have literally no way to catch those spirits.

Which critters feed on other spirits?

Yeah, you really have to ride the idea that dual-natured critters are ambush predators or else the whole thing falls like a house of cards.

Actually, this pretty much explains why we aren't playing ghoulpocalpse.

Think of it, bunch of ghouls show up, corp gets the heads up.
Corp sends about 4 or 5 wage mages, astrally, to the location of ghouls.
Mages light up ghouls, secure n the knowledge that they're safe somewhere about 20 miles south.
Rinse and repeat.

The thing is that mages are rare and ghouls can by RAW successfully turn nearly anyone into a ghoul simply by touching them. Contrary to Vampires they needn't even do it on purpose, just a brush on the subway is enough. By the time the ghoul is reported he was able to infect a lot of people.

True, mages are rare, but they also are pretty much invincible when dealing with a ghoul threat. Pretty sure those 5 could go through about 1~2k ghouls in the space of a day.

Also, how noticable is a ghoul. Sure, a brush on the subway, or running around in the airport terminal, or dropping by the club at ladies night in a wig will pretty much start Wide Spread Pandemic ™, but I'm guessing if some shambly groaning, obviously unwell shell of a man were to seek entrance in Grand Central, local Law Enforcement would be equipped to "process" the poor sick person.

Even removing distance (allowing astral combat vs anything you can astrally perceive), reach still makes sense. A honking big weapon, meta, critter, or spirit still has extra emotional impact, which would play out on the astral. Its only a die or two in SR4, which seems perfectly reasonable. In Sr3, it was a bit more extreme; my troll mage (air adept, actually) with a weapon focus staff was good, but still far from unbeatable in astral combat.

Yes.

Unless they and all bystanders wear Full-Body Armor with Chemseal you can assume that all who come in contact with the ghoul are infected.

Well, most ghouls won't run the streets in plain sunlight, as far as I remember. You'll find them in the sewers, at least underground. Astrally running off against an entire clan of ghouls might be slightly difficult even for projecting mages down there.
Also, in my opinion the situation given if a mage traps a dual natured being in open sight is kind of equal if a sniper does the same. You'll have little to no chance to avoid getting killed. You won't even recognize him.
To both situations, smoke grenades provide a temporary solution (mana-smoke grenade thing, whatever its name was, included).
And there are situations in nature (nowadays) where a being can't even hope do defeat his enemy. Mice an cats, for example. Or rabbits, foxes and the big bad wolf. So why wouldn't this happen to dual-natured critters?