Nope. If it's hearing, it's hearing. It doesn't matter if a *technological* sensor is creating a visual representation, it's not magically vision. It's sound. If you used UWB radar, it's the same thing. If you used Echolocation, you might 'see' blip, but it's still not vision.

I disagree with that statement. The spell causes the subject to disregard the sight of the spell's target. It does not cause anyone to disregard any other sensory output from the target (sound, smell etc) nor does it conceal the target's representation on a screen. It is only the target itself. Yes, a videocamera where you look at a LC Display instead of a viewfinder that bypasses the CCD would counter regular invisibility, as you do not look at the target but only at an image of the target. Cybereyes would do the same thing if it weren't for the whole "paid for with essence, part of the subject" bit.

That's why I don't often bother to learn mana illusions.

Magic + technology = madness

Exactly: if the image a camera gives you works, the image an ultrasound gives you does, too.

On on unrelated note, it's interesting that this is a place where there's actually a drawback to having essence-paid senses (cybereyes). Win some, lose some. I don't think this applies to even implanted ultrasound, unless such a sensor gives a mage LOS?

Invisibility does not really affect vision, hearing, scent, touch, taste, and did I mention vision. I better state that it does not affect vision again just for good measure because I think that part where I stated previously that it doesn't affect vision keeps getting missed and I wouldn't want someone to miss the part where I state that Invisibility does not affect vision.

Improved Invisibility affects vision.
Invisibility affects the mind.

Improved Invisibility does NOT affect the mind.
Invisbility does NOT affect vision.

The mind is not limited by vision and vision is generally not limited by the mind.

Wow, after that display, you're going to feel very silly:
So. Specifically affects *only* "normal visual senses" "that rely on the visual spectrum". This is for Invisibility *and* Improved. I believe a 'nyah' is in order.

Heres a quick analogy of a situation that I'm sure has happened to everyone that hopefully will elucidate how I believe Invisibility works.

You lose something like your keys. You look everywhere, but can't find them. Then after awhile you find them hiding in plain sight like in the center of the kitchen table. You definitely remember looking on the kitchen table for them and there is nobody around who could have moved them, but there they are. Your eyes are functioning just fine because you were able to see everything around them without any difficulty, but for some reason your mind just refused to register your keys sitting on the kitchen table.

In this situation it was not your eyes that were at fault, but your mind either not adequately disseminating what was being seen and connecting what you were looking for with the items present.

Not so fast. You left out the part at the end where it states flat out that Invisibility affects the mind. Why, I wonder, would it specifically say "mind" and not simply "vision". Hmmmm? Now thats interesting and maybe something that should be considered further. Wouldn't you agree? Afterall it would have been easier for the writers to simply say it affects vision since they already alluded to that previously, but instead they decided to go out of their way and use the word "mind" instead. Must be some sort of reason for that other than mere sloppyness.

NORMAL invisibility affects the mind, by telling you: YOU DON'T SEE ME!
And Ultrasound and Radar circumvent this by not making you see stuff, but telling you that there IS stuff there by means of echolot.
And the spell does NOT tell you: don't trust your software, your software does not tell you the truth, ignore the echo on your radar.

IMPROVED INVISIBILITY had under SR3 the description of bending the light around the object and thus making it impossible to see.
No telling your mind ANYTHING and THIS is why Improved works on CAMERAS and other OPTICAL SENSORS too.
But still, no dice with Ultrasound and Radar, because it's stil not optical.

This Redcrow's analogy however does not incorporate the fact that an image of the keys is different from the keys themselves. Were the keys hidden by the spell but then the area where they lay photographed, anyone would see them as they are not looking at the keys but only at a picture of them. The same goes for any representation by an imaging device.

[edit]@Stahlseele: I totally agree, and add that SR4A unfortunately still has the light-bending silliness.[/edit]

It does?
And here i thought they had tried to hide their shame . .
Because, as we all know, technically, without light coming through to you, you are also completely blind.
And sooner or later you start to freeze too . . .

It doesn't really make any difference if you are looking for your keys physically or performing a "Wheres Waldo" with a photo of your kitchen table. In both situations you could easily overlook that which is right in front of you. I'm reasonably certain I'm not the only one that has experienced this situation.

Technically speaking nothing is really "hidden" by Invisibility because the spell isn't cast on a person in order to hide them. It is cast on everyone else around the person to keep them from being able to "see" them. Though I use the term "see" a bit loosely as it doesn't really affect their vision, but instead their minds ability to interpret or disseminate what is seen just as in the analogy of the keys.

As I've said, I think that an Invisible person would definitely appear on an image created by an Ultrasound scan, but that image simply would not register in the "minds" of anyone using it if they are within the spells range.

No, the spell is technically cast on the Person wanting to be invisible . .
It AFFECTS everybody else regardless of where they are when the spell is cast.
Else, if you were made invisible in one room and entered another room with a person in it, you would have to cast the spell on the person in there again too, else that person would be able to see you . .
And it gets even more iffy if you consider, that it's the mages line of sight that's doing it all, and not the LOS of the invisible person.
And if the Mage leaves the room, you don't suddenly become visible again either. And it does not even stop there yet i'm afraid . .
Because, let's face it, if the person is invisible, there is no LOS to the person to begin with, thus the spell goes poof immediately . .

Yeah, I can see Redcrow's point of view.

I mean, let's say you're a security guard. The digital security camera captures an image of an intruder walking in and displays it on the monitor in front of you. But, because you're in physical range of the intruder's Invisibility spell, you don't see the digitally processed image of the intruder on that monitor.

Yet, somehow, even though you're looking at the same monitor, replacing the digital camera with an ultrasound sensor means you DO see the image?

The spell doesn't affect the camera at all. Nor the monitor. It's affecting YOU. Your brain. Changes in the camera or monitor shouldn't have squat to do with how the Invisibility is affecting YOU.


-karma

Yup
*imitates stereotypical uninformed metahater*
It's all the darn trogs' and stunties' fault. No proper human can visualise heat without equipment. Were there no trolls and dwarves, invisibility would not cause the poor subjects to get cold.

More seriously though, convection and thermal conduction still work, so it shouldn't get too cold.

Ok, this is confusing... Can we just pretend invisibility does not exist and just work with Improved Invisibility for less headache's sake?

I'm glad to see someone understands where I'm coming from. My feeble powers of elucidation are beginning to fade with old age, I guess.

@LOS: that is not an issue for the spelled person. LOS is only checked at the casting of the spell, not when it is sustained and in effect.

Which idiot had the idea of this misleading nomenclature with illusion spells?
The spellcaster targets a subject, and those who may be subjected to the spell's effect are called targets.


Yes, the type of camera has nothing to do with it. That you are not looking at the one who received the spell in either case is the important fact. The spell tells you to ignore person x, it does not tell you ignore the image of person x.

Improved Invisibility is cast on the person wanting to be invisible, but standard Invisibility targets everyone else in LOS of the caster.

Nope:
Who the spell is cast on is the same for both versions. Who the spell is cast on only differs in that with Improved Invisibility technological sensors are affected in addition to living observers.

With your interpretation you could do all sorts of silly things.

See, I think thats actually backwards in that the spell doesn't tell you to ignore person x, it does tell you to ignore the image of person x. Which is why the spell is linked to the minds ability to recognize visual stimuli regarding person x, but not stimuli from the other senses like hearing and scent from person x.

Again I must say that a simple rewrite of the spell makes all these problems vanish like the function of the spell.

You're looking at a monitor. It's black and white and low resolution, so you can't tell if it's a feed from a video camera, or a 3D recreation drawn from ultrasound data. A person walks across the image that is physically close enough to tag you with the Invisibility spell.

Do you see the image?




-karma

How about just rewriting both spells to add a penality to all vision based tests equal to the number of hits generated on the spell casting test?

I don't agree, the magic only enables the block, if the eyes see person x. It does nothing if the eyes see the image of person x. ore someone made to look like person x

Agreed

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say. If you are talking about seeing a grainy image of someone who has received an invisibility spell, yes the image of that person on the monitor will be visible to you. Again a case of person=/=image of person.

Just to make myself clear, if a mage does not beat a camera's OR with the Improved Invisibility spell, someone watching the video automatically sees the image of the person who received the spell.

Note: To avoid confusion I will from now on call the one who is potentially invisible recipient and those who need to resist the spell observers.

This would make the spell a lot less powerful. It removes the whole autofail-capability against spells. Also it would not force shooters to use the blind-fire modifier nor would it force them to use INT instead of AGI.

As I said before, based on the poor wording of the spell it cannot be stated with any certainty that one way is right and the other is wrong. Its basically however you wish to interpret it and whatever works best for you. However, if you choose to rule that the spell affects vision but not images in order to protect the viability of Ultrasound, you must also accept that other images will be unaffected as well. That means every commlink with a vid-cam renders standard Invisibility completely useless.

Did you read the quoted passage, Redcrow? It's unequivocal: visual senses, and no others. Yes, it accomplishes this mentally, meaning it doesn't work on sensors, drones, etc. However, Invisibility is clearly not 'ignore this person'; it's 'you don't see this person with your visual spectrum senses'.

It's not my fault that it doesn't really make sense, and if you want to house-rule it into 'mental block/ignore/disregard', you can do so. However, when the text is so explicit, there's not much room for argument.

Every vid-cam is *supposed* to render standard invisibility useless.

What if the invisible person interacts with the environment around them? Say Mage A is Improved invisibility. Mage A then goes into a room and start picking up vials, cups, moving chairs, and other stuff in a room. Would the camera in the room (and the sec guard watching the monitor) see the objects moving or not?

Have you even read this thread, Yerameyahu? It's clearly not unequivocal. Do you actually have anything new and useful to add to the discussion or did you just stop by to say 'nuh-uh'?

Typically invisibility covers everything a person is wearing or carrying. I would say that anything small that was picked up would appear to vanish and be covered by the spell. The chair I would likely rule would be a bit too big to be subsumed by the spell, so the guards would likely see it moving around on its own.

Not completely, but it definitely reduces the benefits.

What would rate as small? If Mage A is a Troll Mage who casted Improved Invisiblity, that could range from anything from a pen to desk lamp. What if the mage was walking through snow or a blizzard?

The more I think of this... the more I think that the invisibility spell is a manifestation of magic bending light. The Improved Invisibility spell just works on optical cameras and such. If physical matter can still affect the mage who is invisible, then observers should be able to see those "interactions" and know someone who is invisible is there. Same way with Ultrasound... as it's a radar thing that can still affect/interact with the physical person there. However, that's just my interpretation of it.

Check the poll, Redcrow. The thread takes as given that ultrasound counters non-improved Invisibility; it's not even a *question*.

I would take the size of an object into account strictly on a case by case basis, but essentially anything that can easily be held in your hand. So I would have no problem with a pen or a desk lamp. If the mage was walking through snow or a blizzard I would grant observers a bonus to resist the spells effects.



The description of the spell says that only Improved Invisibility is bending the light while regular Invisibility is affecting an observers mind. If both spells were actually bending light, there simply wouldn't be a need for both spells. But as has been mentioned previously, the whole notion of bending light around someone to render them invisible is nonsense because it would make them blind as well.

Its unfortunate that you never took debate in school or you would know that argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy. Hopefully you can at least understand that something is not true based on how many people believe it to be so. Or do I really need to point out examples where popular opinion turned out to be false?

This isn't a debate. It's a discussion.

However, I'll humor you. I was addressing *your* question about if I'd read the thread; my response was that my position clearly demonstrates a better understanding of the thread than yours. No ad populum was used at all. Pay attention.

At this point, I don't even understand what you're asking about. The book clearly and explicitly says that ultrasound defeats Invisibility (SR4A p333), and that Invisibility affects "normal visual senses" in the "visual spectrum". We also know that sensors have always been immune to the non-Improved versions of illusion spells, even if Improved Invisibility worked against ultrasound. Doubly wrong, then, to say that Invisibility defeats ultrasound detection.

Unless it projects an image of what the person would be seeing onto the light bending field just infront of their eyes.
edit, or allow the light through, and just fills in the 2 holes in the 'back' or your head with more illusion.

This however is not in the spell's description just as affecting images of the recipient is not in the description.

Actually, you said...



Which implies that you feel the poll results are in any way relevant to the discussion or somehow bolster your position. That is argumentum ad populum and its useless in a logical debate or even a logical discussion.



And this would be an appeal to authority, which is another logical fallacy. Its been too long since I studied formal debate, so unfortunately I can't recall the proper Latin term for it.

My assertion is that the RAW is contradictory and not explicit because the spell states that it "makes the subject more difficult to detect by normal visual senses (including low-light, thermographic, and other senses that rely on the visual spectrum)." which is what would happen when something "creates an actual warping of light around the subject" but does not necessarily correspond with "affects the minds of viewers".

The part where it says "affects the minds of viewers" is the important part and the whole point of my argument. They could just as easily have written that Invisibility only affects the vision of living targets while Improved Invisibility affects technological sensors as well. This would be consistent with everything else written about the spell and would not in any way imply that someone using Ultrasound might be affected.

But instead it says "affects the minds of viewers", which differs from the description of Invisibility above it that implies that vision is the target rather than "the minds of viewers". It also makes more sense that something that "affects the minds of viewers" would not be defeated by cybereyes instead of the ad hoc handwavium of an excuse that if its paid for with essence its suddenly considered natural and no longer technological.

So in conclusion you are correct in that the RAW states Ultrasound defeats Invisibility, but that was never my argument. My argument was based solely on whether or not the RAW made sense and how it should function given the wording of the spell. So far I have not seen anything that invalidates my position.

This is just another example of the mess that is the SR magic system. Unfortunately it has been largely cut 'n pasted from one edition to the next with no real attempt at fixing its obvious flaws, inconsistencies, and just plain sillyness.

improved invisibility?
Says it bends light, if you want more detail then that for a spell, but are perfectly fine with a bio-invisible alloy in your bones costing you a chunk of your soul, you have some problems.

*snickers* this is the same discussion we've had again and again and again since the beginning of time . . well, okay, maybe not THAT long, but at least since the beginning of SR3, maybe earlier, i don't remember ^^#

Woops my bad. It actually only bends that light that comes from the recipient, either as reflected light from outside sources or as emission. So now I am of the opinion that by RAw the recipient would not be blind and eventually cold.
[edit]Wait a minute, this would not work either. If the spell warped all light coming from the recipient away from any observers the recipient would not be invisible but black. Not to mention that it should be a Manipulation spell and not an Illusion
To fix improved invisbility the warping light passage should be deleted.

With regular Invisibility there is the issue whether it only affects the minds of people who see the recipient, as the description says, or if you want it to also block images of the recipient.[/edit]

Hmmm... SO my two cents on Invisibility.

It affects the ability of "the mind to see the target". If a camera first "sees" the invisible character and a NPC views it on a monitor of some sorts, the camera wins against Invisibility. This allows the NPC to see you. Improved Invisibility affect the physical world so camera in above description does not see PC. The NPC does not either. That is how I have been playing it since 2nd edition, seems to work just fine.

Ultrasound is not even vision so it wins pretty much all of the time. Now if you combine that Improved Invis with a Silence spell. That is the ticket.

I didn't mean to bend light from the invisible person. Also radiant heating is not really required in an environment where you have a heated atmosphere, otherwise you'd freeze to death in a dark room, which doesn't really happen unless you haven't noticed. As for being able to see, siphoning off a fraction of the light that would normally hit the characters eye sockets to allow him to see with, and making that up with a few extra illusory photons on the other side is really not beyond the ability of a physical illusion spell.

What happens when you shoot an improved invisible person with a laser weapon?

If some perceivers resist the improved invisibility and others don't, does light warp around the mage correctly, except for the photons that would hit the retinas of those who resist?

When light is warped around a person, it takes a longer path - could you discern the outline of an imp invisible object by measuring the differences in arrival time of photons when he moves, or does the warped light move faster than light (in which case you could set up causality violation experiments and cause paradoxes where effects happen before the cause - oh no we broke the space time continuum)?

Redcrow's interpretation is indeed both sensible and effective, and is the one I myself use in my games. It's just not canon. By canon, invisibility effects only SIGHT - it's right there in the name, invisibility.

But if you want a chance to chase your tail in circles until you get sick and fall over, reading the rules, errata and FAQs (especially the FAQs... oh, those terrible FAQs) is a great way to do it.

By canon, invisibility makes it so you don't see the subject. If by paying essence, your ultrasound vision is sight, well, you still can't 'see' it. If you're just holding the unit, the unit isn't seeing it, it's hearing it. That's by canon.

By the FAQs, if you cast invisibility on a wall, you can now see what's on the other side, so you could in theory cast spells 'through' invisibility. Ouch.

By the wisest GMs I've met here on Dumpshock, invisibility makes you SEE what you expect to see. If you cast invisibility on a wall, you still probably see a wall, because that's what you're expecting to see. If you cast invisibility on a door, you see a wall, because that's what's around it. If you cast invisibility on a penguin in a field full of penguins, it just kinda blends into the crowd.

I don't think I've ever seen a settled answer on what happens if you are invisible and you say pick up a kitten and put it under your coat. Do you see a floating kitten?

Where does it say that implanted Sonar becomes vision?

I knew the FAQ were bad, but I don't remember that particular nonsense.

That's actually the (physical) mask spell.

[img]http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/700674603_mAVrc-L.jpg[/img]

Seriously?
You're trying to use appeal to authority as a logical fallacy when discussing what the very text in that authority says?

Ok, Improved Invisibility is a physical spell that works just like an ultra-mega-hyper-kamehameha version of a Chameleon Suit.
Invisibility is a manipulation spell that makes people ignore the sight of the invisible person, something similar but not entirely to Obfuscation discipline of the Nosferatu clan in VtM.

Why is that? Because invisibility just works on the sense of sight of a person. If someone with Invisibility cast on her farts, people will hear it and probably smell it (depending on what she ate). Obfuscation from VtM works on every sense a person have.

You would be correct IF he was asking you to check the poll RESULTS.

He wasn't.

He was asking you to check the poll ITSELF.

The poll itself sets the baseline for the argument. "Ultrasound vs Improved Invisibility, Does one counter the other?"

The poll ASSUMES regular Invisibility is negated by Ultrasound, so that part isn't even technically part of the argument at all. If you want to introduce it as an additional part of the argument, that's fine, but the default subject here does not include it.




Uh, no.

Appeal to Authority is when the person speaking claims or implies his or her personal expertise in the subject matter as a form of proof.

Like someone saying, "I studied this in college so that means I'm right".

Quoting text from a rulebook is NOT Appeal To Authority, it's Citing Your References, which is correct and proper in a discussion or debate.

Just sayin...

I have a question. What's the logical fallacy in which one uses a lot of Latin words to sound more impressive?



-karma