Hello all,
a little question came up during yesterday's game, and it's about whether ultrasound googles counter improved invisibility. Now, the ultrasound sight modification specifically mentions that it counter "invisibility", while Improved Invisibility mentions that it affect technological devices. I read this as "ultrasound counters standard invisbility, but not the improved version". One of my players believes that it counters all forms of invisibility.

Who's right, from a RAW standpoint?

Invisibility and Improved Invisibility counter sight. If it counts as sight its countered.
Does Ultrasound count as sight? When built into any camera, goggle, contact lenses and ONLY into them I'd say yes.

Physical means it affects things that did or did not cost essence.
Not Physical means it only affects living beings and items that did cost essence. (implants)

Ultrasound is only useful when a non-implanted ultrasound system is used against the manabased Invisibility spell.

Ultrasound "vision" is not sight, it is a process that maps the reflected soundwaves into a picture. No visible light is involved. So this means improved invisibility is countered. Normal invisibility is countered as well, because the person using ultrasound is not looking at the invisible person but at an image generated from the reflected soundwaves.

Dakka Dakka, in your opinion would a Silence spell work against Ultrasound?

Yup, the spell's description even says so.

DD is pretty much bang on the money here. Consider the following:

- An imp-invisible person can hear you (i.e. your soundwaves impact on him)
- You can hear an imp-invisible person (i.e. their soundwaves impact on you)
- The imp-invisibility spell does not target or affect technological devices more than or in different ways to living observers
Ergo, ultrasound works.

I also play with Silence working against ultrasound, but more like a darkness spell than invisibility. When looking with ultrasound at a Silenced area, you don't get an echo back from the area, so you know there's something messing with your sensor - but you can't see what is going on inside or pick targets. The Silence spell description also says that it works by "jamming" sensors.

Ultrasound only cuts the penalty for invisibility in half.

Silence only sort of works. If someone has a silence spell cast on him and walks in front of a wall, you see a big empty spot in front of the wall. A little suspicious. You still can't target the character directly, however.

I'm with Smokeskin and Dakka on this. Silence as "darkness" makes sense.

Of course, a mage could just carry some sort of white-noise generator that specifically affects ultrasound. But there is no single spell that completely hides you. Shadowrun is full of move and countermove.

But by RAW you could make one. The drain for Improved Undetectability is only one higher than Improved Invisibility.

Funnily enough I cannot find where it actually says that, though it is something I remember being the case forever. One thing to check is if Invisibility is capitalized (without being the first word of a sentence) because spells are always capital, while an effect like invisibility is not. Thus Invisibility and invisibility are two different things.

But yeah, like others have said, Invisibility and II counter someone's ability to see you, not hear you, and ultrasound is just highly sophisticated hearing.

M&M p. 18 "because this system builds images from sound and transforms them into visual input, indirect illusion spells that affect sight do not affect this system.... However, because the character is not being viewed directly, they cannot be targeted by magic. Modify by +4 the target numbers for any other actions directed at characters "visible" only through ultrasound vision.
...
Cybernetic ultrasound sight is affected by mana-based indirect illusion spells (in addition to physical spells), because it has been purchased with Essence."

So I was wrong - ultrasound vision only works against invisibility when it's not implanted as cyber. When implanted, ultrasound only divides vision penalties by half (in other words, generally useless, compared to buying thermo & low-light for half the price).

Which is exactly why you don't bother with cyber-versions of sensors you can velcro to your chest.

Unless you are playing an earlier edition (3rd I think) M&M is absolutely irrelevant.

Ultrasound works against both forms of invisibility because, as someone said, it is basically a computer-generated rendering projected onto the user's field of vision. The description specifically says it works against invisibility.

So, Ultrasound trumps Invisibility, unless I use a modified multi-sense invisibility spell with higher drain. Is that correct?

Simple Question:
I am scanning the sky with ultrasound. How would I see a bird with a silent spell?

Wait, ultrasound? Did the teams UWB radar get jammed despite the hacker's r5 ECCM?

You wouldn't. It measures as: NOTHING here. Since you "look" into the sky all you see is emptiness. If you look onto a wall and someone with silence is between you and at the wall... you won't see the wall (he is sucking in all vibrations... hmm.. sounds dirty). That might give his ESTIMATE location. (Somewhere in that field of silence.. if it is an area spell)

Or a cartoon style outline if it isn't.

Indeed, Saint Sithney. Ultrasound is for chumps these days.

Hmm, 31:1 on the poll. Rarely have I seen DS so united in an opinion.

No kidding. Since when did we get over 31 regular posters?

Some could be lurkers. I'm sure we've got 20ish people at least who post very regularly, and plenty more with the occasional post, and then a number of lurkers. It is a fairly good turnout on a poll though.

Ah, the only question in which everyone can agree on a single answer. The holy grail of forums.



42 posters now

Well... Everyone except one.

Strange, when I look at the poll, it says 42 people have voted, but I only register 39 votes (38+1). Anyone wanna try using Ultrasound to find those three invisible votes?

View Results (null vote)

It is not just cyber but goggles would be effected as well. When they say indirect because you can't be targeted I think they are referring to people who are in another room and looking at screens. If you are there and using goggles you can be targeted. But I'm not sure of what direct spells would apply, I guess chaos style spells.

Really though I don't think ultrasound should work on normal invisibility. It gives visual representations of where people are, normal invisibility isn't making you invisible it is making people not see you even though you are visible. It is more like a mind control effect with the command you don't see me. So the ultrasound goggles would be displaying the visual representation but you would just not see it. But alas the RAW doe snot agree with me as far as I can tell. Unless they mean mana spells are indirect illusions and physical spells are direct illusions, but the term indirect and direct are not defined for illusions unless I missed a paragraph somewhere. My guess they mean targeted spells like chaos as mentioned above.

Going strictly by this it seems to me that standard Invisibility could hide a Mage from a target with Ultrasound while Improved Invisibility would not. Its not so much the idea that the Mage would not appear on the Ultrasound, so much as the target would simply not "see" the image that the Ultrasound created. Their mind would simply skip over it as if it wasn't there in much the same way that someone using normal vision would simply not register the Mages presence.

Improved Invisibility actually warps light around the Mage to make them invisible and Ultrasound is completely unaffected by light so this spell would not hide a Mage from a target using Ultrasound at all.

Seems like a good excuse for a Mage to pick up both spells.

Thats always the point, where I could cry.

Why is the OR factor? I mean: If the light was warped, the light was warped. It does not matter who "sees" it. It has to carry the same information to anyone.
Why can I see somthing, if I am invisible? (The light was warped)

I understand where you're coming from and I would agree. For me the problem is with Invisibility affecting a targets "mind", but its an Illusion spell and not a Manipulation spell like all the other "mind" affecting magic.

But the thing is the user of ultrasound gear never actually looks at the spelled person. He looks at a screen which shows a mapping of reflected sound waves.

This http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/2/

No, indirect vs. direct illusions are a specific subcategory (and not related to physical vs. mana). A direct illusion targets a particular person or group of people, to make them see a particular effect, for example, agony. Indirect illusions are spells where it is cast on your target, but it affects everyone else around the target. For example, invisibility, entertainment, etc.

In a nutshell, if you cast your spell and a new viewer steps into range (so not initially targeted), does he see the effects of the spell or not? If so, it's indirect illusion. If not, it's direct illusion.

It doesn't really matter if he looks directly at the spelled person or not because Invisibility does not affect a targets sense of "sight" it affects their "mind". As I said, the spelled person probably shows up on the screen just fine, but the targets "mind" simply doesn't register them as being present.

OTH, you could easily stand around a corner with a simple mirror on the end of a pole and see the caster just fine because you would be outside their LOS and therefore unaffected by the spell.

Invisibility does not affect technological devices, sure. But it should still affect the "mind" of anyone in the casters LOS. So even if a target were sitting at a desk watching the caster on a cctv and not observing them directly, I would say that so long as the target were within LOS of the caster their "mind" would be affected and while the caster might appear in full detail on the cctv, the viewer simply would not register them as being present. This is because the spell isn't affecting anyones sense of "sight" it is affecting their "mind" directly. The camera isn't affected because it has no mind and anyone watching the cctv from another room would be unaffected because they are outside the casters LOS, so their minds would register the caster as being present.

Otherwise you have a problem of everyone with a simple vid-cam on their commlink having an instant Detect Invisibility scanner rendering the spell virtually useless in a world where everyone and their dog has a commlink.

Line of Sight bounces off mirrors and mirrors are two-way.

My solution to the inherent problems with Invisibility/Improved Invisibility is to trash both existing spells as they are written and rewrite a single spell that functions as the magical equivalent of Ruthenium Polymer which is more in line with how an "illusion" should actually function anyway without all the "mind affecting" and "light warping" nonsense. Then you have a single spell that would function against both living targets and technological devices but would would be ineffective against Ultrasound.

That of course is just the first step, though. IMO, most of the spells in Shadowrun could stand some reworking starting with the spell categories themselves. Unfortunately the spells in Shadowrun have been largely cut 'n pasted from one edition to the next with no real attempt to solve some of the inherent problems with them.

A Disregard spell would work too.
Just a spell that does not actually make you invisible, but simply makes people not care about you being there.

You're right, I had forgotten about that. So then, you could use a vid cam on the end of a pole to look around the corner or a fiber optic camera even.

Personally I'm against spellcasters being able to utilize reflective surfaces to target people, but thats a whole different bone I have to pick with the SR magic system.

That seems to be more or less what the current Invisibility spell does. I would have no problem with a Disregard spell under the Manipulation category as that is where mind affecting spells belong. I just don't think they belong in the Illusion category with spells that affect the senses. I also really dislike the split between spells that affect living targets only and those that affect both living targets and technological devices, but that stems from the whole mana vs. physical type spell sillyness that SR has always (stubbornly) maintained.

Invisibility, even though mental, is only for vision systems. Ultrasound, strictly, isn't vision.

i personally used to use II but now use Trid Phantasm as it does all those good things and more since its multi-sense etc. because its a physical illusion spell (it specifically changes the properties that belong to the object (as far as any sensor or living entity is concerned). (page 201 SR4 full sensory illusions affect all senses... physical illusions: create actual images or alter physical properties... Very nice against those pesky UWB and ultrasound guys.

edit: for terrible spelling.

No, invisibility is strictly NOT for vision systems. Improved Invisibility is for vision systems. It doesn't matter if Ultrasound is vision or not because Invisibility is not targetting vision. Its targeting the mind. Even if you had a piece of cyberware that used scent to somehow create a 3D visual representation of an area, Invisibility would still tell you they simply aren't there because its not dependant on any senses. It affects the mind directly.

I've already stated that I have serious problems with many of the spells as written and invisibility is no different. However, going strictly by how the spell is worded even Astral Perception should not be able to detect a person under a standard Invisibility spell unless the perceiver is solely on the Astral and thus out of LOS. But once again we see an area where the RAW becomes problematic and so it was decided (probably without much actual thought) that Astral Perception could indeed pierce Invisibility even though the spell specifically states it affects the mind and not the senses.

The truth is we could all argue back and forth on this issue and yet noone would necessarily be wrong because this is just an area where the RAW doesn't make logical sense. Personally I will likely go with my own suggestion above about throwing out both existing Invisibility spells and simply rewriting them to function like an illusion spell should without all the nonsense.

We could go ahead and ask the question again:

If I cast regular Invisibility on a wall, would I see the people behind the wall even if I didn't know they were there?






-karma

Only if you overcome the OR of the entire building.

Redcrow, Invisibility doesn't affect hearing, scent, etc., does it? Then it's vision.

Better question:
If you make the building you are in invisible, will you run against walls and doors?

Redcrow is following the Path of the FAQ. While perhaps considered canon, down that way lies madness. I only pray that SR4 has hidden more pages of those dangerous tomes than we suffered under SR3.

The point is, if the "hearing sensor" creates a visual representation it is being viewed via a vision. Yes ultrasound is not vision but the it creates a visual/vision based object to see so you can interpret the sounds in a usable way. If your mind is telling you I don't see him it should not matter if its him or a him outline created by ultrasound but seen visually.

If that is what the FAQ says, it is not madness but reading a spell description and actually interpreting it logically.