So Cybered because Keeping up with the Mage in the group is hard.
keeping up with the adept is slightly less hard.

And you know, there's just a ton of /fun/ cyber out there.

I don't think that's quite the point he was making. Right now, without such an optional rule, cyborgs have trouble keeping up with magical characters. I've seen arguments that cyborgs are just worse than magical characters and arguments that cyborgs are balanced with magical characters. If you then add on a penalty for ware, you penalize an already iffy group of characters further.

Personally I'm ok with things as they are. MBW 3 + dodge (ranged) has kept me safe from pretty much every indirect spell fired at me. For the direct stuff that's what counterspelling is for. That and having those fancy smoke grenades that cloud the astral mixed with thermal smoke. A few of those makes things more then even since I can see them but they cant see me. Ultrasound/APDS is basically how every mage we fight dies.

You only need Therma smoke grenades.
Sure the guy can see you astrally, but he can't use your aura to target you.
He has to have eyes on the ball so to speak.

But then he can still bind shoot you at -6 as he knows where you are if he can't work that out then well your even safer.

with a gun.. sure
but he can't blind shoot you with spells.

And if a Mage is blind shooting me with a gun, I'm not all that worried.

Depends on the spell. Area ones can just target an area. That you happen to be in. And mages can be GOOD shots if they want to be.

Wait a second, heavily cybered characters absolutely BITCH magical characters at the starting gate. With creative use of the Restricted Gear quality and some of the high power level cyberware, a starting sammy can dominate a starting mage. It is only once karma starts to flow in that magic characters begin to pull ahead.

With that said, I don't know what penalty you're referring to.

Last time I checked a Mage can target you with spells using Astral Vision without any negative vision mods. You can check if you want but that's what I remember it saying.

Indeed they can...

Only Mana-Spells though.
For example, Stun-Ball . .

An astrally perceiving and thus dual-natured mage is active on both planes. Since spells haven't been present on both planes since SR2, the only way any spell can affect a mundane target is if it is cast on the physical plane, the type of spell has nothing to do with it. So there are two options either you can acquire a mundane target with astral perception and still cast a spell on the physical plane or you can't. The latter contradicts and invalidates the first sentence, so it must be possible to use astral perception for targeting and cast spells on the physical plane.

Why use smoke?

Ekyelebenle Venom is the minimum amount of grenade-based death to send a mage's way.
Milk some off the SURGEling today!

Not sure if you can successfully aerosolize that venom. Using a squrt gun or capsule rounds may be a way though.

From SR4A

You cannot use someone's aura to target a spell. You must have physically solid target you can see, or an astrally active target to hit.
You cannot use someone's aura as a target for a spell.


You have to be able to form a mystic link to your target


So smoke grenades work great protecting you from a Mage.

So smoke grenades of any kind do you jack shit against indirect combat spells(well okey they do give the caster few dice penalty), the caster only needs to know te generqal area your at.

No he has to be able to see the center of the radius of the spell.

He needs direct LOS with the center.
Given that area spells have Force Meter Radius that's still a fairly decent requirement.

If you had quoted the whole section it would have become apparent that all it says is that contrary to other spells indirect spells need to travel from the caster to the target and bounce off solid but transparent objects.


Yes, but where does it say that you need to use physical perception to cast on the physical plane. If this were a requirement an astrally perceiving character could not cast any spells on the physical plane, which contradicts the rule that an astrally perceiving character can cast on both planes. Here is the reason why: Astral Perception replaces the physical senses. During astral perception the mage has no access to any of his physical senses, no vision and no touch, so no spellcasting. This cannot be if he is supposed to be able to cast on both planes.


Only until he switches to astral perception.

As smoke is only something like -3 negative modifier to the test, he can see you in the smoke just fine.

Unless it's FAB bomb.

It does say you can cast spells on both, but it doesn't say you can effectively target someone if all you can see is their aura. And you have many examples where you cannot target someone's aura unless they are dual natured themselves.

Even if you're breaking the rules and letting people target via Auras.
They're still suffering -2 from smoke or -4 from thermal smoke, and really they should be suffering a -2 dicepool penalty for using astral perception to target someone in the physical world.

so you're at -6. Suddenly being at -6 on your magic+sorcery vs someone's reaction is starting to look a lot less fun. It still feels like you're breaking a fundemental aspect of the magic system by letting people cast indirect spells using astral perception on people in the physical world.

If you can't see them physically, you shouldn't be able to cast on them.

How exactly is smoke stopping me from seeing you physically, its only -2 visibility modifier and with low-light vison so is thermal smoke too.

Targeting with Astral Perception is not the same as 'targeting via auras'. If there's a physical LOS from you to them, you can use Astral sight. I don't agree with this, particularly, but that's the rule in SR4: Astral sight is 'super-vision', usable for everything against everything (except FAB) with only a -2.

I guess smoke grenades in the future have gotten really bad compared to today.

Meh. Nail 'em with a flashbang, then take a potshot at the Magedome.

(emphasis mine.)

If you can't see both at the same time, then you can't use what you see on one to target a spell at something on the other.

Which means you are de facto not active on both planes, which you should be. It would mean as soon as you turn on astral perception you can no longer cast aquire targets on the physical plane, since you have no vision or sense of touch. Only by casting it on the astral plane you could affect yourself with a spell.

Unless we assume that the sentence about being active on both planes is bogus, we need to conclude that you can indeed use astral perception to cast a spell at a purely mundane target.

Casting on yourself is completely different.

Why? You need to acquire a target which is yourself. While astrally perceiving, you can only do that via astral perception.

You can touch yourself.
And actually you can't see your own astral form, except in small parts.

Self is a different mystical link than LOS
You could be blind, and still target yourself with a spell without having to astrally perceive.

*snicker* But yes, IIRC you don't require sight to target yourself.

No, because 'being active' and 'having LOS' are not the same thing.

Well you can, but if you are astrally perceiving you can't perceive that you are touching yourself and thus cannot acquire the target (yourself).

Where do the rules say that?

You're always in Touch contact with your own body.

Yes, the casting-with-Astral rules are totally broken and inconsistent. Try not to apply logic.

magicians are powerful enough that adding the "you can use astral perception to target your spells in pitch black" just isn't necessary.

Removing it however means that astrally perceiving mages can only cast spells on the astral plane.

Or spend a simple action to switch back to the physical world.

They can still aim guns while astrally perceiving.. although with minuses.

And ONLY a -2 for Non-Magical Tasks...

Well, obviously.

And ghouls don't even get that.
So technically, a completely physically blind ghoul can still shoot as well as anybody else . .
Maybe even better, due to agility bonus . .

This is True...

"I hear dinner!" *blamblamblam*

At least you can hide from him behind a glass window and make faces at him...

-CJ

Beware of the Ghoul with Cybereyes.

Well the window only protects you from indirect spells.
Direct spells still kick you ass

No reason to get cybereyes; just trode in a tiny camera feed. Keep your Magic and limited Essence. Unless you meant a mage ghoul, of course. :/

Now, that's a funny idea. But I'm not sure this would work, actually... Trodes giving you visual information would require you to be in VR, wouldn't it?

-CJ

it specifically says you cannot use a display for line of sight.

You can only use things you paid essence for

That's why I said, 'unless you're talking about a *mage* ghoul'.

Actually, CeeJay, it's all just simsense, whether AR or VR.

OK, just so I am on the same page as everyone else. My understanding is that it is VR and AR that are beyond the ken of spirits. A materialized spirit could still watch a flat screen tv movie, though, or the non-AR part of a computer display. Right?