Has anyone investigated the notion of making astral combat a ranged affair as opposed to melee? On the face of it, it would solve the problem of dual-natured creatures being completely owned by spirits and projectionists* but would it create more issues instead?

If it seems viable, could it work according to current RAW but over distances?
Should there be a range limit? What kind of limit?
Should it be more analogous to physical ranged combat than physical melee combat?

Discuss.

* I suppose the made-up word should be 'projectors', but the cinema-theatre-worker homonym did make me smile.

It all depends on whether you consider it a "problem", or a weakness that dual-natured beings are intended to have. I have the second view.

Considering that every dual-natured creature has the possibility for being a magician, mystical adept or adept, I don't see that as a problem, just pick the Magician or Mystical Adept Quality and you are good to go.

The problem is that it's a weakness that would render them genocided within a generation.

Dual-natured as it's written is stupid. Mostly because things that live on the astral plane have freedom of thought. And you dont.

Well something has to prevent Ghoulpocalypse, given the disease's RAW growth rate.

It's not a problem with the dual-naturted interaction it is a problem that almost all paracritters are dual-natured. Ghouls for example wouldn't need to be dual-natured if they got some sort of other sense like echolocation to combat their blindness. Or even easier, remove the blindness.
What do you mean by freedom of thought?

This opinion appears to be based on some assumptions.

1) All or most things on the astral will attack you and try to kill you if you are dual-natured.
2) Those astral entities that attack you will be powerful and impervious to your defenses, as well as faster than you.
3) It is not possible to hide from astral entities that bear you ill will.

A set of potential responses to these assumptions:

1) All or most astral entities don't care about you one way or the other.
2) Dual-natured things are slower have fewer initiative passes than purely astral things, but they can make such an attack costly enough to lead the attacker to reconsider attacking
3) One has the option to run away, into a building or a forest jamb-packed with other living things.

Unarmed combat makes one a sitting duck as well, with all the mages out there, not to mention guns.
I vote we make all metahumans have ranged unarmed attacks as well.

In all seriousness, I don't think it's as much of a problem as you make it out to be. Sure, you can pump a Naga full of Stunbolt while projecting. Just remember that a lot will repay in kind.
Being dual natured is very much a double edged swords, which indeed tends to hurt more than it helps. Most dual natured critters are very well compensated for that though.

A non magician dual-natured critter.

1) is slower, both initiative pass wise, and purely movement rate.
2) can only retaliate with unarmed combat.
3) Yes, if he's in a tunnel with many twists and turns, or a cave system, then it's hard for a spirit or magician to get los without being in some danger. But only some.
4) A forest? Even in the Jungles of the Congo and Amazon it would be possible to get LOS and be, oh I dunno, 40-50 feet in the air and untouchable.
5) There are many Astral entities that would want to wipe out.. Ghouls, Vampires, Banshees, Pixies, Shifters, and many others.


Yes, Unarmed combat makes you a sitting duck, BU, you can pick up a gun, you can wear heavy armor, you can run away. None of these option are available to a dual natured person dealing with an astral entity with mana or stun bolt.

Astrally projecting magicians don't have an instant "I win" button against dual-natured critters. In places such as many indoors areas (and some outdoor ones), visibility constraints will keep them from being able to continually stay out of close combat range, and astrally projecting beings also have a harder time getting to underground targets. And there is also the Drain of those spells to consider. They still have an edge, but astral projection has its own drawbacks (your meat body being helpless and catonic in the meantime). Overall, I think it is balanced for something that is usually a drawback for an option that has lots of other advantages.

If you do change it, though, I would require dual-natured critters to use their astral stats and the astral combat skill for any ranged attacks, only getting the advantage of using their physical stats and skills for actual melee combat on the astral. I would also revise the cost upwards for character options such as ghouls, since you are essentially turning a disadvantage into an advantage. Pixies can be left as is, because they have astral perception, which can be turned off with no problems.

Yes, Magicians have that problem.

Spirits do not.

I don't argue the vulnerability of being dual-natured, I argue against the position that dual-natured entities would be eradicated in a generation. There are lots of examples of physically vulnerable species that survive despite there being other species that hunt them actively. Often that survival hinges on them maximizing their own advantages... hiding, running into cover, sheer numbers, traps, all kinds of things.

As far as LOS goes, I have been in many forests both tropical and temperate in which 40 or 50 feet up puts your LOS into real jeopardy. Even if you can see bits and pieces of the target, cover modifiers apply for spells as well as gunshots. How long will a projecting magician pursue such a hunt? 2 hours? 4 hours? Certainly not longer than her Magic Attribute allows. And a spirit? OK, longer lasting, but spells? Powers? What will it do?

Now, say I have a magician who summons a honking big spirit and tells it, "Go find a ghoul and kill it." If it does actually find a ghoul, that ghoul is in trouble. But the world is a big place, full of places to hide, and it is not coincidental that ghouls tend to be known for their reclusive nature. This microcosm has checks and balances built into it that make it unlikely that my magician, or a cabal of such magicians, will eradicate ghouls in one generation.

And here's the broken logic.

Spells or Powers your pick. Spirit of Man: Mana/Stun Ball, Influence (Power)

Take a Force 6+ Spirit of Man and give it two spells, Stun/Mana Ball and Detect [Life Form], Extended. With its speed it should be able to canvas a reasonable area fairly quickly. An initiated mage could even do this with an Ally Spirit, so it wouldn't consume lots of services or be gone at the next sunrise/sunset.

I only wonder if a ghoul is a separate life form or just a diseased human. Paracritters however could be easily eradicated that way.

For a combined approach on both planes , have a Spirit of Man cast Mana Static at Force 1. All otherwise non-awakened ghouls and those that haven't raised their Magic Attribute will be blind, those that still act normally will be dealt with first and the rest will receive friendly hugs from a Fire Spirit (Engulf).

Agreed. It's like saying "Don't swim in the ocean or you will be eaten by a shark!"

well there are 60+ shark attacks a year

And Sharks aren't collecting human bounties.

Out of how many individual immersions in the sea by swimmers? A million? Ten million?

It's taken humans centuries to bring whales to the brink of extinction, and whales have not caught on, or decided not to catch on, that they can kill whalers.

Before we get into this discussion, let me echo Doc Byte and pbangarth's observation that just because you CAN kill something doesn't mean you WILL, or would even want to. It is perfectly possible for me to kill every snail I see, or to uproot weeds all day, or whatnot, but I have no desire to, because there is *no reason for me to*. Similarly, Fire Elementals can probably lay waste to vast tracts of the world's ghouls, but why should they? It's not like the ghouls can particularly even inconvenience a free spirit. And so, this discussion will not address those points. Instead, it will simply serve to illustrate how dubious it is that spirits could, in fact, genocide the crap out of ghouls or other permanently dual-natured races/critters in one generation.

Disclaimer: I don't have my book here, but I'm making some assumptions with stats. Basically, if there's a typo or a retarded mistaken in the main book, like not giving Ghouls or a spirit the "Perception" or "Sneaking" skill, I'm assuming they have it. I'm trying to make this realistic for the game world, not beholden to a statblock that may or may not have mistakes in it. Much like the Sangre Del Diablo discussion in other threads, if a critter SHOULD have a skill but a typo doesn't give it to them, screw that. They have it. If anyone responds to this post by saying "Ghouls can't reasonably sneak, they don't have the skill" or something, I will kick you in the face, because you're being deliberately retarded, and I'll counter that the spirit doesn't have Parazoology as a skill, and doesn't actually know what a Ghoul is or looks like, so he can't find any.

Part 1.
For part 1, let's suppose there's some astral entity that doesn't have AOE attacks. Because, you know, we're talking about astral combat and not the astral eqivalent of "lololol I drop grenades on you!" Let's assume this thing is force 5, and ergo has 5 in all of its relevant skills and stats in astral space. Let's assume it *hates ghouls*, and gets its jollies off by attacking them. There are three ghouls. These ghouls aren't freshly turned, and have an astral combat diepool of 6 - they have a stat of 3 and a skill of 3 in unarmed combat, or whatevever breakdown you're comfortable with.

All it's gonna take to actually threaten that astral creature with possible death is for the ghouls to attack that spirit once. Sure, he can zip in and be all like "Booyah, I unload my 10 die pool on you, hahaha!" and probably hurt one. But three on one with a die pool of 6 for each attacker isn't much to sneeze at, either. In a reasonable breakdown of events, the astral critter will do a level of damage or two to one of the ghouls, and then the ghouls will gang up on it before it can zip out of range - you don't get to fly in and fly out free of charge, remember. Those three ghouls will likely do 2 or 3 levels of damage right back to the spirit, owing to the fact they can knock his die pool and gang up on him. And immediately you begin to see that if he sticks around, this is gonna snowball into bad news for his face. Statistically, he's going to die.

Have you noticed that damn near every naturally dual-natured creature type is described as living/travelling in packs or is magically active? This is why. Gang up on your enemies, and you will own them.

Part 2
Now, let's talk about the reality of the situation: damn near anything that is fully astral has spells or spell-like effects they can bomb onto targets in the aforementioned "lololol I drop grenades" tactic. And they're gonna use them. So let's look at the reality of how this shit is gonna go down.
1) Realistically, anything engaging in genocide is going to be Force 6 or so. I'd even go up to 8. It's not going to get higher than that, because in practice, anything with Force over 8 that's free is going to be spending its time on more constructive endeavours, or is probably going to be dangerous enought to get it itself killed by something working at cross-purposes, because force 9+ free spirits are thin on the ground.
2) Anything being genocided is going to be living in dense terrain. This is because everything I can think of that's dual natured and doesn't have their own ranged effects is a city-dweller or forest-dweller. Specifically, the city dwellers are creatures that live in marginalized territories such as underground, abandoned building complexes, sewers, etc. So again, let's talk about Ghouls, because they're very convenient for our purposes. Other creatures have shit like Fear, Paralyzing Howl, Concealment, and other powers that skew this immediately away from the Spirit's favor, which is why we wanna talk about Ghouls.
3) We can assume that ghouls will live in hives, in packs, and won't be too terribly sharp upstairs, but will have decent hunting intuition. Let's not pull any punches here: Ghouls in their home warrens aren't rocket scientists, but they aren't idiots, either: they know how to hunt and protect themselves, in simple fashions. Ergo, they'll have set up traps for intruders, have cover, and generally know the terrain.

Let's assume the ghouls have generically 6 dice in "punching the spirit", and 7-8 dice in athletics/stealth, because that's about what I recall their RAW stat breakdown would give them. Let's pretend there haven't been any typos in the book, again, and they have the small selection of skills they should have, as ghouls: combat, sneaking, surviving, and runnin' around.

The location: An abandoned apartment block. It'll have a background count, aspected toward ghouls/death/nastiness of 1-2. Let's assume it's 1, cuz they MIGHT kill someone and be awful now and again, but mostly they eat corpses they find, not babies. This means our spirit - let's say it's a spirit of man, cuz they have innate spells - is down a force, giving him Force 5. Let's suppose this is a small ghoul pack, only 15 or so. Let's also assume the Spirit of Man is the one above, and he's rolling with Detect [Ghoul] and Manaball rather than Stunball; manaball means he doesn't have to manifest to finish the job.

The Spirit of Man is going to know where everyone is, sure, as long as he's got that detection spell up - but he's still gotta suck the sustaining penalty if he does. Additionally, while he knows where ghouls *are*, it doesn't mean he'll be able to target them with spells: he still needs LoS for that, and that means he still has to roll against their stealth to actually *get* LoS. He might get a bonus, or remove whatever bonuses THEY get from cover, but it's not a sure thing. We can also assume that if he hits them with the manaball, they're toast. The spirit definitely has the advantage in the "whomp" category.

But the first thing the ghouls will upon combat would likely be to scatter into groups: this is pretty standard for packs defending their home. There will be a couple of "easier" targets to get the spirit's attention while the rest jockey for position. Given the urban terrain, the spirit's not going to be able to get range on them of greater than 10 meters or so - somehting any ghoul can close in the blink of an eye. The spirit won't be able to get range even if it moves away, because the ghouls will be seeking enclosed spaces which are easily defended in hand-to-hand combat. They'll all be trying to outmanouver the spirit, like a wolf pack: lure him in somewhere with clustered targets just out of sight, and then pile on him with their hands while he blasts them with spells. At 6 dice for attack, with groups of ghouls doing the attacking, that spirit is gonna have to be mighty lucky not to start hurting real quick into the fight.

Yes, the spirit can lay waste, but its only real advantage is an area where it can stay out of reach, in LOS, and bomb them with spells. Any animal so threatened is going to retreat to an enclosed space when so threatened. It's bad for dual-natured creatures, but not as bad as it first seems.

The easiest reason is their summoner told them to. Human mages have every reason to eradicate ghouls or everyone will be a ghoul sooner rather than later.

This asumes that a) the ghouls are not surprised b) they have Initative or have delayed their actions c) the ghouls can keep up with the spirits speed of 33 m/IP (100m/turn 3 IPs). Anyone can walk, attack and walk again. So the only time the spirit can be hurt is at the moment it strikes one of the ghouls. I doubt they will manage that. so it's more like 1 on one or 1 on 2.
Additionally nobody said that the spirit needs to be alone.

This has a side effects which make the whole scenario moot: Normal (as in not otherwise awakened) Ghouls will no longer be dual-natured as their MAG Attribute drops to 0. Without astral perception they are blind, and targets for the mundane cleanup crew.

You seem to forget that before and after each attack the spirit can hide behind a convenient wall and force a new surprise test, possibly without the +6 for an ambush. If it drops the sustained spell or has it sustained by someone else, a force 6 Spirit of Man still scores one more hit than the average ghoul. A successful ambush means 3 net hits on average. So the average ghoul can't react to the spirit.

Even if it goes wrong once in a while a magician can summon more spirits. All he has to cope with is some drain. If his Mag is great enough he'll only have to swallow some pain killers (Stun damage). Someone who plans this probably has some medtechs on call, if he can't do it himself.

BTW can ghouls eat ghoul flesh?

I think with most paracritters, being dual-natured was meant to be an advantage, perhaps even one that made them useful in security applications. However, in practice it does seem a lot like a liability.

I like giving ghouls Echolocation instead of Dual-Natured. It still fits the blindness theme, but makes them less sitting ducks. (I also seriously downgrade the infectiousness, since the author of that said it was a mistake.)

Generally, I'd give paracritters either
a) the ability to turn Dual-Natured off
b) some sort of astral ranged attack to defend itself with, even if that's only a Fear power
c) both of the above

While it's true that the spirit could surprise them, it is unlikely the spirit has invested any skill points in any of the skills in the Stealth group unless it's a sneaky-themed spirit. Given the situation, it seems likely the ghouls would at least equal the spirit's stealth pool, and all it takes is one of the many ghouls to roll effectively and shriek to raise the alarm. Speed alone doesn't provide surprise - or rather, it cannot be the ONLY guarantor of surprise. The ghouls should have some kind of roll. The ghouls will cease being surprised the moment any of them die, at the very least.

On the subject of movement, the Spirit does have 33m per pass. That's physically a lot faster than a ghoul, yeah. But it's not an instant win button by any stretch. I'll explain why later.


True. But once you get into spirit swarms, the issue becomes not "Why is astral combat so hard for dual-natured critters" and more "Why do things get stomped flat by a spirit swarm." And eventually, some more intelligent ghouls or critters are probably gonna hire a hitman to handle you. Say, the Ghoul magician in Eyewitness.



This is a tricky interpretation, and one I don't agree with. I see no reason why they would be considered "blind", rather than simply suffer a penalty. This is because if you look strictly at the rules, if their magic is reduced to 0, they should die, right? And even if that's not true, they're no longer dual-natured in 90% of the areas they live in, given the background count they'd have. Except that's obviously not the case. Even if you do accept this as true, they're FAR from helpless: they have enhanced senses hearing and smell, and can almost certainly maul the crap out of most "mundane cleanup" crews. And they can also step out of the (magic) meters radius of the spell. It's not that far reaching, after all.

Regardless, this discussion is about astral combat between astral and dual-natured entities, so for the purposes of this discussion, casting astral static to render ghouls no longer dual-natured results in a net *loss* for the attacker: he can no longer accomplish his goal without manifesting, which is a weaker tactical position.



Hardly. I suspect, instead, that it has been forgotten that held actions don't disappear. I shall explain. This is the "later" section I was talking about. Let's assume the following: spirit busts into apartment block, manaballs 4 ghouls from surprise, and cackles. The remaining 12 ghouls are freaked out and scatter into four groups of 3. Initiative numbers are as follows:
Spirit: Eleventy billion, aka "first".
Ghoul Group 1: 9
Ghoul Group 2: 8
Ghoul Group 3: 7
Ghoul Group 4: 6

On Eleventy billion, the spirit pursues Ghoul Group 1, and blows them into chucky salsa with a manaball.
On 8, 7, and 6, the ghouls move into other rooms and hide. They are walking, and functionally holding their actions.
On eleventy billion, pass 2, the Spirit pursues Ghoul Group 2 into their room with the intent to turn them into salsa.
As an interrupt, ghoul Group 2 unholds its action and pre-emptively (or at the same time, depending on how you read the rules) attacks the spirit. One or more of these ghouls makes shieking noises (a free action) to alert the other ghouls.
Concurrently, the other ghouls decide to use their movement to head to the same room, rather than away from each other. This is not an action, just a different use of their pre-existing movement; their actual actions are held.
All ghouls roll to attack, getting 3 successes each (6 + 2 friends in melee, averaging 2.66 successes a piece at 8 dice). The spirit defends, rolling 11, 10, and 9 dice. It dodges all three attacks.
The spirit - concurrently or right after, depending - uses manaball. All ghouls in Group 2 die. It uses movement to head toward the other ghouls, but pulls up short so as to surprise them.
On Eleventy Billion, Pass three, the spirit pokes his head into the room to cast manaball.
As an interrupt, all six ghouls attack. We could intersperse some surprise rolls here, but I take a dim view of surprise working when all six defenders are in one room, waiting for something to come through a wall. It seems... unlikely.
All six ghouls roll 3 successes, with their die pools of 6 + max friends in melee bonus. The spirit rolls his defense: 11 (4 successes), 10 (3 successes), 9 (3), 8 (3), 7 (2), 6 (2). So he's hit twice. He'll roll his body of 5 vs the ghoul damage of 7P (Str 4, Natural Weapon +2, 1 success). Damage may be lower than that, I suppose: I'm working from memory on base ghoul stats, but it seems probable they'll have a strength of 4-5, and I think the natural weapon does +1 or +2 damage, *and* the natural weapon lets them use their str in damage in astral combat according to earlier discussions on Dumpshock. On average, the spirit reduces that 7p to 5p.
Spirit dies, owing to the background count having reduced its damage track to 10 boxes. Possibly all the ghouls die from the manaball, depending. Even if the spirit doesn't die, he came really close to dying.

The key here is that held actions don't just disappear, until the turn is entirely over. Walking movement isn't an action, just regular old manouvering. If held actions disappeared after the pass they were on, anyone with less initiative would automatically lose; an attacker could take cover for pass 1, and then free-kill anything on passes 2, 3, 4, etc. That is explicitly not the case. The held actions likewise should be used as a concurrent interrupt for the same reasons, although the book is unclear by my recollection as to what the order of combat operations is, in this case.
You'll note that in the above example, if the ghouls HAD used stealth as their action, it would have been easier for him to kill them. And I didn't even factor the Detect Ghoul sustaining penalty in, in his defense rolls.

This was a small hive, and only had 16 ghouls. Larger hives - 30, 40 ghouls - are gonna just swarm the spirit like ants, and take cover if it retreats. If the spirit survives a volley of attacks and can't kill all of them with a manaball - likely, if his vision is restricted or they're all around him - then he'll take free attacks when he tries to break away from the pack.

Point being: this is how animals defend themselves. They live and hunt in packs and jump your ass because if they let you come after them one by one, they lose. They have to pile on you.



True, but here we begin breaking away from the thought experiment of "why is astral combat hard for dual-natured creatures" and return to "how do I kill ghouls".


I suspect they *can*, but probably *don't*, either because it tastes bad or isn't as nutritious or whatever. Otherwise they'd be solitary creatures.

Edit:
I recognize my opinion is based on certain rules assumptions, but I don't think any of this is house rules territory, at least to the best of my memory. Certainly, a given GM could give surprise rolls to the spirit and ghouls, but I find that a little cheesy, and as a player would begin asking for surprise rolls every time I entered a room expecting to find an enemy, even if one wasn't there or I didn't concretely know where people were in it. But I admit, rules calls could go other ways here. It was simply to show that hey, spirits don't necessarily have carte blanche to maul ghouls in their home environs.

You seem to use surprise differently than the book tells us. It can occur anytime something new happens even in the middle of combat.
Since the ghouls can't know when and from which angle the spirit will pop in, they should make a surprise test, which they will probably fail. So they do have their delayed action but can't use it to interact with the spirit.

Do you have anything concrete on that? I imagine some sapient ghouls would see eating their feral brothers as the lesser of two evils. They are even more dangerous to humans since they lack the inhibitions of the saner ones. As such they are a liability for the saner ghouls. Feral dangerous creatures will be put down with a lot less moral qualms than blind sapient humans with a skin condition. Sorry for the derailment.

The key here is "unexpectedly introduced to combat." If I'm a ghoul and Bob screams "KREEEEEASARREEEEERREER!" which is ghoul for "MY FACE IT BURNS OH GOD" and I decide to step into an enclosed space and attack the next thing I see, a spirit popping his head in isn't exactly "unexpected".

The spirit probably doesn't know exactly where in the area the ghouls are, either, only where *generally* they are, so the ghouls might get the bonus too. Unless the spirit rolls way fantastic on his detect ghouls, anyway:

Spirit: 11 dice, force 6 spell reduced to force 5 by the area's background count. Probably 4 hits. Sick.
Ghouls: Resist with 3 dice. Probably 1.

Threshold 3 is enough to know generally where, and generally how far the target is, but not where in specific. Like, "he's in the living room", but not "behind the door when you step in." (That's my recollection of the chart, anyway)

If we wanna pull out ambush rolls, this whole experiment gets way complicated way fast, but the spirit's gonna be hurting more, IMO. Why? He's entering a room, and any room he enters with ghouls in it, they're gonna be waiting to pounce, ergo +6 dice for an ambush situation. Just because they don't know what angle or when he's gonna pop in doesn't mean it's a surprise test, IMO. If I'm in some underbrush waiting for the bear I saw maul my partner, it's sure as fuck not gonna surprise me, because I'm looking every which way. Plus, there's always the question of "does angle actually matter for astral perception, since it's not sight."

If angle and method of attack are all it takes to make a surprise test necessary, then if I shoot through a wall at someone, they don't get to dodge, because they didn't know where through the wall I was going to fire from. While you CAN read the rules like that, it makes defense a bad proposition.

As to the second thing, no. But I think the Runner's Companion mentions something.

It's not like the spirit can only enter through one or two openings in the room. It can enter from anywhere, the floor, the ceiling, any wall.Not sure if you can successfully plan an ambush in that situation.

While the ghoul can move 10m/turn without an action, it cannot do that in every direction. 3m straight up will be difficult for the ghoul. There probably won't be rooms like this in their warren, but they will have to leave their home one time or another to eat.

It may be an omission on the ghoul's and all other critters' entries, but by RAW they can't even attack the spirit:
You cannot default on Astral Combat, and the claws should mean nothing in astral space. But then again they pierce ItNW by RAW.

True. But I think the potency of surprise, and the fact that it's "all or nothing" means that surprise should be used sparingly, especially in cases where the participants in combat are aware there are hostiles in the vicinity. Combat-ready troops who are expecting an attack don't focus on only one direction: they're constantly checking around themselves, turning, making sure nothing is flanking them. You can see it in troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the best example was in a mid-90s documentary on the IDF I saw, with a bunch of IDF soldiers in Nablus or somewhere. Basically I think giving surprise in a situation where people are in that state really runs the risk of turning everything into "surprise the enemy or die, because they'll surprise you."

Yes, they'll have to leave. But that's why they hunt in packs. Basically my entire thought experiment is to put to light that the oft-quoted opinion that dual-natured creatures are helpless is really quite false- they're at a disadvantage, yes, but they're not instantly dead. And, leaving aside for the moment the idea of a magician with a vendetta against ghouls, there's functionally no reason for astral entities to attack the ghouls sans provocation ANYWAY, any more than there is for your mage to be attacked by a roving Dragon simply because he's there.

And yeah. You can't default on astral combat, but it's the stated opinion of most of the writers and the FAQ that they should use their Unarmed Combat skill if they have a Natural Weapon. Yes, I know it's the FAQ, but really that's the only answer that makes logical sense. Even if we ignore that, we should grant them an Astral Combat skill and explain its lack as an oversight, because to do otherwise is ridiculous.

You haven't seen Aliens, have you?

Well, obviously the stealthed attacker should be given the benefit of the doubt if you are attempting to emulate Aliens, rather than some other genre.

Actually:



So, they can attack with their claws.

See? I shell out all this money for a limited edition SR4A hardback, and I don't even consult it for the relevant rules.

Okay, let's look at the problem from another angle:
Right now, Astral Comabt is a pretty useless skill. Period. If you have the choice (i.e. you can cast spells), than Mana Combat Spells are strictly superior to Astral Combat.

If you want to increase the usefullness of Astral Combat, Aerospiders suggestion of giving it a range is totally valid. I would definitely restrict the range to something shorter than LOS, however, to keep Astral Combat from becoming a fixed force, drainless Stunbolt. Maybe base the range on Essence or something...

-CJ

I don't think there are many astral hit squads roaming the countryside. A dual natured squirrel (if it theoretically existed) could easily have a fairly decent life in the wild despite being dual natured. Some dude who's got the old 3rd edition SURGE quality that made you dual natured could have a normal life and not expect to be ganked by a random encounter (well not any more than any other average joe in Shadowruin).

However, for all practice purposes for shadowrunners and others with interesting lives, being dual natured in a terrible state of being. Not only does it open you to a new avenue of attack 24/7, it's an avenue that your enemies have massive strategic and tactical advantage over you. Due to the speed of astral travel, you can come for you extremely quickly from almost literally anywhere. There are situations where they can just win with little you can do other than run away and maybe you'll escape despite the massive advantages your pursuer has (speed & flight). To protect yourself, you have to invest a skill that doesn't really help you other than this one niche roll, draining points and karma. I also assume astral wards are more common than physical wards especially in some forms of sercuity due to their more selective nature so you're in trouble there (even if they're not more common, they exist and mess with you more than nearly anyone else). While there are advantages such as ignoring the -2 distraction penalty and general being able to look into the astral plane, being dual natured sucks and is correctly a massive disadvantage (as oppose to astral perception which is cool and sometimes handy).

While making astral combat ranged does help with some of the problems, I do feel like it has issues with whole "no ranged attacks in the astral" soft rule Shadowrun always had. You can make the valid case that spells are ranged in the astral so that rule is already broken or never really applied. Allowing unarmed in place of astral combat helps the "must burn points" issue being dual natured has. My personal feeling is that much like critters rarely have enough armor to avoid getting pwnt by guns, it's a nasty limitation some things/people have and PCs avoid like the plague.

Again, being dual natured means you have Magic at least one, and although there are no specific rules, I don't think you have to be sapient to have the magician/mystical adept/adept qualities. By the same reason you have technomancer critters, you could have a dual natured squirrel who can cast stunbolt (because he is a magician or mystical adept). Really, the only dual-natured creatures that might get the short stick are the ones who are neither magician nor mystical adept.

Only specific critters are mentioned to be otherwise awakened (Naga, Wendigo for example). Giving this to all others sounds a lot like flying trolls (the book does not say that they can't fly).
Ghouls however can be magicians or (mystic) adepts, if they were awakened before the infection. But those should be few and far between. I guess less than 1% of the ghouls.

My real qualm about changing astral combat to make it a more useful skill is rooted in two facts:
1) Spells have drain, and astral combat doesn't. Any time you wanna cast a spell at range in astral space, great, but you still run the risk of giving yourself some stun.
2) How would this work with Weapon Foci? It seems that making an astral combatant with a weapon focus just got a lot more attractive than it already is - which is pretty damn.

Stylistically, I just don't like it.

I'm not sure how that all works in the case of critters on the ability to buy skills and qualities. But my focus is things PCs can be like ghouls so sapience and "can be a mage" are givens. The squirrel was just a hypothetical as "some random critter no would really care about".

I will admit that the 1% magician figure is highly suspect considering how common mages are in the shadows so I can live with a ton of magic using ghouls running around. However having more common magic users means astral stuff as well is more common as it's easier to get, so it balances itself out in that aspect.

While learning stunbolt or other ranged spell greatly reduces the number of situations where your attackers can just defeat you such as staying just outside your reach, it only helps but does not remove the advantages your foes have over you. It's easier for them to send help due to astral speeds, ambushing is easier for them since the things that count as barriers is far smaller than normal, you have to deal with astral only wards which at best an annoyance to anyone else, and retreat is much much harder for you and easy for them. Now astral gank squads (as defined by astrally projecting conjurers who summon spirits and manifest them) really do ruin anyone's day. However that tactic is not used in many groups for dudes in the physical world whereas that's totally just a normal astral fight. Secondly you're much more vulnerable to this tactic as well since the spirits don't have to burn a pass manifesting and the mages can join in on the fun.

While I totally accept the existence of dual natured creatures and people, it's just a really bad disadvantage for anyone to have who might have enemies. It's not unplayable as a disadvantage, but at best (being a pixie mage for example) it's like getting quadriplegic as a hacker. It messes with your options and opens up avenues of attacks on you normally closed. You might get other things to balance it out, but that does not negate being dual natured sucks.

What if you did give it drain?

Say, based on range, rather than damage?

That way, melee would be "free" (i.e. 0 DV of drain), but as the range increases, the drain increases, so that a dual natured critter could attack spirits, but do so at the expense of possibly dying faster.

I would suggest the Range Penalty Modifier table; as a positive value, doubled, as Stun.

See I think people are taking the wrong thing.

The problem is not that astral combat is melee range. It SHOULD be melee range.
The problem is the 'always targetable from the Astral' nature of Dual-Natured critters.

"They should just have been a Magician with Stunbolt of their own!" sounds pretty absurd.

I prefer the following simple idea: if a creature can't do something against ranged astral enemies, then it can turn off it's dual-natured in order to "hide" from them.

The only critter capable of deciding to be or not-be dual natured is drakes (being in dracoform means they're dual natured, in metahuman form they're not. (Magicians who aren't naturally dual natured don't count, as its not their entire species).



Assume that they aren't always targetable. What then allows them to be targeted at all?

I stopped to check the books and the only dual-natured creatures they mention that can have the Awakened Qualities are the ones that are also sapient.

Anyway, what can you find on the Astral Plane? Spirits, people who used Shade and projecting Magicians.
Everything else that can interact with the Astral plane is stuck on its meat body.

Magicians are not that common and it is not like you encounter magicians projecting 24/7 (because they can't), so the main issue I'll consider are spirits.

• Spirits of Air might have Elemental Attack (range LoS).
• Spirits of Beast might have Noxious Breath (cone-shaped, BOD meters).
• Spirits of Earth might have Elemental Attack (range LoS).
• Spirits of Fire have Elemental Attack (range LoS).
• Spirits of Man might have Innate Spell.
• Spirits of Water might have Elemental Attack (range LoS).
• Guardian Spirits might have Elemental Attack (range LoS).
• Spirits of Plant might have Noxious Breath (cone-shaped, BOD meters).

The problem, as can be seen, is the elemental attack power (Innate Spell is a problem, sure, but it can be used for any spell, not only offensive ones).
If Elemental Attack had a limited range (say Magic x 10 meters or Magic x Magic meters) I don't think it would be a problem.

And even if you call the Free and Wild Spirits card, well, Free Spirits are indeed rare and Wild Spirits are usually bound to a location, so, the only reason a Wild Spirit would attack a Ghoul is if the Ghoul invaded its territory or something.

Magicians are a threat to dual-natured creatures unable to cast spells, don't argue with that. But it is not like Magicians are not a threat to mundane either...

Elemental Attack is irrelevant as it is a P power. It only works on the Physical Plane. Same for noxious breath.

Really, this is how I view the problem:

I can, at *any time* of the day, encounter someone with a gun. They can totally shoot me from range, and I'm going to die because I don't own any body armor. Even then, if they use a rifle, it'll blow through my armor and totally kill me. I might not even see them coming. It might be because I have a car, it might be because I insulted them, it might be because they hate that I'm wearing these awesome blue leather shoes. The point is, I can only defend myself in hand-to-hand, or hide, and they could be on top of a building or something. This is a terrible state of affairs, and if I ever get into any line of business where I might be shot at, I'm toast.

I.E., for the average dual-natured creature, suddenly being killed by a psychopath isn't particularly MORE likely than me, or you, suddenly being killed by someone with a gun. For a shadowrunner, it's a serious problem, because they can't get the equivalent of their own gun unless they're magicians. But I don't think there are astral entities running around killing dual-natured sapients with any frequency, and those that do no doubt get serious corporate and private attention.

I think, since astral sight is a psychic sense, astral combat should be a mind battle as well and therefore not depend on range.

in addition I'm not totally happy with astral combat + Will vs Astral combat + Int and the Cha/2 DV as it makes combat lasting for hours for two spirits of even force. but that's offtopic

This didn't even occured to me.
So, now, dual-natured creatures only need to worry about spirits of men that have some LoS mana-based combat spell and projecting Magicians. It's not like either of them can be found in every corner...

Even if Astral combat were ranged, it wouldn't matter.
That same F10 manabolt will kill you regardless of your ability to desperately swipe back and (potentially) do cha/2 damage.

Yeah, the easiest "fix" for this is to allow dual-natured critters to SHUT OFF THE POWER.



-k

Or what about the reverse? Simply reduce all spell ranges in the Astral to Touch. That Stunbolt? Now a Touch spell.

And suddenly Astral Combat is useful.

I like this idea too.

If I were to think that the state of being dual-natured had a problem and required a fix, I would opt for the fix that allows a dual-natured being to shut off the power when it wanted to.

This fix is far less intrusive to the game mechanics and the underlying concepts of Shadowrun than changing the fundamental nature of magic by limiting it on the astral. The astral plane is the 'home base' of magic and is the least likely place for there to be limits on it.

Fixing one mistake by making another one doesn't seem productive to me. Though such behaviour does have a long tradition in this game, doesn't it?

I like this idea for the Dual-Natured.

Technomancers can 'shut off' their connection to the Matrix, so why could a Dual-Natured whatever not be able to 'shut off' its connection to the astral? Just impose similar issues to the Dual-Natured that 'goes silent' that the TM will go through.

Sounds good.