Hi there,

A question came up in my last session where our mage was riding on the back of a motorcycle. He wanted to cast Invis on himself and wanted to know if it included the bike or the driver of the bike. The spells says (copied from 20th An. Corebook):

This spell makes the subject more difficult to detect by normal visual
senses (including low-light, thermographic, and other senses that rely
on the visual spectrum). The subject is completely tangible and detectable
by the other senses (hearing, smell, touch, etc.). Her aura is still
visible to astral perception.

The subject? What is that? I assumed the intention is a single casting is for a single person but maybe not....What about objects?

in case of a car, the passengers would be invisible, too. but to make the car invisible in the first place you need to beat the ORT and only the net hits are accounted for your invis. that's very hard. you need like OR(car)+OR(camera) hits to drive around invisible. that's at least 8 or 9.

difficult decision for your bike case so

"Subject" simply refers to "the thing you're making invisible". It's one 'whole object' as adjudicated by the GM - though this runs into problems with say, a building, if your GM says 'the whole building is an object'. As Makki says, since a car is a whole object and includes the things inside of it, passengers would be invisible. Sadly, a motorcycle with two people on it probably wouldn't, because it doesn't conceptually 'contain' the people; they are on it, not in it. But at the end of the day, if motorcycle+driver+passenger seems like one 'unit' to you, it could. It seems open enough to interpretation.

Why would you need to beat the cumulative of the car and the camera?

You wouldn't...

I think the idea was that the hits meet the car's Object Resistance Threshold (to turn it invisible) and after that, the net hits remaining reach a camera's Object Resistance Threshold (for it to not see the invisible car).

But you would need Improved Invisibility to defeat a camera sensor anyway.

Do the rules even say that you need to beet the OR of the object you try to make invisible?

Not according to the last paragraph on SR4a 208.

I expect a caster could treat two humans and a motorcycle as one contiguous zone to be made invisible (and a smaller volume than a car, at that) as far as observers and visual sensors are concerned. The bike would still make a significant noise (which could partially be masked in heavy traffic). If it's Grid-linked it would still be trivial to track and if it isn't, then other vehicles are going to be changing lanes into it and driving through its space all the time (they do this often these days, even when motorcycles aren't invisible).

A more elegant solution would be to use Trid Phantasm to create a multisense illusion of an empty, quiet bit of road wherever the motorcycle drives, or perhaps a small car with a different engine sound, etc.

The purpose of the spell was to hide from pursuit after a particularly embarrassing turn of events in which the bikes owner had to pull out some fantastic Evel Kneivel moves and the rider in back (the Mage) got into a fistfight and got his ass handed to him.

The team's hacker was plugged into the City's traffic monitoring system and commanding the cameras not to feed and record the images of the bike as it drove from A to B.

So maybe he should have cast Improved Invis to work on the camera...I must have overlooked that but with the hacker's efforts they did a fairly decent job of keeping their movements hidden.

Invisibility requires a single subject, not area of effect. That means one thing - motorcycle, driver OR caster. If turning the one invisible also conceals the other naturally (as in the case of a car or a tarp everyone is hiding under), then everyone is covered. Most bikes don't do that, so...

either redesign invisibility to be area effect, or use trid phantasm, as was suggested.

OR is simply "do you have enough net hits?" it doesn't use them up. Otherwise your Fireball spell would need to defeat a combined OR of all 6 drones you're hitting.

The problem with using Tri-D Phantasm to conceal the motorbike in this way is that, being an area-effect spell rather than cast on a target, the motorcycle would have a nasty tendancy to roar off out of said area of effect.....

Granted, the spellcaster can continually move that area with actions but it is going to be a pain in the behind to get the timing right

OK, do we want to discuss improved invisibility again?
Or what happens to stuff that was in the car when the car was made invisible and then taken out?
Or to stuff that was not in the car when it was made invisible and put into the car?

The same thing that happens to your clothes after you make youself invisible and take them off, or the hat you put on your head after you make yourself invisible.

(Personally, I say once it's out of the spell, it's out of the spell. If you pick it up, it's back in.)

I guess also on this subject... How does invis work in combat? There is very little in the book about it and it isn't covered in the FAQ.

All the book really says is that if you are invis they get a -6 dice pool modifier to attack you and they use Skill + Int instead of Skill + Agi.

So if I am standing there 20 meters away they can just turn and shoot me anyhow? Or for Melee?

On the defense side, they don't get any penalties for being attacked by an invis attacker?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this!

Not as I play it. To know in which rough direction to turn the victim has to have some kind of clue. The sound of a gunshot or shuffling feet, whatever.

If they're supprised, which they genrally are, they will not be allowed to roll defense at all.

I think you'd apply the visibility modifier to any Rea(+Dodge) rolls as well?

Why? :/ I mean, I get the idea, but in the mechanic, it's the same as being shot by snipers, right?

I don't disagree. If you check my post you will see I was only clarifying what I thought someone else's view/houserule was.

Indeed, sustained area spells can have their area of effect moved by the caster. Relative to what frame of reference, though? As this argument points out, there are horrible disparities in this area, since real space has no absolute co-ordinates (at least, that we have access to).

If one were to insist a spell's area of effect is at one absolute location and the caster can move it from there, the motion of the galaxy, Earth's orbit and rotation will mean that the area of effect is literally miles away before the mage gets his next action.

Another approach is to suggest the area of effect co-ordinates are relative to the Earth. In such a case, a mage using TriD Phantasm / Entertainment in an aeroplane cabin will find the illusion effect lagging significantly behind the plane.

One could say the area of effect is positioned relative to the caster or some other arbitrary object within the area of effect. This is much neater. It certainly isn't RAW, however. As such, one could cast TriD Phantasm using the motorbike as the frame of reference. Wherever that motorcycle goes, the illusion goes automatically. If the characters abandon the bike and hoof it on foot while wanting to stay under the cover of the illusion, then the caster needs to move the area of effect away from the bike by spending actions.