Some of the magical diseases in Augmentation have very targeted effects. For example, Mana-Active Aura Deficiency Syndrome would be pretty scary for an awakened, but only causes nausea for mundanes.
This sort of disease could be weaponized by applying it to a high body character just before a meeting with an awakened target, or simply infecting someone close to the awakened.
On the other hand, I on't see any mechanics for acquiring diseases in Augmentation, except perhaps searching out an infected individual. I'm leaving to go kayaking soon, so I'd prefer to discuss this on dumpshock rather than looking through all the books.

Ask your GM.

Makes a good point. This is something I'd expect to see in War or Arsenal, cos let's face it, we're just the sort of slots who have trouble remembering the Geneva Convention et al above a certain pay grade.

May I point out that this method can be used to burn out weak awakened characters, or strong ones if you mix it with a few other penalties?

Did Shadowrun have... Oh, I keep forgetting this is based in a future version of our universe.

While i wouldn't say you could just go out to your gunrunner or fixer and "buy" an disease, you could easily find someone having it and taking a culture and if you have a biomed shop/facility growing that to usable amounts.

Or break into some lab and steal one / bribe some dudes to sell it to you. But i guess something really dangerous or exotic will be too expensive to use as a "poison". People are a bit anal about letting infectious diseases loose into the population... don't know why *g*.

Geneva convention was second world war I think, and there was also some other thing that the Corporate Court enforced which says "no biochem warfare even if you're extraterritorial". I think there was something about weaponised nanotech, too.

But a self replicating poison is something else entirely.

Depends on the vector. But consider, that you are a walkin biohazard.

But don't let that stop you being a shadowrunner. Just look at all the ghoul and other Infected runners.

Well, I guess a lot of people here said: "Ah ghoul and vampire is playing in my group? Yeah, money for their heads!"

God, longbowrocks. MADS is the AIDS/Legacy Virus of SR. You are a bad person.

I thought HMHVV was that? If you want to have a disease-in-a-can, you could always be Infected and shoot your blood/DMSO with an Ares Squirt.

No, HMHVV is the Resident Evil virus. Legacy is the one that infects mutants in X-Men, right?

This Legacy is something separate from the X-Factor that gives them their powers? Goddesses, I need to start reading some COMICS.

I got this from the 1990's cartoon. I think it just kills mutants. It definitely doesn't give them their powers. Anyway, the point is that MADS is a bad disease that affects an important subset of the world. Using it as a crude weapon is unspeakable… and probably already in progress at all the big corps!

Somehow I see that exchange thusly.

"You want me to drop a chemical weapon in the middle of the Renraku company picnic for ten grand?"

"Yup."

"Dude...do you have any idea how fucked up that is? That's bringing down some serious legal heat, not to mention Renraku itself! GOVERNMENTS are going to care about this!"

"Twenty thousand."

"Well...look, there will be families there, wives, kids....not everyone there will be....bad...necessarily."

"Thirty thousand."

"...S-s-security...is...really tight....and the weapon..isnt really....discrete...."

"Fifty thousand."

"So did you want the weapon dropped at the buffet or the wet bar?"

Yes. But only because shadowrunners are not necessarily sane or smart. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying longbowrocks needs to relax and stop obsessing about killing mages.

It only lasts three days. I doubt I would have any leftover power to resist after that.

If I don't obsess about killing mages, who will?
Also, how is anyone going to detect it before symptoms set in (Which I imagine happens at my first resistance test)?

I only play SR2/3, so take this with a grain of salt ...



Definitely. Awesome idea. Just watch your trail - it's about as distinct a weapon as you can use, and it's not the sort of thing governments and corps take well to.



I imagine finding someone infected would be difficult. Unless it's super-common, your best bet would be a quarantine ward or a medical center. Less suspicious, track down a lab which does testing with it. Even less suspicious, if this disease also affects animals, it may be in a lab which tests animal diseases (labs testing animal diseases are almost never held to the same standards as ones testing human diseases, even when it's the same disease. By virtue of saying 'this is anthrax for making inoculations for cattle', your security budget has just shrunk five times.)

But do talk with your GM. He's going to be on his own with this one, it sounds like, so he may not want to go there.

MADS can only be transferred when both the carrier and the victim are Dual-Natured, so you'd at least have to get a drug like Tempo to induce astral perception if you want to go through with your plan.

To make things even more complicated, the disease also leaves a taint on your aura that can be recognized by an Assensing (1) test.
Given that your victim has to be astrally perceiving during infection, it's a pretty serious restriction that the disease is as easily recognizable on the astral as that.

It seems to suggest that, but the previous grade of disease (non mana-active) doesn't require that, so it could just as easily be up in the air.

Yes, and then they have the disease after that test. Good job mage.

No he doesn't. It also transfers on contact.

I'd think this would vary with how far was the mage when doing his assensing - If says hee gets a look from somethng like ten meters away and decides he'd best stay clear from someone with a bizarre aura, I doubt the bacteria/viruses/whatever would rabidly jump at him through that distance.

It's mana active. This is the part where mages get what's been coming to them for all that infinite range BS. Now they can get diseases at infinite range too!
Ok, technically only as far as they can assense someone from, but that's still a good ways away.
Another way to look at it is as a balancing feature for the fact that assensing can tell everything about you from how you're feeling to whether you're a technomancer. You scored 5 hits? Congratulations! You know I'm a technomancer with 4.985 essence. You also know that I had a disease, and just shared it with you.

I would never put a range limit for transmission, but it's your call.

What the fuck are you talking about:

So you have to be dual natured to get it in the first place. And to give it on. So your plan is not working at all. (Only if you somehow stay dual natured with drugs)
It is working poorly with Aura Deficiency Syndrome. (You still need contact.)
It does not JUMP. If magical diseases would jump through the astral everyone would be a ghule right now.

Somehow reminds me of Harry Potter.
I could wipe out my Enemy and his family with spells which could backfire if a mother tries to protect her child and cost me all of my power or I just steal a unregistered weapon and blow out the brain and shoot five more times to be perfectly sure. (This methode was approved by: Your friendly Terminator)

He also knows who infected him with MADS and now you have a pissed-off, probably obscenely rich mage coming after you for revenge.
Or, in the case that he's a law-abiding citizen, he calls Lone Star's Department of Paranormal Investigations and reports you as a manahazard that has to be contained.
You know, the corps really love it when someone walks around and burns out their precious magical investments.
Not to mention that you can forget including mages in your own team.

If you want to kill mages, your best bet is still to simply become a drone rigger.
"Sorry, you can't mindcontrol my drones. Your standard stunbolt response is useless, too. Enjoy sucking massive drain from elemental combat spells and physical illusions while i just use the 4 IP i got practically for free to shoot your barely cybered Body 3-4 ass full of APDS from multiple directions."

If you absolutely want to play a streetsam and still be the magekiller, just do what everyone else does and play a fomori with Astral Hazing. If you want to take it up a notch into batshit crazy territory (not that you have to, you already have good chances of beating every mage built with the same amount of BP), make him a fomoraig as well, that's a relatively cheap way to learn counterspelling and it isn't even affected by your self-generated BGC.
Ok, you're now an acid-sweating, swamp-dwelling, infected monstrosity with a CHA maximum of 2, but you can literally eat mages for breakfast.



@Irion : you're right, it doesn't jump either. "Spreads through direct contact" excludes precisely that. One should note that Assensing works as a vector as well, however. Besides that, it's Contact only. So no, there are no diseases jumping around freely on the astral.
Staying astrally active through drugs isn't that hard to pull off, though. Not that developing a Tempo habit wouldn't turn out to be the worst nightmare of anyone lethally afraid of mages, but that's the drawback of contrived plans to kill mages with magic even though you're mundane.

You really should read the rules a bit more Longbowrocks... The Disease transfers through CONTACT (as you, yourself, mentioned in a previous post), not through being Assensed. You MUST TOUCH the target, there is no other way to transfer that disease. And that target must either be Dual Natured, or Assensing, a the time of contact.

If you are changing it to Nigh-Infinite transmisssion ranges, it is a house rule and you should state it as such. The rules are pretty explicit on this one, as Irion has already pointed out.

Yeah, based on the description, we have to assume that "Vector: Contact, Assensing" means both at once, not one or the other. Even magical viruses are still *viruses*, and you can't get one without physical contact. That's why MADS only affects *Dual-Natured*; a projecting mage can't get it, no matter what he assenses (*sees*) or touches. You can't get it just through seeing.

Keep going out with Joytoys all the time and you'll get HSV-5 in no time flat!

I'll give you guys the "dual natured only" since I was just trying to make my method easier by saying that MADS is a development of ADS, and thus wouldn't reduce its target audience to only dual natured being (I was effectively claiming it was errata, and so I apologize).

However, the commas after vectors are OR operators, not AND. That's why you get things like these:

• Gamma-Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis strain gamma)
  Vector: Contact, Inhalation, Ingestion
• Croisade (Visceral Ipsvorosis)
  Vector: Inhalation

You can't contact, inhale, and ingest something at the same time.
Also, if you count inhalation as contact for the Gamma Anthrax, then you can't have inhalation without contact, so the vector for Croisade should be: Contact, Inhalation.

If you don't believe this logic, take a look for yourself. The rules would mention if vectors stacked, since that would be an important mechanic to keep track of. The rules don't outline how to manage multiple vectors, because each vector is managed on its own.

The vector is the method by which the disease infects the
host. Diseases spread by contact must touch the target’s skin. A
chemical seal (see p. 317, SR4) offers complete protection unless
breached. Diseases spread by ingestion may be in food or liquid
consumed by the victim. Diseases spread by inhalation may be
transmitted to the victim via his breathing apparatus; a character
wearing a gas mask, chemical seal, or using an activated cyberware
internal air tank (p. 334, SR4) is immune to its effects. Diseases
spread by injection must be injected into the target’s bloodstream
or alternately through an open wound.

Why are you combinig MADS and ADS?
MADS is the dual natured one.
ADS only spreads through contact.

Read the rules man.

@longbowrocks
Yeah no I get it. But the vectors, symptoms are just a first note, the text is regulating the disease.
And here the text says:

So the vector is actually false it would have to be contact(dual natured).
But this is not important, since the text is giving a perfect explaination how it is meant to be.
(As a matter of fact the disease assumes that vampirers are dual natured.)

Sounds right. Ok.
Personally, I think I'll stick with crunch though, since assensing bugs me almost as much as ritual casting.

Why does Assensing bother you? Assensing is great for targeting magic, but sucks for everything else, as you would be at a -2 (due to assensing) for any non-magical task involved. I am just curious as to your reasons.

If yo ucan catch the disease by merely assensing a carrier, what would happen if the assensing is done trhough a polarized ward ? Logically, the ward should stop block the transmission.

Note : the polarized ward is a rather clear proof that assensing isn't equivalent to an astral contact but more akin to sight. Which makes the transmission by assensing a rather weird proposition. Bacteria and viruses aren't exactly known for their mobility, they rely on their host or some medium to carry them.

No problem.
I'm just a magic-hater in general because when it trips me up, it generally does it with an opposed test that's wildly in the magician's favor, or no opposed test at all. Needless to say, this is difficult to deal with. I'll most likely stop hating magic once I figure out a successful all-around counter to spellcasters (I'm thinking some sort of hidden drone puppeteer). Once I've done that, I'll start a wild campaign against the character I created to beat mages. This cycle will probably continue for a while.

Assensing is one of those things that doesn't offer an opposed test to mundanes. 2 hits will grant the "assenser" the ability to recognize the target's aura if they have seen it before (possibly requiring a memory test, but still no rolls on the target's part), regardless of physical changes or disguise. 5 hits will tell you whether the target is a technomancer, which castrates one of the happy advantages of being a technomancer: anonymity. 5 hits also grants knowledge of the presence and location of implants, geneware, and nanotech, again with no opposed test.

Thanks for asking though. I now realize that a lot of my emotions about assensing were born from what I thought it could do when I started playing this game. On review, it's still a bothersome ability, but it doesn't give you the power to see through walls, or negate optical camo any more than ultrasound does.

Other spellcasters.

Cheating! I meant by mundane means.
I'm actually still debating with myself whether I mean 'mundane' or 'non-awakened' by that.

Why does the counter have to be nonmagical? The best way to keep from getting hacked is to have a hacker protect your stuff. The best way to keep from getting shot is to have a street samurai murder everyone in range. The best way to keep from getting screwed in a deal is to have an expert negotiator to do your talking for you. The best way to keep from being affected by magic is to have a magician protecting you with magic.

Quoted for Truth... Magic defeats Magic. Always has in Shadowrun. There are a few mundane ways to try and stack in the mundane's favor, but ultimately, a magician is the best solution.

Yeah. Magic is supposed to be unfair. There are some ways to tone it down (including some house rules), but you shouldn't alter the basic specialness of it.

In my opnion shadworun's magic is designed so that resistances tests are reasonably balanced when there's some counterspelling on. It turns what would be a 'magician's stat+skill vs target's stat' into a 'stat+skill vs stat+skill' contest.

Rurning it into a 'mage's stat+skill vs target's stat+ skill' would shift the balance in the defense's favor making it very hard for a mage to affect a protected target - beating a 'target's stat+skill+counterpselling' would be hard.

This balance seems quite fair for me : pitting an armed, armored and chromed guy vs an unchromed and unarmored one would quickly end with a dead nudist. Which means that an unprepared mage will probably end up as swiss cheese in an impromptu encounter with a sammie. But a prepared mage is likely to ruin the sammie's day. It balances out.

Note : I'm speaking using run-of-the -mill, not specialy optimized characters.

It feels to me like the difference between a mundane and a mage is the difference between Superman, and Martian Manhunter (current rendition).
Superman can do incredible things, but Martian Manhunter gets all that plus telekinesis, shapeshifting, ethereality, and invisibility, which effectively means he could do fine without any of Superman's powers.

As for squishy mages, as outlined above, that's true in many games. However, in Shadowrun mages can wear loads of armor, dump points into body, and even toss a barrage of spells out from a tank/drone with only a fiber-optic cable sticking out the window.

Not a fair comparison, fire negates all of the Manhunter's powers, and is way more common than Radioactive Alien Rainbow Rocks. The Manhunter is more powerful than Superman, but a kid with a match shuts him down hard.

And a rigger can sit on a comfortable couch six miles away and drive a tank around to blow up your magetankdrone, with minimal personal risk.

Not everything has or needs a direct counter that's readily available to everyone.

Lol, you would know. Although apparently the writers haven't been very consistent with the magnitude of his weakness across the years.


I didn't mean for the mage example to be a challenge, but more of a remark on the fact that
A) Mages in Shadowrun don't have inherently lower HP than mundanes (as opposed to DnD and most RPG video games).
B) Mages in Shadowrun can armor up (again, different from DnD and video games).


I've been looking forward to building exactly that character for exactly that purpose for about two weeks now. Just no time to do it. However, I will take the challenge since you got around to it first.
I use this:
Military Vehicles...............Handling Accel Speed Pilot Body Armor Sensor Avail Cost
Aztechnology Cuanmitztli +3.........5/10...50......3.....36.....30.......4.........37F...1,400,000¥

Why are you making me side with the mages? Evil McEvil Man.

Mages in Shadowrun are significantly less powerful than they are in other RPG systems. A sufficiently powerful mage in D&D (not the New Coke version that's in the market now) can kill every man, woman, and child in a sizable village in a single action.



It's not a challenge, it's a counter. A counter for the rigger would be a hacker that traces the rigger back to his commlink and loads a bunch of Black IC onto it.

Everything has its counter in Shadowrun, and most things have more than one. Magic's primary counter happens to be other magic.

Well, and Thor shots. Thor shots counter pretty much anything.

But not from the other side of the universe, and only once per day.
Don't those natural disaster, higher than normal AOE type spells generally take more than 1 standard action to cast?

Some of them take an entire round, yes (though nothing says Sociopathic Mass Murder quite like an Incendiary Cloud). The point still being that it's not a valid comparison.