So as a mage I can summon a watcher. It has two die for its primary skill watching. Everytime it makes a watching roll it has about a 1/3 chance of seeing something blindingly obvious, and about a 1/3 chance of critically glitching... pretty grim odds.

How do I make them actually useful?

If I make them too useful, then they stop shadowrunning being possible. If they are as rubbish (I am being polite) as they are now, then they are useless and they might as well not be in the game.

What do you do in your games. I am particularly interested if anyone using RAW has found a way to make them useful.

I vote for 'leave out of the game'. Mages get enough love.

Watchers in 4thed really don't live up to their name. If you use shrinking dice pool for extended test watcher's won't find or spot anything unless it's close and obvious. What they can do is act as a distraction or basic early warning system for obvious threats. Also I've seen them used as two way astral communications. Watcher maintains mental link with caster and is ordered to stay with non astral team members to relay communications.

As mover points out watchers do have their uses, their just not as game changing as the other stuff in the mages arsenal, which works fine for me as their essentially free.

Honestly, mobile communicators is *pretty* handy, and it saves you from using a real spirit. So let's just call them Talker spirits instead.

Watchers are what they are, want something better then summon a real spirit.

You can always aspect them to make them more useful in their "Watching" role... Rules for such in Street Magic.

"If this door opens, alert me at once."
"If this thing moves, alert me at once."
"Follow this man. If you lose him, alert me at once. If he begins bleeding, alert me at once."

Watchers are good at watching and letting you know if something obvious happens. They are a handy way of spreading out your attention.

I myself hybridyzed the ruled from 3rd edition: Watchers are summoned at force of half your magic. - at no extra costs for summoning... drain still is just hours.

They also get a +2 dice pool bonus for their only power as well as perception throws. (So a nice, good force 3 watcher, even in 2 point-Background count still can see something - 6 dice left)

That helps a LOT. The whole "Yay, we are force 1"- totally doesn't work. There are bubbles of background count everywhere... they would pop too easily.

Yeah, that pretty much hits the nail on the head. Here's a couple of facts:

1) The watcher doesn't need to roll to spot something blindingly obvious - if something IS obvious, there's no roll. If something is poorly hidden, then yes, it's crappy at noticing. But a watcher doesn't need to roll to notice people entering a room, or a spell being cast if it's Force 6 (TN to assess is 6 minus Force, after all), or whatever. Just as you wouldn't make a player roll to notice blindingly obvious things, so it goes for watchers.
2) The watcher also doesn't need to roll dice to do things like relay communications. "Go tell <person> we're being attacked" is not a rolling sort of situation. They're also good for things like, "Go to place X. Tell me if it's warded."
3) You can always utilize the teamwork test rules to let a pack of watchers be more effective than a single one.
4) You can extend watchers lifespans to Hits in days, rather than Hits in hours.

HOUSE RULE:

At our table we simply have watchers summoned with the summoner's mental stats. This makes them useful without making them over powered.

-D

Think of Watchers as the casual everyday magic party trick. They are not powerful, but useful.

A Mage can have at least 4 Watchers at all times that just hang out with the team mates and relay communication. Useful, hard to eavesdrop. Great for surveillance.

Don't forget situational bonus. +3 for actively looking.

A watcher is a freebie, it should be useful, but it's not meant to be as Uber as summoning a Spirit.

By itself a Watcher is useless. Against skilled opponents they are almost useless. With a creative and skilled Mage who understands their limitatinos they can become useful tools to extend the reach and knowledge of the Mage.

Watcher spirit at parties. Ok keep an eye on this drink whenever I sit it down and remind me it's mine.

One trick I figured out as part of the backstory with Pup The Dog Shaman was that he was a spotter for a Urban Sniper who taught him shooting.

He'd use a Watcher Spirit to find out when a target stopped moving (Like he was sitting down to watch the Combat Biker game), and show up on the other side of the wall right where the fellow's centre of mass is. He'd then use his "Wreck Wall" spell to put a hole in the external wall large enough for a bullet. Once the hole was there, his partner took one shot, and it was Miller time.

Watchers are also great for a low-end magical radio system for a group. Just make one Watcher per person, and have them communicate with each other at the speed of spirits. No radio chatter at all to be picked up electronically, perfect for no/low-magic areas.

Finally, they make GREAT distractions.

If your magician is of a possession tradition, then a watcher can possess dead bodies. It'll probably only be able to do so if you prepare the body as a vessel to give the watcher bonus dice on its possession attempt. So it isn't a way to drop a guard and spontaneously reanimate him on your side now. But it can be useful if you come across a particular body you appreciate and would enjoy keeping around, for the tasks it could feasibly perform for your benefit. Vessel preparation retards degeneration. In SR4 where you can't get a dikoted ally spirit, this is a mage's friend with benefits that won't talk back.

Wow. That's a level of squick that I had not previously considered.

Watchers are astral, any spellcasting is obvious. Watchers have a ton of use and utility and don't need to be buffed. If I want a better watcher, I'll summon an air spirit.

The best use if watcher spirits I've seen suggested in a game was in jest.

"Summon a bunch of watcher spirits, and then order them all at the enemy mage in chorus!"
"Won't he get rid of them fairly quickly, though?"
"Yeah... exactly as fast as I can summon them."
"That's not a chorus, that's a round. And a bad one at that, since they're rating 1."
"That's kind of the point."

It hasn't actually been used yet, sadly. The party ended up doing something else against the enemy team.

I do a lot of "alert me if someone comes through this point" I don't care how bad their perception, and how good your stealth, you can't follow us through a narrow sewer pipe without the watcher seeing you.

If you need more dice for the watchers perception, you can simply summon a huge mob of them. NPC groups roll ("highest dicepool of a single member" + "number of teammates") dice for a perception test. If you have 6 watchers, that are 8 dice. If the watchers stay only one hour, they don't cause drain anyway.

That's incorrect. A watcher still needs to make an astral perception roll to spot a stealthed character walking past an arbitrary spot, unless the arbitrary spot has something that the stealthed character must manipulate in order to pass. Infiltrate does work against unseen, astral observers.

That's why you put the watcher to watch a door; "if this door opens, warn me".

Sometimes as a GM you have to make arbitrary decisions regarding stealth and circumstance. Just because you you have an awesome success on your stealthy check and the opposing player doesn't even have enough dice to match you. If your walking down a narrow well lit hallway with the opposing player two feet away you really need to bring common sense to bear. My players have argued this with me in several different games but I stand firm in some situations.

Stealth isn't invisibility. It's the art of remaining unnoticed when that is possible. If there's an opportunity to sneak past the watcher unseen (due to cover, ruthenium polymer clothing, or invisibility spell), the ninja would get a check. That's why you place watchers in such as way as to give no opportunity; hence watching the door that must be opened to pass through it.

Agreed, unless you have concealment, invisibility and/or ruthenium + sound dampening. That's when you use the "toss a pebble around the corner" trick to distract the guard. If he doesn't buy it...you may be screwed. Even with the exceptions above, I'd still give bonus dice for the circumstance. I'm AFB, but it'd probably end up:

Skill + Int +3 (Actively watching) +6 (Dangerously close proximity) +3 (Enhanced senses) -0 (light penalty) -4 (Ruthenium)

If we assume skilled guards, say skill 4 and Int 3, that would end up with 15d to discover the Infiltrator. The infiltrator could still have more dice, but it's not exactly easy. A watcher, to bring us back on topic, would be slightly worse:

Skill 1 + Int 1 +3 (Actively watching) +6 (Dangerously close proximity) +2 (Astrally Perceiving) -0 (light penalty) -0 (Ruthenium, doesn't apply to Assensing) = 13d to perceive an infiltrator within 2 feet of it with no good cover.

"Look for Angry or Scared, and tell me." Even if you're the stealthiest Mo'Fo around, you still have emotions. That drips into the Astral Plane.

Of course, if you have some Ice Cold bugger like my Accountant From Hell, then some problems might occur.

not helping but i am reminded of the attempt to use a watcher as translator

*Bunch of babbling in unknown language* "What did he say?" *Watcher babbles back in exactly the same language, in the same tone*

This is it exactly. I don't care how many dice you have for infiltration. If you want to walk in front of someone in plain sight without being seen thats an invisibility spell. Stealth lets you sneak around, time the pattern in the guards patrol to know when to dash, recognize where the holes in the security sensor coverage are, etc. But you can't just open a door that someone is staring at and walk through "unnoticed" no matter how stealthy you are.

That's why you flip from Ice Cold to Pink Mohawk. Why bother opening the door when a shape charge of Bangalores works so much better.

Wow what a lot of answers in a short time. As the OP I think its fair to give a summary of the answers, and how I feel about them:

"Use them as Talkers: Go send a message to this person"
How does the watcher find the person? The only possible answer is "you will find him at <address> ", astral tracking or the search power (which Watchers don't have) . So astral tracking requires assenssing and 1 hour. Going to the address requires at least one hit on area knowledge (which I would be happy to assume the watcher has: at level 1). So 1 time in three we have the critical glitch, and thats always funny with messages. And whats the chance that the watcher will hit a background count of 1 on route and be disrupted?

"Watch this door opening"
Sorry thats what infiltration skill is all about. You just have trick / conceal / distract the watcher. Infiltration is not invisibility it's knowing how to get into place, and the idea that a thing with attribute + skill = 2 can stop a 20 die infiltrator I find...strange. I also think that the watchers will be reporting a lot of false positives (just make a roll to see if its spotted anything in the last hour...oops a critical glitch)

"You can always aspect them to make them more useful in their "Watching" role"
I am away from books at the moment, I shall go and look into this. I hadn't heard of aspecting them before.

"Mages are already overpowered, don't give them more"
Was also an interesting argument. You either agree with it or not, but basically its saying get rid of watchers.

"Use them in packs"
Good idea, I need to think how to do it. Assist other bonus's are interesting.

While thinking about it, I realised that I had forgotten to include the actively looking bonus in my calculation. This increases the number of die the watcher rolls from 2 to 5. At 5 die they no longer are totally and utterly rubbish.

My feelings so far, although I hope the conversation continues, is that they are so rubbish they are better removed from the game. I don't like as a GM the effort of explaining to a player that his cunning plan involving watchers will almost certainly go wrong because the watcher is rubbish and will probably critically glitch. I don't want the hassle as a player of summoning one just to watch failure after failure, and have the watcher screw up my plans with its critical failures.

Its off topic, but I only half agree.

The player needs to come up with a way to influence the guard to move, be distracted...etc. And that's one of the main uses of the infiltration skill. Watcher or not, someone with a lot of infiltration skill should be able to sort it out. Of course you might not know that the watcher exists...which makes it more interesting. But don't forget that the watcher is so rubbish that it will be reporting a lot of false positives "the door moved master", "not again you fool...I'm eating dinner and its the 5th false alarm tonight"

how often do they glitch with their 7 dice?

2 basics, +3 activly looking, +2 obvios Object.

And if you let them sit there for Hours, they just use the rule to buy success.. 1 is always there, so the Watcher recognize the Door is opened, he may not see the reason because the guys is stealthy, but the Door aint got a stealth roll. No false-alarm also.

Search is one of the main uses of watchers!

Unless your infiltrator is also able to perceive astral, he probably doesn't know the watcher exists. Infiltration skill might let you find an air duct to crawl through to get around the room, it might let you realize that room is a choke point and a likely spot for magical security and you should go another way. But if the only way is to open door A, walk through room, and open door B to get out, you are hosed. It doesn't matter how stealthy or tricky you are light still bouces off your hide and you still have a signature in astral space. Watchers might not be the brightest things, but they don't blink, they don't text message their girlfriends, the don't go to the bathroom, take coffee breaks, or spend their shift watching AR porn on their comlinks. You can't spoof a phone call to them and they don't care if you tossed a pebble around the corner, because thier instructions said to watch the door, not listen for pebbles. In some ways they are easier to handle than metahuman guards because they won't go investigate things outside of their orders. In fact, if the instructions said to watch the door they probably don't care if you cut a hole in the wall with a monfiliment chainsaw or make more noise than a heard of elephants crawling in the unility space above the ceiling tiles. But if they have been told to watch a door then your only real choice is to have the mage banish it or dont use the bloody door.

Not sure about aspect, but there is a bit about attuning them to a specific astral shadow or aura in digital grimoire (a pdf only release, and therefor often overlooked).

This then makes it "easier" for them to find and keep tabs on the subject. One can also use material links and similar, with the accompanying modifiers.

Yep, it is Attuning, not aspecting... I mistakenly referenced the Wrong Term, and Wrong Book (what happens when you do not have access to your boks)... Thanks Hobgoblin...

Awesome. I was AFB so I didn't realise that. Of course they get 2 die to search...and critically glitch 1/3

You cannot have the mage banish it: thats the same as letting the watcher do its thing.

I can see that we don't agree on what the infiltration skill does. You think its about moving silently, and sneaking. I think its about being able to break into places without being observed and being able to distract observers. It doesn't matter that much that we don't agree: its the GMs opinion that counts.

The door example isn't really real anyway. Doors are opened and closed often: thats the nature of doors. I guess very occasionally that might be useful but its an extremely small use. So we've worked out that they are not good for finding people and talking to. They are mostly rubbish at spotting people. The are disrupted at the slightest background count. Concealment just stops them dead in their tracks...etc

I guess we have also worked out that they can watch a door and see if it opens... I have to admit that I am not very excited about that.

I think I stand by the "they are so rubbish we might as well get rid of them from the game" but YMMV

You cannot have the mage banish it: thats the same as letting the watcher do its thing.

I can see that we don't agree on what the infiltration skill does. You think its about moving silently, and sneaking. I think its about being able to break into places without being observed and being able to distract observers. It doesn't matter that much that we don't agree: its the GMs opinion that counts.

The door example isn't really real anyway. Doors are opened and closed often: thats the nature of doors. I guess very occasionally that might be useful but its an extremely small use. So we've worked out that they are not good for finding people and talking to. They are mostly rubbish at spotting people. The are disrupted at the slightest background count. Concealment just stops them dead in their tracks...etc

I guess we have also worked out that they can watch a door and see if it opens... I have to admit that I am not very excited about that.

I think I stand by the "they are so rubbish we might as well get rid of them from the game" but YMMV

The Secret Handshake detection spell from Spy Games (pg161) is great for watchers. In fact, the shadowtalk makes direct mention of this making another use for watchers.

I know the number of hits on a Summoning for Watchers determines how long it sticks around in hours, but does it also determine the number of tasks it has like a regular spirit?
In addition to that, does binging a Watcher simply add to the hours it sticks around or does it keep it indefinitely until it's tasks are done?

There are lots of ways infiltration can get you around the watcher. The above mentioned air vent, finding another route through the complex by studying the floor plans, tricking the guards into running through the door for you to get the watcher to go report back the the mage, probably other things as well. That all falls under the "being tricky" part of infiltration, rather than the "being stealthy" part of infiltration. But if the watcher is watching the door, and you walk through the door, no amount of sneaky-tricky stuff will save you. You don't need to roll perception to see someone standing in plain sight in front of you. They are right bloody there. Infiltration can do alot of things but it can't make you invisible to someone who is looking directly at you when you have no cover. Thats like asking somone to make a perception check to find their cup of soycaf on the table in front of them. Unless its really dark, or you are really drunk, I am pretty sure that is an automatic success.

And when did we work out that watchers are not good at finding people? The do in fact have the search power, as was pointed out earlier in the thread. An air elemental would probably be better at it, but they have more drain to resist to. You get what you pay for.

If there is a consistently well-lit hallway 30 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 3 meters tall, there is no way someone is going to be able to roll infiltration alone to traverse from the entrance on one end of the hallway to the other, and have the guard at that end not see them. Similarly, you cannot use *only* infiltration to slip through a monitored decontamination room (such as this one: http://img.directindustry.com/images_di/ph...uice-470712.jpg ) while a guard watches, because there is no place to hide - you will be apparent to the guard immediately upon entry. Infiltration is a powerful, requisite skill, but it cannot work miracles. In the same vein, you cannot use Con alone to convince someone to kill themselves, Pilot Aircraft to land if your plane has lost both its wings, Navigation if you have no means of setting reference points, or Tracking if your target has left (literally) no trace.

Situations where Infiltration or other skills automatically fail are rare, and should be, because they decrease player agency. But they exist. Sometimes, skills simply cannot be applied.

I had a mystic adept that used watchers like remote control kids toys.

Using the Passenger spell(from digital grimoire, which is like borrow sense but for all senses at a higher drain) on the spirit meant the adept could keep an eye on the spirit, see what it was doing in real time and, more importantly, use their own Perception skill.

Since watcher spirits Services are measured in Hours, not Tasks, the adept could update the watchers orders whenever it needed to do something different.

So, basically, a remote control spirit car.

I wonder which senses exactly you're borrowing from a watcher. I assume that, like all spirits, they basically just use native astral perception for everything.

Borrow sense specifically mentions being able to borrow astral sight(but because its one sense only, you get either sight or astral sight), which makes it a clever way to get the ability to see the astral as an adept without the Power for it.

Its either in street magic or the RC, but spirits do possess regular senses to use their Perception skill with. (someone in our party plays a free spirit, its come up a few times)


Using Passenger, you get all of that at once. Drain code could be better, though.

"OK, go look and see if there's someone sleeping in the passenger's seat of the car following us, then report back. ... There is? Look again, and see if he has a plug like this," *Holds up the Deckers/Hackers Datajack* "Plugged into his skull. ... He does? Go back and pull it out."

*Car chasing us has the driver suffer Dumpshock and falls out of control before the Pilot Program kicks in*

Let me know if you find that page ref.

I like it, but there's a hitch: Watchers don't have Materialization, only Manifestation.