Well, you still have touch spells. Also, can you cast through eyes of the pack?

Not quite true. Magemanacles do exist. When the mage starts shaping mana it gives them an electric shock that disrupts the casting. It also has some natural earth within so the mage can't freely Astral Project (As everyone knows, the Earth has a astral form, and while it can be pushed through, the mage would take time to do that. Time the guards can use to actively notice the attempt.) I've also heard of practices involving implanting ware into mages who commit heinous crimes to reduce, or eliminate their magical ability.

Would Astral Perception not get around this?

Furthermore, they don't really stop the casting or disrupt it, because there is no way to do that . .
So if the mage can take the shock without too much trouble, he will still be able to cast spells . . .
And just for the sake of argument, if the spell casting is stopped, he usually still can summon something to eat you.
Or to possess himself.

Also, yes, implanting something into the mage to get rid of his magic . . sure . . uhuh . . yeah . . no . . right . .
"he tried to escape, we had to shoot him" < = easier and MUCH cheaper!
And if the mage has no sin, then nobody will complain anyway . .
You are getting assigned a criminal SIN by lonestar.
Lonestar "forgets" to do so and you never existed, so they can not have killed you.

Assuming your GM reads/enacts the fluff, I believe I read somewhere that the only sense that actually creates a magical link is sight (well, astral sight too, but that's an awakened characteristic anyway) even touch doesn't create the link, but is necessary only to the spell. It sounds odd to me, yeah, and I prefer to allow touch to create said link, but that's how I understand it.

I'm fairly sure those only prevent astral projection, not casting of spells. I'll double check though...

And to my knowledge, none of those things prevent summoning.


No, astral perception can't go through solid objects, so would be stopped by the mask. You might be able to see an aura if someone puts their hand against the front of your mask though, but unless they were dual natured, you wouldn't be able to cast a spell since you only have an astral LoS to them, not a physical one.

Edit: Hmm, looks like the magecuffs kind of go back and forth. The fluff seems to indicate projection and perception only, but the rules say that any magic activates them, so they certainly should work on spell casting and even summoning. The mage mask doesn't prevent summoning or astral projection beyond forcing a Willpower + Intuition (4) test. But since it lists no penalty for failure, there isn't much reason a mage couldn't attempt it every IP and eventually succeed.

Touch spells work because you cast them on yourself and you always have a magical connection to yourself.
So cast at yourself, then touch someone to get the spell to go zapity.

No. Physical objects appear as washed out, but discernable objects that don't impede movement, but do block visibility on the astral.



You're right. It would be easier. And unless it's a really upstanding officer, I doubt a SINless, and dangerous, runner would make it to lock up. Unless, of course, said runner was involved, and could be proven (even illegally) to have been involved, in a high profile case. Besides, I didn't necessarily mean Lonestar, or expensive ware (Not that there is much that isn't expensive...). There is also the possibility of the mage going into volunteered lab assistant status, as well.

Oh, and keep in mind that the shock on the cuffs is 12S(e) which is going to put just about anything except a dwarf/troll hybrid on the ground.

And assuming you are in a Mage Mask, who are you exactly touching?
What Eyes of the Pack? If you refer to a Spell, you must still be able to see the "Pack" that you are effecting, if I remember correctly (or at least be able to touch them). And no, you still could not cast through their senses.

Nope, becasue you cannot pierce the MageMask even in the Astral, as it blocks LOS.



Yes, all viable possible angles. Put the Mage in a Ward, though, and it is possible he cannot summon anything viable, and MageManacles would tend to stop such things anyways. Are you not going to put the mage in a warded location, likely underground? The Prison Systems I would design for mages would include such things.

And yes, if the Mage is without SIN, he may find himself quite dead, though that would be a waste of a perfectly good deniable asset that you could coerce into your service.

That son of a slitch that put you in the mask

Yes, I mean the spell which is touch range and so does not require you to see your pack at all. You just need to touch them for the initial casting and then maintain it. But yeah, found the line, no targeting through the sense, ah well.

Ahh, I see, you actually thought you were awake when he masked and manacled you... Hmmm....

I still don't think it's reasonable for a professional criminal mercenary to not keep track of PAN devices unexpectedly removed, but okay. It isn't *impossible*.

Agreed... After all, a Shadowrunner lives by his Equipment. To assume that he just doesn't care is a BIG assumption.

Or more like he maybe forgot something from his list of 500 things that he always apparently does when he got his new commlink after having to ditch his old one.

I mean, if you think about it, there are a ton of things that every shadowrunner likely should do for various reasons, so I don't think it is too unreasonable that some of the things can occasionally be forgotten, or simply be too obscure or irrelevant to be used yet. For example, before the first time a runner loses a piece of equipment unknowingly, they likely wouldn't consider how handy it would be to have a really big popup when something goes missing from the PAN unexpectedly.

And also, as I said, something could have been taken, but still be connected to the PAN thanks to routing happening automatically.

It is possible that it could be in your PAN once it is removed, but the idea is that when putting Skinlink on it, you disabled the wireless transmitter. If it isn't transmitting, it won't be in your PAN. I appreciate that you are trying to help my argument, but that doesn't seem to work to me. How I see things isn't necessarily how other people see them. It is ultimately up to the GM to decide, and the player to react to.

Oh yeah, good point, forgot we were talking about skinlinked devices for a moment. In that case they most likely would drop from the PAN right away.

Just wanted to apologize for earlier. Realized that I cared to much about trying to get people to understand and that's not something under my control.

Really, because I've seen the opposite trend, maybe i go to better clubs.

For what it's worth if my read on skinlink is correct my guestimation is it's somehow modulating your bodies bioelectic to send the necessary signals. If that is the case it should actually work in exactly the opposite way from what's described as we're talking about an electric field that doesn't really have an appreciable power source and is literally too low to measure. Now imagine what happens when that field is exposed to even other casual electric fields in the enviroment, it would be disrupted. Lets not even mind what happens when sucha field would be exposed to a field whose intention o create jamming.

But let's table that for a moment and presume that science has bypassed those hurdles as well as the air, skin, skull, fluid, interface barrier necessary to make trodes work on the same level as a physical connection. My question is once we've gone with that assumption we can start to look at what else could science do logically rather then just making sure the mage and the adept doesn't suffer any downsides from their career choices. Effectively what trodes and smartlink do under 4E is a fiber optic pipe connection over wireless. My question is within the realm of that engineering what would the fiber optic pipe now be carrying. For me that makes me think that the fiber optic pipe (datajack) should be twice as effective, essentially moving twice as fast. Since making them move literally twice as fast would be hard to reconcile without doing funny things with IP's i feel the best fix is to give them essentially double the actions. Most matrix actions eat up a complex action anyway.

You still run into the problem of that giving a huge advantage over matrix entities such as sprites, though I suppose you could give this bonus to all matrix entities as well, but there might be some trouble reconciling with physical interactions through the matrix (A pilot would give a drone 6 complex and 6 free actions a turn, a skilled enough rigger could give it 10 and 10. A skilled enough TM... is scary x.x)

Only if you see that as a problem, personally i believe that a dedicated hacker should be better then a sprite, just having a datajack won't make you better then a sprite without the skills to back it up. At the high end for AI's and free sprites it might be a problem.

Also, as pointed out in another thread a while back, the skinlinked version lacks DNI and thus can't eject your clip as a free action.

It makes IC a total joke though.

It's a damn good pick pocket who can scoop my implanted comlink out of my head without me noticing.

It lacks DNI unless you also have a skinlinked trode.

Exactly.

While this may be RAI it definitely isn't RAW. You do not need a DNI for the Eject clip action to become a Free one. All you need is a smart gun.

So, your character now has an internal commlink because the old one got pickpocketed one time too many? Pickpocketing has become enough of a threat that implanted commlinks are now cost effective?

Are you also now using cybereyes instead of skinlinked goggles?

Did you read what he was replying to? You said that 'any case in which you would lose a non-implanted device, you would also lose the implanted device'. He was providing a contradiction to that statement, not saying that people have internal commlinks because they are afraid of pickpockets (Though it is just one more advantage).

Actually it is raw per unwired.

I would so go for a system where Magic is limited in the way that I suggested. It turns getting cyber for a magic/technomancer character from a no-brainer to a "OMG, do I REALLY want that <insert 'ware system> THAT badly? I also think that it fits a burnout mage better if his magic truly limited if he gets 'ware.

So it seems there are some good arguments for cyber characters not getting something like radar, a cyber deck, or a datajack implanted. Well so what? That just leaves more room for a cyber character to implant more things they do need. I guess if you have a cyber limb you may run out of useful things to implant in it with capacity, but maybe that should be combated by adding new things you can implant.

That makes me think. Maybe all cyberlimbs could get a small bonus (maybe by percent) to how much can be implanted in them. It is a small enough advantage that is might not imbalance but instead balance things.

Anyway I think we will be getting more gene tech in the next edition. Ultimately this is pros of being a mundane with cyber vs. being a mage passably also with cyber. That and a mundane character not having enough things to spend karma on.

Huh?
Cyberlimbs have capacity limits, that is the limit for how much you can put into them . .
Doesn't mean you can't get more into one Limb than the limb has capacity, but then the implant needs to use Essence.
So this only works for stuff that have both capacity and essence cost listed. So no attribute Enhancements for Essence.

What exactly is the pro of being a mundane with cyber vs a mage with cyber? That there is more genetech coming out in some future edition? That you can ignore implanting some things because they have a non-implant exact equivalent? The first doesn't benefit mundane more than awakened because awakened can use genetech, and the second benefits awakened because that means they don't have to waste essence on things like a datajack.

As a matter of fact, mages pay extra for genetech so this is really not such a good choice for them.

As a matter of fact, I think a datajack is one of those things you should take if it fits the character. Some academic background. Get a datajack.

The idea of KCKitsune would really limit the usefullness of ware for the awakend. And lets be honest.
The non augmented mage or adept is not really the problem. Is he?

The unaugmented Mage lobbing Mana-Balls left and right at Force 10 is a Problem.
The unaugmented Adept is so bad that he's basically extinct.

Possibly the most easy to implement, and also balls to the walls crazy with its implications, is to take Unwired's note about Interface types (manual vs DNI) at face value, and then go a step further and assume that -any- use of a DNI device is a free action, instead of the listed action types in the main book.

Since free actions can explicitly be delayed till later in the pass, this change single handedly changes decking into an incredibly convoluted game of wits where everyone is trying to out-maneuver everyone else, and pure virtual speed - initiative - becomes very, very important, and very very deadly. (Important note: This is completely ridiculous balls-to-the-walls taking off the power limiters of the matrix. Hackers can now take 3 actions per pass, and the only other counter is a faster hacker who can step in and cockblock them.)

In order to emphasize the difference between Trodes and Jacks: Trodes or other external DNI let you take ONE action per pass like this. Jacks let you take ALL of them.
Optional distinction: You need internal cyber DNI to achieve hotsim - with your skull in the way, the best you can get is cold.
To even things up, Manual Control is alwas a simple action in the same way that dni is always free, leaving the Combat Texters feeling useful.
Pre-emptive rigger nerf: While using DNI to rig, the cold limitations of plastic and steel slow you down. When executing a command that has a physical result, such as driving, executing a maneuver, or shooting a gun, you may only execute that command once per pass. (the advantage a rigger now has is that they can make a driving test, make a sensor test, and shoot someone, but can't shoot someone 3 times in one pass).

Edit: Bringing Sanity Back to the matrix: You can only take the same action once each pass, unless its already a free action(in which case you an do it as often as you have actions). This prevents 3 hack on the fly checks, or 3 attacks, but expands your options(you can attack and crash, or hack and spoof a trace.) After realizing what I'd written and suggested, this rule is kind of necessary.

@Stahlseele

The good old manaball. I would check with an edge test if the mage sees the guys at the moment the ball hits.
Because if you shoot and take cover behind a crate, you are not visible. So no LOS so no DAMAGE!
Thats the BONUS for direct spells. If you enforce that, manaballs tend to be less scary.

That is a fair point. Might be tough getting GM's to enforce it, although I know I'll certainly try.

Which unaugmented mage can do that? Last time I checked a Force 10 Manaball is 7 drain. Assuming 6 in both drain attributes the mage will drop after the fourth spell.

@Irion: While you have to have LOS to affect people with the spell, you cannot duck into cover before the spell hits. Targeting and hitting the target take place at the same time. Either you are still in cover so you can't target the spell or you are not yet in cover and the spell goes off before you are back in cover.

Yeah. This is true. Direct spells don't actually travel the distance, they spontaneously affect from the mana surrounding the target(s). But, it still needs LOS. And if the target moves behind a crate from a delayed turn, then the Mage may be SOL

@Dakka Dakka
So, my point is still valid.
Is everybody in LOS the moment the spell is cast or not?

The LOS thing is the biggest disadvantage of direct spells. I think it should matter.

Only if she can move at the speed of light or moves before the mage actually sees her.

Ok here is the advantage to being mundane, you don't need to dump lots of points magical... That and why not go for a lot of cyber, gene tech, and bioware.

Having more points freed up at that start might let you buy some other things that cost a lot of points and are only available at character creation. Species, surge, other qualities. Adding more qualities would help out mundanes, but also awakened, but I argue it would help out mundanes more because they have more build points free to buy up the useful qualities. I argue that the same is true for adding more bioware, genetech, and cyberware except instead of build points it is essence.

Anyway on an unrelated note, I have been thinking that to make cyberware a better choice there needs to be some way for later game characters to sink some karma into their cyberware. Maybe after a runner has had their gear for a while and has become very used to it he is able to eek out a little more performance from his enhancements. These would be like 5 and 10 point qualities; not something everyone has, just the rare few who have 10 to 20 karma to spend on small bonuses. The mechanics of are more tricky because so many augmentations give very small bonuses of one or two dice and adding just one more dice seems like a large improvement. But you could still write qualities for specific gear.

And how many of those are you EVER gonna need?
One left, one right, one dead center, more is usually not needed . .
If you DO need more than three force 10 spells, then you are in much deeper shit anyway and don't need to care about dropping after the fourth anymore . .

One with centering, centering foci and a blood fetish for Manaball

@Badmoodguy88
I guess the most obvious example is an adept.
If you stick with the rules:
You start with Karmagen and you take the adept quality, one point of ware and increase your magic from one to two. (As a matter of fact you could take the adept quality after taking the ware and so get around the problem of paying for the lost point.

So depending on how you role you get one point of ware for 10 Karma or X point of ware for 0 Karma.
In play you keep increasing and dropping your magic attribute till you have the essence loss you want.
This coust 10 Karma per point. I guess 4 points are more than enough. (40 Karma)
Now you start buying up magic.
2: 10 Karma.
3: 15+13(*0.6)Karma
4: 20+16*(0.6) Karma.
5: 25+19*(0.6) Karma.
6: 30+21*(0.6)Karma
So 148 to 220 Karma for 4 points of ware, 6 points of magic and 5 points of initiation.
(Quite a deal if you consider, that with improved ability (4 to 6) you may save yourself around 22KArma for 0.5 Powerpoints. Do this with 3 Powerpoints and you got yourself 22*6=132 Karma saved. )
And you do not need to go this high. Drop the last 2 Points and the Karma cost go down to 95 Points!

Except you can't do neither of these think in chargen, the order in witch you do thinks in chargen doesn't matter one bit, you always lose 1 point of magic for every point of missing essence.

Also awesome job "breaking" the system with your character thats only viable after 100+ karma

You might take two points of essence loss in Chargen for additional 5 Karma. (After your ruling)

Yes, he won't be at start a bit behind the sam who dumped everything in ware. So what?
This is true for any character. (Well, may be not mages but thats a different story)

Three points of ware and one point of magic is easy to get. Costs around 60 Karma, 10 out of chargen.

(Not to mention, that cybering up to the point of no return is not helpfull for every concept)


After you took the quality. Nothing is preventing you from doing it the other way around. RAW. (Even enforced with what is written to latend awakening)
Thats why the rules for essence loss are silly.

The order in witch you do thinks in chargen doesn't matter at all.