Pretty much this.

However, like i said, extended masking hides the spell, the spell hides you.

Which Turns your strawman example into

"Thats odd. I don't see ANYTHING on the astral."


Just because any given conclusion is reached, doesn't invalidate the steps taken to get there - which is expecially relevant when things happen and change before the end.

If that works, it still requires a custom 'Astral Sense Cloak' spell.

Why, exactly?

We already know that Astral Perception is a Sense that can be affected by existing spells that let spellcasters borrow senses from others.(borrow sense/animal sense/eyes of the pack/passenger We even know that Astral Perception is a type of Perception test, and recieves bonuses from things that add to it (perceptive, reception enhancer), despite not rolling the Perception skill for it.

Multisense Illusions work on all Senses.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me: Spell hides a target from astral sight, but not itself.

A seperate trick, unrelated to the spell's composition, is used to hide the spell.

Because invisibility is for optical light vision only. Unless the masking is already hiding your astral presence entirely? I thought the premise was that the spell is hiding your astral presence, and your masking is hiding the spell. I don't deal with mages that much, so I could have misunderstood you; did you mean that the goal is combo astral/physical hiding?

Unless I'm mistaken, Yerameyahu was saying that you were mistaken in saying that 'regular' Invisibility should hide its subject from Astral Perception, since it is a single-sense spell (and the single sense it affects isn't Astral Perception). He's saying that you still need a custom spell: either a multi-sense mana invisibility or a single-sense mana invisibility targeting Astral Perception.

Try to keep up, I've been suggesting Multi-Sense spell designed Illusion Spells for several pages now.


Normally you are right.

Psh, I've specifically commented on your custom spell three times. People keep saying 'Invisibility', so I'm re-pointing out that it's *not* Invisibility. It's one that affects Astral Sense. I guess I was responding for Draco18s' benefit, though you said this:

Sure, but you weren't talking about multi-sense spells when you said:



"Regular Invisibility" isn't a multi-sense illusion, and it isn't a single-sense illusion targeted to Astral Perception. Yerameyahu's point, if I followed it correctly, was that Regular Invisibility therefore doesn't work against Astrally Perceiving spirits.

Also, must you always post in such a hostile and condescending tone?

I will just enter this conversation here.

I am almost always on the side of "What is reasonable within the rules and description".

So yes, it SHOULD be possible to have a spell passively cloak you in the astral space. I am also thouroughly against it. I am also absolutely against a spell which makes you absolutely undetectable for all physical means.

Such a spell(s) would elevate every one last magician who can build up a few net hits in that test into "Can never be beaten" category. It is INSANE. Even normal invisbility+silence is harsh enough. But if NO one on the street can detect you... the only way to beat you is grenading everything around you and hope for the best. And the ONLY way to stop you is a closed door (which has to stay closed).

The game would really not be fun anymore if your infiltration team is just four mages, while all others (the technomancer) waits in the car.

I always go in my games with: To have a spell affect something, you need to completely understand it. Must be somehow able to experience it, somehow. Which blocks them at least from fooling radar and millimeter scans. (But somehow allows them to block thermo-vision... ah well). And since the astral world is not "natural" to you - eh... just ignore the dual-natureed ones *g*- you can't cloak yourself from it either. This is of course all complete bullshit and totally a crumbling wall for me. But the balance just NEEDS that.

I'd also like to step in here and chime in:

Masking always get an opposed Assensing test. It is by no means foolproof.

I think it's these statements that is throwing people off:



I say that because the book says this:



Which leads me to think that if "her" is meant to signify that the aura of of the spell rather than the aura of the subject of the spell than frankly it takes the cake for the most tortured sentence I've yet seen in SR4, which is saying something. I simply haven't read anything here that convinces me that a vanilla Invisibility spell is hiding the subject's aura while simultaneously blowing its cover. Which, frankly, hits me as kind of a wacky scenario.

Actually, both the character's aura and the spell's aura are visible on the astral. Spells have their own auras. Invisibility (the visual illusion) certainly does not block astral sense (your aura).

The specific premise here (if I have it correct now) is that you can custom-design a spell that cloaks you from *Astral Sense*, and then use Extended Masking to mask the spell's aura. If the GM lets you make an Astral-Sense-cloaking illusion, then that'd work.

I think it perhaps should be impossible for balance reasons, but there's not particular reason it isn't possible by RAW (whatever *that's* worth, heh).

I understand the multi-sense argument. What I don't understand is how "regular invisibility" is supposed to work against Spirits unless you mean that they can't "see" you but they can still assense you, at which point I'm not sure why people even bothered bringing it up, since at that point you're merely saying that the spell is happily chugging along on its merry useless way and have muddied the waters for nothing.

I think in a situation like that you don;t need to adhere to rules that closely. Context is appropriate to add in. A roto-drone in a confined space which gets levitated into the ceiling should have a bad day. Its blades just got shoved into the roof, I don;t think a pure speed/damage test really fits.



Yeah I kind of think while the spell creation rules are cool for guidelines anytime the perfect spell seems to be created especially obvious things like multi-sense invisibility I probably wont allow them. They weren't in the base game for a reason IMO. Some spells are designed with flaws with a reason, just removing the flaws via the spell creation rules breaks a lot of spells.

Responding to Shinobi's quotation: (I wasn't aware that Crash/Ram damage scaled up after the 200+ m/t category (Body*3)?) In any case, yes. Crashing isn't usually fatal, and drones in particular have relatively excellent Body:Armor ratios, and they don't tend to be moving very fast. On the other hand, that low Body means they're very easily forced to make Crash tests. *shrug*

I can certainly see the GM dramatically fudging things a little, but you probably don't want to make crashes massively lethal. Drones are powerful now, but that would be a major balance change.

True, but I kind of think if you decide to fly a roto-drone(they are pretty big after all, I'm not sure I'd let one go through a window anyways) through someones window into a apartment you kind of accepted a high risk maneuver. I might not destroy the drone, but I may ground it by having it get stuck and need minor repairs.

Sure, depending. I feel like I might more make it lose a turn (righting itself), or damage the rotors (reduce speed/etc.). Of course, we *are* talking about magic (Levitate), so things are more flexible.

Dare I ask if one can crash a drone into a Trid Phantasm? For example, a wall made by Trid Phantasm?

No. The drone will perceive the wall and try to stop. if it does not stop in time, the drone will register a crash and shortly afterwards that nothing has been damaged. You could however box a drone in. Unless it has been programmed to try to ram every wall that impedes its progress, the drone won't move.

Clever. Me likee.

Maybe someone can riddle me this: If a rigger was jumped into said drone from the example above at the time, what would the test(s) be like? One to beat OR of the drone's sensors, and then an Intuition + Counterspelling <sr4a208> for the rigger to be 'affected' by the illusion of being stuck in a wall/box all of a sudden?

The rigger shouldn't get a perception test, but he could still act as he wanted. All he can perceive is the senor output from his drone. For the drone it appears real and so it does to him too.
Walls appearing out of nowhere reek of magic. He doesn't know however whether a real wall (shape element for example) or an illusionary wall (trid phantasm) was created, unless it was was a brick wall or similarly complex structure and he knew more than average Joe about magic.

If they were actually rotordrones, then levitating a blacnket or throw into their rotors ought to be enough to screw them up.

Or even if the rotors are ducted and grilled, draping a blanket over a drone will screw many of its sensors.

To be honest, although the OP didn't much care for his chosen action in that circumstance, he still did the wisest thing.

If someone dislikes you enough and knows you well enough to send rotodrones into your apartment, get the heck out of there. Staying and fighting, even if you win, just gives your opponent more time to do something that _will_ get you.

Agreed. Great little scenario to discuss though. I have new respect for trid phantasm.

Just curious has anyone used the chaff spells in play. I've never taken them but theoretically this is what they are there for. The sensor rating drops by 1 for each hit over the OR threshold of the device. Now assuming you use the OR threshold of 3 you have to be a decent mage for this spell to do anything. Kind of off I guess if you get enough hits for it to really do anything you are probably better off with a high force powerbolt.

Honestly, a jammer is a lot more effective. :/ Hm.

Has anyone considered a house rule that spells specifically designed to effect objects (particularly computers) reduce the OR threshold by 1?
Eg. Chaff, Wreck, Trid-Phatasm, Improved Invisibility, etc

True, another advantage to fighting by proxy. No need to stay around yourself.

Taking a lesson from the Trid Phantasm Idea, I think that Concealment might be a better use for a Force 9 spirit than an attack task. It works against whatever else is around, too.

I agree. Especially if you have reason to believe the opposing rigger may have a mage friend.

If you can summon a force 9 spirit, you are so mighty that don´t have enemies left. ^^

My upcoming character can summon force 9 spirits. Gonna be a hell of a drain roll, but it's possible.

Which is not that hard.
You need:
Magic 5+.
The spirt will role 9 dices so you need a bit more.
Drain will be between 0 and 18, avarage 6.

And you need 12+ dice in MAG+Summoning to get a single service most of the time.

If they only roll 9 dice against your summon test, why do you need 12? Honestly, 6 dice with edge added would do the trick most of the time.

The "on average, one hit more." At 9 vs. 9 it's even odds. Half the time the summoner will do better, half the time the spirit will (on average, 0 net hits). At 12 dice, the summoner does better more often.

Settle for a force 7 if need be.

The summoning part is easy, Magic 5 + Summoning 4 (favourite spirit +2) is already 11 dice before Edge. The tricky part is avoiding the physical drain. Still, a few boxes of drain is way better than being shot by two medium combat drones.

If you edge the spirit might well reciprocate and it's edge is a lot more disposable then yours (stupid fourth edition).

If by "more disposable" you mean "the only critter in the game that can have more than 6"¹ then you're right.

¹7 if you're human or a pixie or have a Spethial Feath, or 8 if you're one of those and have the Spethial Feat that gives you another. But nothing gets more than that. Except spirits of a force 9 and higher.

Or he just assumes that spirits always start with full Edge, whereas the summoner may have already used some of his.

@LurkerOutThere
If spirits start to use edge, even a Force 6 spirit is hard to summon.
Binding a Force 5 spirit is likly going to kill you.
Not saying this would be a bad thing!

But you need to establish a base line here.
RAW spirits only spend edge if you tend to abuse them. Since letting the fight and die for you does not count...
If spirits tend to spend edge more freely on the matirial plane there is not reason not to spend it, if they get shot too.
All I am saying, you open a can of worms here. That is a plane in desprate need for clear (house)-ruling.



In general: It is good to remember that a force 9 spirt (make it guardian) is quite hard to stop.
The only thing i can think of is banishing and very heavy weapons. The first buts an equal toll on the opposite mage the later might be quite hard to get and not that usefull depending on the situation and the GM.

My house rule on Spirits & Edge is this:
-Summoning a Spirit with Force>your magic rating, the spirit edges to resist. Can be mitigated depending on certain external factors, e.g. BC, special reason for spirit to fight (e.g. a christian fire spirit defending a church)
-Summoning a Spirit with the appropriate spirit bane, the spirit edges to resist
-Summoning a Spirit whom you have abused, the spirit edges to resist
-Only certain extreme acts, e.g. letting a spirit take your drain, pumping it up with drugs, or cannibalizing it count as abuse. Summoning, Binding and combat explicitly do not count.
-The summoner freely controls how the spirit spends edge otherwise. However, he needs to expend one point of his own edge whenever he wants his spirit to edge.

I found this houserule to work well at our table. Starting characters can still get reasonably strong spirits, and it prevents a lot of the arbitrary use of edge.

There are a lot of assumptions here. The most important one was, that you survive the summoning a spirit rating 9. We are talking about physical drain here. Even with average successes he cause 6 points of damage. If you are talking about "i summon this spirit and stay at home for the next few days to cure the wounds" THEN you are right. But i don´t talk about "i am able to survive this action", i am talking about "i am able to summon AND to be healthy enough to go on with the run".^^

Well, if you can somehow ensure that the spirit doesn't edge, it's rather easy to pull off. Assuming you have Summoning 5+Magic 6+Focus 2+Spec 2+Mentor Spirit 2+Aspected Domain 2, you've got a DP of 19, easy enough to get a success or two. Your average DP is probably ~14 (Logic 7/Charisma 7+Willpower 5+Aspected Domain 2), meaning you soak about 4 damage, while the spirit causes ~6 Drain. If need be, edge on the drain roll, because the spirit can't edge against that.

That 6 points of damage can be first aided away quite fast.

One interesting things about shadowrun is the high variance on the die rolls. As an example with "fudge" you "usually" get your skill: over 30% of the time you roll exactly average. With shadowrun you get much more variability, so although you will only get a service say half the time, you are quite likely to get a few services, whereas with a much flatter variance, even if you succeeded you would probably only get one.

I have done quite a lot of "spirit wrangling", and I enjoy it. But even if I have high drain die roll, I roll those resistance die with trepidation. If I summon a rank 6 for example, I have had on occasion 10 drain to soak: very very unpleasant.



Summoned Spirits don't last that long.

Summoned spirits and Edge
I think its clear in the rules that the spirits "might use edge if you have abused spirits in the past". Don't abuse the spirits then that won't happen. As others have pointed out "what is abuse varies from tradition to tradition". I play a psionic whose spirits are her materialised thoughts, and a Voodoo houngan who has names and characters for each spirit that he summons.
In both of them draining their force permanently would constitute abuse. Fighting along side them to defeat a threat wouldn't be (even if the spirit was disrupted). But sending a voodoo spirit in alone with the knowledge that it would be probably defeated would be abuse, while it wouldn't with the thoughtform. However I can see almost no circumstance in which the thoughtform would spend edge, while the voodoo spirits are "just like people" and are much more likely to.
I leave the decisions as to whether the spirit spends edge or not to the GM.

Of course spirits don´t last that long. That was not the question nor did i imply that meaning.

Let´s get it straight: the situation that "caused" this topic was "i got surprised by drones and didn´t find a proper way to fight them...with magic". It was not "i was sitting around in an aspected domain pumped up with combat drugs, armed and armored to the teeth waiting for somebody stepping into my trap". So calculation-examples are fine, but they have nothing to do with the reality (if you want to accept for a moment, that SR is some kind of "reality"). A highly spezialized mage has commonly around 12-14 dice for summoning and the same amount for drain resistance. Even if you maxed out magic, summoning force 9 spirits is usually 6 points of physical drain. Sometimes you get away with absolutely no wound, but most of the time you get your ass kicked. So summoning mighty spirits is nothing for "i am in serious trouble"-situations, because you cannot guarantee to knock yourself out and make the job for the assassin easier as it has to be..

Mr.J: did you finish the job?
Assassin: no, he killed himself, i just looked at him and suddenly he dropped dead

Hmmm...maybe this could be THE way to get rid of mages. Simply look like somebody that makes them think only rating 9+ spirits can hurt him, and wait if they survive.^^

Use a force that you can Summon, Force 9 is for the pros.

And yes, you can. Logic based tradition, augmented with Cerebral Booster and Trauma Damper, Logic 5(7)+Willpower 5 = dp 12 for drain resistance. Summoning 5 (Beast Spirits +2), Mentor Wolf (Beast Spirits +2) + Magic 5 + Power Focus 4 = 18 dice. Logic 8 + First Aid 4 + Medkit 6 = 18 dice to treat the drain.

The scenario has yourself caught flat-footed in your own territory with the equivalent of two high-grade enemy samurai within a few meters. I would be willing to take a bit of drain to get out.

In order to not fall unconscious, the spirit would need to roll no more than...


Drain dice is 12, average hits is 4.
Say, body 3, you're average. So your physical track is 10. Maximum boxes after resisting is 9 (to stay conscious).
9 + 4 = 13.

So, the spirit could not get more than 6 hits on [Force * 2] (12 DV). At Force 9, that's 18 dice.

6 hits on 18 dice is average. So half the time the spirit's throwing more damage at you than you can survive on average. And each hit on the spirit's 18 dice is worth additional 2 DV you need to mitigate (2 additional hits) with your 12 dice (the spirit has better odds to roll well and doesn't need to roll spectacularly well to knock you out, either).

Those aren't good odds, chummer.

Sure you can repair yourself afterwards, but only if you're still conscious.

The spirit uses Force to resist being summoned, generating 3 hits on average, maybe 5 if things turn bad. Not nice at all, but surviveable.

Am I missing something? Are you trying to bind a Force 9 spirit? Only then does the spirit roll 18 dice. To summon a spirit the spirit only gets Force dice but the DV is hits*2.