If a mage has a rigger mod and was jumped into a drone, could he cast spells as the drone?

My initial thought is no by RAI and possibly RAW, but an argument could be made for it. It gets into some fairly metaphysical ideas, though, so I don't think I'm really well acquainted with the fiction to say with 100% certainty that it should be a no.

The Argument
1) Mages can cast spells
2) Mages do not need their body to cast spell; see Astral space
3) A rigger can "jump in" or project his consciousness into a drone with the proper gear

Questions:
Is this analogous?
If a mage casts a mind affecting spell on a drone that has a rigger jumped in, is the rigger affected? (The answer to this, which I don't know and am AFB so cannot look up, is very important!)

Anyway, just some crazy idea I had while playing around with Chummer during my lunch break. What are your thoughts?

Need to be your own personal perception and eyes (astral or mundane). So no. You can use mirrors and the like, but using an electronic pair of eyes doesn't work.

I'm very sure the answer is No.

My best explanation for the reason - mages can't use anything to target spells with aside from natural visions, Astral Perception, and augmentations paid for with essence. So although you can "sort of" see out of the drone like its eyes are yours, you aren't really, the same way that DNI of Ultrasound isn't really eeing (and it's not one of the explicit list of allowed targeting senses).

Now, one interesting thing you might try is "leashing" a drone to the mage with a Fiber Optic Cable. You can cast spells through one of those. Granted, it means your drone is on a leash, so it's not exactly a foolproof or universally applicable strategy, but I can see some clever things you might do with it - remote magical air support, for example.

No it is not analogous. Though the rigger controls vehicle from the perspective he is the vehicle, it is artificial (basicaly he's being fed data and such at the speed of light and feels like it is the case). His conciousesness is still present in his meatbody.

So could a mage mind-control a rigger through a drone? No he could not, as he does not have line of site to the actual rigger.

yeah, SR has had a "no electronic targeting" hard rule since the beginning. Purely astral or optical means only, either by direct visual observation or looking through mirrors / fiber optic cables.

The only way I could see it working is if you were in AR mode and had the drone drag a fiber optic Mage Sight Cable along with it, connected to you. Casting through the MSC incurs a -3 penalty.

Might need a damn long cable, though. On the plus side you could probably route your command signals through the cable too and be immune to wireless hacking.






-k

Ah, good point. And, since you have not paid essence for the drones sensors, that pretty much kills that...

Does that mean mages with Cybereyes cannot cast spells if they are using Ocular Drones?

Or with Cybereyes or another vision modification that you paid for with your own Essence (such as Eyeband).

This would fail due to RAS, unless you hacked your rig to add RAS override, in which case you get those penalties.

Only with the above optical cable trick, though your ocular drone may need a walker mod to work, by my logic.

When the drone leaves, the character is blind in that eye since the whole eye leaves their skull (SR4A 340). SR4A 183 under Choosing Targets says the caster must be able to see the target on their own and that perceiving through a device that provides a visual sense (in this case, seeing through what is now the drone's optical sensor) is not sufficient to provide line of sight.

The SR4 FAQ indicates No:








-k

I was actually thinking of just sitting in a van and looking through the cable, and having the dog-brain fly around.

Play a gnome rigger mage. Attach mage sight cable to one of the balloon drones.










-k

"mind affecting spells" as I understand them, actually affect your "essence" or whatever, not the consciousness that is created by your physical brain. That's why you can cast them on astral beings that lack true brains (spirits.) You mentioned casting in astral space, again this involves the mage's astral form, and spells that originate in astral space have to stay in astral space, you can't shoot ghost-fireballs just cause your spirit is wandering around. I don't remember where, but there is a reference to security mages using cameras to cast Indirect LOS spells, but it specifies that this only works on closed circuit camera systems using optical wiring. Which would suggest that using a wireless drone as a spotter for LOS is not possible, unless perhaps you're doing ritual spell casting which is it's own animal. My ruling would be a very strong no, on the topic of allowing a mage to basically rig a drone and cast from it, or to equate casting on a drone to casting directly on the person rigging it.

Basically the problem is that magic comes from the spirit. Rigging does not involve the spirit, a rigger does not put his soul into the drone, despite the way we refer to it ("Jumping In.") A rigger is still just sending and receiving electronic signals, so if you could cast on them through a drone they were rigging, why not cast on someone through a phone call? The main point is: the rigger's soul remains in his body, you cannot effect it without having LOS on it and the drone involves no mystic link.

In the security mage you're mentioning, you could sort of go around the probelm with using a camera to do teh spotting, then cast an indirect spell with an origin point that's legit (within line of sight) and an area of effect that includes the previously spotted target. Of course it works only with indirect area spells, the only damaging spells able to affect a target you don't see.

Thta would be a magical equivalent of shooting a rocket or greande at the ground near a corner to hit the guy hiding behind said corner with the blast radius.

There are in fact Mage Spiders in SR4.

Mages with dozens of Mage Sight optic fiber cables leading to a set of goggles they wear. Each leads to a different part of the building he's protecting. He can flip between the different feeds as needed. For a team trying to invade the building, well, they get the nice surprise of spells coming out of the very walls, as the ends of the optic fiber cables are probably pretty well hidden.




-k

Stay away from our mundane haven! Drones are the way for mundanes to one up mages, and I will cry if the mages start migrating to drones to.

*on review, I didn't contribute much with this post.

You could restrain a rat / dog inside the drone, implant it with cybereyes with an eye-camera, and route that video feed to the mage. Now you've got remote senses that are paid for with essence.

Yeah, but not paid with the mage's essence.




-k

Is that ever explicitly mandated? I thought the mantra was "paid for with essence" without specifying whose.

I'm pretty sure RAI would not let you use the rat's senses. I just had a quick look at Borrow Sense (SM166) and casting through senses borrowed that way is also prohibited, so no tying a rat to a drone and using the Borrowed Senses spell to cast. Drat.

SR4A pg. 183, "Step 3: Choose the Target(s)":
"A metahuman spellcaster can target anyone or anything she can see directly with her natural vision. Physical cyber- or bioenhancements paid for with Essence can be used to spot targets, but any technological visual aids that substitute themselves for the character’s own visual senses—cameras, electronic binoculars, Matrix feeds, etc.—cannot be used."

Given the text keeps talking about the caster's own senses, it's pretty clear that "paid for with Essence" is intended to mean the caster's own Essence as well.

I cannot believe that any sane GM would allow using someone ELSE's essence to qualify. Otherwise what would stop a mage from getting a video feed from the team Street Sam's cybereyes, and casting spells through that?

Or, hell, hop onto the matrix, hack someone's cybereyes on the other side of the planet, and cast murder-spells through that?

See how silly this starts to get?




-k

Fixed that for ya.

Aghast as I am that this thread has generated a real debate, I'll play along.

How exactly is magic to be transmitted through wireless connections?

In any case, the RAW is perfectly sound. The line about the enhancements paid for by essence provides an exception to the 'natural vision' qualifier, not the 'her' qualifier. If one were to use it to make the latter exception one may equally use it to make any exception to any section of the magic rules. After all, it doesn't say that spells targeted with cybereyes cause drain, require LOS, are limited by caster's Magic, etc.

Well, a live-stream from someone else's cybereyes would qualify as a "Matrix feed", I'd say. So that's already covered. No worries here.

It was all started by ideas stemming from Kage's post here.