I am sure this is an old chestnut, but as it says in the question: Do they stack?

I have to say this is one of the (very few) areas that D20 is better than Shadowrun as it is always easy in that game to work out what stacks with what. (I realize I opened myself to flame wars but a little heat is a good thing in a conversation).

I see no reason they wouldn't.

On the subject of stacking, I thought it was assumed in Shadowrun that things stack unless stated otherwise. The rules in this case are generally prohibitive, not permissive (i.e., they state when you can't stack things, rather than enumerating all the things that do stack).

As long as the sources make sense and don't contradict. Chameleon coating is just really good camouflage, while concealment can be any number of things, a fog bank rolling in, vegetation moving to obscure you, your sounds being dampened, or maybe people just have the inexplicable desire to look the other way. Even if they overcome the concealment power, they still have mundane stealth to deal with.

Yes, they stack.

On a side note: Do Silencers stack with Ruthenium and/or Concealment?

I strongly doubt they could stack with ruthenium, as the polymer cover won't affect sound in any way that makes sense (except the "flash hider" part, for visually locating of the shooter), but they are likely to stack with Concealment.

No because the apply to completely different checks. Ruthenium applies a penalty to the opposed perception check to notice someone using infiltration. A silencer applies a penalty to the check to notice a gunshot.

I rule they don't, concealment is about not being seen, R.P. is about being seen but looking like something else. This isn't grounded in mechanics perse, just so called common sense.

Ruthenium is about what?^^

Sure they stack. When you're Ruth'ed up you look like Predator. Now be blurry and hard to see, plus hidden in the shadows, plus a long ways off, plus behind something, you'll be even harder to see.

What I wonder though, is does Ruth transmit the light (or lack thereof) though or just project an image of what it sees on the opposite side? Cause if its the latter, doesn't that mean that a projection of darkness would still give off some light, like when your computer monitor draws the color black (as opposed to being off)? Would that screw up the camo effect at night since you'd be a kind of 'bright black' ?

An LCD draws a "luminous black" only because the technical limitations of the technology prevent 100% absorbtion of the backlight - that's why it's contrast is lower than other technolgies (like cathodic) who actually light up the pixels instead of masking (incompletely) a white background.

IMHO ruthenium polymers alter their reflecting properties so that they just change color (thus looking black if no light shines on them, as there is nothing to reflect back) rather than actually emitting light.

Fluffwise it does this. Technologically speaking, both are impossible.

The former is impossible due to the inability to bend light in arbitrary directions as to go around an opaque object that changes shape.

The latter because of this:

Looks pretty sweet, right? Not from this perspective though!
Basically: you can't project aimed light out of a single point where the angle of view changes the color of the projected light.

I just assume that these piffling little technological barriers have been conquered by the 2070's.

First link fixed.

It is the later, assuming Ruthenium Polymer is the same thing used on the Chameleon suit. But, I assume the technology has been advanced sufficiently to give an accurate display of "no light".

Edit: It is.

I would say Concealment yes Ruthenium no; one effects perception, the other just effects visual light. But this is just me giving an opinion, not me trying to cite RAW.

@General
Thanks for the answers. The consensus is pretty clear that the two stack.

So what happens if a person with thermal vision is looking at a rutherium coat armoured mage. Do they take any minus's as the thermal image is still there?


I'm not sure that is still true given metamaterials. I'm not enough of a material scientist to understand them: at the moment they work with regular shapes and with wavelengths that are not near the visible spectrum, but I read somewhere (see the strength of this reference) that "they" are looking into irregular changing shapes.

Ruthenium works for the visible spectrum (red to violet). For thermographic vision you have thermal dampening.

Here's a Monkey Wrench, just for fun. For Elves and Orcs, Lowlight is part of the Visible Spectrum, and for Dwarves and Trolls, Thermographic is part of the Visible Spectrum. Now how do you handle it?

Fine.
Ruthenium works for the HUMAN visible spectrum (red to violet). For thermographic vision (biological, electronical, mechanical, magical or otherwise) you have thermal dampening.

Happy now?

The consensus is stupid but hey 'It's mmaaaaaaaagic'

Heh.... Awesome Clarification there Brazilian_Shinobi...

Yeah, the BBCode crapped out and I tried to fix it.

I thought chameleon coating was just adaptive camouflage, that it recolored itself to match it's backdrop.

And another : lowlight is not a part of a spectrum. It means you can perceive lower amount of light than normal human would, but still in the same range of frequencies.

Regular camouflage is -2 to Perception Tests when appropriate, +2 when inappropriate. Chameleon coating is -4. So they're adaptive, but also somehow more efficient.

That's true... You are not really moving into the UV ranges. Which would be cool, by the way.



For regular Camouflage, I think Combat Fatigues in the various patterns.
For Chameleon, I think Predator.

You welcome, just to avoid more confusions

My point was I don't think chameleon coating does anything with light or anything, it just has perfect camouflage, like having a custom made ghillie suit for every single spot you could be.

I can agree with this.

If you're going to nitpick, most light intensification systems also pick some near-infrared light - most CCD cameras do it, their sensivity range is a bit wider than the human eyes.

The effect isn't noticeable because the CCD sensors are color-blind : they register the total amount of light hitting them and return a monochromatic image.

According to SR1 and SR2 rulebooks, elves and orks night vision relied on a higher number of rod cells in the retina. Without a specific mention, I would assume their sensitivity range would be close to regular human eyes, though the thermographic vision of dwarfs and trolls set a precedent for different metatypes having different range.

Just FYI: rod cells are generally "color neutral"; e.g. you can't see colors with them, just light intensity.

(Two and a half things I didn't know, verifying that tidbit: 1) rod cells are are sensative to a single photon of light (but are clustered in groups to amplify the signal) and 2) they're slow to update; about 100 ms).

Check out Spy Games, pg 151-155 or so.

I see in UV!





-k

Awesome... Will check it out.

The UV addition seems very pricey and has a pretty high avaliability for what it is really.