Its all in the header.

An infiltrator type character can max out his infiltration, cover up in ruthenium, throw on a chameleon suit with full thermal dampening, and a variety of other options to avoid meatside detection. He sacrifices some armor and BPs/Karma, but he can make finding himself damn hard.

He can get aerosols, nanites, jammers, low power lasers, and MAD proof bullets and MAD proof guns, choose to run bioware only, and other options to avoid various sensors.

Erase tags, turn off commlinks, etc. to fall off the matrix. It may cost a lot of that cool functionality, but it can be done.

But for the love of me, how does the infiltrator get past an F1 watcher who perceives him astrally no matter how awesome his skills and kit are?

Mundane only. Magic fighting magic is right out, as is any adeptry.

Personally, I allow mundane characters to use infiltration against astral perception, albeit at -6 penalty to reflect not knowing exactly what you are hiding from. I would also allow a specialization to hide from astral observers, but it would merely bring the penalties to -4.

For astrally percieving characters, this is still possible, but the penalties are not included.

Lots of previous threads on this. The short answer is 'it's hard', and it should be. Magic is magic.

Been recently discussed at least two times. Basically, some people think you can still use infiltration, some don't, and both have arguments to back their point up.
That said, you could try using FAB or Mage Sight Drops from Spy Games...

By RAW, Infiltration works against the astral just as well as it does against the physical. Which it does, solid objects are still opaque on the astral. They're just insubstantial.

All the toys add nothing, but the Infiltration skill itself should still work. The infiltrator knows to use objects that block auras just like using shadows to block vision.

If the GM says no because the character does not have astral perception, than suggest that a magic knowledge skill would give the character the required background to use their infiltration skill this way.

^{EDIT: need to learn to type faster}

I've said before and I'll say it again. get a cardboard box, make a small hole in it and cover with a transparent plastic so it blocks the light of your aura, but you can still see through the box. TA DA, no astral perceiver will be able to see you.
Solid Snake WAS RIGHT.

They'll just see a box. Coat the inside with FAB and they can't even stick their head in to check it out.

Look, we've been over it already, let's not start it again. I still think that you can't hide from something you can't see, and thus Infiltration is useless, you still think otherwise. In the end it's still up to the particular GM to decide.

You mean that when you want to stay unnoticed, you start tossing smoke grenades around?

It's not about being able to see. Everyone hides from things they can't see, mundane or not. It's about how easy it is for them to see you (in most cases, very).

a F1 watcher with its 2 dice for assenssing might get +3 if the order was "look out!"
5 dice is still not much to notice anything significant...

Most people are Obvious on the astral, though. It all depends. As it stands, the rules don't cover this interaction terribly well, either being too harsh or too easy (depending on your view).

Sure you can. In fact, most people hide from things they can't see.
It's like saying that just because you've never seen a million dollars, that it doesn't exist.

I mean when you try to sneak past someone pretty stupid, but invisible for you, you might as well try to outline him, at least, and hope that said outlining won't cause him to raise alarm.

On the contrary. To sneak past a cam or hide from a patrol, you should be aware about them. Passively hiding from things you can't see is handled with Disguise.

While I concur magic is, in fact, magic, 100 years ago the idea that something could sit at 30,000 feet and pick up your heat signature in enough definition to determine what your wearing and record it all would have seemed like magic.

But now that its here, those in the business of not being found by that sort of thing find ways...I can't imagine that for 50-60 years every organization that has a vested interest in being sneaky (especially since some of those tend to have lots of resources) has just said, well screw it, if they put up magic, sneaking is game over.

So, what is this with mage spy drops and FAB?

Is there anything that lets you conceivably move around, being all infiltrator like, and still try to hide from the astral?

And not to stoke the fire, but you can't see a drone at 30,000 feet either, but if you know its likely, you can take steps to hide from it...

Yep, I hide from satellites all day long.

And here we go all over again. I thought we could at least agree to disagree.

I'll agree to disagree...just want to know what options you have to break the magicrun win button.

Something I never see mentioned in these threads is the most common means of subterfuge. Every magician in the world will extol on you the importance of misdirection. It's a LOT easier to be invisible when no one's looking at you. Have a team mate release a bunch of ferrets on the other side of the compound and the spirits (watchers in particular) will certainly want to check it out.

They'll also raise alarm, and the whole secure facility will be prepared for your arrival.

Another thing is that most people seem to treat spirits like automatic gun turrets. I.e. If it's alive, kill it. I'm not sure how reasonable it is for any kind of spirit to know all the astral forms of legitimate personnel by heart, but remember that although their 'vision' is superior you're still dealing with a security guard. Con is still an option, as are various distractions. The spirit could easily be tricked into confronting the Face whilst the rest of the team sneak up to the front door.

But what gets me most is the extent to which people will trick cameras and then whine about how 'omniscient' spirits are. You'll shell out for rhuthenium but magic vs magic is too much to ask? This is a different game, hombre, but the rules are the same - keep up or don't try.

My current character con'd a spirit. I manifested to ask why my sin didn't say I was a registered mage.
"I'm a mage?" *roll con, several net hits*



SR3 had rules for that, to some degree. It was either spirits, or wards. There were only so many people the spirit/ward could identify as being OK.

With me as GM the on-call security mage wouldn't get out of bed/body at the mental image of a bunch of rodents.

My point was rooted in the notion that a spirit cannot feasibly be advised on how to react to every possible occurence. You might say they've been told not to worry about anything smaller than a dwarf, fair enough, but if a human can be tricked or distracted then so can a spirit and the spirit should be easier since they've probably had a lot less security training.

The ultimate infiltration team: gnomes & pixies

Pixies are already immune to perception of all forms at will.

Until they call out, "Hey, listen!"

@ Aero:

The difference is thusly: Anyone can shell out for ruthenium. Granted, the street sam with ten tons of steel in his troll body and the minigun probably won't, but any single character can attempt to defeat sensors.

Anyone can cut their commlink to hidden or even OFF and erase their tags.

Anyone can pay up for a chameleon suit if they don't mind a 6/4 base.

So, meatside, matrix side, and techhead side, anyone can disappear if they really want to, with the right stuff.

We're looking for a way for a non-mage to be able to get past a spirit. With technical or skill advantages mechanically, not just through clever play.

Magic is supposed to be not just anyone. If you're removing 'be smart' from the equation, what's left?

A non-mage gets past a spirit the same way a non-mage gets past anything else: intelligent use of cover and concealment. A soldier maneuvering through a battlefield doesn't know where the enemy's observation posts are, but he uses terrain and obstacles to obscure his movement. He doesn't wander out into the middle of a clearing and wonder why he's getting hit with indirect fire.

The would raise the alarm for a bunch of Ferrets or Rats? Not Likely...

Fatum, I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it's the fact that the watcher can't be seen by the infiltrator that makes it difficult, it would only be that infiltrator doesn't KNOW where the watcher is. An infiltrator would routinely infiltrate past cameras that he can't see (since if he can see the camera, it can see him) as long as he is aware of where the camera is located.

The same thing applies to Infiltrating against a watcher that the infiltrator doesn't see. He can make a reasonable guess at where a watcher would be, and then infiltrate passed with those assumptions. Since he can't be exactly sure where the watcher is, I think it would be reasonable to apply a penalty similar to shooting at an invisible target.

I think the satellite analogy that Draco18 said is very key. I you are aware that a satellite is somewhere above, you can certainly hide from it as you move, even if you have never actually seen the satellite, with the appropriate penalty for not knowing exactly where it is. The GM can decide, "Well, the infiltrator was wrong, there was no satellite, there was a camera over there." SO if the infiltrator was totally wrong about where he thinks a watcher might be, then the GM should let the roll happen as if the user is normally infiltrating, but ignore the results and the infiltrator is "seen". THe same should happen with a watcher. The player should declare where he thinks observation may be coming from, and make his Infiltration roll with the invisible penalty. If the watcher was somewhere totally different, the GM makes teh call and may get him spotted, just as if he fails the roll.

Not to mention the general infamiliarity with Earth in general, as well as having a total of 2 dice for most tests they will try, before modifiers.

That's not a problem for Assensing, though, thanks to the retarded astral perception modifiers in Street Magic.

It depends. Some of the modifiers are big penalties, some are big bonuses. They make sense: in a crowd, you're hard to spot; in the open, you can't hide at all.

Where are the big bonuses for physcial perception then? This table is off by some 4 dice because the author took average conditions as the baseline whereas the core rules for physical sight take perfect conditions as the baseline: any less light and you get a darkness penalty, any more and you get a glare penalty. A cluttered astral background is -2 dice when total darkness is -6, FAB cloud is -2 when thermal smoke is -6 to thermographic vision,...

Nice, and how exactly do you know where a spirit might be, KeyMasterOfGozer? It's not like anything's limiting it in its movements...

There are tons of bonuses for physical perception. It's the easiest pool to raise.

Astral space is different, it has super-light (not glare) as well as darkness. They're just different, how is that a problem?

Amen

A trick I've never actually pulled in a game, but have wanted to for a long time is to pull a page from Khadaji's handbook.

Step 1: Find secure facility that has something you want.
Step 2: Purposefully set off alarm, retreat.
Step 3: Wait for guards to investigate and find nothing.
Step 4: Let time pass, say 2-3 hours.
Step 5: Repeat steps 2-4. For several days.
Step 6: Walk in, ignore alarms, pick up whatever you are looking for and walk out before the guards, who are SICK OF THIS SHIT even bother to show up.

Granted, it wouldn't work for every type of run or against every kind of facility, but it can be damned effective!

Release a box full of Nimue's Salamenders.

Personally, I prefer going in detected and expected over going in undetected. But that's just me.

I do think part of Infiltration is thinking "If I was director of security, where would I put the watcher spirits?" - and that's why you might have a clue which spots to avoid. Obviously, your dice roll result says something about how well you guessed.

And if not Infiltratrion, then Knowledge: Magical Security Tactics.

OK, since I wasn't part of the discussion, can someone enlighten me. Because Street Magic says that meatspace objects are insubstantial but opaque on the astral plane.

This is True... What is the actual issue you need enlightenment with?

The impression I received was that some think it's impossible to hide from astrals. I wanted to make sure that was false.

I'm not arguing yet that it's possible to stealth past magic security, but I wanted to make sure the baseline limit does exist.

Here's another one...physical, non-organic objects block/opaque out auras by fluff. Clothes are, by definition, non-organic unless your perhaps wearing a recent bearskin. So, assuming your not running around naked, shouldn't spirits just see a pile of opaque stuff when you go to ground? And when you move, just a moving opaque object, meta shaped - especially if your latexed/nano'd over mask wise and wearing gloves? At what point does an aura break through? Someone earlier said a cardboard box would do it...if thats true, wouldn't a quarter inch of kevlar do the same? A

And if you go to ground in tall grass, does the aura from the grass cover your aura, and your opaqued out body form?

And not possessing spy games, what is a mage sight drop?

Oh, and if your essence gets lower, wouldn't that theoretically decrease your aura? We know it inherently decreases your interaction with the Astral (mages losing their magic etc.)

Do cyberzombies even show up on Astral as an aura?

Questions, questions for having the low tech beat the "high tech" of shadowrun. Because if you aren't looking to strip the advantages away from the haves and render them pointless, you aren't being a good terrorist/shadowrunner.

It's unclear. The wording on the FAQ can be interpreted to say "You cannot use Infiltration against astral observers unless you, yourself, are perceiving astrally." However, it also stats that it can be done, but is difficult. Each side of the argument clings to the interpretation they prefer.

My interpretation is that Infiltration vs Astral Observers can work, but the observer gets substantial bonuses to his assensing test, while the Infiltrator loses benefit of his toys.

Aha, and then you notice that the best option is having them patrol an area, and with how little the limitations of the physical word apply to the astral, you have absolutely no idea where in the area the spirit might be at any given moment, mph?


Far as I understand, your aura extends past your clothes. Like, a couple of inches from your body.

Yes. Basically, that's the most obvious method of actually hiding from an astral observer.

Eye drops that let mundanes see astral bodies.

Nothing I remember on that affecting the assensing tests against you...

Yes, but it's twisted, unnatural and painful to look at.

Misdirection has to be the answer to the op's question. Spirits, especially watchers, could be manipulated fairly easily. But what about paying a mage to have a (possibly bound) spirit use the concealment critter power to conceal on the astral?

That's right. I went there.

What about Tempo?