There are several threads on this, but the short answer is yes, active spells (and auras in general) are auto-spots for Astral Perception (inc. all spirits). They're 'Obvious'. There are some significant ways this isn't true (you can hide your aura among/'behind' other auras, in bright ambient mana, behind astral-opaque shadows, etc.), but that's the broad sense.

Perception is just that. The ability to perceive, to notice something odd. In the above case two things were odd, an AR and a Sniper rifle in a club with a force 5 invisibility spell on them.

Now I may be doing it wrong, but since the spell says the Aura is visible to astral perception (SR4A 209) and it says that it doesn't do jack all against anyone with a camera (a guy in a booth watching the video feeds of the club floor), you had, from a realism perspective, other ways you could have been identified. An aura with a force 5 spell on it is going to stand out to anyone who can perceive and who is looking at the entrance.

Now, it could well be that everyone is too involved in the show to look at the entrance. It could well be that there's a clear path to wherever you want to go and your infiltration roll led you down that path. But the impression I'm getting through these sessions is that the GM isn't rolling for the opposition and isn't always making the players roll (which really lets you save up edge for when you need it). The more the players roll dice, the more edge gets burned on little things. The more the opposition rolls dice, the more they react and participate in the world.

As far as I can see from what I'm reading the people in the club are background. The people in the buildings are background. Most people in the city could be made of cardboard for all the effect they have on the world.

And if you want to play that way, you can. There's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't have to be that way.

I'm re-reading from first principles, and possibly spotted something I've missed before.

If someone is asked to make a Success Test (unopposed) and they roll 5 hits, does that mean they are counted as rolling 4 _net_ hits, because the threshold to succeed at all was 1?

That's correct. In the Using First Aid section of the rules, where it gives the rule as a First Aid + Logic (2) test, it gives an example of someone rolling three hits, one over the threshold, and healing a single box of damage.

I think from a lot of people's perspective you are actually not missing anything...

What I tend to do is this:
As soon as someone uses Infiltration, the other guys have to roll, because he is no longer obvious, and I liberally allow the use of Infiltration.

Now, there are a list of modifiers for perception, and some of them apply to astral perception, too: For instance, if something is obvious, the perceiver gets +3 dice. A sensible rule would be to base it on force, though: +Force dice. In a crowded club a single aura (without a spell) isn't obvious, so no dice. However, the astral aura of a spell is obvious, so the perceiver gets bonuses. Likewise, any active focus, etc. Even with just the +3 rule that can quickly add up.

I generally like to play it so that mages with sustained spells have a really hard time sneaking past even basic magic security. This is good, because mages rock out as they are, and if they have all their spells on all the time, this just gets worse. (My group's mage has 4-5 sustained spells by now - two foci and two to three from spirits. That just gets ridiculous, so as of now I'm not pulling punches...)

Sure, but that's where the threshold is explicitly stated. If, for example, a mage casts a spell rolling Magic + Spellcasting and rolls 4 hits, does that mean they have 3 net hits because the threshold to succeed at all was 1?

Also, there seems to be some confusion about firing at drones. SR4A 170 says that drones roll Pilot+Handling as their defense roll while autonomous, but 246 says they roll Response. Plus, there seem to be no rules for melee combat against vehicles - have they just decided that kicking a car doesn't have any effect? (Since kicking a wall may have a chance of having some effect this seems unlikely..)

Yea, it's all a matter of the circumstances. An establishment catering to the shadows and the rest of the worlds underbelly will likely only have a scanner to keep things civil and keep their establishment from being destroyed. If you got caught (and really you would have, I'll get to that later) the first thing that would happen is one of the bouncers would grab you. If you fight back then the grapple and hold moves come out or the stun batons if you seem relatively tough. If you evade them grabbing you and make a run for it then they'll be drawing their tasers or guns loaded with stick-n-shock or, if a decent place, the bartender pulls his Ares Screech from behind the bar and they yell at you to stop or they'll shoot. If you still keep going (or draw your weapon) then you'll be getting hit from all sides with shots that ignore half your impact armor (or, in the case of the Screech, all your armor.. how's that Willpower?) as you can bet the two door bouncers aren't the only security in a club like that.

Now, how likely were you to actually get caught? Extremely - if they're willing to go through the trouble to install a MAD scanner then that and the bouncers won't be the sum total of their security measures. Force 5 Invisibility (which means, at most, a threshold of 5) might be more than the bouncers can resist but even a seedy place would have a camera on the front door and you'd show up clear as day on that. But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say you meant "Improved Invisibility"... anyplace serious enough about security to get a MAD scanner is also going to have ultrasound or someone who can assense on the door as well or possibly even a mana barrier or some other magic identifying method. After all, why bother keeping out people who can draw a gun just to let in the guy who can destroy the entire building with his mind? (personally if I was going to run a club meant to be a secure place for shady dealings I'd get someone to drop a high level background count on it, but that's just me).

Of course, most places wouldn't bother with full scanners unless they've had a problem with it in the past since, even in the 6th world, the vast majority of the population still lead normal civilized lives. Your average wage mage probably won't know a combat spell or, if they did, wouldn't think about using it and you average mundane isn't packing heat and any cyber they have is purely medical. Popular clubs will have bouncers to check ID's and keep out the obvious disruptive elements and maybe have a small hand-held MAD scanner (like the wands they use today) and a GloWand.

Yerameyahu, that's drones in melee, but what about vehicles?

Ah, I misread you. Your paragraph started out about drones (which are vehicles). Presumably, a *driven* vehicles gets Reaction + skill +/- Handling, because that's how Melee works in general. You're right that it doesn't really list it… it very rarely comes up, unless it's anthroforms.

Resisted tests are treated as opposed tests, and therefore do not use thresholds. Other spells are wonky. Heal, for instance, appears to have a Threshold of zero (since you heal boxes of damage equal to the net hits). Detection spells have results that start out with 1, or 1-2, net hits - except that meeting the threshold is supposed to be a success. So either detection spells have a threshold of 0, or they messed up and should have said "Thresholds" instead of "Net Hits" on the detection spell tables.

After re-reading I'm going to alter my post some...

Not necessarily - just because, astrally, non-living things are mere shadows of their physical form doesn't mean they're translucent. Though if you can't see what you're hiding from because it's on the astral I'd probably tack on a -6 penalty and if you have a sustained spell on you a penalty equal to the spells force.
In my opinion Invisibility spells should only apply to the physical plane but, technically, any spell you can cast on the physical plane can also be cast on the astral plane so, while it seems counter-intuitive, it's allowable to cast invisibility on the astral and somehow the spell will hide you and itself. Now I wouldn't bother going casting Improved Invisibility in the astral - since there's no "light" per se in the astral I'd argue it doesn't do anything. The better alternative is Concealment - no resist just a straight perception (or assense if astral) with a threshold equal to the spirits force.
Then you didn't read it before taking it. It doesn't hide you astrally, it just makes your aura harder to read and if you cast a spell the signature it leaves behind fades faster. You still have a healthy astral glow for anyone looking
Chameleon suit with thermal damping and the Stealth adept power will get you past most mundane guards. If they have ultrasound (assuming you could find out) then you'd need a silence spell. Levitate will get you past pressure sensors...etc...etc. Or you could go with the near "insta-win" of casters the world over: Concealment - you may trip sensors and break wards all over the place, but everything would have to pass a perception test to see you - stack infiltration, chameleon, silence, and levitate and you'd be neigh undetectable
Depends on the group... "awakened" doesn't automatically mean "can assense" - Adepts and Mystic Adepts have to take the Astral Perception power to do so.
Nope - chameleon suit doesn't do squat on the astral... but then most places aren't going to have spirits as guards. More likely, a high level facility will have some awakened security guards monitoring a Mage Sight Security System - lower level facilities will have wards. There are other options, check out magetech in Arsenal

Note about ultrasound sight : one effecttive solution is to have the sonic equivalent of a radar detector - a simple mike deisgned to be very sensitive to the ultrasound range used in the detectors. It will alert you when you're pinged with ultrasounds before they're strong enough to return your presence to the user. you can't tell where you're pinged from (though several linked sensors may get enough to give you a general direction) and it might be tripped by a bat passing around, but it's an effective way to know when you're about to be spotted/

Ultrasounds sights has the drawback common to each and every active sensors (including a flashlight in the dark) : they can be detected before they allow you to detect.

The sensor you describe is called an ultrasound sensor (passive mode).

Things that really mess with astral stealth are mana-tech, like the glow-rod you mentioned. Glow-moss on the entrance is another option. The trouble with that is: He specifically picked a guy to take the blame for him, because he already counted on raising an alarm from the MAD scanners. Another alarm is just another bit of blame shifted. And so I disagree with him being found easily: The roll still stands, and 9 successes are hard to beat for any perception roll. If the place uses ultrasound they just don't get DP penalties for stealth gear or invis.

It depends if infiltration is possible at all. If you're in the middle of an empty room, you simply cannot roll infiltration. If using ultrasound creates the equivalent situation, that's it. I'm not saying that's the situation in the example.

Exactly, by the example my assumption was that the infiltration roll was to get by without making any noise (since he wasn't stealthed or silenced and it's unlikely the bouncers failed the resistance test). With 9 hits no one would be the wiser but it wouldn't do anything for a camera with ultrasound watching the door unless he also declared he was taking some specific action to break line of sight with the camera or the action he described taking would have done so.

I will say that was a good use of teamwork

All that aside I am kind of curious to know why they needed to sneak an AR and Sniper Rifle into a club.

In case the Drinks were in some way offensive?

Because the characters were very narrowly specialized and they had no skill in close combat and very little in the way of concealable firepower in case things went sour inside. And shadowrun's rules make shooting a perfectly viable alternative in a brawl - according the the shootign rules, you can fire a scoped sniper riffle a someone trying to cave in your skull with his fists without penalties...

Actually the guy with the gun gets -3 (see Attacker in Melee in the ranged rules section)... though he gets -3 regardless of weapon... from hold-out pistol to assault cannon... the silly is that a laser sight will reduce the penalty by 1 and a smartlink will reduce it by 2 (at least they don't stack).

That's quite realistic, actually. The Barrett sniper rifle is a nimble weapon well suited to close combat and acrobatic characters. Have none of you heathens seen Gurren Lagann!?

and due to a single attribute being the measure for all body movement, in the SR world, all world class snipers have the same physical flexibility as world class gymnasts who have the same fine motor control as the sniper. Really though, I'm not sure an anime series is a good measure of what is or isn't "realistic"

Don't forget the +2 Dicepool bonus for Point Blank from Arsenal.


I have plenty of cosplay pictures of Yoko. I go to A-Kon and Animefest in the D/FW area and Yoko is a favorite cosplay. I find it creepy the character is supposed to be 16 though...

It was our first session, and this was the meet with the Johnson. None of us knew what to expect, so we decided to go in cannoned up in case it all went pear shaped for some reason.

Which was stupid, of course, but unfamiliarity with the rules (both ours and the GMs) meant that we winged it, and that was the result. As an aside, it was Improved Invisibility, since we'd already worked out the normal Invis was useless against a simple webcam, being mana and not physical.