In a run i did i had the team break into an apartment and "convince" a guy not to testify against a mob bosses grandson. Knowing the team and figuring on everyone having improved invisiblity i had a thought. If i give the swat team mage that is helping to guard the guy trid phantasim i can make the player characters visible!!! Trid phantasim is awsome i simply had the mage cast it and make an illusion of those characters standing, walking, or running where they were, now this brings me to my first question. Since both spells affect the same part of the brain and would contradict each other in that situation how do you determine wich one wins? When I did the trid thing the character ducked behind a door to get full cover modifiers. Now herein lies the problem with this. This was an average sized door and even though this guy was a dwarf he would still take up a good bit of the width of the door. Think about it, if you were standing in front of a door while someone in shotting at it you would have a pretty damn high probability of getting hit espically if the attacker was using an assault rifle like these swat guys were.

My personal thoughts on these situations is as follows

For conflicting spells use a force test
For the door thing or similar situations use supressing fire rules but allow for some damage stageup.

Any suggestions? or better ideas?

Wow, interesting situation.
For the spells in conflict, I'd keep it simple and just say that imp invis makes the actual runners invisible, but has no effect on the illusory runners. The thing that gets me here is, the mage has to maintain an illusion of every move the runners make, the instant they do it for the other SWAT members to hit them, so maybe an easy solution (that hopefully preserves some semblance of game balance) would be to decrease the +8 blind fire TN by the number of successes on the spell, or by the force of the spell, or by the force + the number of successes, or whatever you feel is appropriate.
That way it is certainly capable of negating the imp invis, but at least has some die rolling in there, and it not a completely fool-proof workaround.

For firing through the door, maybe reduce the +8 blind fire modifier, since where else could he be? There should still be some penalty though, since you don't know if he's smashed against the wall, or near the other edge of the door about to peer around, standing, or squatting. The whole idea of staging the damage up is hitting in the right place, and this doesn't really solve that problem much.
I'd go for surpressive fire over a 1m spread. That should still be pretty deadly, shouldn't it?
Remember, the door gives extra armor.

Quick question, how is the Mage seeing them in the first place?

I'm assuming astrally.

No good, invis and improved invis duck astral. once the spell is dropped, you see the effects, but not during.

Remember, it's not true invis, it's the Jedi mind trick, the SEP generator, the Not my department syndrome. everyone sees the person, their brain just ignores them, that's why it takes improved invis to fool cameras. Better bet would have been a ward then a dispel of some type.

Astral perception

SR core book, pg 195
Improved Invisibility:
This spell makes the subject invisible to normal vision. The subject is completely tangible and detectable by the other senses. Their aura is still visible to astral perception.

Again, the support mage can't see them. Might I suggest some flash bangs and tear gas? such things can easily blow concentration.

Also, an ultrasound equipped drone comes in handy as well.

I will, but I was under the impression that regardless of your vision, your brain tells you that it isn't there. Otherwise the spell is absolutely useless in an extraction sense.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation, but I thought the mage was astrally percieving, and can therefore detect the invisible runners. He uses the illusion spell to create the illusion of a roughly humanoid shape (since he's going after the aura, afterall) directly on top of the true position of the runners. All of the SWAT members see the illusion, and shoot it. I thought this was obvious. No?

that is the situation i hoped i made it clear enough

I didn't know astral got around invis in Canon. It won't in my games, but good to know for other games.

Moon hawk has good ideas about how to work it. I would have each success negate one +1 of the +8 blindfire modifier on a given target. It also seems that he ought to be made to split his sucesses amongst the number of targets he is trying to mark. So if he gets 8 sucesses he can make the illusion very closly match one guy (negating the entire visibility penalty), or he can pretty well match two (leaving each at +4). Of course he can at will switch from emphasizing one target to emphazizing another, but changing the illusion around like this ought to be taking up all his actions while he is doing it.

Don't really need trid-phantasm for this either, regular would work for living observers, and entertainment would do the job just as well as phantasm for far less drain (does not matter that the illusion is obvious).

The good part about using phantasm is that you could have the illusions look like enemies of the team (your people know what the illusion is going to be), and try to trick them into shooting each other.

Let's break it down. for starters let's just look at the two spells and how they interact. The guys are invisible and the are going to stay that way as long as the spell persists.

The mage can see their auras from astral space so he knows something living is there. If he knows the people and recognize the auras he could project the illusion of what he remembers them to look like but the truth is, he cannot see their physical bodies.

He could just place big floating red "X"'s where they are. Let's look at how the illusion itself will behave.

1) The mage really has no way knowing how the people are currently dressed or what gear they have on them, he's ad-libbing at this stage.

2) If the mage is "exposing" multiple people and if they all start moving, I doubt he will be able to perfectly mimic the motions of several individuals.

Technically possible to pull this off, practically impossible. The mage would need some truly incredible rolls to keep up with several people moving at once.

Sunday

Yeah, i don't think it would make any difference game mechanics wise, but if you had a GM who house ruled detailed illusions were more difficult, the mage in question could just put up big floating diamonds or something centered on the center mass of the target and give SWAT nice glowy, bouncy targets.

Sunday_Gamer's interpretation matches mine, and he describes it well. A Floating Red-X that the magician attempts to keep centered on the moving targets will help the shooters tremendously.

I only allow shooting an unseen target with the +8 penalty IF the shooter has an idea of where the target is. By sound, by footprints, by observing a trapdoor mysteriously open, or even by lucky hunch (player indicates a one-meter wide line across the playing mat and I know the target is within it).

The floating red X-s, at a minimum, allow all the shooters to have enough of an idea where the targets are to make their shots at +8, but IMNSHO the magician should be able to lower the TNs by more than that. Two ideas come to mind: (1) Remove vision penalties completely, but give targets a -2 on their dodge test (after all, they see the guns swinging in their direction). Or (2) give the Magician an Intelligence(2+number of Xs) test to keep the X's centered, and each success reduces the +8 penalty by 2.

Now, for comments on the rules:
A) Yes, the astrally perceiving magician clearly sees the auras of the invisible people AND the glowing form of the sustained spells. An astrally perceiving magician is unlikely to know where the character is behind the door.

B) An astrally projecting magician cannot cast and sustain a Trid Phantasm (a physical spell) at all, and cannot cast a Phantasm that would be visible to mundane viewers.

C) It gets really hard for one magician to cast and sustain even 3 invisibility spells without sustaining foci. Remember the +2 TN for successes AND drain for each sustained spell. If they are high-force sustaining foci, remember focus addiction.

D) Invisibility is resisted by viewers. They roll Intelligence(Force) and if they equal or exceed the caster's successes on that subject then they pierce the illusion. The magician sustaining 3 spells gets few successes on the last target, and may be using lower Force.

Now, for comments on the scenario:
1) SWAT doesn't bodyguard witnesses as far as I know.

2) SWAT will have ultrasound sights on their guns and ultrasound vision or goggles, and can flip off the lights completely, giving them better target numbers than the intruders and freeing the magician to do other things.

3) The SWAT magician can dispell spells, perhaps starting with the one sustained by the PC magician on himself. Or cast manabolt / barrier / stunball depending upon the size of the room.

4) A materialized spirit can have great luck fighting the PC magician, depending upon how big the magician's penalties are for sustaining spells.

"An astrally projecting magician cannot cast and sustain a Trid Phantasm (a physical spell) at all, and cannot cast a Phantasm that would be visible to mundane viewers."

I said perceiving not projecting.

"1) SWAT doesn't bodyguard witnesses as far as I know."

maybe not swat but definately guys with assault rifles they coud even be actual well trained apes that is all beside the point.

"A) Yes, the astrally perceiving magician clearly sees the auras of the invisible people AND the glowing form of the sustained spells. An astrally perceiving magician is unlikely to know where the character is behind the door."

he dosent have to my point is that if the guy is standing directly behind a door weather a mage is sustaining a spell or not is really likely to get hit if the guy on the other side of the door with an assault rifle goes full auto on the door itself which is what the PC was doing. Not off tot he side or evening standing sideways he was standing directly behind a door and expecting the full +8 full cover modifiers

I'm just curious, how were they all under Imp Invis spells? That's one spell per person, and the +2 sustaining modifier per spell adds up pretty quickly.

It should be noted that I once helped my friends shoot down an invisible target by materializing on top of the target and shouting at my friends in the physical world to shoot me. It worked.

Kong

And btw, seeing someone under invisibility from their astral aura would not tell you a darn thing about what they are carrying or wearing. I can see your aura, your aura contains none of that information. Your guns, like yourself, are covered by a spell and astrally, you'd see the spell. I would not let you see their gear while they were invisible, not unless you had a way to break the invis.

Sunday

Well there's a catch with that. Most times mages take improved invisibility, which is a physical spell and does not work on the astral what so ever. If they took normal invisibility they still show up to technological devices, so theres no win-win there.

It's not an aura you're seeing. It's their presence. Material items appear on the astral plane just like they do in the material world -- they just don't have that glow living or magical things have. That's why you can't use astral perception to see through a wall.

That's an interpritation. The book calls it a one-way mirror. Meaning your actually seeing the physical plane.

<just rubs his temples>

Even a character who is completely blind on the physical plane sees exactly the same thing as any other magician does when they're using astral perception. You're not seeing both worlds at the same time -- you're seeing it from either one perspective (astral) or the other (physical), which is why you can only cast spells on one side or the other at a time.

On the astral plane -- whether you're dual-natured and perceiving or whether you're projecting -- you still see things on the physical plane. They just do not glow or shimmer or have an aura of their own. Auras are not the definition of the astral plane, they're just a feature of the astral plane.

Improved Invisibility and Invisibility only affect what you physically see on the physical plane. If you're using astral perception and/or otherwise looking around from the astral perspective, you're going to see the target, complete with the spell's aura and the dull, lifeless rags they have on. The spell does nothing to actually make anything invisible. Never has, never will. It only affects the physical vision of the target.

Astral perception gets around it 100%, and you're not just seeing a beam of aural light floating around. Call it an interpretation if you like, but it's exactly what the text is saying. Spirits and astrally projecting mages -- complete with a total lack of physical vision -- still see walls, tables, clothing, and everything else. Just like an astrally perceiving mage does. Invisibility doesn't change that in the slightest.

What Zazen said

Cept, one's not actually seeing the Astral Plane... it's only described in terms of vision because all us mundanes just don't understand what having a psychic sense is really like. Vision is just the best metaphor for what they experience.

I agree that invisibilty, improved or not, would not affect you on the astral, and that percieving would let you see what gear the person caried.

On a related thing though, is there any way - spell, metamagic, whatever - to go astrally invisible? And no, I don't mean masking - that just makes you look mundane IRC.

A lot of you guys are just arguing the scenario, well guess what he is the GM and if he says SWAT does BG work then so be it. Here is how it would break down IMO...
The astrally percieving mage can see the invisible people, as the spell does not hide auras, and as per the rules can make an astral perception roll(4) to see through the spell, so he can make them out on the mundy plane as well. Next off the use of the phantasm, is sweet, great idea. So he could mark the targets with his phantasm as needed. However, for game balance you could say that there might be some "lag" to his spell. The two options would be to use net successes or force as a gauge for the offset to the +8 penalty. Here in lies some potential trouble, if you use the successes, then that changes depending on each person's resistance roll versus the spell. I say that because I always assume in the middle of action that People resist any spells that effect them, so the friendlies would still need to resist the phantasm if you go with that like I do. Also, one of the few weaknesses of the sweetness that is SR 3 is the lack of effect Force has on spells, so I always lean towards applying force for other effects. I would say reduce the TN penalty down from 8 by the force of the spell.

Also tell Damien K I said hey, and never ever ever deal with a dragon.

"No, we challenge " Some Dumbass challenging a F10 spirit on behalf of his whole team.