So suppose you're a young, mean, lean corporation. You can't afford to have a dozen mages loafing about, distracting the shock troopers with their college-boy long hair. So you outsource.

The magical security company makes you put up magical discharge detectors (they look like smoke detectors, but they've got glowmoss and a light sensor inside). If magic is detected, an alarm goes off. If it's a confirmed alarm, they send in a few astrally projecting mages with spirits capable of Materializing to do some Counterspelling. (They tend to send in a force strong enough to ensure that the mages - their metahuman capital - aren't damaged. Their main job is to shut down mages, so that mundane security can do its job.)

This magical outsourcing company doesn't respond to nonmagical attacks. They could, if you wanted to pay for it, but they're really expensive, so you normally only call them if magically attacked or in total disaster situations.

Normal threats occur far more often, so you've got mundane security to handle that. It's better to keep that in-house. But since magical threats are too rare to keep a mage on site all the time, while being too extreme not to get insurance, such an outsourcing scheme is a good solution for your company.



In a big corporation, change "outsourcing" to "refer to the Magical Security Division", with mundane security hating MSD's guts for being elitist pricks who just watch from the astral while they do the dirty work. Or seeing them as the magical cavalry which will hopefully arrive in time on the rare occasion a powerful mage attacks.



In-game consequences: a mage needs to be careful about the Force level he uses; the higher, the bigger chance of setting off the mana-sensors. On the other hand, you get a whole new level of B&E in trying to disable these sensors, which is best done without magic!
You don't meet as many corp mages; they prefer to hang back and watch safely from the astral while their spirits with Magical Guard do the dirty work. On the other hand, mundane PCs aren't subjected to quite so much hostile magic.

Yeah, I like it. Private fire dept. for magic, reverse DocWagon for buildings. Subtle, no TPK, etc.

I got it from the first sentence of your reply post... Regardless of how you follow it up, it implies that such a situation is "Screwing the Mage" when in fact it is setting a sitatuion that plausibly exists in the game world.

You mean, regardless of context and the completion of the thought? I thought I was pretty clear (to the point of specifically saying "now and then"), and that was at least the second time I'd said it, after all. Ah well, I'm sorry I confused you; no doubt we're on the same page now, though. Just in case: the problem is that PC-mages have a power disparity with PC-others, and neither always, nor just sometimes, intentionally 'challenging' the mage addresses that.

That would be indeed interesting



1mio / 1% => 10 000 people average with a magic attrite of 1+ and of all magic classes.

1) Please remove all people too young and too old (if you use the normal adult/child/workforce relation that would be around 50%) => 5000adult and work capable magic people (16-70) with magic 1+ of all classes

2) Please remove all people who has only spiric/spell knack (the advantage). I assume that they are only a "minor" force, lets remove 10% => 4500 magic people

3) Please remove all of them who has only magic 1 or 2 (with magic 1 or 2 you will have problems even doing basic magic security jobs like wards and patroulling. Normally these people do not have a higher skill. However I assume that magic ressources are way better trained/funded/supervised since they are valuable ressources and not simple wage slaves. Lets stay with the 10% (and thats extremly generous, it would mean a way higher learning ability then any other profession group)) => 4050 work capable magic people with magic 3+ and skill 2+

4) Please remove adepts. Now the speculation begins. Lets make it 50% full mages with a magic 3+ and skill 2+ => around 2000 mages with magic 3+ and skill 2+

5) Please remove people who are way too nuts / disabled / socially challenged to work for a corporation even in the case of magicians, lets say 10% => around 1800 mages with magic 3+ and skill 2+

6) I assume that every cabable mage will have a ward/astral patrol/corp spirit summoning/binding contract, perhaps on a weekly roation, so whatever you are doing as a mage, you will always have ward duties to do, so almost all mages working for an organisation can be counted for "Security" - otherwise you can further reduce the number by 50% since not every mage will be a good security mage (combat capable) and with the correct abilities and spells.

Now we have around 1800 full mages, sane and in working condition in a major city who are quite skilled (not in a SR player sense but in a NPC sense (3= professional worker).

7) Lets assume, that 2/3 are working for an organisation (corp, state, mob) and are not independent >= 1200 mages

Now, we need 24/7 shift service, after all, criminals don´t have normal working hours. Of course mages will be on constant emergency standby service, lets assume 1/3 will be "off duty" => 800 mages [(usually it would be 2/3, but lets be generous for the cyberpunk setting)]

9) Please remove the mages on vacation/professional development/spirit binding/ward creation/ (which should not be interrupted) or in the hospital (= completely out of the picture except in the case of a major disaster for the company). Normally its 1/3 of your workfoce, around 260 mages less.

=> 540 mages in a major city which are currently working for a major organisation like the corps, the state or the mob.

10) Lets assume that the Big 10 have 500 of them (and only 40 for the rest[extremely unrealistic]) => 50 per Big 10 available and on duty which are professionally trained. [Usually you have the Big 10, the state, several A and AA security services, independent organizations, freelancer, the mob etc. Normally you would divide it by 100, not by 10.]

However these numbers are extremly generous normally you have onlye 1/3 to 1/2 of your workforce available during shift duty, and normally only a way smaller part are profssionally trained etc. Compared to the simple amount of space they need to protect, I assume that it´s safe to say that magic security is quite care - even with numbers which heavily favor a high rate of corporate mages. If you want real combat capable security mages, well then halve the numbers again.

If you have a more "realistic" view: a corp can only have half a dozen full security mages (combat cabable) on active duty with perhaps another dozen on emergency standby with multiple response times) for an entire major city for all their building/VIPs etc. [if you completely take "realistic" numbers from actual working conditions this number even shrinkgs to 1-3]



Thats indeed an idea - however the probelm is, that some of this methods reduce essence- which reduces magic of course. Which means, some of the methods will not be used for low magic user, only if you need to restore the Arnold Schwarzenegger / Albert Einstein of Spellcasters. Then of course, even Deltaware is plausible. I belive that even the "subprime" casters will only make a small part of the entire magic force of an organisatiion. After all, it´s not cost effective to boost a magic 1 skill 1 caster - even under your control he still cannot do basic effective magic.

It's like the Shadowrun magic version of the Drake Equation: it says more about the person assigning the values than it does about any other aspect of reality.

Why?

Seriously why does anyone bring up the numbers except as a contrived reason for why a mage should or should not be there. Who the hell actually builds an adventure and designs it not based on the team and what would make a good adventure for them, but instead by making sure it follows statistical models. You know why there might be magical security on every place the runners go after? Because it will make it a better adventure for everyone involved including the mage. If people need a better in world explanation just go with since the team has a mage and the people who hire you are people who think a mage is needed or would come in handy generally because there is some kind of magical security.

double post

@Ascalaphus

What the hell are "normal" threads in your mind?
If I get robed once a week, my company goes bankroubt.


@apple
And now lets see how many mages you need to kill shadowrunning in the whole city...
Around 40.
6 mages alone dropping in astral will kick the crap out of any mundane group. If they have a mage with them, he will be kicked too.
Consider the things they do not need to worry about...
Oh, I have unmasked spells quickend to my aura... Well, I do not give a fuck.

Skills and attribute raiting of mages is a big question. They used to have 6 one edition early. So those guys actually need to be still around.
The next question is, what is a normal raiting for magic?
Remember Karma is somehow a metagame currency which does not really apply to NPCs. (Because Karma makes it as hard to know a bit about soccer than to know about quatum physics....)
Even more obvious with metas...
If you have troll, he would need a lot of Karma to raise strength from 5-8, a human could actually go from 1 to 6 for that kind of karma. (So trolls with strength 8 would be as common as humans with strength 6...)

So actually we do not know. It could be as easy to have magic 8 as it is to have guns 3 or to get your highschool diploma...

@apple

Interesting math, and very logically thought out. Now apply that same logic to the criminal and shadowrunner community, and then tell your PC that he can't bring a magic 5 or 6 mage to the table as he is 1 in a million. Then tell the guy who wants to play an adept that magic users are extremely rare, and with the other guy playing the mage he should stick to being a mundane. No, I thought not ...

Given that magic is still the best counter to magic, and that only a certain percentage of the shadowrunner community are awakened, it follows that magically active teams would not be wasted on magic-lite targets. Ergo, in a metagamey way magic heavy teams would tend to be selected for runs against corps with magical security.

Also, given your assertion that Magic is a rare and valuable resource, certainly in the world of SINners there will be blanket testing sometime after puberty, so that supposition about people never realizing their magical potential will be a lot less than it used to be. As for the low Magic score average, I imagine corps would invest in training for their mages, and once basic skills are learned training up their Magic attribute would be high priority.

According to SR canon, PCs straight out of CharGen have risen above wannabee status and are starting to be considered serious pros. People who like the epic-style games may disagree, but YMMV. All the same, from a game balance perspective if you are going to low-ball corp magical security, then it follows you should limit starting PCs to a low Magic rating as well, otherwise you will set off all these "Mages are soo overpowered!" whingers.

As a GM, if my PCs have any magic users (which they almost invariably do), I will tend to use magical defences in the runs where it is game-logically feasible for me to do so. And by my math, most reasonable sized Corps will have some kind of magical defences, and as Ascalaphus pointed out smaller corps can also outsource.

Every normal *player* group is statistically an exception to the rule. This is nothing new. However, the general statistics of NPCs do not apply to player groups. So yes, what is statistically true for large groups for NPCs is of no intereset for player groups. Or you you enforce and 53/47 gender ratio based on the latest census of your country? Of course not, and neither do I

and Shinobi Killfist: The main question/topic where I replied was if magic security is rare / not rare. I did not comment on runner jobs, potential player opposition etc. That is for the GM to decide.



Yes, and as you can see I have taken the 1% as people who are already aware of their magic attribute. If I would have followed the logic conclusion of Street Magic (" a fraction" ) then you can again divide the numbers of mages in a city by 10 or 100.



I quote myself:

Irion


Considering background count, different skill levels and of course an overboarding crime rate: no. Expect these 6 mages find a way to multiply themselves.



They are not. You can just open your basic SR4 book and check the possible skill valus there. Normally trained NPCs will have 3-4, highly trained will have 5-6 and superhumans will have 7+. Of course, if you are designing the averate Joe Corpmage you use other values then for General Ito Smith, currently the highest ranking Initiate in the UCAS Amry, Grade 8, Magic 10 and head of the Magic Corps of an entire country. But then again it is for the GM to decide which opposition the players face. Usually they start at Joe Corpmage and end up with Grerat Dragons, Immortal Elves and other funny things.

All I am saying is just that: magic security in the form of mages and spirits is expensive. With that it will be much more rare than mundane guards, cyberscanner or ICE in the Matrix.

SYL

I think you misunderstood my argument.

I said you need permanent security against normal threats (like robbery), because they're more common. If your company gets robbed once a week, you need security guards on-site all the time.

Magical assault is extremely rare. It's too expensive to have mages around all the time, so you need on-demand magical security.



The funny thing about a Magical Security Service (MSS) is that because of Astral Projection, combined with Guardian or Man spirits with Magical Guard and Materialization, it's actually very doable to run a magical security company that responds to alerts.

When you get a call, you send in two-three MSS mages in astral projection mode (they won't get hit by bullets, and they travel at 1000km/h), who then send spirits of Man or Guardian to Materialize and use Magical Guard to shut down all magic down there. Local mundane security then moves in to shoot the suddenly weakened invading mage in the face. If the mage tries to take the fight to the MSS mages on the astral, they outnumber him on the astral and fry him before he does it to them.

MSS is like insurance. You may never need it, but you pay a monthly premium just in case you do. And when you need them, they'll come.

Mundane security needs to be there all the time, as a deterrent, because mundane security threats are common in a dystopia, and because their response times aren't based on speed of thought, so they need to be nearby to begin with. (Of course, there are varying levels of mundane security too, but that's not the topic.)

Shinobi, are you saying you and your group don't care about the game world 'making sense'? If a (different) great dragon showed up on every run, I'd start to lost my immersion. Things have to be setting-reasonable, that's the whole point. I can just see it: "Man, we never had to deal with magic on a run before that mage joined our team… pretty suspicious."

That's the beauty of MagiSec On-Demand: you never ran into the Counterspell Cavalry until you started slinging spells. And it makes sense.

I think i will use the MSS concept in my games - it is way more realistic (= cost effective) than the on-site magican in most runs. This will only prove a problem for the shapeshifter adept.

It does make sense. Thank god.

Indeed it does.... Also the concept is expressed in Corporate Security (which I mentioned earlier) so is entirely canonical

The only thing that bothers me, is that there are too many mages in this calculation. That destroys the feeling.

There are only as many mages as the plot writer (GM) requires.... Now Sleeeeeeeep

"Why are there only Watchers here? No other Spirits?" "Ah, he were go, Security is by WAM, Inc." "With a name like that, you'd think they'd be..." "WAM stands for Weak-Ass Mages." "Oh."

I think the MSS idea makes sense.

Here's another one, small drones covered in shock frills with a glomoss/optical sensor package that lets it home in on a source of magic. Might be triggered by false alarms or try to chase down spirits and you would have to set them on patrol routes away from your wards, but they would be almost as cheap as a normal drone. And the fifth time your mage player tries to stunball everything from above and a C-D Dalmatian smacks into them repeatedly, they might start trying to think of a new strategy that keeps the rest of the team around to bail him out. And most corporations probably have air surveillance anyway and anti-magic mods can just be one package available to drones.

I think you can play with the %, but the idea is that it is plausible that a mage might be present (YMMV-but it is left to GM interpretation, also that 1% figure is an estimate from the 2050's IIRC). Granted not every facility/office building has such a need. Most have no magical defenses, but the facilities with something worth stealing are goinng to be magically protected (depending on the value).

I'd have to check the books, but I don't think that would work, thorya.

It might not strictly work by the book, but it makes sense. You have six patches of glomoss on a drone, one pointing along each direction of the three direction axes. With optical sensors, you can use differences in how brightly they glow (assuming that the brightness of the glomoss is related to the strength of the magic and the distance from the magic, which I've always assumed it was) to determine the direction of the source of magic and then stear towards it or locate it with other sensors. Of course, if glomoss just glows at the same intensity than it's shot or you have to use several patches of varying force to get a similar effectiveness. These would be for mages trying to use stealth or subterfuge.

I've had an idea I'd been toying around with for a while inspired by the new Nikita series and the way SR4 plays:

What would happen to the game if nuyen as a resource to manage was removed from play?

So money is still around but your table just doesn't care about tracking it. SR4 runs much better with limited time frames and set piece plot twists so the more important resources are time and gear selection (available at hand gear as opposed to stockpiled). The strengths of SR4 compared to earlier editions are the slick Contacts, Street Cred/Notoriety/Public Awareness, and Extended Test rules so why not focus on those.

Add to this the Unwired rules for Spoofing Lifestyle and hacking corporate Skillsoft Clusters and you are now looking at Street Sams/Mundanes who don't have to worry about paying for that new gear or training that skill -- they just need a bit of time to get it. Add another assumption that the hacker always has the Skillsoft Cluster available and any safehouses/lifestyle you may need until someone makes a Glitch/Critical Glitch while interacting with either.

So the only difference in versatility between the mage and the others is what gear is needed for a task and what gear you were able to bring. The main guys I can see being screwed by this are Technomancers so we'd need to fix them somehow.

Thoughts? (or should I open a new thread for this?)

Yeah, thorya, I'm not sure if the moss responds in a 'calibrated' manner. But, I'm also concerned about the feasibility of blindly ramming the mages with shock strips.

Cheops, I think that would work for a Nikita-style game, or a corp-team game, etc. It's very different from the normal 'economic' SR games, though.

*raises hand* I design adventures based on the setting, and my understanding of the setting is based on statistical models like this.

Despite that, I'm still basing the adventure on what will make a "good" adventure for my group! How can both these things be true? Because different groups have different ideas of what qualifies as "good." Our group is more tolerant of an adventure without magical opposition than they would be of an adventure with an unreasonable number of magicians without good reason.

That's just a quality of the people we play with, and if your group is more concerned about balance and challenge than they are about nit-picky population figures, then you should by all means continue writing adventures based on the things your group enjoys. But it would be fallacious to presume that everyone is getting the same stuff out of the game, which is why using terms like "good adventure" is less-than-useful: "good" isn't a meaningful term in this context.

Magic security is the CHEAPEST OFF ALL, while beeing THE MOST EFFECTIV. (Together with drones...)
Think of it like that: You have 14 mages on standby. Make it two teams a 6 mages +2 for healing.
They start there astral journey in a secure room. And I guess they have figuered out that a increase body spell is quite good for survivability.
(Since it is a physical spell, it stays with the body... So you do not have to care about wards because of it. (The only problem would be wards, because you need to get through them somehow. So I guess, it would work best if they could push through or are involved in building up the wards. At least 3 of the team.)
The point is, this team can be deployed and redeployed in a matter of seconds!
So even if you start simultanious attacks, one team can probably stop them, if you do not cooridnate to the second!
6 mages getting the drop on a group of runners (additional to "normal security") will end the fun in a matter of seconds.

This would be a very realistic game of shadowrun. It would be the high end of the black trenchcoat. The kind where a gun has been fired means: You are dead, you just do not know it, yet.

That doesn't say 'cheap'. It says that they have a good reaction time. You're talking about a large group of powerful, trained mages, in a dangerous job. Yes, they can maybe multitask a little better, but their time is still very valuable. They also have downtime, and so on.

Let's have a little story about statistics and RPGs first.

In Vampire the Masquerade, they said that it takes about 100,000 people to sustain a vampire's long-term needs without causing undue stir (due to abnormal anemia patterns and all that). It makes for a nice figure to calculate vampires-per-country. Except that a typical game is set in a single city, presumably in the neighbourhood of stable. With about 10-300 NPCs, if not a lot more (Chicago: 140), and 3-5 PCs.

So then you think of setting a game in your own town, which has what? about 150,000 people in it. That's room for 1.5 characters! And in general you'll want at least as many NPCs as PCs (or much more) if you want to play a political game.

This is the point where you realize that some setting writer really wasn't paying attention to reality when coming up with the figures, and it's time to change them if you want to have a good game without everything being about the Big Blood Crisis.

So please excuse me if I don't adhere to statistics too religiously.





Not cheap at all. Consider that you can only use powerful mages, because nothing a Magic 2 mage does is scary or effective enough. You need powerful mages, and you need to pay them more than the comfortable enchanting or research jobs. (Most people dedicated enough to get to Magic 4 woul do well as a researcher or enchanter too, and those are safer jobs.)

I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're expensive. It takes a lot of investment to get them that far, you're not going to risk them on anything mundane security can handle. They're too expensive to use for things they're not absolutely necessary for.

That only tells us that Vampire writers are dumb. But yes, it might ( ) be true about SR4 writers.

Wait, what part of that is cheap? There are probably fewer than 100 of these guys in a city the size of Seattle [depending on how you assign figures to the Mage Equation], and you're putting 14 of them in a secure room. How many facilities could possibly have this kind of magical support? How could it possibly be cost-effective?


Are you suggesting magical security would, in this example, only be deployed astrally? What would the general strategy be, for the magical support, then?


And I think that's an excellent point: if you and your players feel like the statistic would be better assigned some other value, or ignored completely as a factor altogether, there's no harm in that, either. Canon is a matter of convenience and commonality, and shouldn't ever be adhered to our of dogmatic concerns. [Unless the group's really into dogma, I guess?]


"And how often would I be shot at? Really. How often do you suppose I'd need to cast spells that would give me aneurysms? I see. Does your company have any openings in, say, janitorial magic? No, I understand there's a pay cut, thank you."

@Ascalaphus

Well, the point is how powerfull are mages in general. Looking at the difficulty written down in the 4. Edition and at example mages I guess the avarage is still 6.

You can never go after what is possible to pick at char gen. This does not work.
The problem is, that (espacially with BP-Gen and knowledge skills) I could generate myself as a 17-year old and run out of 400 BP.
(People whoe are better at this stuff could even do it for 12-year olds, I suppose)

This is actually an other "problem" or "characteristic" of shadowrun, depending on how you look at it. It encourages to build "experts". In a lot of games you may get the first few steos of a skill (0 to 1/6 of max-Level) for around 1/20 of the price of the full package (well if you also use stuff like see "Aptitude" it goes even higher).
In Shadowrun 0 to 6 is only 5.5 times 0 to 2. And the last point is just useless, because it is so much more expensive than the point before and and therefor can be ignored from a metagaming point of view.
So from a metagaming point of view there is not often a reason not to raise your skill to 6. Unless you just wanted the first point.
Doc Micheal has a good and calm job at a holiday resort.

And the mechanics of the game just play to this assumption. (If you look at the mali and the hits for certain results)


For what? Yeah, you would need to use those mean spirits from street magic. Thats a drawback....
Just take the object resistance to start with. Look at how many hit you need for first aid, and so on.
There are some expections from the rules, but not much.


The point is, I should not start any argument on statistics, if I PC fall out of it big time.
It this is the case, I should scrap it allthogether.

And Vampire espacially the third edition is one of the crapiest rules I have ever read. (Actually somebody ask me once what I think of the 3. and the 4. edition, and so I overread them. In the 4. Edition I could go more than 4 pages, without screaming in agony. Well, that was too mean. The 4. Edition is quite ok. The 3. Edition is nothing you can give anybody with an IQ over 70 and some attraction to powergaming...)
Probably my judgement is harsh, because I read those after shadowrun. (Where the rules are fucked up at some occasions, but generally streamlined and good)

@3278

Lets check it... If they have to but up the wards, lets say always three of them. If we give them magic 5 and willpower 4 they will have around 5 hits.

This means 5 hours every 5 weeks. So if I have 14 mages, I opperate on 11 at all times, I can build up and maintain around 30-60 Wards (force 5). (Spirits will push this limit further)
(Initiations and higher magic will push this limit even higher...)
(Not to mention what happens if I can co-contract with those mage who build up the wards in town. To just allow my guys pass through them)

With the "ward" problem out of the way, the number of facilities to "defend" is rather unlimited....1000 is easy to go.
Those 14 mages, can actually (with a warning system) protect the whole city...
(Yes, if all those are hit at the same time.... Yeah... But would the police force of New York be able to deal with it if every bank, high class shop etc. is robbed at the same time?)
Think of a SWAT teams, with the ability to teleport. (And teleport back as soon as injured. And add to that the possibility to even "heal" severed spines.)

I have no difficulty stipulating that this number of mages can provide this number of wards. Actually, I have no difficulty stipulating than any megacorporation will have enough magical assets to put a ward on every facility worth putting a ward on, 24/7.


This is the part I don't understand. Above, you're equating "ward" with "protect," that because these mages can ward these locations, those locations are defended. Could you explain how the presence of a ward is the same as protection? How would to ward be used, strategically, that provided such protection?


What does the team of astral magicians arrive with, that is equivalent in this metaphor to the SWAT team's guns? What does the astral team do when it arrives at a facility that's being penetrated? I'm just not clear on how this team is being used, is all.

I think they will sit in astral space, stunbolt everything that is astral and command their guardian spirit to provide counterspelling and other support for mundane security.

Wards are the main problem, not the solution.
Wards are the only thing in the game, which make a phyiscal mage better than an astral one.
The astral once can't follow through wards. Espacially bad is the situation if wards are build next to each other.
The astral mage would need to, worst case, breach both wards!
This takes at least 2 seconds!
2 Seconds is a lot of time. Depending on the building...

The strategic problem is to build up the wards in a way, so they do not provide a strategic "problem".


Make everbody fall asleep. In some cases permanently. NiL_FisK_Urd got to the point.

Yes, especially if they are rare, wanted by all and come in limited supply. Then they are of course cheap.



You have a world full of criminals and criminal activities, and you have dozen/hundreds/thousands of theoretical objects to protect. Yes, you can indeed travel around the world in 80 seconds. And of course, by the rate this MSS uses up spirit services they spend a lot of their time binding new ones. Of course, if in your game world the runner are the only runner/criminal/blackops/mob operation in a city, then of course MSS is almost perfect handling non-matrix intruders. Of course Astral Backup is standard procedure for many security sites/operations. That is not really the question, it´s indeed the only way to make magic security working against the background. However, as in reallife, all ressources are not endless and you always need to balance requests with operational needs. This is more or less the basic of every security system in SR - otherwise we are at the point of "Well, in my world, if I would design security, then there would be no crime".



No. It would not. It would be Utopia, living in a world, where the only criminal is the PC and where the entire Security of a city can be concentrated against the PC. The very moment where you add social unrest, mob operations, black ops by other corps, civil riots and all other aspects of criminal activities the idea of "6 mages are enough" simply crumbles.

SYL

No, both quotes are from Street Magic, SR4.

SYL

You have your magical team creating dozens of wards; presumably you're using them to solve some problem. What are those wards intended to do? Pretend I know very little about Shadowrun, if that helps.


Everyone who is astral, yes. But doesn't this leave everyone who is not astral, also not asleep?

@apple

If I can replace hundrets of officers, a fleet of helicopters and so on and so and so on with a couple of guys, it is cheap.

Even if I pay them 10k a month + company owned appartment/house + health benefits+ leonization (make it a family package)+ eventually cyberware+ magical equipment ++++ still it is dirt cheap.


No, but does the police call for swat if a few kids spray graffiti?


No, we did not talked about minor crimes. And you probably know that. And you know that everything I have written is 100% independent from any minor crimes.
The point is, that I am just using the most effective way in the book. And let me put it like that:
THERE IS NO DEFANCE AGAINST IT.
(Other than beeing stronger or beeing not seen at all)


Actually, not really. But thats not what they are actually thought out for. But spirit of man with mass influance "GO HOME", ends every riot nicely...
They are for stuff normal security can't handle.
Yes, MR. Force 12 free spirit won't hire them, because well there ain't much he can't handle...
And what do they cost? 2 or 3 Millions a year? So what? Divide that per 500-1000 "Protected building" and live with it...
And you can also let them bind a sprit and provide some cheap security on the side...
Thats adding to the security costs (in the end) about 6k a year per customer. For that kind of money, you can hardly put a ward on your building...
(Force 4 for 4 weeks (one mage) around 400 (And we are talking about magic+willpower=12 at least, better would be 14). Making it 5k a year.)
If I pay shadowrunners 20k for a week (per person) (and even then a lot of people are bitching about too less money)....

@3278
Wards are a wall on the astral->Your guys can't get to the intruders(or it is annoying)->PROBLEM.
Idea: Create wards that let your guys pass.
1. Solution: Create them yourself
2. Solution: Ask the guys creating them to let you pass.

So yes, those wards provide some sort of "security", but mostly against "lower" mostly sub-human threat levels. (Awakened critters etc.)


Spirit of man->Stunbolt->Asleep.
Guradian spirt->Punching ->Asleep
Beast spirit->Probably eaten-> Dead.

Wait a second: are you really saying that you can recplace your entire physical security with 6 MSS mages?



Did you actually read the rules for Mob Control and Mob Mood? Or the rules for permanent and/or mass versoins of spells in general? Because it does not function this way. Neither does the spell Mass Influence exist (except of you if you develop it ingame in your world).



Yes there is. Except of course if the GM does not want to have a defense against it and simply ignores everything which would contradict the statement, that security mages are not unstoppable.

SYL

There also a dozens of other corporations in town, each with half a dozen of valuable sites and thrice as much buildings, a thousands of other street for rioters to gather, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. If you're the head of security of a company and two buildings gets hit by separate black ops teams within the same two or three hours frame, the same night a riot, involving several magicians powerful enough to defeat not only the police but also the national guard, wander close to a third building while avoiding any other valuable site owned by another corporations that would sent its own magical security forces, you first call back the previous shift, then you call early the next shift, and then you call reinforcement from another town.

If a third black ops team show up, okay, start writing your letter of resignation.

... then you have always limited ressources. Mundan, matrix, magical. Simply saying "well, I have just fired 1000 normal security guards, and have sold my fleet of trucks, helicopters, cars and closed down my dozens of security stations because I have a half dozen mages on my side" won´t work.

SYL

@apple

No, just that those mages can do a job for which you would need....


Great Form spirit... And since there is no Counterspelling for spirit powers....Force 4 is all that is needed....


So which is there?
The alarm sounded, you have one runner mage of the same magic raiting as the security mages! What do you do?

It seems fair to never consider Great Form spirits in these calculations.

So, now the average security mage is an initiate? And perhaps you should again check the rules for Invoking. Especially the part for the necessary hits, drain and the affected area.



It starts with the availability of mages - see the previous page on how "relaxed" numbers are handled and how convenient they can be used to create an army of security mages if one just ignores that they are still humans in a human society. But then of course not every security mage is a grade 1 initiation. Then of course there is background count from 1-2, sometimes even 3 in a major city, depending on the area and the incident. Astral navigation and communication is ignored as well (but that´s another topic), as is economic usage of ressources and job security/satisfaction. We are only talking about site protection, ignoring any other form of protection (like VIP protection). As it seems there is a large difference in handling a dystopia and the rising crime rate, complete with a totally different view an the fallout regarding social stability, street crime etc and the effects back on every kind of security. Depending on the opposition, force 4 spirits are quite in danger when encountering a half competent shooter with an assault rifle on the other side (of course this would mean that the whole thing just escalated). Of course the opposition may be educated about spirit powers and magical defense, using cover etc to lessen the effect of magic used against them. And again: if there is only 1 issue per shift, then of course all resources can be concentrated. And I do not even start with genre/setting/magerun implications.

But then of course 6 initiate grade security mages with multiple bound great form spirits are a force to be reckoned. As is every other overkill.

SYL

Somehow people got the impression Wards were involved. No. Only the person who set the Ward knows when it's violated, and he might be asleep or away from the secure room.

Glowmoss and an optical sensor. If it goes off, the alarm is heard by the person on duty. Streamlining response times greatly.

Yes, the idea is to stay on the astral entirely, and just send in Guardian spirits to counterspell. Not to otherwise interfere in combat, quell riots or anything else. There's reasons for that.

1a) You don't need magic for that. So you're in competition with the mundanes, and they're probably cheaper.
1b) Demand for protection against magic is high. Time spent tumbling with mundane problems is time not available for your core business (which you charge monopoly rates on).
2) It might be against the law. Using counterspelling to assist security forces is quite different from stunballing hapless burglars or mindcontrolling protesters.
3) It violates the core idea: a plausible in-game way to make things appropriately difficult for mages without screwing the mundanes just as much or harder. (See Yerameyahu's points earlier.)
4) It might create popular resentment against mages "oppressing" the mundanes, something that established magical societies (you know, the guys who help people Initiate, so a pretty significant alumni network) will want to prevent.

Glowmoss is a little bit problematic.



Edit: confused GloMoss with glowands

SYL

I assumed he meant scatter the little guys around the whole place, in case one tripped. Maybe it should be 'several' instead?
That was half my problem with the (separately suggested) anti-magic Doberman, though.