OK, i am tired and bored . .
If Vampires burn in Sunlight . .
And Moonlight is just reflected Sunlight . .
Should they not burn at night too?

Also, if this does not work:
Look up. Into the sky. No, not the moon.
There's stars out there. Billions. Each star is a sun.
Vampires should burn at night with the power of a billion suns, right? O.o

Vampires werent even vulnerable to sunlight until they needed a means of killing Orlock in the old Nosferatu movie.

Unfortunately i cant find the post, but IIRC a dev posted a while ago that only the direct, unreflected light of our sun (sol) would damage critter/people with the Allgery: Sunlight weakness.

That means no UV-Fleshlights, moonburns or satellites with giant mirrors as weapons of mass destruction against Asamondo.

Now you may discuss how "direct" the sunlight is when it has passed the atmosphere while i search further for the quote.

So, in theory, could some critter have Allergy (Light of Wolf 359) or something?



Where do I get one of those? I'm guessing that some critter has like, the opposite of an Allergy drawback to UV radiation?




Perhaps it's only the light of Sol filtered through Earth's manasphere? Can a Vampire take a spacewalk without any problems, then?

What about the noon day sun and a mirror to shine it on the vampire hiding in a warehouse? It's reflected, but not any more so than any of the myriad other ways like gets bent and refracted.

Or is a vampire underwater safe since the light is being refracted by the water's surface?

Please.
Tell me that's a typo.
Don't google it.

Judging by that "not reflected" thing, a vampire would be perfectly safe if he inhabited a building lit by natural sunlight piped in via fiber-optic cables; the light is, after all, being reflected through the cables. Hell, if you get windows that diffuse the light enough...




It's too awesome a typo to be a typo. I think he's onto something there.

I prefer to think of the vampiric weakness to sunlight as a mystic rather than purely physiological phenomenon. Vampires are creatures of death, therefore the light of the sun (ultimate source of life) is intolerable to them. At night, the sun sleeps, and vampires are safe. Leave real-world physics in the real world.

Sorry, lads i cant find the original source of the quote i have memorized. i will talk with my friend who originally found it, try to find it again and report back in. i dont want to spread any statements of others without proof.



Things exists out there ...
actually its a typo.



Its a mystical phenomenon as the weakness is a paranormal one.
The life/death theory may be one but i dont think its the intened shadowrun interpretation since its an awakened disease and HMHVV 1 infecteds are actually very well alife.
They need to eat and their digestive organs adapt to a special kind of food, they got a paranormal dietary requierement which may keep them alive even if their food isnt exactly well rounded. They have a body temperature and need to drink water.

By RAW they dont even die in sunlight they "merely" get a -4 pentaly to all actions and suffer intensive pain.
But its well worth asking how long you can endure such a state without taking any "real" damage.

This is why I'm wondering if "The light of <Insert Star Here>" is a viable target for an Allergy, and whether or not the allergy will be in effect outside of Earth's manasphere.

Are vampires safe standing on the moon? In direct sunlight?

Do they "burn" faster or slower? (After all, it's diffused through the Earth's atmosphere....)

See, these are very good questions. The only answer I can come up with is that direct sunlight interacts with Earth's manasphere in a manner harmful to Vampires and other critters with a similar allergy to sunlight. Therefor a vampire on the moon in direct sunlight is absolutely fine, because it's not interacting with Earth's manasphere.

Maybe, but they go dormant from the lack of air.

EDIT: Not to mention explosive decompression.

I'm actually totally fine with indirect sunlight reflected by mirrors working just fine on vampires - see the end of Fright Night II (1988) for the best example of a vampire being burned to a crisp by a vampire hunter keeping a beam of sunlight trained on her with a mirror. I'm always fine about seeing vampires burned to a crisp, as often as possible.

Wait. Vampires have only moderate allergy to sunlight, so they can walk out at daytime, they will just be significantly weaker (-4 dice to everything).

What support do you have for this? The weakness is to sunlight, not to "sunlight on Earth." Also, a vampire standing on the moon would definitely not be fine; apart from sunlight and, as previously mentioned, decompression, there's no mana to sustain HMHVV. At best, the vampire dies because its existence is mana-dependent. At worst, the vampire becomes human again, and then dies due to decompression.

As far as a weakness to starlight, there isn't enough light for such a weakness to ever come into play, so no.

The basis is simple: reflected sunlight doesn't work. Therefor it must be direct sunlight only; and as it is strictly sunlight, not, say, intense light with the same radiation spectra generated by non-sun sources, the allergy must be magical in nature. Magical things won't work in the absence of mana, therefore I can only conclude that the allergy of vampires is to direct line-of-sight to them, through the manasphere. Take away direct LoS (mirror, moon, whatever,) and they're fine, so must they be fine if it's not focused through the "lens" of the manasphere.

As for being on the moon: I presumed that he'd have an EV suit on. Did that really need clarification? Evidently it did.

As for there being no mana to sustain HMHVV, one could say the same thing about a Dragon flying into space. Yet Lofwyr considered running away into space a viable alternative to trying to tank/outrun nuclear explosions wiping out Germany. Therefor, there doesn't seem to be any nessessity for ambient magic to actually sustain Awakened creatures; the whole "Fifth" (and Third, and presumably First) worlds aside.

Quick ShadowDragon is trying to use logic to prove his point on the internet - get him!

Edit: It does make sense.

I'd simply judge that moonlight, or light flitered through clouds on a very dark day, will be too 'weak' to trigger the allergy. Sunlight bounced off of a mirror, however, will have most of it's intensity left when hitting the vampire.

And as was pointed out, vampires in shadowrun don't burst into flame in sunlight - they get dice penalties.

Well, the biggest mana void you can find is 10 I think - Lofwyr has a magic rating much higher than that, so he'd keep his powers etc in space. He'd just have to have powerful protections in place to protect against the astral damage he'll be taking each round.

Most vampires would probably just die in space, though - when their magic hits 0 they lose all paranormal powers.

I agree wit that - what holds true for one of the most powerful Great Dragons is a fr cry from a reliable benxhmark for what something more usual, like the average Joe Vampire. And even Jerry Vampire (yes I've seen the latest Fright Night and enjoyed it).

And in intense pain. Read the description again. Moderate's not exactly a walk in the park. It's not quite the mythical, and it's sure not Blade, but it's not a picnic.

Yeah, you'd think someone would do something about that....

(What? Like I wasn't going to show up in this thread...?)

I tend to like the old Bram Stoker version. They are greatly weakened by sunlight, but don't get all hot under the collar. And shirt. And pants, etc.

Where UV or magical sunlight would fit into that, I dunno. As long as they don't sparkle and have homoerotic tendencies (think Anne Rice - as a rule that is; gay vampires can do whatever they want and that's fine), I'm ok.

But with an EV suit on, the vampire would not be in direct sunlight anymore, would it? That's why I misunderstood your meaning.

Assume for sake of argument that the EV suit isn't required, but that there is also no air.

It's an impossible hypothetical situation (similar to an "airless, frictionless, environment" physicists like to talk about).

"Assume a spherical cow of uniform density...." (Sorry, Mike Ford flashback...couldn't be helped.)

He's on Luna, on the sunny side, with no suit. Well, he's not frozen...it can get kinda toasty in direct sunlight on Luna. He's dormant, because there's no air. Were he conscious, I believe he'd be in intense pain from the direct sunlight exposure. Yes, I think the allergy would be active on the lunar surface (and I think it would probably affect him through an EV suit because, well, there's the whole helmet thing).

That said, there's nothing canon about it because the situation was rightly described as impossibly hypothetical.

Sorry, spherical, uniformly dense cows are my job industry.

One of them told my boss that the project we were showing her was "not what we wanted at all" despite having gone through 3 prior reviews, numerous storyboards, etc.

Was expecting you a lot earlier, actually.

Got too involved in other pursuits last night. It happens.

My 2 cents:

Until I can see a quote in a book, Vampires are damaged by anything that would give you a sunburn. So yes, reflected direct (yes, i said reflected direct) sunlight, which gives people sun burns all the time, would damage a vampire. Sunlight reflected off the moon never gave anyone a sunburn, so it wouldn't damage a vampire.

Unless they're on the moon!
(The reflected light from the lunar surface would be sufficient to give an astronaut a "moonburn" while walking on the moon)

I know the direct, un-ozone filtered sunlight on the moon would be enough to give you sunburn rather quickly. I don't know if the relected light carries the same energy. At least according to the footage, it's not as white as it appears from here.

Well, i found a hint to the quote i had in mind.

in this thread.



I made a search through AH's posts but after nearly two hours of searching my interest ist starting to wane.
I cant find it, maybe its there, maybe not.

Thing is: it seems to be a statement by AH. As we all know the description of HMHVV changed throughout the fourth edition from mindless critters to altered things somewhere between (former) human and monster (milage may vary) back to being more like critters again all under different authors.
So basically you have the freedom of choice there is a vampire for everyone, except the sparkling kind ...

In the end ill stick with shadowdragons explanation. Its fits my personal view of am inherental logical magic system which the authors tried to build up at a certain time.

The Earth is the source of all magic in SR and not the sun itself. Or did i miss something really essential?

Made me remember this little incident

Nice

Either way, it's still an Allergy and it's a reaction they have to mystical contact (line of sight) being drawn to them from the sun. I guess there's an argument to be made that a well-polished enough mirror could allow that allergy-triggering LoS to be drawn in the same way it could allow said Vampire to draw LoS for a Wreck (Sun) Spell, but as was stated upthread, reflected sunlight doesn't work.




Yes, he does, by like, twenty or more. Of course, there's no case which makes logical sense - space (and the moon, etcetera,) aren't just a high Background Count, they're the absence of mana altogether. What else do we know that fit that description? The Fifth World. Yet to that, I have to say: Lofwyr, Dunkelzahn, Ryumo to name a few; also Harlequinn, and Ehran.

Clearly, they all survived an extended period of no-mana, they also weren't running around with their Magic ratings reduced by 10, yet ruling the world because their magic ratings, even reduced by 10, were far, far more than anything the rest of metahumanity could come up with. Heck, the Immortal Elves were even running around during all that time doing stuff, yet they never whipped up some Spirits or some spells? There's no real case to be made for any of that making sense.

Anyway, there's nothing that says an Awakened Virus needs anything more than the dietary needs it inflicts on its host to survive; or even that having the virus inside them die out completely would kill the host. Maybe that's your cure for HMHVV: take a trip into space! Somehow, I highly doubt it, if only because one of the corps would have tried it by now. So I have to conclude that a vampire remains a vampire in space, he doesn't croak from the lack of mana. He's just a vampire in space, a very small, very insignificant bloodsucking parasite who desperately needs to drag someone into a pressurized environment to bite their neck.




That's debatable. It is, after all, a magical allergy, not a physical one; if it was physical, then cranking up sun-lamps and other sources of similar/identical radiological spectra around a vampire would give him the same -4 dice pool penalty and "severe pain" that taking a walk in the Salish wilderness at high noon does.

So, given that - and given that you wouldn't let "wearing an Extravehicular Activities suit" protect you against getting magical Line of Sight drawn to you any more than you'd let wearing Milspec armor do the same, I have to conclude that if a vampire is, for some reason, wearing an EVA suit on Earth's surface at broad daylight, he'll be suffering from his allergy. It is, after all, magical in nature, and auras do encompass your worn armor/protective garments. Therefor, the Sun would be able to draw LoS to his aura, and hit him with his Allergic reaction.

On the moon, of course, it wouldn't be being "lensed" at him through the manasphere, so I say, he'd have no allergic problems, in or out of an EVA suit. Out of it, obviously, he has much bigger problems to worry about, and even in it, of course, he's still at risk of "moonburn" and other unpleasant things that can happen to you from direct sun exposure (you can look at the sun without taking your -4 dice pool penalty from the allergy, sure, but it's gonna strike your ass blind by burning out your retinas,) and other facets of "being on the moon."

Who said that? Not being argumentative, just would like a source. Preferably a canonical one.

Your first case up there? I'd call that an exposure to the allergen. The second scenario is a little more tricky, since there are clarity and depth issues to be taken into account.

This is the quote I was going off of:

Actually....

I believe there's canon of Harlequinn summoning a spirit during the middle ages.

That's what I thought. There's nothing canonical that says it's can't be reflected, at least that I've been able to find, but my gut tells me there's some intensity issues that crop up if it's bounced or refracted too much. Still doing what I can to nail some of this down.

There's also nothing that says it can't be artificial, high-intensity, broad-spectrum light that mimics as closely as possible the spectral spread of real sunlight. Probably wouldn't be enough to initiate a full-scale allergic reaction, but it would probably be enough to disrupt a vampire in mist form, for instance. The best an artificial source could probably muster is the equivalent of Mild/Nuisance level Allergy, just enough to make things difficult for them but not enough to hurt them, really. I'll have to cogitate on this one a bit.

This sort of came up in some of the conversations I'm having as I work on "After Midnight," the follow-up for "Another Rainy Night." It's been some interesting research so far.

Patrick--pretty much my thoughts as well.

Not that it has ever come up, but murky water probably diminishes the penalty at -1/m depth, so 4m under the vamp is fine. Clear water probably -1/2m so they have to dive deeper.

IIRC this is also where they mentioned that it took him a several hours-long ritual just to scrape togther the mana necessary to do so.

Mirrors continue line of sight. So, even if it's a mystical link, mirrors and fiber optics and such should work.

Hey, if the sun is only an allergy, can a Vampire just take some Antihistamines and ignore it on occasion?

EDIT: "AHHHHHHHHHH! The sun! It hurts, it hurts!" "What's wrong Bob." "Allergic to sun. Hurry, Epipen of Antihistamine in my left jacket pocket." *Jab* "There you go." "Now to suffer until it goes through my system." "Slap Patches are faster and cheaper, you know." "Yeah, but I'm also allergic to DMSO." "OUCH!"

Yeah, -4 dice is equivalent to 12 boxes of damage, so...




Alleviate Allergy spell. Done.

That is the rub, isn't it? Personally, that's the way I'd do it; Vampires' allergy is mystical in nature, not physical. So even wearing an EV Suit on earth won't save them if the sun can draw a mystic link to their aura; but it has to be lensed through Earth's manasphere, so it doesn't do jack if they're in orbit or on the moon or something.

Mmmm...sparkly vampires...

Not necessarily, though it does lead to the Dark Side. Er, Light Side. You know what I mean....

You can't really go in and nerf the spell since, well, that's precisely the kind of thing it was designed for. Not just to let vampires walk in the sun, but anyone with an Allergy to Sunlight to walk in the sun. Or an Allergy to Plastic to deal with a good chunk o' modern tech. There are lots and lots and lots of legitimate uses of the spell.

I had a longish talk with Jason about how to deal with it in regards to HMHVV, and we never did really come to much of a conclusion. It's just one of those things I've come to accept as part of the baggage that goes with my current little niche in the Sixth World.

Sustaining the spell would be a pain, at least. Or an expensive Sustaining Foci. And you'll glow like the dickens in Astral.

Yes yes yes, same as everyone else that has allergies up the wazoo, but still, there are stabilizers for even the spell.