No, you don't understand. It's not the cleaning company that issues the badges. It's the security company that does that.

And with that program in place? Anyone not wearing one of the "super-magical" badges WILL SET OFF ALARMS. Very expensive, very COSTLY alarms (since a mage or two will show up in Astral, not ot mention costing a service from several spirits ... every time it happens).

Ok, my jocular tone might've been misleading, but my point is: If the runners could fake their way into the cleaning crew (false SINs, work histories, hacked DBs, ...) before, they still can. And whatever gets issued to legit cleaners will get issued to the Runners. Essentially they probably won't even know they just defeated cutting-edge magical security tech because they didn't know it existed.

And honestly, what you, I think, fail to understand is simply basic human nature. If a security guard (or whoever checks the cleaners) sees a cleaner whose paper work is slightly off, 99.9% of the time, that guy actually is Ok and someone just messed up the documentation.
So, 99.9% of the time, letting that person pass is Ok and stopping him might prevent some exec's waste basket not getting emptied, angering that exec, causing him to complain, costing the guard his job.
In maybe 0.1 % of all cases that guy's a dangerous terrorist and the guard will cost the company huge amounts of money if he lets him pass.

From the company's POV, stopping all suspect cleaners is obviously the correct response. From the guard's POV that's pure suicide.
As far as I know, no institution has ever awarded employee-of-the-month status to the guy who stopped the cleaning lady, whose papers were slightly inconsistent regarding her grades in fifth class, from entering the building. At least they didn't publish that feat in any international papers.

... most of my evil Executive types have read the Evil Overlord list at least twice. Rule #67: No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency. Same principle applies to identification, IMO.

Which just means, of course, that the party hacker had better have gotten all the right files into all the right servers, so that the fake SINs the team is using hold up under scrutiny.

Oh yeah, the Evil Overlord list, nice bedside reading.

Problem is, most evil guys don't even know they are. Evil, that is.

But yeah, any system worth hacking is worth hacking right.
Or was it any person worth shooting is worth shooting twice? I always seem to mis-apply that one.

Actually, as a RL security guard myself, that's basically it. It pisses off all the people who haven't the foggiest that there are actual bad people out there ("You mean I have to put my wallet through the x-ray machine? Why!?" "Sir, rule #1 of the Screening Procedures posted on that big board that you've passed every day for the last ten years says 'Remove all items from your pockets.'" I have this conversation weekly, if not daily, and I work with the same groups of people every day...).

Which is totally silly, because the ward is only positioned relatively to the ancor...

???

Yes, so if the anchor stays in the same relative position to the ward, the ward stays up. Am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

What happens when wards collide?

I.e. two vans with wards inside ram one another?

Well if one is a mana ward and the other is a physical ward, they phase through each other, clearly!

@pbangarth
Since the ward is relative to the ancor, it can't.
If it is not relative to the ancor, it always will.->Movement of earth.

Parenting issues:

The sun never moves, relative to the Earth (it's always in the sky, see?).

The earth is constantly moving, relative to the sun (goes around once a year!).

The ward may not move relative to the anchor, but the anchor may move bringing the ward with it. Same as how the sun can orbit galactic central point once every 250 million years (bringing the earth along for the ride), but the Earth can't move outside it's orbit (the orbital ring being equivalent to the ward, here) or it flies off into deep space, or goes crashing into the firey furnace.

Nerds are so awesome. Great post Draco18s.

That seems suspect. A vehicle can't be a mystic lodge for just that reason.

Personal Opinion aside, it is RAW that a ward can be emplaced on the inside of a vehicle, assuming the vehicle is big enough.

Well, from what I understand:
Actually you can. The issue is that when the vehicle is in motion, things tend to fall all over the place (your ornate candle sticks will fall over around those corners). So you have to pack things up and tie them down, and then set them back up again later at your new destination.

Think of a magical lodge as a chemistry lab: if it's not tied down while you're moving, it's going to break. And you can't use it if it's broken.

So you don't use a candle stick that will fly around, you use the headrest of the front passenger seat instead. Except for the most severe of circumstances, it doesn't move more than the "few centimeters" allowed in relation to the rest of the vehicle and the ward inscribed therein, so the ward remains. In the case of something like a crash, in which the headrest does move more than allowed in relation to the ward, the ward would be destroyed.

Or you get your rigger buddy to inlay a magical circle of your precious metal of choice on the floor of the van whose cabin is floated on air-ride like the cabs of some semis to cushion shocks.

Certainly, at least SOME vehicles - those large enough - should be able to carry Wards, and even Magical Lodges. I mean, really ... just because my water-themed mage lives in a houseboat (which is a vehicle, albeit a rather slow one), he can't have a Magical Lodge in his home?

This precise topic came up about a month ago. The consensus was that it was not strictly RAW but that a reasonable extension of RAW was for the rating of lodges to be limited relative to the size of the mobile platform. A houseboat would be limited to 4 or less, if I recall correctly.

Sayeth whom? Interesting house-rule, to be sure, but it is a house-rule.

If anything, I'd say the Workshop vehicle upgrade in addition to the Magical Lodge materials and you're good (and that's pretty steep). If a Bulldog Step-Van can fit enough room to have a working armory or EMT area then it should have room enough for incense, bookshelves, or whatever else your Magical Lodge requires.

That's surely what 'reasonable extension of RAW' means, no?

No, wards should not be mobile!
Why?
If you get to realtive movement everything gets fucked up!
There is no clear case anymore. You have to state to what the ward may not move!
Is one wall enough? Does it need to be all 6? Or even more? What counts as "movement"? Must the ward be inside the room or can the ward shield it? If not, why doesn't it work with a person? And so on...

Ok, lets throw in some curveballs in regarding to moving wards.

A high power ward is put on a baseball bat. Any spirit moving THROUGH the ward might be disrupted.

Mage use astral perception to see spirit. Mage whacks spirit with bat. Bat cannot hurt spirit on the astral plane but the ward is whirled THROUGH the spirit. Spirit passes through the ward (forced yes, but still passed through) and is disrupted.

Did i just invent the spirit whack-a-mole?

Keep in mind the warded area must be a minimum of 1 cubic meter in size, and 1 meter thick in its smallest dimension. Thus I do not believe you could ward a bat, as most bats do not meet these minimum dimensional requirements.

Ok, so at the end of a stick/bat we add a cube made of metal wire that allows air to travel freely through it. We ward the entire thing and hit a spirit with it.

Something like this:

Like a giant spirit flyswatter.

The warded area needs to be that big, but not necessarily the object that the ward is anchored onto. So if you warded that baseball, it'd be projecting a field around it. No?

In the "whack-a-spirit", why wouldn't the baseball simply bounce off, as the ward hit the spirit? Maybe wards act somewhat similarly to magnetic fields?

Moving wards does open up a can of worms, though. What happens when two wards run into one another?

Right, but a "reasonable extension of RAW" shouldn't limit a Magical Lodge because of the size of a vehicle its in, since Magical Lodges are never given a size requirement. We simply know they can exist, and a logical extension would be to give them the same respect as any other "shop." It's just that Magical Lodges are the shops where all the magic happens ( ).

*shrug* To me, that's exactly what 'reasonable' means: limits, especially when the RAW forgot to include them. We're not even disagreeing: if a lodge is a magic shop, and a panel van can hold a shop, ipso facto.

I'm not sure if lodges are relevant to wards in the first place, though. We've had some detailed discussions of the rules (and their problems) for wards before.

Right. I was just irked by the other House-Rule about limiting Magical Lodges due to the size of the vehicle by ratings. In the vehicle can fit a shop, it should be able to fit a Magical Lodge of any rating.

My players do the same thing with biofiber in a pipe. The spirit is not necessarily disrupted. There is a chance that either one is disrupted (which I rule as biofiber dies if it loses). They're pretty effective, provided you can get the spirit in melee (or can hit it with exotic thrown weapon pipe). It's nice for mundanes to have reasonable tools for sending a spirit packing if they need to.

Hey, The Jopp, I thought we couldn't put pictures into our posts. How did you do that?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA .... [GM Hat] No. Just no. [/GM Hat] .... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ...!!



Seriously, while it might be within the technical letter of the rules, as read to allow the anchor itself to move ... it's not even close to the spirit of the rules. And is definitely one of those cases where a GM's discretion is required - so that you can put a small Lodge or Ward in the back of your delivery truck, but cannot make "Spirit Flyswatters".



On the subject of Shops in Vehicles: do remember that even Arsenal suggests that, at the GM's discretion, SOME shops might not be functional while the vehicle moves ... needing to be broken out of the vehicle and set up around it. IMO, a logical ruling would be that you can have a relatively low-rating Magical Lodge (which is like a Kit in terms of limits/abilities) in a vehicle, and not have to stop to use it ... but a higher-rated Lodge might require you to stop the vehicle, extend the sides out (think "expandable RV trailer" stuff), haul some crates out of their storage niches, and set the place up before it can function.

A reasonable extension of that would be, say ... "The rating of any magical lodge in a vehicle is limited to __; higher rated lodges function at this limit unless the vehicle stops to set the lodge up at it's full rating." I might require one combat turn per point of rating above the limit for that setup. And no, I'm not sure what the limit should be. I'm thinking EITHER, 2-3 ... or some small fraction of the vehicle's body. (Face it, you should be able to fit a larger "use right now" lodge in the back of a city bus, than a panel truck.)

Damn good question. All he did is what the rest of us do.





"Random" image:



Huh. When did that change..?

Won't let me do it...

Weird.

While you could do something like that...
a) your not going to get that tool through any wards without alerting someone yourself
b) what spirit is going to get close enough to you to let you hit it, when it can see exactly what that wire cage holds?
c) what weapon proficiency would you suggest you use for "large wire cage on the end of a stick"?
d) How unwieldy do you expect something like that would be?

I mean ya sure, you could do it, and it should 'function', but don't expect any spirit with a high enough force to pose a threat to actually be dumb enough to get hit by it.

I would treat Lodges and suchlike just like a 'shop' - in the description they usually do not work as the vehicle is moving, more like a toolkit in that case. You have to stop and 'deploy' your shop.

Usually you can put a 'shop' in any vehicle for the mere cost of 1 mod slot. I would say that is just to have it stored inside the vehicle. If you want to use it you need to deploy it (open up the vehicle and fold out everything or set up shop outside the vehicle). You basically just get a storage area.

If you want it functional INSIDE the vehicle you should require a few more mod slots, perhaps +1 slot per rating of the toolkit usage you want.

You should not have to pay much more but say that you get a Hardware Shop in the back of the van. You pay the 10K for the shop and an additional +1 mod slot and 500Y per rating of the shop you want to be able to use it on the move.

This could easily be done with Force instead. A talismonger shop in a van and +1 slot per force and +500Y per rating.

This of course could depend on a vehicle, a Tower drone with an additional Drone Repair Shop would have the machinery integrated with the launch racks to perform repairs on the drones already parked inside it and should not require more space but be limited to what size of drones it could effectively repair (Micro and Mini drones).

Precisely my point.

On a large enough vehicle (e.g. cruise liner and up) it'd be reasonable to allow the lodge to be "always active" due to the space allowances and relative little motion of the boat (though in storms you'd still have to pack things away).

When it comes to 'limiting' magicians I would usually manage that by myself by not maximizing magic or dampen my abilities to be more flexibility.

A few points of bioware, cyberware, a cybernetic arm filled with fun useful toys can make a mage extremely flexible - it also gives you a lot of roleplaying fun witha road of power progression as your mage tries to become better.

And in the case of a groundcraft i'd say that a regular van would have the rear compartment set up like a shop (very much like those of the examples below:

The Carpenter handyman


Plumber Workshop?


Here's the retro version

Second image is 404, but yes. That's what I imagine a shop looks like, and I can't imagine using it while the vehicle is moving.

Odd, I can see it. Yea, I have a hard time seeing many people using workshops on the move unless they are in a craft that is protected from sudden jolts - like for example a zeppelin or LTA converted vehicle that can float and/or move very slowly.

I would at least give them a penalty from any action that requires careful handling or precise movement of parts in any vehicle moving across any kind of uneven terrain or turning corners.

In those examples on the other hand there IS plenty of space to work in, its just not very effective to do it on the move.

I'd draw that "large enough" line a little lower. Keep in mind, you can have a magical lodge in your home, even with a Low lifestyle - and not using the Advanced Lifestyle rules, so no "work space" quality.

That's a pretty small space; it implies to me that a Lodge needs little more than an office cubicle in terms of "footprint". So, I'd allow a Lodge on a houseboat, and on RVs or similarly-sized vehicles (City Bus, maybe the back of an Ares Roadmaster, etc).

I DO like the idea of charging slots equal to the force of the Lodge, though. Or perhaps even twice the Force of the lodge ... that'd innately restrict it to larger vehicles. Want a very modest F3 lodge? 6 slots. Want a F6 lodge? Find something with TWELVE slots to spare, before you even ask!

Also, keep in mind (in light of the posts directly above this one): there's a difference between "just come to a full stop", and "open the side of the truck up and spread drek all over the place around it".

I picked a "largely indisputable" example.

I could have sworn that moving an anchor breaks the ward. Because the anchor is anchored to Earth. So its okay if Earth moves, but if you move the anchor relative to Earth then it breaks.

And if that's not the case...we can break the game right now by making a bullet an anchor for a astral barrier and we've effectively made magic bullets that can hurt spirites and projecting mages, and disable foci. And I am VERY sure that is not suppose to be how it works.

And even if you try to say, well...bullets are too small. Well then...rocket launchers just got a lot cooler.

Only for sufficiently large bullets.

1000mm rounds should do.

This example does not represent the way the rule is written.

Sure, a bullet or bullet-like object can be the anchor for a ward. But shooting the bullet does not drag the ward with it any more than moving any other anchor moves its ward with it. Shooting the bullet would break the ward. Now, if that bullet were set securely inside a vehicle, which vehicle were the physical structure to which the ward were shaped, and the vehicle moved both the ward and the anchor at the same time, then the ward would persist.

Not only that, but firing the bullet would change its form, which would in turn break the anchor for the ward.

Yea, if you want to move the ward you must move EVERYTHING that IS the anchor for the entire volume for the ward.

In the case of a vehicle i would say that the chassis is a prime candidate for what to anchor a ward to.


That would ensure that the anchor for the ward has no moving parts that could disrupt the ward.

Still, if you DO anchor a ward to an arrow, and shoot said arrow, or a thrown dagger.

Ok, as soon as the dagger is chipped or the arrow hits someone and deforms slightly the ward is broken, but the ward WOULD hit its target and apply a possible effect.

I think I preferred Dumpshock sans images. :/

It seems clear that wards are not intended to be placed on projectiles, or even things typically considered 'portable'. On the other hand, the RAW has some problematic contradictions that require you to either allow such things, or significantly rewrite. There is no good answer. What you really have to do is decide exactly what kind(s) of wards you want in your game, and declare it. Magic is arbitrary enough to support whatever you say is true.

Given that, I can certainly see why you might want actual portable wards (as opposed to BS magic bullets) just as a fluff element: it makes sense (in one possible world) for someone to carry a magic warding talisman that protects their person. On the other hand, it makes just as much sense for wards to be possible only on 'permanent' (geographic locations, ignoring tides/skyscraper-bending/etc.), or only on those + large vehicles, and so on. In these cases, personal magic protection depends on your other options: mostly counterspelling, and a good offense.

Luckily, this will all be answered in an upcoming sourcebook! ;D