And don't forget situational modifiers. At this point, I'm starting to really think that problems with the canon sneaking rules may exist, but they're minor and easily houseruled towards sanity, and the real problems come from not applying the correct modifiers to make things as difficult as they should be or not understanding what the results of the test actually imply.

Me too.

Really just about every stealth test that common sensically should succede ought to have at least a +2 modifier coming from someplace (light, cover, distraction, camoflauge, magic, etc), and then when you throw in the need for two sucesses to really defeat stealth to the point where an alarm is immediately going to be raised it works pretty well.

Certainly it is much more dramatic if a guard gets one success and walks over to investigate than if he just opens fire on whatever it is he thinks he might have caught a glimpse of.

Heh. Man, I have got to design a security company whose number 1 guarantee is that if they think they hear something, they send a mag downwind before even looking. Screw your sanity and your drama and and your good storytelling and your realism. Shadowrun should work like a bad computer game.

Nothing like the ad slogan:
"We'd rather shoot your dog than let a thief in."

Well the opposed test is really nothing more than a perception test right? We're all talking about using the visibilty modifiers table for perception, but on the same page in sr3 (p. 232) at the bottom has a success table like lilt mentioned. One succes in the test means "something is there." that could be anything to the guard... animal, something in his head, etc. so maybe withn just one success the sec guard blows it off, but is a little more weary so the plus two perciever is distracted modifier no longer applies.

I've always felt that open tests go against one of the basic feels of teh game, which is, the multiple dice rolls and mechanic of multiple successes is to gauge not only if you suvveed, but how well you succeed. This is a very important measure in stealth, so why not keep it for all tests. admitedly, a 2 int guard will likely never see a shadowrunner, but that's they made perception a specialization of stealth, you can always use it for a background skill to augment your perceptions. of course you could always use astral perceiving guards, since according to canon astral perception beats even invisibility (which is better than stealth) it'll beat stealth. guard sees a living meta-human aura skulking through the shadows, he opens fire.

Stealth works just as well on the astral as it does on the physical. If an invisible character is stupid enough to put his fate in the hands of a spell and just trump through the scenery, he deserves to be spotted by a perceiving mage. Just like anyone else would if they did the same thing.

Since when has stealth worked just as well on the astral as it does here? I can sneak across an open field at night and not be noticed, but on the astral, I'm a glowing beacon of life. QED. This is how astral sight breaks a lot of things that should not be broken.

The astral has just as many things to hide about as the physical does, sometimes more. Blending yourself in with the surrounding terrain is just as easy on either plane, moreso if you know what you're doing with the astral. You just use the Astral Visibility modifiers in Magic in the Shadows in place of standard Perception modifiers.

It may be as easy (a completely debatable and unprovable matter of opinion), but it follows far different rules. I assign a penalty if someone isn't hiding with specific regard to the astral.

How would one do that? Simply declare it when making the test?

What I'd really like to see is a viable option for hiding on the astral, either through dampening of some sort (hell, it's magic; make it up), mental conditioning (I really do like this approach), or changing the mechanics of astral sight to stop completely breaking reality.

If there's a good way to stop astral sight from making hiding impossible, I'd like to know it. It's bad enough that ruthernium doesn't do much for thermal vision and does shit for ultrasound.

Even if I'm standing on a clean tarmac in the dead of night, scouting the area before advancing? With my ruth suit, I'm visually invisible, half as thermally invisible, and effectively invisible to ultrasound because I'm so far out. And as I've had explained to me, I'm a glowing beacon in the middle of a barren, reltively quite dark area.

Grass? Hell Gaia herself (the whole freaking earth) produces a soft glow.

More importantly, since it's a "glow" not a "beacon", you're only noticed if you're in LOS. Even on the Astral, you can't see through things. If you're using stealth (The comment that started all this was using stealth on the astral plane) you're not standing tall, looking at a building, you're laying on the ground if there's no cover, ont he closest thing you can find to a hill, trying to keep yourself out of LOS.

Anything that would help you 'stealth' in the physical world, will help you stealth in the Astral. Of course your stealth skill will work (unless you keep making the assumption you're a "beacon" which is so NOT canon)



Sphynx

What do you do when you're indoors, then? And I'm assuming that the bacteria in the air isn't doing too much, or you'd just be watching through a big snowstorm.

As nice as it is to imagine shadows are what helps you attain stealth, that's not the case at all. Only in old medieval style games can you step back into the shadows, disappearing from sight, it's not realistic. You hide behind something, lay low to the ground, move along corners of your environment, you don't just step into a shadow and disappear.

As for beacon vs glow, a beacon produces a light that can be seen by itself, a glow is only seen when looking at the object producing the light. Never in Shadowrun is a living person (or even a person with a thousand spells on them) a "beacon", just a glow. And the reason it's a glow is to allow an aura which will get past the otherwise impossible to see through clothing of a person.

Sphynx

I'm not suggesting that you just slip into shadows and suddenly you can go back to making backstab attacks, or whatever, but shadows do certainly play a very major part in stealth at night, and you can step into shadows to initially hide yourself. It's just not as simple doing just that. I understand this, but my issue is that all the stealthy dynamics that apply in real life cease to apply on the astral, as has been explained to me. If this is not the case, I definitely need to know.

Even a glow indoors where you have nothing but bacteria in the air providing ambient light is enough to easily give you away, so unless there are other things at play, astral projection seems to make slipping through a building basically impossible.

It's basically the difference between direct lighting and soft, diffused lighting, but don't let that lead you into thinking that diffused lighting can't light an area. It just doesn't do so as harshly or travel as far (lack of coherency).

That's not the issue, though. I have no problem with understanding how a projecting character can hide. Even one who can only see on the astral can do a good job hiding himself. But a mundane infiltrator or infiltration team, or, for that matter, covert ops squad, operating in a hostile urban enviornment, stands absolutely zero chance of avoiding magical detection. This is my issue with the system at present.

Except there is no pitch-black darkness in the Astral, always glowing even if only from the earth itself, so no, there's never a beacon (except maybe in space)

Sphynx

Actually, I take that back. I've had my mental image set on outside surroundings due to the comment about on standing outside.... indoors you could definitely be a 'beacon'.

Sphynx

So, the question remains, then: how is stealth indoors not stopped absolutely dead by atral perception?

As far as I can tell, only way to fix this is to allow magical dampening through materials or rule that there are ways to hide yourself. The former is kind of hackish and the latter is just silly.

I'd say astral stealth indoors is still possible. Tha glowing aura of the earth is an aura, thus probably extends some distance from the earth itself. As the earth is so much larger than a human, shouldn't its aura extend proportionally further?

If you go that far, you're nearly blind on the astral everywhere, indoors or outdoors. And you also get screwed if you're in a high rise building, corp skyscraper to high rise apartment complex.

@Arethusa
Not really. You're just interpreting that the aura of the eart would be particularily bright or opaque or something. If the glow from a single creature isn't enough to give penalties then why should the aura of the earth?

Next we have things like bacteria: Bacteria have auras too, and they can certainly glow on the astral as, when tightly packed they can impose distraction vision penalties. Bacteria get everywhere. I'm surprised you can't give someone glare vision penalties on the astral by opening your mouth at them. You get germs and the like on walls and in the air, providing another level of diffuse lighting.

Does normal daylight give penalties? No.
Is it possible to hide in normal daylight? Yes.
A character's aura could be likened to carrying a torch or lantern in a land that never grows dark.

It's as possible to use stealth against an astrally percieving character as it is to use it against a character that isn't astrally percieving. If you try to walk past some guy, infront of him, on the physical plane then you're boned too, that dosen't mean stealth dosen't work on the physical plane.

That does help somewhat, and does differ from teh description I've been given, but it still leaves an enourmous difficulty in hiding indoors, though it seems potentially less insurmountable.

And, really, you can walk in front of a guard physically without him noticing. The stuff that's behind you in his field of vision matters immensely. But the big issue I have is with visualizing how one can hide on the astral from something he or she can never anticipate. I know I can roll for it, but it still doesn't seem to make any sense. I should also point out that perception causes problems, but it's projection that I find breaks things quite a bit.

One should also not discount background count. Whether it be at a toxic waste site in the barrens or the banal corridors of a megacorp office building, there ought to be some background count. I believe you can see MitS for more details, as my memory a bit hazy at the moment.

Background Counts occur after a heated argument, passionate kiss, or any other time emotions go even slightly above normal. Most people tend to ignore that, though.

If the issue is mundanes sneaking past astral patrols, then yeah, that's pretty much not going to work. I'd liken it to Helen Keller trying to sneak through a familiar room full of people. It's really hard to be sneaky when you don't know who you're hiding from or where they might be. But this is nothing new. We all know that if one side has magic and the other doesn't, the side with magic has a ridiculous advantage. We're used to this.
But two astral bodies should have just as many opportunities for stealth as we're used to, they'll just be different sorts of opportunities.

A point or two in Magic Background should be more than enough for a mundane to know how to take advantage of astral terrain when sneaking around. Hell, I'd probably offer it up as a Complimentary Skill since they have fewer situational modifiers to work on to begin with. Mages shouldn't have a cakewalk with everything they do, afterall.

It might make sense to require a charachter to be astrally perceiving for them to use thier stealth skill astrally, or require them to be able to perceive, or give them a -2 open test result to stealth tests on whichever plane they are not paying most attantion too (ie -2 on the astral if they aren't perceiving, -2 on physical if they are), or make them use thier second highest result for one plane and thier highest for the other, or some combination of those.

Personally I think there ought to be some illusion spells that work on astral perception, they just ought to be harder than regular perception ones.

At most I could see an Astral Camouflage spell, but nothing like Invisibility. Blending your aura in with the background is one thing, nullifying it is something else entirely.

Oh sure. It might be that only positive illusions would be possible in astral space, because they have to not only create whatever effect they are trying to create, but work themseleves into it somehow so the spell's aura is less noticable.

So basically astral phantasm, astral mask, astral blindness, and more limited versions of those. Maybe have it be a +1 drain level, or +2 drain power modifier in the spell design rules, perhaps indirect ones ought ot have a t# of 6 rather than 4 as well (I think these illusions ought to be pretty tough).

Anyway something I think would be cool. In one of the novels a shaman cast an astral illusion (and quickened it I suppose) to make his enemies think the group was still in a building when they had, in fact, left. It would be fun to be able to do stuff like that.

careful about the novels, they have a bad habbit of not following the rules if interfers with a munchkin storyline...

What I am saying, however, is that the sheer potential for astral security or astral response security makes it essentially fucking impossible to be good at infiltrating somewhere, as you never know and never can know. This is not something you can circumvent or even really take action against, as you can never know when it's coming. The fact that magic is given such a ridiculous advantage over mundanes goes too far, and, in this case, it takes the game from interesting to stupid ina heartbeat. Mundane metahumanity might as well packs its bags and go home, and, honestly, I don't even think magic was intended to be quite this unabalancing.

As for background count, it isn't going to be enough to let you hide, nor is it something you'll ever be able to predict and adapt to as a mundane. As it stands, this remains an insurmountable problem that altogether kills any chance of stealth engagements, since all it takes for your squad of mundane special ops to be detected and manabolted is an astrally projecting mage, and they will never have a chance to react, much less fight back.

Uhm, dude, you're the one saying that Stealth doesn't work against astral security, whereas most everyone else is saying it will. Thus, mundanes do have a chance, thus it doesn't have a ridiculous advantage.

You might as well say the same thing about riggers. You never know when an Ares Guardian loaded with a Great Dragon is going to appear out of nowhere.

err, how bit a % is there that is awakend in the sr world? 10% total of the worlds populations? then there is the fact that shamans dont realy fitt the guard type bill. that limits it to adepts with astral abilitys and hermetics. then comes the fact that going around astraly active all the time is a bad idea, there is more in the astral then just magicans and spirits, dont forget about the shedims (or whatver they are challed) as they make it a slight gamble to leave your body to go fully astral.

oh and the basic premise of stealth is to stay out of sight. doors, walls, desks and other solid objects hide your aura unless your body is just some cm's away from the edge.

allso, pick up mits (or magic in the shoadws if you will) they have a nice small text about astral patroling. a building interior gives a +4 on a intelligence test to notice someone. and the size of the area patroled have something to say to. sure, stealth have nothing to say here but i dont realy think it should have anything to say either as when your dodgeing a astral entity that is able to walk tru walls and other stuff it becomes allmost pointless. but stealth against someone that is only useing astral perception is fully doable, you just have to keep in mind that your aura extends a bit outside your body

oh, and its not like its a true lightsource. i kinda liked the description in the old grimoire book (or was it awakening) where they descibe the effect of a living aura like giving color to the world. when looking at a item astraly it seems as if its gray and faded, but if you look at it tru a aura then it becomes more vibrant in color, maybe even more vibrant then it would be in the physical reality.

I'm saying that it's inconcievable for a mundane character to reliably adapt to astral conditions to remain concealed reliably. There's really been no solid explanation for how such a feat would be accomplished.

A Great Dragon would not be the same. I can see the Great Dragon, and there are countermeasures. I am proper fucked when it comes to magic and will never be able to counter it short of just hiring a mage.

[edit]

Even with a low percentage, what I'm saying is that the possibility of an invisible countermeasure to your infiltration that you will never be able to notice or take action in response to kills your chances of being good at what you do. You can get better through equipment and skill to counteract thermal cameras, etc, but you can't take on magic.

It's not that there'll be astral security anywhere you go, but its possibility makes it something a professional should always account for and never can, short of being awakened him or herself.

I wasn't aware of the +4 to notice people indoors, however. As it had been explained to me, it was basically almost impossible to hide short of running into a forest. What you're describing sounds much more sane, but still bothersome.

Also, do like that description of auras coloring the world. That actually makes the entire concept suck substantially less.

what about all the tricks you already know that work anyway. an astral only perciever can't tell much about you at a glance, so if you look like you belong you are unlikely to get hassled. second, distraction distraction distraction. third, legwork will let you know how much magical hoo-haw they are throwing around.

sure, I could concievably end up in a place scoped by a mage when I wasn't expecting it. but the same can be true of any anti -intrusion measure that you do not expect.

-Mike R.

rember that background count for that kind of enviromant lasts maybe 5-30 min after it happend and will most likely be a rating 1-2 one. then there is the metamagical ability of cleansing...