So I finally made rank 3 and promptly opted for quickening. I plan of getting a force 3 reflex booster quickened (for 6 karma) after I shell out big for an enchanter who knows tattoing. Being rank 3 I'm now able to cover 3 force of spells with me under masking. So I'll be walking around wired and masked.

Now I'm thinking: So what kinda problems arise from walking around with a spell permanently active, albeit concealed? What happens if you try to enter a room that is astrally warded? You spell exists in astral yet you are in the physical, what effects if any are encountered?

Stuff like that... thoughts?

Kong

The spell must deal with wards just like if it was being sustained on you. (although it acts as if it were of force equal to how much karma you pump into it, not the actual force).

i doubt it's canon but in my group we've always played that you can start and stop a spell any time you want but still be sustaining it, still get the +2 modifier if you're actually doing the sustaining but the spell's not active. same with sustaining foci, so for us just deactivate the spell, walk through the ward, then reactivate.

I think having a Force-3 spell is pretty much the point, because of masking (the effects of which I'm not at all familiar with). Thus 6 Karma is most that can be used on Quickening it. With the Tattooing metamagic that's an effective Force of 12 against those wards.

It's only 12 for purposes of dispelling, but I can see how one could extend that to use for wards. I hadn't really considered doing that before.

Either way, it's no good to be walking through wards willy-nilly all the time.

Okay, I just remembered something about Tattooing doubling the effective Force in at least some situation.

Hmmm. Ok so either I'm walking into wards with force 6 or 12 depending on whether the tattoing helps against wards, which I was counting on. However, what's this about being able to turn the spell on or off? ANyone else hear anything about this?

Kong

Nope, can't turn the spell on or off. That's Raptor's house rule. Use it in your game if you want.

Edit: accuracy.

Coulda-shoulda-woulda taken Anchoring instead. It does all the stuff you want to do here: you can activate and deactivate as a Simple Action, or have it activate every time Detect Enemies goes off (Detect Enemies->Increased Reflexes/Reaction == Spider Sense!)

bah, no wonder I don't hear of anyone taking that then. And here I thought it was the Answer.

Excellent, thanks for the help guys.

So, it's always on then. I terms of masking, I can cover myself and my force 3 spell which means both it and me are capable of using the aura tuning rules to try and slip through astral barriers, not easy at rank 3 though.

However, it does mean from now on I have to be a little more careful about what I walk into. Now let's play: Name all manner of places that are warded!

Go!

Kong

Places will be warded any time a magician, adept, aspected magician, sentient ghoul, vampire, free spirit or other oddity with (1) a magic rating and (2) the ability to astrally perceive chooses to make it hard for spirits and astral magicians to get into their area, or someone wants to pay for it.

How many of these are in your Shadowrun campaign is your choice.

In our campaign, our team often finds wards
a) around a corporate CEO's office and conference room
b) or all offices from Vice President on up
c) a 1-meter long passageway all visitors walk through just before a security checkpoint (especially federal buildings)
c) private rooms in a hospital where rich clients stay
d) bedroom-bathroom-dressing room of rich people
e) a vehicle or room a shadowrun team keeps a kidnap victim in to help prevent ritual magic from locating the victim
f) a toxic shaman's lair
g) the limousine of VIPs, hollywood stars, and rich people

/Edit: "often" means 30% to 70% of our encounters with such things.

Does that create more wards in the world than can feasably be maintained by the finite number of mages in the world? That is a LOT of wards.

Sounds like you and I play in very similar worlds. Your list looks pretty much like what I was figuring on.

So I'm walking into an office and it's got a ward on it. I, for some reason, decide not to look where I'm going and try to walk in.

What happens? I walk into an invible wall as my quickened spell runs into the ward? Do they automatically go 3 rounds and I either stumble and walk into the room having torns the ward a new one or I suddenly realize my quickened spell just got it's ass kicked?

Just trying to figure it all out before it comes to pass.

Version 2... I'm invited into a warded space, is there anything anyone can do to allow me passage without my spell and the ward going Thunderdome?

Thanks by the way folks, big help this forum...

Kong.

PS: I don't think he meant "every single one of those" but more of a "these are all good candidates" for wards.

@blakkie: if one in a hundred is magical, and a corporation has 10,000 employees, how hard is it to cover the corporate officer's offices? And spend Karma to make it permanent?

You think a rich lady with Luxury lifestyle (100,000 per month) can pay to keep pervert magicians out of her bedroom and bathroom?

I never liked that statistic. One in a hundred doesn't make magic rare at all. I mean, heck, I'm an albino, which puts me at less than one in ten thousand IIRC, and I know five other people with albinism, not counting the people I know through NOAH. Shouldn't magical ability be at least comparably rare to albinism?

@Sunday_Gamer, my impression of "Pressing through a Barrier" (MitS.83 ) is that the writers intend for magicians to have some warning. Perhaps it's like pushing through molasses to force a spell or active focus through an astral barrier, and the magician can stop unless he is in an elevator or being dragged by a troll. IMO that's what the writer's intended.

@Eyeless Blond, yup, I agree. IMO Magicians shouldn't be 1% of the population. That's why it's up to each GM to determine how prevalent magic (and thus wards) are in his campaign world. Even at 1 in a thousand, all the things I described should occur with some frequency.

Considering a single ward can last, what, at least one week without any Karma whatsoever, and a business with security magicians on staff who constantly update and maintain those wards... I don't see the problem with even temporary wards being fairly common.

A typical, non-initiated, non-cybered magician (Magic 6) can ward a 300 cubic meters with a Force 3 ward in three hours that lasts about 3 weeks on average. The cost for doing this is only 300 nuyen plus however much the mage in question wants to charge for the regular maintanence of it. Note also that it takes no time to increase the lifetime of a ward; you just have to make another test against the same TN, with successes adding another week (though I, personally, require the same amount of time).

Yeah, there's no way wards would be pretty fraggin' common. None at all. No company would dish out 3-600 nuyen every few weeks for a cheap, easy, and simple means of keeping pesky magicians out. That's crazy talk, man.

Problem is, watchers unless I miss my guess cannot tell time., otherwise it's a nice idea.

No, I'm not making an assumption about the cost -- it's a listed cost in SR3 under the rules for wards (p. 174).

The pathetically cheap cost of it just goes to prove that the demand is far less than the supply, as well it should be. *Any* magician, even adepts, aspected magicians, and SURGE Changelings with Astral Sight, can create a ward. It takes a couple of hours every few *weeks* to do it, and by canon it takes *no* time to upkeep it (nor is LOS a requirement unless you wish to make it so). Just a little concentration and unless you fail, bam, it's good for a few more weeks.

Wards are supposed to be a dime dozen because they are, in fact, a dime a dozen.

blakkie, that's why a smart company uses multiple mages for the warding. It makes a for a better ward and you can have one of them on the clock at all hours

Yes, 300 that is the cost for the materials. But i mean you pegging the labour costs at between 0 and 300 . That is something you arbitrarily came up with, no?

No, 300 is the going cost for a mage for an hour. Wards don't take materials (at least per canon). The smart thing to do is hire three mages for ever how long you need them. You'll get a ward three times the size that will, on average, last three times as long. You just have to pay three times as much (you'd end up spending the same thing in three installments, most likely, as the shorter ward had to be replaced).

No, it's 100 nuyen per hour, and it takes one hour per Force point of the ward.

And three mages with Magic 6 can ward an area 900 cubic meters in size. I always have trouble with cubic area, but I think that's more than the three 300 cubic meters each mage can create on their own. Takes exactly the same amount of time but you have to pay for each mage.

So you have three mages creating Force 3 wards as a full time job. 80 hours a week lets them create about 25 900 cubic meter wards with each one pulling in 8,000 nuyen a week, or 24,000 a month, or half a mill a year. Assuming they work that hard, which at those prices means they're probably not.

Yep. Definitely no incentive there. And ruining that kind of income by jeopardizing your reputation is something that would happen on a regular basis, I'm sure.

Who said they had to travel worldwide? With magicians as common as they are, and the pay as good as it is, it's pretty easy to find a magician to do your warding locally. Each building is likely to have several full magicians on the payroll, any one of which can spend a couple hours every few weeks maintaining a ward. 3 hours out of (80 hours x 3 weeks = ) 240 hours is hardly a major demand on their time, especially when they're getting a nice bonus for doing it.

Shadowrun has more magicians than they do professionals in any other single field just about (just under 1 out of every 100 people is a full magician). It's not hard to find one, especially for a position that requires no schooling or real talent whatsoever.

Magic in the Shadows, page 28. A mere fraction of the 1% of the world population is an aspected magician or one that otherwise never became a full magician. The rest are all full.

No schooling + easy work + minimal hours + great pay = lots of magicians offering their services.

Yeah, like I said, that number's stupid. 1% of the world's population would, by then, be roughly 100-200 MILLION mages on the planet. That's roughly the population of the United States today, and IMO far, far too many people for magic to be "different with a capital D." I'd go as far as to say .1% or even .01% (~1-2 million) metas should be Awakened. That makes them about as rare as people with albinism. Additionally, I'd say that only 10-25% of *those* people ever get the proper trainning to make wards, and of those maybe 10% can become full, unaspected mages (the rst being adepts or aspected mages).

That brings us doen to 100-500,000 people on the planet being able to build wards, and about 10-50,000 full mages/shamans. An even smaller percentage of each would be initiated; maybe 10% per initiate grade. These numbers still seems a bit high to me, but maybe not to you all.

Nitpicking: World population in the canon Shadowrun universe actually isn't much different than it is today, thanks to the writers' habit of leveling every urban center they come across with plague, earthquake, fire, and sword. 1% of the population would therefore be about 60 million.

Not so nitpicking: Reducing the numbers like you describe would make having PC mages fairly implausible, and would make controlling them extremely difficult. Ever seen what happens when the PCs have a mage, but NPC mages to counter him are few and far between? It ain't pretty.

Another question is how many people are mages and don't know it and where do they conglomerate? Yes, I would assume you could find at least one mage in every region, but I think a mage in a third world country would quickly find himself "employed" an on their way to Seattle or somewhere else. From the wording of the rules, I don't think warding is very difficult and I could see people doing warding without knowing many spells. Warding is performed with your Magic Attribute, so it is an unskilled action, of which there are very few.

Now, also remember that Magical Assets(read: Mages) are going to be clustered up where runners go. If the runners are making a hit on a Renraku Call-Center, I don't think they'd have many mages on site. I don't even think it would be worth if for the runners to make a strike against a call center unless something was up, at which point Renraku would allocate some of their mages for defense. Not every building in Seattle is going to be a top-secret R&D lab or executive offices. The Janitorial company has got to have an office and supplies somewhere y'know. And I don't think wards would be necessary.

As far as regular people running into wards every day, I doubt it. As far as regular people (or even regular mages) quickening spells every day, I really doubt that too. As far as shadowrunners go, and the places they hit, well, I think mages are going to become run of the mill.

Remember, shadowrun is supposed to be exciting, even a regular joe in 2060 rarely runs into magic, although on ocassion he will see it. Shadowrunners are supposed to be a level above, and it is supposed to be exciting. Who wants to get paid by "Mr. Johansen" at McHugh's when they could be up against strange spirits, combat mages, cybered up Sammies, etc...

And when I say "Who wants to get paid by "Mr. Johansen"".. I am speaking about the PCs. They are here to play exciting futuristic games.

I think if magic were more powerful, it would be rarer. But a mage on both sides of the battle will work to cancel each other out and luck will determine that. Even a mage on one side and a WIL of 6 on the other will go a long way, since most non-mages are high in Body, etc.. I know this can be changed easily by some good prep by the GM, but you see my example.

Feel free to carry on discussing =)

Just dropping a reminder that I'm still wondering if someone can invite you into a warded area or any way to enter such an area with ones quickened spells?

Kong.

The creator(s) of the ward can allow anything through that they feel like.

Here's a matter I believe should be stated, since this thread has reached the topic I'm dealing with. Wards should rarely be regular "vanilla" wards. All wards that are likely to deal with random foot traffic(the majority) should be alarm wards, with only secure areas(probably ones you'd have to get through a security door to access) actually having real and true wards.

The reason for this came to me as I was wondering just how a secure magical research environment works. Multiple magicians, not all of whom probably know one-another, creating wards to protect their work(and protect others from their work) all the time. What happens when Dr. Jim comes(invited) into Dr. Bob's warded area, when Dr. Jim didn't work there when Dr. Bob made his wards? Dr. Jim is a machinist, so he has a high-Force Analyze Device spell quickened.

Now, suddenly, Dr. Jim is either gonna lose that nifty analysis spell, or Dr. Bob's ward is going to be demolished. Oops. This would've been avoided if Dr. Bob's general area had been protected by an alarm ward instead. It goes off, but Dr. Bob knows that Dr. Jim is okay, so he doesn't send spirits to annihilate the offender. No harm, no foul, no potential destruction of valuable(and karmically expensive) magical effects.

That's why the "elevator forcing a dual-being through a ward" idea doesn't fly with me. That's an incredibly sloppy method of ward creation, that such a thing is even possible. A clever(and thus professional) warding job would involve alarm wards for the most part, with standard impermeable wards placed only at very specific locations. An alarm masking ward, in particular, is a great astral tripwire to have around.

If you have masking you can try to sneak your quickened spells into the ward. It's in MITS somewhere, in the astral security section I think (as opposed to any section on masking, say. Have I mentioned how much I hate finding information in these books?).

Also, as a random aside to the number of mages- that number is only going to go up, presumably- just about everyone in Earthdawn had some magical abilities, and we can assume that the sixth world will progress in a similar fashion.

Alarm wards are cheaper to acquire, too, costing half as much as a full ward. I was only using standard wards to make a point earlier. I fully agree that a true ward would be a rarity; alarm wards would be amongst the most common, while masking and/or polarized wards (which cost the same as a standard one, though masking requires an initiate with Masking so they'd conceivably charge more) would be saved for secure areas.

Standard wards are pretty much just there for people who don't have MitS.

Then I stand corrected.

What, you're not going to flame me? You must be a nice guy. Welcome to the boards! I know I've seen at least a couple other nice people here too.

It should be noted that summoned spirits can create and preform warding rituals for wards up to their force (and presumably act as fellow warders in a group effort).