So I've got a shaman in my game that has the Improved Invisibility spell, and it's a favourite among the group as a whole. The only thing is, I'd prefer to not have every session be about how it took what should have been a tricky job and made it a cakewalk. I've got a few thoughts on how to mitigate it's usefulness, like having a mage dispel it when it's cast at Force 2, but I would like some input on the matter, since I can only have mages on astral lookout so often.

Please note, I'm running 3rd edition.

It's been some time since I GM'd SR3, but IIRC since Improved Invisibility is an illusion spell, any onlooker can "disbelief" the spell by rolling equal or more successes on an INT test, so low force invisibility can fail without opposition mages around. Also Invisibility doesn't hide sound or smell, so you could equip your security patrols with guard dogs. Also consider detection devices that aren't dependent on sight like sound sensors and pressure plates.

And while a facility might not always have a mage on-site they will call one in from their security provider's headquarters when they notice something weird, like doors opening without someone visible on the surveillance videos.

There's a chapter on facility security in SOTA2063, so that might provide some help if that book is available to you.

The spell has to beat the object resistance of the sensors & cameras that can perceive it. Force 2 won't cut it.

Likewise, if a person is observing the area with their own (cyber)eyes, there is a check involved. The observer may see through it at Force 2.

I would use any/all of the following in my secure facilities:

1. Ultrasound sensors.
2. Thermal sensors.
3. Motion sensors work great too.
4. Weight sensors on the floor.
5. Cyberware scanners
6. Chemical Scanners
7. Magnetic Anomaly Detectors

Each of those things completely bypass Improved Invisibility. Impr. Invis only stops visible light. So use sensors that don't use light as the sensing medium. Motion sensors are great for this.

Drone sensors are great for picking up the invisible too, especially when they are casting at low levels. Those Drones (and their sensors) have rather high Object Resistances. Low Force ain't gonna cut it.

A good way to teach your players a lesson is to let them sneak in with that Force 2 Impr Invis and have the security forces pretend to not see the party until they get into an easy to corner location and then spring the trap on them, say a grenade (or two) and Chunky Salsa.

EKBT81 made some good points, so I'll just follow it up with this: if it's valuable enough to pay a mage to steal it, it's valuable enough to pay a mage to protect it. Invisibility doesn't do anything on the astral plane so any astrally active security (watchers, spirits or elementals, or dual-natured guard animals) wouldn't be affected at all.

Dual nature or astrally perceiving automatically see through invis.

spirits, mages, critters all fun.

As mentioned before anything that doesn't use sight can bypass this. Using ultra sound for example. Drones with sensors of ~3 should be able to see right through it.

Bog standard Motion Detectors will "see" right through Invisibility, Improved or otherwise - they're not SEEING anything, they're listening. More akin to echolocation than sight.

Similarly, anyone with Ultrasound "vision" would get an echo-map off the invisible person/object, too.

Then there's pressure pads and such, hidden under the carpet (or even built into the marble floors) of whatever location the runner needs to access, and infrasonic trip-"beams", and so on. Basically, anything that doesn't rely on light or EM radiation for detection.

Yeah, motion detectors, watcher spirits, paracritters like Hellhounds...

Invisibility isn't that great.

Even a regular dog with it's nose and ears can notice something invisible is moving around. And with invisiiblity spell floating around since the Awakening, I'd say all but the dumbest guards will have 'possible invisible intruder' on their mind if their dog starts acting weird.

Invisibility grants a predator style effect. It's a +1 to perception test per success (House rule: I personnaly decided that [Force] is the maximum number of successes that counts).

So 4 successes grants +4.

It's very nice but not OP.

Now add in that the spell is sustained, so if the mage want to make a second PC invisible, his target is at +2. He will roll less successes. and so on.



The spell is very usefull. But doesn't imbalance the game at all. It's a good way to help one non-stealthy character to sneak into a location when the whole group needs to enter.

I thought that was a general rule for magic: Force limits hits?

Absolute best way to deal with invisibility.

Doors.




-k

I'll have to come back to this in more detail, but remember that wards interact with sustained spells. That means that either the mage has to cast the spell inside the ward or they have to bust through and alert the ward's creator.

(Edit: I'm assuming you're not dealing with an Initiate with Masking; if so, like I said, more later.)

~J

In 3rd edition, never seen it

p.178

"Force
A spell’s Force represents how much magical energy the caster puts into the spell, which determines the power and effectiveness of the spell. Spellcasters learn spells at a specific Force. They can cast the spell at a lower Force, if desired, but can never cast the spell at a higher Force than they have learned. The minimum Force for any spell is 1. Characters who want to increase the Force of a spell must re-learn the spell. See Learning Spells on p. 180. The higher the Force of a spell, the greater its potential effectand the harder it is for the target to resist. High-Force spells are also more fatiguing to cast. When choosing the Force of a spell, you must strike a balance between its effectiveness and your character’s ability to absorb the Drain of the spellcasting."

In the following rules, no mention of that neither.

It just made Force useless for most spells.

Don't forget that vision isn't everything. A runner with all his gear will often be a little noisy when moving around. Doors are also a good and cheap way to hinder people using invisibility spells (or ruthenium polymer suits)

You are NOT invisible anyway. Fog is +4 to TN which equals to 4 success in an invisible spellcasting, low light +6.

You're thinking of Camouflage. Invis and II are what they sound like, and jump straight to the +8 Blind Fire.

(Still more later)

~J

- Use suppresive fire from sentry guns (loaded with gel rounds)
- Use air lock systems and non-lethal gas in case intruders are detected
- Use area denial/effect weapons

Uh! You're right. Did I house rule that long time ago or what?

That's what written:

"INDIRECT ILLUSION SPELLS
Indirect illusion spells manipulate energy to create an illusionary
image or sound or other sense-based effect, fooling the
senses. They must be cast “around” a person, or over an area
(Magic rating in meters) that is within the caster’s line of sight.
All indirect illusions are resisted by Intelligence.
Invisibility
Type: M • Target: 4 • Duration: S • Drain: M
Improved Invisibility
Type: P • Target: 4 • Duration: S • Drain: +1(M)
This spell makes the subject invisible to normal vision. The
subject is completely tangible and detectable by the other
senses. Their aura is still visible to astral perception.
Attacks against invisible targets suffer the Blind Fire modifier
(p. 111) if the attacker is unable to see or otherwise sense
the target of the spell.
Invisibility affects the minds of viewers. Improved invisibility
affects technological sensors as well."


Hell it sucks. That means it's totally unreliable. Should 1 single NPC roll a good Intelligence test and *zip*, the PC is seen by him. And what about a device?

Besides the Fact that a Force 1 Improved Invisibility Spell with 8 successes (in SR3) was impossible to actually resist if your Intelligence Attribute was less than 8. This is why the tactic is so successful. Many spells work better at Force 1 than at higher forces because once you accumulated more hits than the resistance attribute, you need not worry (and you tended to accumulate more hits with a Low Force Spell than a High Force spell). We had a Magician who played on that very aspect of the system. He was frighteningly successful, even if there were other ways to counter the effects of the spell.

Simpler solution that costs the corp less. Give the guards a paintball gun, and instructions to hose the hallway with it should they ever suspect something invisible. If they're wrong, the worst it costs is a mopping.

That could even be automated - have a fixed drone with a camera and a non-visual sensor (radar or ultrasound) along with a repeating paintbal gun. If there's a mismatch between the sensors, hose the mismatched area.

I can get messy if it's hacked, but nothing too bad.

I'm unsure how effective that would exactly be. SR3 BBB states that "Invisibility affects the minds of viewers". So one could contend that any random hits with paintball pellets would also end up being covered by the illusion. Guards might notice if splashes disappear from view, but any intruders that move out of the paint gun's field of fire would be just as invisible as before.

As a player, I would find it, ermmm, totally shitty. And probably added unfairly because I abused the rule.

Why would you get any difference in successes based on the force? TN is either fixed or resisted.

Right. Improved Invis is a TN 4 no matter the force. Also to affect cameras you have to cast it at least at Force 4 (half or higher the object resistance of 8 for electronic items).

Ideally you'd want to cast it at Force 9 to pretty much negate the chance of anyone getting enough successes to resist, but that would come with 5M physical drain.

Maybe I am thinking of just Invisibility. Been a while, and I no longer have books to reference.
Whichever is resisted with Intelligence.

They're both resisted with Intelligence.

EDIT: To be clear, there are no spells in the core book that have a Target Number based on the Force. There may be in one of the supplements but I don't have those at hand.

One important things regarding invisibility is that people know the threat exists. Guards can and will be trained not only to use dogs or ultrasound to detect invisible people , but also how to react to their presence and defend against them. Trained personnel shouldn't act in a silly way or be surprised more than a few seconds when it happens. If there is a the sound of footsteps or a door that open alone, nobody's going to say it "must be wind".

I'd compare that to the procedure police officers in the US now follow when they stop a driver (at least in dangerous locales), keep your hands when I can see them and all that. It may be lousy, slow, rude, whatever, and not useful most of the time. They do it because it will save their life sometimes.

Right. Invisibility is best used to, say, traverse open terrain (where the possibility of a direct encounter is small) or move about freely in an area that's only lightly monitored. It's also an excellent aid to someone who's already an infiltration expert or to the troll with a machine gun stationed on the roof for a dangerous meet.

There are some neat tricks you can pull off with it -- make your driver invisible and probably the first thing that'll pop into an enemy's head is that the car is remote rigged, probably sparing the driver a bit of directed fire. Also you can use glass to your advantage since it's opaque to astral perception and some scanning devices, meaning that you can walk straight up to a window and look in without worrying too much about getting seen.

Because Force sets Drain, which can determine how much Spell Pool you can throw into casting rather than resisting Drain.

~J

Ok that makes sense.

RE: The emphasized stuff. Just to be sure that all my I's are dotted and T's crossed, where is the rule that governs this little bit of magical weakness?

SR3 p182, under the rules for Sorcery test, just above the Object Resistance Table.

Gravel paths ways surrounding the site or zen stone garden in the center of corp area. Bag of flour or paint grenade is always a giggle and always considered fair...

Well, considering the rules, I would somewhat be scared to travel an open terrain if I rolled 3-4 success on the spellcast. If 1 single guard succeed his intelligence test, I am screwed uncovered and just botched the infiltration.

Dangerous thing, very dangerous.

wouldn't wards also have an effect in preventing movement into a building with an active spell?

Which is where they dynamics of Spell Force come in.
At low Force, you are likely to overcome any attempts at a Guard's ability to beat the successes on the spell (all you need worry about is technology at that point).
At higher Force, your Successes will be lower, but the resistance will be higher (and with Imp Invis, Technology may have a harder time sensing you as well).

yes, I understand that

Well I house ruled the spell force=max success, so at my table, it's not something I'd fear.

Not quite.

Let's say you have a fairly normal starting-ish mage with Sorcery 6, a Drain resistance stat of 5, and 5 spell pool. Improved Invisibility.

Casting at Force 3, the drain is 2M, which is the lowest Drain you're going to get so it's the lowest force to really consider. You can dump all your Spell Pool into the casting roll, and come out with about 5 successes (TN 4). Odds are you'll get at least the 4 necessary hits on the Drain roll to stage Moderate down to nothing. Your standard guard will be at odds to get about 2 or 3 successes on the resist, but this low force won't affect cameras.

Casting at Force 5, the next jump up, drain is 3M. The razor split here is 4 Spell Pool to the casting, and 1 to Drain. So you roll 10 dice and get about 5 successes still (still TN 4), and you're at odds to get your requisite 4 successes on Drain. Now you're still doing just as well in terms of successes, cameras are foiled, and even high level security will only get 1 or 2 successes back at you.


Casting at Force 9, the big time, Drain is 5M. You can't get the requisite 12 dice to put yourself at good odds to resist that drain, but you can probably stage it down to light. So you throw 1 die at the Drain and 4 at casting, and again get 5 successes (TN 4 still), take 1 box of physical damage, and then pretty much no one will get any successes against the Force of the spell, much less the 5 needed to see you.

Why is the TN 4 again? I was under the impression the TN was the Force of the Spell. Been a while since I played SR3, But I am pretty sure that was the whole point of Force mattering.

Nope. No spells (at least in the main book) have TN related in any way to Force. It's always either the target's stat, some calculated thing (like 10 - Essence for Heal), or a flat number.

Flat numbers are usually 4 (for most elemental spells, indirect illusions, some others) or 6 (for high-end manipulations like Barrier spells).

EDIT: Force does, however, set the TN for the resistance roll, so it's important there.

Good old fashioned trip wires are still in vogue but mostly as you can see magic via magic, passive or active, is the best option. Triangulation of force between the various character roles means you tend to get Pawned by what fails or don't have.

Here's another anti-invisibility tactic:

Deadly non-visible-light lasers sweeping the hallways, that automatically shut off if the camera system sees someone walking down said halls.

The guards making their rounds would be unaffected. Anyone the cameras can't see, not so much.

I still like my first answer best, though. Doors.



-k