Hi,

I have a few questions concerning the body of a magicien while astrally projected:


The situation: One of my players was caught by runners, stunned, dragged into a cell, tied down and now is being tortured for answers.
The player is a wizard, and no anti-magic stuff (helmet or drug) were given to the player.

1) The player tries to make as if his body in unconscious by projecting himself in astral. Does a non-awakened can see the difference? How does the meat body of the wizard reacts? If a biomonitor is connected, what signal do you see for an empty meat body?

2) The player may try to escape at max astral speed. If the opposing team as a awakened character watching astral wolrd and doesn't want to follow, he could simply knock down the meat body. Since damage is linked between astral form and meat body, what happens to the astral form while the meat body is knocked down? Is the link broken like death while knocked down? Or is the astral form "dispelled" for being knock down?

Thanks
Olivier

1) The body looks commatose. A non-awakened can cearly see something is up because the mage would have absolutely no reaction to torture. He appears to be completely comatose. I imagine a biomonitor would pick up perfectly stable signs, which under the circumstances, would be unusual.

2) Well... if the Astral portion "escapes", there isn't much the captors can do. Of course, they hold the meat, so I wouldn't worry about it. Of course, the captors should realize the mage probably went to his chummers for help, so a rescue operation is imminent. Unless the captors are complete idiots, they would have seen this coming. Question is, why did they capture the mage, and what did they intend to achieve from his capture? If you can't think of anything, probably means the captors would, at this point, pop a bullet in the mage's head. But, you know, that would suck as a GM thing to do.

Frankly, they should have set up anti-magic stuff. Wards, a spirit on standby, something. Think about this: a conscious mage can fry your brains by simply looking at you. If I'm gonna kidnap someone that can do that, I'm gonna have a plan.

To complete the situation:

My mistake was indeed not to block the wizard capability.
Instead, i chose to lock him underground in a cell with bacteria painting on the door and walls. He is tied down on a metal chair with a biomonitor and electric wire to chock him (the torture part). the NPC are outside, asking questions from a distance.
The goal was to avoid any eye (or other) contact with the team since they are not specially there to kill the player but to obtain answer (and I totally agree on the part where a bullet is a crap solutio for the game) and don't want him to recognize them.

1)So there I am, with the player gone in astral (in the cell) and wondering if the NPC can know if the player is acting the unconsciousness or if they fall for the trick. So for you, if someone is really unconscious, the monitor should react more to electric choc than when he is in astral projection? A good NPC can make the difference?

2) So if I understand well, you seem to say that even if I knock down (fill completely stun monitor), the player can still be active in astral form?

Thanks for your answers

First thing to do : SMILE ... maniacly if possible ... and laugh under your breath, as if you Meant for him to go Astral

Do Not let on that there isn't a plan.

lastly ... make a plan !

have some form of astral trace or spirit tracking him, to find his chummers before they can plan his escape .

So either way, he's trapped, and they are torturing his meat. Of course, if his body is knocked unconscious, he immediately returns and is unconscious as well. I'm assuming they're doing stun damage, so it wouldn't take much to KO. But, as soon as he's conscious again he can escape again. Making the whole thing fairly useless to the torturers. So, here's the plan.

1. They torture him into unconsciousness a couple of times and then realize what's happening.
2. Then they threaten with removing body parts. As in, "we know what you're doing. So, here's what we are going to do. We are going to knock you out. Then we are going to saw your left arm off at the elbow. And we will keep removing chunks until you tell us what we want to know, or you die."
3. If the player doesn't talk at that point, start chopping off parts and taking off essence. He's fucked, and he should realize it and play along, like his character, not as a guy who's NOT about to have his body chopped up. He can get replacement parts later

Couple of things. First, how's he supposed to talk if he's unconscious? Second, losing limbs doesn't cost Essence. Getting them replaced with cyberware does.

He doesn't have to be unconscious to hear them. If he's trapped in the room, he can hear them talk, astral or not, right? If not, knock him out, wake him up and explain it. Or just start hacking away until he talks. Either way, it will force the player to decide whether he wants to be a decent role player, or make a new character.
And I've always had a problem with the theory that it's the replacement that causes the essence loss. Violating the sanctity of the body should be what damages the essence. Putting something else in it's place, or not, shouldn't make a difference.

<edit>Actually, that theory is proven by the "essence hole" rule. If you remove cyberware, you don't get the essence back.

It is not 'proven'.
The implantation is what causes the essence loss, not the loss of a limb.
In SR4 there are no rules for losing magic due to physical trauma.

There are however, optional rules for severe damage, in Augmentation, where one possible effect for taking excessive damage is essence loss.

Ok that was the answer I was looking for!

I don't think I'll shop limbs off the player, it's hard, and since they didn't do anything specially wrong to get embushed, I would find it not nice of GM to destroy partially the character.
But I may find an in between situation.
They are many disadvantages that are mental and could be the result of too long torture.
I'm sure they are some nice phobia or other mental disorders that I can develop while torturing the character. Up to the player to resist or to let go.
That way, the character is not destroyed, he can still continue is life "normally" but his roleplay would be slightly altered.

To answer your second post, Mist-e-Fire:

1) Yes, a skilled NPC can tell the difference between astrally projecting and unconscious, because you have to be conscious to be in the astral. (See point 2.)

2) Knocking a character unconscious (full stun condition monitor) stops them from being in the astral - their astral form returns to their meat body. (There's a piece of equipment called "mage cuffs" that work exactly that way.)

If the people who captured the magician know that he's a magician, I think it's reasonable for them to guess he's in the astral if he's conscious but not answering their questions.

Ok, Thanks Freya!
That completes the explanation very well

Remember that in the 2070's, limb loss isn't permanent. You can have a new arm grown and attached in a month, for 25,000. Costly, but not out of what's reasonable for a shadowrunner, especially a mage, to have available. Really, the threat should be enough for the character to talk. If he believes them.

If the captors are already going for physical torture (as opposed tomere ineterrogation), they're likely planning to definitively dispose of the mage once he's finished spilling the bean. They'be baiscaly ensured he's going to be hating them and very likely to want payback, which means letting him loose afterward is a bad idea.

At that point, there's litlle to stop them from going the 'remove bits' route beyond the interogator's squeamishness (if they're resorting to abduction and torture, i wouldn't trsut their moral compass to hold them back here)

Do you have a reference for that?

Well, at the moment, the NPC have succeeded in performing torture without any possibility for the players to make contact (astral, visual or matricial) with their torturer (remote torture with electric shocks).
So, for the moment, and since the NPC need the character to continue their "work", but under surveillance, there is absolutely no way they would kill them.

Why doesn't he just oversummon a spirit to bust him out?

So they're not really prepared to do anything actually disabling either, are they. In that case, you have to bluff. Which rarely works against PC's because most players would rather have their character die after horrible torture and disfigurement than actually go along with anything that might make them, the player, look weak. So.... good luck

He doesn't oversummon because he is a false wizard. The character has burned his magic ability (magic = 1). Still able to project himself, but for the rest...
He is now a "regular" mercenary dealing with weapons and sometimes using the few left of his magic ability.

For the torture part, we will see. I think my players will go over that feeling and try to know when their character have gone to their limit.

Thanks for all your answers

AFAIK, there has never, in any edition, been a rule that losing a limb costs Essence. It is the introduction of cyberware (and, later, bioware, nanoware, and geneware) into the body that incurs the cost.

Completely true, thanks for the quote, too. I missed Bearclaw's question.
Furthermore, you don't lose _any_ essence if you replace a lost limb with a cloned one. Refer to Augmentation.

There have been rules in various editions for magic loss with severe damage. You had to roll for that each time you took deadly physical damage in SR3 for example.
None for essence, though, except the optional rule in Augmentation.

The character should look into Calling. Shameless plug.