Active would be anything you have to 'turn on', roll drain, etc. Like Strength Boost or whatever it was called. Pretty much anything adept equivalent to sustaining a spell.

Passive would be stuff like improved unarmed combat.

So the SOTA 63 power would be an active or passive one?

Actually, going by RAW of 3rd Ed there's only one power that explicitly shows itself being "in effect" in a spell-like manner within someone's aura: The damage charge created by the "delayed damage" power and that particular effect only manifests in the aura of a victim that has been exposed to that power.

Rulewise there's no distinction between activated/temporary and passive/(more or less) permanent powers (see above in previous parts of the discussion about "power juggling") => Adept powers are by RAW only recognizable when having enough successes on an assensing test: Each success above the 2 first two reaveals 1 adept power (at random) => In order to determine all powers of an adept with a large number of lower priced powers you really need many successes on that assensing test.

I can't say whether or not this has been changed in either SR4 or SR5.
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Facial Sculpt is one of the powers in SotA'64 (p. 66). It has indeed an power point cost of 1 and is one of the cases where "active" vs. "passive" doesn't work out that well and certainly can create some serious issues with the previously discussed "powers juggling". Why?

First of all it has to be "activated" by an act of (relatively) long concentration during which the facial structure of the adept is altered. This alteration remains for a number of hours that is determined by his magic attribute after which the change is reverted (seemingly instantaneous). However, once the face has been changed there's no indication that the adept must maintain any form of concentration (which would equate into the power being "sustained" like as spell) => So it sort of starts out as a power that has to be activated but once the change has occured it's actual state of being "in use" is highly debatable.

Mechanically this power "sucks" since it makes use of the dreaded open test mechanic in order to determine the effect upon people that look at the adept and willingly or unconciously try to recognize him/her. With a bad roll that might impose a mere +2 modifier to perception tests whereas a lucky roll might change the TN for the required perception test into absurd regions. I highly suggest some form of house ruling there, that determines the TN modifier for the observing person by a Magic Test against TN 4 where every success creates a cumulative +1.

Another thing that could cause debate is the level of control and detail this power provides. There are references to it altering facial structures by "thickening" / "thinning" / "stretching" some or all of the defining facial structures even to a point where someone might misidentify the adept's (meta)race. However there's no clear word what happens if the adept tries to mimic the exact look of another person whom's facial features he/she knows => The scope of this power within the individual campaign should be discussed with the GM right from the start.

To further complicate things, this power quite obviously only changes facial structures (including teeth) but not things like skin tone and hair color. In order to change the latter two you'd need the separate power called Melanin Control (also in SotA'64, p. 67). This particular power shares some of traits of Facial Sculpt in that sense that it also has some sort of activation mechanism but the effect staying in place once the desired state has been reached (and unlike the Facial Sculpt it doesn't automatically revert to normal after a specified amount of time). So it's neither truly active nor truly passive as well.

Yea I haven't answered yet because I've been digging through the 3E books.

I'm guessing I'm remembering a house rule - still, it makes sense to me that activated powers are visible in the astral.

I agree about Facial Sculpt definitely being in a gray area of that concept.

ok, here we go for a new question, honestly not really 3rd ed oriented, but still:

It comes from "Ivy and Chrome" scenario.

When you astrally project, you look like and idealized version of yourself, but what about what you wear?

In this scenario, the mage-doctor who was astrally projecting was wearing his doctor-clothes.

Is that cannon?

I can't recall where it was, but I do remember seeing in a BBB that "You are what you will" in astral space. In other words, your astral body can have whatever clothing you want it to, since it's all symbolic. The only things that still look like themselves, IIRC, are foci.

Well, in the Bug City Novel, the Mage appeared very much naked when he manifested his astral body on the mundane plane much to the enjoyment of female company . . and much to the annoyance of an air elemental he tried to hide behind . .

SR3 BBB, p.173:

Ah thanks, that's good to know.

Next questions:

-> Astral Tracking : does a link last forever. Let's say Mrs X mom kept a lock of hair from her daughter. 20 years after, she's a runner. May I use this to astral track her?

-> Is there any size involved into Astral Tracking. If instead of a lock of hair I get a single one, would it work the same?

1) I don't think you can 'Astral Track' someone with a DNA sample. It requires a connection from an object (spirit, foci, circle, and lodges) to the owner. 'Ritual tracking' - essentially the same as the targeting part for ritual sorcery (rules are in Magic in the Shadows) can be used with DNA (material) samples for living things. I think there are rules somewhere on the viability time frame of a DNA sample for ritual purposes somewhere, but I can't look just yet. I know if the sample was preserved probably it is pretty much indefinite.


2) No, there are no rule differences for the size of DNA samples. Different types of symbolic links work better/worse, but for DNA as long as you have a sample it works the same. I don't recall any rules about the sample being used up etc etc.

Actually, DNA samples last as long as they need to. There used to a rule that they lasted (Essence) hours, but that was dropped in 3rd edition. There were also methods, like the Preserve spell, to make a ritual sample last forever. It was specifically designed to make pc's sweat over leaving DNA behind, although all it really did was make the Sterilize spell really popular.

2) There is no requirement on size, but the sample *is* used up in the ritual, so a small sample could only be used once. Larger samples could be portioned out.

We've had that [Essence hour] in mind but we couldn't find it in the MitS rulebook. That's where I got confused.

Same here

And I don't even really have 4E or 5E rules in my head to confuse things even further.

I'd rather say "as long as the GM deems them usuable with an upper limited dictated by other known sources within the ruleset".



Baring the quite possible situation that such a rule might still be hidden in a very obscure place within the SR3 ruleset you're certainly correct that this explicit rule definition was dropped within the text on ritual magic. However, ...



... by implication this particular spell is the precedence for a still limited time frame during which untreated DNA samples can be used as material link (that doesn't impose TN modifiers): The spell's description explicitly states that it preserves the material for [Force+spell casting successes]*12 hours which in turn indicates that (untreated) DNA samples are still limited to less than 24 hours [=(Force 1 Preserve spell with the minimum numers of successes of 1) * 12] ... otherwise the spell wouldn't make any sense.

It's not a ''problem question", but I remember the Adept being sometimes broken (or always) in 3rd. Was it my perception or a normal thing ?

As for the mage, wasn't the drain enough to control their power hungriness ? I know that foci and etc. can -X the TN of resisting (or casting ? magic rule blurred in my head right now), but it's a DM thing to make them accessible or not.

I'm pretty sure it was an SR2 rule, and possibly even SR1. I believe it was in one of the Grimoires, although I can't be certain.

Well, yeah, the implication in Sr3 was that ritual samples didn't last forever. But somewhere in the transition documents was a dev note saying that they lasted as long as the GM needed them to; you couldn't hide behind wards with a stopwatch, and come out knowing you were safe.


Adepts weren't as broken in SR3, largely because augmentations were a lot cheaper and more effective, relatively speaking. For example, Wired-3 was available to a starting character; even though it cost more nuyen than SR4, in an absolute sense it was only half of your potential starting cash, leaving you plenty of room to buy more stuff. Sams could front-load on cyber and bio, and come out a lot more capable than a comparable adept. In the long run, adepts could catch up through initiations and buying power points, but that was a slow process.

Drain was an issue, but not as big of one as you might imagine. A well built caster could still handle a lot of drain without too much problem, and when they initiated and got a hold of Centering, that tended to go away as well.

Ok, good to know for adept. I was gonna look at nerfing them on my impression, but that not the case so cool.

For the mage, I just need to restrict access to things, letting the player get them slower. I think that would do the trick.

Probably perception. SotA:64 brought in social powers that could be problematic (you could end up with such huge TN modifiers that it approached mind control, like having a reasonable shot at convincing a Suspicious Enemy to do something Disastrous to them), but that's about it. The one other issue I can think of is that Adepts are much simpler to design than most other character types—so in a group of inexperienced players (including the GM), there's a pretty good chance that the Adept is going to be the one someone figures out how to optimize first, possibly before the GM learns how to deal with it. A melee adept throwing 18 dice in melee before combat pool and dealing (STR+1 or 2)S isn't the end of the world—in the hands of a moderately experienced GM who knows the system. It can be quite another thing for a less-than-confident GM with shaky command of the system. They can also amplify some of the system's preexisting edge cases, like putting an extra six dice behind a Shotgun Cone of Doom (max out the choke so that your attack is at -9TN, then roll so many successes that only a Troll is going to be left standing despite the 2S damage code). But again, this is only really a problem when a GM is inexperienced enough that this hits them out of the blue (it doesn't even take explicit player munchkinism—I built the shotgun adept early in my SR-playing days, as maybe my second or third character ever, and only noticed the Cone of Doom in mid-combat when I had the opportunity to take advantage of it).


Drain has problems as a control mechanism. Even putting aside the ways of compensating for it (*cough*Trauma Damper*cough*), the problem is that the TN mods from damage are so nasty that any reasonably-designed character will rely almost entirely on spells that they can use effectively while having very high certainty of not taking Drain. I've toyed with ways to address this, like giving mages a third damage track for Drain that acts like Stun but doesn't give TN penalties and then making Drain harder to resist completely, but nothing's really fleshed out enough to recommend yet.

As it stands, though, there are some options for potent spells with very little risk of Drain (including spells that are, for practical purposes, Force-independent), but you can't take them away without shafting mages.

~J

Fortunately, it was much harder to load on the dice in SR3. You only got dice equal to your skill to start; the most common source of extra dice was the allocatable pools: Combat Pool, Spell Pool, etc. There was no social pool, so the easy way was out. There were other ways, but they were much trickier and easier to restrict. You certainly wouldn't see a 50+ dice pornomancer in SR3!


Yeah, in practice Drain tended to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Mages tended to either throw spells under tight enough control that drain wasn't an issue, or they cast it as hard as they could, not caring if the drain knocked them out. The middle effect-- Drain slowly wearing them down-- didn't happen as often as it probably should.

For the adept, I think my perception was because one the player in the time upped so much his reaction that he was acting all the time, but I didn't take into consideration that he was surely weak at many other skill/actions.



I thnik that's a good idea. If mage are all low power without consequence or high power and we'll see where it goes, adding this kind of damage track make them think (theoretically) about using moderate spell because they have room to spare without adding TN modifier.

Not really—Kinesics gives extra dice on top of the TN mods, Tailored Pheromones can give up to four more dice, and if you're really dedicated you can buy Improved Ability:<Social Skill of choice> for up to six more, giving a maximum of 19 dice—and only the last six are particularly pricey. Though I'm noticing now that Tailored Pheromones are Avail 12—was that always the case? I could have sworn they were available at chargen, at least at some point. Still, all the powers will make it easy to acquire them post-chargen, so the main restriction will be earning the cash.

There's also the fact that the Social Skill rules don't have much in terms of threshold rules—a single success is sufficient, and while it's suggested that there should be ensuing consequences there appears to be a lot of room for crafting your approach to mitigate these if the consequences to your target can be obviously Disastrous. Actually, based on the example on p94, SR3, I'm starting to think that despite the odd placement of the Suspicious modifier in the modifiers table it's supposed to be one of the mutually exclusive options, which reduces encountered TNs even further.

Anyway, I'd need to do more detailed analysis to get specifics, but between the additional -3 to TNs, the +3 to dice, and the additional availability of IA:<Social>, I don't really see Social Adepts being effectively controlled by the lack of a social pool—both in terms of actually being able to get loads of dice and in terms of the TN mods being so huge that even without lots of dice they're still pretty powerful.

(I will note for the less-initiated following along at home that the available TN mods discussed vary in their breadth—-2TN for Good Reputation applies to all Social Skills, the -3 for Kinesics is limited to Etiquette and Negotiation (which remains extremely broad, though the lack of Intimidation/Interrogation does hurt—but the extra dice are available for them as well), and if you go in for Aptitude you need to pick one skill for it. Nevertheless, there's a lot you can do one that one skill, and you get enough bonuses for the others that you're still a generally-powerful Face. This is before getting into things like the GM allowing GLaKI, or generous interpretation of Friendly Face.)


Mm. Yeah, large quantities of Reaction/Initiative bonuses can be attention-grabbing, though they probably aren't all that powerful in actual practice. The difference between +4REA/+2dINIT and +3REA/+3dINIT isn't nothing, but given how much cheaper the former usually is it's probably either illusory or an artifact of the specific kinds of combat environments being presented. Well, unless the rest of the team didn't take initiative enhancement, in which case you've got a build-quality mismatch.


I do think it has great potential as a solution, but it won't be easy—for example, I don't think a straightforward approach like using full Force to calculate Drain is sufficient, because there are still a lot of spells that can be made easy to resist Drain for while remaining useful—in particular, utility spells like Levitate (you move slowly, but levitating at all is a big change from not levitating), or things like Fetish/Exclusive-for-Drain Stunbolt. I'm not certain that these are actually problems, but again, that's why I need to do the analysis.

Still, if someone tries this approach, let me know how it works out (preferably with details about mage build, player optimization ability, and play style).

~J