So it's reared its ugly head - probably not for the first time.

If a magicial is astrally percieving and he/she is wearing goggles/glasses/contact lenses - is their vision blocked? After all it is a physical object.

Can you see through windows on the astral? I'm pretty certain you cannot.

Hopefully I'm wrong but if I'm not how does wearing specs effect a dual natured being like a shapeshifter?

No, glass is not transparent on the astral. Astral perception included. Real "Dual natured" beings can switch from regular to astral perception but are astrally attackable all the time.

So if a dual natured being or astrally percieving magican puts on a pair of glasses (or wears contacts), it blinds their astral view?

Seems strange as a blind magicial can see but what, if you put some glasses on him he cannot?

:-/

Observing the astral plane is not a visual activity - it just involves extrasensory information most easily compared to vision.

Neither a blind mage nor one wearing a body glove is inhibited in terms of astral perception at last check, but please do correct me if I'm specifically contradicted on the latter anywhere.

Basically yes. "mundane" objects are opaque on the astral, so even glasses hinder your "sight". Even if you target spells with your regular eyes, electronic magnification e.g. doesn´t work for a mage, because you need direct LOS and not an electronic image (i cannot remember though, if SR4 still has both version of magnification like electronic and optical). This is why cybereyes are soooo handy for mages. ^^

This is the best answer here. Glasses wouldn't impair your astral perception any more than a jacket impairs your sense of touch.

Wrong. Sorry. I am off books, but i solely play awakened chars. and you can trust me on this one. As soon as your astral perception goes on, your "sight" is blocked by glass. Even transparent paper would hinder astral perception.

Street Magic page 114 / Astral Visibility:

Yes, that is true. But where does targeting originate* for astral perception?

Its not your eyes, as even magicians who have had their eyeballs removed or otherwise damaged can still astrally perceive.

*In the "draw a line from you to the target" kind of originate. Not the "sunlight is where vision originates" because "that's where the photon was born and it ended at your eyeball" kind of originate.

I generally go with glasses or contacts not blocking astral perception but things like car windows do. The idea behind the astral sight being blocked by the astral shadow of, for example, a store window, is to prevent astral targeting and give a game reason to infiltrate a place. Pretty much the same reason those store windows and car windows are polarized in the physical world. Stops easy magical attacks and eavesdropping.
As astral 'sight' has nothing to do with your eyes, there is no reason for something on your eyes to block it. As has been pointed out, blind magicians can astrally perceive so it is plain that astral sight is not linked to eyes.
Plus, this is just an unnecessary complication. 'Just wait, my magician has to take off his contacts before assensing this place. Damn, I dropped it!' Meanwhile the blind magician has no such problem.

The sane way to go with is that things you are wearing are not blocking astral perception. Just like you can direct a spell into an enemy's aura, despite him wearing clothes or even military power armor.
Where you draw the line in bulkiness depends on personal taste.

If you prefer, though, you can use the cited passage to its full extent and make mages always take off their glasses in Caruso style before they can astrally perceive. This way makes mages marginally more perceivable, beside the perception test to notice magic.

In the end, it doesn't really matter, as long as it's communicated within the group.

Personally, I'd prefer to stick with the logic the books give us:


Given that text, it's rather clear IMO that the ability to astrally perceive is an additional sense where the practitioner's brain interprets the stimuli by mimicking the other senses.

In other words, if you want to put something on a character that blocks their ability to astrally perceive, you need to figure out first the mechanics of how perceiving works and it sure as hell ain't using the body's natural sensory organs. A blindfold would do as much to one's astral senses as it would one's sense of taste i.e. zilch.

That's exactly how I do it. If I want to block someone's astral sight, I have a watcher bouncing around in front of them (and screaming if I don't want to hear them, too )

The problem with this is that the issue was handled differently between editions and there's little actual definition as to where this psychic sense originates from. As a result, different groups handle it differently, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

From an in-universe point of view, your worn gear might be considered part of your overall aura and not a factor in astral perception.

Take the glasses off, however, and suddenly peering through them at a distance blocks normally.





-k

This would be an acceptable house-rule if would go for. We shouldn´t make it even more complicated than it already is.

As I would handle it: Your astral senses are omnidirectional from your aura. You interpret it visually because that's how your mind is best set up to interpret astral stimuli, but it is not visual.

Your aura encompasses you, and anything you can reasonably be said to be wearing. Even big-ass power armor mini-mecha would not impair your aura, if it's something you wear. If it's something you pilot, then it would. (Examples: A suit of WH40K-ian Power Armor would be part of your Aura. A Titanfall type Titan would not be.)

So, no. Wearing contact lenses, or goggles, or a welder's mask, will not impair your astral senses, neither would wearing a set of power armor. And really, nobody expects the wizard in power armor!


Now, bear in mind, you can choose not to rule this way, but you're opening up a can of worms if you do. Specifically, if you rule that, say, wearing a head-to-toe body stocking blocks your astral vision, it also blocks other people from establishing Astral LoS to you, and thus completely immunizes you from many flavors of hostile WIZARDRY, like everybody's favorite spell, Stunbolt. This will very quickly become a complete paradigm change: head-to-toe body coverings will become standard, not only for the Runners, but also for security forces. It will also make physical spells, as opposed to mana spells, more appealing, whilst making assensing less useful because you can't see anybody's aura.

Mages can still take advantage of this, by the way, if they, for instance, wear the head-to-toe body cover, but keep like, the tip of one finger uncovered. They can cover it completely by folding in their fist, and when they want to cast spells, open their hand.

Any point of your aura. Its not really specified anywhere to my knowledge, but older editions and fluff have made a big deal out of the "synchronizing of auras" to spellcasting thing. The rules are clear that astral perception is not a traditional sense and lacking a physical focus its just "there". So from a strict RAW perspective, as long as there is a fleck of your aura exposed, you can use astral perception freely.

Cue "sticking my finger around a corner to cast spells."

You can already stick your gun 'round a corner to cast bullet. I don't see the problem here.

Doing so induces "firing blind" penalties. My point was that if you observe auras from any (and every) point on your aura, then you can target spells without penalty by exposing only a finger: you count as having line of sight from your finger.

Nope, spellcasting still requires you to satisfy the range condition of the spell in question.

However, firing around a corner is easy with a smartgun. Frankly, if a similar modifier is applied, I don't see much of a problem with it. Noticing magic isn't based on visibility, so stealth isn't a real balance factor. Spellcasting and gunfire aren't that different from one another and an astral target will perceive you regardless of the wall and can use your finger as a valid target for return magic.

I'm in favour of worn items don't impede astra senses but - how does a mage hood work?

Lead.

Call it some flavor of handwavium.

Or you can assume that Astral Perception originates from the perceptive regions of the body (namely the head/mind) and that the Mage hood screws with that perceptive region enough to eliminate the ability. Seems perfectly reasonable to me; but then I never assumed you could use Assensing from your finger either. *shrug*

I prefer Mage Sight Goggles.

TJ, you and I are on the same page here. I was making a sarcastic remark of "that ruling means X will happen, are you sure you want that?"

While yes, I would think that something like sunglasses wouldn't impair your astral perception while your wearing them, I do not think that magic-LOS originates from your "aura"

(By the way, with the way astral perception works, mage sight goggles don't work: the fiber optic cable would be opaque! Ditto mirrors etc. etc.¹)

¹Mirrors are a thin sheet of reflective metal adhered to one side of a piece of glass, to give it durability and tensile strength.

I agree - it is just funny is all.

Yeah, I know - Mage sight goggles are crazy... but so is the Fiber-optic security system too.

Honestly, i don´t know what you are discussing here. You proposed a houserule that immediately opened a can of worms for even more abuse than we had before. The RAW clearly states, how astral perception is working. Of course it is not sight, smell, taste or touch, but our brain interprets it that way. All the senses are located on the same “places” they were before and the only thing that makes life difficult, is that transparent objects in the normal world are not transparent in the astral world. Yes, this means that a mage HAS to put down his glasses, take off his helmet or whatever to start his astral perception. So what? That is a pity, but it is like water. Water is wet, it doesn´t care if you like that or not. If you start a houseruling with the assumption that things attached or within your aura are not included to the RAW, you can go for it as long as you have a GM with some common sense. If this common-sense-GM might be a problem, the next thing you have to deal with are PC´s that press very closely to a thin wall so that they can perceive and target spells through them because “the aura shines though the object”. Astral perception is like magesight at Dresden Files or the punishing look from the Ghost Rider. It is something that doesn´t work with glasses on and IMHO you should be able to recognize that the mage is a bit “away” if he is checking your aura.

As for mage sight googles: you are mixing up stuff massively. You can target via regular sight through MSG´s, but this has nothing to do with astral perception.

The bigger issue here is that both options aren't entirely without implications.

What you propose (and btw, that's not RAW, it's just how you read it), also means* that you can't target someone in a full body glove like, let's say a chameleon suit, effectively making clothed people immune to magic**.

Edit:
* (taken to an extreme)
** single-target mana spells

You don't say.

You don't use Mage Sight Goggles for astral casting. They're pretty much a meatspace casting only thing.

If you have a cybereye implanted in your hand you can already cast around corners. And... other places.


-k

Please, PLEASE shy away from the Other Places.

No, a 3rd eye at the base of the neck is perfectly fine.

Mage hoods are to stop casters targeting spells, not to prevent perception. They're a way for mundane security to contain magical detainees. Even then, they generally supply enough distraction that most mages aren't going to manage to do anything useful with perception anyway after the negatives.

The white noise generator inside the hood makes any normally automatically successful action (like projecting) require a Willpower + Intuition (4) test (Arsenal, 66).

For containing the magical, I'm more for the magecuffs. A bit of glomoss, photoreceptor, and battery and any magical activity gives the magician a 12S(e) jolt. Sure it's only got four shots, can be set off with a false positive, but the first jolt will likely knock out anyone.

Mage Hoods aren't actually designed to block your astral abilities but to keep you disoriented and unfocused. Basically its a black hood that keeps a buzzing sound in your ears, blocks your vision, and in some cases even vibrates somewhat to keep you dizzy.

You can still use your senses, it's just darn uncomfortable and close to impossible to actually cast spells. Think of it as a major distraction modifier that lowers your dicepool by a shitload.

Frankly, between that and knocking you out, knocking you out seems more humane to me. Which goes to show how much corps and cops care about humane in SR.

Honestly, that's the cops being nice. If they wanted to be mean, they'd stick you in a box and flood it with FAB.

Based on the intuition I developed playing Awakened characters, I agree with Machiavelli. I prefer the notion that, even though you are wearing them, the glasses do cast a shadow like any other object and impair Astral Perception. It is consistent with what is written. And I think a blindfold or hood should impair a Magician's sight while he is in his body.

And let's note that you can just pull down your glasses and look over them (sort of like you might if you walked into a dark room with sunglasses and did not want to take them off).

I think it's actually kind of cool, to think of someone pulling down/off their glasses when they perceive Astrally.

I don't know that I find the blind caster to break this logic. In Astral Space, he likely has eyes, and if he does not, he would still see from where his eyes would be.

Of course, if you Project, it becomes moot.

This may sound inconsistent, but I think I might give contact lenses a pass...it's sort of a "gut feel" rationale, because they are laying on your eye, swimming in your bodily fluids, and they are very thin, so any shadow they might cast would likely be minimal.

My much bigger problem with glass not being a problem for visibility on the astral stems from one very obvious logical problem:
If the glass does not stop visibility, then why does the wall around the window do so? The Wall is exactly as dead or alive as the Window after all . .

I think that any natural barrier works to block vision in the astral. It's not an aura issue, it's a how we perceive things issue. If the object, or a part of the object, would keep you from seeing through them in the physical world, then your mind naturally constructs the same type of block in the astral. Blind people, like most folks in modern society YouTube videos excluded, know they can't walk through walls or glass (except in extreme circumstance with the glass) just like everyone else, so their astral vision is blocked by these barriers. It's about how our mind constructs the basis for reality in both the physical and astral realms.

That said, if you can see directly through it without circuits or fiberoptics, etc being involved, you can use it for targeting with magic. One thing I do have to say is that I have a pretty strong dislike for the concept of a Mage with a 40x optical spotting scope popping off folks with Powerbolt from 3 klicks away without any negative modifiers.

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No one said glass windows didn't stop visibility, we said that glasses you are wearing on your face don't (or do), because of various reasons.

I was thinking that glasses shouldn't. But you're right. It sounds way cooler to see an awaken character slide their glasses to the edge of their nose to get a better look at your aura.

Rule of cool wins. So I'd rule that glasses should block astral vision. This is annoying because I wanted my blind adept to have glasses on, but screw it, he doesn't need glasses.

Hooray for boobie...aaeehm...for the rule of cool. ^^

I think what i posted was quite RAW and it doesn´t even interfere with your mentioned situational problem. One problem was astral perception, the other problem is spell targeting. You target an aura, this aura "shines" around your astral body and THIS aura is targeted. Clothing, armor etc. are per RAW explicticly exceptions from the LOS-rule (for more informations also look for the cyborgs and brain-in-a-jar rules from augmentation (IIRC)), because your aura exceeds your clothing easily. How the situation chances if your armor is 30cm thick, is another propblem. Then we would need to discuss how far the shine goes exactly...blabla...you know.

And that's exactly the point.
It isn't mentioned anywhere if glasses are or aren't part of clothing. As such, it is your understanding, interpretation and extrapolation, but not cold, hard rules that simply are.
Where do you stop? Brain in a jar? Military power armour? Glasses? Contacts? A tank (obviously)?
Personally, I think that it's easiest to roughly go with the "if you wear it, it belongs to your aura, if you pilot it, it doesn't" approach, which makes the matter simple too for glasses.
I'd also make a distinction between simple glasses and giant goggles, or even a fully enclosed helmet.
To me, it just seems petty to require lifting a pair of sunglasses before you can assense, but YMMV.

In the end, and as I wrote in my original post in this thread, it really doesn't matter (except for personal taste) as long as neither GM nor players try to be all smart about it and take the issue to an (allegedly logical) extreme.
The only difference is usually the noticeability of astral perception (normally exempt from notice in contrast to spellcasting or spirits), which is either cool to some or annoying to micromanage to others.

As an interesting aside: I did a bit of research in older books, namely SR3, Magic in the Shadows, SR2 and Grimoire.
In fact, only SR2 squarely stated that glass is translucent on the astral plane. SR3 and its magic supplement don't even touch the subject, apart from unliving objects casting a shadow on the astral (no mention at all if these block sight or not, even for opaque things). SR3 let you, in contrast to SR2 (and presumably earlier), project through living things as long as they're not astrally active (but you had no way of noticing it), and even pass through the earth itself (which is also explicitly disallowed in SR4).
Oh, the huge manatee of retcons!

Questioning fellow players, I got a 50/50 split of whether glasses would block astral sight, not depending on in which edition they started playing, with even the proponents of blockage acknowledging that it's really vague, and necessitates a split between how mana spells are directed and how astral perception works, with no satisfactory answer on how to treat contacts.

So, if glass as a window does block it, why does the glass in the glasses not block it?

Because it's not about the material but wether or not it is between your aura and your target. Your aura has always extended past your clothing and armor in shadowrun in every edition. For all intents and purposes spells originate from a point that is past the glasses (from the PoV of the caster). Another way of looking at it is that the glasses are within your aura, not outside of it.

Center of Aura/Body --> Skin/Eyes --> Contacts --> Glasses --> End of Aura/ Point of origin for spells.

Glasses as such have nothing to do with it. A blindfold blocks spells because it blocks line of sight. Touch spells work fine even with a blindfold on.

I think this is a hugely important point that is usually overlooked. Since astral perception is not linked to eyes or any other of the physical senses, why do we assume it is directional, as sight is? To me it seems perfectly logical that it would be a 3-D, all directions sense. So, while eyeglasses might be opaque on the astral, a mere turn of the head would be enough to bypass the blockage.

Of course, this does open up the issue of the astral perceived being much harder to sneak up on or surprise.

To be fair, I think part of the reason a brainjar cyborg's aura doesn't extend outside their drone body is because they have so little essence left. Compared to a metahuman in full millspec there's a lot less meat contained in a lot more metal, so it doesn't take as much to block the cyborg's aura. That's something I think a lot of people overlooked when augmentation came out and there was this sudden cry of "If brainjars can't be targeted by their auras why can guys in bodysuits or milspec?"