This was a 3rd ed. argument, but I'd welcome people's opinion on this in other editions as well.

So recently someone told me that any decent shadowrunner will be able to detect being assensed, Awakened or not, and that they will immediately take offense to it and become violent.

Having read quite a lot of lore on it, that's not my impression. One of the original published SR stories had a street mage sitting on a stoop assensing literally everyone who walked down the street who looked at all interesting just for fun, and even when she did so to an experienced mundane shadowrunner, he had no idea.

Nothing in the core books gave me the idea that if a mundane is walking down the street and someone assenses them, they have any way of knowing that. Heck, an astral being directly passing through a person takes a TN 10 (in 3rd edition) Perception check to notice, and that's when something's literally moving through your aura. Having someone just look at your aura seems like it should be imperceptible. There is nothing at all in the Magic section which says that people get a check of any kind to notice someone assensing them.

Of course, if an experienced shadowrunner is looking a mage right in the eyes at one foot away and the mage's eyes suddenly unfocus and then refocus, they could infer that they might have just been astrally perceived. But can a mundane tell if someone is assensing them, under most circumstances?

Like I said, 3rd ed question, but I also play 5th ed and would like to know if there's support for a mandatory perception check on the astrally observed party's behalf. I've never known a GM to do so, but perhaps they were being negligent.

Not that I am aware of... SR5 has a similar check to detect if an astral form passes through a mundane aura (p.314, Astral Detection), but nothing about noticing being assensed.

ETA: I guess a reading of the Perceiving Magic section in SR5 might allow it, but since there is no Force associated with assensing, I personally wouldn't include it in the list of things that could be perceived. Even so, the Threshold would be the assensing magician's skill, so a high level assensing skill would be pretty difficult to detect.

Assensing is a passive detection. Nothing is radiated or sent out by the Assensor, so there is nothing for the object to notice. Would you or I specially notice if someone were looking at us, or hearing what we say? Or smelling us?

....

Now, touching or tasting might be another matter.

yeah, a mundane might notice that you're ogling them if you're not subtle about it. but telling that you're assensing them as opposed to, say, letting some sort of image analysis software do it's thing, or just ogling them because 90% of all shadowrunners are lesbian elf stripper ninjas (the remaining 10% are dikoted ally spirits in the form of an ares viper slivergun, i presume)? no way to know. as a mundane, in any event.

Is it possible they were referring to situations such as the Johnson trying to assense them at the meet? Because that's one of those "runner etiquette" things that gets discussed alot.

The general consensus at my table is: No, there's nothing about assessing that in and of itself would alert a mundane, but an astute observer probably recognizes the unfocused, thousand yard stare that means they're being scanned with something other than normal vision--and some groups might take offense to that, due to the issues of privacy/anonymity and trust that come up.

It's generally a matter of reading body language to figure out that someone is trying to assense you--which means you have to see the person doing it and make a perception check to figure out what they're up to. The party doing the assessing can also try to hide what they're doing the same way a guy checking out that hot elf at the bar or a would-be thief casing store security can try to be discreet about it, possibly relying on an Etiquette roll or an opposed Con test to deflect suspicion. Naturally, experienced runners probably have a better idea of what to look for and thus have a better chance of picking up when someone's eying them.

Same deal goes for checking someone out with ultrawideband radar or some other scanning device, or just looking for the telltale bulge of a shoulder holster under their jacket.

I don't think that even an awakened character would be able to sense they were being assensed without seening who is doing it.

I once had a GM who ruled that astral perception was fairly obvious to a casual observer. To him, astral perception looked like meditation with rolled-back eyeballs.

I would say that it should be moderately difficult to notice astral perception, with bonus dice if the character liable to notice has the assensing skill or a relevant knowledge skill. To determine what, if anything, a character is assensing could be a judge intentions test, again with bonus dice if that character has assensing or a relevant knowledge skill. I think it should be easy for an assensing character to see that another character is astrally perceiving.

There is some fluff of people noticing astral perception. In On the Run, there is a note to have the Mr. Johnson comment if he is assenced. In Neat Kincaid noticed some mafia Wiz Kid trying to assense him and flairs up his masking to make himself look stronger than he is. Those are the only two examples of fluff that I can think of off the top of my head of people actually noticing when they're being assenced.

No rules, but I think treating it like the threshold test to notice magic, that being the level of the skill is the threshold to notice someone assencing, makes sense.

In Street Grimoire there's a technique called Astral Bluff. Unless you can tell when you're the subject of assensing or can somehow just time it properly ... it's remarkably useless. I don't think it's going to help mundanes, though.

Even if assensing requires an unfocused look, there's no way a mundane could tell if they were being assesnsed from a crowd or from a distance. You would need to notice someone is staring at you funny, and then deduce that they're assensing you (as opposed to just ogling).

As for reacting violently... um, no. There are plenty of times where a person might be assensed, and if you reacted violently to each and every one, you'd get in serious trouble. For example, high security checkpoints will have a security mage or adept on hand, who will assense everyone who goes through. It's no more invasive than a metal detector, so unless the PC routinely goes off when entering the mall, the response is excessive.

There is an argument in some circles where it's impolite for the Johnson to assense you, but even that doesn't hold. Very few Johnsons are magically active (although many will have some form of magical security, either in the form of a mage in the background or spirits in the astral), and since Masking is very common, there's no way you can know if the Johnson is magically active or not without assensing them-- and if it's wrong for them to do it, it's wrong for you, too.

i'm all fiction, no rule books, so in the novels, most mundane's perceiving anyone doing astral mumbo jumbo is pretty blind to it. they have no idea other then by expressions and body language to guesif they're doing anything. in mind probes, they always notice. in perceiving astrals aura's or assensing from a mundane standpoint, almost never. only reason that makes sense is if they're expecting it or have had it done to them so many dozen times before by friends etc that they just might be able to notice. but probably not

In SR, magicians are simply better then non-magicians. So no, that isn't how it works in standard rules. You can't notice that you are being assensed. You might notice that you are being looked at, and can go into the standard monkey dance over it, but you don't know you are being assensed. Even if you are currently astrally active and notice that he also, you don't know that he is assensing you - though that isn't a bad bet as to what is going on, you don't know that for sure.

Some people might react violently to being looked at funny. Granted, "any decent shadowrunner" should be professional enough not to engage in that kind of penny-ante barroom pissing contest.

As for picking someone out of a crowd, an experienced runner should absolutely be able to do that. Being able to tell when someone in a crowd is paying an unusual amount of attention to you is just basic survival skills. True, you won't automatically know "hey, that guy's assessing me", but you should definitely have a chance to notice if someone is scoping you out, and be able to recognize the body language that comes with detailed scanning--be it visual, astral, or technological. As an experienced runner chances are you've seen all three a fair number of times from your own teammates, so you know what to look for.

When it comes down to deciding whether you're being assessed or scanned, it's largely a matter of guesswork but if you know your trade it should at least be an educated guess.

> Are they wearing shades?
> Does it look like they're rocking one of the more common cybereye varieties? (Because lets face it, eyes are very distinctive, so unless you pay extra for a custom iris design the off-the-shelf models are probably fairly easy to recognize.)
> How does their outfit and bearing come across to you? Are you seeing lots of chrome and tech or do they have any telltale signs of following a magical tradition? (Wearing bones/feathers, mystical symbols, bits of jewelry that look like they might be fetishes, ect.)

This is just off the top of my head, but for a professional runner learning how to size up people and identify the nature of potential threats should be more or less second nature--ditto noticing when you're being watched and being able to deduce the watcher's motives.

Also keep in mind nowhere does it say they have to be staring straight at you while assensing. Remember they are not 'seeing' with their eyes.

So if I am facing 12 oclock looking out over my soykaf and you are in my 10 oclock as I shift to astral vision you are in my forward viewing range and I am not even necessarily looking directly at you physically.

Thus I could still be reading quite a bit off you without probably triggering any bells since again on the physical level it does not appear as I am looking at you directly.

It does take practice, it is natural for the eyes to follow what we are observing with the third eye.

But once you condition the body to stillness or even better become able to do small routine actions automatically to keep the hands busy while you open yourself up you can observe quite a bit without giving yourself away unlike the beginner who stands there slack jawed and arms just hanging there as they peer at someone on both levels.

The latter being prone to receiving a High Caliber Lobotomy for their actions.

Very true, there's no reason you'd have to be looking at or even facing your target to assense them--and even a seasoned runner's going to have a damn hard time figuring out that the guy at the counter sipping soycaf with his back turned is actually assensing them. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people did turn to look just out of habit.

Brings up an interesting question though: Does assesning cover a full 360 degrees or can you only process the information if it's laid out like normal sight? (Meaning you can "see" from any part of your aura, but you have to pick a certain point to look out from and are limited to viewing a conical area roughly the size of your normal line of sight.)

If assensing is truly a 360 degree sense, I can see a lot of adepts picking that up and relying primarily on astral sight while in combat.

That allows the other side to throw a manaball that just hits you and doesn't affect anyone else in the fight with you. So that should be used with caution.

or, you know, they could just do that with a manabolt in the first place (unless the other side you're referring to is that people in the astral can attack you, which actually is much more relevant than being able to use an area spell on a single target).

anyways, my personal opinion: you perceive out of one part, and that part (barring possible use of metamagics or something like that) is located at or near your eyes. if you want to detach your aura from your body, you have to project. otherwise, your astral form is going to function more or less like your physical form, unless you go through extensive training (hence the mention of metamagics, though i don't think i've ever had a character that would spend a metamagic technique on that).

Well, first of all, that depends on the crowd. In a really thick crowd, you're going to be lucky to see that guy at all, never mind being able to tell that he's focusing on you exclusively.

If I recall my spy fiction correctly, you only can tell if someone is scoping you out by getting them to follow you and recognizing that they're a tail. That takes a lot of work on its own, but assensing is a lot easier than tailing. Assensing can be done in one combat pass, so it takes about a second to get a lot of information, not long enough to realize you've been looked over in astral space.

Really, though, with the prevalence of scanning equipment and magical security, you should assume you're being scanned whenever you leave your house. With SR4.5's wireless matrix, you have to assume that your ID is being checked every time you move, your equipment is scanned every time you go through a door (hence why fake SINs and licenses are so important) and generally assume Big Brother is Watching. Getting mad at a Johnson or random stranger in a crowd is really counterproductive.

While it's true that Astral Sight is not normal sight, several editions of the rules say it works similar to normal sight. So, when in doubt, you can use the assumptions of normal sight, and assume it's not 360.

Of course, you could astrally project while in your body, so your astral body is facing one way while your physical is facing another. Of course, that brings in all the problems of projecting, and really doesn't net you anything more than fully projecting.

The other possible exception is the Eyeband. Generally speaking, any eyeware that is bought with Essence, you can use for magical purposes. So, since the eyeband gives you 360 mundane vision, you might argue that it counts for astral perception. I personally wouldn't let it work, since things like thermo don't work on the astral either.

Maybe if the astral seer SURGEd and got the 360-degree Eyesight quality instead.

As Jaid pointed out, it's easier to just use a manabolt if you're trying to hit a single target in a crowd. Less drain too, which means you can safely cast at a higher force. Now, if you were facing a group of astrally perceiving adepts locked in melee with your allies, chucking a manaball might be a viable strategy.

Astrally perceiving does make you vulnerable to purely astral threats, such as projecting mages or un-manifested spirits. Thing is, if a mage's astral form is hanging around they probably didn't anticipate a direct fight--since they can't do anything to you unless you decide to become astrally active as well. Better to know about them and be able to do something about it rather than getting spied on or ambushed by summoned spirits with no way to attack the guy summoning them. Ditto if there's a spirit hanging about. This way you can warn your team and start attacking before they manifest in the middle of your party or possess your street sam.

Not only that, but I'm pretty sure mundane light sources don't carry over on the astral--judging by the fact that windows are opaque and you can't use AR displays--which means you're immune to flash grenades and the like while astrally perceiving. That's better than having low light and flare comp put together, plus you get the ability to read people's auras and pick out who the pointy hats are so you can geek them first.



If it's a really thick crowd, the mage is probably going to have at least as hard a time assesnsing you through all those living auras as you'll have noticing them. Probably worse, since anyone who isn't just staring ahead and walking along with everyone else tends to stand out if you watch for patterns of movement rather than trying to look at faces or whatnot.

As for Big Brother, it's just that kind of (totally rational and justified) paranoia that makes a good runner keep a lookout for things like that. A security camera or ID scanner is par for the course, but if a random guy on the street is looking at you, that's a sign that something's up. People don't look at each other on the street, it's a social behavior developed to make it possible for us to feel comfortable in a crowded urban environment. Not being looked at means you're fitting in, whereas having people notice and look at you is a cue that you've made some kind of social gaffe--or that someone has hostile intentions towards you.

Sorry to say, but not only is picking watchers out of crowds a thing in spy fiction, it's also a part of many real-world self-defense courses.

As for the 360 thing, if the book says it works like normal vision then I'd take that to mean you're still limited to a typical "cone" of visible area--and no, I wouldn't let the eyeband thing fly either.

[edit]





That, I might allow.

Astral tank.

People do look at each other on the street, all the time. You might just look like someone they know, or maybe you just look really good. Or maybe it's just random staring as they space out. In self-defense courses, you only pay attention if someone starts to follow you. If someone stares at you as you walk by, but doesn't get up, they can't actually cause you any trouble. Shadowrun communications change this somewhat, but it's still not worth a paranoid response.

Generally speaking, any shadowrunner should assume they're being watched whenever they go out in public. For a good reason: they are. Unless they live in the woods or the deepest, most toxic part of the Barrens, there's camera everywhere. And even though magically active people are only 1% of the population, in a crowded city you could pass by over a thousand people pr day. Add to this the reality of security checkpoints (with spirits or astrally-perceiving staff) you have to assume you *will* be assensed.

and not just the 1% of the population that are magically active can assense you either... if you've walked past an area with a ghoul, spirit, or other dual-natured or astral creature, for example. if ghouls weren't so... well... ghoulish... and contagious... the non-feral ones could probably get jobs in security forces. for people that don't mind the ghoulishness, they probably do just that if they can't afford a proper magician.

Don't forget Watchers. They're not really bright, but they can watch for things and alert people. Given that they're basically free, it wouldn't be out of the question for a security mage to summon a bundle of them and station them at checkpoints, with orders to manifest and alert the mundane guards if they see anything unusual in the astral.

i didn't forget watchers. they're spirits, aren't they?

Sort of, Kind of... In a way...

I'd say your brain is still wired to a limited field of view, no matter the potential capacities.

It's pretty easy to describe as "spotlighting". We take in a Hugh Jass amount of visual data at any given time, especially while moving, but your mind naturally "spotlights" on what it deems as most important at the moment (and all too often it's the wrong stuff). It's not an intrinsic "You can't do this because...reasons" but a "You need to really focus on this one area/person at a time if you want it to count as an Assensing check".

Yeah, but they deserve special mention. Because watchers are free to summon, and you can have a lot of them, they make great checkpoint guards. Regular spirits are a bit expensive and hard to bind for this sort of deal, but watchers are perfect for this sort of thing.

I thought you were still limited to one watcher at a time?

SR4: A magician of any tradition can have up to Charisma watchers at one time, and this doesn't count towards bound or unbound spirits. They last a number of hours based on your Magic + Summoning test.

SR5: If I'm understanding correctly, creating a watcher counts as a minion (and you're limited to Charisma in minions, including ally spirits, homunculi, and great form spirits), is a ritual that you must learn (like any other spell), and the ritual to create one takes Force minutes to complete. They seem like spirits, but you actually cannot use Banishing against them, and as I understand it you use Ritual Spellcasting to conjure one.

Well that's nifty, I'll have to remind my group about that...

Oh, but there is more. SR4a, pages 189 to 190 gives you pretty much all you need for watcher spirits.

People have always underestimated Watchers. They're dumb, but they make great astral detection systems.

I'm not sure if this works in SR5, but in SR3, the Watcher Attack Pack was fearsome. Watchers couldn't do much damage in astral combat, but they counted as Friends In Melee. So, if you had six watchers plus one big spirit, you were scary in astral space. In a one-off, we were all playing magicians, and we encountered an astral great dragon. Every single one of us sent a horde of watchers after it, plus every spirit we had. That dragon went down rather quickly.

Yeah, numbers really seem to make the difference in Shadowrun.

SR5 watchers are no longer free of charge, and are likewise not something you can just conjure up on a whim.

you must expend reagents equal to the force of the ritual while in a magical lodge of at least the ritual's force (you can expend more reagents if you want, to reduce drain, as well, but that is not required). furthermore, it takes force minutes to cast the ritual, and if you don't have a lodge handy you need to spend more reagents and time (time being the biggest problem here) to set up a temporary lodge.

you are limited to a maximum number of minions at a time, but i'm not aware of any language specifying that other types of spirits count as minions.

in any event, you can probably still use watchers to help out in astral combat (and can also do the same using homunculus in regular combat as well as astral combat, provided the target is on the ground), but it's unclear whether the friends in melee bonus applies (which is only a flat +1 dice pool bonus, regardless of number) and you use the regular combat teamwork rules (which suck for no apparent reason), or if you can just use the more general teamwork test rules for astral combat (there's a line at the start of the astral combat section, which is about 1/4 of a page long, which says you resolve it like regular combat, but no mention of whether it just means that it's similar in terms of how the die rolls are set up, or whether all regular combat modifiers and rules also apply to astral combat).

so... you can still use the trick. but it got nerfed so hard, i don't think it's worthwhile any more. it costs money (not much) and time (quite a bit) to set up, and doesn't give you very much benefit.

on a side note, SR5 watchers also violate one of the fundamental laws of magic that have been around for at least as long as i can recall in shadowrun; they are summoned with ritual spellcasting, a sorcery skill, and i'm pretty sure there are multiple explicit statements that you cannot under any circumstances conjure a spirit of any sort using sorcery in at least two previous editions, not sure if it goes back to 1st or 2nd as well.

Ally spirits are also minions (pages 122, 127, the rituals are classed as [Minion]), so having one will impact how many watchers you might want to have.

And check out the Summon Great Form Spirit [Minion] on page 136. Since the ritual doesn't specify otherwise it also uses Ritual Spellcasting to create (to me that's also a break in the same fundamental laws of magic that have been around for a long while now), you don't get as much bang for your buck as you used to (no increase to a spirit's materialized Physical attributes), and apparently now can't perform it again to try and improve the great form spirit further. On the plus side it does appear that binding great form spirits doesn't cause that extra 50% drain they used to. But with great form spirits being minions it begs the question, is a bound great form spirit a bound spirit, a minion, or both?

But regarding the old laws of magic, I currently couldn't find any reference to them in the SR5 books. So I guess when it comes to spirits now, if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it isn't really a duck. Makes me wonder what other old laws of magic are gonna be broken next. (gold from mana?)

Oh gods, yes. Early in SR4, a summoner mage tried to resurrect the Watcher Attack Pack. He had 6 Watchers, 6 bound spirits, an unbound spirit, and his own astral form. That was a mess of a combat to deal with.

Before the nerf came in, self-replicating agents were all the rage in SR4. I gave up on Matrix combat when one guy brought in 1000 agent copies; the only logical response was 1000 IC programs defending things. I just handwaved that one, there was no way I'd play that out.

Even in SR4,5, things could get out of control quickly. One mage with six bound spirits and one unbound could take over a combat. The Technomancer did the same thing with seven sprites, taking over whatever machinery was in the area. And the drone rigger brought in his six drones. There were twenty-three combatants on one side, and that doesn't include the street sam, who was largely useless in this fight.

Normal opposition didn't stand a chance, but whatever the players do, the enemy can do as well, right? So they fielded enough drones and spirits to match their numbers. Which meant that now, I had a battlefield with about fifty different combatants running around. Shadowrun is not a mass combat system, so things were just unmanageable. I basically gave up and declared a PC win.

It was cool until you hit a patch of BC.

Oh believe me, I'm aware. Back then I was still playing, rather than GM-ing, and our hacker had a dedicated agent swarm specifically tasked with maintaining every type of software in the game at rating 6, as well as spoofing lifestyle for the whole group. Called them his "Code Monkeys."

Of course, this was before the nerf came down that prevented agents from writing or upkeeping software. Once that hit he had to find new uses for all the fricking agent programs he had. Once during a job that involved blackmailing a government clerk, he cracked into the guy's headware commlink and basically took full control of it. Left a few code monkeys in there to watch the guy and make sure he followed orders. The whole table cracked up as he described how periodically one of the code monkeys would walk into his field of vision via AR and stare at him ominously while eating popcorn.

Agent swarms were still deadly, even after the nerf. You couldn't have two copies of the same agent in the same node, but you could have copies in multiple nodes working on the same thing. I had to put a stop to that one, because otherwise one decker with one cracked Agent could take down Zurich Orbital.

So, do denial of service attacks not exist in Shadowrun, then?

They do...

And the hell with Standard Agents (though they are really nice), The favorite tool in my Cyberlogician's toolbox were his Worms (kind of an Agent, but not really).

They do, but the rules are complicated. They needed to stop the Agent Smith army somehow, but they left in rules for DDoS. They had to make a compromise.