If the magician is not 'perceivng into the Astral plane but is just 'hanging out' at a Stuffer Shack, can he be attacked from folks projecting in the astral plane...say by manabolts from other mages?

Suppose our hungry mage has a weapon foci? Can he be attacked then?

Can weapon foci be 'turned off' (I t hought they were always on)...

Thanks!

No
No
Yes
You mean grounding, which has been a thing that exists in the past editions.
But as of SR4, no, the worlds are completely separated from each other.

Unless the mage is astrally perceiving or projecting, he can not be normally attacked from the astral just like any normal person can not be attacked by astral entities.

The foci can be turned on or off, because foci addiction is a thing and sometimes you need to power down. Also keeps you from snagging on wayward wards you may pass through.

If on they can be disenchanted as per Core pg 307, but this is not an immediate process taking [Force of Foci] Hours to do.

Grounding is one of the things I miss most in the later editions.

Turning that guy with the power focus into the manifestation point for a manaball from the Astral was groovy.

And way overpowered in comparison to everything else... I was very glad to see its demise.

This thread was very helpful guys. I was completely thinking the Mage could be attacked all the time. I was also sure weapon foci were always on.

Is it a simple or complex action to activate it?

Free action i think.
You are not really required to do anything to activate/deactivate.
Same for DNI-Cyberware.

Simple action to activate a focus. Free action to deactivate. Pg 318 of SR5.

That was before foci addiction was a thing. It was kinda the sole thing keeping a caster from just layering on the spell locks and foci until they looked like an Astra Christmas tree.

Also, I'm adding it back next game I run in 5e to try and shut down the magicrun issues by forcing mage to actually pay attention to the astral.

Have to disagree with you on that one, Binarywraith.
Grounding needed to be destroyed by fire and its ashes scatterred to the 4 winds, because it does not require an active focus to target upon to use... Any Spirit or Dual Natured creature also suffices for grounding.

But do let us know how the experiment goes.

The Spirit Index would soon rack up if a PC was summoning and grounding through his own stable of spirits so that puts some brakes on it.

However it has been pointed out that Watchers are just mana constructs born of the mage's mind with similar properties to spirits without being full on spooks, meaning they could be used to pop the watcher behind your target, have it manifest and act as ground zero without invoking spirit index because in one sense the caster is literally doing it to himself, or fragment thereof.

The problem, as it was, was that grounding did more to screw mundanes than it did to screw magicians.
For example, take the humble watcherbomb.

Even disregarding this obvious tool of cheese, a magician hit with a fireball through his focus has more defense dice than all the mundanes around him.

So ... good for you, but if your players are even a little bit creative with grounding, it may well go the opposite way from your expectations.

Nah, my players and I have a pretty good rapport, and an agreement. I will generally let them get away with a novel and clever idea taking the enemy completely by surprise the first couple times. If they make a habit of it, it will eventually get countered and used against them by opponents who generally have a lot more resources. Generally I don't see a great deal of cheese that way, without having to tell people no very often because they have a good sense of what will and won't bring overwhelming responses.

In this case, though, I think you're right and I'll probably limit it to working on active foci only. Dual natured critters are still fair game though.

As far as spirit index goes, I'd suggest that blowing up one's own watchers should probably set off a few red flags for spirits. After all, if a mage is willing to do that to his own creations, he's not likely to care more about doing it to others.

did they not change the rules in such a way that you can only cast mana spells on the astral and only physical spells on the real world?

They Did... But a Grounded (assumming such rules) Mana Ball or Stun Ball would still royally screw with everything around the physical point of detonation.

If I were to ever reinstate grounding, you could only target an active focus with it and the spell would automagically lose any AOE benefits (as if its AOE range was 0). "Stunball? Don't care. It wrecks house on the focus and the mage carrying it. You should have used Stunbolt. Take 10 drain."

Active Focus, Of course...
But what about Quickened Spells? They function similarly.
And if you go with Quickened Spells, why not Sustained Spells as well?
The rabbit hole can get deep pretty quick.

I, for one, am glad that Grounding was eliminated. Not everyone agrees with that sentiment, though, so YMMV.
Sounds like you would just use Grounding as if the Target were Dual Natured and then, only to target single individuals... I woulds still hate that as well. There are already enough things to screw with the Awakened without adding Grounding back into the equation. In your proposal, Grounding especially punishes Adepts with Weapon Foci and no Astral Perception.

It seems like they got rid of it because it was easier to replace than fix. Especially with dual-natured creatures, spirits, and the quickened/sustained/etc. spells TJ mentioned.

Although making the AOE 0 and restricting it to active foci only, not any magically-active thing, it might be do-able.

For my upcoming 2E game, I changed grounding to simply say that only targets whose auras are integrated with a dual natured object can be hit.

So, a mage wearing an active focus can be hit even though he himself is not active because he has taken an astrally active object onto his person and "integrated" it. I think that solves the astral Christmas tree problem without allowing for the summon a spirit and blow it to hell trick.

That would still be a problem, yeah.
And personally I wouldn't allow sustained or quickened spells (quickened, maybe, just because they already interfere with wards and such).

But I never have to make the final judgement call. I'm not a GM. ;D

No GM Duties? Nice.

Man, that's a problem I could happily live with.

Just to be clear. If the mage had a weapon focus and turns it on, can he be attacked by Manaball or Stunball from the Astral plane then?

under current rules? No.

But an astral mage could deactivate the focus as per page 307 in core.

Focus Addiction was an incredibly dumb idea, and has been explicitly stricken from the game in our house rules. It's just a ripoff of that wretched "magic is suddenly addictive" story arc from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (at least, that's the source I blame the most for introducing this idea in recent years).

Why not also punish the other archetypes for the using the tools of their trade? Deckers addicted to using their cyberdecks, sammies addicted to using their weapons, riggers addicted to using their drones, etc. You know, I'm pretty sure I'm addicted to breathing, but I struggle on, trying to cope with my affliction.

Well they actually do have addictions for Riggers and Hackers, at least in 4th ed. Media Junkie, Reality Impaired and Virtual Personality can all be taken to simulate someone who is addicted to the matrix, not to mention that hot sim VR can also be addictive in the same way BTLs are addictive.
You could argue that samurai using combat drugs to help out also face a potential addiction vector though it is easiest for them to avoid.
So I have no problem with limiting magicians who want to rock with 6 or 7 high rating foci (5+) with the potential to become addicted to that much power. If your magicians, hackers, riggers or samurai aren't abusing their tools then don't bother with the addiction but if they insist that every action is taken at maximum power then maybe a little addiction test is in order.

See, this is the point where I start banging my head against the wall. If I'm going to punished for using the tools of my trade, no matter what that trade is, then I throw up my hands and say "Forget it, you just can't win." There's no reason to bother creating a character if your losing, one way or the other, has essentially been decided before the game's even begun. At that point, I propose just going back to D&D, where I can use the magic items I want without any of this "addiction" foolishness.

Some lost souls are trying to do that there too
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/24eut...ction_mechanic/

They're clearly smoking large amounts of crack, that's the real addiction they should be dealing with.

Have you ever actually had this come up in game? I've been playing SR for literally decades and have never actually encountered an issue where a player needed reigning in using any of this. The players tend to read the rule books, see that this is a possibility, and self limit. So I've never had to actually inflict this on anyone. The threat of it is enough. Without having it written down though, it becomes a case of the GM trying to stomp on the player's fun if you start asking the player to keep things in check.
The odds of anyone who has a dedicated magician actually facing addiction tests isn't very high unless the campaign in question has a very high power level where the magician can easily get high rating foci.
I like having this written down since it saves me having to be the heavy when a player gets out of hand. As GM you have enough to do without trying to keep one character or another from overwhelming the game. These addictions, even if never used, work as enough of a stick to save that hassle.
Plus I've had the odd player who thought one of those would be a nice hook on a character concept.

It's never come up in game for us because we took one look at this idea and said "No."

If someone's becoming disruptive, we have a radical solution - we actually talk to them after the game and explain our concerns.

Not that radical. I do the same but the addiction rules have for the most part prevented that particular discussion ever being needed.

There's also the fact that we typically run high-powered games. Our starting characters are usually double the normal starting points, so the idea that my mage could be slinging around Force 12 spells isn't actually too far out of the ordinary.