If it's dark outside, how much light is there on the astral?

Life lights it, but what if there is not much around?

Normal visibility mods?

The astral is always the same amount illuminated. The only illumination comes from the constant glow of living things. The only vision mods on the astral come from seeing through wards and from things that exist on the astral, like FAB clouds.

And the earth is considered living and gives off enough light.

That's right.

The only exception I'd make, and I think this is covered specifically in the related chapters, would be if your runners were in areas where the earth is heavily infected, polluted, or dying, like toxic waste dumps, irradiated fields, or the campus of the University of Texas, Austin.

Auras of living things give off light.
Astrally active beings make auras look dim.

And if all else fails remember if you're looking in at the astral that means you are an astrally active being. ( and by default your own personal light bulb )

The only way you could be in darkness in the astral plane is if you are in a room with no living things and you are currently masking your aura so you look like a non-living object on the astral plane and a quick look in MitS suggests to me that while you can mask your astral form to look like an aura nothing suggests you can make it look like a non-living object or invisible entirely.

I could also see a mage projecting in space dealing with full darkness mods. You know, right before he or she dies from horrible mana warp damage.

~J

This is a HUGE topic imo. Something that has never been covered by the books nearly enough.

You're in your pseudo vietnam setting... Your team of super elite Seals/rangers/recon are approaching carefully towards your target. Camo'd up, ghilli suits <sp?>, all the stuff that makes you basically invisible to normal joe blow soldiers. You're willing to spend six hours working your team into position at mind numbing slow crawl.

Your target sends up Jerry Lewis the mage. Jerry spends ten seconds in astral and points out all of you instantly.

Is that how it works in your game? It's a pretty common way apparently. Part of the Well People Glow thought process.

If people glow, and inanimate don't...then wouldn't each drop in essence make you glow less and thus give you a relative bonus to stealth when compared to glowy norm at 6 essence? If you put on a new set of clothes do you suddenly turn invisible to a mage? How thick of clothes does your aura leak through?


I also don't like the zooming around at superspeed searching areas. Okay...you just zipped around at superman speeds...you know what you saw? You saw a freaking blur. No, you didn't spot the dragon sitting there. You were going too damn fast.

We play that the best way to hide yourself from astral entities is to conceal yourself in jungle or plant growth. You're living, and you're surrounded by other living things.

The topic of astral stealth has been covered alot around here - I think there was a thread maybe 3 weeks ago where people were complaining that a projecting mage could easily spot their (mundane) überspy.

The way I usually handle it is I compare astral vision to infrared: How much does this deviate from the background?
- Living thing passing through office building: no perception roll required.
- Living thing moving slowly through dense foliage: assensing test if and only if the mage says "I take a closer look at that section of the jungle to see if anybody is sneaking up on us."
- Living thing moving slowly through dense foliage, with active foci / spells / dual natured: no perception roll required.
- Living thing moving slowly through dense foliage, with active foci / spells / dual natured, and heavy astral activity (huge amount of FAB in the air, for example): assensing test if and only if the mage says "I take a closer look at that section of the jungle to see if anybody is sneaking up on us."

I remember mfb saying on this topic that if you're trying to get into someplace that you know is guarded by a mage, and don't find a way to deal with the mage, you deserve to be spotted. There is no such thing as astral stealth. Only security mages with a sudden case of severe diarrhea.

That that point of view is absolutely not backed up by canon mechanics. Mechanically, stealth applies equally to the astral, and the test for searching for a person while projecting, even inside a building, is quite hard. As far as the numbers are concerned, astral security was never intended to be the end all to security; it was designed for, you guessed it, protecting against astral threats. This 'you deserve to be spotted' crap is really quite silly.

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Jaded, keep in mind both the above and the fact that vegetation in a quasi-Vietnam setting is going to actually be excellent astral camouflage. On top of that, a zooming mage does see a blur. All vision penalties he'd get on the physical, he gets ont he astral, and you see shit when you move that fast here in real life.

As for stealth dynamics and the effect astral security would have on both them and the way security and privacy are looked at from a social point of view, shut your brain off and just stick to the numbers. The astral's really not all that well described, and when it is, it's pretty inconsistent. Yes, a lot of descriptions make it seem like astral security would basically make mundanes completely obsolete, but the numbers make it clear that this was not the intent. Until the writers get their shit together, just run it by the numbers.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we had this exact same conversation before?

But you're right, my method is indeed punishing to players who don't have a mage in their group. I guess I should stick to the table dealing with astral patrols, found in MitS on page 89. That is, I will, if my players ever decide to just ignore the security mage.

But I am getting off topic. To get back on track, and to answer Apathy's question, I think that non-astrally active plants, animals, paracritters and (meta)humans should look about the same in terms of luminance. Maybe stuff that has more of a "soul" should be a little brighter... but how do you define "soul" in a Shadowrun context?

It can also depend if the mage is specifically looking for "darkened auras", i.e. cyberware. That does show up on the astral and does change how a target looks. I'm not saying cyberzombie, but any cyber might show up as a distortion, which could be recognizable. When's the last time someone chromed a palm tree?

Don

I doubt it'd be that much more recognizable than the difference between a human and a palm tree using physical sight.

~J

Even large amounts of cyberware shouldn't dim a persons aura. After all, the guy could have .00001 essense left and a mage assensing him with a horrible roll could miss the cyberware altogether.

As far as I remember (and I don't have books handy to back this up at the moment) cyber creates dim or dark spots in a person's aura, it doesn't dim the aura as a whole. And not seeing the cyber in a person with .000001 essence would require more, IMHO, than a bad roll. Yeah, with a bad roll you wouldn't know much about the cyber or maybe you just overlook the person, but if you see them, you can't help but notice that they are practically devoid of "spirit" (or however you choose to designate it).

As for the gaiasphere, it probably does provide decent light pretty far up, but it definitely gets weaker the higher up it goes. It should follow that it also gets dimmer as it becomes closer and closer to a mana-warp. The gaiasphere, with all its ambient light, has got to be one of the reasons stealth is not totally useless in the astral. I mean, yeah, you glow and all that, but the whole world is glowing. Not to mention that opaque things are still opaque and all that, so you can hide behind them, go from cover to cover, etc.