Sure, that should work. (strafing the area with enough bullets might do it too, but you'd be less sure). I admit that I did not make the opposition paranoid enough to prepare for a radar sensor, the should have scattered more metal trash around

Mato spots the harder reflection among all the soft reflections of the tree easily enough. It doesn't seem to be moving, so even at -6 the shot should be a gimme, if Mato is taking time to aim (hitting something about the size of the palm of your hand while moving rapidly would still be a roll)

I'd also like to remind you of this handy little matrix action:

TAG
(SIMPLE ACTION)
Marks required: None
Test: Computer + Logic [Data Processing] v. Sleaze + Intuition
You track and analyze enemy movements in real time, giving your allies the edge in engagement.
The hacker may “tag” a number of targets on a single PAN, equal to their net hits, within their line of sight. They can then relay those tags wirelessly to allies. Tagging a target negates up to 2 dice in penalties from Visibility and Light/Glare to any affected ranged attack rolls allies may be making against that target, including blind-fire due to invisibility or shooting through cover. Allies who can see a tag may also take one additional Take Aim Action against that target as a Free Action on each Initiative Pass. Tags may be sustained by spending a Simple Action to refresh the tags each Combat Turn.
When using a PI-Tac, the hacker may add the PI-Tac’s level to the number of targets they may tag.
Note: In order for allies to receive this bonus, they must have the ability to see AROs.

That is a good Matrix action. I don't think I've used that one.

As for radar sensors, sometimes you have the right tool for the job. I've been carrying them around for several chapters now - after juggling capacity issues during chargen to free up room for them - so it's nice to use them.

Mato will blast the skimmer and move on.

Thanks for the tip Jack First time for me as well. (and even had some dice luck).

Tag: 9d6t5 5

I IC'd shooting the drone, but if Beta wants to roll for it then we can.

Any opinion on whether Mato's skimmers work on water? I go back and forth. Just like a hovercraft, right??

I'd imagine they should because you float above the ground, and I've seen boats like that. Perhaps they'll be less stable above water (?)
If they do not work, I may suggest the levitation + movement for traversing the river (Beta seems conflicted on levitating the boat, so we can just levitate Mato instead, AM would be disabled due to too many spells BUT she can land or land Mato before combat so it is not the worst plan.

Let's go with the "yes, if ..." principle on the skimmers. Yes he can cross water using them, if he is at running speed (minimum). Think of it bit like a water skier, as long as he's moving fast he can stay up, but as soon as he slows down he'll sink to his hips in one combat turn, at which point the skimmers are choked off (no air), and he's swimming.

A sort of bit of back-up logic for this call: the skimmers can support Mato, obviously. But the water will push out from under his feet over time. Water is dense and doesn't move that easily, so pushing on it for a second isn't too bad, he'll make a good dip in the water but not so much that the water flows back in above the blasting air. But any slower than that and the water starts flowing back in above the hole, trapping his feet in the water, slowing him down, making it even harder to make the next foot strike fast enough not to have the same, etc.

So Bobby can fly down the river, Mato can run down the river, and AM could levitate+movement to head down the river.

Let me know of any other modifications to that plan or other preparations or precautions taken.

Alright this is ridiculous enough to work, let's do it.

Mato will have some throwing knives readied.

The Fashion spell can launder clothes with 3 net hits. Maybe if we survive this and get to a point where AM can drop her sustaining, she can dry off Mato with a solid casting.

AM is also invisible.

We can handle the trip two ways:
- you can all figure out your movement speeds and I'll work out how quickly you each get to various ranges of the escaping raft.
- we can fudge things and assume you coordinate somewhat and all approach at the same time.

Preferences?

(There are things to happen as you close that will be the next IC, so this discussion won't slow down the IC)

Fudge it.

I don't think there's anything that requires us to go at our maximum speeds. Mato might not be able to go very slowly, given his unique locomotion, but nor does he have to sprint like a sports sedan on a freeway (presumably).

As for dodging what's in the river, Athletics is a 6E skill and a 5E skill group. All of Mato's Athletic skills are at 1, although specializations break up the skill group. I'll just roll 1 die.

Agility 10 + Athletics 1: 11d6t5 3 hits

Still can't roll for average but at least I beat 21% this time, barely.

Beta, Trouble, and Tatanka are watching the matrix Tatanka was sent toward the escaping people, and Trouble is in the rough vicinity of the team but on asral. So AM is not dual-natured currently but we have eyes on the astral plane. She follows the matrix but is more focused on physical threats the closer she gets. (she plans on physically engaging them).

Jack, let's be mindful of using elemental strike on a boat... in a river... when everyone on the boat is wet with rain...

I don't know what kind of boat they are in but the end result could be the electrical equivalent of the chunky salsa effect.

Actually it's more a preparation for more drone attacks
But I don't think that magic electricity grounds out through water (otherwise you could use that for some grandiose tricks with a low level water ball and a lightning strike.

Well if magical fire can ignite things as a secondary effect then I don't see why magical electricity wouldn't ground out through water.

That raises just more questions:
How is a circuit established with magic? Is it a continuous flow or just a charge?
Can I punch the ground if an opponent stands in a puddle?
And more important from a rules perspective: is damage reduced/distributed between multiple opponents?

Furthermore: The adept doesn't get hurt by his electric strikes but they don't have a general immunity to electricity.
To me this paradox alone suggests that magically created electricity is a lot more guided and focused than any naturally occuring one.

All those questions are valid, and all those are subject to GM discretion. I don't think there is any one correct answer to them. It depends on what kind of game the table wants and what the GM is comfortable adjudicating.

In Run & Gun, when fighting under the water, the effect on spells is:


Implied by that is that the spell is controlled enough to not, for example, form a sphere of zap around the caster. Now it doesn't talk about adept powers, but I'd treat adept powers that are electrical based the same way (which would be rough on the adept). But again that is under water, where the electricity is presumably dispersing in every direction including through anybody in the way.

Now, Seattle is the default setting for Shadowrun, and right since the early days both electrical attacks and mentions of the frequent rain in Seattle have been in the system, and I don't think there has ever been a discussion of "but the target is standing in a puddle, so that changes how my taser/lightning bolt/ etc works." That is a consistent enough silence that I don't think that rain or puddles need to be taken into account.

In the case here, where people are on a full out river, essentially on the boundry between underwater and water is only incidental, why not split the difference? To take that literally, single target attacks made into the water's surface or at targets on the water's surface will have a 2.5m AOE. Thoughts on that?

===============================

There are a some rules stuff in spoilers in the IC for Mato and AM, but I wanted to pull the stuff for Bobby over here as there is going to be more rolls involved.

Bobby can just buy the hits on dodge to avoid the shot from the drone, no worries there.
shoot Bobby: 6d6t5 1

But then the other team's mage drops a Net spell (street grimoire) on Bobby. Bobby resists the initial spell with Body+Strength, with each net hit on the spell temporarily lowering his agility by 1, and if his agility drops to 0 then his movement drops to 1/4 speed at best, which would be a problem for flying.
Net spell: 13d6t5 4
drain resist vs 4: 14d6t5 2
edges drain resist: edge drain resist: 12d6t5 4 No further drain

Alright, 10P +5AP to Mato. This should be alright as long as I can manage an average roll. Mato is tank-y, but only when the dice agree to it.

Regress to the mean... regress to the mean... regress to the mean...

Body 5 + Chasseur Field Uniform 13 + Synergist Business Line Longcoat 3 + Cyberlimb Armor 10 + AP 5: 36d6t5 13 hits

Okay, an average roll!! But, geez, a 4 of the hits came on the last 5 dice from the +5 AP.

Tecumseh: A little tanky! (even at around the mean)

Jack:
The mage resists shapechange with strength+body+counterspelling dice
resist shapechange 1: 12d6t5 6 tie goes to the defender
resist shapechange 2: 8d6t5 2 + missing resist die: 1d6t5 1 (typo on the original roll) total is 3 successes -- less than Bobby's 4, so the mage is now a giant jellyfish.

ETA: there was a vehicle speed table that was supposed to go into Rigger 5, but that I think was cut from the book, but then posted in the forums by a freelancer (iirc). Did any of you happen to copy and keep that speed table? I'm trying to determine supposed speed of drones from rigger 5. (So far I've just been treating it like a narrated chase combat, with things speeding up or slowing down one side or the other closing or lengthening the gap)

FYI, you normaly only resist the baleful transformation with body (+ whatever counterspell you have) - not that it matters after the second spell being a success

I remember the table you mean:

(15 KPH * Speed for watercraft, 30 KPH * Speed for ground craft, 60 KPH * Speed for rotor/propellor craft, and 300 KPH * Speed for Jet-propelled.)

AM and Trouble Follow with a petrifying spell on the Jellyfish/mage. Shape change still allows him to cast spells, and direct spirits - but Petrify would turn him unconscious. I took the -3 visibility penalty.



Petrify F6 -3 : 15d6t5 6

Well, per the GM's IC post, AM and Mato are still 500+ meters away. I doubt that AM can see the mage at that distance, especially if he (or she) is a jellyfish flopping around in the bottom of the boat.

Mato, without sprinting, skims at about 100kph, or 80 meters per combat turn. I don't know the boat's exact speed but I'm guessing it's ~30kph, or 25 meters per combat turn. That means that Mato is (500 meters away / (80 meters per turn - 25 meters per turn)) at least 9 combat turns away from reaching the boat in person, closing about 55 meters per turn. It will be 6+ turns before he's even in Extreme range of his SMG, so he won't be able to contribute much at the moment.

To be fair, I turned the man into a quite massive and large specimen - with nice colors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion%27s_mane_jellyfish

From a high enough vantage point, it should be very visible

At 500 yards in the middle of the night in the rain? I wouldn't think anything would be visible, regardless of low-light vision.

GM decision I guess - but that's what the vision modifieres are for

How come Bobby is so much closer than us?

Sorry for the slow posts this week, been a weird week with messed up schedules and I didn't do a good job of setting aside time to post. Next week should be back to something more normal (and I've learned to plan posting time better).

@Gilga Bobby put on a burst of speed to try and catch up with the fleeing raft, and at a current agility of 12 his 'run' speed is 48m a turn, while AM is going at 25m/turn (5m/turn from levitate, x5 from Movement). My understanding was that Mato was keeping pace with AM, as Bobby had been until he changed his mind. If I have anyone's intentions wrong here, please correct me. As for whether or not AM can see, it is too dark for low-light vision to be effective (middle of a cloudy night), but astral perception would have a chance, with the usual modifiers for rain and for long distance. Trouble is closer so can also relay info about what is going on back to AM. The jellyfish has partial cover, so call the threshold for her to see enough astrally to target a spell as being 3 right now. And finally, in this case please roll init -- beating a jellyfish should not be too hard, but the mage

@Jack a) thanks for the speed multipliers! b) sorry about the wrong dice, I was using the general 'resist physical Manipulation spells' resistance, I didn't remember that baleful polymorph had its own dice. (nor do I see why they would have written it that way. Who thought it was a good idea to add more special cases to SR? But it is what it is, I'll at least remember to check next time ) and c) that is one cool jellyfish.

@Tecumseh actually the raft is not even going as fast as in your estimate, only about 20km/hr, which is why at AM's 25m/turn you have been closing the distance. Mato could close faster if he starts moving to his full speed. (apparently the kidnappers are also confused enough about the rules for movement on vehicles that they decided not to use it).

The Petrify spell is the same way, only resisted by Body. Which is awesome when you're the one casting it and terrifying when you're the one resisting it. It's also head-scratching why they didn't follow the standard resistance pool for Manipulation spells. The writer of Shadow Spells (and Petrify) wasn't a writer on Forbidden Arcana (and Taboo Transformer), so evidently two writers came up with the same (questionable) idea independently.


Okay, that would mean that Mato could close the distance at 63 meters/turn. But, even at that pace, he's still 8 turns away. I'm sure Bobby will have everyone electrocuted by the time I get there.

Alright, so no petrify, and Bobby does the combat solo. I can live with that.

This resistance test is used primarily by Negative Health Spells from Shadow Spells


Convert Blood to Ichor
Inflict Disease
Rot

The same number of manipulation spells uses the same resistance form:
Turn to Goo
Petrify
Shapechange (baleful polymorph)

Consequently, those are some of the nastiest spells you can afflict someone with.


As for Electrifying the boat - since beta told me about the environment tables in Run&Gun (thanks for that - totally forgot that those existed), I likely won't attack them directly, so not to harm the hostage. But Bobby will continue to circle them and divide their attention (should have taken some Psyche beforehand, so the sustain penalty wouldn't hit so hard).
I'm mainly waiting for a reaction from the water spirit.

I was also toying with the idea of turning into a hippo - but that would likely be to tempting a target for all parties involved.

If the drone is closing in, I'll try to destroy it this time.

Not that the drone is proving itself to be much of a threat to Bobby, yet, but if either Mato or AM wanted to try and pick it off, it is on the order of a couple of hundred meters from them, with the gap now closing for Mato.

I'll wait patiently until AM has LOS to the boat. Good luck

I'm hoping to close that gap very soon. My mistake in having Bobby pursued, because of course he sped up to escape it, putting him in engagement range first. Sorry about letting things get misaligned, and I'm trying to correct this.

With Bobby dog-fighting with the drone and the raft stopped for the moment, the range should be pulling together so that everyone is involved (plus the water spirit coming towards the party at 56m/turn).

===============================

The drone will shoot at Bobby next -- I think Bobby is not edging, but didn't stick this in there yet just yet.

With a whirr of rotors the drone rotates a quarter turn on its edge and starts rotating slowly back to the horizontal in a way where its front is pointed at, and tracking, Bobby. It quickly shoots a trio of bullets at the owl before it falls too far away.

Drone does a semi-automatic burst (-2 on dodge for Bobby). I have no idea about recoil rules on drones? It feels like maybe that should be a thing? But I don't recall seeing rules about it anywhere? If there is something we'll take dice off the end of this roll as appropriate. Drone at medium instead of long range this time so a couple more dice.
semi-auto burst at Bobby: 12d6t5 5

For reference, the Ares Sparrowhawk is an equivalent of the Cyberspace Designs Dragonfly (Rigger 5, page 129), but with an Ares Light Fire 70 pistol instead of the cutting blades. All other stats per R5 with a slightly upgraded pilot rating. Handling 4, Speed 2R, Accel 1, body 1(0), Arm 3, Pilot 4, Sensor 2, but rigger is jumped in (reaction 6, intuition 5, logic 6, pilot aircraft 5, gunnery 5, control rig (1).

The water spirit which is closing in is F6 (which means all stats 6 except agility 7 and reactions , should anyone be attacking it before it does more. Next turn it will be under Bobby, which is in (longish) range of Bobby and AM, and actually pretty close to Trouble I think.

==================================

AM, I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not clear on Tananka. I think that is the name of her agent? I'm not really clear on the commands to it, on how aggressive she expects it to be, as opposed to monitoring.

Damn it, this drone is much more agile than expected

Defense: 25d6t5 9

I'll try again with my last action this round

grapple: 18d6t5 7
Drone Defense: 12d6t5 4

1) I'm going to use this opportunity to close up range a bit. Bobby is fighting to control the drone, the raft is stuck, and let's fudge things to bring AM into visual range and Mato closer than that.

2) I'm going to give the opposition mage one shot at dispelling the shapechange spell at the start of this time (about when Bobby grabs the drone), and hold off any other productive rolls during the narrative of Bobby wrestling the drone (the point is to jump forward to where things are in closer range).

Opp mage rolls 11 dice to dispell
dispelling shape change: 11d6t5 5 good roll
It is resisted by spell force (5) and caster's magic (7) =12
resist dispelling: 12d6t5 7 better roll, and the mage is still a giant jellyfish, ack!
opposition mage can't use his centering while a jellyfish
drain resist vs 3: 11d6t5 2 takes 1 drain

Cool, so the question remains:
Does the drone have a gun with electric firing, or is there still a trigger to be pulled - i.e can Bobby force the drone to fire?

It is way more cool if Bobby can make it fire, so logical or not it has a mechanical trigger.

@Gilga: visual range, just. Call it -3 for range (if vision) and -1 for the light drizzle (visual or astral). AM needs to take an appropriate perceiving action and roll (visual or asensing) to figure out what bits of what she can see are the mage. (There is only so much of anyone sticking up above the edge of the raft, and it is far enough that picking out what is who isn't easy)

I don't think that there are penalties for range/visibility for casting anything other than indirect combat spells (correct me if I'm wrong), so if she can see it she can cast at it normally.

++++++
And we should probably roll init. Opposing mage may be trying things of their own, whether that happens before or after petrification matters.

Gilga, I think you put an OOC post in the IC thread.

Mato Initiative: 1d6+14 19

Oh, I edited that thanks.

Copied from previous rolls:
Initiative: 10+1d6 15 ---AM
Initiative: 10+1d6 14 --- Tatanka (in astral next to boat watcher spirit).
Initiative: 10+3d6 25 --- Trouble delayed action to operate with AM and augment the spell.

AM has eyes on the ship, Tatanka is following it and has already identified the mage, he can instruct her where to look.
The spell roll is in IC:

here are the observe in details actions.

perception help: 8d6t5 3 from Tatanka.

perception: 8d6t5 4

Great - I always wanted to hear the sentence: "Drek, get down, the owl is packing..."

Right: Ini

Ini: 14+4d6 28

The neat thing about Analyse device is that it takes care of any proficiency issues - so now I basically have 1 skill point in using an exotic weapon like device (sustaining turns that into -1, but them's the breaks)

I can now do a straving run on the jelly fish - which hopefully doesn't have any armor or defense while in the boat

Fire drone gun: 9d6t5 4

neat

Well I guess we're about to find out what kind of boat this is. Namely, if it's bulletproof or not.

Eh, it won't sink that fast - and considering that all bullets hit a really large jelly fish, there shouldn't be much penetration beyond that (also I think the gun was loaded with gel rounds)

Well did you sabotage the mage's Body when you did the transformation?

Is the mage a jellyfish hidden inside a suit of metahuman armor?

Is the jellyfish aware of the attack? Can it dodge?

Is the jellyfish suffocating?

Did AM Petrify the jellyfish before Bobby shot the jellyfish, thus boosting its Barrier Armor Rating? Is this a highly improbable sequence of events or is this normal Shadowrun?

Questions, questions.

Good question, yes I would have used the one success to reduce his body.

as animals can't wear normal armor, I'd expect him to have slipped out of it (or squeezed out of considering the size)

Yes, but I doubt that the time it takes to suffocate will be relevant in this case

As far as I understood, Bobby had the ini to act before the petrification took

And yes, this is most definitely a normal evening for SIS.

Also, Mato's movement just reminded me of a quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5pEx_MWwg

Inits:
opp Sam init: 11+3d6 25
opp rigger init: 9+4d6 20
opp mage init: 5+1d6 8 (the sadness that is having reaction=0 !)
opp water spirit init: 14+2d6 21

@Jack per my last IC, Bobby is in control of the drone, but is still about 300m out, well outside the range of a Lightfire 70. He was engaged while still at substantial range -- they know better than to let Bobby get close to them, after what he did on the island! However the drone isn't struggling anymore, so he can move at his full fly speed to close. Of course, not everyone on the raft is out of action yet.

Speaking of which, at 25 the street sam goes, and fires a burst from his Ruger 100 hunting rifle. -1 for range, -1 for rain, -2 for firing from a moving vehicle. Bobby will be at -2 for dodge due to the burst. Let's just say that the drone confused the shooter just as much as it hinder's Bobby's mobility, so no modifiers on that.
shoot Bobby: 12d6t5 4

Next up is the water spirit, which takes its move of 56m for the turn, just passing Mato (apparently headed for AM?)

Mato at 19 Action??? I'll hold the IC post at this point

AM at 15 finally gets to cast petrify

@Gilga: AM sees enough to target with petrification. I figure a giant jellyfish might have a body of 3, reduced to 2 in this situation. The mage will counter spell with everything that he's got
resist petrification: 9d6t5 2 edge fails
edge fails on resist: 7d6t5 2
Still not enough, given AM's six successes

@Tecumseh the raft is still out of range of Mato's SMG, but there is a water spirit steaming quickly his way, about 50 m away.

@Beta does the spirit sticks around after the mage becomes unconscious, is it still approaching AM on the second pass?

Ah, I missunderstood you then.

I'll adapt my post accordingly - also Full Defense against the attack Full Defense: 25d6t5 9

In that case, AM's petrification will likely take affect before I'm shooting at the mage, which in turn means, I'll likely attack the shooter with the drone.

Mato is built to be medium-fast all the time and - via Edge - super-fast at critical times. But for long engagements over multiple combat turns such as this one he needs to pick and choose the spots where he uses Edge, especially when he's chewed through most of his reserves with several suboptimal rolls.

Mato would potentially be interested in an Intercept Attack against the water spirit, but that would require it to move within 1-2 meters of him. Given the size of the river, that seems improbable. So if there's the option to shoot it while it races past him, he would try that.

Free Action: Run
Free Action (from Perfect Time): Call a Shot - Bulls-Eye Burst
Simple: Take Aim
Simple: Burst Fire

I'm unclear on modifiers. I'll assume Range modifier is 0 (i.e. target within 10 meters). Light and Visibility might be an issue, although Mato has thermographic vision to potentially negate them. But for all I know the water spirit is underwater - not on the surface - which could complicate visibility or cover or ____.

I'll take -1 for rain/visibility (although I always thought these should multiply with range, so they don't matter as much at short range and matter a lot at extreme range) and -2 for attacking while running and -4 for a called shot. Seems close-ish.

Shooting: Agility 10 + Automatics 5 + Specialization 2 + Smartlink 2 - Environment 1 - Running 2 - Called Shot 4: 12d6t5 3 hits
Forgot Take Aim: Take Aim +1: 1d6t5 0 hits

In the unlikely even that the attack connects, the AP is multiplied by... something. Actually, now that I've written this all out I'm reminded that Bull's Eye Burst multiples the base AP of the weapon, which for SMGs is 0. So either a Bull's Eye Burst does nothing for SMGs and Machine Pistols or we house rule something like -1 AP per bullet, or -3 AP in this case. Not the greatest value for a -4 called shot penalty, but potentially better than +2 DV from target vitals due to reducing the spirit's hardened armor / immunity to normal weapons. Provided, of course, that Mato hits in the first place, which he probably didn't.

Man, really struggling with the rolls here. Oh well. Good luck, AM!