Can you hear the physical plane while astrally projecting?

Yes you can. It says so rather explicitly in SR3.

Page 173, first sentence under "Astral Senses"

(Edit: decided to not be lazy; looked up page number)

Its also on page 161. I heard some people saying that you caint and was wondering if this was some 2nd ED throwback or something.

I haven't got my books with me (otherwise I'd look it up myself), but can you listen to sound coming from non-living things as well? Like announcements on the monorail, or a conference call, or the all-too familiar sound of somebody readying his gun of choice?

Im pretty sure SR3 P. 173 says that sounds are as easy to hear on the astral as they are in the physical. It dosent make a distinction on type of sound so id say yes.

The exact quotes (there are two, actually, at the beginning and end of the astral senses section) are " Your astral form has normal human senses of sight and hearing." and "Speech and other sounds are as easy to hear from the astral plane as they are in the physical world."

While it mentions specifically how looking at nonliving objects is different for an astral form, it never mentions anything similar to the idea that sounds originating from nonliving sources are in any way different.

Heh, that's one weird bit of inconsistency right there. I've always tried to handle astral sight and sound similarly: Sound made by living beings sounds clearer and not really any different from the physical plane, but sound made by non-living things sounds muddled, like underwater, and a little distorted - hard to tell exactly what kind of noise, making conference calls almost impossible to understand. I always thought that made more sense.

The vision thing can be easily explained. Ive always thought of things ont he astral plane as hazy and blurry so think of it as kinda like a person who caint read without glasses trying to read without his glasses. Thats why their is a +2 modifier to physical tasks while preciving because astral sight is less efficent for such things than regular sight. Or another option is to just say that you caint hear non living things.

Hmmm - in previous editions of SR you didn't 'hear' mundane sounds as normal on the astral. You heard the emotional content of the words, just like you could only read the emotional content (aura) of any written text. With a speaker, or handwritten text, the content was big and easy to understand (easier the more emotive the message) but if it was a recording or synthesized voice, you wouldn't understand it as easily. Same with text - reading street signs or other unemotive text was nigh impossible, as was reading data put out by a computer or the similar.

Too lazy to go dig up my 1st and 2nd edition books for page references and exact quotes, but that's the gist of it I think.

I don't know the offical rules but i can say that i always make mages make an assensing roll to determine the emotional content of what is being spoken about in the 'real world'. Otherwise i feel it's way to easy to be an 'astral spy'.

I've also made the 'apparition' ability of projecting mages - the ability to appear as a ghostly form in the real world that can communicate with people, a meta-technique.

That'll show those pesky mages!

You've made manifesting a MetaMagic technique? Rough.

To be honest, I wonder if that was really thought out at all. I agree with Fox: canon makes it way, way too easy to be an astral spy.

Well, Arethusa, I think we are all pretty familiar with your belief that the things about shadowrun you dont like were obviously not carefully thought out. I disagree though... I personally rather like the way the rules are in this regard. (I like my astral spying and speedy long distance communication abilities exactly as they are, thank you)

Then you've clearly never had them used against you.

~J

Whoa I'm way behind on this. I always thought you had normal hearing on the astral for sounds that originated on the astral. I believed that everything from the mundane world was represented by emotion...wait till my players hear this, I'm gonna be lynched!

Honestly, with the way it's worded, it could be that. The astral is really not terribly well described and open to tons of interpretation— and, incidentally, yours makes a lot more sense.

Which is why you hire a mage or use a trusted one for those purposes. Just because there's no convenient way to do it, that doesn't make it broken or anything else.

Want matrix security? Hire a decker or security sysop.
Want physical security? Hire some bodyguards.
Want astral security? Hire a mage.

It's all the same.

Yeah, except that's inherently flawed.

Want matrix security? Learn to deck or avoid computer systems with matrix vulnerabilities.
Want physical security? Learn to fight or learn to avoid fights.
Want astral security? Whoops, you're screwed. Can't counter something you'll never have access to and can never detect.

Besides, who said there are mages you can trust? I can trust a simple machine, but more people means more vectors of insecurity. Your reasoning is deeply fallacious because you regard mages as tools and overlook their existence as individuals.

Well, there are some methods to get astral/magical security without mages being there. Several, actually, although I would presume they are all more costly, especially for a large area, than either physical or matrix security.

Boo hoo. You're not one of the 10% of the world's population who's a magician. Cry me a fucking river.

Just because you can't perform a specific and specialized ability, that doesn't make that specific and specialized ability "overpowered" in the least, especially since you DO have the ability to defend against it... just not personally. If you're performing some action that requires the highest levels of security, where *no* one else can know what you're doing, you hire people to cover all your basis. Period. Only a total dumbass expects to be able to handle every angle of a situation personally.

Your problem is obviously with magic as a whole. That's a major aspect of Shadowrun, so either learn to deal with it or play in some other setting where it's not a concern. 'Cause of all the things magic can do, astral reconnaissance certainly dosen't rank up in the "horribly broken rules" category.

(1) Arethusa is completely right, a mundane can't counter magical security by other magical means. However, that is the reason why, as the Rodent suggested, you make sure that at least one person in the team is not a mundane. But I totally agree with Arethusa, if I were to play this game alone and didn't want to play an awakened character, I'd be pretty limited in my options. Either that, or I'd have to be really creative with my attack plans.
Is this broken? Depends on your definition, but even if it is broken, there's still a lot of solutions to this perceived imbalance.

(2) Rodent, could you please remind me why we're getting all hostile here? I guess I missed a meeting somewhere... I mean, it's not like you need to reinforce your argument, it's a pretty strong case already.

(3) What I'm curious about is, if astral security actually was overpowered, how do you suppose this could be "fixed"? And I don't mean that in a cynical way, I really do want to know.

I just get annoyed when people constantly bitch about how broken all of the rules in the game are. Sure, there's some that are legitimately screwy, but not the whole entire game as some people keep implying with their endless barrage of bitching and moaning about them, doubly so when they don't even bother to offer up a few ideas on how to make them "better" (without completely redesigning the game from scratch). Especially when said bitching and moaning is based on asinine arguments like Arethusa's.

ROUS: I don't necessarily agree with everything Arethusa said, but he's got just as much right to his opinion around here as anybody else.

This forum's filled with Shadowrun fans who enjoy the game enough to spend time in here debating inane and mostly pointless idiosyncrasies of a role playing game [no flames, please! I'm just as guilty of it as everyone else.], but almost all of us have one or more pet peeves with the rules. So we shouldn't throw stones just because the one rule he hates is different than the one that we hate.

Arethusa: Are you a PC or the GM? If you're the GM, it'd be very easy to just update SOTA to add in some astral counter-balances. If FAB II (is this the right one- thinking about the one that glows in presence of astral activity) became cheap and readily available in little aerosol cans or something, than everybody would have the ability to tell where the mages were.

There are ideas on different levels of anti-magic security (mostly containment though) in the prison/punishment thread.

I don't feel meetings are much of a problem if trying to avoid some astral recon. When a group can't get to a location that denies projection it can be discouraged with dual-natured guard animals, which can attack an astral presence (well, counterattack anyway).

A group could also make arrangements with some local ghouls as a form of astral security, essentially glorified dual-natured guard animals. This falls into that more people = less secure category, though. Trust in street relationships like this are reinforced out of the barrel of a gun. The ghouls are a physical threat that a mundane group knows how to deal with: two in the chest, one in the head. The ghouls would know this too; and when outsourcing talent, even if it's the blind, smelly, drooling, man-eating kind, I'd only hire the most professional "security specialists" available.

Meetings can also happen in the Matrix. When you can't hide that you're having a meeting, might as well plug in and keep it quiet. If worried about being defenseless while jacked in (should have body guards anyway) you could just plug in to a couple of computers with transducers and conduct the meeting via text. No worries about a projecting mage reading.

If worried about a mage listening to conversations in general, a group could learn some hand signs and speak of things in vague terms, also using code names. The story at the beginning of the Bottled Demon adventure makes reference to this.

Meetings aren't that much of a problem, defeating magical security is a problem. One example of cover-all-the-bases paranoia (never a bad thing...maybe) would be the Infiltration Challenge thread, the team has two mages (shaman and hermetic) and a physical adept. Magic is a very powerful force in shadowrun. The relative power is probably more powerful than in other fantasy settings because its use is limited to the magically active, but I think it makes sense that it takes a mage to beat a mage.

Firstly, public announcement: cut the bad language. It makes you look stupid and ruins your argument.

Right! I'm taking the viewpoint of a GM who has some very clever players. I make it harder for my mage to astrally spy because i'm sick of having to make every place they go to astrally covered against their prying. I like the idea that they can get 'some idea' of what's happening in the real world via the astral - it creates mystery and offers a clue. It doesn't totally ruin the other character's efforts in surveillance - the rigger still sends in his crawly drones, the face still cons her way into the base etc. The players all feel they've contributed. This works well for my group. I've made manifesting a meta-technique to give my mage something to work towards. *Personally* I think it's pretty crazy that any astral mage can materialize and communicate - it's essentially giving any mage permission to go anywhere like a ghost which just breaks lots of stuff *if you ask me*. Again, personal opinion, don't take offense

Thanks for all the good astral security ideas, by the way ...

I could have sworn there's such a thing as awakened kudzu, too. And holy crap, being from the south? There's absloutely nothing in the world that can kill it, short of napalm mixed with herbicide.

All you need to do is go to a facility where you know they've got the stuff in use, and yoink yourself off a good handful.