I'm thinking of creating a changeling that's tied to the astral plane, making them dual natured. Given what I've been reading on what it does I'm thinking it's overall a negative quality, but how much is it worth?

Nice idea.

Astral perception is not without its positives, so I think it's mostly dependent on whether or not they have adapted to it - I.e. do they suffer the -2 for meat-world tests? If not then I'd make it just 5, but if they do then I'd make it 20 or even higher. I'd let the player decide which he wanted.

If you are dual natured, you don't suffer the -2 on all actions due to astral perception. The other thing is that its really easy to get rid of this. Get a bit of cyberware, and your magic is reduced below one, and suddenly you are not dual natured anymore (this is the classical technique to make ghouls no longer dual natured).

I think its an interesting disadvantage, but to be honest I would make players pay for it as an advantage: assensing is IMO one of the more useful abilities of being a mage, and letting someone get assensing as a disadvantage doesn't feel right: disadvantages are meant to be bad for you. If however you already had the option to astrally perceive (i.e. mage or mystic adept with astral perception) then it sounds OK at 5 points

IIRC all sapients and critters that are already dual natured have a Magic attribute, which to me would say that this would be a positive quality available (considering its advantages) only to a changeling that has a Magic attribute somehow (like being awakened).

And don't forget that SM has Astral Sight as a 5 point positive quality (available provided you're not already awakened or emerged), and is also available as a metagenetic quality to boot. Overall, a 5 point cost to let an astrally perceiving changeling be dual natured as well sounds OK to me too. Hopefully I can see some additional feedback from others before implementing this one myself.

I would rule it as a negative quality worth somethink like 20BP, being dual-natured is a really really bad for you if your not a powerful magician.

Actually, if you check the RC on page 110, under Other Metagenetic Qualities, you'll find that Astral Sight(from street magic) counts as a Metagenetic quality.


Its not -quite- the same thing as being dual natured, but its close. More convenient, in some cases, since you can turn it off, and being able to project is a nice side benefit.

True, but the whole idea was to have the character permanently linked to the astral plane. She's already a mage so she has astral sight, it was the rest of the package we were dealing with. (and yes she doesn't have the -2 for meat tests anymore, so we're leaning towards the 5 point merit right now, but....z0

It's a HUGE negative for your character - 30 or 35 point negatrait. You can be attacked by things you cannot fight back against. At any time a mage can auto frag you and there is NOTHING you can do about it. This is just massive.

However, it needs two protections to prevent it from being used by Gamists

A) It cannot be taken by mages or mage adepts

B) If your essence drops enough to lose your dual nature, you must immediately exchange the dual nature negatrait for 30 points of other physical and/or magical negatraits.

That would probably be pretty fair.

Not entirely true. When you are Dual Natured (as in the critter power), existing in astral and material at the same time, you affect both astral and material at the same time. While you could be attacked by astral entities, you can use your Unarmed Attack skill and damage against those same astral entities. Not only could you see that astrally projecting magician peeping behind your shoulder, you can spin around and clock said magician with a solid punch that could send him/her reeling back to his/her meat sack in extreme pain.

Besides, the Astral Combat skill is accessible to the Dual Natured, so there's another option to defend yourself with.

Except that the people you are fighting can:

A) Attack at Range

B) Run at over 1000 kilometers per hour.

Punching is never, ever, ever going to let you kill someone with a sniper rifle and rocket boots, because he is never, ever going to let you stand near him. So yes, while you can theoretically fight back, you're a naked guy with a spear going up against a dude with an assault rifle and you are going to die.

A) kind of defeats the purpose of the character it was being designed for, after all she's a mage.

B) I can agree with this, don't know about the cost though.

Whoops! Use split costs then (like the hacker disadvantages), it's a significant worse disadvantage for a non-mage character than a mage.

Double Post

But that only works if the magigian is stupid enought to stand behind your shoulder, instead of frying your ass from 1km straight up.

It's not a huge diadvantage for a mage because they can fire back in that scenario. I think 5/35 maybe

It doesn't actually work like this, though.

Spells don't have Range Categories, and astral visiblility modifiers for spellcasting cut both ways.

While being astral jet-fightered IS a danger to dual natured beings(especially with Surprise/Defender unware), if they can be hit, then they can hit back.

With how Delayed Actions work(4a 145), its also extremely easy(if a bit lawyery) to intervene and hit a would-be astral drive-byer with a stunbolt first.
Its by no means a guaranteed or complete protection, and it also relies on you having higher initiative(and possibly beating a Surprise test), but its its a tactic to be aware of if you're playing a dual natured PC.

I asked about this with two guys at a local game store whom I know are familiar with SR4 and all, and while both did not give a points value both did state that being Dual Natured would be an advantage for SR4. Mind, this is coming from two who are GMs & players themselves. Considering a few things I did not at first, would rate this as a double cost positive quality; 10 BP for those who have the Magician or Mystic Adept quality, 5 BP for others with at least a Magic attribute, still not available if you do not even have a Magic attribute or have Dual Natured from another source (like being a drake or shapeshifter), and obviously a lost quality if your Magic drops to below 1.

True Max, I won't argue that, but for magician stupidity I had a player with Magic 5 throw a force 10 lightning ball spell at a target about 3 meters away from him and not shluff any hits to reduce the AOE. I have no illusions about the potential stupidity of others.

And is it me, or are some under the impression astral assassination-like attempts are an every day occurrence the world over? It's like "Don't walk in the woods or you'll be attacked by a pack of wolves!" or "Don't walk the streets at night or you'll be mugged or capped by a gang!" kind of thing. I'm not downplaying the potential threat of being Dual Natured as those have put it, just the frequency of how often it's going to happen. Of course, this could probably be a partial explanation of why the ghoul population isn't as high as one might expect, being Dual Natured with a pitiful Magic attribute of 1 must mean they get geeked left and right by astral things attacking anything Dual Natured (hint, sarcasm).

Well in short: Being dual natured sucks Balls.
In short: You are going to hit every ward on your way. And since wards are the best way to get a basic level of magical security, there will be a lot of them.

I am not talking of infiltrating a high sec environment. I am talking of going downtown and walking into walls all the time.

What part of not being a magician did you not understand?
Yes ofcource being dual natured is a lot less dangerous if your a mage yourself, but that wasn't the case in the post i was replying.


Most likely not world over, but being a shadow runner amps up the occurance rate by about 10 000 times

So, Irion, your local Stuffer Shack, Coffin Motel, and GridCab station (just to name a few examples) are going to have all of their buildings warded? Besides, any magician that forgot to deactivate a focus can potentially run into such an unexpected barrier. Guess there's another reason why the ghoul population is so low, there's wards all over the place that keep them out as they just walk right into them, and from finding any food in the first place, and so they starve to death.

On a more serious note, a Dual Natured critter will still see a ward before they actually walk into it, much like how you can see a wall before you walk into it (assuming you're not blind). Even if the ward is polarized and you're on the transparent side, it's an Assensing + Intuition (3) test to notice it (something like noticing a glass door that's closed, I'd wager).

Wow, never thought the life expectancy of a Shadowrunner to feel like it's mere hours. So there are astral entities just floating around with nothing better to do than pounce on the first Shadowrunner they happen to notice that's been astrally active for just a little too long? Would make any magician with active foci just as vulnerable as something Dual Natured I think, even considering the fact that a focus can be disabled. (again, some sarcasm)

Powers that be, I didn't think the magic level was at D&D levels for this setting.

Well, it depends on the insurance policy, of course.
Since there is the possibility of free spirits and so on I would guess any insurance is not quite fond of paying "spirit burned my house".
So I guess warding bigger should not be so strange.

Well, it doesn't help you, to see the ward. You have to pass it anyway. (Or stay outside)

As I recall you are able to attack astral being as a dual natured, but you use the astral combat ability and deal dmg with CHA therefore.
This is at least the way we understood the rulebook.

I'm not sure you realize this, but there's a significant difference between astral perception(which magicians can do) and being dual natured(which magicians are not).

And this has what to do with the point that being dual natured is an epicly dangerous quality for non mages, who can do absolutely nothing to astrally projecting mage manabolting him to dead from a save distance?

Do it like the ghouls:

live in small enclosed spaces, never get out in the open.

Only defense is: cover, try to get the astral entities to get close enough to you to punch them.

Manabolt doesn't have anything to do with it - what i suggested was a way to have some measure of protection against random astral encounters, and it happens to use that spell. its not the AP-ing mage manaboolting, its the DN'd pc shooting back.

But its not just enemy mages - its anything on the astral, be it a spirit, ward, or even some free-floating FAB. Getting caught in AoE mana-type spells by accident. I did some digging, and magical security starts to show up around High security (advanced) lifestyles, so thats about when the inconvenience-factor of being dual natured kicks in. On the other hand, its not hard to get high Security in under 10 points or so, but it serves as a rough milestone for guaging how inconvenient it is.

There's a difference between having a GM out to get you, and over-emphasisizing how dangerous the astral can be(mage with manabolt is a FAVORITE example around here), and something that happens in a game - like tripping an alarm at a facility, causing the wagemage and a small number of bound spirits to come out with the security force to investigate - a fairly reasonable response so far - ... and all ganging up on the dual natured player because they can't stop percieving to get away.

"KLONG"
That was the sound of my face hitting the desk after reading that and seeing that you still completely missed the point of my original post way up there, a point i have tried to re iterate twice by now, to only have you talk about completely different thinks.
Seriously Udoshi go back up and read very slowly my post and the post i was replying and then read once more your own comment on that and my revious replies.