Okie pokie, so having cleared all my minor confusions about astral perceptions with the aid of Talia and Zanzer, I still have some questions.

What's the range of an aura? Allow me to elaborate: It has been suggested that an active focus could be concealed inside a jacket and would therefore, be hidden from astral perception.

If Samurai A is wearing head to toe CID, gloves and a helmet, can a mage see his aura?!? Does having no exposed skin protect you from being ascensed? If not, why would a jacket protect a focus? I assume you now "get my drift", thoughts?

Sunday.

I've always assumed clothing was incorporated into the "area" of the aura, right up including military-grade armor; so hiding a focus under a jacket wouldnae help any.

Ok, but that's just arbitrary or is there a reasoning? I ask because I will have to explain this to my players and be able to defend it.

How far does an aura extend? If armor won't protect you, where do we draw the line? If a magical scroll is in a bone scrollcase, will astral perception of the case reveal the scroll?

Would you see a magical item in a box? What WOULD you need to stop it and why would it stop it? What is the criteria for determining whether or not it blocks the focus aura?

Anyone? Bueller?

Sunday.

Well, to my knowledge, in 3rd edition, there is no specific mention of how far out an aura goes, so it is basicly up to GM discretion. When I said a focus should be able to be hidden under a jacket, I was referring to a bonded but not active focus (i.e. possessing the astral signature of the bonded mage, but not having an astral presence). An active focus I'm not to sure about, as at that point its aura has a significant effect on the aura of the person it is bonded to, and at that point with an assensing test I would allow the assensing mage to identify the focus.

I do recall something somewhere in 2nd edition (maybe FoF) that full mil-spec armor fully concealed the aura, but I could be misremembering, I'll see if I can find a reference on that. I do usually consider clothing and regular armor to have become part of the characters aura. I don't know that the rules are incredibly consistent, but they work pretty well for us. I'll try to find more, but I can't think of having seen any rules about it.

Not sure on rules, but here's how we've played it (no books here, I'm travelling a bit this weekend)

Foci: inactive but bonded is not visible under clothing due to the rules about perception compared to vision.

Foci: active visible as the astral energies around it create a bit of an astral vortex to fuel the power of the foci. You 'perceive' an almost funnel like effect around the focus, but you don't see the focus itself if normal vision would block it.

Personal Aura: Does not extend beyond the body; but is bright enough to be visible even through clothing, much as you could see a flashlight through the material of the clothing. You ARE your aura, it's your astral shadow. Foci does't have that glow because it's not living.

Spells: (definitely house rules here) We color each spell category in the Astral plane. Combat spells are bright red, indirect illusions are grey, health is white, manipulation is blue, etc, etc (don't know them all off-hand). Seeing sustained spells is possible through clothing and such in the same manner as pre-mentioned. Exception being Indirect Illusions which are cast 'around' a target, not on a target. This creates an aura wide enough to cover any armour worn. Since it's grey, it actually helps you blend into the Astral environment, meaning any indirect illusion spell on a person actually aides on avoiding detection on the astral Plane as well since it surrounds any other spell's aura as well as the person's aura. We add half your successes to your open-roll on Stealth.

I'd guess nearly all of that is House Ruling, we just made it the way we pictured it, then made rules to go around it. But, it's made the Astral Plane a bit more visible for our Mind's Eye.

Sphynx

I've always equated it (more or less) to a gravity field. There is no place where the gravity effect of an object with mass doesn't exist ... but go out far enough and for all intents and purposes the ability to identify individual gravitational effects ceases to exist. Not specific numbers, I know - but my 2¥.

Because your astrally projecting self-image includes such personal effects as clothing, Id assume your aura is visible through them. Im with Sphynx on the foci perception, in terms of on/off/hidden.

Now we're talking, see I knew if I butted heads with Sphynx long enough he'd come through for me

Thanks Sphynx, I think I'll borrow most of that...

Sunday.

It's a 2nd edition quote (edit: p.149 BBB), but still ...

@Talia

Ahh, that was the quote I was thinking of, just misremebering it, thanks.

For what it's worth, the "Flame Aura" spell extends to Essence centimeteres from the body.

This is being pulled entirely out of thin air, but as it's consistent with how SR runs, so it should work.

Nonliving things have a definite existance in the astral, but it's "unpatterned" by default. You know that the thing is there, there's a hazy concentration of astral stuff there, but it's only noteworthy if you're making a physical map.

Living things have real presence on the astral, and emotions/attachments count as part of living things for the astral definition. Furthermore, your pattern "bleeds over", if you will, to unliving matter, ultimately making it part of you for all intents and puropses. That's why, for example, cyberware ends up being effectively part of you. Emotion and proximity both affect this; the more strongly you feel about a nonphysical object, or the longer you remain in close physical contact with it, the faster and stronger it becomes, astrally, "part of you". (Thankfully for everyone out there who dislikes being targeted by ritual spells, this effect does reverse over time, especially for physically proximate but emotionally neutral objects.)

So for things like clothes and armor, the "aura bleed" quickly turns the object into "you", so it shines with your aura glow and targeted effects center right back into your self. (If you want to be technical, a just-donned suit of full body armor would protect you, a just-removed one would be a weak astral link, and a freshly implanted cyberarm wouldn't be affected by mana effects. In practice, we'll have these transitional periods go by too quickly to matter.) Things with long-term physical contact and emotional significance (E.G: a wedding ring) would be pretty much permanently yours, or at least until someone else overwrote your signature by a similar process. (Not canon, but still in keeping with the ideas behind it, this would let your wedding ring be as effective as a lock of your hair for ritual sorcery, unless someone else utterly overwrote its function first {pawned and on display, still useable; melted down and turned into part of a statue, no.})

Foci in general are specially made to bond strongly and easily, but differ in signature depending on if they're active or inactive. Inactive foci are much like the wedding ring, just strongly patterned astral "stuff". Anyone assensing it can plainly tell what it is and who it belongs to, but it's still just part of the tide, and would be indistinguishable from anything else you'd have in your pocket. Active foci, on the other hand, strongly imprint themselves on your aura, about as obviously as a third arm. And even if you're wearing baggy clothes under milspec armor under a long coat under a burlap sack, by the time you're out and up for your run, your aura would have bled through all of that, "focus node" and all.

Just a point, on the power focus/magic item issue. Those items are magically active but do not have an aura. An aura only belongs to living things. Inanimate objects cannot have auras, but they can be astrally present.