And then they go on to describe TNs that range from Fair to Disgustingly Easy.

On the other hand surreptitiously casting mind link to convey a message to an ally in a social gathering will be quite likely to be detected. This is a spell with absolutely no visible effect and if you walked in with it active no mundane would have a chance of knowing it. Say force 4 on magic 5 (wanting the 20meater range to cross the convention room lost a point of magic to get a little cyber and don’t want to advertise with your geasa). Target to be noticed if 5, average human intelligence is 3 any individual has a 70% chance of noticing you. If the closest 4 people are allowed to roll there is a 99% chance you will be spotted.

That hardly strikes me as being anything like unobvious.

Assuming your magic was 8 and the spell was only force 3 (for the same distance covered) that is target 9. That is still a 20 % chance of an individual spotting you and a 60% chance of being spotted by at least one of the 4 nearest people

Still not all that safe.

Edward

A special Metamagic with a prerequisite of Masking to surreptitiously cast spells then, perhaps? I think that would be a reasonable metamagic to have... if you make the spell casting an Exclusive action, then you add your Initiate grade to perception tests to detect the spell, or something like that. You could call it Somatic Masking or something.

No, not making the spell Exclusive for the purposes of higher Force... taking an Exclusive Complex Action to cast the spell in a stealthy way using the Metamagic technique. It's similar to the way other canon Metamagic techniques are done (Quickening, for example, is Exclusive).

It's for "Noticing if someone is using a magical skill," whatever that entails. The base TN is 4 + Magic - Force, but there are a whole host of negative modifiers (p. 162 SR3) that make it in practice pretty damn easy for mundanes to notice someone casting a spell, especially shamans casting spells, and downright foolproof for another Awakened to notice, even without astral perception active.

I like the idea of withholding dice to increase the TN to spot, btw. I personally wouldn't have a problem withholding six or more dice to make it tough to detect my spellcasting, particularly for low-Force spells. That's a good house-rule, though it is a house-rule.

Jaron, It is quite clear that this rule is about noticing the caster, not the spell. So one success gives away the caster otherwise the test makes no sense.

And since we are talking about noticing the caster when he works his mojo, I would say that these rules are pretty fair. Maybe even a little lenient.

This rule means that a mage with magic rating of 6 could stand right in front of an average joe (intelligence 3) and cast a force 4. Joe would only have about 42% odds of noticing a spell is being cast. And it's being done right in his face by the guy he is talking to!.

Now if the mage wants to be discreet and cast from the shadows, at distracted target or whatever, modifier starts to pile up.

Plus, I don't know about you, but I only roll for people who might notice. In that case, that would be joe (he's talking to you and thus his attention is on you) plus any security who are paid speicifically to pay attention. Otherwise, I would grow crazy making rolls.

As for Shamans being less discreet, hell yeah. I enforce it ruthlessly. I always thought that it both made sense storywise and balancewise. From a story perspective, shamans are supposed to be more expressive and artistic in their understanding of magic. It therefore must be more noticeable. And from a balance perspective, I'm sure you noticed that the advantage of a totem is never really offset by the disadvantage. But since Shaman are less discreet, I feel it evens out roughly with the mage.

Anyway, all of this becomes moot when our mage gets a geas that forces him to shout in latin whenever casting.

MITS

Bat Totem: +2 to ALL magical target numbers when in direct sunlight

Cobra: +1 modifier to ALL target numbers for the remainder of the combat when surprised.

Dove: CANNOT cast combat spells. Will (6) test to purposely inflict physical damage on a metahuman.

Goose: +2 to all magical target numbers away from home territory

Phoenix: Overflow drops by one box every time deadly damage is taken.



Just as a few examples of rather brutal totem disadvantages..

Once again, joe is currently talking to the guy casting a force 4 spell and he has a less than even chances to notice something is amiss!

I would argue that it does mesh with the flavour text.

Sure it's subtle. Exactly as subtle, in fact, as a guy carrying a katana under his coat, or the guy carrying a Remington Roomsweeper in his front pocket. Real subtle.

Reminds me of an exchange one of our players had with his contact:
Is that a Roomsweeper in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?
(pause)
Oh.
(disappointed look)

Yeah, so I guess a Bat shaman would mostly work at night anyway, huh? Bewteen focusing on night ops and mostly working inside, he probably could avoid direct sunlight more often than not. Here in Montreal it is possible to live, work and shop without ever going out. It was the topic of a docu/fiction film.

I'm guessing most Bat shaman players have managed to seriously minimize direct sunlight exposure. Like working in London!

Boohoo, cry me a river for the poor dove shaman. I bet this is the kind of character who has the pacifist flaw to boot.

This would be a huge disadvantage for an assassin dove shaman concept, but something tells me most dove shaman are patterned after Gandhi instead of Ted Bundy and that the player didn't want his PC to use violence in the first place. So big whoop, he has a mechanical flaw that enforces his roleplaying decision.

Never saw a runner goose shaman. Used a few security goose shaman. They didn't look very handicaped at the time.

Usually, the totem qualities play in the a PCs favor. And for the few totem that doesn't, I gotta say I have yet to see a player choose them.

Why do you figure I have problems with those totems?

Start from the top and you'll see that's not the case.

40% doesn’t represent hard to notice in my book.

I would assume that the caster is waiting until a slight lull in the conversation before casting the spell, if he casts it mid sentence then it should be very easy to notice but who is going to risk there neck on a 40% chance per individual when there are probably more than 1 person close enough and not sufficiently distracted to get to make the check.

Also what exactly is it you see when you notice somebody using magic. If your not projecting it cant be the mana flow or the aura, there is supposed to be no physical manifestation unless you have a shamanic mask.

As to shamans being less discrete and showier. It makes sense for a lot of them but what about these.

Cobra
Fox (to a small extent)
Jackal
Jaguar
Puma (to an extent)
Moon
Gargoyle (in the case of detections)
Trickster
Cat
Coyote
Mouse
Owl
Rat

All these are described to a greater or lesser extent as stealthy but using the abilities granted by the totem stealthily is all but imposable. A starting shaman casting a force 1 spell (min) is only target 7 to spot, with 3 dice has a 42% chance of being spotted by an individual. The +1 T for distracted dose not change a huge amount this so if you stand in the presence of 4 people that are not paying you significant attention you have a 83% chance of it being noticed that you are casting a spell.

For a hermetic that would be a 65% chance of detection for casting a force 1 spell with magic 6 in front of 4 inattentive guards

With a les than even chance of puling of the most basic magic in front of 4 people that don’t suspect a thing, are distracted and have no special knowledge of what to look for I don’t call it really hard to notice

Edward

It happens. I thought about playing phoenix, not because of the totem modifiers, but because I wanted a shaman, and I wanted one that playing with fire a lot made sense. Decided not to and had the GM write me a different totem (Darkness), on a background I gave him..

Wound up with some impressive modifiers, good and bad.

+2 dice on illusion
+1 dice on non-elemental manipulation
+2 dice summoning city spirits
-2 dice on elemental manipulation
+2 target numbers on all actions in direct light

Absolutely incredible for a themed character, and pretty much perfect with what I had in mind. Painful as can be in a lot of circumstances though, because we don't have exclusive night runs, and direct light.. well, it was ruled that it takes a certain intensity, so things like sunlight, brightly lit rooms, searchlights..

Ok, I make a stealth roll with 6 dice. I get mostly likely something in the 7-11 range. You fail to see me, I cast spells, you don't get to roll because you failed to know I was there.

If you aren't looking in my direction, you do not get a roll to see if you spot the spellcasting. Distracted would be maybe... we're having a conversation, and the waitress spills your drink on you, and I decide, while hes distracted, I'll cast a spell now. Some guy standing over there isn't watching me to see if I am casting a spell (unless thats what hes paid for), and, if he is, most people wouldn't care, unless they're paranoid of magic, fanatics, or other sillyness.

If I go to a nighclub, do you roll for the 200+ people there to see if they can spot my survival knife in my boot? All of them, even that guy thats 150ft on the other side of the room? What about the band members? Do they only get a +1 because they're "distracted" by playing music at the time? You only make perception checks if someone is looking for something, or in the case of magic casting, if they're attention is on you. If they aren't paying attention to you, they can't see it (minus shamans of course).

Er, no, the rules for noticing magic that I quoted aren't in MitS at all. They are actually in the very same section where magic is being described as not obvious--the very next paragraph, in fact. There are *no* rules in MitS about noticing magic, and nothing stating how obvious or not-obvious magical skills are. All we have to go on are the statement that magical skills are difficult to notice... and the mechanics afterward which in practice make them about as subtle as pulling a knife on someone.

I also object to the idea that hermatics are somehow *not* as showy as shamans are. Did you see the pic of the hermatic mage in MitS? The one with the bald head, virrored wrap-around sunglasses, and the bolts of eldrich force flying from his fingertips? If ever there was a showboat of a caster, that would be it.

That said, I do agree that something like the shaman's mask would make spellcasting much more obvious (when it's visible, of course; thus not through camera systems and the like), and IMO it's a great way to help balance the shaman's generally superior spellcasting traits against the hermatic's (cheaper Lodge as opposed to multiple expensive libraries, only need to complete one astral quest as an Ordeal instead of four, etc.) My only point was that the negative TN modifiers to spot the casting for shamans in particular rack up very quickly, and contribute to the problrm of the mechanics not lining up at all with the adjoining flavor text.

42% for doing it in your face is suprisingly hard to notice, in my book.

Do it in an actual sneaky way and it becomes really hard. Do it while he's distracted talking to somebody else while you are sitting in a corner with bad lighting...

That's at least +4 by canon, more depending on the whim of the GM. If something is done out of direct sight, I tend to allow a stealth roll. In order to notice that a person is spellcasting (or whatever), you have to notice that this person is there in the first place!

As for your stealthy totems ; I'm guessing that if they are stealthy they won't cast right in the face of their target. They will cast from concealment.

Considering the question : "what does the perceiver notice (asked by somebody else)?" They notice the look of concentrations and the small gesture accompanying spellcasting according to the text. Someone who is used to work with mages could immediately guess what the mage is doing while average joe might only notice something weird that he won't connect immediately to spellcasting if there is no visible effect. He would only pass the info on to investigators if it comes to that. If Joe was the target of the spell in the first place, odds are it doesn't even matter what he noticed. Basically, the reaction of a successful perceiver depends on context.

Well... yeah!

I guess we just disagree about how discreet magic should be. In my experience it is fairly discreet if you take some basic precaution but casting at the negociation table should be a bad idea.

Do you figure a mage should be able to sit at a table and kill one of the participant with no one having a fair chance to realize who cast the spell? 'Cause that's what would happen with a significantly higher TN. Poker games would become deadly, to say the least! Heck, this scenario already isn't that far fetched with an initiate casting a weak spell. It's easy to kill an average joe with Will 3 and a 2D mana bolt spell.

As things stand, a starting PC mage could be talking to two average joes, kill one with a force 4 spell and then have 58% odds that the other person won't realize the PC cast the spell! He could then immediately pretend to be just as shocked and panicked as the other person and drag him to "safety"...

It's hardly subtle yet it could easily work. If players want better odds than 58% to pull a stunt like that, I have no problem making them sweat a bit.

Technically, they do. It's called Force.