The one is for you GMs out there:

I had a character that legitimately got his hands on information that part of their run was dealing with a corporation in the area named Kestra. So, he decided to go over to the Kestra offices in the center of town and scope the place out in case the team had to deal with the company directly.

That's fine with me so I start describing the compound as having three buildings, a tall central one with walkways leading from about the third story out to the other two buildings. That it is surrounded by electrified fencing marked as such with cameras ever couple of meters panning left and right to get a pretty comprehensive view on what surrounds the compound. The gate was guarded by two humans, one in the building and one standing out side.

So, undercover of a force 5 imp. invisibility focus with 5 successes, he decides to go on past the guards and investigate -- alone -- what's inside. Since the guards don't have the intelligence to beat his invisibility, he just has to move quiet-like to get by. Now, however, he's got a problem: once he gets inside he can see two groups of guards -- two or three metahumans (I misremember the number) and a barghest each. The critters manual describes barghests as big, nasty dogs, so I always imagined that they could be trained as security dogs just like German Shepards (and others) are used for that purpose today. Also, they have the Enhanced sense (Sonar) critter power. Therefore, his invisibility is no match for the sonar "seeing" of the barghests and they immediately begin to bark and pull in his direction.

The guards, confused by the lack of target, restrain them. Now, most people would probably have run away at this point, but our intrepid protagonist decided to try to Influence (with the spell) one of the Barghests to kill the other. The spell failed and the Barghests began to howl with their Paralyzing Howl critter power. Having hearing dampeners, the guards were okay and the character resisted and now began to run away. The guards at the gatehouse were now outside and had guns drawn trying to guess what was happening. Our protagonist casts control actions on the one, succeeds, and forces him to go over to one of the groups with a barghest, say "What's going on?" and then try to shoot the barghest. The barghest beets the goon on initiative, jumps him, and begins to eat his face.

However, it was at this point that the security mages began to take notice. First, one casts detect magic and detect enemies, both spells are successful and both spells mark our character. Next, two mages, one who cast the spells, and five more guards exit the larger, central building. The mages are already perceiving astrally in expectation of a mage and magical problems -- they left the physical to the guards.

Now, even though our character is invisible on the physical, I ruled that on the astral, the mages could see the foci that he's wearing to cause that invisibility. Not sure if this is canon, but that's how my games have always run. So, the first mage throws a deadly stunbolt. The character resists it but is knocked over from the force. The character then uses physical barrier in a unique way: casting it as a horizontal plane in the middle of the pack of opponents. This cuts a few in half when it appears (failed body roll) and pushes the others aside.

Now, the second mage gets his turn. Seeing that the first stunbolt was ineffective against the target, the mage passes an intelligence test to guess that the focus might be something for spell defense or the invisibility. So, he targets it with a manabolt blasts it to kingdom come. Now visible, our protagonist runs under a hail of bullets.

But, the cameras that I said were on the fences before all of this happened now have a blurry but perhaps usable picture of the character, and the mages have his astral signature from the control actions spell and the physical barrier.

______________________________

Now for my question. You've all read the story to get this far, so how often have you all run into characters that seem to keep digging themselves in deeper despite the hints (guards, cameras, electric fences, para-animals, etc.) that you give them this is not-a-place-to-go-in-alone-and-unprepared ™? Also, his actions could hamper the rest of the party's ability to perform successfully in runs in the future. I feel that I need to present some repercussions to the character in order to keep the game as real as possible. If you enter a corporate headquarters, kill two guards, seriously injure a mage, and get another guard eaten by a security barghest, then that corp is going to do something serious and probably violent to you in the future. But, since none of the other players were there are the time, I'm torn between chastising that specific player and how to do it without really chastising the whole group.

Advice? Comments? Concerns?

One, the character should not have used barrier that way, it's just plain against the nature of the spell.

Two, they can see him on the asteral plane. Always. Improved invisibility hides him from normal sight and machines, but not from astral realm. I also play it as half effective against infra because it doesn't say that it controls the temperature around the body or anything. (If I'm wrong there, I'll admit it)

Third, yes, they ignore those hint's alot.

Fourth, You should do what they would realistically do. They would call Lone Star, hand them the picture, and then get some more magical beef on call.

Lone Star will probably hunt him down because he has Inviso, Mind Control, and is guilty of at least two murders, one manslaughter, and breaking and entering. Possibily even Terrorism. And until something else get's their attention, he better learn to love his safe house. He's not gonna be leaving it for a while.

Magic is not a cure all, people know what's up, and they know about invisibility spell and items. And they always have an ace up thier sleave. Even the average joe shmoe guard shouldn't be entirely stupid like that. I'd still let them roll to see if they get a clue (especially when the Barghests started barking), cause they probably have been TRAINED to deal with something like that.

I may be cruel, but I would ensure that the repercussions did indeed impact the rest of the team. That way, the other players might get bothered enough to help you reign in this guy's carelessness.

I don't see the stupidity. When it was obvious that he wouldn't be able to sneak past the dogs, he ran. There's plenty of other stuff wrong with this scenario, though:

Invisibility doesn't work on the astral plane, as such the mages and barghests should have seen him fine.

Fully resisted stunbolts shouldn't knock people over.

Physical Barriers shouldn't cut people in half.

Barghests shouldn't have psychic powers that let them beat people on initiative and eat their faces before they actually have an action to do something hostile. They especially shouldn't attack their usual masters like that.

Agreed with Zazen. There's no reason why the Barghest should have used its initiative pass on an attack, as it was before the guard's aggressive action.

~J

Don't make the team suffer a lot, just enough that they'll have reason to "educate" their teammate. And, heck, that punishment might turn into an interesting sub-plot ... it's all in your approach. The right team will make lemonade out of the worst drek, er, lemonade.

There are two dead people, that means increased security. They are going to have to deal with that. Since he hasn't really worke with the team before, you are giving them a break. Lone Star won't be breaking down THEIR door...

I fail to see the problem as a GM. He just handed you several plot hooks for a later time on a silver platter take it and don't bother thanking him.

Have LS give that individual a hard time for a bit. maybe he has a tail from time to time and if they have some form of bug detectors, notice one here and there. sas you said, they haven't worked together before. perhaps the LS thinks he is a small fish and wants to see who he's working for. bring in LS and the corp every once in a while just to keep the paranoia up., even if their appearance has nothing at all to do with what he did, maybe LS cops just happened to be parked in the alley across from their proposed mark, say, 3 runs down the line. Perhaps they hear some talk about this corp hiring a lot of new mages and even possibly a few runners disappearing at the corp's hands.. are they looking for him? did these runners get caught doing their own run on these guys? or maybe they just needed some targets for their upcoming class of guards who are getting some training


Whenever things die down a little bring one or both of them in and the runner(s) will instantly make up more plots for you out of their paranoia

The way I read the rules, if a non-elemental attack spell (e.g. stunbolt) is fully resisted, it doesn't even fire in the first place. No lock, no shoot, kinda like some missile targeting systems.

I always thought of the _____bolt spells (fill in the blank with stun, mana, power, spirit) were magical bolts of eneregy that moved through space (astral or physical) and hit something. Therefore, definately powerbolt could knock someone over, IMO, because it's physical, but the others are up to dispute. I've always had them knock people around in a street fighter like "hyduken" kind of way.

-- Dash --

Was this a newbie player?

If so, be gentle in the repercussions and they'll figure it out.

If the player is experienced, drop the proverbial book on them. Doing all that without cleaning an astral signature means that magical investigators are going to come looking especially since, as someone else mentioned, the highly illegal spell use.

-Siege

invisibility have been up for discussion before so im not going to do a take on that, but just state the same as the other said that it does not work on the astral (the magical signature would light you up even if your presense cant be seen) and the dogs work the same way as ultrasound against invisibility (its sound, not a part of the EM band so therefor no effect from invisibility.). now with a silence spell allso the dogs would not see him. as for heat, give a partial effect, you see the heat radiating from the person but you dont see the person...

my biggest problem is the barrier spell, it can only be set up as a wall or dome, no way you can you it as a gigant cutting disk. i think the description is very specific on the forms a barrier can have...

Here's my opinions.
I think the player was perfectly justified in trying to sneak into the facility and get past some guards. If players turned tail and ran at the first sign of decent security, it'd be a pretty boring game. The barghests detected him, and started barking. The GM was nice and used cliche stupid guards, who did not immediately figure the situation out . . . fine. Cliche guards are fun sometimes, as long as the PC's don't expect them every time.
Seeing the opposition was too much, he fled. Wisely.
Stunbolt should not knockdown. I understand your POV, but the energy is purely astral. There is no physical energy involved. However, I think that even a fully resisted spell should still be felt, just like a fully resisted gunshot still hurts. If the player was reeling from resisting the spell or something, fine, I can understand being knocked down from it, but it's not for kinetic reasons, and given the repercussions of said falling down in this situation, it seems a bit harsh.
Barghest eating face of guard: They're not shi-tzu's, they're fragging BARGHESTS. I'm sure it's all the trainers can do to keep the nasty things from eating the trainers, so I see no problem with this.
Barrier spell cutting in half: According to the rules, no way, for several reasons. On the other hand, it sounds like it was pretty cool. Behold the power of the GM. Technically, it's not okay, but it's a clever use of the spell, IF the GM allows it. One caveat: Don't ever let non-combat spells be more effective in combat than combat spells (and damaging manipulation spells). The PC's will start doing it every time, and before you know it you've got the spinning-barrier-security-guard-blender-of-doom. Ooh, I want one.
Repercussions: Definitely, but don't be too harsh. There should be problems for the group, but if they're smart, they shouldn't plague them for more than another run or two, at most. It's not like they killed a Lone Star. (which my players will never, EVER do again)
So anyway, there's my 0.02 on the subject. There were some moments of harshness, and some moments of leniency. The PC's got away, it didn't go well, they should have a bit of a hard time for a bit because of it, but I think the embarassment of it all is already shaming enough to teach them a lesson. Oh yeah, that's another good one. Have some contacts give them a hard time about it. I'm not saying to have their Fixer call them up and tell them that they're too hot to handle, just rib 'em about it. SR is all about reputation, and a few sharp comments from the PCs friends can often do a lot.
Happy Gaming, sounds like you're doing fine.

I think that the best way to let the player know that what he did was goofy would be to point him at this thread. So he can read about all the other GM's that would have the corp turn all their attentions on him and wipe the character from the face of the earth as well as messing things up for his friends. After that whatever you do to him will seem nice and fuzzy.

I would double security on the compound so any run against it will be trouble, and if he ever gets caught by that corp he should never see the light of day again. So I would go easy on him so long as he doesn't go looking for trouble.

As for the bargherst. or however you spell magic dog, I agree that it turning on the guard seems odd to me. The dog had his attentions on the character. It sees the guard draw his weapon and it decides to pounce and chew on him. This would mean that anytime security drew a weapon near one of the dogs the doggy would attack? This dog indeed seem to be psychic in reading the intent of the guard. I would have ruled that the mind controled patsy would have been able to walk up to the group, draw his weapon and put one into the evil mutt before it knew what was going on.

my 2

Whilst I agree with everything said on this thread, I do think the use of the barrier spell, whilst contrary to the rules, was quite cool...

You might want to think about letting the player create such a spell - if planes of force can be created by magic, there's no reason why it couldn't be employed offensively...

Come to think of it, a variant could be used to create invisible, magical stairs - never have a problem with compound walls again!!!

In response to all those calls that the player did nothing stupid...

Not running?
Trying to get a barghest to 'randomly' eat the other barghest. Security would notice stuff like that.
They'd sure as hell notice if one of their guards decided to walk up and shoot a guard dog in the head for no reason other than it was doing its job.

At the point the barghests noticed, the smart thing to do, was to walk away. Walk right past the guard and cameras with imp. invis still up.

He didn't make the Best Possible Moves, but he wasn't stupid. If it were a chess game, you'd see neither "!"s nor a "?"s next to them.