"All right, we'll send a patrol unit over tonight. Have you thought of setting up a neighborhood astral watch? If you like I can transfer you to an agent for our Security Education section for details. We have very low-cost programs available in three different languages to train the young and inexperienced Awakened in astral security procedures, to create astral Watchers, and what to do in an emergency...." Lone Star *is* out to make a profit, after all.

Possibly. What do you suggest? I haven't read the rules for astral recon lately, esecially for Watchers, but watchers IIRC don't really make for good spies as they're about as smart as a dog, and can't really stay interested in the affairs of the mundane.

Hm. That's still pretty true. How about a TN of 12 - the perceiving character's Essence - the spirit's Force/Magic? That makes the TN nice and low for people with normal Essence, and emphasizes the fact that Essence increases your connection with the Astral world.

At the same time, you'd add (6-Essence)/2 (round down) to all TNs for a mage to affect a character with low Essence. This would include Perception TNs to spot a low-Essence character from the Astral. It would not apply to elemental manipulation spells, but would to all spirit powers, including Engulf. Thus low-Essence characters would not be able to notice magic going on around them, but they'd also be slightly protected from it.

Rather than argue about how well known a person needs to be to send a watcher search, would you prefer a messenger spirit? Split watcher spirits into their two main roles, watch places and ferry messages, and make them require different summons?

I could then see watcher spirit durations increased and messenger spirits use the current watcher spirit durations.

Exactly. Likewise, how much does it cost to buy enough .22LR rounds to build a 5-meter platform that can support one ton of vertical load and at least 200 lbs of shear? What about compared to, say, enough real building material to do the job?

This is why I think that's appropriate.

Edit: though I'll need to think over your suggestion that it might counter astral perception. I'm very skeptical, but also can't think too well right now (pretty tired).

~J

Well, consider then: what exactly is a Watcher Spirit's primary job title supposed to be? A messenger? A snoop? A nutritional part of this fully balanced Elemental Attack Pack ™? Or maybe they're meant for actually watching things?

A watcher spirit is not a bullet. A watcher spirit is not a brick, a nail, or even a very reliable tape recorder for conversations. The one task that watchers can do just as well as other spirits, by the rules, is patrol astral space, like the loyal guard dogs that MitS describes them as. If we expand that role, by making Watchers relatively easy to summon for long periods for that purpose, and that purpose only, we can kill two birds with one stone: making Watcher rules more sensible, as well as reducing the vulnerability of people to astrally projecting peeping Toms without making weird idiosyncratic rules increasing the power of mundanes against the spirit world.

The Search rules still need revising, though.

I also still like the two ideas of high-Essence mundanes being able to sense onto the Astral and low-Essence creatures being resistant to all Magic, but for different reasons. First, the rules just ring out coolness to me; that's not a particularly good reason, but it's the most important to me. Second it helps drive home that the higher your Essence the more connected you are with the living (ie astral) world, and the lower your Essence, the further you are away from that world.

I prefer the idea of them as being ordinary Spirits of Man. Possibly spawned from the above, but I see nothing "toxic" about something so deeply human.

~J

I'd argue that rape and sexual exploitation are about as "deeply human" as toxic waste and massive radiation damage are "in tune with the environment", but this isn't the thread for any of that.



So, back on topic, how is everyone weighing in on the recent issues brought up:

I) Watchers are too expensive to use as long-term anything, especially as guards. Solutions so far:
Ia) Split Watchers up into two separate spirit types, one for messages and searches, and a far cheaper one for guarding
Ib) Make watcher spirits easier/cheaper to summon for long periods of time, but only for patrolling purposes. Keep the canon rules (successes = number of hours present) for all other spirit uses.

II) The Search power, astral tracking, etc. needs work. It should have the following changes:
IIa) Dependent on distance between summoner/target.
IIb) Dependent on communication between spirit and summoner (summoner's Int? Spirit's Int? Some sort of description skill?).
IIc) Dependent on summoner's knowledge of the target.
IId) Should be the same rules for Watchers and other spirits? Similar but with special restrictions for the Watchers? Maybe non-Watcher spirits can search for physical objects more easily than Watchers?

III) Reinforce the flavor text regarding Essence-as-connection-with-Astral-body with actual rules:
IIIa) High Essence creatures/characters have an easier time detecting astrally-active beings?
IIIb) Low Essence creatures/characters (creatures specifically with Essence Loss from cyberware/addictions/etc) are slightly resistant to magic? Maybe add total Essence loss to TNs for Health spells, and 1/2 Essence Loss (round down) to all other spells?

IV) Maybe we should consider optional rules to--how did nezumi put it--"require eating puppies or something," to initiate? For magic in general?
IVa) Mechanically, regular initiation is a bit of a pain in the karma already. It's only when you stack both groups and ordeals that it becomes a little too easy. Maybe we should make "Group Initiation" an ordeal itself, so it doesn't stack with other ordeals? This would make the base cost for self-initiation Base*3, and initiation w/ordeal or group as Base*2.
IVb) Forget cyberpsychosis: how about astralpsychosis? Maybe initiation should make you go a little crazy. I imagine initiation as immersing yourself in levels of magic that are, at best, greater than humans should normally be able to handle, at worst incredibly dangerous. Of course this would be the direct opposite of cyberware's detachment and mechanical psychosis; the initiate's version would make him prone to bouts of mania, hyperactivity, maybe delusions and schizophrenia? How could we make Initiation drive you a little crazy, and have it both be workable and interesting?

V) Revamping geasea to be less inherently munchkiny:
Va) Gesture/Talisman/Incantation Geasea require a Free Action devoted to each geas before using any magical skill. This means someone with more than one of the three will be forced to waste a pass chanting or waving their hands around before casting a spell, for instance.
Vb) Maybe we can cross-pollinate the aspected abilities of Aspected Mages, and the limitations of the different Geasea? I imagine a guy taking a Sorcery-only Geas after losing a lot of Essence to a single cybersurgery, for instance, or an Aspected Mage who can only use his magic at night, rather than the limited range of canon limitations for aspected mages.

VI) Spirit combat rules need to be reworked.
VIa) Remove the silly "fishing poles/whipt/boards-with-long-nails help with Contests of Wills" rule.
VIb) Replace it with something else that gives mundanes a change at beating spirits, but makes more sense. Maybe the Essence loss penalty mentioned above could apply to spirits attempting to get in a Contest of Wills with a mundane?
VIc) Rework the Immunity to Normal Weapons thing to be less all-or-nothing. The same or similar changes could be made to vehicle/hardened armor later, to help out the sam who foolishly tries to shoot a car.

VII) Foci issues
VIIa) Mundanes bonding foci? At least weapon foci, to allow them to fight spirits?
VIIb) Reintriduce grounding rules?
VIIc) Possibly rework focus combat?
VIId) Focus addiction rules suck. They should work like other addictions, all of which needs to be redone themselves, and maybe if severe enough you should start losing Essence like you can in SR4?

...this was exactly the "loophole" that the PCs exploited.

Irrelevant. Magic vs. technology is covered more by III than by I. This issue is solely meant as a simple way to combat the astral scouting issue, while simultaneously making Watcher spirits work something like a low-powered blend of nature spirits and elementals, rather than their current weird rules that make them into something odd and different.

What, the "living things can crush your astral spirit" thing? How do you combat the fact that living dust mites cover every surface except in the cleanest of cleanrooms, bacteria float in the air, and all of it would instantly crush the life out of a projecting mage, since he can't physically push any of it out of his way, the moment he steps out of his body?

I wouldn't be against removing astral projection entirely, leaving only perception open. "Astral projection" would then actually be metaplanar projection, and only available to initiates. But making living things impossible to move through opens a large can of worms itself.

Indeed, it's *balanced* as it is, but I'm not sure the rules are any *good*. I guess I just don't like the idea of a Sam carrying around a collapseable 10-ft pole, just in case a spirit comes along. I mean, forgetting the actual mechanics for a moment, why should it make sense to bring along long-reach weapons as an aid to making a test of wills?

Well, that was one proposal. Other possibilities include Earthdawn-style damage while projecting, increased range, frequency, and nastiness of astral flora and fauna, and weakening the ability to exactly gauge distances and positions for non-living things. Also scrapping physical sound penetration through the A/P barrier.

That's a big jump, but the idea itself intrigues me—especially since it closes one of the crippling gaps between full mages and the aspected. As it stands, it's usually worth paying those extra five points for the ability to project alone, and the ability to do whatever else was forbidden is just an extra bonus.

As for ten-foot-poles, I know that I can exert my will on people more effectively when carrying a big staff seriously, the only justification I can come up with is that it allows the user a better defense. That's not a ridiculous justification, but it's comparatively weak, given that the fact that frequently the ten-foot-pole won't actually be able to hurt the spirit, leaving it only useful for parrying.

~J

If GMs don't use astral nasties, presumably because it's too much bother to having them around everywhere, how does adding more of them fix the problem? Making the solution more complex doesn't encourage anyone to use it; kinda the opposite, really.

I'm even more leery of making the astral into a whole alien ecosystem than I am of removing it entirely. The problem is basically the same as that of sculpted hosts for deckers. Having the mage's astral game be so completely removed from the rest of the group's on a regular basis would simply discourage groups from running it at all. Forcing the GM to come up with unique challenges just to satisfy the mage's astral journey is something most GMs don't want to bother with, just like most GMs don't want to bother with coming up with a whole sculpted system metaphor (or series of them even!) just to satisfy the team's one decker.

That, IMO, would be worse than just forbidding the mage from entering astral space altogether, because it would leave the potential for astral abuse there, only kept in check by the GM constantly having to pay attention to balancing the astral plane, distracting him from the rest of his players.

No, if we're going to keep the astral plane we need to remove the abuse potential of the astral without foisting the responsibility onto the GM. To do that we need to think of all the possible abuses that the astral plane offers, and find a way to nerf them without completely making the astral useless. In that vein, anyone want to add to my list of potential abuses above?


As for specific fixes, I like Kagetenshi's previous idea of limiting how much the astral world and physical world interact, frosting up that "one-way mirror".
1) Since the astral plane has nothing to do with your normal senses, then your normal senses don't apply when using astral projection. Thus, you cannot hear, see, smell, taste or touch anything that does not have an astral aura. You can thus sense auras, and even use assensing to discern their properties and emotional states, but you have no way to orient yourself other than the living earth itself and the pinpricks of light that are other people. The "one-way mirror" becomes completely opaque in both directions.
1a) Manifesting, as a lesser form of a spirit's Materialization power, can somewhat counter this. It gives you psychic senses that somewhat mimic the real versions of those senses: you can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell as a manifested being. It's not as solid a form as a Materialized spirit, however, and the senses don't work so well: +2TN to Perception vs. anything living, +4TN to Perception vs. anything nonliving. At the same time, living beings can see and perceive you normally (though maybe at a +2TN because you're slightly insubstantial?).
1b) What would you say about mundanes and Manifesting mages being able to have a Contest of Wills?

2) Don't really know what to do about this. Maybe make astral signatures require more than one success on the Assensing Test, and you must successfully Perceive someone before you can Assense them?

3) Perhaps you can only command spirits within a certain distance of your physical, not astral, body?

I never even hypothesized why GMs don't use them. If it is your experience that GMs consider it a bother to include astral nasties in such a way, say so, do not imply that I did.

That whole post, and the only response you have is to take a single, entirely insignificant and superfluous clause and accuse me of possibly implying that I was putting words in your mouth. Accusing me, even though your actual post was just inches above mine in the screen and it would take a total and complete ignoramus to have read your post in such a way as to have included any such idea as was included in said clause in your statement.

Suddenly I remember why nothing ever gets done around here, and why I just dropped this forum for two years only to see very little done on my return.

Okay then, why do *you* think that, if there are indeed a lot of astral entities out there, GM's just don't use them? And, if it's true that GMs don't use the astral entities that do exist, how will adding more varieties of astral entity encourage GMs to start using them in the first place? The above clause, which I certainly don't want to give you credit for, sums up why I don't think it'll work; why do you think it will?

Yes, because some of your post is just rambling. 1a and 1b look promising, but the rest will probably make the issue worse.

Like tisoz posted later, there are mechanics already in SR3, but they are underused. I cited astral nasties (and he brought in others), but GMs don't use them.

Why? Because it adds a whole new map that the GM has to plan out that may not be needed and the GM may not be as well read on the astral as a devoted mage. Astral, rigging and decking are less studied by GMs who haven't played characters of that focus simply because they are outside the regular floorplan. Integrate all three closer to the running gun battle, and it'll encourage (force) GMs to learn them as soon as a mage, decker or rigger is made.
Not all GMs are good at improvising hazards and not all players are good at accepting GM improv.

Baba Yaga, Bean Sidhe, Brocken Bow, Corpselight, King Frost, Man-of-the-Woods, Nomad, and Tungak are all in Critters.

The two types of ghost are in MitS.

While some of them have clear situations that define when and how they will most often be encountered, I am not aware of any book that actually indicates they are tremendously rare beyond the somewhat limited encounter locations.

Part of the issue is that these are not tame, and would not be encountered on corp property if the corp has any say. To keep them off would require more wards and patrolling tame spirits.

There is a definite issue that the astral is not described as a hazardous place, and I do support fixing that notion.