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SR3R Master Thread

Jon’s Glorious Karma Character Generation System (S3CKS)

Decking

Ranged Combat

New Gear

Cyberware

Time, Pool, and the Flow of Combat
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Decided:
(All of these are subject to reopening for discussion should there be any strong argument for a different path)


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In progress:

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Proposed changes:

1) The Astral Form

When a projecting mage leaves his or her body, they lose contact with it entirely. Damage suffered by the body is not felt by the projecting mage, nor does damage to the astral form appear on the body. When an injured astral form returns to the body, the damage incurred by the astral form expresses on the body in a dramatic fashion—likewise, damage incurred by the body is immediately transferred to the astral form upon recombination. A body may die, leaving the projecting mage stranded in astral space, or the astral form may die leaving a functioning shell with no higher brain function.

The astral form does not feel pain, though astral injuries do affect operation.

2) The nature of Essence

Essence is an attribute of the astral form, not the body. As such, a mage whose body has died will run out of Essence and die in a few hours.

Cyberware and drug use can cause damage to Essence, which is expressed on the astral form. For example, a mage with a cyberarm may appear either wholly armless or with a shriveled and horribly damaged arm on the astral. Full-borg mages are truly a horrific sight on the astral.

This damage to the astral form does not, curiously enough, impede functioning.

3) The permeability of living beings In light of the strength of arguments against it, Proposal 3 has been withdrawn.

Complex organisms act as barriers to astral forms, and cannot be passed through. As a rough guideline, most macroscopic organisms are impenetrable—some exceptions (like Proteans) exist.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your flamewars. Opinions? Other areas that need to be addressed here?

~J

How about how Essence and Mana interact?

Expand on what you mean?

(For those keeping score, the fact that we're separating the "self" (astral form) from the body necessarily means that we're rejecting modern psychology and the biological model for personality. I'm sad about this too, but I think it's the option that leads to better gameplay.)

~J

I think that these are changes that needed making. I particularly agree with number 3) The permiability of living beings. I house-ruled that astral forms could not pass through living beings when SR3 came out.

I like the appearance changes of cybered astral forms. I hope to gross out some of my players with cybered mages.

So what if you're rejecting modern psychology Modern psychology doesn't deal with the astral. I think this could be interpreted as the meat body being just a shell for the astral personality. Essence is what ties a personality to, for want of a better phrase, the Prime Material Plane. When the Essence of an astral form runs out they go to wherever it is dead creatures go to, the Plane of Man? That's how I played it in my campaigns.

Edited for spelling errors. That'll teach me to use the spell checker

I propose reducing the problem of cybered magicians/adepts by making initiation cheaper and not increasing magic (20 or something Karma per point of magic would stay in effect).

On that note, make all geasa taken against magic loss from bio- or cyberware count against all the adepts powers, not just one point.

I will try to get 2&3 houseruled. Thank you.

I don't like the astral damage expressing suddenly on the physical form.

What I'd prefer:

When a mage projects, all stun damage remains as physical damage on the astral self. Spells cannot be cast at force higher than magic on the astral -- and all drain is "physical".

When the mage returns to the body, all the physical damage on the astral form replaces the stun damage on the body-- and stun damage on the astral form is added to it.

I don't like 3, and I don't like 1. 2 is okay, but I'd use a wholly different explanation for Essence myself.

Bodies not on the astral themselves should be completely permeable. That is, any aura can be passed through like air, but any dual-natured or wholly astral being would remain impenetrable. Mother Earth, on the other hand, is a big dual-natured planet, and thus impenetrable. A mage being unable to pass easily through a crowded room or zip through a forest is idiotic when they're on the astral. Auras on the astral are not themselves astrally present beyond a kind of 'experession effect' that tints the mana around them into certain patterns based on their emotions and the state of their bodies. Instead of being solid barriers, they're more like a fine mist with an image projected onto it, quite visible and possibly very vivid and bright, but intangible.

A Projecting magician is not wholly disconnected from their body. They are simply seperating their mental self from their physical self for limited periods of time. For either to function properly both must be in alignment with each other, but magicians can use their command of mana and the astral to maintain a long-distance link with their body that allows them to maintain a living, functioning self while these halves are seperated. As such the Astral form knows when the Physical form is wounded, and expresses those wounds itself (though it does not necessarily impede performance) and the physical form expresses wounds that the astral form has suffered (usually in the form of internal ruptures, snapped tendons and other nasty, nasty injuries that don't require an actual knife to be taken to the body). If the body dies while the Astral form is missing, the Astral form can sustain itself for only a short period of time before it collapses itself. If the Astral form dies, the physical form is quick to follow, unless kept on serious life support (just in case some errant Shedim really needs a body or something).

Also, Though I have no real problems with 2, it does present an interesting point about cyberware. If Essence is an attribute purely of the Astral Form, why do mundanes die when they get more cyber implanted than their essence limit? Why Cybermancy? Obviously, Essence is tied to the body in some way as well.

I just wanted to say that there's a lot here I'm going to respond to, but having just had oral surgery today is probably not the time to say it. In the meantime, carry on your discussion.

~J

Not doing damage is irrelevant, as I never said it would. It would, however, bring you to a complete stop. And we know that it's not just the 'will' behind it that does damage (Though that is a major component of astral combat). Being forced through an astral barrier can cause damage, without an attack being initiated or an effort of 'will' on either side. As towards incorporeality vs astral travel, I AM actually describing astral travel. Incorporeal entitites cannot interact with other incorporeal entities (being incorporeal and all), Astral entities, on the other hand, can interact with other astral entities, but not physical entities. The Astral is a reflection of the physical, but it is NOT the physical, physical things do not affect astral things (Beyond the normal astral-physical interaction of mana expressing, either as emotional background count or magical effect) and the astral does not affect the physical. When you're dual natured, you're both at once.

That's Astral Travel, not incorporeality.

This is one section of SR3 that most emphatically does NOT need to be fixed.

Personally I think none of the above rulings need to be instituted whatsoever, those parts of SR3 are just fine the way they are in the books.

Don't be like FanPro and try to fix what isn't broken with the astral part of the magic system.

It is already broken. Just try to find a logic behind the current system.

~J

1) A full disconnect would make it nearly impossible to discover the adjusted location of your meat body if it moved while you were out. The "dramatic" expression of injuries is arbitrary and lacks any real reason except to make it easier for a medic to try to diagnose and repair injuries. A "logical" consequence of the recombined health bars would result in the damage mostly expressing itself in the body suddenly and harshly reacting to the stimulus of the injuries, sharp muscle contractions and blood pressure jumps resulting in torn muscles, internal bleeding, and similar consequences.

2) Completely arbitrary, but no more so than the description in any of the books.

3) No, I do not like the SR2 tactic of mundane vines making a building astrally impermeable. Life is far too common at ground levels to function as an astral barrier without limiting astral projection to thinner altitudes.

How about this: The ability for a living thing to impede the movement of an astral-only body depends on the fact that the cells in living tissue are "connected" astrally. The little invisible connections that bind an organism's aura together synergize to create an overall "mass" aura, much like knitting a sweater out of loose bits of yarn. Thus, more complicated creatures (creatures with metahuman-level Essence) are more likely to impede astral movement than lesser creatures (single-cell organisms or simple multi-cellular organisms like yeast). This is also why using tissue samples from an organism can be used to track the organism, or even vice versa (reverse Ritual tracking).

This is also important as far as astral tracking is concerned. The lower a person's Essence, the "fewer" the connections in the mass aura and the lower the integrity of a person's astral connections (the invisible yarn that binds his aura together). Thus, tissue samples from individuals with lower Essence have ties that unravel faster, and are less useful for astral tracking (degrade in Essence hours). Because a person's Essence also determines how long they can stay in the Astral plane, the Essence degradation represents the person's extended aura "unraveling" the longer it stays away from its "home".

With FAB, it depends on whether or not you are using the "new" or the "old" model. In the Corporate Security Handbook (SR2 rules), FAB was not dual-natured. You could justify FAB as bacteria that artificially produces the "astral ties" needed to impede astral movement between individual colonies, through some product (probably accidental) of gene engineering. In Magic in the Shadows (SR3 rules), FAB is dual natured, and thus is "solid" as far as astral travelers are concerned.

I've always liked the ability for Ivy and biomatter and other "mundane" ways to counter an astral scout. However, running things as SR2's magical universe is a complete shift from SR3 (just as SR3 was a complete shift from SR2), and I honestly don't think that is completely in tune with the goal of SR3R (providing a revised ruleset without completely overhauling the overall spec of the rules).

Proposal #3 has fallen to the arguments against it. I think regarding point #1 that the implications of separation are still preferable to the implications of linkedness, but Herald of Verjigorm brought up a point regarding difficulty of locating a moved body that is unaddressed.

More as things evolve, and as always comments are welcome.

~J

I'm always amazed how people can take something easy to understand and then make it difficult to grasp. There is nothing wrong with the Astral rules the way they are. The implications of what you are doing makes everything just a little more unbalanced.

After all basically you are allowing any astral projecting person to essentially knock out or kill any mundane without anything more than his astral fists or weapon focus. How long is even a maxed out troll going to live against an opponent he cannot see, can by pass his armor, and he is unable to out maneuver? Becuase that is the can of worms you are opening by aking living object solid on the astral.

That's based on a false extrapolation of rulings based on a proposal that has been canned. Next?

~J

No, it is based off reality. If something is solid you can hit it. If it can be hurt based on how hard you hit it, you can destroy it evenutally. Simple and quite effective. I may miss ground to manifestation, but the 'pane of glass' is prefferrable to have the mage gain even more power.

The way I see it, you don't like astral reconnisance, but are too lazy to work all the nice inexpensive ways of dealing with it.

1. Bound Elemental: For a trivial cost a force 6 elemental will watch an entire floor of a building forever.
2. Astral mages: Fight fire with fire.
3. Dual natured paracritters: hellhounds are your friends

The problem we were trying to address was that this was a "you can't fight fire with anything but fire" situation. There were, and are, no non-magical countermeasures to astral projection.

You're right that changing it does change a whole host of other things that we weren't expecting (even if it doesn't change what you think it's changing). That would be why we're posting our proposals here and asking other people to comment on it.

~J

This may seem like a silly idea, but I will offer it as an alternative to solid auras.

Maybe the "pane of glass" between Astral and physical isn't fully transparent. Maybe it is more like frosted glass, distorting and obscuring the mirror image of the physical world that is projected onto the astral plane. Perhaps viewing purely physical object from astral is like looking through the mother of all funhouse mirrors.

Maybe a dense concentration of overlapping auras interferes with astral sight the same way the glare from bright lights interferes with physical sight. Maybe when auras are too dense a mage mas to make an assensing test to tell one from another.

This would reduce the usefulness of astral recon while allowing astral beings to retain their free movement. In dense foliage, an astral being will have difficulty telling the difference between a plant, a metahuman, and a raccoon. Put a few dozen potted plants in the guard barracks and the Astral mage can't be sure to make an accurate head count.

Against nonliving objects the mage is even more fragged. Unless he makes the perception test he can't tell the difference between a garden sprinkler and a minigun turret. He can't be sure if the secret corporate hanger contains a lightly armed rotodrone, a helicopter, or a kilometer-wide heliofortress.

On the idea of the frosted plane of glass, the astral perception modifiers from MitS simulate this to a degree.

Another bit to worry about is you can hear spoken words just fine, so listening to the secret corporate plot (or whatever is quite easy). Of course, a lot of business meetings would be held in the matrix instead, to no spoken words would be involved.

Well, my 2 cents:

Option 1&2 is a whole lot of work just to make it possible for a mage to get himself lost while projecting. Honestly I don't think any of the changes are really necessary at all; all you need to change is the theory a little.

Here's how I think of it: In magic, everything is connected. Bits of bricks are connected to buildings; leaves are connected to trees that spawned them, and an astral form is connected to the body that spawned it. This is true whether that astral form is a nature spirit or elemental, a watcher, an ally, even the major astral form a mage creates while projecting. This is why ritual magic works, why allies and other spirits can be called through weird shortcuts in the metaplanes to their masters, why an astrally projecting mage is aware of wounds to his meatbody and can be "snapped" back to his body if he is disrupted. In fact, it probably works through the same sort of metaplanar shortcut a free spirit is sucked through when someone says its name. Unfortunately for the mage he can't just snap his way back to his body any time he pleases, no more than a free spirit can snap his way anywhere he damn well pleases as if someone said his name in that spot. Call it an unconscious reflex, call it an unknown natural process, call it rules of magic, whatever you like, but that's just how it works.

Does that make sense, or am I speaking Greek here? I just really don't think any of these changes are really necessary; they certainly make no more sense this way than they do the SR3 way, at least IMHO.

Sorry, but I have to agree with Eyeless (and others) in that I do not believe any of the changes listed in the first post are necessary, or even warranted.

I'll have to think on Eyeless' suggested explanations—something in me rebels against the idea that things are mysteriously different when one is rendered unconscious than when one is conscious, but I could be convinced.

With that said, are there any inconsistencies or areas in the rules for the above that people would like to see addressed?

~J

I'm with the group that says that these rules aren't broken. I can understand a microscopic strand of connection from the body to the astral form that is always there. It is the ambilical connection that keeps them both alive. In astral combat, if you get a black eye, I can imagine your physical body automatically reflecting this by getting a black eye. Anyone pulling guard duty over your meat body would know that you've met something bad. And if your friend who is guarding you is tickling your feet, you can feel that sensation in your astral form.

*bump* and...

As long as we're thinking of changing things that don't really need to be changed, I've got a list of little bits from the magic section that could use some work:

1) Change "Detection spells" to allow directed and indirect subcategories, mch like illusion spells. Directed detection spells, like Detect(Object) and Mindprobe are resisted, but indirect ones like Nightvision and Clairvoyance are not resisted.
2) Make Invisability and the like, instead of being so all-or-nothing as they currently are, merely provide some kind of a bonus to whatever we finally decide to do with Stealth tests.
2a) Er, we ARE getting rid of Open Tests, aren't we?
3) Find some way to allow Ritual Tracking with only one person. In the books it is implied in some places that people have done ritual tracking all by their lonesome (example: that bounty hunter in SOTA '63 using reverse tracking to find someone) but by the current rules it's impossible, which is pretty stupid.
4) Fix Adept Geasea to actually be meaningful, rather than free stuff.

Anything else?

I misunderstood the implication, having forgotten that Nightvision was resisted.

~J