Shadowrun 4e newbie questions

[vagrant]

Given superspeed and the retardedly short length of actual combat in SR, I prefer to stretch out the non-combat bits. The first encounter firefight with Team 1 of Corpsec might be only a few seconds, but actually going down the hallway and swiping keycards/hacking or whatever takes <however long you think it's reasonable for HTR to show up>, which is usually 5-10 minutes if its a highly secured location. (HTR on-site or ready to be choppered over in a few minutes, etc.) HTR is expensive, as kzt noted, so response times for the Ares America HQ in Seattle will clearly be less than response time at some warehouse out on the borders of the 'plex.

[Blade]

Magic response can be on site very quickly. A mage can send a spirit who'll be there in a few seconds and in the physical plane three seconds after.

Likewise, drones can be dispatched from the nearest security hub and get on site very quickly. At least some small roto-drones that will be able to search for and track the runners.

I've read somewhere that criminals nowadays use the 2 minutes rule, stating that in order to avoid law enforcement, they should be out in less than 2 minutes after breaking in. I guess that with cheaper and more common VTOLs, this time might have gotten shorter.

[virgil]

How likely is it for there to be a Radiation Shielding spell? From what I can tell, it would be nearly identical to the Alter Temperature spell (easier, because it's Restricted to only reduce radiation), but I don't know if the fact it's manipulating radiation means only toxic shamans can develop/use such magic.

[Username17]

Radioactive material has the highest object resistance, and therefore can only be affected by high force spells. If you aren't a Radiation Mage, radioactive areas also have a background count that reduces the force of your spells, requiring the initial force to be even higher, and also reduces your Magic attribute, making the maximum Force you can cast spells at be lower. If you have Magic 6, you can't affect any radioactive materials in a background count of 3 (your effective magic is 3, which means you can overcast to 6, but the spell's Force is then reduced to 3).

It's much easier to purify radioactives by using magic to remove all the non-radioactive material. It's relatively simple for magic to refine Uranium ore. But cleaning up radiation is super hard.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

There was a radiation shield spell in 3rd edition at least. Not sure wether or not there is an official one in SR4, but i think there might actually be one.
It was cast on people, not on stuff, so basically a magical armor/magical lead suit. Which kinda gets around the problem of casting at radioactive stuff itself. But of course, the heavily radiated areas will simply make the spell go poof once you enter them, because BGC . . If the GM thinks about actually using it for once. Which, because of mage player whining, is in my experience VERY rare. But the GM might actually be sending you in there because he feels the mage is too strong and needs an area with BGC to humble him.

[virgil]

Instead of trying to affect the radioactive material with your spell, you instead just stop the radiation itself from moving about; like the magic lead suit spell Stahlseele speaks of. Does radiation itself have object resistance?

P.S. - Are Radiation Mages presumably fairly valuable to corporations with nuclear capability?

[Stahlseele]

ALL nuclear mages are toxics . .
And generally, corps don't care about radiation mages at all.
There are after all "perfectly fine" mundane methods of getting rid of radiation.
SR3:
Radiation Barrier
Radiation Shield
And i am guessing you could be able to remove radiation from things using Clean(Element) Spells? Not sure though.
There probably were specialized spells for this in some of the SR3 extreme books. Like on Ausfalia or the SOX probably.

edit:
*goes for a quick burrow into his source books*

Turns out SOX is an SR4 book which has Radiation Barrier and Radiation Shield Spells.
And a decontamination spell as well.

[Username17]

Corps don't actually care about the Toxic/Non-Toxic divide. I mean, you can explain to them that a zombie making Houngan of Ghede is light side, while a radiation mage geologist is dark side, and they will stare at you like you're a crazy person. They can't actually tell the difference between a Loa Zombie and a Shedim, so the kinds of distinctions that the players care about mean jack diddly to them. The black and white morality of what magic is allowed and not allowed for player characters is hidden information for people in the world, and most corporate bean counters would consider the arguments laid out in Street Magic fairly uncompelling.

Bottom line is that there are definitely radiation mages who hold down corporate jobs. Their skills are super useful, and any of them who are not-crazy enough (or crazy in the correct ways) that they can still show up for regular working hours can pull down a sweet paycheck for using those skills.

Bonus Edit: the Radiation Barrier type spells work very poorly. They need to be very high force to accomplish anything, and their force gets depleted for being in areas that you'd need them to function in. They might as well be joke spells.

-Username17

[virgil]

Bonus Edit: the Radiation Barrier type spells work very poorly. They need to be very high force to accomplish anything, and their force gets depleted for being in areas that you'd need them to function in. They might as well be joke spells.

Alright, so the beta particles (and other emissions from radioactive materials) themselves have an Object Resistance of 4; not just the spent fuel rod.

[Stahlseele]

Huh?
No?
Radiation ITSELF is measured in Sievert in SR o.O
Radiation Shield and Barrier lower the incoming Sieverts by their force.
Exactly like Armor. So if you have 10 sievert incoming and have a force 6 Barrier, 4 will go through. Better have some mundane anti radiation stuff on you as well.
No scratch that, that was the SR3 way.
The SR4 way is different.
In the SR4 spell, the force lowers the radiation level and if the radiation level is HIGHER than the force, then the spell does NOTHING AT ALL anymore.

Only things can have an object resistance. Radiation is not a thing(TM) so it does not get an object resistance. But most things radioactive will be in a BGC so that will fuck with your spells immediately.

[Nath]

Well, technically, you may need to shield yourself from as much as three different things, depending on whether you intend to transport a sealed uranium container, visit a damaged nuclear plant or survive a nuclear explosion.

Getting close to radioactive materials causes exposition. Your body may receive alpha and beta particles and gamma rays which damage tissue (mostly skins and eyes for alpha and beta particles, while gamma rays penetrate into the body).

Radioactive materials may be found in water, or flying around as dust (especially after explosions, whether the explosion is the result of a nuclear bomb, an hydrogen leak inside a nuclear power plants or the kinetic impact of a depleted uranium ammunition). Breathing, drinking, swallowing or getting your skin or clothes dirty with radioactive materials causes contamination. Which in turn will cause hours, days or years of exposition (and possibly contamination of your surroundings). At such short range, alpha particles do most of the damage directly onto the skin or internal organs, sometimes very localized.

Ongoing nuclear reaction emits neutrons that cause activation. This can turn any atom into a radioactive isotope, leading to pretty much the same effects than contamination. However, activated carbon, calcium and other "light" atoms that make up most of your body, clothing and gear decay into non-radioactive atoms way faster than "heavy" atoms like cesium or "super-heavy" atoms like uranium. Good news: the exposition level will quickly drops. Bad news: it's going to drop quickly because all the radiation will have been emitted faster. But except for some very exotic compound like Californium-252, you had to get into a functioning nuclear reactor or in the midst of nuclear explosion for any significant level of activation to occur, so activation usually is a very secondary issue considering the level of exposition, contamination and temperature you'd also be subjected to.

In theory, radiation shielding only protects from exposition. If you get contaminated, there's a point in asking whether it would protect your from exposition from radioactive materials that are now inside your body.

[Stahlseele]

yeah, that's where the decontamination spell comes into play.

[Grek]

Alternatively: Shape Metal and a suitcase full of lead.

[virgil]

Is SOX a mana warp (as mentioned in a couple books) or mana void (as described in Street Magic)? Several sources are mentioning select areas within the Zone being magically decontaminated for safe havens of research and having ghouls run around as well; both of which seem difficult to explain when the astral will rip apart toxic mages and ghouls and the like. Or is the SOX only strong enough to count as a warp/void in select areas?

Related note - are toxic mages boosted regardless of whether the background count is positive or negative due to pollution?

[Stahlseele]

The SOX is a Mana Warp if anything. Probably nothing at all.
Just very radioactive with BGC. Where you draw the line between BGC to Warp is hazy to me <.<
It does not make either Ghouls nor Toxics explode.
Ghouls use Astral Perception though, because they are blind.
And BGC is like smoke for normal vision. So the more BGC you have, the foggier the Astral Perception gets. Which is kinda important and annyoing to dangerous for people who rely on it to get around.

A Mana Void is where there is no mana AT ALL. Like Space is a "Force" 12 Mana Void.
Now THESE are dangerous to both Toxicers and Ghouls.
Because it drives you insane to be magically active even just trying to perceive in one of these. Was there not also something about Ghouls keeling over dead if their Magic Attribute goes down to 0? Or at least completely blind because no Astral Perception anymore either.

Seeing how several Corps have their own spaces in the SOX, at least there they will have geomancy / feng shuey to make the mojo flow smoothly i guess.

Toxic mages have the BGC as their domain if i remember this correctly. It is aspected TO THEM.
Which means it's a double whammy, because an aspected domain to somebody will hinder everybody else. So in a Level 2 BGC Toxic Zone the Toxic will get +2 while everybody else gets a -2 which makes a difference of 4. Seeing how 6 is what most player characters have as maximum for magic in many cases, that is pretty damning already, because instead of a 6v6 you now get a 4v8 . .

[Nath]

According to the German-French SOX sourcebooks, the SOX zone has Toxic Domains and Mana Warps and Mana Voids and Mana Ebbs depending on the place and the time.

The Cattenom power plant is a permanent Mana Void -12. Mana Void between -7 and -9 may pop up anywhere at random and are moving as fast as 1 meter per minute. Mana Ebbs may appear around those Mana Voids. Mana Warps appear in cities and on highways were large number of people died during the evacuation and panic that followed the incident. Some of the warps are also moving, 1 meter per hour max. Notable concentration of radioactive materials and other toxic dumps (since the megacorporations use the SOX to dump pretty much any waste materials) are Toxic Domains between +2 and +6. The rest of the zone default to Toxic Domain +1.

[virgil]

Just very radioactive with BGC. Where you draw the line between BGC to Warp is hazy to me <.<
It does not make either Ghouls nor Toxics explode.

Per Street Magic, a Warp happens when the background count reaches 7 or higher. A Void is when it reaches -7 or lower. The background count is present regardless. In BOTH cases, spirits, dual-natured critters, and projecting magi take damage. I guess I'm curious as to whether a warp or void can be aspected, both giving a boost to mage spellcasting while risking quite a bit of damage if they try to assense or astrally project.

According to the German-French SOX sourcebooks, the SOX zone has Toxic Domains and Mana Warps and Mana Voids and Mana Ebbs depending on the place and the time.

That's actually quite helpful, thanks!
I actually found a copy of the SOX book. However, my German is waay too rusty to able to glean much helpful information for my games, especially with specialized terminology that you'd see in an RPG.

[Stahlseele]

@Nath
i had not thought that it was THAT bad in there O.o

[Shrieking Banshee]

Question on 4e matrix rules (It may be a pointless goal but im trying anyway), but from what I imagined, when you ran a program, its running counted against the node it was inside.
So if you hacked into a Security node for a corp, then your persona running in the program would count against those in the program. So you couldn't just spam a million agents into that node because then it would overload, as well as limit the power of the programs running in the system including yours.

Or am I wrong?

[Username17]

Question on 4e matrix rules (It may be a pointless goal but im trying anyway), but from what I imagined, when you ran a program, its running counted against the node it was inside.
So if you hacked into a Security node for a corp, then your persona running in the program would count against those in the program. So you couldn't just spam a million agents into that node because then it would overload, as well as limit the power of the programs running in the system including yours.

Or am I wrong?

You're wrong. Agents count against the computer they come from, but you can just hackastack as many as you want. Not that such a system would help anyway, because most of the time what's important is scamming yourself admin access - and that's all done externally.

-Username17

[Shrieking Banshee]

Well thats what I hear real hacking is more about anyway but I thought the entire point of hacking was to bypass the need for a password (Which Im not sure on the possibility of in real life but hey-not a computer guy and this isn't a super realz game).

I guess the game made more sense in my head then it did by raw.

You used data search to find the hidden nodes, or sort the cream from the crop as you say.

And you used Scan to find detailed stuff IN nodes, or scan for the important data. But quite frankly I think you only needed one skill for finding things in the matrix.

Still assuming that the passcode didn't matter, wouldn't it help against hackastack, assuming the hackers skill still mattered in hacking and directing Agents?

I don't know. Hacking is so utterly confusing.

[vagrant]

Well thats what I hear real hacking is more about anyway but I thought the entire point of hacking was to bypass the need for a password (Which Im not sure on the possibility of in real life but hey-not a computer guy and this isn't a super realz game).

I guess the game made more sense in my head then it did by raw.

You used data search to find the hidden nodes, or sort the cream from the crop as you say.

And you used Scan to find detailed stuff IN nodes, or scan for the important data. But quite frankly I think you only needed one skill for finding things in the matrix.

Still assuming that the passcode didn't matter, wouldn't it help against hackastack, assuming the hackers skill still mattered in hacking and directing Agents?

I don't know. Hacking is so utterly confusing.

??? Passcode wut? All you need is admin access and then you poke around to your hearts delight (dodging the ticking perception roll made by IC or sec hackers.) It's actually not /that/ difficult.

[Zaranthan]

Radiation ITSELF is measured in Sievert in SR o.O
Radiation Shield and Barrier lower the incoming Sieverts by their force.
Exactly like Armor. So if you have 10 sievert incoming and have a force 6 Barrier, 4 will go through. Better have some mundane anti radiation stuff on you as well.

In case anybody thought Magerun was a new thing in 4E, that's pretty crazy powerful. 4 Sv will kill you to death without immediate medical attention.

[Stahlseele]

in that regard they actually nerfed magic.
in SR4, even if you have a force 6 radiation shield on you, if you enter a 7SV environment, it does not help at all anymore.
It has become an all or nothing spell.
Up to 6SV will be completely negated by an SR4 Radiation shield, anything above will kill you dead pretty much 100% of the time.

[Grek]

Radiation shield seems like a really good candidate for overcasting, though.