[adzling]

Spirits are far easier to kill in astral than material plane if you can engage them.

How do you engage a spirit that is out of reach? Step into a room.

so a shifter bear/ wolf/ tiger taking unarmed to use his claws his shoe-horning now?

im sorry i fell off my chair for that one.

BTW what does "making a mundane" have any relevance to?
a mundane shifter with unarmed can tear apart an astral entity, because he's dual-natured. no magic required.....

TL:DR if you're dual natured you better take some unarmed combat skill to fight astral threats but running, hiding and/ or bringing them into range of your attack are all valid options,

SOoooo We're shoehorning players now? Great, thanks, I'll just NEVER make a mundane again, great job.

Who said I was making a shifter, Any dual natured creature is fucked, because in *MY* Experience, Spirits are fucking bullshit in astral combat, and unless you are a mage/have a mage to back you up, you are going to die.

[LeVentNoir]

Spirits are far easier to kill in astral than material plane if you can engage them.

How do you engage a spirit that is out of reach? Step into a room.

While ignoring the fact with no stated upper limit on the spirits movement while in Astral form they can:

1. Follow you into the room.
2. Attack you.
3. Move away from you, preventing retaliation.

This ignores the next option:

1. Move to the doorway.
2. Cast spell at you.
3. Move away.

I think what your single actually solid point is:

"When built to fight a Spirit in melee combat, a PC can hide in a broom closet, and through use of interrupt actions to get half the number of attacks as a spirit per round, possibly avoid dying."

I'll give you that.

[adzling]

1. The character being able to win a stand up fight vs the astral attacker. Not always possible, and contains dual natured PCs to having high Cha and unarmed combat.

No high cha needed, just unarmed combat.

2. That the astral attacker cannot easily move in the astral at speeds so in excess of the PC's material movement that cover, line of sight, and prolonged melee range engagements are a thing. None of this is in any way backed up by any quotes from the rulebooks, and assumes that creatures able to move at near speed of though aren't accustomed to perceiving while doing so.

The first part can be mitigated to great degree by stepping into a confined space, say a room, that draws them in range of your claws etc.
The second point is just daft, sit on a train going through a building at 60mph and tell me how much you see.

3. That this game takes place exclusively in locations where there is plentiful, three dimensional, dense cover. Given that dual natured creatures are bound to the material plane, they are bound to material cover, which is almost exclusively two dimensional, and easy to track people from place to place in. Additionally, astral beings, able to ignore gravity, can attack from straight above, negating 99% of cover and making tracking even easier.

Again your being daft, srun mostly happens in congested urban spaces. Mostly.
Step into a room and brain that spirit with your fists!

4. That the PCs are going to be high magic pcs. Almost every single threat to a dual natured PC increases in danger for a magic 2-3 PC. Mana barriers are harder to pass. Your limits on astral things are lower. Your have less adept powers and lower forces.

You clearly have little understanding of dual natured and how they fight and what skills and stats they use.
I would suggest you check that out before commenting further.

[Voro]

Everyone seems to forget that spirits in astral space MUST use mana based attacks, or melee combat. If it uses melee combat, then you can attack it back. If it uses mana spells, block its line of sight.

I will get right on blocking the line of sight from something that can pick me out of the crowd (I am obvious) and that can move at 100m/turn in any direction it pleases, through air and walls, and in fact through anything except the earth and wards it doesn't have permission to pass through. Oh, and 100m/turn is it's walking rate. It's running rate is 50 kilometers/turn.

Really, this is the "Nerf guns cause my melee combat character dies all the time" whine, except over dual natured status.

there are pros and cons to it.

I can take cover against guns. People with guns cannot fly around and be immune to my own guns, or thrown weapons, or literally every ranged option I have that isn't manabolt, stunbolt, or their AOE equivalents.

There is a pro to it, and tremendous cons.

Suck. It. Up.

Inspiring. Truly.

Vamps and dual natured, ghouls are dual natured. 80% of the para-critters are dual natured..... and yet there are not exploding critters left and right all over the city and countryside... hmmmmmm......

I have seen exactly one vampire that is not at least an adept. For that matter, the only Infected I've seen that was only an adept was my own. I've also only seen one sasquatch and one naga. Mind you, I'm a long-standing member of a living community in addition to multiple home games. I've seen literally hundreds of different character builds, probably pushing a thousand now, with over a hundred personally inspected.

----

In our game astral perception is only as sure as normal perception, i.e. completely dependent on the circumstances/ area. Most action happens in a city where there's plenty of cover to hide/ run from astral presences. Our team recently plunged into the amazon and in triple canopy jungle the amount of cover is even more dense.

This is entirely reasonable most of the time. However, a dual natured entity is going to stand out. They're obvious. And unlike your mages or adepts, they cannot turn it off.

Wards, yeah you could crash into one but you could also crash into a wall (you can see both at a distance being dual-natured).
The only real ward risk is ward in an elevator shaft, my team (see above) has run into that scenario precisely once in a year of continual play.
They survived.

I cannot enter a situation where I will hit a wall because of a device that hundred of people use every day. Elevators are not the only risk - go into a parking garage, for example, or try driving through a secure checkpoint. If you're in any situation where you are not propelling yourself, you likely can be caught by surprise, given how astral sight interacts with physical objects. Regardless, your mages are safe from this! They won't get knocked unconscious unless they're actively assensing. A dual natured creature is not. They cannot turn it off. They cannot be safe.

Sure wards are all over corporate targets and players often have corporate targets. However they're not all (or even mostly) going to be force 6. And they won't cover the entire facility, they will be used on the most high-value areas that are small enough to feasibly protect.

There was an excellent writeup at some point - I can find it if necessary - that detailed the costs and efforts behind using wards as a corporate entity. What it broke down to was that even a mom and pop shop could afford rating 6 pretty easy, and a corporate facility could afford rating 12 pretty easy, due to the math behind setting them up. And most places, particularly corporate facilities, are heavily encouraged to reach high, as in order to re-establish wards later, they would have to shut down operations over at least large chunks of their facility to, well, facilitate the ritualists.

Spirit try's to wiz by and melee you're dual-natured person? I'd permit an interrupt melee attack in return.

Reasonable, if they pass a surprise test. Doesn't get around spirits of man or mages with manabolt, who never have to come within your reach.

You think your astral entity can fly through an entire cityblock in a microsecond because astral flight is so fast and thereby invalidate the chance of someone hiding?
Sure but there's nothing that says (or even suggests) they can take in and visually process everything that passes in front of their eyes as they move through a 100 rooms at close to the speed of light.

And I quote (Page 314, Core, under Astral Movement) "If you're looking for a particular place or thing, you must travel at a slower pace. "Slower" in this case means up to 100 meters each combat turn - this is considered to be the Walking rate in astral space."

You can quite explicitly look for things - particularly obvious things, like an astrally active entity - while moving at 100m/turn. Aside from that, they typically won't need to. None of the situations described have involved canvassing hundreds of rooms. At most, a watcher or spirit watching the entrance or main lobby and the road outside would cover all situations I've personally described, without any need for dedicated searching.

I can appreciate that your playstyle doen't involve challenging astral entities in a manner consistent with the core book, but given that the core book does, the errata team should keep that in mind.

As to the rest of you, I think I might have been a little unfair.  It feels like many of you are new to the game, and definitely have started with 5th edition.  Many of you seem to have have made brand new accounts just to post in this thread, which is ........ interesting

The discussion on reddit was devolving past where I felt anything useful was getting through to the errata team, so I came here. I suspect others have done similar.

I get it, you're new, and you're trying to apply real world physics to the astral world.

I am not.

Maybe find someone who's played the game with for a while....?  There are lots of people on roll20.  Or try Runnerhub.

This is, among other things, an insulting ad hominem attack. The duration of time I have played Shadowrun is not relevant to my arguments. For that matter, you have absolutely no way of knowing how long I or any others have been playing. I know for a fact that of the people who have recently participated, whose experience with the system I am aware of, I am the only one who has only played on 5th edition - and I've been doing that since before Run n Gun was released - several years at this point, more than long enough to attain system mastery.

But you know what? That doesn't matter. I am familiar with and have played on Runnerhub. I am an active member of ShadowNET, which has a spread of both players new to 5e, experience with 5e, and coming from any of the older systems up to and including 1st.

Ultimately, though, even that doesn't matter. We're not talking about those editions. We're talking about Shadowrun 5th Edition, and the nominal errata it is to be receiving. Which, thus far, has not fixed any of the major confusion, and has instead added abilities to a subset of PCs that were not in need of anything other than some clarity, abilities which now threaten to ruin their functionality as shadowrunners.

Spirits are far easier to kill in astral than material plane if you can engage them.

How do you engage a spirit that is out of reach? Step into a room.

Assuming the room isn't warded (neccessitating a struggle to get in) the spirit pokes it's head into a corner, relays where you are to it's summoner through it's link, manabolts you, then moves out through the same way. If it is warded, it kills you while you're trying to get in. If you get in, it saunters through, easily possessing the skill to make the check, since it's a spirit, even assuming it isn't keyed to said wards.

A better option, a good way to draw out your slow death, but not a way to win the fight.

[adzling]

Hold action is a thing, so is interrupt action against melee opponent.

Your combat toolbox is a little empty there chummed.

Spirits are far easier to kill in astral than material plane if you can engage them.

How do you engage a spirit that is out of reach? Step into a room.

While ignoring the fact with no stated upper limit on the spirits movement while in Astral form they can:

1. Follow you into the room.
2. Attack you.
3. Move away from you, preventing retaliation.

This ignores the next option:

1. Move to the doorway.
2. Cast spell at you.
3. Move away.

I think what your single actually solid point is:

"When built to fight a Spirit in melee combat, a PC can hide in a broom closet, and through use of interrupt actions to get half the number of attacks as a spirit per round, possibly avoid dying."

I'll give you that.

[Patrick Goodman]

Children: Focus.

Calm the hell down, all of you; this is starting to get more than a little testy. Even if I can't do mod stuff in here, I know people who can.

This is why we can't have nice things, and I, for once, would like some nice things. So STOP IT. NOW.

[Voro]

1. The character being able to win a stand up fight vs the astral attacker. Not always possible, and contains dual natured PCs to having high Cha and unarmed combat.

No high cha needed, just unarmed combat.

Moot point. Unarmed combat is melee only. Manabolts aren't.

2. That the astral attacker cannot easily move in the astral at speeds so in excess of the PC's material movement that cover, line of sight, and prolonged melee range engagements are a thing. None of this is in any way backed up by any quotes from the rulebooks, and assumes that creatures able to move at near speed of though aren't accustomed to perceiving while doing so.

The first part can be mitigated to great degree by stepping into a confined space, say a room, that draws them in range of your claws etc.
The second point is just daft, sit on a train going through a building at 60mph and tell me how much you see.

My previous comment includes a quote from the core rulebook that explicitly states that Astral entities are capable of looking for specific objects, things, whatever, while moving at 100m/turn, faster than almost any PC, and unrestricted in the vertical axis.

Drawing them into the range of your claws does not make this a winning battle. It makes it a siege. You can't step outside without them manabolting you "slowly" to death. What happens then? They just get bored and go home? No, they call in more spirits, or just an HTR team with guns. You can't leave that building without being spotted, because you're always obvious on the astral, so game over, hombre.

3. That this game takes place exclusively in locations where there is plentiful, three dimensional, dense cover. Given that dual natured creatures are bound to the material plane, they are bound to material cover, which is almost exclusively two dimensional, and easy to track people from place to place in. Additionally, astral beings, able to ignore gravity, can attack from straight above, negating 99% of cover and making tracking even easier.

Again your being daft, srun mostly happens in congested urban spaces. Mostly.
Step into a room and brain that spirit with your fists!

See above. The points are valid for outdoor urban places, and indoor urban places are not your friend even if you can beat up a spirit.

4. That the PCs are going to be high magic pcs. Almost every single threat to a dual natured PC increases in danger for a magic 2-3 PC. Mana barriers are harder to pass. Your limits on astral things are lower. Your have less adept powers and lower forces.

You clearly have little understanding of dual natured and how they fight and what skills and stats they use.
I would suggest you check that out before commenting further.

A magic 2-3 PC that is not dual natured doesn't have an issue with mana barriers. They turn off their foci and spells, and they stop assensing, then they walk through like a mundane. No problem. Hell, that's what magic 6 and 7 PCs do most of the time, because it's easier and safer. Unless they have a spell they just don't wanna get rid of. Or they're dual natured, and thus can't turn their presence on the astral off, and thus *have* to deal with mana barriers.

---

If I am coming across as adversarial, I apologize. I do not mean any of what I'm saying as a personal attack, I am merely trying to attack the arguments.

[LeVentNoir]

1. The character being able to win a stand up fight vs the astral attacker. Not always possible, and contains dual natured PCs to having high Cha and unarmed combat.

No high cha needed, just unarmed combat.

Unarmed combat is not the skill used. You may attempt to use unarmed combat against a materialised spirit, but the spirit is an Astral Form, and thus, invulnerable to unarmed combat. Astral combat is the skill used.

You must be assuming that the spirit has Materialised, and were that the case, then yes, Critter Power Claws would be effective. But sadly, the Spirit is an Astral Form:

Only astral attacks or mana spells/powers may hurt an astral critter;

This does not say that adept or critter powers may hurt such a creature: A point of difference on the vulnerability of a materialised Spirit with Immunity to Normal Weapons vs an Astral Form.

Thus, we are limited to Astral Combat,

Unarmed astral attacks are an performed through an Opposed Astral Combat + Willpower [Astral] v. Intuition + Logic Test

Your Astral Limit is a function of Magic. You must have high Willpower to be effective at attacking. For a Magician, the damage value is linked to Charisma.

To sum this all up:

You have assumed the spirit has Materialised. You have assumed that the spirit is in range of a melee attack. You have assumed that Astral Forms can be attacked with Unarmed Combat.

Can you please stop writing errata for Run Faster and go back and clean up the core rulebook first. Clearly there are significant design issues here that are causing tension as a Dual Natured Character without Astral Combat skill and high Charisma has no effective method to hurt an Astral Form.

Before you attempt to dismiss my very valid points yet again, do you disagree with any of the directly quoted references I have made?

[Hoorah]

Reading through all of this, and all I see is logic being pitted against bias, with no different results than any other similar case. The bias starts to whine and throw erroneous arguments to try and counter the logic, with no other backup besides handwavium, in and attempt to make themselves feel better, mixed in with personal attacks on the logic, most of which are naught but speculation. Meanwhile the logic continues to place valid point after point, with real world evidence, and tested claims, and avoids personal attacks, in most cases.

I feel like everyone involved should sleep on this matter, think it over, every side of the argument, not just the parts you agree with. If this continues any further, all I see is it devolving into a school yard fight, and that isn't good for anyone.

[adzling]

please read what it means to be dual natured then come back
you're missing the point of being dual-natured

tL:dr dual-nature can use unarmed and natural weapons on the astral and they use their physical stats while in astral
so too does a mage astrally perceiving and using a weapon focus
both remove the spirits immunity: normal weapons

1. The character being able to win a stand up fight vs the astral attacker. Not always possible, and contains dual natured PCs to having high Cha and unarmed combat.

No high cha needed, just unarmed combat.

Unarmed combat is not the skill used. You may attempt to use unarmed combat against a materialised spirit, but the spirit is an Astral Form, and thus, invulnerable to unarmed combat. Astral combat is the skill used.

You must be assuming that the spirit has Materialised, and were that the case, then yes, Critter Power Claws would be effective. But sadly, the Spirit is an Astral Form:

Only astral attacks or mana spells/powers may hurt an astral critter;

This does not say that adept or critter powers may hurt such a creature: A point of difference on the vulnerability of a materialised Spirit with Immunity to Normal Weapons vs an Astral Form.

Thus, we are limited to Astral Combat,

Unarmed astral attacks are an performed through an Opposed Astral Combat + Willpower [Astral] v. Intuition + Logic Test

Your Astral Limit is a function of Magic. You must have high Willpower to be effective at attacking. For a Magician, the damage value is linked to Charisma.

To sum this all up:

You have assumed the spirit has Materialised. You have assumed that the spirit is in range of a melee attack. You have assumed that Astral Forms can be attacked with Unarmed Combat.

Can you please stop writing errata for Run Faster and go back and clean up the core rulebook first. Clearly there are significant design issues here that are causing tension as a Dual Natured Character without Astral Combat skill and high Charisma has no effective method to hurt an Astral Form.

Before you attempt to dismiss my very valid points yet again, do you disagree with any of the directly quoted references I have made?

[Patrick Goodman]

Now. I'll try to be civil here, but frankly, sir, you've tried my patience today. No good has ever come of that.

Let me go ahead and address a couple of things.

You still fail to address the very serious criticism that this errata is completely ignoring major errata content to overfocus on reverting to 3e.

Source? I've got something like 35 open discussions right now in there, between Core and Run Faster. There's about to be a lot more, as I open discussions on the "Mess of Metahumanity" chapter for discussion.

We're not ignoring anything, and I'll thank you to provide proof the next time you want to go running your mouth and attacking my people. That will not stand, especially if you want to come storming in here and spreading your bile in my figurative back yard.

Incidentally, re: the "overfocus on reverting to 3e" comment -- You want to provide proof of that, as well? Since it's patently untrue, I don't imagine that you can. There is no agenda to revert things to 3rd edition, never has been, and to the best of my knowledge never will be.

Do you even know about the edge issue or the movement tables? Do you even care?

If you're referring to shifter movement rates: Very much aware of them. One of your sparring partners (Adzling, to be precise) brought them up weeks ago, in fact. We weren't there yet, so we tabled them temporarily. Now that we're entering that chapter, it's about to become an active discussion again.

When you don't know what you're talking about, you might find it best not to be quite so confrontational.

*I'm really sorry you won't get to play your init +5d6 regeneratin Tiger street sam who never has to worry about astral barriers.

No one wants regeneration either, if you didn't notice. It is just a compromise because some people are ridiculously upset that people have fun the way they want at their own tables.

Yours is not the only SR community out there, dezz, and you're not always the finest exemplar of what people over there think.

Quite a lot of people wanted Regeneration, actually. And Dual Natured. I've gotten a number (more than a dozen and less than three, to be sure, but a number) of emails asking what happened to shifters, and if there would be a fix for them since they seemed to these people obviously an error. I've gotten a few thank-you notes from people, including some of the users you intimidate over on reddit, who were happy to see their traditional powers and weaknesses restored.

It might not last, since Jason has final approval, but your outrage at this is not as common as you want to think. The reddit community is not the be-all and end-all of Shadowrun communities, and to be honest, the vocal online community is not the sum total of Shadowrun fans out there.

Thank you for outing your true colors. I think this was an illuminating conversation for everyone.

Right back at you.

I talked to Adzling and told him not to go picking any more fights on reddit. I'm going to tell you the same thing now: Don't you dare come into my forum and start fights with the regulars here.

[Li]

Thank you for replying, Mr. Goodman, it was getting rather tense in this discussion. However greatly things have spiraled out of control, it's important to remember that we're all here to have fun with a system that we all clearly love, once we cut away all the hurt and spent feelings and get right down to the core of it.

However, you do raise a point. Dezzmont is not the only voice of the online communities, nor is he the best. So I would like to ask you, and your errata team members to honestly consider what is being asked for clarification, because there have been several points raised by LeVentNoir and Voro as well. I for one am not trying to start a fight, and understand that the errata team is very busy with the internal projects that we on the outside cannot see. However, the four page slapfight that has occurred here is both concerning and alarming with personal attacks fired on all sides. Regardless of how we feel on various factions within the community, we are still all part of a larger whole. I think we should all do well to remember that.

In summary, http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/e2/e2983cfb7b9158ab06ad348047932f425ed9c1a842dca2fd6b8f606373baaf9a.jpg . We shouldn't have to feel this way about a game and a pastime. And if you missed it,

Reading through all of this, and all I see is logic being pitted against bias, with no different results than any other similar case. The bias starts to whine and throw erroneous arguments to try and counter the logic, with no other backup besides handwavium, in and attempt to make themselves feel better, mixed in with personal attacks on the logic, most of which are naught but speculation. Meanwhile the logic continues to place valid point after point, with real world evidence, and tested claims, and avoids personal attacks, in most cases.

I feel like everyone involved should sleep on this matter, think it over, every side of the argument, not just the parts you agree with. If this continues any further, all I see is it devolving into a school yard fight, and that isn't good for anyone.

This is important and would otherwise be lost. And with that, I for one, am signing off for the night. May you all have a pleasant evening, and hopefully whenever we wake up tomorrow to continue in this work, we remember what it means to be good to each other. After all, the disunity within Shadowrunners is the only thing that's keeping them from being a palpable force in 5e, I believe, for anything but the corps that pay them. We, on the other hand, are all on the same side.

[Patrick Goodman]

I'll get to this tomorrow, when I've calmed down a bit.

[Sir_Prometheus]

It feels like many of you are new to the game, and definitely have started with 5th edition.  Many of you seem to have have made brand new accounts just to post in this thread, which is ........ interesting

Sorry, I didn't realise you were going to attack our shadowrun credentials .................

..................1. The character being able to win a stand up fight vs the astral attacker. Not always possible, and contains dual natured PCs to having high Cha and unarmed combat.

Attacking your credentials mostly because:

A) You don't seem to know the rules (as Adzling pointed out, Charisma has nothing to do with this, but that's just one of many)

B) You and 3 or 4 of your friends JUST made accounts JUST now to argue all this.  So, yeah, you're new here. 

[Sir_Prometheus]

BTW, Patrick, that made me think of a thing.  Is it possible that pushing through a mana barrier is really supposed to be Mag+Str when you're dual natured?  The rules seem to assume you're astrally projecting most of the time, they may be just assuming Cha because that'd be astral Str.