[Sir_Prometheus]

Well, if you want to accuse me of not replying in good faith you can go screw, frankly.  I have no idea what you think my "true colors" are other than you somehow think it's personal when it's not. 

Text was cited but not by you and more importantly, no, it is not definitive, as described. 

You were getting into fluff descriptions, sir, you were wrong on all counts.  Mostly I think they got rid of the alternate-astral form just because it made them too obvious.  But they very much have been spiritual beings and always have been dual natured.  Vampires haven't, but now they're dual natured, too.

You claim this is a reversion to 3e?  Wow, that's a bit hyperbolic.  You're obviously a bit overly emotionally invested in this.  I'm not sure why, I suspect regenerating tiger street sams.  Regardless, obvious omissions are sorta low-hanging fruit for errata.  I just want to make sure the karma (or other) costs take all that into account. 

[dezmont]

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.

Spirits move riduclously fast. Blocking its line of sight is not very practical. Mana based ranged attacks on spirits are not rare. Some of them are downright more crippling than damage ever could be.

As for 'low hanging fruit...'

No? I think the question of if shifters have two edge pools and two seperate adept power lists is a bit more critical than anything actually being talked about.

[Sir_Prometheus]

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.


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.


Suck. It. Up.

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......

Well said. 

[Solathon]

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.


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.


Suck. It. Up.

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......

Going to have to say that this is overly antagonistic, there are individuals who obviously have quite a bit of system mastery, and who are very well versed on FIFTH edition giving suggestions and trying to be diplomatic, and  you're just being a bit, a tiny little itty bitty, oh fuck it, you're being jackasses, why don't YOU suck it up and stop being a little shitstain and actually try to refute the ENTIRETY of their arguements rather than cherry pick and interpret the rules how you WANT to and not how they're WRITTEN. Mkay? Mkay. Have fun with that.

[adzling]

:::wave::::

sorry I had to sign off the reddit farkfest but my handler requested it and it was only starting to get ugly with folks trolling and personally attacking me despite my attempts to engage and answer as many questions as possible.

but no fear, I'm back here!

Sooo it occurs to me after reading far too many of these "dual-natured kills you" responses that much if not all of the negativity is resulting from personal decisions/ ambiguity about wards, astral space and their effects.

As a point of reference our table has 3 mages, one adept and 2 mundanes (yes they call it magicrun for a reason).
So with the above pc spread there's tons of activity on the astral and making use of astral vision, spirits et al.

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.

So even if an astral spellcaster can see their target at a distance (not at all a given) there is still plenty of opportunity to just hide, behind anything living or non-living (except of course if you're in an open area, the desert, etc).

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.

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.

In a year of play our team has had to deal with wards about every second session but have, for the most part, "pushed" through them using the rules for sneaking. Those who couldn't because they didn't want to risk intersection stayed on the other side of the ward and supported / did something else valuable.

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

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.
We don't let astral entities do that at our table as it beggar's belief (and would make a mockery of anyone trying to hide from a spirit/ mage).
you want to search for someone in the astral, sure but it's gonna take time just like walking through those rooms (or mebbe running through them) would.

My point is that play-style has a very large effect on how drastic you view these changes.

For how we use astral space it's not really a big deal, at all.

[LeVentNoir]

Hello Sir_Prometheus.

I want to ask you about the benefits of being Dual Natured. It in fact seems to me that there is utterly no upside what so ever. It is entirely downsides. Additionally, it makes certain builds and playstyles simply not viable.

Reading over this thread, I've realised my Sasquatch Rigger is simply dead.

Being a charisma 2, mag 1 Dual Natured entity, he has a mechanical unlikely hood of passing a Force 2 mana barrier. He will astrally intersect and take a full stun track and pass out. I do understand he is astrally weak, but until now, I didn't realise how much threat he is under. With no astral combat skill, without even being an adept, he is screwed. He can be attacked at any time by any astral entity with no option of defence.

Now, for shifters, who haven't taken 4.5 essence of cyberware, this problem is slightly less, due to higher magic, but is still present. I ask you, do you not see that it is essentially impossible to function as a dual natured entity without being a full mage?

You must be able to astrally project to fight astral combat without being kited to death. You must be able to cast mana spells to easily and effectively damage things in an astral fight without high charisma. You must be able to cast mana barrier to protect yourself while sleeping. You must have a high magic to be able to pass through mana barriers without intersecting.

If it uses mana spells, block its line of sight.

You are aware than on the astral, movement is essentially speed of though, or high enough that any entity that is dual natured and thus stuck at material plane speeds has no option of holding cover when the opponent can simply move to negate it, attack, and continue moving away!

[dezmont]

To try to salvage something constructive from... that...

I don't particularly care that people disagree. But I care that the quality of discourse is low, and it is pretty transparently low. There is frankly very little attempt to defend against the actual arguments. It really is just a 'we are right, you are wrong' situation where the same talking points are mentioned but not supported, or not supported well.

It frankly doesn't matter if I did or didn't cite something. He got to it first, and it is true. To say that I am somehow being unreasonable for pointing out something that is objectively true is silly. And I think everyone can see it is silly you are so upset I am not the one who brought forward the proof that you actually misunderstood the mechanics there.

Again, the primary argument is that shifters shouldn't get regeneration or dual natured, not that people want to keep playing 5d6 initiative monsters with regeneration who don't exist, and that the errata team should focus on critical writing errors in shifters (Movement, edge, magic, ect) before focusing on lore updates between editions frankly many people think aren't appropriate at all. Even if you feel that it is 100% justified and you totally plan on doing them, you should be able to see why this paints the errata team in a bad light. You 'fixed' the fact that shifters changed but they are still as broken and nonsensical as ever. The actual errata never hit.

Whole lotta stuff

Honestly good points and a good faith attempt to try to figure out the disconnect going on here. I may not agree with everything, but at least you are honestly trying rather than evading the core point: People seem to not agree with the errata on how fundamentally dangerous dual natured is.

I will say that driving into a barrier is different because not everyone can see it and you can hit it purely by accident, but I also have to say I don't recall barriers being on the road that often.

Spirit sniping is a bit more scary than just damage. While damage is easy to illustrate and think about, a lot of people don't realize how many very dangerous and powerful spells and powers are mana based. It is a bit beyond just like getting attacked by a gun you can't close with (especially as movement points alone can bring you into contact with a ranged NPC) because you can be paralyzed, feared, or mind controlled via the astral. A lot of scary save or die stuff that your team can't help you with from out of your reach.

Astral perception, stealth, and masking definitely has been an ambiguous mess for years and cleaning that up would go a long way to helping people get on the same page about how things work.

You are aware than on the astral, movement is essentially speed of though, or high enough that any entity that is dual natured and thus stuck at material plane speeds has no option of holding cover when the opponent can simply move to negate it, attack, and continue moving away!

Honestly this depends on the situation. You would both need to be able to break astral sight, and then manage to change where you appear to be going while someone can't see you, and there need to be enough options that the insane speed of an astral creature can't allow them to simply move around to check everything. It is important to note that astral movement is so fast it is realistic to literally check a 25 by 25 meter area each turn assuming literally every meter blocked line of sight to every other meter. Realistically it is possible for an astral form to check every spot in an area so large that a character can't realistically leave it in one combat turn, meaning they can never escape.

[adzling]

So as I have pointed out on reddit the errata team is still working and we have put out other errata besides shifter stuff.
To assume that there will be no other errata on shifters or that this is all we will focus on is, to be frank, outrageously blindered when you look at both the facts of what has been presented so far as well as what the errata team members *cough* have said.

Moving on, yes both astral space and the matrix are in desperate need of *clarifications*.

And yes, you are correct a well positioned (and well commanded) spirit with the appropriate powers could hang back and destroy a dual-natured target in the open.

However this scenario is not very likely or common in my experience, at our table.

This is because:

1). yes you can move really fast in astral but you still have to stop and look. If a dual-nature being ducks out of sight into a building/ forest/ water/ whatever you have to spend time to find them. That time is considerably larger than simply zipping through the astral from london to tokyo.

2). summoned and bound spirits do wtf they want, and it's not always the perfect answer to combat/ risk you as summoner/ binder would hope for.
once summoned you don't get to drive your spirit like a PC, you give it a command (help me in combat, kill those guys, scout that space etc) and the GM then controls the spirit to get it done.
spirits, unless higher force and very accustomed to the material plane, are typically very poor tactically. They might try and close to combat rather than stay back and plink unless specifically commanded to do the latter, using another service.

3). there's lots of cover that can force a spirit into hand-to-hand range

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,

[Solathon]

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.

[adzling]

You greatly simplify the challenges of keeping someone in sight in a typical environment.
While running into a ward could cause astral intersection issues the same could be said of hitting a brick wall at speed.
The real risk is the ward you can't see that you're about to crash into, like in an elevator shaft.
How many wards have you run into in elevator shafts so far (likely none or not many i'd wager)?

Finally kiting is a bogus analogy, see my post above for reference.

TL:DR this ain't starcraft, there's plenty of stuff in the real world to hide behind/ draw an astral being into so you can take it apart with your hands.

TL:DR 2: Astral scouting/ searching is not as powerful as you think it is (by far).

Being a charisma 2, mag 1 Dual Natured entity, he has a mechanical unlikely hood of passing a Force 2 mana barrier. He will astrally intersect and take a full stun track and pass out. I do understand he is astrally weak, but until now, I didn't realise how much threat he is under. With no astral combat skill, without even being an adept, he is screwed. He can be attacked at any time by any astral entity with no option of defence.

You must be able to astrally project to fight astral combat without being kited to death. You must be able to cast mana spells to easily and effectively damage things in an astral fight without high charisma. You must be able to cast mana barrier to protect yourself while sleeping. You must have a high magic to be able to pass through mana barriers without intersecting.

You are aware than on the astral, movement is essentially speed of though, or high enough that any entity that is dual natured and thus stuck at material plane speeds has no option of holding cover when the opponent can simply move to negate it, attack, and continue moving away!

[adzling]

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.

[Solathon]

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.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Adzling is pretty much on point, as was Reaver.

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

I get it, you're new, and you're trying to apply real world physics to the astral world.  Well, don't.  It's weirder than that.  Maybe find someone who's played the game with for a while....?  There are lots of people on roll20.  Or try Runnerhub. 

[Solathon]

Adzling is pretty much on point, as was Reaver.

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

I get it, you're new, and you're trying to apply real world physics to the astral world.  Well, don't.  It's weirder than that.  Maybe find someone who's played the game with for a while....?  There are lots of people on roll20.  Or try Runnerhub.

I'm sorry, i've been playing since second edition, I just don't have the time, or give enough of a rat's ass about the forums to make an account before now, I've been lurking for a while but I just couldn't stand you being such a cunt for no goddamn reason, take that how you will, take my opinion of you how you will, and take your own opinion and shove it.

[LeVentNoir]

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

I get it, you're new, and you're trying to apply real world physics to the astral world.  Well, don't.  It's weirder than that.  Maybe find someone who's played the game with for a while....?  There are lots of people on roll20.  Or try Runnerhub.

Sorry, I didn't realise you were going to attack our shadowrun credentials that we are under no obligation to present to someone who is out of hand dismissing rules legal, effective and deadly threats to a wide range of characters.

I literally GM'd this last night, so assuming I'm a decent GM, who has GM'd over 50 games in 5e alone in the past year, and played in at least that many, with characters covering all archetypes and niche spots, I would like to announce: I have played this game for quite a while.

Your assumptions that astral combat are not an instant death sentence for dual natured characters relies on:

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.

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.

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.

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.

I suggest, before placing a trait on a wide range of characters, a trait that is a death wish as read from rules,  you instead put this entire idea on hold, and clear up all these questionable grey areas and assumptions you are using about what being dual natured means, how astral combat works, and how astral cover and movement work.

Can you please provide me a citation for:

1. High speed astral movement prevent easy perception.
2. This game taking place in locations with plentiful cover such that a PC can reliably break line of sight.
3. How a PC with say, Agi 5, and 20 movement / turn can expect to outrun an Astral Form with no listed upper limit to movement.

Finally, can you please show me how all these delaying actions lead to the PC winning rather than simply delaying their death?