Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: living on <08-29-15/0943:44>
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let say i put a lvl 3 spirit in front of my door to guard it and give me a headsup if anyone opens the door or is otherwise intruding.
does any possibility exist that anyone is bypassing him without me noticing? if he get killed, i feel it. he is dual so he sees invisible enemys and looks trough camo, he only looks at one door, so sneaking should be impossible (at least open the door).
seems kinda over powered...
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Well, your door is going to be protected. Assuming someone coming to gank you will come through the front door. Big assumption. As a guardian doorman it works ok.
It's not really overpowered because a Force 3 spirit isn't anything to write home about.
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Well, your door is going to be protected. Assuming someone coming to gank you will come through the front door. Big assumption. As a guardian doorman it works ok.
It's not really overpowered because a Force 3 spirit isn't anything to write home about.
well the greater Problem is not PC using this, but NPC. a lot of facilities have one good spot to break in (some only have one spot like a bunker). or a small one room magical supply shop with only one room. etc.
sure theire must be a mage.. but we started to take high profile jobs, so a mage in a protection team is standard. and like 90% of stealth approaches get countered by a well placed spirit.
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well the greater Problem is not PC using this, but NPC. a lot of facilities have one good spot to break in (some only have one spot like a bunker). or a small one room magical supply shop with only one room. etc.
sure theire must be a mage.. but we started to take high profile jobs, so a mage in a protection team is standard. and like 90% of stealth approaches get countered by a well placed spirit.
Only one good spot to break in? Unlikely. And if the facility already knows about it and has a spirit just stand there all day, then it's not a good spot to break in from in the first place.
A spirit isn't infallible either you know. Spells work on them-- They're not any harder to get past than an astrally perceiving mage with a biomonitor.
Regardless though, my point is "find another point of entry, or make one". You should not be entering a facility from somewhere so obvious that they are so ready for someone to come through that spot that they paid a magician to tell a spirit "Stand in this spot until my shift ends and stop anyone from entering."
Alternatively, use illusions or mind control magic (which still works on spirits, it doesn't say anywhere it doesn't). Alternatively, don't do a stealth approach. Do some serious recon with drones (which the spirit won't spot due to not standing out on the astral and their small size) and then plan a blitz route. If you have a decker or a rigger, you can use a Kanmushi to spy.
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kanmushi?
the point is that cutting thru walls is not very silent. so if u position a spirit at the door, or the key way trough the building, there is no chance to avoid them silent. at some level i c the security mage as a spider. sitting in the control room and his spirits do the guardening (like a rigger with drones and cams).
i know that spells work on them. but he sees dual so illusions dont work. the question is does mind control work? doesnt he tell his master that smth is curious? for a security mage its not hard to summon a lvl 6 spirit, so he got all mentals on 6 + maybe antimagic. its kinda hard to controll for a long period.
but on the other hand, i got a problem as GM. if i dont place spirits in vital places, i can hand the whole floor plan to my team. nothing stops the mage from scouting every inch and person and the scouting of the rigger is worthless...
at bigger facilites you will not encounter 1 spirit, more likely 2-3. one spots the maindoor, one the elevator down to the vital palces and one is over the the building spoting around.
i know this is high security, but with a ~300 karma team you got to step up the letter for high profil runs...
the problem is that all silent appraoches are either worthless or you got no protection (as GM) against magic intrution.
the most time the team trys the stealth approach till spotted by a spirit and then brutforce theire way to the objectiv. and thats everytime a all or nothing scenario... as GM its very hard to be consistent an present a challenge that is difficult but not impossible. i would like my player to have the possibility to succeed with sneak but it doesnt fit in the world.
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Shiawase Kanmushi. It's a microdrone that looks like a small bug. It's perfect for spying because of it's size and that it actually is mistakable for an insect.
Cutting through walls can be very silent actually. They also have a spray foam thing that melts glass silently. Seriously, if "through a door" is how you think a stealth approach goes... You should really study up.
Why wouldn't an illusion work? Just because it may have an aura doesn't mean it's automatically spotted as an illusion, especially if it's an illusion of a living thing.
Alternatively if they know there's a mage, they can try and eliminate them before entering. This will get rid of the spirits. How to do that? I'm not going to spell it out for you... But there's ways. Drones with drugs. Silenced sniper bullets through walls. Your own spirits... Be creative. Take them out in a way that doesn't immediately alert everyone else, and if that is impossible... I don't know what to tell you. You can't take out a single person without being found out, so stop trying stealth and just work on a better mission style.
Finally, it's inaccurate to say a silent approach is worthless if you can't pull of the entire run without being spotted. Getting in before being spotted is a lot different than going through the front door-- Err, sorry. It should be anyways. HTR team times can make a big difference.
Instead of trying to avoid setting off alarms, set off false alarms. Use distractions. The bigger the facility, the more vulnerable it is to such tactics. Drawing some or all of the security to a point elsewhere lets the stealthy parts of the team go in avoiding what's left while not needing to worry about alarms being sounded. If they are spotted by someone, it should be by the time they're already in the heart of the complex near their target. This can be accomplished with bombs, spirits, drones, illusions, or a roided-up street samurai for the distraction.
What I'm trying to say is, be creative.
Try using disguises! Unless the spirit is somehow in a place literally no-one is supposed to be, in which case it's so far into the facility that it spotting the intruders is too little too late and a waste of money.
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Couldn't you just Banish the spirit? As far as I can see, that's not disrupting, so I don't think the summoner would be notified.
Also, unless the corp is blowing 75 drams of reagents (i.e. 1500 nuyen) to bind each spirit for however many services the mage manages to get, the spirit is going to poof out at sunrise and sunset. That may be a gap during which runners could take advantage of.
The mage will have to go home (or at least leave sometime), which means he'll have to leave the (100 x magic) meter area. So he'll almost certainly have to change shifts with another mage. Runners could probably do something with that too, perhaps taking out a mage before he can finish installing replacement spirits.
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Just do a stealth roll. You can still stealth against dual natured enemies, even if physical camouflage doesn't work. Guarding one stationary door might give a situational bonus, but some distraction and a good stealth roll will get you past with the spirit none the wiser.
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1. Banishing sucks.
2. Successful Banishing alerts the summoner/binder.
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Just do a stealth roll. You can still stealth against dual natured enemies, even if physical camouflage doesn't work. Guarding one stationary door might give a situational bonus, but some distraction and a good stealth roll will get you past with the spirit none the wiser.
it would be +3 (Perceiver is specifically looking) and myb -2 for distracted. i'd say to see the door opening the spirit is looking at, it wouldnt be an opposed test but an threshold 1-2 test.(its not about seeing the sneaky person, but to see the door open) and in addition a opposed test to see if someone makes sounds.
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Wards are more cost-effective than spirits.
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Manascape + Invisivility+ Sneak.
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Despite this being 4 months old, I want to chime in.
If a spirit is told to report on anyone coming or going through a door, opening the door isn't going to cause the spirit to report. If a spirit is told to report every time the door opens then a set of false positives could get it ignored.
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(Actually, this post is 2 years old :P)
What some people are forgetting is that Spirits are Sapient. Which means they are fallible. All the usual methods of getting past a guard will work on a Spirit. fast talk, distraction, stealth, bribery, etc.
People seem to always assume that a Spirit is a willing, helpful robot..... They are not. They are Sapient entities from another realm (Astral space), that have been bound to your will and forced to do a task in exchange for a magical Mcgruffin (we are never told what a Spirit gets out of the deal). This means it is entirely possible to have a Spirit under your control that actually really, REALLY hates you. This also means that, just like any other sapient species, they have all the normal failings of a Sapient.
In short, having a Spirit do a task such as "watch a door" is no more effective then having a meta human do the exact same job. In fact it could be a worse option as, the Spirit's stats are tied directly to it's Force. In the original example, it was a Force 3 Spirit... which means this spirit is basically equal in all ways to a the average person (all stats are 3s), which means this Spirit really isn't going to notice a whole lot (ASTRAL perception checks run 6 dice only. and ASTRAL perception is the only search method they have - called out in the CRB)
So a creative approach to the spirit may get surprising results in interesting ways.
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Its important to note that mana illusions affect the mind of the targets(s). If you have a mana illusion successfully affect a spirit its all in their mind and the fact they are dual natured is meaningless. The main reason mana illusions are not popular is they only affect living things which means drones and cameras dont see the illusion, they see what is really there. If the spirit is physically manifested then all you need is an invisibility mana spell and if it does not resist it your invisible to the spirit. Also as mentioned all the mana based manipulation spells will work just fine on them as well which is all the ones you really care about like influence and control thoughts. This is the purview of the GM but it is also worth noting that as mentioned above the spirits can be fast talked and bribed as well, alot of this is up to the GM. Its one of the reasons I go to great lengths to role play how well I treat my spirits with most of my characters. I heal them up after combat if they took any damage or I let them go if I cant fix them even with substantial services left over, I avoid all of the actions that are specifically called out as upsetting to spirits like forcing them to maintain spells for you and such. I tend to play most of my mages as fairly religious (I strongly favor shamanic based traditions) and try to use spirits for their intended role meaning if I am fighting I summon my combat spirit and I avoid summoning spirits in environments that would upset them. If I am underwater I dont summon any of the elemental based spirits accept water. Fire, Earth, and Air spirits have cause to be upset if you summon them under water. This can be limiting based on where you are and what spirits your tradition has access too but its part of treating them nice, I also role play with my spirits (alot of this is done in down times not game time with my GM) meaning I do things like summon my spirits and then tell them to go have fun and stuff, ask them if there is something I can do for THEM ect. I also name my spirits and tend to re-summon the same spirits repeatedly assuming the GM has no objections to it.
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(Actually, this post is 2 years old :P)
What some people are forgetting is that Spirits are Sapient. Which means they are fallible. All the usual methods of getting past a guard will work on a Spirit. fast talk, distraction, stealth, bribery, etc.
I'm not sure that is true, even ignoring how do you interact with something on a different plane. Bribery, for example. The spirit HAS to obey commands, it cannot choose not to obey commands, so bribing it to not obey commands is pointless.
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Its important to note that mana illusions affect the mind of the targets(s). If you have a mana illusion successfully affect a spirit its all in their mind and the fact they are dual natured is meaningless.
That is not entirely true. The people would be invisible, the aura of the spell would not. A smart spirit would know "a spell just walked through the door" = a person just walked through the door.
Also, you cannot cross planes with spell casting so unless you cast invisibility while projecting it isn't going to effect the spirit.
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(Actually, this post is 2 years old :P)
What some people are forgetting is that Spirits are Sapient. Which means they are fallible. All the usual methods of getting past a guard will work on a Spirit. fast talk, distraction, stealth, bribery, etc.
I'm not sure that is true, even ignoring how do you interact with something on a different plane. Bribery, for example. The spirit HAS to obey commands, it cannot choose not to obey commands, so bribing it to not obey commands is pointless.
That all depends on the spirit, the reputation of the conjuror, and the command given. There is a lot of wiggle room often times in what someone says, and what they mean.
"Watch that door, and alert me if someone opens it" is a VERY open command to a spirit that really doesn't like you. Yes, it "has" to watch the door, Yes it has to alert you if someone opens it, BUT; nothing stops the spirit of telling someone what exactly is on the other side. Nor does it specify WHEN the spirit has to tell you when someone opens the door. (that is implied as "right away") Meaning the spirit right before its summons is up could say "oh yea, while I was watching the door, 53 people opened it"..
Like I said, Spirits are Sapient. They are not robotic automatons. They have faults like everyone and everything else, its just finding and exploiting those faults can be harder (or easier) then people think!
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I agree 100% with Reavers interpretation of spirits. Spirits are intelligent, have feelings, goals wants and desires just like any other sapient creature, that has been made abundantly clear in the last two editions and they will most likely use whatever wriggle room their orders leave them if they don't like you. In comparison just think of how you would feel if some jerk who probably views you as little better than a pet or worse asked you to stand in the same spot and look at a door for 12 hours. Bored out of your skull before the first 10 minutes were up, and then the resentment begins building. In probably less than an hour you'd be desperate for something to break the routine and likely pissed at the idiot who asked you to do this, then your attention starts to wander and so on. ......... Yes i know that with training like for example soldiers have you can actually stand guard for a long time, but a spirit is very unlikely to have such training. In honesty it would probably be more effective to just put a sensor on the door to register if it's opened and have the spirit do something more worthwhile. I usually have spirits be more like a roving guard patrol or something like that, but I have also used bored spirits guarding something as a challenge to players that could actually be overcome in more ways than fighting, it can be great fun.
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Regardless of what your hermetic textbook tells you, spirits are not automatons. They have feelings and desires, and they communicate with eachother. Treat them with respect, and you're golden. Disrespect them at your peril.
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If you want automatons then you should go Elementals. Look into Forbidden Arcana for those. They are dumb and very literal in their command interpretation
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(Actually, this post is 2 years old :P)
What some people are forgetting is that Spirits are Sapient. Which means they are fallible. All the usual methods of getting past a guard will work on a Spirit. fast talk, distraction, stealth, bribery, etc.
I'm not sure that is true, even ignoring how do you interact with something on a different plane. Bribery, for example. The spirit HAS to obey commands, it cannot choose not to obey commands, so bribing it to not obey commands is pointless.
That all depends on the spirit, the reputation of the conjuror, and the command given. There is a lot of wiggle room often times in what someone says, and what they mean.
"Watch that door, and alert me if someone opens it" is a VERY open command to a spirit that really doesn't like you. Yes, it "has" to watch the door, Yes it has to alert you if someone opens it, BUT; nothing stops the spirit of telling someone what exactly is on the other side. Nor does it specify WHEN the spirit has to tell you when someone opens the door. (that is implied as "right away") Meaning the spirit right before its summons is up could say "oh yea, while I was watching the door, 53 people opened it"..
Like I said, Spirits are Sapient. They are not robotic automatons. They have faults like everyone and everything else, its just finding and exploiting those faults can be harder (or easier) then people think!
If you assume that mages are idiots who are commanding their first ever spirit, then sure. If you believe that a high logic and a professional level of skill actually implies an IQ higher than a toddler that doesn't work, sorry.
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I have worked with alot of very experienced and very intelligent people who treat the other people they work with like garbage and I have enjoyed screwing them over because of it on a few occasions. Spirits are the same way and trust me giving orders that are air tight is impossible, and most GMs dont want to deal with that level of contract law in a game. This is all the purview of the GM and how they feel about things, at this point there are no rules involved its how the GM interprets thing and that is going to vary from table to table. I and a few others just wanted to put the thought that spirits are not just automatons that follow commands perfectly out there. Heck I have had games go totally of the rails because of badly worded commands to spirits with NO ill intent at all. imagine if the runners are doing a hostile extraction and they lose track of the target but realize they are facing a dug in protection detail and they know the alert for help has gone out and they are on the clock for the HTR team to show up. The mage sends in a spirit with the command to kill everyone in the next room. when they kick in the door after the screaming has stopped they realize the target was in the room and hes dead because the spirit killed him because he was in the room.
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Figure an expert summoner will be much more experienced in wording instructions than an average player (contract lawyers notwithstanding). If you have a situation where the spirit or some third party is trying to find a loophole in the spirit's instructions, make an opposed test between the magician's Summoning + Logic and the spirit's Force + Logic, or the third party's Summoning + Logic (or maybe Con + Logic if you're feeling generous).
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(Actually, this post is 2 years old :P)
What some people are forgetting is that Spirits are Sapient. Which means they are fallible. All the usual methods of getting past a guard will work on a Spirit. fast talk, distraction, stealth, bribery, etc.
I'm not sure that is true, even ignoring how do you interact with something on a different plane. Bribery, for example. The spirit HAS to obey commands, it cannot choose not to obey commands, so bribing it to not obey commands is pointless.
That all depends on the spirit, the reputation of the conjuror, and the command given. There is a lot of wiggle room often times in what someone says, and what they mean.
"Watch that door, and alert me if someone opens it" is a VERY open command to a spirit that really doesn't like you. Yes, it "has" to watch the door, Yes it has to alert you if someone opens it, BUT; nothing stops the spirit of telling someone what exactly is on the other side. Nor does it specify WHEN the spirit has to tell you when someone opens the door. (that is implied as "right away") Meaning the spirit right before its summons is up could say "oh yea, while I was watching the door, 53 people opened it"..
Like I said, Spirits are Sapient. They are not robotic automatons. They have faults like everyone and everything else, its just finding and exploiting those faults can be harder (or easier) then people think!
If you assume that mages are idiots who are commanding their first ever spirit, then sure. If you believe that a high logic and a professional level of skill actually implies an IQ higher than a toddler that doesn't work, sorry.
Me thinks you need to get out more. There are many very intelligent people who make stupid decisions all day long. There are many people who say one thing, thinking it means one thing, only to have what they said interpreted In an unexpected way (See this all day long on a construction site among the trades).
Oh and morons are found everywhere. Ask the Crown Prosecutor that tried to take me to court. HE ended up paying my legal bills AND giving ME money after he tried to sue me for a car accident.
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We convey meaning and intent with much more than just spoken words, contextual understanding, body language, inflection. .....etc. Even if you think you have been crystal clear with no room for misunderstanding, you can easily be misinterpreted, especially if the person you're giving instructions really wants to. Orders given to spirits and metahumans for that matter carry intent as well as instructions, any order does, if you really wish to disobey the intent but stick to the actual words that's pretty easy. As Sunrunner said no order is airtight, even if given by someone fairly competent and intelligent.
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Something basic like getting a spirit to watch a door should have best-practices. Security organizations probably have this stuff spelled out precisely to reduce unwanted variation in spirit behavior.
If there's real ambiguity in what the player said, I say have the player roll a knowledge skill ('Magical Security' threshold 1, 'Security Protocols' threshold 3), and if he succeeds then retcon him to have made the instruction properly. If the player glitches or crit-glitches, then the GM thinks of a hilarious and damning misinterpretation. If the spirit likes the summoner and is really trying to enact the intended meaning of the unclear instruction, maybe have it roll Judge Intentions as a teamwork test with the player's knowledge to see if it figures it out.
The thresholds I gave were just for monitoring a single passage. I'd consider assigning a higher knowledge threshold for a more complicated or non-intuitive instruction.
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Something basic like getting a spirit to watch a door should have best-practices. Security organizations probably have this stuff spelled out precisely to reduce unwanted variation in spirit behavior.
In the best practices for WHOM ? The person who is giving the orders? Or the person who has to follow them? Remember, they are two separate individuals, with separate ideals, wants, desires, and possibly opposite objectives!
Remember nothing is cut and dried, heck if it was, these forums wouldn't be here :P And the Law profession would be out of work. Interpretation is key, and subjective to the individual who hears the commands, and can be twisted and warped as suits that individual - this is what your spirit index helps to measure.
If you have a really crappy Spirit Index, expect your Spirits to twist and warp every command to their best advantage - you have proven that you are NOT their ally after all.
However, if your Spirit Index is good, then spirits are going to be more inclined to interpret your orders in a favorable way - because you HAVE proven to be an friend of spirits.
Security organizations DO run into these problems, that is why spirits are not the sum total of a Corp's magical defenses. In many ways, a Spirit is no more effective then an average security guard - just for a different plane. They still have to spot the target (its not automatic, yes sneaking skills works on Spirits), they still have to engage the target - or whatever their protocol is. Which is no faster then the DNI voice coms a security guard is going to be using. The Bio monitor will tell someone he is gone, just as fast as the mage knows his spirit is gone... And really, the Guard is more effective in that regard, as usually it's the Security Command that gets the alert when a guard goes down, where the mage has to rely that info to someone else (as an astrally projecting mage is actually really combat ineffective on meat targets.)
More importantly, have you ever tried?
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A spirit can watch a door from the astral, making it impossible to interact with. Furthermore, if a bunch of highly logical mages who share information over the past 50 years coupled with over a hundred years of business management experience can't figure out how to say "watch that door and report to me immediately if someone enters it" without leaving loop holes, well then how the hell are the corps managing to accomplish anything?
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By relying on complementary security measures as Reaver said, both in astral, matrix and meatspace.
In regards to the example you gave. ...
( Spirit reporting back to exasperated security mage after break in )
Mage: why the heck didn't you alert me, someone broke in through this door, you broke your contract!
Spirit: I did no such thing, noone has ENTERED this door, look ( spirit knocks on door for effect ), it's perfectly empty noone inside this door.....oh there was someone who I thought was gonna enter the door but they opened it and went through the resulting hole in the wall or whatever you call it, but you didn't tell to look for that so I thought it unimportant. .........
Again as Reaver said your standing with the spirit world is the best indicator of how willing any given spirit will be in regards to interpretating the order it's given to your or its own benefit.
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By relying on complementary security measures as Reaver said, both in astral, matrix and meatspace.
In regards to the example you gave. ...
( Spirit reporting back to exasperated security mage after break in )
Mage: why the heck didn't you alert me, someone broke in through this door, you broke your contract!
Spirit: I did no such thing, noone has ENTERED this door, look ( spirit knocks on door for effect ), it's perfectly empty noone inside this door.....oh there was someone who I thought was gonna enter the door but they opened it and went through the resulting hole in the wall or whatever you call it, but you didn't tell to look for that so I thought it unimportant. .........
Again as Reaver said your standing with the spirit world is the best indicator of how willing any given spirit will be in regards to interpretating the order it's given to your or its own benefit.
And all it takes is this happening once, it gets written in a paper, widely distributed to hermetics, and then it can never happen again because they learn and adapt.
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I think you are over simplifing it ShadowcatX.
After all, if people did everything that was written down, we wouldn't need prisons.
People are lazy. They do things quick and dirty all day long, even when they know they shouldn't. And IF they did do things right everytime, I wouldn't make $65,000/3 months doing QA/QC on electrical and Instrumentation installs that when done incorrectly could kill everyone within miles!
(Ever seen 100 million liters of LNG go 'boom?)
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I think you are over simplifing it ShadowcatX.
After all, if people did everything that was written down, we wouldn't need prisons.
People are lazy. They do things quick and dirty all day long, even when they know they shouldn't. And IF they did do things right everytime, I wouldn't make $65,000/3 months doing QA/QC on electrical and Instrumentation installs that when done incorrectly could kill everyone within miles!
(Ever seen 100 million liters of LNG go 'boom?)
Except again, these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because? Especially when those instructions are the exact same, day after day? Java has been around half the time spirits have been around in Shadowrun.
Seriously, magic users have summoned blood spirits, invoked great form spirits, learned how to get totems from shamans and taught every other tradition how to gain their benefits, did the great ghost dance, and more. Yet you all seem to think they are too incompetent to be able to say a single sentence without ****ing it up?
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Except again, these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because? Especially when those instructions are the exact same, day after day? Java has been around half the time spirits have been around in Shadowrun.
3 words for you:
Mass Effect Andromeda
😂
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Except again, these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because? Especially when those instructions are the exact same, day after day? Java has been around half the time spirits have been around in Shadowrun.
3 words for you:
Mass Effect Andromeda
😂
Means nothing to me.
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Except again, these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because? Especially when those instructions are the exact same, day after day? Java has been around half the time spirits have been around in Shadowrun.
3 words for you:
Mass Effect Andromeda
😂
Means nothing to me.
5 year development,
200 programmers
$40 million dollar budget.
made unplayable by all the glitches and bugs in the game and has effectively killed a billion dollar franchise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asCWrjU3pps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-xNNAc45s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJARrs0hrZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4IxRWbHARs
IF a studio as good as Bioware releases this pile of dogshit, kinda blows that " these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because?" argument out of the water because, well, they DID release this pile of dogshit.
Just saying.
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Cutting through some of the banter... But the basic facts boil down to the fact that spirits are independent sapient beings. They are capable of acting on their own discretion and as a result are fallible, they can make mistakes. Now, that could be misinterpreting instructions, it could be distraction, it could even be simply not noticing something.
Some of these things could be based on the summoner-spirit relationship, Reaver's example of the spirit following the letter of the instruction but not the intent is just one possibility. A summoner that is on bad terms with spirits might find them doing something like this. You could also use magic to distract a spirit that is standing guard. I believe there is an Astral illusion spell that could be used to hide from a spirit's astral sight. Or even just overloading it with a Mana Static spell.
There is only so much you can load into a single service, so it is impossible to expect to cover every possible loop-hole. And if you're using a spirit to guard just a single door, then you leave every other avenue of entry open to intrusion, free of that spirit's watchful eye.
And all of that is assuming that this door is never used by authorized users. As soon as you have the possibility of use by people that shouldn't cause an alert you open up a whole new avenue of confounding factors.
TL;DR: There's no such thing as a perfect security system.
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Except again, these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because? Especially when those instructions are the exact same, day after day? Java has been around half the time spirits have been around in Shadowrun.
3 words for you:
Mass Effect Andromeda
😂
Means nothing to me.
5 year development,
200 programmers
$40 million dollar budget.
made unplayable by all the glitches and bugs in the game and has effectively killed a billion dollar franchise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWkao73HuU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asCWrjU3pps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-xNNAc45s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJARrs0hrZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4IxRWbHARs
IF a studio as good as Bioware releases this pile of dogshit, kinda blows that " these are generally above average intelligence people, in a field where they are highly paid working off the back bone of 50+ years of research and development. Look at computer programming, look how exacting the language there can be. Would you expect your average computer programmer to screw up giving instructions in java just because?" argument out of the water because, well, they DID release this pile of dogshit.
Just saying.
The fact that you don't see the difference between a person writing a single line of code, and 200 programmers trying to work together over 5 years on a massive project, tells me you have more problems than worrying about wether or not a spirit can watch a door.
P.S. I don't know what language they wrote the game in, but I guarantee you that language isn't 50+ years old.
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Just post a sign outside the door that reads, "WARNING: Guard Spirit on Duty." With any luck, trespassers will still be arguing about the best way to get past the spirit when mundane guards show up to detain them.
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Just as an anecdote:
In a currently running pbp game our group was also confronted with a compound guarded by a bunch of bound spirits.
Our solution was to follow the spirit - conjurer trail to find the mage, enact a fire drill and shoot the mage offsite to get rid of all spirits directly.
Because if in doubt shoot the mage first
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You're the one who brought up coding ShadowcatX, not me.
And to your pendantic response. Java isn't 50 years old either. Nor do Java programmers get it right 100% of the time on the first try. They usually write the code, test it, then refine it. At least that was the I was taught to program - and still do program in LL this way.
My point, with Mass Effect, which I suspect you are being to obtuse to try to understand is that these people's reputations and livelyhoods are on the line with every game they release, yet they still fucked it up. Just like many programmers do when coding games, anything else (you know that thing you fo sometimes called 'patching'???? Why? Cause they fucked it the first time!!)
Coding is not the same as issuing a verbal order. You KNOW that.
Or do you?
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You're the one who brought up coding ShadowcatX, not me.
Yes, I was. And I pointed out that people who programmed in it didn't have half as much experience as mages do dealing with spirits. And yet have managed to enable the entire world to communicate thanks to it.
And to your pendantic response. Java isn't 50 years old either. Nor do Java programmers get it right 100% of the time on the first try. They usually write the code, test it, then refine it. At least that was the I was taught to program - and still do program in LL this way.
My point, with Mass Effect, which I suspect you are being to obtuse to try to understand is that these people's reputations and livelyhoods are on the line with every game they release, yet they still fucked it up. Just like many programmers do when coding games, anything else (you know that thing you fo sometimes called 'patching'???? Why? Cause they fucked it the first time!!)
Coding is not the same as issuing a verbal order. You KNOW that.
Or do you?
And my point is how many lines of code was that game that they had to patch? Windows Vista, for example, had 50 million lines of code, and as terrible as that operating system was, there were not 50 million patches. Go get a respectable programmer, have them program "hello world". See how often they **** it up, especially when they do it on a day to day basis.
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ShadowcatX, spirits aren't "a single line of code" they are a complex and living thing that can respond in a multitude of different manners.
Not to mention that respond to a command like "watch this door and report any intruders to me" is not at all like a simple I/O command to a print-line.
There isn't a codified way to command spirits, even with 50+ years of experience there is no way to expect a perfect response from a single command. No more than you can expect a perfect result from a human security guard told to watch a door. Or even a mechanical motion sensor told to alert when it detect motion. It is possible to minimize the chances of failure, but not 100% eliminate it.
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ShadowcatX, spirits aren't "a single line of code" they are a complex and living thing that can respond in a multitude of different manners.
Not to mention that respond to a command like "watch this door and report any intruders to me" is not at all like a simple I/O command to a print-line.
There isn't a codified way to command spirits, even with 50+ years of experience there is no way to expect a perfect response from a single command. No more than you can expect a perfect result from a human security guard told to watch a door. Or even a mechanical motion sensor told to alert when it detect motion. It is possible to minimize the chances of failure, but not 100% eliminate it.
No, spirits are not a line of code, the orders are. And there absolutely would be rules and codes for how a corp mage would command them.
Furthermore a human security guard can willingly choose not to do his job, a spirit cannot make that choice.
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And that shadow is where your wrong, a spirit CAN decide to NOT do its job. It just has to be creative in how it decides to go about not doing its job because of some unspecified magical mcguffin that says so. It just like when you decide some one is being an ass at work and your gonna make their life miserable. You dont want to be fired so some things are off the table but there are plenty of little things you can do that wont get you fired that you can do to the other person.
The whole Spirits twist commands is a VERY common trope in alot of fantasy fiction and I have literally read 100+ books that deal with how people who have commands that cant be ignored for what ever mcguffin find ways around said mcguffin. Take Robert Jordans Wheel of Time series where the Aesdai mages are MAGICLY bound to be physically incapable of speaking a lie, and yet they are know for being incredibly sneaky and duplicitous. The books are filled with hundreds of cases where they find very interesting ways to deceive people and give them false information despite literally being physically incapable of telling a Lie. To be honest its kinda funny because the more powerful the spirit in question the SMARTER they are and the better they would be at figuring out how to get around commands they dont like or want to obey.
Your whole they learn thing is true but it also leads to 300 page command lines to put a spirit on guard duty. And that is where people will get sloppy because they are not gonna bother or are in too much of a hurry to recite their 300 page fool proof command. Or hey nothing has gone wrong for the past 2 years so you know instead of spending 10 minuets reading this corp mandated command sheet I am going to just say hey watch the door.
Also you seem to think repetition makes things perfect and in some cases your right but in alot of cases you would be wrong.
Lets play a game, type a simple sentence like "John runs down the street." 10,000 times in a row non stop, if at any time you mistype anything you die, guess where I am betting my house? You dieing. I am like reaver I do building code inspections for a living and I make my living off of people being paid high 6 figures screwing the pooch, and it happens every day all day with out fail. I love figuring out how the Mechanical engineer messed up the apartment building.
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SunRunner, there is an important flaw in your example of me typing a single line 10,000 times so let me correct it for you.
I type your line 10,000 times. Then, without seeing my list you have to choose a line, from 1 to 10,000. We will go to that line and if that line contains an error, then I die, otherwise you do. Where are you getting your house now?
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You have shown me nothing, your being deliberately obtuse. You continually use how repetition of a task guarantees accuracy because they do it for a living, I showed you a simple example of how it does not to disprove your point. What you did in no way refuted my point, repeatedly conducting a task does not mean you have a zero error rate. You obviously dont want to consider any viewpoint but you own and everyone else who does not agree with you is wrong. We will have to settle for an agreeing to disagree on the topic.
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I accept that even the simplest of task can be bungled on rare occassions. I also put forward that risking one's life that an opponent is having that occassion on any given specific day is stupid and that telling them to do it is bad advice. Furthermore it is bad storytelling.
Eta: I can't help but wonder if we took magic out of the equation how many people would argue for incompetence. If it was guarded by a human guard with gun drawn at all time would you all argue the guard is holding his gun pointed at himself? If it was watched by a spider, would you argue that he would forget where the alarm was?
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No, we would argue that a seperate set of tricks could be used to distract the guard or spider from his job.
Fake an alert from their child's school, forge a clearance badge, disable the Spider's sensors, etc.
What we are saying, which you arguing AGAINST, is that no system or guard is fool proof.
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No, we would argue that a seperate set of tricks could be used to distract the guard or spider from his job.
So it is only mages you think are utterly incompetent at their job. I suspected as much.
What we are saying, which you arguing AGAINST, is that no system or guard is fool proof.
Except I have never said that. I have argued against depending on the incompetence of others as a way to get through, specifically con and negotiation in this case, since the spirit is 1) astral, 2) bound to follow orders without a loop holes because it's summoner isn't an idiot.
Restraining the spirit, for example, would work fine.
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Wow. Just Wow.
I think I have a new entry for my "Moron" list....
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let say i put a lvl 3 spirit in front of my door to guard it and give me a headsup if anyone opens the door or is otherwise intruding.
does any possibility exist that anyone is bypassing him without me noticing? if he get killed, i feel it. he is dual so he sees invisible enemys and looks trough camo, he only looks at one door, so sneaking should be impossible (at least open the door).
I'm gonna reiterate the wisdom of the advice that lots of things that could work against a metahuman doing the same job could also work against a spirit.
Concealment/Stealth (spirits are exactly as fallible at being sneaked by as a metahuman)
Fast Talking/Conning ("Hey I'm authorized! No need to report my presence as an intrusion/of course your master "meant" for allowing ME through.."/Hey go back to master to doublecheck that he really did mean for you to keep ME out)
Being backdoor'd (Going into the room by way other than the guarded door. You can almost always CUT your way thru a wall to force another way in, if it comes to that. If there really is literally only the one way possible to get into the room, then you hardly need the expense of a spirit to make it hell to infiltrate)
Being evacuated (Granted, there are more environmental options to force a metahuman guard to vacate the guard station, but there are still ways for an inventive and well equipped shadowrunner to force a spirit to abandon its post)
That all being said, I have a problem with the premise in the OP. That being a spirit makes a mandatory chokepoint pure hell to get through:
When it comes to Runners being forced to go thru a chokepoint and it being impossible to bypass said chokepoint, then it doesn't matter what kind of security is on the chokepoint. Computerized sensors, Metahuman guards, or drones would all be equally effective as a spirit.
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I'm mostly with ShadowcatX. I work for a big company. There are "communities of practice" and "Center's of Excellence" and "Learning Organizations" and don't forget "Checklists"!. I believe the spirit will follow the intent, if only because the letter has been refined to near-impervious. If there is that kind of robust standard, the players can find a copy of the 'procedure'...maybe at sun-up and sun-down (or other times for bound spirits) when there is a 5 minute gap in coverage as the 2 page instructions are recited.
STAINLESS STEEL DEVIL RAT. Best name! Those books were so much fun! Thank you for the rush of nostalgia. :)