[Zonne]

Hello,
I got a scenario that I have not been able to truly answer via research or rule books and was hoping you all could help me out.

You are a mage in a well lite warehouse. 3 goons are in the warehouse with you. warehouse is otherwise empty.
The warehouse fills up with normal smoke, no one can see anything around. Without the smoke the mage could have normally targeted them.
Can the mage use assensing or astral perception to find his targets(auras) and actually cast on them with an acceptable negative modifier.
The targets are mundane goons.

I am trying to find a way to keep my mage in the fight without having to get cyber eyes for those kinds of situations.

Thanks!

[All4BigGuns]

Hello,
I got a scenario that I have not been able to truly answer via research or rule books and was hoping you all could help me out.

You are a mage in a well lite warehouse. 3 goons are in the warehouse with you. warehouse is otherwise empty.
The warehouse fills up with normal smoke, no one can see anything around. Without the smoke the mage could have normally targeted them.
Can the mage use assensing or astral perception to find his targets(auras) and actually cast on them with an acceptable negative modifier.
The targets are mundane goons.

I am trying to find a way to keep my mage in the fight without having to get cyber eyes for those kinds of situations.

Thanks!

I'm not real certain how this would be as written, but I'd allow it. I think it's good thinking

[Black]

Off the top of my head...

Yes, you could use Astral Perception with a -2 DP and cast the spell in the physcial...

But that's my 'dont have rulebooks with me' answer.  It seems fairly borderline, but I would consider letting it through with a small dp penalty for using astral perception while operating in the physcial realm.

Other opinions may differ though...

[Zonne]

Thank you for responding.

I've seen others on this forum say something similar but the situations were never black and white to were I could be sure they were using book rules or their house rules.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this?

Thank you,

[Mäx]

The spellcasting rules very clearly say you can cast spells on both physical and astral targets when using astral perception, so yes your make can use astral perception to target spell on the bad guys.
 

[Bastwolf]

Also you don't have to buy cybereyes to see through smoke, there are plenty of other ways to do this without using essence, goggles with thermographic vision enhancement for instance.

[KarmaInferno]

Generally non-Essence cost electronic vision enhancements CANNOT be used to target spells.

You might be able to use Thermo from your goggles to note what location to chuck an indirect area of effect spell, but that's about it. Direct spells you can forget about it.



-k

[Mirikon]

Also you don't have to buy cybereyes to see through smoke, there are plenty of other ways to do this without using essence, goggles with thermographic vision enhancement for instance.

However you can't use those methods for spellcasting, and there would still be vision penalties for targeting purposes.

Taking the -2 and using astral perception is your best bet, all told.

[Zonne]

The spellcasting rules very clearly say you can cast spells on both physical and astral targets when using astral perception, so yes your make can use astral perception to target spell on the bad guys.
 

From what I understand is you can target into the astral using mana spells on targets that are dual-natured(perceiving), targets that are projecting into the astral, or astral beings (spirits).

These targets from my example are mundane(auras only) and it was not clear to me whether a mage could use someone's aura via assensing to target them with physical spells while in physical combat. If you could please reference the page that would be most helpful.

Thank you,

[Nerhesi]

You're reading too much into it. Also, you've confused two items:

Astral Perception & Aura Assenssing

You don't need to "read auras" or make any roll at all to use astral perception - it's just like normal vision. You choose when to put it on, and you automatically see everything clearly in the astral plane. Trying to "read into" what you see for more information, is different and is called Aura assessing. By RAW, an invisible person in a pitch black room hidding in super thick smoke is clearly visible, with no roll, to anyone astrally perceiving.

"The next thing a magician must do when casting a spell is choose her target(s). A metahuman spellcaster can target anyone or anything she can see directly with her natural vision." SR 4A, Pg183

"A magician in the physical world can only cast spells on targets that are in the physical world. Similarly, a magician in astral space can only cast spells on targets that have an astral form (though the auras of things in the physical world can be seen, auras alone cannot be targeted). An astrally perceiving (or otherwise dual-natured) magician can cast spells on a target in either the physical world or in astral space. An astral target can only be affected by mana spells—even if the magician is in the physical world astrally perceiving—as it has no physical presence." SR 4A, Pg183

As the magician is astrally perceiving, he can choose to cast physical spells. Remember, astrally perceiving does not mean you cannnot see the "physical world" - not at all. Astral Perception is a "bonus", it is like an overlay of information on-top of what you can already see. Sometimes it it is too much information, which is why when astrally perceiving you get -2 to all physical NON-MAGICAL actions.

What this means, is the magician can astrally peceive an obscured, hidden, invisible, etc foe and cast a spell on them without any penalty as spell casting is a magical action and not subject to the penalty.

tldr; Astral Perception lets you cast physical or mana spells on anything you can perceive in the "physical world" without the -2 penalty.

[acolyte99]

One minor point: you cannot see astrally and physically at the same time with astral perception:
page 191, SR4A, emphasis mine

It takes a Simple Action to shift
one’s perception from the astral to the physical, and another to
shift it back again (it is not possible to see both at the same time,
though almost everything in physical space is reflected on the
astral, albeit without detail).

A Dual-Natured being (with the power Dual-Natured) can do so AFAIK.

Nice catch with the "non-magical" actions. Hadn't noticed this.

[Nerhesi]

One minor point: you cannot see astrally and physically at the same time with astral perception:
page 191, SR4A, emphasis mine

It takes a Simple Action to shift
one’s perception from the astral to the physical, and another to
shift it back again (it is not possible to see both at the same time,
though almost everything in physical space is reflected on the
astral, albeit without detail).

A Dual-Natured being (with the power Dual-Natured) can do so AFAIK.

Nice catch with the "non-magical" actions. Hadn't noticed this.

Nice catch yourself. I guess this comes into play should you shift into astral-perception and there exists some object or item that has absolutely zero astral image... I' not sure what that would be as even objects show up as "dull gray" objects. Any examples?

[acolyte99]

I don't have examples where the shifting to astral perception will let you miss the info that there is an object at all.
But there might be a  lot of examples, where it can become important, that you can't see the colors of the objects around you when astrally percepting.
And you can't look through glass (I know, most windows in Shadowrun are polarized or mirrored to protect against mages, but there might be situations where you could look through a window physically and after shifting perception to astral you can't anymore).

A somewhat exaggerated example might be that if you are running around in a facility while astrally percepting you can't read the danger signs any more.

Generally seeing only auras and dark shapes is what causes the -2 for non-magical actions, I think. It's not as precise and full of the normal information as normal seeing is. On the other hand you get other useful info like feelings, grade of cyber etc. from the auras.

[Zonne]

Maybe it is true that I am reading too much into the text. I remember SR being much more complex, these super simplified rules tend to throw me off.

When I was reading the "An astrally perceiving (or otherwise dual-natured) magician can cast spells on a target in either the physical world or in astral space" I was thinking they can target them as long as they also meet the normal requirements for casting in each realm (visible light for physical realm and anything above aura in the astral).

I hope my GM is not as critical of context as I am 

Thanks for contributing,

[UmaroVI]

That's not possible, because while astrally perceiving (as pointed out by acolyte99) you can't see visible light at all, so under that reading you would never be able to cast on physical world targets while astrally perceiving - but that contradicts it saying you can.