[Morg]

My players hit me with the enigma of magical sound suppressors, after much debate (and questions like would you need to use silence on the bullets rather then the gun) we decided to Poll opinions on this question.
please don't be afraid give your .02 New Yen 

[Kot]

Hush is a mana spell and so only affects living beings and magic
sonic attacks. Silence affects technological devices and is useful for
jamming alarms, detection devices, sonar, and tactical communications,
as well as technological sonic weapons.

Combine that with the Object Resistance Table on p. 183 and you have your answer. If you beat the gun's OR threshold, you have a magical silencer.

[Chaemera]

You have it backwards, Kot. The Object Resistance test is for any sensors that might hear the bomb going off.

Just like with Improved Invisibility and vision, Silence masks the sounds of affected targets automatically with a single hit on the test. Then, any person or sensor which might hear the sounds is considered, for people, they roll an Intuition (+ Counterspelling) test against the hits on the Spellcasting test, for sensors, compare OR to hits, if hits >= OR, you're good.

Granted, silence is LOS(A), so you don't cast it on a bomb, you cast it on an area around the bomb. Which would encompass (most of) the area in which gas is expanding, so you don't even have the conundrum of the expanding gas making the noise beyond the affected "item", all sound within the area is suppressed equally.

[Kot]

I was thinking about casting Silence on the gun itself.

[FastJack]

The target of the spell is the Gun, but any drones/computers/etc. that may hear the gun's retort would be the subject of the Object Resistance test, not the gun itself.

[joe15552]

yeah, this is a weird rule, but to tell you the truth, I like it. That funky little "(A)" in the range specification means that the spell is an area spell, so that means that if you cast silence on the area around a gun, it makes no noise to sensors that fail the object resistance test in a (Force of the Silence Spell) meter radius around the gun. Which means that outside that radius, the gun makes as much noise as a gun normally would. It is complicated, but the magic system in SR4 has a realistic feel to it, when all the rules are followed correctly.

[raggedhalo]

Doesn't Silence keep everything within the area quiet?  So people outside the area wouldn't hear anything that happened inside.  Simples.

[Dahrken]

If I'm not mistaken Silence is able to silence any sound originating inside it's area of effect, no matter where the possible auditors stands. A gunshot will be silenced, but if the bullet leaves the affected area it's noise will be heard, as well as the screams of a target outside of the spell (or the impact of the body falling if he/she didin't survive).

Even an explosion is likely to be silenced, but it's secondary effects outside of the area affected by spell (broken glass falling on the floor, collapsing structures etc) would not be silenced.

[The_Gun_Nut]

The expansion wave doesn't stop at the limit of the AOE of the blast, that's just the limit of the damage.

I would think that it would still be heard, albeit muffled.  Depending on the strength of the blast, it might not even be that!

[Walks Through Walls]

The person or object that is trying to hear the explosion would get a roll to resist the spell. If they resist they would hear the noise if they don't they wouldn't hear the noise.

So getting back to the magic silencer theory/use for the spell it would depend how well you roll on the spell. With only a success or two you probably aren't going to fool much with five or six successes you can fire a gun or explode a bomb and not be heard

[Kot]

I'd just penalize the Perception test by the spells hits/force. This way we have it simple and working.

[KarmaInferno]

The spell specifies it actually damps sounds originating or moving across the field. But it's an illusion. Argh.

Yet another spell that really should be Manipulation, at least for the Physical version.




-k

[The_Gun_Nut]

Most spells in SR would fall under Manipulation given even a briefest thought.  The devs chose to split them up to avoid having one category holding 75% of all spells available.  I think the spell catagories work best when contemplating their function instead of their mechanics (as it were).

[Morg]

Your opinions and examples were helpful everyone

[Rascal]

Could you make a gun into a sustaining foci as well? Everlasting silenced gun! (Granted that it will hurt if someone steals your toy, you lose more than just your pet Ruger...)