"Current" 4e Shadowrun rules.

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 2:22 am

Vebyast wrote:The Shape spells simply set a material's velocity and include no language about slowing down when resisted; they are, in other words, prepared to exert exert arbitrarily large forces over a nonzero distance, giving us an arbitrarily large amount of work.

This is an interesting thought...and it's also bullshit rules-lawyering to an impressive degree. If the authors had to include language about every single interaction with the world, the word count probably would be a little too high.
I find your conclusions...arbitrary

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:31 am

Vebyast wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:While you could use Shape Metal to spin the turbine directly, pushing it at 1/3 of a m/s is so bullshit that the amount of power you're getting is essentially meaningless.
Lifting and dropping stuff is being conservative. The Shape spells simply set a material's velocity and include no language about slowing down when resisted; they are, in other words, prepared to exert exert arbitrarily large forces over a nonzero distance, giving us an arbitrarily large amount of work. Driving a load directly, the only limitation on a power plant would be how much power you can put through the gearbox that connects your giant piston to the generators.

That is the absolutely stupidest reading of the spell I can imagine. The spell lets you move the stuff in the spell's area, not the stuff in the spell's area plus everything in its path out to infinity. Hell, it even outright says that it only moves "loose" material, and if the material is connected to anything that you have to spend many seconds wriggling it free before it'll move at all.

You are completely full of shit. Shape does not push with enough force to turn a gearbox to spin a giant generator. It simply doesn't fucking do that. The most energy you can generate over time is to have mercury crawl up to the top of a water slide and allow gravity to pull it down through a turbine. And as previously noted, that is not very much energy compared to an actual hydroelectric dam.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 6:01 am

Can't really disagree with the pushing part. Does the area of Shape Material only 'grab' the material within the area of the spell, and any leaving is the area is lost; or do you automatically 'grab' any that flows into the sphere of influence?

If we take the most strict reading and presume you can't even move it out of your zone of control, our most likely scenario is a half-filled sphere of water. You then move it into the upper half of the sphere and capture the potential energy gained. The Three Gorges Dam has an efficiency of 76% of converting potential energy; accounting for center of mass, we get ~7.4MJ of energy from the spell. That's enough to power the average American apartment for a bit less than two hours. Switching to mercury means we can power the apartment for nearly a day from a single casting of the spell at Force 5.

Things are different if we can sustain a continuous stream, automatically releasing any moved out of an area and grabbing whatever water enters the sphere of influence; then that would allow for 1.5MW for every net hit of a Force 5 spell.

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:35 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Hell, it even outright says that it only moves "loose" material, and if the material is connected to anything that you have to spend many seconds wriggling it free before it'll move at all.

The spell that I've managed to find (Street Magic 174) could cause solid steel to wiggle free from the surrounding solid steel. I'll admit that that's not arbitrarily large, but it's still terrifyingly big. A column of metal longer than the diameter of your spell can probably be hung from the top without failing, so it's definitely more than would be required just to lift the same amount of stuff.

FrankTrollman wrote:The most energy you can generate over time is to have mercury crawl up to the top of a water slide and allow gravity to pull it down through a turbine. And as previously noted, that is not very much energy compared to an actual hydroelectric dam.

A caster using Shape Metal can lift a block of metal that weighs as much as a nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and I think that that waterslide is a meters-wide column of mercury roaring past at twenty or thirty million kilograms per second.

Now that I think about it, a bigger limitation on this scheme is going to be the available quantities of dense materials. We might be limited to lead or steel after all.

I'll admit that it's entirely possible that I've done my math wrong. I'm still working off of a crude reverse-engineering of Virgil's numbers because I haven't found exactly what the rules are for calculating a spell's area of effect. And Virgil could himself be exaggerating his numbers, and you point out that the casters wouldn't be able to cast these spells repeatedly. But the numbers would have to be off by several orders of magnitude before hiring spellcasters became more expensive than building a damn dam.

Eh, whatever. Pointless discussion is pointless. Control Weather looks pretty good for filling reservoirs, watering crops, or keeping the clouds out of the way of the solar arrays, but those are all pretty chump change compared to really violent weather. Is there anything that would let us couple a tornado to a generator? Other ideas:

Use temperature differentials to drive ocean currents into a maelstrom
Pull a jet stream down to your wind turbines
Hold a captive hurricane just offshore so you can drive wind turbines without the hurricane losing strength
Have a sandstorm pick up loads of plastic and then exploit the triboelectric effect for electricity generation

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:57 am

Area spells are limited to being their Force in meters of Radius.

The thing about the dam instead of the casters though is that at least your dam can hardly get fed up with life and walk away.

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:19 am

Lokathor wrote:Area spells are limited to being their Force in meters of Radius.

Ok, yeah, that's stupid. That really should have defined that in terms of mass or volume rather than radius.

Lokathor wrote:The thing about the dam instead of the casters though is that at least your dam can hardly get fed up with life and walk away.

Hah! It probably throws off the job market when your employees' backup plans are to go take over small countries.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 9:24 am

Area Spells: Some spells target areas or points in space; in this case the caster must be able to see the center of the area affected. All visible targets within the area are affected; area spells can affect more than one target at a time. The base radius for all area spells is the Force in meters. Area spells affect all valid targets within the radius of effect, friend and foe alike (including the caster). For this reason, spellcasters often choose to vary the radius of area spells. This is done by withholding dice from the Spellcasting Test. The caster can reduce or expand the base radius by 1 meter for every die withheld from the Spellcasting Test. Dice expended to change the radius of effect cannot be used in any related test, such as resisting Drain for that spell.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:46 am

Have a thunderstorm constantly hover around a farm of lightning rods to get electricity from them.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:31 am

The energy of lightning isn't very convenient to harvest. Having an "always on" lightning source might help, but there are still many challenges to overcome to be able to get significant energy out of the storm.

Regarding the whole 'how to use magic to generate electricity' question, a big problem with that kind of thinking is that Shadowrun rules aren't here to describe the way the whole world works, but to handle the most common cases that might happen in game.

So you can't know for sure, looking at the rules only, if spells/spirit powers can be used reliably in an industrial way. But since the fluff tends to suggest that there aren't many such uses of magic, then it probably means there are hurdles that prevent or hinder them.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 12:53 pm

Mainly a 1% total awakened people in the world probably.
This 1% is then divided into Mages and Adepts and other things like people who can cast a single spell or summon a single spirit or only look into the astral.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:08 pm

The 1% magical thing has never been the effective limiter on industrial magic that many of the authors seem to have thought it was. 1% of the world is actually a fuck tonne of people. About seventy million people. That's as many people as there are native Tamil speakers, and last I checked there's still totally a Tamil film industry. Heck, it's more people than live in Italy, France, or the United Kingdom. Those countries still manage to have industrial applications.

The United States has a million engineers in 2013, and in 2070 the area is supposed to have over three million magically active dudes. The rarity of magic is simply completely meaningless as far as limitations on industrial activity. Because as soon as you compare it to any other highly sought after CV notation, it's fairly common. While 3% of people in America have doctorates, remember that they don't have doctorates in the same things. Only one fifth of one percent of the population are actually licensed physicians. If you narrow your search further it gets starker still - only 1.3% of 1% of the population are optometrists. Nevertheless, the Optometry industry keeps puttering along.

The bottom line is that the handwave "there aren't many magicians" is pretty much 100% meaningless as far as answering the question of whether or not (and why and why not) magical powers are employed in any particular industry.

Blade wrote:So you can't know for sure, looking at the rules only, if spells/spirit powers can be used reliably in an industrial way. But since the fluff tends to suggest that there aren't many such uses of magic, then it probably means there are hurdles that prevent or hinder them.

See, I would actually say it's the opposite. The fluff keeps saying that there are magicians doing magical stuff in industry somewhere. They just never fess up to what industry or what they are employed in doing in it. Whenever people find a genuine use for magic in industry that emerges from the rules, various authors flip the fuck out and issue nonsensical and nonfunctional nerfs (see: Movement). But even then, they still hold that magic is still used in industry somewhere, just not in any particular place you happen to be asking about right now.

For fuck's sake, the Tirs and the NAN countries are supposed to have an economy that is largely bolstered by magic industry somehow. Whole economies with millions of people getting large sections of their GDP out of magic. They just... haven't figured out what it might actually be in terms of actual goods and actual services.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:32 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:See, I would actually say it's the opposite. The fluff keeps saying that there are magicians doing magical stuff in industry somewhere. They just never fess up to what industry or what they are employed in doing in it. Whenever people find a genuine use for magic in industry that emerges from the rules, various authors flip the fuck out and issue nonsensical and nonfunctional nerfs (see: Movement). But even then, they still hold that magic is still used in industry somewhere, just not in any particular place you happen to be asking about right now.

That's was part of my goal in the wage mage thread I made, to get a better idea of what they could actually do in the setting; and me asking questions on how the magic works to have actual emergent applications.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 5:02 pm

I think the NAN actually makes most of it's money in that regard from telesma and other reagents for talisman making . .
But i ain't sure.
And yes, while 1% of all people world wide is a big number, many of these are useless to industries i'd guess. Or rather, they are usually more worth being employed doing stuff that can't be done by machines or mundanes for far less money.
Adepts for example, what good would they be in the industry?
People who can only look into astral space?
etc. etc.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 5:23 pm

I don't recall reading about the use of mages in the industry. Let me look in my Street Magic...

"The Awakened World"->"Magic and the Corps"

Magic has many uses in a corporate environment;
the most pervasive is in the area of security. [...]
Security is by no means the only way corps employ magic,
however. Those who have a stronger presence in the magical
arena rake in serious nuyen from producing magical goods, dis-
tributing formulae, and providing thaumaturgical services of all
types. Most of major players maintain secret labs where they
conduct cutting-edge research into magical techniques and
goods (always with an eye on the bottom line, of course).

> One thing to point out here: This makes it sound like magical
stuff is produced on an assembly line by a bunch of robots and
factory workers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The
production of any magical gear worth its price is a slow and care-
ful process demanding skilled labor. Any corp that figured out a
way to automate it would make a fortune (at least before the
market got flooded), but so far nobody’s done it yet.
> Lyran

> As far as corp magicians go: if you’re good and you can stom-
ach working for the Man, most of these folks have it made.
It’s said that a talented magician is harder to replace than a
senior exec, and I believe it. That’s why corp magicians are so
often the targets of extraction attempts—and many of them
don’t mind, since all they care about is their research. They
don’t care who signs the checks as long as they get to keep
their cushy lives.
> Cosmo

> This file kinda implies that corporate magic is all cloak-and-
dagger secret-lab stuff. There are a lot?of magicians out there,
and most of them want to buy stuff—formulae, foci, talismans,
metamagical techniques, fetishes, manatech goodies, and all
sorts of other everyday magical products. Somebody’s got to
produce them, and it’s not all weird old women in their attics.
Magical goods are big business, and corps are always racing to
develop the next big thing.
> Fatima

One other sector where magic is big in the corporate
world is the entertainment and fashion industries. The trid and
sim trades are constantly scouring university magical programs
looking to snap up talent to feed their never-ending need for
bigger and better special effects. In many cases it’s cheaper to
pay a few magicians to toss around some showy effects than it is
to produce them virtually, but that doesn’t mean the magicians
don’t make a good living.

The part I cut is only about security.
The rest is about the AAA and AA, and it's only about spell formula, telesma, magical services and the other aforementioned things. There's nothing about industrial use of magic.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 5:24 pm

A friend of mine suggested that part of the motivation for nerfing actual rules-supported magic industry is because it would otherwise allow for mage PCs to quit running and make mad cash casting Shape Mercury once a day for a megacorp; which is just believable enough to likely be the motivation. They don't want to give specifics because once they do, players can go do that instead of getting shot in the face.

That's ultimately a fairly weird viewpoint to take though. No PC isn't a world-class talent in their field even before the equipment, and if that street sam decided to sign a sports deal or the hacker started doing legit programming, such talent would be paid for just as readily. They don't, because the setting is a dystopia where there's a real chance that they wouldn't actually get paid as much as running and would have oppressive constraints on their personal freedom. That, and it's about shadowrunners, not legitimate businessmen.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:55 pm

virgil wrote:A friend of mine suggested that part of the motivation for nerfing actual rules-supported magic industry is because it would otherwise allow for mage PCs to quit running and make mad cash casting Shape Mercury once a day for a megacorp; which is just believable enough to likely be the motivation. They don't want to give specifics because once they do, players can go do that instead of getting shot in the face.

That's ultimately a fairly weird viewpoint to take though. No PC isn't a world-class talent in their field even before the equipment, and if that street sam decided to sign a sports deal or the hacker started doing legit programming, such talent would be paid for just as readily. They don't, because the setting is a dystopia where there's a real chance that they wouldn't actually get paid as much as running and would have oppressive constraints on their personal freedom. That, and it's about shadowrunners, not legitimate businessmen.

The problem is that too often, SR assumes runners get paid pocket change for their runs, which throws the whole "runners prefer to risk their life than go legit" idea out of balance.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:33 pm

Eh, the little number for pay rates in published adventures, while bad for that kind of verisimilitude, is something minor enough that I can just ignore; when combined with the setting assumptions.

One thing I've been having a pile of trouble with. For as important a concern that security and alarms should be, does 4th edition truly not have a standardized security protocol with response time/severity? That feels like something you could devote an entire chapter towards, and would be freaking gold to DMs like me; but the best I could find is this, which looks like it was two pages in an SR3 supplement. I'm talking modifiers on response time and size based on location (Stuffer Shack could burn down before the police come), force brought to bear (cannons are answered with APCs), paranoia (light response if in the lobby, power squads if in top-secret research room), and even corporation (some are less forgiving than others). It doesn't (and probably shouldn't) need to be precise numbers, since PC quality can vary, but at least a range.

On-site security standards for typical locations (office buildings, executive apartments, research facilities, etc), with templates based on quality/wealth and focus; Triad places use more wetware, AA complexes have reduced stats compared to AAA, magic-clientele uses critters, etc. That would also be awesome. I know I can extract samples from varying adventure books, but they seem kind of schizophrenic in quality and that's terrible for finding what you're looking for. That goal could easily explode into an entire book though. Call it Detect & Deter or something.

To top it off, as far as I am aware, the only arcology ever given stats is Renraku; which is tarnished by it being a heavily modified warzone and written in SR3. It would've been nice if they gave more info on those, as running in one of those isn't as intuitive as running through an office building's basement, and there do seem to be a number of them floating around. Especially the mini-arcologies, like size and such, would be nice.

Of course, I could be ignorant as hell and there's a book with all of my needs fulfilled.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:09 pm

SRs absurdly short turns combined with absurdly high hit rates means that your security response needs to be absurdly rapid to even matter a tiny bit.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:08 pm

What are the main areas in Washington DC in Shadowrun that would be domains? From how Street Magic describes it, all of the monuments (Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, White House) will have a background count in the 3 to 5 range. This would encourage clandestine meetings at famous locations because of the inherent magical protection; at least until you deal with Chaplain America or some other patriotic magic tradition.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:56 am

Does Infiltration work in the astral? If so, can you make yourself plainly visible to people in the mortal world while simultaneously hiding from spirits with infiltration? Is Assensing used in place of Perception in this instance?

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:27 am

Yeah, you can pass through physical things, but their Astral Shadow still blocks sight, so you can hide behind stuff and things that way. Anyone using astral sight or on the astral plane trying to defeat your Agility + Infiltration test should counter with an Intuition + Assensing test the same way that people trying to detect you physically use Intuition + Perception.

Remember that if you're using EotM rules then you also have to get past their Intuition + Data Search check with your Matrix Stealth rating, which is either from your Intuition + Hacking check, or from the results of a Cloak Program (activated with Logic + Electronic Warfare).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:31 am

Also remember that when you are astrally projecting, your Agility is replaced by your Logic.

-Username17

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:33 am

Lokathor wrote:Yeah, you can pass through physical things, but their Astral Shadow still blocks sight, so you can hide behind stuff and things that way.

Which also means that, for example, smoke from a smoke grenade blocks astral sight just like normal vision.