[ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby Dougansf » Mon May 16, 2016 2:00 pm

I think Stealthy Stride and such illusory spells and talents are best explained in the True to Form section of Astral Space (page 207).

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby etherial » Mon May 16, 2016 2:11 pm


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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby ChrisDDickey » Mon May 16, 2016 3:12 pm


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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby Panda » Mon May 16, 2016 3:35 pm

Without Astral Sense, it lasts Astral Sight rank rounds. Astral Targeting does not affect duration in any way - it just provides a bonus against astrally sensed targets. As a

If the adept spends a Strain to renew the talent prior to it ending (effectively losing a turn when looking to maximize the duration), this is going to extend the previous astral sensing results.

Adding Astral Sense, it makes renewing Astral Sight free, but also limits the range at which you can use Astral Sight for free. If an adept wants to astrally sense a target outside of the spell's radius, the adept will need to spent Strain and use the talent for as long as the target is outside of the radius. I know this adds a complication to the answer, but I want to be as complete as possible.

As indicated previously, if there is anything here you don't like, you should change by all means change it to fit how your group works and how you want the game to run at your table. This can sometimes sound like a flippant response, but it is very sincere.

Please let me know if this doesn't address your questions, or if you have any more.

Best regards,

Morgan
Earthdawn Developer and I have a gaming , though, let's face it, it is really an Earthdawn blog which also happens to have some reviews.

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby Dougansf » Mon May 16, 2016 3:38 pm

I think the questions have boiled down to:

A) What is the full procedure to "astrally sense" a target for use in Astral Targeting, and other Wizard spells?
If an example helps, let's say the Wizard has no prep spells up, and encounters a slow moving Cadaver Man. What actions does the Wizard have to take in order to "astrally sense" the target to allow those spells?

B) How does Astral Sense spell specifically change the Astral Sight talent (especially in regards to the above)?

(edit: somewhat beaten to the punch by Panda's answer, but I'll let it stand. Thanks again Panda)

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby ChrisDDickey » Mon May 16, 2016 4:00 pm

Once again, thanks for the long answers.

I think I understand where you are coming from when you talk about all except the initial test always being against a single target. I was not really understanding that before. Maybe I am just thinking about using the talent wrong. Most of your answers are about studying something in order to get details. I am kind of interested in just using the talent to "see" things.

The top of page 210 says that when the talent is first activated you see the astral imprints of nearby objects. All the answers that you have given state that every subsequent test must be against a single item only. What if you want to stay in that mode. Lets say you need to run through a forest on a moonless night. You just need to see the path, see the trees (living), and see any dead logs (dead). You don't want to study any of them, you just want to avoid them. Can you simply, using nothing but the Astral Sight talent do that? Take a Strain every Rank rounds but run at full speed through the forest "seeing" all the obstacles without stopping to study every one?

Does it matter if you are using the Astral Sense spell to augment your Astral Sight? Other than the big advantage that you are not taking strain?

One thing I had not noticed until just now is that while the Astral Sight talent says "he can see astral imprints and magical auras" the Astral Sense spell says "is able to sense magical presences that are not otherwise in his line of sight" So I am (now) thinking that maybe the Astral Sense 30 yard sphere does not show Astral imprints of physical things, it only shows magical presences (including life?) but does not show anything non-magical that is not alive? I don't know if that is true, but it is something that I just noticed and am wondering how big the differences are between Astral Sense and Astral Sight.

So if you can run through a woods on a moonless night (assuming you can) - avoiding all the deadwood, I am not certain why you can't see the astral imprint of a sword just as easily as you could the astral imprint of a dead log.

Once again, I know this is getting deep into the weeds here, but this is a confusing topic and how the various spells and options interact makes it more confusing still.

Thanks again.

P.S. I just saw your answer that to see outside of the 30 yard sphere, you need to spend the strain to use the talent in it's old Rank x 10 yard LoS only mode. So if the 30 yard sphere does NOT show astral imprints (which once again I don't know for certain yet), then I guess you might need to spend the strain in order to see them in the standard LoS mode.

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby Panda » Mon May 16, 2016 5:22 pm

Greetings,

It's no problem and I really am happy to help.

If your only goal is to perceive astral space, not astrally sense patterns, then there is no need to make any subsequent tests. I'm not generally a fan of analogies because they can quickly lead down a road of useless pedantry (I know I am culpable in this more often than not), this may help: Astral Sensing against a target is like using Awareness - you are trying to perceive something specifically; just using Astral Sight at the area is like using your normal vision, you are interested in general features. For your example of running at night, there is no need to astrally sense a target. It doesn't matter if you are using Astral Sight through the Astral Sense spell or not, beyond the range considerations.

There is no difference in what you perceive with the spell or not (outside of the whole radius and range things). Non-magical things are simply very weak. The first test to perceive astral space allows you to differentiate between what you are seeing, just with no real details. It's not that you are seeing the imprint of a dead log, you are seeing the imprint of "stuff". There is a bunch of impenetrable "stuff" on the ground and astrally it is completely uninteresting. You aren't seeing a mundane sword because it may as well not exist compared to the true pattern using it. When you get down to it, Astral Sight is primarily interested in true patterns. If you will, true patterns are visible at the astral wavelength, everything else is some level of background noise.

To be fair, the topic of astral space has been left deliberately vague and mysterious for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is so GMs aren't boxed in by any "official" answers and you can tell the stories you want. This explicitly isn't a setting where all of the answers are known. Magic isn't fully understood. Arguably, it isn't even well understood. There are a lot of general rules and guidelines, but also a lot of exceptions. Thread items spontaneously generate, here seem to be some correlations, but no one knows how to trigger the event. Same with pattern items. Pattern items cannot be thread items, except when they are (a Weaponsmith's heartblade is the prime example of this). The entire field of true illusions is more like a number of strangely connected loopholes in the "laws" of magic as they are understood by Wizards. Basically the magical equivalent of somewhere between quantum mechanics and mysticism, fully leveraging the observer effect.

This is all going deep down the magical theory hole and getting pretty far off topic.

Please let me know if there is anything I missed, or if you have any other questions. [I had to type this response in parts over time, which means it may appear jumbled. Please let me know if this is the case.]

Best regards,

Morgan
Earthdawn Developer and I have a gaming , though, let's face it, it is really an Earthdawn blog which also happens to have some reviews.

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby cz1234 » Mon May 16, 2016 8:04 pm

I've always thought of it as similar to the Matrix. All of the stuff without a true pattern is just the background pattern (the green scrolling text in the Matrix). So a sword being held aloft might be discernible as a sword but a sword just lying on the ground might not. On the other hand objects with true patterns look more distinctive, like Neo or Agent Smith, it stands out to the background.

Or I think of it like a video game with very few textures. Only items with true patterns have textures mapped to them, everything else is indistinct. I think of it as being globally illuminated so it all looks kind of flat except for the true patterns.

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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby Baravakar » Thu May 19, 2016 5:08 pm


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Re: [ED4] Astral Sense and Astral Targeting

Postby Razan_GM » Fri May 20, 2016 7:41 am

That is exactly how I see it, with one or two exceptions. It works only for non-physical spells (only for those that are against Mystic Armor or not creating physical effects). Because astral arc is on Astral Plane, but effects go in straight line on Astral (pure energy) or Physical Plane (fire, lightning and so on) and would hit first obstacle. As spells that are against Mystic Armor are pure magical energy they will ignore physical obstacles.

Thats how I see it.


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