Shadowrun 4E: best measures for countering mind control?

[holywhippet]

In our last session our player running a magic user couldn't show up to the game. During a gun battle my character (dwarf, weapons specialst/rigger) got mind controlled by an enemy mage (he only has a will of 3 and got no successes). He was ordered to attack a fellow teammate, a troll enforcer. The troll did retaliate with a single attack before I convinced him I'd been under mind control.

Hopefully our mage will be at future sessions so he can counterspell for me, but what options do I have for countering mind control? My gun has a skinlink so nobody else in my party could have hacked it to stop it from firing, but maybe I could leave a backdoor for my party members to use via my commlink?

Any other ideas?

[TheOOB]

Shoot the enemy mage first is usually a good idea, and if you believe you're going to be fighting enemy spell slingers use smoke and whatnot to give them vision penalties. Casting pools are usually smaller than gun pools, so the more vision penalties you can spread around the more of an advantage your team has.

[comicshorse]

Seconded. Flash grenades are good for this to.

[hiryuu]

Break up line of sight. Get someone in front of the mage. Throw a petit brume and/or smoke grenades. Hit the mage really hard. Take cover. Spend Edge.

Drone rig. Drone rig everywhere.

[holywhippet]

Hmm, the drone rig idea is a good suggestion. I didn't know they were a mage until I was mind controlled. We knew there had to be a mage somewhere since they were invisible to normal sight but not to cameras.

[comicshorse]

Ultrasound sights for your smartgun should see' through Invisibility spells

[holywhippet]

We were in an area with lots of cameras that we were in control of so seeing them wasn't a problem. It was not knowing which one was a mage.

[Dimers]

There are body mods and drugs that increase Will. If you just want a temporary solution, drug up before the run. If it becomes a consistent problem even with your own team's mage around, increase your Will with karma, genetech, bioware and such.

[The Glyphstone]

Can you cyber up your brain with some sort of 'dead-man's program' that dumps tranquilizers into your system if you become influenced by hostile magic?

[hiryuu]

Can you cyber up your brain with some sort of 'dead-man's program' that dumps tranquilizers into your system if you become influenced by hostile magic?

Oh, man, I wish. Shadowrun's response to magic is usually "throw magic at it," and the closest thing to any kind of manatech that does this is genetically tailored symbiotes that glow or shiver when they're exposed to magic.

[holywhippet]

Can you cyber up your brain with some sort of 'dead-man's program' that dumps tranquilizers into your system if you become influenced by hostile magic?

Well, the trick there would be detecting that your will has been dominated. Just detecting magic wouldn't be enough.

I'm thinking I could modify the smartgun accessory on my SMG to not fire if it thinks it could hit an ally.

[hiryuu]

I'm thinking I could modify the smartgun accessory on my SMG to not fire if it thinks it could hit an ally.

That's actually a rather genius idea. This would most likely require either a pilot program for the gun or your team to carry RFIDs. The second option is probably a bad idea.

[Dimers]

That's actually a rather genius idea. This would most likely require either a pilot program for the gun or your team to carry RFIDs. The second option is probably a bad idea.

Check out the Safe Target System, page 33 of Arsenal. It's available as an add-on or an internal modification. "If the gun is pointed at or within a radius of 1 meter of a target marked as 'safe', the system engages the gun's safety ... The basic system can also be upgraded ... with special image recognition routines." You can definitely (and for a fixed, stated cost) make sure your gun doesn't shoot your buddies, no RFID required.

[holywhippet]

That does look good thanks. I'd need to modify it though since you can turn it off as a simple action. In theory, if you are mind controlled you'd try to turn it off so you can shoot your allies.

[Reluctance]

Control Thoughts is unclear on whether you actively act in the caster's best interests, or whether you're just a puppet. Control Action is explicitly in the latter category. So either you waste an action disabling the system, or you keep pointlessly pulling the trigger until the mage in question can give you a new set of commands.

It's not perfect, but it gives your allies all an action to tackle you and limit the damage you can do.

[DeadManSleeping]

I'm pretty sure one of the splats has magical material that translates magical energy into electric signals, but I think installing that in your head would react the same way to every spell, which is just a bad idea.

[hiryuu]

Check out the Safe Target System, page 33 of Arsenal. It's available as an add-on or an internal modification. "If the gun is pointed at or within a radius of 1 meter of a target marked as 'safe', the system engages the gun's safety ... The basic system can also be upgraded ... with special image recognition routines." You can definitely (and for a fixed, stated cost) make sure your gun doesn't shoot your buddies, no RFID required.

Uh, please read a little earlier in that. It knows what targets are marked as safe because it searches for RFID tags and active PANs. The part where it says "The microcomputer scans for a programmed RFID or PAN profile and determines the relative proximity and location of the tags that fit into this profile." So, yeah. Programs can't operate on information they don't have. No RFID, no data, unless you have a camera pointed directly at it. Even if you use it, that 1 meter thing is going to be a problem. It's such a problem that basically two people can't use the same cover without shutting off the option. Wearing anything with RFID tags when not just moving around in public is usually a bad idea.

The safe target system is basically for security teams. Have two patrolling teams and each has all the other guys on their profiles. That way they don't catch each other in the crossfire. Gun won't shoot employees/etc.

You can slap a pilot program into a gun. You can even make your gun play mp3s and be a wireless node if you want. Just slap a pilot program in, teach it what your buddies look like, and all that happens when it gets pointed at an ally through the smartlink, it rolls its pilot rating to not cycle the clip, throw on the safety, or what have you. Just remember to slave it to whatever internal skinlinked cyberware you're using, that way if some jerkwad tries to hack it, he's got to physically grab you first, and if the hacker can grab you with his hands, you're probably already screwed anyway.

[Dimers]

I did read earlier in that passage, and then it specifically says "Instead of a certain profile" (rather than "in addition to"). If that's not convincing, well, "The basic system can be upgraded ... with special image recognition routines." So you get the basic PAN/RFID system, feed it zero PAN/RFID profiles, and then upgrade it to not shoot at your specific friends via image.

Yes, it works via physical camera. You can add a camera as an accessory to any gun, and of course, all smartweapons already have one. So I don't see any problem with using the image-recognition system, which is already guaranteed hack-free if any wireless hookup in the camera is turned off.

Which is not to say that the Pilot program thing won't work -- it should be fine, and in most games it would be. But that depends more on GM judgement. I can just imagine somebody telling me to roll my gun's Perception to see whether the Pilot program does its job in determining who does and doesn't match the images ...