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Message no. 1
From: Dust <rogan@*******.BERGEN.ORG>
Subject: Watchers and Searching
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 08:41:58 -0400
You know watchers have a very nice area to search. With astral speed, a
force 1 can track down almost anyone in a city because they can go at
1000 kph and if the summoner conjured them with enough hours they're
pretty good.
One of my PCs loves to use watchers to find people this way and I
was wondering what prevents Lone Star combat mages to send out watchers
looking for wanted felons in Seattle or other places who don't have wards.
I mean they can catch almost any wrong doer. If there are as many active
magic personnel in security forces and law enforcement as they say there
are, if you want to catch someone why don't the mage simply mindlink with
the person who saw this "wanted" person, get an image of the person in his
mind, and send a hefty watcher after him or her?

Dust
Message no. 2
From: Brett Borger <bxb121@***.EDU>
Subject: Re: Watchers and Searching
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:41:21 EST
> You know watchers have a very nice area to search. With
> astral speed, a
> force 1 can track down almost anyone in a city because they can go
> at 1000 kph and if the summoner conjured them with enough hours
> they're pretty good.

Well, are you using the Search rules given in the Grimoire, or are
you just fudging it?

Second, I always ruled that The mage needed to have assensed the
target for the watcher to know what he's looking for. Anything
totally physically based just confuses the poor shmuck.

As for wanted felons, (assuming the cops HAVE assensed him AND (s)he
isn't magical active to mash the watcher) IF you summon a watcher
with a lot of hours, he'll probably be a Force 1. Now think about a
poor weak dumb watcher bumbling into the Level 2 or 3 (temporary)
background count such a person probably has around them....
Message no. 3
From: Mark Steedman <M.J.Steedman@***.RGU.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Watchers and Searching
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 16:43:52 GMT
Dust writes

> You know watchers have a very nice area to search. With astral speed, a
> force 1 can track down almost anyone in a city because they can go at
> 1000 kph and if the summoner conjured them with enough hours they're
> pretty good.
> One of my PCs loves to use watchers to find people this way and I
> was wondering what prevents Lone Star combat mages to send out watchers
> looking for wanted felons in Seattle or other places who don't have wards.
> I mean they can catch almost any wrong doer. If there are as many active
> magic personnel in security forces and law enforcement as they say there
> are, if you want to catch someone why don't the mage simply mindlink with
> the person who saw this "wanted" person, get an image of the person in his
> mind, and send a hefty watcher after him or her?
>
Read the rules on these things in Grimoire 2.
base 2 hours to find target, and 2 hours to get back, thats 4,
divided by success. Now at 2 success a watcher force point you need a
lot of conjouring skill to get any force at all. Note the Seach TN 9 -
summoners intelligence (possibly plus targets initiation grade) and
you will find this is not quite so good.

However the astrally followed 2 hour watcher is amazing, and the 6000
yen in materials 6 day watcher never gives up :), 12 tries a day,
couldn't care if it's utterly stupid it will succeed, make take
forever but it will!

Mark

Further Reading

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Thwap!