From:	"Jeff Freeman (I'm a person,
Subject:	Physads Yet Again
Date:	Thu, 20 May 1993 07:52:14 CDT

One other point in the ongoing phyad debate, the "best" advantage they enjoy in
SR1 (and I'd imagine in SR2 this would continue) is their potential for subtlet
y. In the campaigns I've played/ran, and from what i can glean from the variou
s sourcebooks, technological detection/security measures are far more prevalent
than magical ones-esp. amongst law enforcement. Whereas the sam will show up o
n these every time, the physad will seem "normal" to them. Even with assensing,
one only gets the fact that they are adepts, not what they can do. Moreover,
there is no law in the Shadowrun earth (not yet, at least) against being magica
lly active, whereas the average sammie can get 20-30 years just for having his
cyberware (by the way, a common dodge for this in my campaign is a military his
tory, complete with documents showing that the stuff was implanted when the cha
racter was a soldier- does any one else use similiar tactics?).

However, I can believe they took away auto-successes (even if they made extra d
ice in a skill cost less than 1 magic point each). They were one of the best in
dications of a truly mystical ability on the phyad's part. To continue the sta
r wars example, the jedi training bit where seeing the tiny little drone had no
thing to do with blocking it. However, I guess it must have seemed unfair to be
able to hit thing regardsless of the target numer- oh, I'm blind, nearly dead,
and the critter is two inches tall and buzzing around my head at 120 mph? Well
, four hits, it took a deadly wound. Or were people just abusing the hell out o
f autosuccesses by using the skill web (a player tried to do that in my campaig
n once, I tried not to hold it against him- I really needed a good laugh)

Ciao for Now,
Jeff