If someone gets attacked quantronically, and another character wants to make a Guard reaction, stepping “in between” (quantronically) the attacker and the target, does the attacker have to deal with any IC programs the guarding character is running?
Using a fitting hacking device, a character could “tank” in the quantronic space against attacks by performing the Guard reaction and trusting on the high-level IC running on the hacking device.
That question came up in tonight’s game, so I thought I’d ask it right away in the Infinity forum here.
Imo:
Guarding is a defensive action, and using an IC an active one. So I would say, the guarding character takes the damage, and only if the running IC could act as response, the attacker had to deal with the IC.
But you have to remember, that most quantronic actions are of up to Close range. So the guardian character could normally only guard an other character, if both are in Close range, and the IC of the guarding character could normally affect the attacker only, if both are also in Close range.
This is somewhat fuzzy to me, but I would tend to answer “no”.
IC is similar to Difficult Terrain in the Warfare rules. IC is a hazard that you encounter while moving between quantronic zones, not something that comes into play when attacking or defending. In Warfare, you need to make an Acrobatics roll to enter a zone that has difficult terrain. In Infowar, you need to make a Hacking test to enter a zone with IC without setting off the IC’s effect.
The IC would trigger if the player was actually moving into hacker’s quantronic zone. Say for example, the hacker had valuable information on his commlog. To get that information, I have to actually penetrate your commlog and root around in it. I have to enter the commlog’s quantronic zone to do so.
If the player was simply being quantronically attacked, then his zone isn’t being penetrated, and the IC wouldn’t trigger. Same thing on a “guard” reaction.
The advantage you get on the guard reaction is that hopefully your hacker has a better hacking skill and a higher firewall than whoever he’s trying to protect.