Muspellheimr also says it is not how it was intended. He just says the book is not contradicted by the FAQ.

/facepalm

Im Tired Yall!

I just woke up like 20 minutes ago.

Sorry Muspellheimr.

Regardless, the thread is an interesting read for anybody interested in this topic.

A) As Sabs pointed out, Energy Drain isn't a spirit power available to summonable spirits.

B) Building a ally spirit to 20 is doable, but the typical Shadowrun campaign will end before you get even a tenth of the way there.





-k

That's the biggest weakness with the ally spirit rules. Even a force 6-8 ally spirit will break the game wide open, and results in this amazingly retarded 'power cliff' effect when the mage suddenly coughs up this AWESOME power boost after hording his karma - that might never happen because most games won't go that long.

I'm looking at page 92 of the runner's companion. It has a list of free spirit powers.
Essence Drain is not one of them.

Did they add Essence Drain as a free spirit power in Street magic?

Yes, page 107 in mine.

Actually no, the max force(of spirits or spells) isn't a factor of magic based skills and as such is limited to mystic adepts full magic rating.

Edit: How exactly does essence drain help in raising spirits force over time?
Also sabs don't you mean they took it away from the list of powers availebul to PC free spirits in RC, Street magic is after all much older book.

Sigh
Dumb-Ass Developers.

I never know whether to go by the FAQ or not in these discussions.


Yeah, the Free Spirit would be an NPC.

I hadn't checked the print dates on Street Magic and Runner's Companion.

If you let your players gain an ally of a Free Spirit NPC, and you gave him access to Essence Drain.. you're an idiot GM and you get what you asked for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Especially if you give them enough karma to get the Free Spirit NPC up to force 20.

Currently it doesn't matter. A F20 spirit requires 10 Magic minimum, the advantage the MysAd has is things like Kinensics (or whatever its called) that increases skill ratings (but he still dies due to the drain).

It's magic. If you want rationalization:

A spirit possessing a living being cannot completely invest the creature with its power, as it is currently already a well of mana. A non-living/dead body, however, offers no such resistance, so the spirit can easily greatly enhance the physical characteristics.

Also, a possessed creature already has stats. A dead body would not: what is the Bod/Agi/Str of a corpse (Hint: it'd be more akin to a homonculous)?

Oh, sorry i sometimes forget that not everyone has been a shadowrunner even for whole of the 4:th edition, to me and many others it's less about checking the release dates and more about knowing that street magic was relatively old book when RC was released (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Also seriously guys, could someone of you explain to me how exactly does essence drain help in raising spirits force(for more then a little while at a time) i can understand how karma drain would help, but not essence drains function in this conversation.

I've been a shadowrunner since 1989 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
I played SR1 and SR2, then I went and played Earthdawn for a while.
But, I never bought any of the versions not put out by FASA, until 2010.

Agree completely that nowhere in Possession is there an exemption from normal attribute maximums. No exemption means no exception.

Course, my fluff explanation is that the spirit chooses to limit it's own power while in the living vessel to not destroy its vessel and hurt itself in the process.

Correction: A piece of dead meat possessed by a spirit could be tougher than that meat had it been possessed before it died a few seconds ago.

So under the ruling of the faq where possessed living vessels cannot go over the augmented limits, the fight would go as..

a human got into fight with a troll.. human summon up a possessing force 20 spirit and get possessed.. human crossed swords with troll's sword.. but troll's str 15 overwhelm human's str 9 and troll's sword killed human..

a few seconds later.. force 20 spirit possessed human corpse again.. human corpse crossed swords with troll's sword.. human corpse str 20 overwhelm troll str 15 and human corpse cut off troll's head..

talk about karma.. heh

Except that summoning a force 20 spirit would likely kill the human in the first place, you keep glossing over that.

And you are now an expert on magic? Who are you to say that a spirit cannot completely invest a living creature with its full power and yet is able to invest the same corpse of the said living creature with its full power once the living creature is dead?

I can easily counter your theory and say that creatures which has a well of mana or essence is more compatible to integration with a living spirit just because of its mana or essence and is thus more powerful than an inanimate possessed corpse.



it would have the bod/agi/str of previous incarnation.. it is simple logic

Not if you have spirit pacts with spirits lending you magic power.

Not if you use essence drain to raise the spirit force from 1 to 20.

Not if you use karma to raise the spirit force from 1 to 20.

So a force 20 spirit increase the base values of a human. Thus 6/9 becomes 26/29. This is to reflect that a muscle augmented by cybernetics/adept powers will get even stronger if a spirit enhanced the same muscle group.

Paranormal spirit power is not magic casting.

A spirit possessing a living body is supposed to return the body in good, or at least functional shape. When it's a dead body, you don't care about bones breaking, articulations going well past their limits, or having blood flowing so fast through the veins it blows the heart valves. Maybe you could treat that as redlining. Then, if anything causes the body to die, it should disrupts its aura enough to end the possession, requiring the spirit to make a new roll (and use up another service) to possess the dead body.

What makes you think that it would increase the natural value of the human being possessed? Obviously only the augmented value is effected. I don't know where you're getting this idea that natural scores would change on the vessel.


Nope, not magic casting, by which I think you mean spell casting. Just magic. And magic applies to augmented maximums on attribute limits.

SR4A p 68, Attribute Ratings. Notice that it says MAGIC and not SPELLS, not POWERS, not just a subset but a label that encompasses ALL magical enhancement, regardless of source. Thus, all magic sources of augmentation are subject to this limit, as are cyberware, bioware, etc.


No offense, but does this even matter to your group? From what I recall your GM was entertaining the idea of letting you make great dragons into slaves to use as cannon fodder in your personal army. THAT doesn't break your concept of the game world, but that a living thing can only take so much bodily stress above it's natural limits before it no longer functions is ridiculous to you? Maybe that's fine for your table, just don't expect us all to see it that way.

I have seen spirits possess living men in real life and the same spirit possessed men achieve some miraculous feats including walking on fire and levitating and being pierced by spikes without blood shedding..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd-uylXRVec...feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxDg0RcrRVw

A spirit possessing a living body is supposed to make it stronger and more powerful.

A dead body without an existing well of mana/essence is suppose to be weaker than a living body with an existing well of mana/essence.

It is common sense and physics.

You arent seriously drawing some correlation between "possession in real life" and physics and trying to apply them to a roleplaying game are you?

I think we can safely leave out anything about 'real-life spirit possession' here. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) … And common sense, and physics, in the discussion of what happens when a magic spirit possesses something—facrissake. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Magic is arbitrary. Always, 100%. You can take any position and it'll be right, as long as you stick to it. So, a spirit might use a living vessel's 'power', or it might be limited by it. Either one, equally good.