a question from a newbie (me)
Is there any rules for a free spirit pc having possesed someone before the game begins?
if not any good houserules you people could suggest?

There are rules and prices for standard vessels in Street Magic. Note that the Plasteel Golem is horribly broken, and will turn you into an almost invincible powerhouse for a nickle and a dime.

thank you.
what about living vessels any guidelines for thoose?

that's an interesting question. talk to the GM.
If your vessel is some random person, just use average stats (2s and 3s for human). If he/she's important from a roleplaying perspective, convince your GM with a detailed background story. GMs love these. If it's someone with special skills and attributes, you should probably pay some BP for it.
If it's an animal, you can buy it with resources, look at Running Wild. Maybe you can even "buy" a human vessel, with the RW rules. After all starting resources are abstract enough.

that's just my first guess.

If you've already convinced your GM to let you play a possesing free spirit I doubt they'll have the good sense to deny you a troll body. What are a few more free build points amongst friends.

/bitter

Why so Bitter there LurkerOutThere?

This screams out to me as the perfect place for the 15 point version of dependent.

really?
what kinds of trouble could a vessel stir up that could justify that, considering that the spirit most likely will spend most of its time possessing the body?

Just remember to never, under any circumstances allow spirits to have inhabitation as a power it just gets too sickening.



I wonder if my gamemaster will ever let me play that charater again...

PCs already can't have Inhabitation. It's specifically excluded from the Free Spirit options.

Because the possesion rules are a crock.

Dream Pact. It's your friend.

I am currently debating the merits of using a Dream Pact with one being as opposed to using the friendship pact.
the former involves not risking losing my force and with it a ton of karma while the later allows me to go bodyshopping.

With friendship pact, iirc. If one of the members of the pact dies, you lose a point of force. Your a free spirit. You can astral shortcut back to your home plane. Unless your being ritually targetted (At which point they could just summon and bind you anyways) there really shouldn't be a reason why you would get disrupted. Where as dream pact gives you a free body, and the ability to gain karma like a normal character.

Whether your Friends can die is really up to the GM, though. The simplest solution is just to give you Karma as a normal character, no silly (and likely meaningless) hoops.

I would argue that its more up to the other players. (Do they want to Hand of God, or roll a new character?)

Psh. Who killed them in the first place? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Anyway, the point is that it's a bad rule, one that I can only assume is never meant to actually be used.

Alright. Plasteel Golem it is.

But, you do lose all the cool flying/teleporting/astral powers that are half the point of being a spirit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Let me see if I can explain what I was thinking:

The vessel is probably not a nameless nobody with zero connection to the real world. If I were even going to consider allowing a player to play a possession spirit that started with and had a regular living vessel, then I would insist on knowing who the vessel was prior to the possession. This very easily leads to situations where the spirit is in fact the thing disrupting the vessel's life. Letting your vessel get shot-up, or arrested, or any number of nasty things that tend to happen to a shadowrunner, would impede the life that most vessel's live. If a spirit wants to maintain the ability to continue using a core living vessel, the spirit would need to protect it from it's own actions as well as worry about what type of trouble the vessel might get into if the spirit went temporarily vessel hopping. If the spirit does not protect the life of the vessel, and I'm talking more than just the physical health, then you might have a situation where the vessel becomes more hostile towards the spirit.

Forgone conclusion, in my opinion. Whether or not the vessel is protected. People really hate losing their independance. That whole slavery thing, don't you know. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

I thought dream pact let even a non-possession spirit possess when the conditions are right.

On the other hand
-it might force possession when the other half of the pact is asleep. Probably not, but a GM could rule that way.
-the person you have the pact with must be asleep. And that means only a few hours a day of possession per day. Probably mostly at night.
-keeping a large or small number spirit pact members happy and safe could be tricky and burn up some time and newyen.

For normal possession spirits.
Possessing a critter could be useful if you rule that the spirit has access the the critter's powers. The rules seem to support this.
Hellhound and Cerberus Hound come to mind for their useful and expensive powers. Also a bullet proof vest type barding is available to SWAT dogs today so it should be available to hellhounds at least, as they are used as corporate guard dogs. On the downside paying for skills, training, a place to keep dangers animals is expensive, as is the animals themselves. Plus the critters are still not that hard to kill and once dead that BP sink is gone.

Humanoid androids are either the cheap manservant or excessively expensive androids. Manservant is not the best choice for combat but they are described as something that would not really raise eyebrows, seeming like something being run by some run of the mill rigger. Androids are awesome but hugely expensive and not available at the start.

Plasteel Homunculus has the advantage of being relatively cheap and disposable. It probably is the best choice for most things. But you might pick up a few menservants for disposable and civilian tasks. Having a few bodies in safe houses all over town for quick access seems smart.