Actually, I think voodoo magicians are awesome at utility, since they can summon Task spirits. It's like a rating 6+ skill wires! Not that you need to be a voodoo mage to summon those. And having them in your body might be less convenient then having them free-moving through the Astral. Just sayin'...

Possession, though, is all about personal badassness. There's an allure to being a walking tank of death, even if that's not the most useful thing you can do for your team. Especially in games where the players tend to fight each other, being individually powerful, as opposed to relying on servants who can't prevent you from taking damage, is useful to YOU. And some people tend to play in a pretty self-centered way, and there's nothing wrong with that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

no. how many times do i have to repeat this?

THERE IS NO CHARACTER, THERE IS ONLY A SPIRIT WHEN YOU ARE POSSESSED.

if it helps, think of it as possession spirits do not add their force to the character's physical attributes, the character adds his physical attributes to the spirit's force. the character's skills, knowledge, experience, edge, magic, and so forth, are all pushed aside. the only thing the player contributes is a meatbody, any already-activated gear, and his physical attributes. that is all. the character cannot hack, he cannot rig, he cannot do ANYTHING, because he has been overwritten. heck, even a lot of already-active gear doesn't work for the spirit.

seriously, possession traditions are kinda good. so are materializing traditions. personally, i prefer materializing traditions in fact, but there is nothing that makes possession spirits especially amazing.

If the possessed person is completely subsumed by the spirit, how can a mage direct the spirit possessing him in any way at all. It would be impossible to give the spirit orders. Unless you gave them all in advance I suppose, like 'possess me then walk over there and kill those dudes'

A magician is aware of what the spirit is doing while the magician is possessed. That doesn't mean the spirit has access to the characters skills. The magician becomes the passenger and basically lets the spirit take over the driver seat. Technically the spirit is in control, yes the magician can still give it tasks to carry out but when the magician's body speaks, it's the spirit doing the talking, when he scratches his ass, it's the spirit doing the scratching, etc. etc.

*edit* Note that if the spirit is possessing someone that isn't it's summoner the rules change and the possessed person has no knowledge of what the spirit is doing. He's not even a passenger, he's more or less shoved in the trunk until the ride is over.

Yep, that's one of the best uses I've found so far for a possession tradition. Especially nice since you get 6 extra dice if the guy you want to put in the trunk is a mage that's astrally projecting. On the other side, it would really suck to be doing astral recon for your team, and when you come back to your meat body, you see it climbing into the trunk of a car that then goes to Mexico. Good times!

I think what edge said is pretty much to the point. All possession traditions have a rather bad relationship with their spirits and thus you shouldn't summon them as often as shamans or hermetics do and not being possessed 24/7 because the latter is what really makes possession overpowered and you the focus of the whole game. If you resort to summon them just when needed they're not stronger then materializing spirits, just different.



You don't need to spend a complex action because you are already possessed and your pools will be way better at least with a guardian spirit and by the rules you're not an npc spirit. Also you will have great reflexes so you most likely dodge better when not going full defense. As sr4 is very heavy on the attributes you also default to anything with 8+ dice and once you learned channeling you'll be the best character in your group hands down.

There is no Dana. Only Zuul!

doesn't matter what kind of spirit, the guardian spirit's skill is a power, and is not always on for a chanelling mage. you must burn yet another service (in addition to the service to get the spirit to possess you) to use the power.


no, you'll be reasonably good at tasks based on *physical* attributes, *if* that task can be defaulted on.

you probably still won't be as good as the sammy, and certainly not anywhere near as well rounded.

and this is even assuming you can channel... if not, then you're back to NPC status, playing a spirit which has only 3 or 4 skills, tripping every ward you go through, lit up on the astral, unable to make ranged attacks on the astral but also unable to not be present on the astral... hey, congratulations, you're a slow ghoul with hardened armor. that's just ever so much more scary than a magician who can take over your mind and make you kill your buddies! [/sarcasm]

Okay let me rephrase. Can a computer possessed by a spirit still function as a computer?

If yes, can an agent running on that computer still hack the interwebs.

To me, both answers are yes.

Further to that question. If I am unconscious, a spirit can possess my body and run around and cap stuff in the face. I think we all agree with that. ?therefore the spirit doesn;t require my mind to do anything.

Next: If I am astrally projecting, can a spirit possess my body and run around right. Isn't that part of what the shedim do.

I think the answer to the previous 4 questions are yes, and what it establishes is:

A) A thing that is possessed can still act on its own, just not physically. In this case this is created by the electrical subsystems.

B) A spirit can possess a body without interacting with the consciousness resident in said body

C) A spirit can possess a body that an then consciously do something else.

D) We all agree that the magician possessed is aware of what is going on.

So with those 4 points still in mind, why isn't it okay for me to turn on VR, and then let the spirit run around with my shoes. I agree its probably not, but it seems like it should work.

being able to do that would require that

1) You are still capable of independent thought

2) the electrical subsystem (the DNI) can operate despite being possessed by a spirit, which we know is true

Both things seems to be true, the only thing not holding is that your physical brain is involved (which it probably isn;t for astral projection, but may be for the 'being aware of what is going on' but might be not be a requirement.

Well, it sounds better than being strapped to a segway.

the computer is not a living creature. it does not have a mind to subdue or override, and spirits explicitly cannot interact with the matrix in any case.

on the other hand, spirits can certainly interact with living creatures, provided they're on the same plane. and a (meta)human does have a mind to subdue.



the rules are quite clear on the matter. your character contributes nothing more than physical attributes, and given this is explicitly a non-combat character, said physical attributes are probably not much beyond decent to begin with (at least, if you're seriously considering using a spirit instead of letting them get into combat on their own).

so yeah, might be a little bit useful for getting your TM buddy through suppressing fire if you can have him possessed with a force 8 (unbound) spirit while he runs across the hallway or something, and it's certainly going to be an improvement over the TM in terms of combat ability, it's much more effective to take that summoned force 8 spirit and tell it to suppress one of the people laying down suppressing fire. it's better yet, imo, to take a force 8 spirit of man that can manifest, and give it stunball as a spell known, and just have it nuke the entire group of people laying down suppressive fire when it manifests behind them. though i suppose you could accomplish something similar by having a possession spirit of man possess the wall behind them or something.

If your mind is subdued how can you issue orders to the spirit when you as the mage are possessed and don't have channelling.

As you clearly DO have that capability, clearly despite being 'subdued' you are still capable of complex reasoning and tactical decision making. And logically therefore assuming you are capable of action could do something.

The problem is can you do something with a DNI, and thats a tricky question, I'm not sure cabral fully answers it.

If you think of a DNI as a translation device

Brain -> Cable -> DNI -> Cable -> Commlink

It is clear that a spirit cannot use the 3rd item in the stack, but its not obvious you can still use item 1.

Note this is, at this point, just for a mage summoning and possessing himself with a spirit, your argument is clear that in all other cases you cannot do this.

Not quite...


Since DNI interface devices are among the list of items the possessing spirit cannot control, I would say that yes, the Hacker can VR hack away through the DNI. The spirit blocks of access to his meat, not his skills and it most definitely does not shut down his brain.

Consider a counter point. An astrally projecting mage's body is possessed. What happens to the Mage's Astral form? It keeps on going until you tell the spirit to play in traffic.

who cares if it costs a service?
I can easily summon another spirit after combat and in the unlikely case that i actually do take stun damage slap on a patch and i'm good to go again.


with channeling i'd be better then the sammy thanks to the 3-4 levels higher attributes i got. Also i can take way more damage then any other char without even having to roll for body. Considering i only need a lvl 1 in most skills to assure me 3-4 successes i'll most likely also be more well rounded not even taking into account that i can afford high mental attibutes and can still cast spells. To be honest a manifesting spirit isn't weaker then a possession one but the latter totally eliminates the magician as the weak link. Also once you learned how to summon ally spirits you'll also have the regeneration power and don't have to count your services anymore.

Cthulhudreams: the mage can take actions to order the spirit, yes. this is explicitly an exception to the rules. it does not say anything about allowing the mage to take purely mental actions (which would include, say, casting spells, which would be pretty danged significant!) and therefore the mage cannot (unless he has channeling, in which case your spirit is just a fancy buffing spell).

Cabral: helpless, impotent... these words do not mean "can do all kinds of stuff, as long as it isn't physical in nature". so congratulations, you can see what's happening. too bad you can't do a damn thing about it.

suppenhuhn: sure, an initiated possession tradition mage with channeling can be decent. as long as there are no wards.

as far as stun damage not being a problem, maybe you didn't notice but most of the cool abilities for a mage cause stun damage. it bloody well *is* a problem, because it can knock you out, and then Bad Things™ happen.

and quite frankly, *I* care if it costs a service. even if it's only a summoned (ie unbound spirit) that's still potential drain to get a halfway decent spirit. if you're summoning towards your upper limit of ability to get these super-awesome stats and powers, then you may only *get* 1-2 services. if it's a bound spirit, then you are flushing money down the toilet. that's a problem.

so sure, an initiated magician who summons possession spirits and has channeling (and masking/extended masking to get through wards) can be pretty good. then again, so can a buffing magician with a couple of sustaining foci, and he still gets to use his spirits as well. congratulations, you've just blown a metamagic technique on getting something that is kinda-sorta better than a buffing mage. maybe. a little.

and for the record, there is no tradition with an ally spirit that gets regeneration. great form powers are not powers that are available to your tradition as standard, so even if you can conjure plant spirits, and have invoking, it doesn't work like that. (seriously, you have to bust out 3 metamagic techniques to make this a good idea? well imagine that, a grade 3 initiate magician being powerful? you don't say. i can hardly even imagine how that could happen [/sarcasm])

That's right. You can't do all kinds of stuff. That's not to say you can't do some stuff. You obviously cannot perform any physical tasks as the spirit is complete control. However, you can perform some, if not all purely mental tasks, because the mental state of the possed target remains unchanged.

Note the reason a Technomancer cannot use technomantic abilities and an adept cannot use adept abilities. Because they impotent witnesses? No, because the spirit's special attributes are used, replacing the vessel's.

it's not clear-cut, the rules say you can do it. But it's a solid position supported by the FAQ.

Drain is nowwhere even close to the limiting factor it should be. Unless you overcast spells all the time or use the handfull ones that have a somewhat restricting drain you only very rarely suffer any stun at all.


max drain a lvl 6 spirit can cause is 12 s which happens once in 729 summonings and you'll still be able to get that down to 8 or so and ignore 6 of those thanks to a slap patch. Granted binding such spirits is costly but you don't really need that.

okay so i spent 48 karma do be a lvl 3 adept and have channeling, masking and extended masking. I only need to resist a max drain of 12s with maybe 10 dice.
your buffing mage needs 4 lvl 6 sustaining foci (physical attributes) a lvl 2 sustaining focus (reflexes) and a lvl 12 sustaining focus (armor) combining to a whopping 76 karma and 380000 Nuyen. He'll still trigger any ward btw. When casting his spells he'll only get a drain of 4x1s and 1x3s (i said drain is a joke) which is negligible but also a drain of 9p for the overcast armor spell which most likely won't even score 12 hits.
So after raising magic to 7 my mage would still have karma, the ability to boost magic yet another 2 levels and a shitload of money to spend and he won't be half dead after 'buffing'.
You're right that is a wee lil bit better. maybe.

actually it does work like that and i can get my lvl 4 adept with invoking when skipping on magic 7. Granted to summon it as an ally i need another 20 karma but i don't really need that as a bound spirit will do for starters. My lvl 6 spirit will owe me an average of 3 services when using luck and will get 6 hits on the invoking table which is enough for regeneration and also adds to my attributes and armor. Since i only need it to possess me to get most of the benefits the 3 services are a handy safety feature if i somehow happen to stumble across 2 or 3 great dragons at a time. Now imagine that: your buffer is a joke compared to this guy. [/sarcasm]

oh goody, *only 8S damage taken potentially in the middle of a run. well thank goodness that's all. gee, i was starting to get a little worred there that it's enough damage to leave me with just a couple boxes before unconsciousness, but hey if it's *only* 8S damage, what's to worry about?

no, because the buffing mage is going to choose spells that are better than armor. they'll pick up deflection, for example. and they're not going to waste anything buffing strength, that's for sure. quite possibly not body either (only need to worry about body if it hits you, and like i said the smart buffing mage is a dodge monkey), and probably not agility (mostly needed for stealth, which invisibility replaces, or guns... fortunately for us, being a mage he can still just cast spells). he'll also probably have 4 IPs, which will let him full dodge if needed and still have IPs left at the end. the buffing mage ignores all those bullets by not getting hit to begin with.


that's been discussed here before (feel free to look it up, though i don't expect you to give up the loophole you insist you've got), and no it doesn't work like that. no spirit granted by your tradition grants regeneration, it's a great form ability.... which isn't part of your tradition. you may as well declare that all voodoo tradition magicians get channelling naturally as declare the great form ability of the various spirits to be part of the tradition. and once again, we're talking about a grade 3 initiate. yes, of course he's scary. he's a bloody grade 3 initiate. in the meanwhile though, some of us have to actually play characters that work from day 1, not someone who will be awesome after 50 or 100 karma. oh, and your grade 3 magician? doesn't have access to great form abilities anyways. you have to go up to grade 4 for that (and hey look, you still haven't increased your magic since chargen that way)

oh, and btw... great form spirits have to be bound. so at that point, you're throwing away money every time you use a service. not to mention the fact that great form spirits cause extra drain. meaning your great form spirit is probably not as powerful as a regular spirit you might be able to summon anyways (on account of it has a much better chance to kill you)... so have fun with that.

cabral: it says they are in the same state, and then it gives examples of a conscious mind remaining aware. it then goes on to say, as i have already pointed out, that said conscious mind becomes an impotent witness. i don't know, maybe english isn't your first language, but it is *my* first language, and i can tell you now that impotent witness does not mean that you can do all kinds of stuff. impotent = powerless, witness = someone who observes. you are stuck there, helplessly watching... you are not hacking into the corp facility, you are not wirelessly talking to your buddies and relaying information, you are not rigging a drone, and you are not black hammering the corpsec hacker. you are sitting there stuck in your own body powerless to do anything but watch.

seriously though, this is starting to feel like a waste of time. i have one guy who insists that absusing nonexistant loopholes is the intended way of playing (and who doesn't seem to understand that "this magician is awesome as a grade 4 initiate" means a long time of not awesome first), and another guy who won't even listen to the quotes he himself provides to prove his own point when those exact quotes *disprove* his point. so yeah, i'm not going to bother discussing either of those points. you are of course free to believe what you want, and play how you want, and even to keep on sticking your head in the sand and pretend like there's nothing screwy with how you play. far be it from me to waste my time explaining to you why you are wrong when you won't listen to reason.

Your remark is actually offensive, because you are implying that someone else has a poor grasp of the human language after having undermined your own point a few minutes ago.

if impotent = powerless as you so strongly assert, why can you order a manifested force of nature to do your bidding. Clearly you are not powerless.

Now having debunked the totally unjustified statement, lets move on to another intresting question. (Your right about ally spirits not being able to get regeneration though)

A) Can I see conventionally when I'm possessed (I assumed that the answer was obviously yes, but it could be no if the spirit provides you with all your infomation via the mental link. Taht said the impotent witness thing implies that you DO have your conventional sense data still)

B) When I am astrally projecting, can I still be sent infomation by my DNI (I really do not know the answer to this, but I'd lean towards yes, as your brain is functional in point A)

C) When I am possessed, can I be sent data via a DNI

D) When I am possessed by a hostile spirit, and if A is true, can *I* as the victim still see AR, but the spirit cannot. Or has the dual natured entity replaced 'me' leaving me with only astral sight? (I'm leaning towards no)

Those are some intresting as opposed to insulting questions that are not answered

Thank you.

Now as for the points you brought up.

This is a very good point. The dice pool and initiative penalties add up. Not to mention that you're talking about overcasting, you're looking at physical drain. You may be counting on the hardened armor to prevent anything else, but there are a surprising number of things that completely ignore Immunity to Normal Weapons. Those things not only don't get bounced by the armor, but ignore the actual armor dice too, and in some cases (such as weapon foci) will reduce your remaining worn armor too. You'll still have a large number of body dice to soak with and a healthy physical track (+6 from a possessing Force 12).

However, anything that does get through, even a little, will add up. Also, when your possession ends, even temporarily, you'll be left with the full damage, not just what you started with. If that KOs you or kills you, tough luck.

This was brought up in another thread. Invoking is your ability to grant a spirit a special power. It's still pretty darn handy to have possessing plant spirit with regeneration, but you can't give it to your ally (nor can you Endowment, Storm, Astral Gateway, etc.

Still, if you want to be a wiz at healing, I can't think of anyway to beat an invoking Hedge Witch with the Great Mother mentor. Don't count on the Regeneration to heal drain as it is still "magical healing".

One loophole you can exploit is that you don't need to know the ally metamagic to summon an ally. The Familiar Ordeal specifically states that you need not have the Ally Conjuring metamagic to summon an Ally. Be warned, due the apparent self-contradictory nature, this may be an error. Discuss with your GM prior to springing it on him or you may both be in for an unpleasant surprise.

If I am an impotent witness to an airplane crash, I am most certainly unable to prevent it, however, I can jump to the left and then take a step to the right. I can put my hands on my hips and bring my knees in tight ...

The fact that the spirit leaves me physically incapable of acting as it runs amok with control of my flesh, does not inherently prevent me from accessing DNI devices and performing actions that do not interfere or conflict with the spirit's control or that rely on special characteristics overriden by the spirit's presence.

What gave it away? My supernatural ability to properly utilize capitalization? English is a language that relies heavily on context. If you ignore the context, you've thrown away half the meaning.

I'd say based on context you probably can't check your email while you serve as Legba's horse, what with the impotent witness thing and all. It's also worth noting that in no way do you need your physical brain to be unscrambled to interact with the Astral and presumably Spirits. You can literally die, hell, you can be incinerated while Astral Projecting and you'll actually have several hours to fuck around and mourn your own passing as a physical being before your form dissipates into the ether. This is Shadowrun guys, a game of goofy fictional metaphysics. Between all the talk about essence and cyberzombies, it's fairly accurate to say that the existence of the metahuman soul is basically canon. So please toss the idea that this has to make perfect logical sense based on our current knowledge of the world out on its ear. What really matters here is internal consistency and game balance.

that happens once in 7 years of weekly playing with 2 summonings per session. Wow now i'm scared.


Ah then i skip masking and extended masking because you don't care about that either and am down to 13 karma, good luck with your sustaining foci and whatever.

huh? why do i need a high initiation grade to score 5 hits on an invoking test?

ever noticed that you don't need to use many services with possession? No? Maybe that's why you prefer manifestation.

Wow now the possession magician isn't good because he doesn't start with masking which is something your christmas tree doesn't have at all, not even in your high karma version. Also i can bind quite alot of spirits until i reached the pricetag of your foci. You also conveniantly ignored that i can cast spells as well while being possessed.
But it's nice that after having debunked your stupid line of argument you now consider it a waste of time because i got something wrong with allies (which doesn't even matter that much).



If you read that ordeal carefully it implies you take the summon ally metamagic when you take the familiar ordeal. It just states that you can already summon that special ally before you actually initiate.

Hey, Whipstitch. I hadn't considered the rammifications of persistent astral projection insofar as proof of a soul. However, you could make the case that astral projections are psychic projections with the potential to linger after the brain death of the magician.

Well, that's a possible reading, but I wouldn't say it hands down implies it.

He may take it. Now, as I said, it does appear to be self-contradictory.

It begins stating that only magicians capable of summoning allies may perform teh familiar ordeal. Who can summon allies? Magicians with the Ally Conjuration metamagic. It could be that the intent was that only magicians who qualify to take the Ally Conjuration metamagic technique may perform the familiar ordeal. I believe to improve your familiar, you would still need the Ally Conjuration metamagic.

As for the quote above, if FanPro had wished to make it a requirement that Ally Conjuration be taken as the metamagic for the initiation that Ally Conjuration is performed, I would have worded it more allong the lines of:

I don't think there's any reasonable argument that possessed vessels can still surf the matrix. You're performing grammatical contortions just to wiggle around the words "impotent witness," but that's not all there is to it, even. The text flatly contradicts you on SM page 95, which says that the person's mind is "subdued," with the exception of a mage giving commands to the spirit he summoned that now possesses him. In other words, per unambiguous RAW, you can not do anything at all except watch and command the spirit. Accessing DNI devices is something that is neither watching nor commanding, so you can't do it while possessed.

Jaid, Suppenhuhn please keep it civil. I dont want my thread to turn into a "My mage is better than yours" braggin' contest