Ok, before things get out of hands.

Although I have nothing against morally ambiguous characters, i do not want an evil party. Benevolence is not required, but at some point, I expect you to do the right thing, or at least try.

In addition, upon closer examination of the character sheets posted thus far, I have a problem with any kind of loyalty rating above 4 (speaking of contacts). With this kind of rating, things can get out of hands and linked with a high connection rating, it sometimes means you don't need a job. If the Mafia Boss is your best buddy, why do you care about shadowrunning?

Also, mixing magic and technology is NOT possible. Magic doesn't work in the Matrix. You can interact with it on a human level, but you cannot use any powers in it or through it. And I'm not a big fan of the excremental thing.

In addition, while the idea of former ally spirit is great, one is enough. Since Cthulhudream was the first to post one, I'll leave him with the privilege of playing it

Finally, day job? come one guys. I found the idea silly for fresh free spirits.

Looking in the book...spirits like the example below 'get' skills.
I assume that because we are free spirits, if we pick 'air spirit', we still buy our own skills?

Spirits of Air

Movement: 15/75 (fl ight)
Skills: Assensing, Astral
Combat, Dodge, Exotic
Ranged Weapon, Flight,
Perception, Unarmed
Combat
Powers: Accident, Astral
Form, Concealment,
Confusion, Engulf,
Materialization,


Also, D said "Don't forget to add a description of the spirit and its magical tradition of origin (which influence on spell drain and the type of powers you can have)."

Meaning, if I pick spirit of air, I can only buy the powers spirits of air have, and their optional powers?

Powers: Accident, Astral Form,
Concealment, Confusion,
Enhanced Senses (Low-Light,
Th ermographic Vision), Guard,
Infl uence, Materialization,
Sapience, Search.
Optional Powers: Fear, Innate Spell (any one spell known
by the summoner), Movement, Psychokinesis

Well, maybe not evil. I suppose not any more so then the average shadowrunner. Perhaps a bit more... vindictive and with a slightly lower regard for human life and no regard for things like 'respecting the dead' and such.

As for the contacts thing... I think the loyalty 6 is less of an issue then the modified connection rating of almost 30. I understand having a highly loyal cult (They generally are) but it tends to be difficult to have thousands and thousands of members globally, virtually all of which are awakened, as well as an army of hackers and whatnot.

I mean heck, with the carnal thing, you'd have trouble just with time. I mean if you have thousands of members, and each one of them gets their main benifit from doing something with only you, and it takes maybe half an hour.... your going to run into time issues, even if you don't need to take breaks to eat or sleep and can travel around the world in an hour. And heck, I'm sure you'd want to do other things from time to time as well.

Hehe, day job. I can see it now, free spirit in stuffer shack flipping burgers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Edit: Also I think the excremental thing was a joke?

Free spirits don't have a type. They are a culmination of all the types of spirits of their tradition. So yes, you have to buy your skills and powers and stats and all of that.

Ok. I'm planning on a Spirit of Man. No day job;)

True, but they were a type before the became free. Just makin sure.

I'm slow, but I get there.

Yeah, which could shape how they look and attitude somewhat, but won't affect powers any.

The "excrement" thing was just a bad pun. It helps to know up front that you are not a big fan of bad puns.

As for magic and technology, you get it and yet you don't. The fact that "mixing magic and technology is NOT possible" doesn't stop people from trying. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, doing so is just "opening a big bag of hurt"! So imagine a group of Spirits that hate the Matrix, and can't do anything about it! Nothing they do affects it!

They have a lot of frustration to project elsewhere.

I was making a former ally spirit as that is the only documented game mechanic for creating spirit formulas. The ally part doesn't really matter. The spirit wasn't a familiar. It was just a conjured test subject.

"Us, Evil? The enemy is Evil! We're just stooping to his level."

On second thought, it is a good thing you nipped that in the bud. The thought of a Force 6 Air Excremental just popped into my head. Don't ask me about the centering ritual used by the conjurer.

Powers: Energy Aura, Engulf, Noxious Breath

What is the sound of an Air Excremental materializing?


There are a million more where that one came from. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)
Yep, that could easily "get out of hand".

So we're banished from our Home Plane.
Can we be banished from the physical plane? If so, where would we go?

I assumed this game was about working out what caused the spirital ban and reversing it - my character has no need for money as is, so he wouldn'tmcare either way even if the mafia boss WAS his best friend, except insofar as he can get some help for dealing with his more immediate problem.

Where are you getting these costs from? SR4 nor Street Magic has these. Runner's Companion?

- (2) Influence
- (1) Mutable Form
- (0.5) Realistic Form
- (1) Natural Weapons
- (1.5, after initiation) Fear

This sounds like a lot of fun. Since "former Ally spirit" is taken, I'm going to try building a Norse tradition Guardian spirit. Just have to decide whether I want a redheaded Thor or a blond one. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Yes, those are the cost in "Edge Power Points" as in, your PC gets one point to spend on Spirit Powers for each point of Edge. A Spirit with Edge = 2 gets 2 Points, and a Spirit with Edge 5 gets 5 Points.

There is a section in Runner's Companion called Creating a Free Spirit Character that gives costs for over twenty-something Free Spirit Powers.

I think you're going to have to be a lot more specific about the circumstances of our 'banishment' and liberation.

What happens when we are disrupted? Can we use Metaplanar shortcuts? Why would any of us be anything other than stock spirits if we are not Allies?

Why no day jobs? If we had one before becoming free we are free to elect to keep them.

Okay, I probably went a little overboard. We just have so many points to spend! :-/ We're like tiny gods.

One thing I guess I misunderstood, is that I thought we could have things (you mentioned cults, gear, etc) that were set up before we were banished. Someone else had this same question - there is a difference between when a spirit goes free and when it is banished from the metaplanes (since, AFAIK, spirits have never been banished from metaplanes, before) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Even if we just recently went free, we might know a lot of people (who used to summon us), and have some easily-made connections we could reestablish.

If you would like everything we have, and everyone we know to be obtained in the last 5 minutes, that's reasonable - but it would be clearer just so say so (and it would automatically disallow quite a few things).

Noted. If an evil succubi isn't a good fit, I totally understand. I liked the idea of its nature being what made it unique (not a requirement for every member of the team), and agree that things will always go 100% smoother when the PCs don't set out to be evil.

Well, free spirits of the power level we're talking about could probably get by just fine without a job - they can do a LOT of things that important people would gladly pay them for. The same could pretty much be said fo any shadowrunner, though - especially ones with multiple contacts with huge loyalty/connection ratings. If you're best buds with every president on the globe... you're probably pretty comfortable.

I imagine that it would take a special sort of job to get our attention. If some random Johnson is looking for someone to do a by-the-book shadowrun, he's probably barking up the wrong tree by gathering a handful of free spirits, and offering them a pittance of what these "genies" could make by going about their usual business, with the world's power-players. When you're a spirit who can create hurricanes (or what have you), powerful people are going to be very nice to you, so that you'll do so for them - or not do so against them.

Again, I don't see any reason we can't pull things back a bit. So, is your new rule that you'd prefer connection and loyalty ratings below 4? What about adjusted connection (for group contacts)? If these are contacts we were supposed to have made in the last five minutes, maybe it makes sense just to disallow them.

Again, I was confused about if we were recently "freed" or recently "banished". If we are newly free, you're right, day job doesn't make a lot of sense (yet). If we've been free for more than... say... a week, and only recently banished from our metaplane, then finding a dayjob would be trivial - most of the things we've talked about doing (gathering cults, becoming famous, or rich) would also be pretty trivial for high force free spirits that can do amazing things that no metahumans can do.


I'll work on adjusting Adsinistrati's character sheet when I get out of work, today, but if you'd prefer not to have evil spirits, it might be worth starting from scratch. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Technically, before you were free, you were a slave to those who summoned you - and vanished when no longer bound to them... so they probably didn't pay you, and you wouldn't have had the free-will to get a job. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

We would be non stock spirits because there are three very broad catagories of spirits: Ally spirits, normal summoned spirits, and spirits that live in the metaplane.

The first two need no description. The third one is what we supposedly are before the start of campaign (Except for the one ally). We were going around enjoying life until for some reason we got banished from our metaplane homes.

So, while enjoying life we made trips to the 'real' world, and during those trips made contacts, amassed stuff, ate pizza, and did whatever. So we've been 'free' for a long time, but only recently have we been barred from our own plane.

This allows us to account for why we have stuff and friends.

As for no day jobs... well first off most places don't see spirits as people and so getting a job would be difficult (Without a very good fake SIN and realisitic form). Also I'd imagine that spirits have much better ways to make money (Their pacts) then flipping burgers for eight hours a day. No spirit is likely to have had a paying day job before they got freed anyway, as a non freed spirit is virtually a slave.

I mean I -can- see a spirit having a day job in much the same way I -can- see a runner having a day job, but both seem unlikely, and a spirit even more unlikely then a normal runner.


Finally, with the global fame, what exactly is she globally famous for?

Edit: Gezz, I guess we all live in the same time zone or something.

Darn, have my character almost completely finished, then I remembered we don't get any free knowledge skills.

I hadn't 100% decided. One option would be as "A free spirit who works for a corporation" ala Buttercup. Another option would be that one of its 10 fake personas (fake SINs) was made globally famous, and the fact that that person is actually a free spirit has yet to come to light.

Really, a spirit with realistic and mutable form (especially one with masking), can pretty much make themselves look like any famous person they want and get the benefit of global fame for a while - but it *was* my intention to have Adsinistrati famous on its own - even if only as the best damned succubi this side of the astral plane (but that doesn't seem like something that makes a good household name, that EVERYONE would recognize).

If we're 5 minutes new to the world, and haven't had time to secure a high paying job, then it wouldn't make any more sense for Adsinistrati to have secured global fame, yet, either.

EST here.

I've been considering the feasibility of doing without them entirely and being a completely blank canvas other than the active skills that it's been designed to perform.

On the subject of Day-job I'm looking at it from a non-fluff perspective. Something you do 10+ hours per week that results in you having a certain amount of resources measured in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to play with.

The secret agent example could have access to some sort of slush fund for operational expenses and to buy stuff for himself that would prevent him being too annoyed about his servitude.

Just built it on the fly in excel, and then imported it into google docs for display. The formulas don't import, so unfortunately I'd need to recreate it in google docs with formula if I wanted to share it. With the PBP games with all the custom build rules it's actually hard to use the standard chargen sheets and programs. I often start the basics in one of those but then have to export it out to refine the build to the specific game options.

It's very expensive fluff power. The ways to make it useful are likely very convoluted.

You could work for a wind-farm.

Dayjob! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)