Alright, so I came up with an idea for a cool, unique character. He would be a possesion based free spirit summoned by a man who was obsessed with clockwork machines that used nothing but springs, gears, and other mechanical means to move. My character, call him Tinker, would have been summoned fairly soon after magic came back to the world by the guy, call him Gepetto, who found a voodoo book that taught him how to bring dead things to life. Tinker would make a spirit pact with Gepetto to give him eternal youth and possess a clockwork machine made by him. After a few years pass, Tinker learns some tricks of the trade from Gepetto and makes a clockwork body for himself. Gepetto becomes diagnosed with a virulent disease and Tinker enters the shadows to earn money to try and save Gepetto's life.

So, now I need to know, what kind of rules could I use for Tinker's clockwork body. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in any of the books that deals with anything like this, so I'm asking the community here how they would deal with it?

Actually, pg. 87 of Street Magic has some sample vessels, including homunculi of things such as plasteel or stone. Normally, such vessels require artisan tests, enchanting tests, and sometimes a shop (definitely a shop for your concept), so I am not sure how I would require the spirit to "pay" for an enchanted vessel. The Nuyen cost for materials is relatively low; even a plasteel homunculus only costs 2,500 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) times the force of the vessel. Something to work out with your GM, I guess.

The homunculi listed make a good starting point to extrapolate from. A clockwork vessel might have less of a Body, Strength, armor, and damage boost, but not have any penalties to Agility or Reaction, for example. Just off the top of my head, say - Body: F + 3, Strength: F + 3, DV (F +3), Armor (4/4), other Attributes unaffected.

Interesting.

Could you take the Restricted Gear quality to get some additional perks for the Body? Maybe rarer/more expensive materials?

- J.

It has to be made of brass, leather, cloth, and copper (but primarily brass), obviously.

I assume it would also have to be wound up (by the spirit or someone else) and would havea relatively limited runtime. On the flip side, you could probably make different limbs or tools that plug directly into the gears, allowing very neat plug and play technology.

The streets of Seattle were dank with fog...

Hmm, I wonder how a clockwork arm would work?

Thanks for the info Glyph, I didn't know there were golem rules already. Do you think I could get away with modular stats? (Like being able to modify my body for higher Agility or more armor)

I should think the clockwork body wouldn't have to be wound and could run for as long as it was being possesed, considering that spirits can make the moving parts of an inanimate object move, although I think this golem would have a pretty high object resistance based on just how many moving parts there would have to be.

A homunculus does not need a winding mechanism to make it move. The magic of the spirit does so. Your clockwork body would be just as free of the need for a spring to run it. Of course, then would it still be a 'clockwork' mechanism, or would it simply have gears and levers?

One thing you have to remember when coming up with a viable character is: How practical is it?

Shadowrun's setting has all kinda of interesting and wacky character possibilities. But not all of them are suited as runners, at least not in most games. A clockwork man running the shadows? Who'd hire that for any kind of clandestine job, which is what the vast majority of shadowruns are? Heck, even most of the metahuman variants are pushing it, and the only reason the standard metahumans can get away with it in most cases is because they're the norm. There is more than one troll running around, say, Seattle. How many clockwork men? It would be like hiring a well-renowned actor for a shadowrun. Everyone's going to recognize you, you're going to stick out like a sore thumb, and you're going to be painfully easy to trace and track down (including back to your employers). Distinctive Style doesn't even come close to touching how much of a liability such a character would be.

SR4 introduced rules for a bunch of character types that shouldn't be available, especially since they were trying to go for a "street level" vibe. For a niche game, some of them are okay, but overall it's pretty damn unbelievable. And there's some options that are just not viable at all. It sucks, but it's true. You can't have a game focused around stealth and espionage and then expect your elephant-headed troll changelings, clockwork men, or sapient hellhound to fit in just fine and dandy.

This does sound like Karl Ruprecht Kroenen from Hellboy 1 O.o

A clockwork shadowrunner could work, depending on how obvious it is when the character is wearing concealing clothing. If they can't see the gears and hinges, only the face, they will likely assume that the character is either wearing a funky mask, or is a cyberfetishist. Neither of which would stand out that much in the jaded 2070's. I still think character concepts like this work much better in "pink mohawk"-style campaigns, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHXYPKCBdFo...feature=related
come on, you know it to be true!

I don' think it would be so obvious to the casual observer. I could easily get a latex covering that would look similar to a face and skin. Plus, the advantage to being a possession spirit is that I wouldn't be restricted to a single body or face. Sure, it'd be obvious once a fight started that I wasn't excatly human but so long as I don't rip off my clothes and expose my clockwork to the world, I'm pretty sure I could avoid standing out, at least to non-mages.

Both Street Magic and Digital Grimoire talk about the visible signs of possession, and it is suggested that the more powerful the possessing spirit, the more obvious the signs, such as glowing eyes, smoke rising from the vessel, energy aura, etc. It may not be all that easy for a free spirit to be inconspicuous.

Cool idea! I'd love to use this in some form some day, so it will get filed into the "Stuff cool enough for me to rip off!" file!

Kroenen actually allready was ripped off by a german shadowrun novel writer . . sad as it is . .

Even if you include those so called "signs of possession," those could certainly be thematic enough and still come off looking--to a mundane--like odd cyber (possibly even buggy cyber).

Ahh, but you forget Realistic Form. With Realistic Form, this character very well might simply come off as a strange drone.

Yes, with that specific power it could blend in much more easily.