That's a really clever idea. I'd let that fly under the right circumstances. Of course, a medium force spirit isn't stupid. If you tell it to go up and hassle gangers, it knows you're asking it to start a fight (assuming the gangers don't run for their lives from the glowing-eyed, flame-aura'd freak). It would count that as a service. But if you're team-mates were in on the gag and started the fight on your behalf, perhaps you'd get away with it. It would depend on the spirit in my game. If it were a violent sort that wasn't antagonistic to you, then it probably would slap down an attacking ganger without charge. If it weren't that sort of spirit, it might well just wander off to get away from the conflict it wasn't interested in, in which case your back to making demands. Of course this sort of reliance on the spirit's own choices can work both ways. Say some people start hassling you and you don't want the Beast spirit that's possessing you to bite their throats out. Now you've got the opposite problem. Basically, I say all this is good - it's more interesting and it allows players to use their role-playing cleverness to get ahead whilst at the same time offering me as GM the implicit agreement that they're willing to accept spirits as actual people. Exactly what I want.



Heh! Says the mage's player. But the GM just says: "Beware the monsters from the Id", and smiles cryptically.

In other words, the more powerful the thought-form you create from your own mind, the more refined your skill in drawing only those aspects of you that you want to, must be. Example, a Chaos magician who has a penchent for abusing those weaker than himself summons a powerful spirit. Much is his dismay when the spirit casually lashes out at some innocent as they pass without any instruction from him. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Just in case people take the above and think I'm out to punish possession mages, that's not in fact the case. Firstly, I apply interesting personalities to Materialisation spirits just the same. Secondly, I try to be as generous as I can be cruel and to make players aware of how things work in advance. So for example, we had a Beast spirit summoned to take out some guards. It was high enough force that I considered it to have a fair amount of personality. It revelled in the fight, enjoying this world of new smells and tastes and prey so much that it not only spent Edge in the fight to do better, but continued to rampage around the compound wreaking havoc. Now if the players wanted to be stealthy, that's a downside, but as they wanted to make a mess, it was great. The point is that players get a feel for what spirits are like and can roll with this. I don't carry this too far, but my aim in a game is excitement and involvement, and you're short-changing yourself imo if spirits don't have some character.

K.

Without looking at the character but being a huge Friday the 13th fan I'm going to guess that the name is in reference to Kane Hodder - the true Jason.

I don't like this. You're implying that you wont deign to address to me or that I'm not worth addressing. Pretty rude and offensive and then going on to tell them to ignore what I've been saying. I think people can make their own minds up, you'll find.

Two: your steel lynx idea won't fly. Anything possessed becomes dual natured... so even if your spirit is inhabiting some control box in the middle of the drone. That box bolted to the drone can't simply pass through the ward. Even if somehow the spirit locked the joystick forward, unpossessed it, then let the drone go through, the spirits astral form is still stuck on the other side of the ward minus his ride.

Unless it deep astral shortcuts past the barrier.

Sure, in general possession spirits have higher stats and armor when possessing a body than materialization spirits, in exchange they are limited by the body's augmented attribute maximums (I don't care if the possessed creature is a new creature or whatever, it's still possessing the body of a gnome and is limited to a gnome's maximum stats) and again have the chance of failing their possession test and wasting their time (not to mention that if your command to a spirit is "possess that guy" and he fails, he has to wait 24 hours to try again and uses up 1 service no matter what)

Don't go injecting house rules and then saying its a disadvantage of the tradition. The rules for the physical stats of a possessed person are their stats + the spirits stats, with maximum augmented stats being 1.5 times that. Which depending on the person involved can get rather high rather quickly.
(Agility 6 + F6)*1.5 = 18... so if you can cast and augment attribute spell and get 6 successes... you're going to be quite the monster.

What are you talking about "house rule?" A spirit augments the possessed person's attributes by its force.

Get over yourself knasser. Your ego is a little too fragile and overinflated if that's what you think.

It could find its summoner that way, because the summoner on the inside could call it. Could it find a steel box the same way?

No it does not. This is the crux of the matter. The new entity replaces the original entity, stats and all. The possessed entity is explicitly stated to be a new entity. The FAQ reiterates that augmented maximums are irrelevant (not because the book says otherwise, but because some don't believe what it says). Published examples of possessed people show physical stats in excess of the vessel's augmented maximums (there are two such examples in Ghost Cartels, which I referenced earlier). The developers themselves have said so here on the forums. Possession doesn't provide a boost to someone's stats. It creates a new dual entity with different stats. Mental stats are explicity stated to be replaced by the spirit's also. If a troll were possessed by a Force 9 spirit, would you say that it would not have Logic 9? If you do argue that then you are in contradicting what the rules state. If you don't, then you've accepted that stats can be replaced with ones in excess of the vessel's augmented maximums. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

We're in agreement that Possession isn't some game-breaking monster, but on this point, I have to say that augmented maximums of the vessel don't have any bearing on the newly created dual entity.

You're going to have to come up with something a bit more substantial than examples from modules and a discredited, out of date FAQ to satisfy me about this topic. I might accept a link to a forum topic in which a developer specifically stated that he supported you're interpretation of the Possession rules. Until then, there is absolutely no argument you can make that will make me accept that a pixie possessed with a force 5 spirit can suddenly have a body of 7. Such an interpretation is entirely unbalancing.

You're going to have to come up with something a bit more substantial than examples from modules and a discredited, out of date FAQ to satisfy me about this topic. I might accept a link to a forum topic in which a developer specifically stated that he supported you're interpretation of the Possession rules. Until then, there is absolutely no argument you can make that will make me accept that a pixie possessed with a force 5 spirit can suddenly have a body of 7. Such an interpretation is entirely unbalancing.

I don't care about whether or not it's magic, it's not conducive to game balance and as far as I can tell from the possession rules in Street Magic is not what the developers intended.

I might accept a link to a forum topic in which a developer specifically stated that he supported you're interpretation of the Possession rules. Until then, there is absolutely no argument you can make that will make me accept that a pixie possessed with a force 5 spirit can suddenly have a body of 7. Such an interpretation is entirely unbalancing.

Mordinvan:
A ward cannot be bypassed by using the astral path, UNLESS one of two things has happened.

The summoner is already INSIDE the ward and expends a service to call the spirit to him inside.
The spirit has already been inside the ward. (very unlikely if you're trying to sneak through a hostile ward)

So, no that doesn't work.

And if the summoner is already inside the ward... then putting the spirit inside a control box is kinda pointless, as the summoner could just order the un-possessed drone to chug through the ward anyhow and use the service to bring the spirit through.

Possessed beings are nigh unkillable monsters that can tear cars in half and wear them as gloves.

As much as I hate to say it, after looking over the FAQ I must admit that your interpretation does seem to be correct. I am forced to admit that by RAW possession traditions are broken and unplayable in the interests of game balance. A possession spirit is always superior to a materialization spirit and a summoner mage can easily get all of his physical attributes up to 10 or higher no matter what his race is, and a min/maxed troll mage can get a strength above 20 with little trouble. Possessed beings are nigh unkillable monsters that can tear cars in half and wear them as gloves.

Unless of course, you use Direct magic, Banishing, Mana Static, gas/elemental attacks, target any allergies they may have or use weapon foci, in which case they are a fancy materialized spirit with boosted stats. Basically, how overpowered possession spirits are is directly contingent on how thoroughly you have nerfed things a lot of the other stuff people worry about as being overpowered. Irony kills.

Sure, its possible to kill possession spirits, but it's significantly harder than killing materialization spirits.

Yes, exactly, they are fancy materialized spirits with boosted stats, superior in every way to materialized spirits.