Disrupted. It's hard to kill a spirit.

I'm another player in the campaign pbangarth is talking about and I was just perusing the thread out of interest when I saw the huge boost that karmagen would give the character. Just for fun I built my own character with karmagen and ended up with another 180 karma. Maybe we should talk to the GM about karmagen (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Yeah, yeah.

Well starting off by paying 1/2 price for the race really helps (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I bet this Free Spirit PC would be much more powerful if he only had to spend 125BP on the race too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

your lack of soak and dodge dice do not reflect this. You'll get creamed by any narrow autofire (anyone would, but you lack dodge dice), SnS ammo is still the bane of all things, your combination of lack of dodge and soak dice result in APDS being fairly lethal to you as well. If an enemy mage can figure out youre low body, he can power bolt you as well.

Also, youre absolutely FOOKED if youre in the blast radius of a grenade.

Immunity to Normal Weapons is a quality most groups deal with on a daily basis. Common tricks my group uses to deal with it are listed above as dangers to you. My group uses them all (whoever gets to go first gets to use their trick) to great effect. Spirits and mages are #1 priority targets for us, so they never last til the end of the pass, much less the end of the round.

As I say, judicious use of her abilities are in order. Attempting to be a 'bullet magnet' in the presence of a gauss rifle is insane. Avoiding combat is paramount for this character. If it is unavoidable, then use of Edge is the saving grace. I should like to point out that autofire modifiers to DV do not count for comparison to modified armor value (SR4A p. 150). In other words, there are many circumstances (and determining whether the current circumstances apply as such is my job) in which she can get away with it.

Spirits and mages you can actually determine as such may not last till the end of the pass/round in your games. This PC appears mundane to the mundane perception and even to intense astral scrutiny. Whereas she can tell the other side's mage no problem, unless he too has serious Masking. In fact, in many instances (again, ones I can manipulate to her advantage) she won't even look like a target. That grating on the wall (or spider) down by the floor will still be able to cast a stunbolt, and noone will know where it comes from without some serious, detailed checking. In the middle of combat. If the mage is trying to find her, he is not blasting her teammates. How does a mage figure out a low BOD score, exactly? And if this actually can be done, is it happening instead of an attack on the Free Spirit's side?

Yup, a grenade in an enclosed space will blow her up. It will blow anyone up. In open terrain, a high explosive grenade is the most dangerous to one like her, yet even if she fails to dodge at all, and it lands at her feet (or head with an airburst link), the 10P/-2AP does not penetrate her ItNW.

SnS is a problem. Will the opposition routinely use that expensive ammunition on all targets, especially those that look mundane? I don't know.

As far as soak dice, she would have 12 Hardened armor + 6 worn armor (maybe more if she has FF, maybe less if she just materialized as a chair or something) + 3 BOD - AP -AP (because both the worn armor and the hardened armor are reduced by AP) = 21 - 2AP. That may not be a troll tank, but it isn't shabby.

So, upshot: Is she invulnerable? Hell, no. Is she automatically dead at the first encounter? Hell, no, again.

Definitely not, AP only applies once.
Not once for every armor.

I'm going by what I gleaned from a thread a while back discussing AP and ItNW. If the GM only wants to count AP once in this situation, that's fine with me.

I think that AP should only be counted once, UNLESS the AP was > the Armor Rating.

if I have -5AP and you're wearing 3 Ballistic armor on top of 4 other points of armor. Then the -5AP obliterates your 3 ballistic armor and still carries 2 points over, lowering your other armor by 2.

umm. you count the armors together first and then ably the AP, so no AP carry over.

Our group is also exploring karmagen, and suggested I make up the Free Spirit PC I built above using those rules, as modified by Ancient History's original ideas posted HERE. The primary point is that the BP cost for character type is paid as a karma cost here. So 250 karma points out of the 750 are used for Free Spirit type. This sort of parallels the idea posted earlier for spending 125 BP for the type.

I kept the EDG high because I like it, and because I wanted her Aura Masking power to be as good as it can be. I realize that that one decision kept the Physical and Mental Attributes down by about 1 point across the board. Remember this game will be in L.A. and the team will be loosely associated with a gang called H.O.D.

Here's the karmagen version:


EDIT: 5 Oct 2010 - fixed Knowledge Skills

I like this one a lot more than the BP version. He's a lot less gimped, and MIGHT be able to hold his own versus a summoned spirit.

If you got rid of one of your spells, got rid of your gear, and maybe lowered a skill or two (EDIT: and willpower) by one, would you have enough spare karma to initiate and get another Force and edge point?

DIE? you need some one to banish you permanently at most you just have to sit it out for a while.

Can't initiate at chargen unless GM says so. And karma doesn't carry over to ingame.

While true, most GM's that use karmagen allow it from what I've seen, it just should be something that gets approval before the math is set down on paper.

Unless GM says so.



RC pg. 44.

True. In my experience, to initiate at chargen with karmagen is generally allowed, however, and from how I understand RC. p. 43, it is the expected default, barring blatant problems.

OK, OK! Not "die" but disrupt. Hobnail boot tracks up and down my back already. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Our GM is not allowing initiation at chargen. I thought of keeping 5 karma back as the system allows, so that inititation could come sooner if I wanted it to.

I edited the Free Spirit's STATS in post #36 to fix the Knowledge Skills entries.. I had too many. So this PC has been accepted by the other players and the GM to play in the L.A. campaign we are starting here at home.

I said to the GM last night that I would have fun with this PC, and probably try to milk her abilities to the max, pulling every creative stunt and interpretation I could. Poor bugger... he said he was fine with that!

So, here's the first question:

This PC has both Realistic Form and Mutable Form. Under the description of Realistic Form in SM, p. 102, it says that the spirit can emulate a toaster and actually be plugged into the wall and toast bread. This means that the spirit can plug itself into the electrical system, have deadly current run through it, heat part of itself up to hundreds of degrees Celcius... and take no damage. This would appear to indicate that the spirit can somehow make at least part of itself immune to electrical and/or fire damage.

So, can a spirit that also has Mutable Form as well create some kind of 'inverted toaster' out of itself that has the immune bits on the outside, and walk through the electrical storm or firewall the opposing mage has set up? (Let's ignore for now the ability to go astral and rematerialize.)

Here's the second question:

With Mutable Form, the spirit can take any shape it wants to. Size does not appear to be a problem. So, it should be able to take the form of a fly, for example. A fly with ItNW of 12. (The fly put a hole in the fly swatter?!?) The PC also has Aura Masking, which with the spirit's current Magic, INT and EDG gives it a pool of 16 to overcome scrying eyes. To all but the most magically discerning eyes, therefore, this is a normal fly. One that should be able to pass right by guards of all sorts, both mundane and magical, metahuman and spirit. And in fact sit on the ceiling above the guards and stunbolt them one by one as they try to figure out where the spells are coming from. And if an astute guard decides that fly is a danger, he could try to shoot it. Shooting a fly off the ceiling would have an interesting modifier.

Am I missing something here?

Only works if you keep the spell force really slow, casting of a force 5 spell is a threshold of 1 to notic and force six is threshold 0.

So just multicast low force spells. It's equal more or less you take less drain and is harder to spot.

Yes, I see where this 'noticing' is different from the detection of auras that is covered by the Extended Masking effect of Aura Masking. So multiple low levels spells would be one way to circumvent that 'noticing'. Alternatively, sitting behind the guards while they are looking/shooting at her teammates would be another way. Of course, she would want to be out of any area of effect of allied indirect spells, wouldn't she? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I think the power's function is to make whatever form the spirit takes more realistic, and thus able to imitate some of the imitated object's functions. A spirit toaster can be plugged in and make toast, as you said, and a car spirit can drive around on its own (though it can't use the Grid). So yes, a toaster spirit is immune to electric power and heat insofar as it is appropriate for its functionality as a toaster. But when the amount of electricity and heat it's trying to resist is not appropriate for a toaster (like in a fire, for example) then being a toaster can't really help you. SO if you want to go through an electrical storm or fire wall unharmed, turn yourself into a highly non-conductive or fire-proof piece of armor or something. Resisting those conditions is within the function and purpose of those things.

The downsides to this, if I understand correctly, are that your character may not necessarily know what to turn into in that situation for your idea to work, being a very young ignorant spirit without a human's "common sense," and that you couldn't walk through the fiery storm of whatever yourself. I'm not aware of anything fireproof or non-conductive that can walk on its own, though I may of course be mistaken. You could have your teammates throw you through as a sentient rubber frisbee or something, I suppose...

LOL free sprites can always fly at there speed form interdependent. It's magic you see. Also though tbh a better thing to do would e just to go astral and bypass it that way. As it would be quicker thna invers tostering your self as well to change from you need to go astara then rematrialize. so you might was well go astral move and emtrailiaze on the other side.