Emo Samurai's dedicated character page. Options

[Grinder]

In any case it will be AWESOME when he appears! :D :D :D

[NightHaunter]

[emo samurai]

So what WOULD be fair enough?

[NightHaunter]

Not having a pet character.
Maybe having a recurring NPC, as a bad guy or whatever, but not a character.

[James McMurray]

GMPCs can work just fine. Don't let them make any decisions except for roleplaying ones and you're ok. They can't accidentally benefit the party with their OOC knowledge if they never talk during planning sessions or offer tactical advice.

Edit: And don't hesitate to kill him. And make sure all the rules apply to him as much as everyone else, at all times. that means when he's not witht he party and when he's witht hem. If something would normally require a roll, roll it for him, even if it's off screen action.

[emo samurai]

I won't.

[James McMurray]

Won't what? Let him make decisions or make all the rules apply to him?

Have you been rolling drain for all these spirits you have running around? Having a spirit use a power on someone (like mind probe) costs a service. So if we assume that the gangers think about blasting the spirits every time they see one you'll run out of services really fast, which means you'll be doing a lot of summoning every day. And if you're summoning high force spirits you probably won't always be able to heal all the physical drain.

[emo samurai]

I'm having it be possible to heal physical drain. Plus, if I Edge the drain resistance tests, I usually get no drain at all. That's canon SR4, right? And I don't have him overcast for binding spirits of Man.

Plus, I used the focus building rules made up in the SR forum to build him a force 4 power focus. :D I allowed him to build karma at group rate, and had him make orichalcum on the side so that he didn't have to pay karma to bind it. I even had him pay lifestyle with the orichalcum money. The focus building skills are there for a reason.

And no, I won't cash-for-karma his orichalcum money. I have SOME humanity in me. :D

[James McMurray]

Do you let everyone pick and choose from the cheesiest SR3 rules you can find? Will you burn the power focus when SR4 rules come out that preventt hat abuse?

What force are the spirits, and what are you doing about them running out of services incredibly fast because each Mind Probe is a service?

[emo samurai]

They aren't Mind Probing very often; maybe once or twice a day. My dude's given them instructions not to do that very often.

[James McMurray]

How can they effectively be thought police if they aren't allowed to mind probe when their duties call for it?

Are you making the rolls? At some point spirits of man would get tired of being bound by you. Binding isn't soemthing they enjoy, but they'll put up with it every so often. When the spirit burns his edge and gets a lot of successes you could find yourself unconscious and then dead.

[emo samurai]

How long before they start getting pissed?

I once heard it said that bound spirits use one service for multiple uses of a power.

Would three bound spirits wandering around assensing everybody be enough for a 4-block section of the Barrens? I'm assuming the gang's former turf is pretty small. He renews their services daily, and he circulates. Would that be enough?

[-X-]

[James McMurray]

How long before they get angry would depend on their force. Lower force spirits would probably be more servile, where the high ones have a stronger will (because willpower is equal to force). A force 8 spirit would be incredibly strong willed and could do things to try and screw over it's captor. I wouldn't have it happen all the time. Perhaps just when there's a glitch on the summoning test.

It depends entirely on how active and mobile the people in the area are. If there's a lot of hustle and bustle you'd probably need more. If only people generally stick to themselves and the gang mainly hangs out at their homes then that's probably enough.

One thing that could eventually happen, especially if any of the gang members has a spellcasting contact, is that they'll wise up to what's going on. Pretty much every gang has to have access to some sort of magical backup or a rival gang will just summon a force 6 spirit to kill them all.

Once they've talked with a spellcaster and had him come check out the spirits they can start to circumvent them. Being strict about controlling their plans when spirits are around could play with the assensing. In fct, now that I'm thinking about it the assensing might never really work. these guys just all got torched by a spirit. They're probably always angry and afraid when they see a spirit. This would couple with fantasies of blasting the spirit straight to hell.

In any case though, once they get in touch with a spellcaster they'll learn to control their thoughts around spirits. It wouldn't always work, but I'd give them a willpower test opposing the spirit's assensing test. Also, the spellcaster will be able to assense the spirits to determine their force. Once he knows that he can tell the gang what kinds of weapons will work and they can call up their contacts to get them. They gotta buy their guns and ammo from somewhere, so at least one of them knows a fixer or arms merchant.

At that point everything goes to hell. The gang is probably going to be forced to resort to grenades to get enough firepower. That means buildings getting holes in their walls or even collapsing. Bystanders will become collateral damage.

Fear and hate go hand and hand, and eventually the hate will overpower the fear. At that point you'll find yourself in the middle of Beirut.

Check out the sidebar on page 178. I think that creating a small kingdom counts as abuse, and would have those rules kick in after a while.

[emo samurai]

Goddammit...

What if they mostly lurk in astral space when they assense? They can't be that hateful and afraid all the time; it won't be that focused if they can't see the spirits. Character is, after all, defined by what you do when nobody's looking, or when you THINK nobody's looking. And those same rules say that resting bound spirits keeps them from wanting to kill you too badly, so rotation should work.

[NightHaunter]

[James McMurray]

Those are NPCs. There's a subtle difference ni that GMPCs are usually a permanent fixture, like the mage that always goes in with the group as opposed tot he one they hire every few runs when they need it. They both operate on the same principals though: apply all rules evenly to everyone and ensure that the NPC doesn't use OOC knowledge.

[emo samurai]

He won't use OOC knowledge, and when I do play as him, someone else will GM. He has been mostly uninvolved with the more important things so far.

[NightHaunter]

[James McMurray]

Did you create them using the character creation rules, give them full back stories, become a bit attached to them, and plan to run them if someone else GMs? That's what I define as a GMPc. YMMV.

[NightHaunter]

I'm a bit attached to them but i'm perpared to sacrifice them for plot and NO they will not ever be PC's.
NO character of mine ever goes from NPC to PC, although they do go they other way.
They are Luther the Wise, brother of lothan. Tendancy to ramble and "educate" these younsters.
Trinity, Rigger of Air, Water and Land. Never uses Drones.
KrackerJack. Anorexic Hacker. Pistols Fetish. STR: 1 BOD: 1.

[James McMurray]

[-X-]

One great way to slip a particular type of NPC past a group of experience gamers is to pretend to run a GMPC. Players expect a certain level of betrayal from an NPC that they don't from a GMPC, often to the point where they will keep distant from an NPC far longer than might be reasonable. With a GMPC, or more to the point what they think is a GMPC, much of that distance evaporates and they treat it far more like a regular PC.

This can be excellent for a one time horrifying betrayal that will likely turn the GMPC into a villain that players will despise far beyond typical NPC villainy.

Good times.

Otherwise running GMPC's can more dangerous than it's worth, leading to things like monty haul style gaming (Cause you want the toys for your own characters too) or a disparity in rewards that makes your players angry. (This can actually be done on purpose preceding that betrayal I mentioned before so the players already start hating 'your' PC character.)

[NightHaunter]

[emo samurai]

I had an idea for who his fixer is. She'll be a Wuxing corp exec who used to be his sort of girlfriend. When they were kids, they'd sneak out at night where she'd tell stories that she'd made up with her fertile imagination and he'd use illusion magic to animate them. He'd mindlink and generate them real-time. This all changed when she went away to Wuxing and she'd changed into a practical, businesslike woman while he'd grown more fanciful. When he meets her again, he'll talk about how he wanted her to tell him that she'd ridden dragons, taken over the pirate fleet she'd been abducted by, and found a magic lamp only to use the wishes to save the world three times, that she'd lived all those wonderful dreams they had together. That's why she has a loyalty rating of 4 and a connection rating of 6.