Free Spirit Character, Including Questions Options

[d1ng0d0g]

[ Spoiler ]

The sky was dark with clouds and the soft rustling of rain tapped against the rooftops and the streets. Above him a streetlight hummed and occasionally flickered and around him on the floor the wind swept around paper and debris. Bogart had always loved the rain, and he was smiling. From the cigarette between his fingers smoke curled up, and his long leather duster was soaked. But where a normal man would be inconvenienced, he had no such problems. He did feel the cold and the wetness. But these things did not bother him at all. He pulled at his fedora and sighed a little. They were late.

He had tailed the corporate goons to this abandoned warehouse, only to find a ward he could not penetrate and that annoyed him quite a bit. Bogart had tirelessly pursued any targets that first his friend ... and master had called him to do, and then later on he started working for himself. He had been in this business for quite some time, and only recently he had hooked up with some new runners. Young ones, but they would do.

A blurb that came to my mind when I was thinking about a new character to play for a campaign.

But when I tried to work up this free spirit magical gumshoe and started to look at the rules for them I realized that they confuse me quite a bit.

Now I get the part about how to Force restricts the maximum rating any attribute can have. (Using the BP system), and that I pay 250 BP for at the same time lots and very little.

But the confusing part goes, what happens when I get more Karma and decide to raise my force ?

Do I pay 10x the new Force rating and get a +1 on all my attributes ? Provided of course that I have a high enough initiation grade.

****

I see two options here, both of which actually do make kinda sense.

Option 1) A PC Free Spirit (as made by the rules in the Runner Companion and Streetmagic) actually starts with an effective -X on most attributes, with Force being the maximum during character creation. As soon as he starts getting Karma, he switches to the regular rules, and each increase in force automatically increases all his attributes. (But still restricts it to Force as a maximum). This basically boils down to a spirit whose attributes are slightly less powerful than most other spirits, yet whose magical nature is much stronger. He can also improve his attributes separately, raising them to a maximum of Force.

Option 2) A PC Free spirit is really screwed and has to really learn up every single trait with karma. Seperately.


My personal opinion is that the new Force x 10 might be a bit cheap (although it is still double the cost, requires initiation (which also costs).

I will run the numbers in a next post .... but my question basically is ... how to make this concept viable ? (If at all)