Ally spirits, So what did you do with them? Options

[Dawnshadow]

Minimize Ally Spirit costs:
Give the ally spirit every skill you ever intend to when you create it.
Give the ally spirit spells at the highest force you ever intend to when you give them to it the first time.
Force as close to the goal of physical stats as possible at creation.
Do as much sorcery and mental attribute training as possible before conjuring the ally.

No, they can't earn karma.

[emo samurai]

Oh... that's what people would do anyway if they were smart min-maxers.

[Dawnshadow]

Oh.. you mean you wanted something like initiation ordeals, on something that can be an ordeal?

No. The only cost reduction for ally spirits is by building them with cost control in mind. You can't just throw one together and go through an astral quest (anything else) to reduce the cost.

[Arkelias]

Ally spirits can't, but Free spirits can. If you want the ally to get stronger on their own...just free them =)

[Straight Razor]

ok questions.

1. can you give you ally meta magics? possession would be great. have him jump in you meat body when you out.

2. i thought allys automaticaly counted as power foci. There for you didn't actualy "lose" the magic rateing, unless the ally goes free, or what-not.

[Crusher Bob]

In SR3, there are two ways to summon an ally:

The good way:

As part of an initiation ordeal, you don't lose your magic point, your initiation costs less, and your ally is supposed to be 'more loyal'. The ally just has a minimum cost of the karma you paid for the initation (~15 karma, which is usually nothing when it comes to ally costs)

The bad way:
Just summon your ally anytime, and lose 1 point of magic. You can get your point of magic back if your destroy your ally, though then you lose all the karma involved in summoning it.

Allies can act as power foci, but they are typically much more expensive (in karma, not Y) than getting a power focus of the same rating. However, as you'll notice, many of the cool uses of allies require them to be elsewhere, thus you couldn't use them as a power focus at those times.

Allies don't get metamagic. You can bind them into a hamonculous, which is a bit like possession, but the ally loses a lot of its powers (3d movement, materialization, etc) so I don't think it's a worthwile trade off.

[hyzmarca]

Ally Spirit abuse 101.

Step 1: Create a basic force 1 ally spirit with no extra abilities whatsoever.
Step 2: Look in the mirror and cast a deadly Stunbolt at yourself. If you cannot cast Stunbolt then simply ram a wall with your head or strangle yourself untill you pass out.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 untill the ally goes free
Step 4: Quest for its True Name and bind it
Step 5: Initiate and repeat until you have one with the Wealth power.
Step 6: Buy a AAA Megacorp with your unlimited funds.

Actually, it works best with Zombies since you don't have to invest a point of magic in them.

[Crusher Bob]

Bah, if you want unlimited money, then enchanting is much easier, and requires no hitting yourself on the head.

[fistandantilus4....]

One of my favorite uses for my ally was to teach it the rotor craft and vector thrust skills as well as gunnery (expensive but worth it). When we occassionally took to long on a run and the scary heavy response teams were showing up, after the teams dropped, he'd materialize inside the vehicle, scrag the rigger, and take control (assuming there are normal controls) and of the vehilce and turn it on the assault team. Good for buying time.

Also handy to give them spells that you'd like cast in a pinch, like barrier, armor, and heal of course, as well as a sterilize , in case you don't have the time to 'clean' a crime scene on your own.

[Kremlin KOA]

Screw that

step 1: Summon force 1 spirit of man (City spirit or hearth recommended for street savvy)
Step 2: Say 'You are Free'
Step 3 watch as spirit gets a force (TN4) test to become a free spirit instead of going home
Step 4: Rinse and repeat steps 1-3 until you get one with the wealth power
Step 5: Quest for true name and bind
Step 6: Feed it karma using the ritual for half price (You will succeed, it is force 1)
Step 7: Get it to feed the karma back to you (Karmic Arbitrage)
Step 8: Rinse and repeat steps 6-7 until you have more karma than Lofwyr
Step 9: gift a third of that karma to the spirit using the half price trick. You each end up with roughly 2/3 of the amount of karma you created
Step 10: initiate, a lot
Step 11: Watch as spirit grows but is still your bitch
Step 12: Make sure spirit uses Karma to learn the cybersurgery skillset to ridiculous levels
Step 13: Abuse the 0 essence Cyberware trick in M&M your spirit can do it and give you all the cyber you could ever want, along with all the bio you can imagine all for 0 essence or bio index
Step 14: use the Wealth power of the spirit to fund step 13, then to fund a corporate takeover
Step 15: get your spirit buddy to learn the Hidden life power and make sure he is force 75
step 16: Become his Phylactry, be immortal, tougher than Ghostwalker, and Able to take Vergigorm in single combat


Minor note, you want a 'Player' or 'Anima' type spirit for this trick

[fistandantilus4....]

one little 'iffy' spot. It does state the in 'Hidden Life' , the spirit has control of the 'receptacle', mentioned in the case of the receptacle being a living creature. So yeah, the ball gag goes in the other mouth now.

[Kremlin KOA]

turn the page
a metahuman receptacle is not controlled
and order that spirit to always increase force when increasing spirit energy

[fistandantilus4....]

I'll turn the page when I get home, that's what I recalled from looking it up previosuly. But hey, if you're right, I know a player at my games that's going to be much happier.

Since you seem to have the book handy, how much karma does it take to increase a force rating for a free spirit? IIRC, it's 3x the new rating plus a point of spirit energy which is also rather expensive I believe. DOesn't seem a very effective way to bring a character along, dumping all of his karma in to a spirit. Personally, if I was running the spirit, I'd wait until it was good an beefy, then hire some runners to off the weak mage.

[emo samurai]

So why wouldn't you summon an ally spirit while initiating? I don't understand.

[Crusher Bob]

Summoning an ally without intiating is rather like reading F.A.T.A.L, your time could more productively be spent hitting your nutsack with a tackhammer.

[emo samurai]

Could you link to F.A.T.A.L.? Google doesn't recognize periods.

[Kremlin KOA]

ya got the karma right but ya missed my infinite karma loop
what weak mage

the karma the spirit gives me adds to karma pool
what I give it at half price also adds to karma pool
so not only do I have thousands of karma, but because I swapped most of that back and forth dozens of times I have a 4 digit karma pool

[fistandantilus4....]

Nothing personal, but I'd kill you on principal.

Got a reference for reverse karma donation BTW?

[Kremlin KOA]

yeah but not sure where to get my hands on it, was a run where a free spirit was the j

kill me?
Um that is excessive, and I would take it personal... killing the character is understandabe tho

[Crusher Bob]

Get your tackhammer ready

[hyzmarca]

I'm pretty sure that the familiar ordeal can only be taken once, limiting you to a single free ally.

[fistandantilus4....]

sorry, not you, defintely your character though. :D At least a stern warning first. Really I just wouldn't allow that, but a character that tried that is going to try all other sorts of loop holes on for size. That just bugs.

hyz: the book suggests that repeating ordeals is up to the GM's discretion. I usually allow players to repeat an ordeal only after they have completed all of the other, excluding geas. So it's usually pretty rare to get two ally spirits this way in my games.

[Kremlin KOA]

funny I would as GM just walk over ot the player, watch them spend all the karma and beef themselves up

then take out my pen and write NPC on the sheet

[fistandantilus4....]

:rotfl:

[Dranem]