Ok would this Background be too outlandish? Even f, Time to make a fool out of myself (<_<); Options

[Warmaster Lah]

This is going to sound bad, maybe, but hear me out first.

Ok I had this idea when someone as talking about a Metaplanar journey. Here goes

Lets say this Shaman goes on an astral quest (True Name, Initiation, etc.) but ends up getting lost out in the planes. He never comes back.

Now lets say a Mr. Shedim (or Freespirit, though I’d prefer a Shedim) wanders by sees a nice empty shell, he inhabits the Body. And well who knows something special happens to mess it up. So now we have a half amnesiac, slightly alien to the mortal world, Shedim Magical user, thinkng he is a human but still far from having it down. Would I be able to use that as a Player Character?

On the conditions:

- I just want the Shedim background for my spell slinger or adept.
- No Shedim Powers what so ever.
- I would like to not have to worry about being dispelled (Ok maybe that’s a valid flaw.)

So could I get way with it?

This is probably ridiculous. I haven’t even looked at the rules on Shedim for a long time, cant even remember what they need for sustenance. His aura wouldn’t even be right would it even. Sheesh would I even be able to RP such a freaky character? Even though it might be fun. I guess I’ll save it for fanfiction then.

-

Also a more serious question. Now when the spirit/astral form of a Mage leaves his body. His consciousness I guess. Is it still possible to retrieve memories from that brain? Technically the info is still in the wetware right? Would a mind read spell work on an empty shell?

[eidolon]

It sounds awesome to me. I'm not totally up on the Shedim rules at the moment (been a while and no books with me), but I love characters with backgrounds beyond the old "I needed money and so I became a shadowrunner".

I don't think it's too out there, especially since you're not asking for all of the powers and stuff. As far as the "don't want to be dispelled" thing, I'm sure you can get with your GM and work out a feasible "why I can't be dispelled" story and make it fit. Stuff like that makes games awesome. :D

[Bodak]

I don't know about Shedim, but a Freespirit would not be able to posess the shell - it would need to defeat the shaman in astral combat before it could posess him, and it can't do that because the shell is just a pile of meat on the couch while the shaman's astral form is gone walkabout.

Since you've had the shaman get lost on a metaplane, the body loses no essence, and so wouldn't die (as opposed to if the shaman had got trapped by wards on the astral plane, the body would die after <essence> hours).

If the shaman was trying an astral quest on his own (it's always better to go with a group) then he might have rigged his body up to some kind of automated healing housebot (or a docwagon platinum stabilization unit deluxe if he has the money). The reason he'd do so is that if he were killed in the metaplane he'd be disrupted back to his body which would be dying, unconscious and able to do anything about it. Lying in a doc unit, he could program it to heal him every time his condition got worse than a moderate wound, or a serious wound, or whatever. Maybe he had the gremlins flaw. Maybe he went off on his quest and everything was fine until he took his first wound; then the doc unit healed him, malfunctioned and healed him again, malfunctioned and healed him again, etc. Each heal performed on a questing character by a non-questing character increases the quest rating by 1, which increases the duration of the quest accordingly. (Some astral quests last days proportional to quest rating, rather than hours as is usually the case.) So that bit is workable, at least.

As for whether you can cast mana spells on an inert body, the way I play it is no. Sure, the body is still alive, but only in the same way that a cactus or a mushroom is. It isn't currently inhabited by a mind so there is no mind for mindprobe to probe. See this thread for more of that.

I think it would be a challenging character to play. You'd be permanently dual natured so you'd face the same problems ghouls and shifters do. And if you were to astrally project or go to another metaplane, you might worry that someone else had nicked off with your body while you were out.

Would you try and doppleganger the original body's owner's house, car, credsticks, wife, job, reputation, contacts? The cover of being amnesiac would help there unless they took you to an awakened doctor who wanted to assence you to see if your aura was damaged... unless you had masking?

[eidolon]

[Wounded Ronin]

It all depends on the GM. I can think of some GMs who would love that background and run with it and I can think of some who would mail you a postcard with one word on it: "no"

[Lindt]

I for one, dont see it as too broken. Im sure we would have to go over some hashing out, but I think Id allow it. Its a pretty cool idea, lots of RPing to go with. I mean is the spirit or what ever all "Hey WOW the real world la la la"? Tons of coolness could occure.

[hyzmarca]

It isn't totally without precident, like when Dunkie's amnesiac spirit merged with that cyberzombie.

Of course, that was the ghost (or Ancestor Spirit) of a Great Dragon who commited suicide as part of a gigantic blood magic ritual and a cyberzombie in a novel series that has the dubious distinction of both closing the Enemy metaplot and giving us a taste of Ms. Davier's brown nipples.

Sicne it is just background there shouldn't be any problems. The problems come if you start using the karma drain power.

[Critias]

Just remember -- folks that make that Assensing test against you probably won't want to give you a hug, y'know?

[Ophis]

In SR4 any spirit with possession can take over a corpse, it's what Zombies are, most don't because they get a rotting body. Some Shedim IRC get aura masking which would help with that hug issue.

[Dog]

As long as it's not a ploy to get some bonuses, go for it.

Once I GMed for a player who wanted to play an IE with some kind of suspended animation thing in his background who would be all confused and mythical acting in modern times. (We'd never played Earthdawn, so it wasn't much of an influence.) We were about three sessions in when he started trying to use his IE contacts and 4th world knowledge to get a leg up. I warned him. Once.

That guy sucked. I think he's in Egypt now.

[Ryu]

The feasibility of this char concept depends on the amount of magic users you meet - masking on working level is an absolute must-have. You´ll also want to talk to the other players before. Most chars would make killing the shedim top priority, as should be the norm for armed combat specialists facing an awakened threat.

[ShieldT]

Okay, I've had this idea for a while.

There's this very nice guy who starts having migraine headaches and hallucinations. He's really popular and charismatic and all his friends start worrying about him. They do some research and find out he's been possesed by a Free Spirit since he was about fourteen.

The guy really gets worried because the attacks are getting worse, so they do a ritual to force the Free Spirit out of him and into a cat.

Success, right? Except it turns out the Free Spirit was the guy's main personality and the attacks were the body's latent personality trying to fight its way to the surface. The Free Spirit didn't have its own memories from before the possession, so it had no idea.

Without the Free Spirit influencing the guy's actions, it turns out that he's a complete asshole with a serious mean streak, so all his friends dump him and start hanging out with the cat. :D

[Serial_Peacemake...]

Personally I would see if you would be okay with a Shaman that just spent WAY too long on some other metaplane. I mean I would imagine that alone could make you a complete, and utter weirdy. Maybe that is just because I like keeping Shedim horrible unholy evils.

[Luddite]

Mechanically that'd be pretty unobjectionable, just take Amnesiac (as you've already stated), Dual Natured (use the point value from YotC) and build the rest of the character as normal for a Shaman of his race. A nice GM will allow you some way to mask your aura, either the critter power or through initiation with your chargen spell points.

The background is outlandish, but not necessarily disruptive. In fact, so long as your semi-human is attempting to just fit in and seem as much like his "host" as possible, I imagine the background could remain virtually unimportant until the GM feels like dealing with it.

[Ravor]

Well as a disclaimer, I'm one of those DMs who would send back the one-word Postcard that Wounded Ronin mentioned above, but I'd second the idea Serial_Peacemaker brought up a few posts up about being a normal Shaman who has spent too much time in the Metaplanes...

And if you wanted to keep the wierd and slightly outlandish flavor, then take Dual Natured and Amnesiac like Luddite mentioned, and explain them as something wierd that happened to the Shaman while in the Metaplanes.