 Insect Spirit Confusion, How do they work |
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 Dec 2 2007, 09:33 AM
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#1
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 393 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Texarkana, TX Member No.: 8,097  |
Okay so I've got Street Magic and am planning on sending my players up against a Roach Hive in the NYC Sewers. However, the rules concurning Insect Spirits confuse me, so I've got some questions.
Three kinds: Flesh form - The Hybrid Form, part man, part roach. Has stats equal to base characters stats plus force? Does not have immunity to natural weapons or the other spirit powers besides natural weapon I would assume and the roaches natural +2 to damage resist. Dual natured. True Form - Giant Roach form. Has stats as listed in the book for a spirit of its type and force. All powers listed in book, including immunity to natural weapons. Dual Natured, but cannot astrally project or um un-manifest? Good Merge - Person with insect spirit manifested inside. Not sure what stats should be, or what powers it has. Not necessarily dual natured and can astrally project? Basicaly, do I have this stuff right? It also seems to me that none of them are vulnerable to evanescence since they are bound in human forms, and only the true form can be banished. Is this right or am I crazy? Lastly, and advice in running these? My players are going in their cold but probably pretty well armed. I wanted to challenge them pretty severely, but not scare them so bad they head for the hills. My current plan was to throw several hybrid forms at them first, then one or two true forms as they get deeper in, then finally the shaman plus one or two true forms as back-up. No queen this time around. A good merge mantid spirit may also show up, but primarily only as an NPC. |
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Dec 2 2007, 10:12 AM
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#2
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Prime Runner Group: Banned Posts: 3,732 Joined: 1-September 05 From: Prague, Czech Republic Member No.: 7,665 |
That's nearly the 3rd edition nomenclature. The Flesh Form are the people with bug spirits in them. They keep their memories and have aura masking. The Hybrid Form are the human/bug things. The True Form looks just like a big bug and it acts just like a materializing spirit - it can near teleport through the astral and materialize elsewhere.
Banishing insect spirits reduces the "services owed" and if you eliminate all of them you can take control of them with Summoning. If you don't take control of them, then banishing is essentially completely worthless as they don't vanish or anything. Try manabolts instead. And no, they aren't actually limited by evanescence in any way. I have no idea why Evanescence is listed as a weakness when it is in all ways better than not having it. If you don't bind the spirit it gets weaker in 24 hours instead of getting destroyed outright when the sun sets. Also, they are resistant to aura reading. There's seriously no downside.
Spirits are offensively anemic, but incredibly hard to get rid of. They make decently scary boss monsters because they have huge piles of dodge and counterspelling dice, but they don't usually TPK because they usually don't use guns and they don't really have a good anti-PC weapon of any kind.
-Frank |
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Dec 2 2007, 11:05 AM
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#3
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 393 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Texarkana, TX Member No.: 8,097 |
Thanks for the quick reply. So my assumptions on there stats/power for the different forms are correct, except that the True Form spirits can manafest/go astral just like a normal spirit? That the part I'm really not clear on. Its not obvious to me which forms get which stats. Especialy for the good merger (keeps all its old stats maybe?) and the Hybrid (which I'm assuming has old stats+force). I'm also unsure which one have and don't have immunity to natural weapons.
Ah thats right I forgot the summoning/banishing mechanic changed in 4th edition, so there is little point in trying to banish a insect spirit, who has unlimited services as I understand it, and so is not vunerable to banishing. Hmm... maybe that mechanic should be played around with in this case, seems logical that it should be possible to banish a true form spirit at least. Can't recall if this could be done in 3rd edition or not.... |
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Dec 2 2007, 11:29 AM
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#4
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Prime Runner Group: Banned Posts: 3,732 Joined: 1-September 05 From: Prague, Czech Republic Member No.: 7,665 |
Pretty much yeah.
True Forms get the stats on page 152 when materialized. Hybrids and Flesh Forms get the physical stats of the host plus the Force of the spirit - like a possession spirit. True Forms run around on the astral and materialize whenever they want, Hybrids and Fleshforms are dual natured and have to physically walk anywhere they want to go.
Insect Spirits actually have a number of services, they just don't spend any of them to do things under normal circumstances. But you can still call upon them for magical services just like any other spirit - and you can still banish their services away if you want to try to take control of them. Banishing in 4th edition really only serves one purpose: taking control of the spirits of other magicians in order to get access to powers that spirits in your tradition don't normally have. If you aren't doing something crazy like that with Banishing, you probably shouldn't even have the skill. -Frank |
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Dec 2 2007, 10:44 PM
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#5
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 393 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Texarkana, TX Member No.: 8,097 |
Hmm all good. Its becoming clearer to me now. Apparently they did away with potency (or whatever the mechanic was for increasing an insect Shaman's force) in 4th as well. Thats okay though because as GM I really don't feel the need for any mechanic to justify my saying 'he's a powerful insect shaman and has a higher magic rating.'
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Dec 2 2007, 11:30 PM
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#6
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,883 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,386 |
"Usually" is the all-important qualifier in this case. Frank's talking about Joe Spirit here, not grenade launcher toting Guardian or Soldier Spirits w/ the Heavy Weapons skills as an optional power and he's definitely not talking about high Force Man and Queen Spirits who bust out Mob Control. This post has been edited by Whipstitch: Dec 2 2007, 11:38 PM |
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Dec 4 2007, 06:26 AM
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#7
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 393 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Texarkana, TX Member No.: 8,097 |
Well I ran some inspect spirits tonight, and I thought they were pretty good opposition. The hybrid form spirits were actually fairly good as some cannon fodder. The Roach spirits were tough enough to hang around a couple rounds, and strong enough to were them down a bit.
The true form spirits were very nasty. In fact a bit to nasty. I went ahead and ignored there immunity to normal weapons power or otherwise my players would have had a very hard time hurting them with anything. As it was the proved considerably challenging. I also probably overestimated them and should have sent only 1 not 2 force 5 soldier roach spirits at them plus a fairly powerful roach mage. |
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Dec 4 2007, 06:59 AM
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#8
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,269 Joined: 18-September 06 Member No.: 9,421 |
Dude, all spirits, possessed people, and inhabited forms have Immunity to Normal Weapons. Do not bring pistols to a spirit fight. Hell, for higher force spirits don't bring machine guns(stupid burst fire not adding to check for armor penetration). Need a mage, an adept with a weapon focus or something.
Chris |
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Dec 4 2007, 09:17 AM
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#9
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,288 Joined: 4-September 06 From: The Scandinavian Federation Member No.: 9,300 |
They couldn't punch through 10 hardened armor? What kind of runners are these? An ares predator with EX-EX or APDS should be taking these out fairly easily, not to mention heavier guns. Unless you're playing with sone house rules I don't know about. But yeah, great as cannon fodder. When my team encountered 3-4 flesh for force 5 ant spirits the mage actually came into his own right while the gunslingers were only partially effective. |
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Dec 4 2007, 06:47 PM
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#10
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 393 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Texarkana, TX Member No.: 8,097 |
Really? I was under the impression that hybrid forms did not possess Immunity to Normal Weapons. But the rules on this do seem confusing to me. In any case my players can hardly be blamed for not having heavy enough for this bug hunt as: A. They really don't have terribly heavy weapons and B. They didn't know they were going on a bug hunt. Well not untill it was to late :evil:
Runners without EX-EX and APDS ammo. With avalabilities of 12 and 16 there not exactly easy to come by in my campaign. I guess I am running at a considerably lower power-level then most of the other GMs around here. The bugs were plenty tough without it. Even with just 7 bod and 5 armor +2 from being roaches they were rolling 14 odd dice to resist damage. Which scaled their damage down considerably. |
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Dec 4 2007, 08:02 PM
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#11
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,883 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,386 |
Spirits and mid-level hardened armor are one of several reasons why I rather wish they had divided up the firearm skills and their applicable weapon types up differently. A house rule I commonly used the handful of times I've gmed was to divide the group up into side arms (Pistols, holdouts, tasers & machine pistols), small arms (smgs, assault rifles, shotguns, rifles) and heavy weapons (unchanged). Is that a realistic division based on how the weapons are actually operated? Hell no! It's as arbitrary as any design decision can be. But it worked pretty damn well in the game world; when I tossed a Force 5 & 6 Spirits at my team they sent the spirits packing with a couple Remington 990s and some Ex-Ex they kept in the van and it also prevented everyone from just dogpiling onto automatics skill for both power AND concealability in a single skill. In the games I played prior to that a lot of the times players would just end up flailing uselessly at spirits with machine pistols while waiting for the mage to save their ass (I don't let stick & shock cut hardened armor in half).
This post has been edited by Whipstitch: Dec 4 2007, 08:13 PM |
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Dec 4 2007, 08:14 PM
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#12
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Immoral Elf Group: Members Posts: 15,247 Joined: 29-March 02 From: Grimy Pete's Bar & Laundromat Member No.: 2,486 |
Do you then throw all three skills (side arms, small arms, and heavy weapons) into the one Firearms Group?
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Dec 4 2007, 08:45 PM
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#13
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,883 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,386 |
Yep. The players are certainly getting a good a deal that way, but I think it is balanced out a bit by the fact that under this setup you essentially -need- to take either side arms or a ridiculous palming pool if you want to pack a weapon that's remotely concealable. Besides, a character can only fire so many weapons at once, and giving players the opportunity to bring the right tool for the right job often just means I have an extra shot at nailing them for trying to sneak a Ingram White Knight into a shopping mall.
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Dec 4 2007, 11:46 PM
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#14
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 689 Joined: 16-September 03 From: Colorado Member No.: 5,623 |
max,
In Street magic on pg. 100 there is a sidebar dealing with true forms, hybrid and flesh forms. for Hybrids and Flesh Forms it does say that they get the Immunity to Normal Weapons power but at the cost of being locked into the real word. No dematerilization. Flesh forms also get the Masking and Realit Form power as well. However of the two only the Hybrid form gets to add its force rating to its vessel stats. |
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