Shedim: practical advice, a couple questions about mechanics Options

[MaxHunter]

Just two quick questions about Shedim, because I want to check out if I have understood the mechanics correctly...

Imagine a group of cheerful shedim has possessed a bunch of corpses and are eagerly advancing towards a group of hapless runners; these are force 3 spirits possessing normal corpses (used to have all stats at "2") so...

1)

their stats are: b3, a3, r5, c3, i3, l3, w3... etc?

... or are they b5, a5, r7, c3, i3, l3, w3... (adding up the vessel's physical stats)?

2)

Do they get immunity to normal weapons?

Cheers!

Max

p.s. IMO the answer to these two questions is not obvious, so if you may, explain your rationale, point out references, etc.

[Aaron]

According to Street Magic, they have the Possession power, which suggests to me that they follow the rules for Possession, meaning they add their Force to the attributes of the vessel, and they do, indeed, grant that vessel Immunity to Normal Weapons.

[Method]

I concur.

B:5 A:5 R:5
C:3 L:3 W:3

Int: 8 (the Possession and Vessels sidebar on page 102 say "Initiative calculated as normal")
IP: 2
Magic/Essence:3

Edit: now that I reread the stat line, I'm not sure if they should be R:5/I:8 or R:7/I:10... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

[Aaron]

R:5 Init:8, I think.

[MaxHunter]

well I would say r7, I 10 for coherence...

Cheers

Max

[FrankTrollman]

The fact that Shedim actually have physical attributes listed is a mistake that I argued against before publication. Shedim follow the rules for Possession and don't have Materialization. Therefore they never use their own Reaction attributes. When they are Astral they use their Intuition instead of Reaction and when they are Possessing a vessel they use the vessels Reaction plus their Force. The F+2 for Reaction is just there to confuse people because it never ever comes up.

-Frank

[Fortune]

Is there any actual way to force something like a Possession Spirit or Shedim to materialize, even though they cannot normally do that? Perhaps with some kind of Astral Shallows or the like?

[Zak]

An Astral Gateway going both ways?

This just gave me an interesting run idea.

[MaxHunter]

yep Frank, the shedim's listed reaction is confusing over there.

I think I got it now, thxs.

Cheers,

Max

[Starmage21]

The fact that Shedim actually have physical attributes listed is a mistake that I argued against before publication. Shedim follow the rules for Possession and don't have Materialization. Therefore they never use their own Reaction attributes. When they are Astral they use their Intuition instead of Reaction and when they are Possessing a vessel they use the vessels Reaction plus their Force. The F+2 for Reaction is just there to confuse people because it never ever comes up.

-Frank

What about when you get a True Form merge?

[FrankTrollman]

Is there any actual way to force something like a Possession Spirit or Shedim to materialize, even though they cannot normally do that? Perhaps with some kind of Astral Shallows or the like?

Well, a Master Shedim can technically learn Materialization as a Free Spirit Power. Of course, this gets back to my own point from back then that it would be way easier and cooler to just have Shedim nominally fall into spirit categories so that such an obscure occurrence could actually have something cool happen as regards the spirit's physical stats instead of having it revert to plain vanilla.

I mean seriously, the reason that Regeneration has those special effects when it shows up as a Free Spirit Power is to make Master Shedim slot in easily if they happen to get Regeneration as a free spirit power. Shedim, master or no, did not need any special rules at all after we made the regular spirit chapter, because Peter and I hacked together all the Shedim effects into the normal rules. The entire special write up of Shedim in the Threats Chapter just makes things more confusing. Things would have been much clearer, and cooler, and there would have been room for nearly half a page more flavor text if the Shedim had just been listed as a "tradition" of free spirits who happen to hate you.

Because damnit, the Shedim really are supposed to come in different types. The kelp-looking ones (plant), the worm looking ones (beast), the ones that look like holes in space (guidance), the ones that look like balls of fire (fire), and the ones that look like jelly fish (water). The only really unique thing they do is Deathly Aura, which could have and should have been a free spirit power that they happened to have.

They are supposed to come in all kinds of different flavors and do all kinds of scary things. And interestingly, that got totally lost in the drive to make them "special." The fact that they have unique rules made the rules for all of them the same. Had they been folded into the normal rules they would have been able to have the diversity that they were supposed to. I really think that Shedim, more even than Toxics and Insects, were horribly let down by being given unique spirit writeups in the book.

-Frank

[hyzmarca]

Metaplanar quests. Different metaplanes have different rules and it is not impossible to find a metaplane in which a spirit is purely physical.

[FrankTrollman]

What about when you get a True Form merge?

They don't have and can't get Inhabitation, so that's not going to happen.

By the way: the biggest single flaw with the Master Shedim as written is that they don't have Realistic Form and can't suppress their Aura, so they therefore can't do the whole Master Shedim thing of pretending to not be Master Shedim. That is not something which should be taken literally.

-Frank