Free Spirit Questions from Companion Options

[KitsuneKaze]

Just a couple of quick questions about Free Spirit PC's

Healing:

It states that First Aid, Medicine and Medicine doesn't work for healing.

Was this meant to be First Aid, Medicine and Magic? And if this is so does that mean the Spirits are "immune" from the entire health school of magic, both positive and negative, due to a lack of a "body"

Services:

Can a PC free spirit still give "bound" services like aid spellcasting and what not like NPC ones.


Metaplanar Shortcut:

Tis a little over powered to bypass wards as such, I was going to ensure (as playing one of these) that a friend from the friendship pact is on the otherside to "lock on" even if I can clearly see physically the other side of the ward on the physical plane. Thoughts?

[Aaron]

Just a couple of quick questions about Free Spirit PC's

Aha! Something I can help with!

Healing:
It states that First Aid, Medicine and Medicine doesn't work for healing.
Was this meant to be First Aid, Medicine and Magic? And if this is so does that mean the Spirits are "immune" from the entire health school of magic, both positive and negative, due to a lack of a "body"

Er ... I can't help with this. There was some back-and-forth at the developer level, and I'm not privy to those conversations. The "Medicine and Medicine" part is probably a typo.

As far as magic is concerned, if I needed to make a call in the absence of an official ruling, I'd say that spells that are intended to affect a physical organic body don't work on the collection of forces that are a manifested spirit's "body."

Services:
Can a PC free spirit still give "bound" services like aid spellcasting and what not like NPC ones.

I'm fairly certain the answer is no, what with the spirit by definition not being bound. Ally spirits can do that, though.

Metaplanar Shortcut:
Tis a little over powered to bypass wards as such, I was going to ensure (as playing one of these) that a friend from the friendship pact is on the otherside to "lock on" even if I can clearly see physically the other side of the ward on the physical plane. Thoughts?

The original intent was that a free spirit could only metaplanarly shortcut to a place where it had previously been. Lemme check ... yeah, p. 91, Runner's Companion. The spirit has to have been inside the ward previously in order to shortcut there.

[Starmage21]

Just a couple of quick questions about Free Spirit PC's

Healing:

It states that First Aid, Medicine and Medicine doesn't work for healing.

Was this meant to be First Aid, Medicine and Magic? And if this is so does that mean the Spirits are "immune" from the entire health school of magic, both positive and negative, due to a lack of a "body"

Services:

Can a PC free spirit still give "bound" services like aid spellcasting and what not like NPC ones.


Metaplanar Shortcut:

Tis a little over powered to bypass wards as such, I was going to ensure (as playing one of these) that a friend from the friendship pact is on the otherside to "lock on" even if I can clearly see physically the other side of the ward on the physical plane. Thoughts?

At 250BPs to play one, I'd be willing to settle letting PCs use the metaplanar shortcut to bypass wards. 150BPs to spend on attributes and skills at the very least isnt much no matter how you cut it.

[garner_adam]

Delete this post. It got put in the wrong section! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

This post has been edited by garner_adam: Aug 6 2008, 12:29 AM

[KitsuneKaze]

At 250BPs to play one, I'd be willing to settle letting PCs use the metaplanar shortcut to bypass wards. 150BPs to spend on attributes and skills at the very least isnt much no matter how you cut it.

I definately felt that pain.

As one of the other players is going to be one of the targets of a friendship pact, and you can conventionally blow a service to get a spirit bypass a ward, or send the ally spirit home and back again, I thought it would be a good compromise.

The spirits have some good abilities, but they are extremely expensive. Still, Im interested in how it plays, and I have a habit of playing broad/flawed characters for the fun factor.


I am fairly confident in magic, that it mentions that a free spirit can give services at will as if it was a bound spirit.??

[Cthulhudreams]

Free spirits seem extremely difficult to play. I was experimenting with a spreadsheet and its super tedious to make an effective character due to the stats no greater than force cap and powers being linked to edge, nor can you conjure. Its really hard to make something workable with those 150 BP left

On the flip side, you have all sorts of highly difficult to manage powers for GMs.

What was the intent? Did you guys play test some characters? Can we see how you're supposed to look as a playable 400BP character?

[KitsuneKaze]

Free spirits seem extremely difficult to play. I was experimenting with a spreadsheet and its super tedious to make an effective character due to the stats no greater than force cap and powers being linked to edge, nor can you conjure. Its really hard to make something workable with those 150 BP left

On the flip side, you have all sorts of highly difficult to manage powers for GMs.

What was the intent? Did you guys play test some characters? Can we see how you're supposed to look as a playable 400BP character?

I'm not sure it is entirely possible to make a somewhat functional spirit character with the initial 400BP char, as such it IS somewhat a work in progress.

Due to our playstyle however, as well as a criminally indecisive player, we have a fairly established routine for inserting characters at a higher power level to mesh with pre-existing characters. As such I have an injection of karma of about 60 points, which takes away some of the pain. Contacts are also generally earned during play, which also keeps our rotating GM's (me included) on our toes.

Here's a basic layout, though some parts may be in error

Body 2
Agility 2
Reaction 2
Strength 2
Charisma 2
Intuition 5
Logic 2
Willpower 5
Force 6
Edge 5

Sorcery 4
Counterspelling 4
Perception 0
Assensing 2

Materilization 0
Banishment Resistance 0
Spirit Pact Friendship 0
Realistic Form 0.5
Mutable Form 1
Aura Masking 3
Guard 0.5

And that is what I could squeeze. No spells or gear, was going to purchase these with the injection of resources, though comparatively not much gear is usable or necessary.

[Cthulhudreams]

LOL! That doesn't fit my definition of usable, sorry.

Don't you have to buy edge seperately too?

[KitsuneKaze]

LOL! That doesn't fit my definition of usable, sorry.

Don't you have to buy edge seperately too?

Whoops, the edge missed the copy and paste. Fixed that.

I believe at the top I also said, I don't think it was usable without the injection, but I knew I was getting it. But consider this.

I am immune to critical glitches
I have 12 hardened armour.
With injection I will have a manabolt/stunbolt at the very least.
With a single complex action I can escape most things, 2 at most to entirely disappear
I can appear as a human, elf, tree, chair, toaster....
I can fly.
Provided I'm not carrying anything, from a mundanes point of view, I can teleport.

To be even more amusing, most of the other player characters will be unaware that I am infact a spirit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Should be interesting.

[Cthulhudreams]

Yeah fair point I guess, but what would you do to make that 250 BP? Its not obvious, loose 2 point of stats to get 5 spells, and some basic money to get a lifestyle and a few bits and bobs. That makes you crippleware, because that will come right out of where it hurts - drain stats, and you cannot do anything aside from cast spells.

Frustrating.

[KitsuneKaze]

Yeah fair point I guess, but what would you do to make that 250 BP? Its not obvious, loose 2 point of stats to get 5 spells, and some basic money to get a lifestyle and a few bits and bobs. That makes you crippleware, because that will come right out of where it hurts - drain stats, and you cannot do anything aside from cast spells.

Frustrating.

Precisely. It is a sticky situation I agree.

Though, I'm not a powergamer, seeking to extract the most out of the build points. A free spirit is the ultimate slow buildup character. Consider that Initiation raises the force cap, and that cap is the only maximum for stats. Hence, given infinite karma (just as a thought experiment), there is no limit on the base attributes.

As for the casting spells things. That does somewhat suck, we somewhat ruled mana static out at our table, as we feel it is somewhat fundamentally flawed. Spells can do a lot, and if there is background count stopping me casting.... as a spirit I have much bigger problems (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[HappyDaze]

Can we see how you're supposed to look as a playable 400BP character?

Not everything is intended for play at the 400 BP level. IMO, Free Spirits under the BP system are inteded for higher-powered games. Try building them with the Karma system and you should have a much better character, but even there Free Spirits are mentioned when they talk about 1,000 Karma characters.

[Starmage21]

even if that is true that theyre intended as a high-power option, perhaps we should endeavor to create a viable shadowrunner free spirit on 400BPs anyway just to show people what a good one will look like.

[KitsuneKaze]

even if that is true that theyre intended as a high-power option, perhaps we should endeavor to create a viable shadowrunner free spirit on 400BPs anyway just to show people what a good one will look like.

Well hut hut off you go (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Mine will be predominately spell casting related, as that's the niche I need to fill in my group, with the street sam drunk dwarf, the MPD actor face, the paranoid exiled high family technomancer and finally *drum roll* the physical adept pixie, complete with critical strike, killing hands, elemental strike who's attitute to life is summed up by Nac Mac Feegle.

Interesting times.....

[Aaron]

FWhat was the intent? Did you guys play test some characters? Can we see how you're supposed to look as a playable 400BP character?

I have to pass on this one. It was 85 BP when I submitted the final draft. I imagine that either some last-minute playtest data came in, or an error was made somewhere along the line.

[Antumbra]

Eh, this is the sort of post I usually erase... meh...

I am immune to critical glitches
I have 12 hardened armour.
With injection I will have a manabolt/stunbolt at the very least.
With a single complex action I can escape most things, 2 at most to entirely disappear
I can appear as a human, elf, tree, chair, toaster....
I can fly.
Provided I'm not carrying anything, from a mundanes point of view, I can teleport.

Voodoo Mage. Spells are obvious.

Not everything is intended for play at the 400 BP level. IMO, Free Spirits under the BP system are inteded for higher-powered games.

So what? If I want to play a Free Spirit and they deliberately make it shit at 400BPs then all they have done is hurt the players who won't take it now and those who will still play them - just like how you still can't play a decent Technomancer out of the gates, yet it's never said that "your team will almost certainly suffer if you play one, so we advise it for much higher power levels".
Weak now, Almighty Zeus later is just bad design.

I don't think an option is where you need 50-100 extra BPs to make a viable starting character and then you still utterly suck at being a Spirit compared to the Mage's cohort Ally - extra super emphasis fun on the word "cohort".

I always thought a good part of Shadowrun was the "If it bleeds, we can kill it. If it don't - load APDS" attitude - .

This reminds me of the "joke" Dragon rules, which were actually playable IIRC - perhaps the ridiculous prices are due to the venom spewed back then.

The less said about the Wendigo being worth BPs, the better.

[KitsuneKaze]

Voodoo Mage. Spells are obvious.

I fail to see how a voodoo mage can A teleport, B escape anything within 2 complex actions.

Everything else, yes. But perhaps people must remember that sometimes its the things that you don't always roll dice for that can make a difference.

Also I'm more interested in the dynamics of how a character will play, how a spirit will hide itself and actions accordingly.

From a sheer balance perspective, it does seem to top out as a little too expensive. The other thing that struck me is the complete inability to assist healing. You could be stuck out of commision for some time. Most of the other stuff is fairish to my eyes.

There is a bit factored in there

All stats start at 2 not one.
Extra Inititave Passes
Magician for Free, (But aspected)
Powers with no sustaining penalties or drain.

But negatively

No assisted healing
No foci
No "ware"
Extremely susceptable to background count.

[Cthulhudreams]

I have to pass on this one. It was 85 BP when I submitted the final draft. I imagine that either some last-minute playtest data came in, or an error was made somewhere along the line.

Man, thats a huge change.

[KitsuneKaze]

Man, thats a huge change.

I do agree, it would be nice if someone could confirm that was intended and the basic reasoning behind it. You can make something much more reasonable at a cost of 150BP for instance.

[Cthulhudreams]

I'd actually call them overpowered at 100BP! (At first glance, could be wrong)

I suspect the reasoning is availible in the other thread about metavariants. In it synner states that races are priced by rarity as well as power balance to justify the stupid pricing of orks and drakes, and free spirits are extremely rare, so he may have just gone crazy with the costs.

[Ryu]

To be fair, the build above looks much like a min/maxxed mystic adept with a double-digit magic score. Only that it´s astral abilities are increased rather than hampered.

[Synner]

Healing:
It states that First Aid, Medicine and Medicine doesn't work for healing.

Was this meant to be First Aid, Medicine and Magic? And if this is so does that mean the Spirits are "immune" from the entire health school of magic, both positive and negative, due to a lack of a "body"

The first instance of Medicine is a typo and will be edited out in Errata.

Regarding whether or not spirits can be subjected to magical healing, this was the subject of much discussion during development and playtesting. Ultimately it was decided, very late in development, for simple consistence that spirits should be as subject to Health spells as they are to Combat and Manipulation spells. I had previously made my position known on the subject on DSF (should we ever move to an SR5 it is among the aspects of spirit rules that I would be addressing differently, but in the context of SR4 the rules need to be consistent), but when I went to retract my earlier statement the thread had vanished. Consider it retracted here. to wit:

Spirits can be targeted by Health spells.

Services:
Can a PC free spirit still give "bound" services like aid spellcasting and what not like NPC ones.

No. Free spirits, PC or NPC alike, do not provide bound services.

Metaplanar Shortcut:
Tis a little over powered to bypass wards as such, I was going to ensure (as playing one of these) that a friend from the friendship pact is on the otherside to "lock on" even if I can clearly see physically the other side of the ward on the physical plane. Thoughts?

Free Spirits can use Metaplanar shortcuts, but to arrive on target they should either be able to physically see or have previously physically visited the location they are shortcutting to (the friendship pact suggested above would work too).

Regarding the BP cost of Free Spirits, several things were changed due to playtesting feedback and developer decisions that came in after the author delivered the final draft. The Health spells issue above is one (not so much for Healing itself but for the fact that it allows spirits to do some pretty scary boosting of their already formidable abilities with appropriate Health spells). Another very important factor was a rise in the Free Spirit's starting Force in the final draft that led to a raise in the BP cost (since all Force-linked Attributes start at rating 2). This last change was a result of playtest feedback simply disliking the idea of Force 1 Free Spirits wandering round (in fact most suggest Force 3 as a baseline).
Other factors that weighed in on final BP cost include:

• the ability to move in three dimensions unfettered and to fly.
• the ability to move back and forth between the physical and astral plane (including the ability to pass through unwarded walls).
• the innate ability to access the metaplanes and use metaplanar shortcuts.
• its dual nature (which also means that unlike a magician it can act on both planes without the divided attention modifier)
• the innate Magician quality and the ability to use most Magical Skills (to a lesser extent the fact that it does not need spell formulas to learn spells).
• 10 Attributes (Physical, Mental, Edge, Force/Magic) at a starting rating of 2.
• the innate extra Initiative Passes.
• the innate Immunity to Normal Weapons.
• the innate Immunity to Pathogens.
• the fact that free spirits can be Healed and boost their attributes with Health spells.
• the ability (for possession Free Spirits) to take over and abandon a vessel at will (barring successful resistance).
• the fact that they are characters that are near impossible to permanently destroy (temporarily disrupt yes, destroy no) and that for most purposes the character is ultimately immortal.
• the innate Spirit Powers and those they can buy—which have no Drain or associated downside.
• the Spirit Pact power.
• rarity.

Comparatively the downsides to playing a Free Spirit are minimal.

Note that Free spirits are intentionally short on points for other Skills and abilities. The rules and costs are for a recently Free Spirit and who is just starting out in metahuman society, not a spirit that's lived on Earth for an extensive period of time.

As for the example above, I'd definitely drop Force down one level, drop Edge down one or two levels, drop Aura Masking to begin with, and use those points elsewhere.

[Stahlseele]

what tradition are those free spirits from?
inhabitation or possession? or something else entirely?
that would be one hell of a buff/tank to get the other player to possess your character if he's down so you get 12 hardened armor and can't be hurt further . .

[Aaron]

I'd actually call them overpowered at 100BP! (At first glance, could be wrong)

One of the things I was looking at when initially pricing them was the fact that they must buy up Force in order to have any other attributes, since their Force is also their attribute cap (that's still in there, ne?). I was also factoring in the fact that they didn't need gear or lifestyle costs, and that they couldn't earn their own Karma.

EDIT: I see Synner gave his full reasoning, so never mind. =i)

[Cthulhudreams]

Regarding the BP cost of Free Spirits, several things were changed due to playtesting feedback and developer decisions that came in after the author delivered the final draft. The Health spells issue above is one (not so much for Healing itself but for the fact that it allows spirits to do some pretty scary boosting of their already formidable abilities with appropriate Health spells). Another very important factor was a rise in the Free Spirit's starting Force in the final draft that led to a raise in the BP cost (since all Force-linked Attributes start at rating 2). This last change was a result of playtest feedback simply disliking the idea of Force 1 Free Spirits wandering round (in fact most suggest Force 3 as a baseline).
Other factors that weighed in on final BP cost include:

• the ability to move in three dimensions unfettered and to fly.
• the ability to move back and forth between the physical and astral plane (including the ability to pass through unwarded walls).
• the innate ability to access the metaplanes and use metaplanar shortcuts.
• its dual nature (which also means that unlike a magician it can act on both planes without the divided attention modifier)
• the innate Magician quality and the ability to use most Magical Skills (to a lesser extent the fact that it does not need spell formulas to learn spells).
• 10 Attributes (Physical, Mental, Edge, Force/Magic) at a starting rating of 2.
• the innate extra Initiative Passes.
• the innate Immunity to Normal Weapons.
• the innate Immunity to Pathogens.
• the fact that free spirits can be Healed and boost their attributes with Health spells.
• the ability (for possession Free Spirits) to take over and abandon a vessel at will (barring successful resistance).
• the fact that they are characters that are near impossible to permanently destroy (temporarily disrupt yes, destroy no) and that for most purposes the character is ultimately immortal.
• the innate Spirit Powers and those they can buy—which have no Drain or associated downside.
• the Spirit Pact power.
• rarity.

So an ogre with an intuition based tradition and the magician quality spends.. 35 BP and gets pretty much all of these bonuses. Okay, he cannot fly, nor can he teleport, and those are pretty sweet powers, but seriously, you have 2s in every stats and I have - well,

4 Body
2 Agility
2 Reaction
3 Strength
5 Intuition
2 Logic
5 Willpower
3 Edge
6 Magic

And I'm a full possession tradition mage, OR I can just throw down a materalization spirit who is pretty much as good as you, while doing my own thing.

Incidently, Synners changes actually increase the total BP cost of that build by 5 making it actively worse without letting you buy any more skills.

He needs to then drop his drain statistics by 2 each which would free up 45 BP net from his changes, but seriously then you are a total cripple. Drain pool 8 and a spellcasting pool of 9 is hardly inspiring. My back of the envelope mage has a spell casting pool of 12 before considering mentors, specialization etc, and a drain pool of 10. I'd be seriously tempted to add a trauma dampner though because to keep pace with the spirits always on armour I'm going to want to throw down lots of my own spirits, and that means I'm going to want to deal with drain well.

And the disadvantages are totally massive. You cannot interact with the matrix, you cannot bind foci!!! (Health spell buffs ===== useless tastic without this) whereas I can do both giving me 2 dice from my sustaining focus and an awesome improvd reflexes 3 - which to get you have to take a -2 penalty to everything,

and I can squeeze in the skill linup

Binding 4
Assensing 4
Automatics 1
First Aid 1
Pilot Ground Craft 1
Spellcasting 4
Summoning 6
Counterspelling 4
Dodge 1

and still have 70k nuyen left after buying the foci.

Oh and I have a mentor spirit and 15 more BP then the spirit.

Lolz.