Free Spirit Questions from Companion Options

[Starmage21]

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 . .

Yeah but until then you either have to borrow someone else's body or wait until one of the team gets wasted(or nearly so). So youre down 1 team member temporarily in either case.

Aside from that, here is a free spirit that I think can make it as a shadowrunner as long as there are a total of 6(5 plus the spirit) on the team for the friendship pact(unless the others of the group are willing to give up their karma).

[ Spoiler ]

Hermetic Free Spirit Anima (250BP)

Attributes (60BP)
Body: 2
Agility: 2
Reaction: 3
Strength: 2
Charisma: 3
Intuition: 3
Logic: 3
Willpower: 5
Initiative: 6(2)
Astral Init: 6(3)
Special Attributes (60BP)
Edge: 5
Force (Magic): 5
Essence: 5

Gear (0BP)

Qualities (+35BP)
Uneducated (+20)
SINner (+5)
Spirit Bane (Toxic) (+10)

Contacts (0BP)

Powers (5 points)
Sapience
Astral Form
Materialization
Banishment Resistance
Spirit Pact
Fear (1.5)
Guard (.5)
Accident (.5)
Influence (2)
Realistic Form (.5)

Active Skills (50BP)
Sorcery Skill Group 3
Spellcasting
Ritual Spellcasting
Counterspelling
Assensing 1
Astral Combat 1
Infiltration 1
Ettiqutte 1
Perception 1

Knowledge Skills (9 Free BP)
English N
Magical Theory 1
Magic Background 1
Security Design(Magical) 1(+2)
Corporate Law 1

Spells (15BP)
Stunbolt
Stunball
Heal
Control Thoughts
Mind Probe

Given the apparent weaknesses of PC free-spirits, the inspiration behind this is general combat and non-combat assistance to the team, rather than trying to actually fill one of the key roles shadowrunners can play.
I also tried to come from the standpoint of the free spirit being a former spirit of man, so I avoided powers posessed by the elemental spirits in lieu of spells.
And yes, SINner is in there. Considering its a 5 point flaw its not necessarily a weakness that is going to give you alot of trouble anyway. You could play it any number of ways(an actual corporate or national SIN that contains data that yes, youre actually a free spirit, or my own personal choice: its the SIN that belonged to the mage that bound you, and he was geeked or died for some other reason and you subsumed his identity with relative success).

[Cthulhudreams]

You don't even past the basic test outlined the devs in one of the lame cain challenge threads of 10-15 dice in your specalisation. You cast spells with what.. 8 dice? Failure. Back to the drawing board with that. Also uneducated is a total kick in the nuts but as you can take like.. geas or something else no-one cares about instead thats not a problem.

Also you've caculated your stats costs wrong. Should be 75 because you've soft maxed willpower.

So you need to cut 15 points out too.

Finally you have no gear and no contacts which makes you utterly useless as a shadowrunner.

[Ryu]

You don't even past the basic test outlined the devs in one of the lame cain challenge threads of 10-15 dice in your specalisation. You cast spells with what.. 8 dice? Failure. Back to the drawing board with that. Also uneducated is a total kick in the nuts but as you can take like.. geas or something else no-one cares about instead thats not a problem.

Simple. Very, very simple. Go for infiltration, not spellcasting. **** being recognised on the astral, you get to be masked when you learn the Masking metamagic.

Concealment, high stealth, "astral dodge", high agility, illusion and detection spells...

[Isath]

Having a look at what a free spirit can do, I would abstain from calling it useless... When judging their usefulness you have to take into account, that they are and work differently. Also that game is not all about stats. The immunity to normal weapons alone is a tough nut in multiple ways... I can imagine the morale of opponents drop, if their bullets just bounce of that...erm...guy...?

Playing a spirit has much to offer. Also it might be interesting to play the familiar of the teams mage - he might have willingly set it free. I guess Spirits come with many useful basics so the rest is about concept and not stats. They are viable somehow.

[Starmage21]

You don't even past the basic test outlined the devs in one of the lame cain challenge threads of 10-15 dice in your specalisation. You cast spells with what.. 8 dice? Failure. Back to the drawing board with that. Also uneducated is a total kick in the nuts but as you can take like.. geas or something else no-one cares about instead thats not a problem.

Also you've caculated your stats costs wrong. Should be 75 because you've soft maxed willpower.

So you need to cut 15 points out too.

Finally you have no gear and no contacts which makes you utterly useless as a shadowrunner.

Oops youre right I did overlook the soft-maxing problem, and the easy fix is to take one from willpower and put it in logic.

Also, you apparently failed to read the design philosophy behind the free spirit character, because the friendship pact at force 5 means you need 5 other people as part of the pact or you cant gain your own karma, which sucks for a shadowrunner character you hope to improve.
That being said, the character is an auxilliary unit, not a member of one of the primary roles. I suggest you go back and look at it again with that in mind.
I also wonder why you think 8 dice is such a terrible amount for spellcasting. I am aware that you can min-max alot of spellcasting dice out of a character, but that is not a standard. Whoever you game with must treat you very very wrong.

[Starmage21]

I also just thought of something regarding the point costs of playing a free spirit.

1.) Any magician can summon a spirit more powerful than a PC free spirit for around 50BPs(magician quality, +2 magic rating, 3-4 summoning skill) out the gate as a starting character that would wipe the floor with a free-spirit PC.
2.) For a small cost, in either additional BPs at creation or nuyen during play, they can have multiple copies of said spirit in existance at any one time.
3.) No real drawbacks for having done-so. Shadowrunner Joe the Magician isnt going to care if his temporary spirit gets disrupted, and he's only out a few thousand nuyen if his bound spirit gets disrupted. On top of that, nothing bars him from simply conjuring another identical spirit immediately after his temporary spirit gets disrupted!

So, free spirits get a couple of additional powers beyond what a conjured spirit does, and are in the hands of the player instead of GM adjudication justifies a whopping 250bp cost to play?

It honestly seems like the 250BP cost was just thrown in there without any acid testing in play.

[DireRadiant]

Shadowrun as a game system is designed with the intent that the ruleset encourages and supports Genre play. Therefore BP spent on different characters are not equivalent utility to each other. This is intentional.

If you want transitive utility value in BP, you will need to look at other game systems.

The choice of ruleset supporting or not supporting genre is a fundamental design decision. Neither choice is wrong. The SR4 designers have chosen to have the ruleset explicitly support the Genre.

Therefore, the issue with the Free Spirit character BP costs, would be if they correctly make Free Spirit PC characters less likely to occur? Given the response in this thread, I would expect yes. Just like I have noted one of the most common metarace chosen is an Orc.

[Starmage21]

Shadowrun as a game system is designed with the intent that the ruleset encourages and supports Genre play. Therefore BP spent on different characters are not equivalent utility to each other. This is intentional.

If you want transitive utility value in BP, you will need to look at other game systems.

The choice of ruleset supporting or not supporting genre is a fundamental design decision. Neither choice is wrong. The SR4 designers have chosen to have the ruleset explicitly support the Genre.

Therefore, the issue with the Free Spirit character BP costs, would be if they correctly make Free Spirit PC characters less likely to occur? Given the response in this thread, I would expect yes. Just like I have noted one of the most common metarace chosen is an Orc.

If that were the case then the point value of the free-spirit would be somewhere around 150BPs. Playable, but damned difficult to manage in the BP shuffle. Right now I would deny any player the use of a free-spirit character on grounds that I feel he would be too weak to exist in the world of shadowrunners for more than one or two sessions (exactly until combat broke out and he got shot at).

Free-spirits were inflated an arbitrary value from 85BPs to 250BPs by Catalyst's internal team. As said before, even at 150BPs their rarity would be maintained, but their playability would also be present.

[Ryu]

First things first: a build for my suggestion at 400 BP, going from your groundwork:

[ Spoiler ]

Hermetic Free Spirit Anima (250BP)

Attributes (60BP)
Body: 3
Agility: 2
Reaction: 2
Strength: 2
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 4
Logic: 4
Willpower: 3
Initiative: 5(2)
Astral Init: 8(3)
Special Attributes (40BP)
Edge: 3
Force (Magic): 5
Essence: 5

Gear (0BP)

Qualities (+35BP)
Combat Paralysis(+20BP)
SINner (+5)
Spirit Bane (Toxic) (+10)

Contacts (7 BP)
Talismonger, former conjurer 3/4

Powers (5 points)
Sapience
Astral Form
Materialization
Banishment Resistance
Spirit Pact
Psychokinetics (0.5)
Concealment (2)
Realistic Form (.5)

Active Skills (60 BP)
Spellcasting 3
Counterspelling 1 (Combat +2)
Infiltration 6
Assensing 1
Astral Combat 1
Etiquette 1 (Spirit World +2)
Perception 1

Knowledge Skills (24 Free BP)
English N
Magical Theory 4
Security Design(Magical) 4(+2)
(Setting Place) Astral Space 3
some others

Spells (18 BP)
Stunbolt
Heal
Improved Invisibility
Stealth
Trid Phantasm
Mind Probe

That build should be able to handle all stealth needs. Power expansion should be ultra-fast.



That leads to another angle: such things are not really made for 400 BP games. You can do it, but it is hard. If you build the same thing under the 750 karma system, you´ll have 250 karma for everything, plus a potential 70 karma from negative qualities. 10 stats at three for 90, agility+edge 3->4, magic 3->6 for 69 karma, spells for 30 karma, one connection for 10, would leave 121 karma for skills(max). Very doable, as that is equivalent to 6 skills at 3 (84 karma), plus three specialisations, and maybe a few physical possessions guarded by the friendly talismonger. A better build, because free spirits can take advantage of the rebate on low-rated attributes.

Maybe it helps if you consider that this a mystical adept with stealth +5, astral perception, astral projection, a drainless spell without sustaining penalty, effective magic 6, an invisible military scout armor, and a prospect to gain power points from increasing edge. And yeah, your infiltrator can walk through most walls (no foci, even passing a barrier is easy), or hide in astral space.

What do you gain from not being a possession-based mage? You are a spirit, you have no body to leave behind. You can attack passive defenses from the inside, and guards from behind. No cover penalties is about equal to +4 to spellcasting in our games. Let´s get dangerous!



Edited for correct karma costs, under the assumption that being a free spirit costs 500 karma.

[Starmage21]

First things first: a build for my suggestion at 400 BP, going from your groundwork:

[ Spoiler ]

Hermetic Free Spirit Anima (250BP)

Attributes (60BP)
Body: 3
Agility: 2
Reaction: 2
Strength: 2
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 4
Logic: 4
Willpower: 3
Initiative: 5(2)
Astral Init: 8(3)
Special Attributes (40BP)
Edge: 3
Force (Magic): 5
Essence: 5

Gear (0BP)

Qualities (+35BP)
Combat Paralysis(+20BP)
SINner (+5)
Spirit Bane (Toxic) (+10)

Contacts (7 BP)
Talismonger, former conjurer 3/4

Powers (5 points)
Sapience
Astral Form
Materialization
Banishment Resistance
Spirit Pact
Psychokinetics (0.5)
Concealment (2)
Realistic Form (.5)

Active Skills (60 BP)
Spellcasting 3
Counterspelling 1 (Combat +2)
Infiltration 6
Assensing 1
Astral Combat 1
Etiquette 1 (Spirit World +2)
Perception 1

Knowledge Skills (24 Free BP)
English N
Magical Theory 4
Security Design(Magical) 4(+2)
(Setting Place) Astral Space 3
some others

Spells (18 BP)
Stunbolt
Heal
Improved Invisibility
Stealth
Trid Phantasm
Mind Probe

That build should be able to handle all stealth needs. Power expansion should be ultra-fast.



That leads to another angle: such things are not really made for 400 BP games. You can do it, but it is hard. If you build the same thing under the 750 karma system, you´ll have 250 karma for everything, plus a potential 70 karma from negative qualities. 10 stats at three for 150, edge 3->4, magic 3->5 for 27 karma, spells for 30 karma, one connection for 10, would leave 103 karma for skills. Very doable, as that is equivalent to 6 skills at 3 (84 karma), plus three specialisations, and maybe a few physical possessions guarded by the friendly talismonger. A better build, because free spirits can take advantage of the rebate on low-rated attributes.

Maybe it helps if you consider that this a mystical adept with stealth +5, astral perception, astral projection, a drainless spell without sustaining penalty, effective magic 6, an invisible military scout armor, and a prospect to gain power points from increasing edge. And yeah, your infiltrator can walk through most walls (no foci, even passing a barrier is easy), or hide in astral space.

What do you gain from not being a possession-based mage? You are a spirit, you have no body to leave behind. You can attack passive defenses from the inside, and guards from behind. No cover penalties is about equal to +4 to spellcasting in our games. Let´s get dangerous!

And when he materializes, he looks like a ninja.

[Aaron]

Free-spirits were inflated an arbitrary value from 85BPs to 250BPs by Catalyst's internal team. As said before, even at 150BPs their rarity would be maintained, but their playability would also be present.

I should throw something in here, now that I've noticed something. The original 85 BP draft version had all attributes starting at 1, not 2 as it is in this version. With that change, the "original" value would have been 185 BP, not 85, and it didn't account for cultural norms or population ratios.

[Starmage21]

I should throw something in here, now that I've noticed something. The original 85 BP draft version had all attributes starting at 1, not 2 as it is in this version. With that change, the "original" value would have been 185 BP, not 85, and it didn't account for cultural norms or population ratios.

Not every stat is useful to everyone at all times. Depending on the desired role, the value of stats is not equal.

Having read, and reread that statement. I'm not sure if thats powergaming or an actual truism.

[Ryu]

And when he materializes, he looks like a ninja.

Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck... it would fit if the previous master wanted to create a stealthy ally. Instant connection to the shadowrunner scene.

[KitsuneKaze]

Leads me to a question actually, Is it better to have the aura masking power? Or the two metamagic techniques..... 3 points of Spirit Power is a big thing...

Didn't mean to cause such a furor actually. But its good to get ideas out on the table. The capability of health spells is good, but as stated the lack of sustaining foci means that most buffs are destroyed by the sustaining penalty immediantly. But it does mean that the spirit can heal itself.

The concept that I was playing around with was a Spirit that is pretending... largely to be a metahuman, aura masking is part of that mindset.

I'm interested to see the continued discussion and pros and cons argued forth. It is likely however that at our table the BP cost will be reduced to 150BP or so. The ability for a mage with conjuring to instantly and for negligble cost summon something better then an entire character I believe is a bit of a problem. Was it in fact considered that most decent permantly bound guarding spirits, summonable by a 400BP character, would whip the ass of any free spirit.

Which means, as soon as there is a summoner on the table all you do is run, something which I must agree they are good at but still...

[Stahlseele]

could the free spirit summon spirits of higher force than himself? O.o
that's be something REALLY funny . .
Player Ghost summons big fire elemental fire elemental appears, looks around, asks player ghost:"where's the metahuman that summoned us little one?"
as in that regard . . can another mage do metaplanar quest to get the free spirits true name and bind him? O.o

[Starmage21]

can another mage do metaplanar quest to get the free spirits true name and bind him? O.o

YES, thats one of the bigger weaknesses of the PC free spirit, and theyre very clear about that in the RC. Fortunately, the second it's created you know that it exists, and where it is.

Also, free spirits can never learn conjuring. Apparently they wont treat other spirits the way they have been.

[Stahlseele]

what about grounding?
does that work through spirits?
probably not, but i thought i'd ask while we're at it . .

[hobgoblin]

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.

now to find some way to get instant karma hooked to this and i can have my own pun-pun free spirit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Stahlseele]

would a free spirit that somehow learns the sacrificing metamagic be considered a blood-spirit? O.o
or at least twisted/toxic?
can a free spirit character follow some mentor-spirit?
free spirit of (sha)[wo]man following (praying) mantis?
would that make the spirit an insect spirit?

[Cthulhudreams]

YES, thats one of the bigger weaknesses of the PC free spirit, and theyre very clear about that in the RC. Fortunately, the second it's created you know that it exists, and where it is.

Also, free spirits can never learn conjuring. Apparently they wont treat other spirits the way they have been.

It's a joke weakness. Seriously, what DM is ever going to punish his players like that? A total ass?

Its just not going to come up, unless its a major plotline driven entirely by DM fiat.

[hobgoblin]

It's a joke weakness. Seriously, what DM is ever going to punish his players like that? A total ass?

Its just not going to come up, unless its a major plotline driven entirely by DM fiat.

or the player is being a total ass first...

still, is it any worse then slapping a mage player with a shedim invasion?

hell, if done right i can see the player of the spirit getting the job of interpreting the orders given by the conjurer (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

(hint: be very very detailed and specific)

[HappyDaze]

If you build the same thing under the 750 karma system, you´ll have 250 karma for everything

There is no karma cost for being a Free Spirit since it's effectively your 'metatype' - that means Karma creation is great for Free Spirits.

[Stahlseele]

Spirit Bane:"that certain one free spirit there"

[Cthulhudreams]

If the player is being a total ass you're probably better off like.. talking to him about it.

So its going to be a plot or a its exactly as fun as 'you get ambushed by a sniper with a railgun and die. New character plz'

Edit: lol at the no karma cost for metatype. What the hell is that?

[Jaid]

the karma chargen system seems to be a bit confusing to me. there are added costs for race, from one of the dev's posts on how much it actually costs to be a nosferatu i think it was, but i'm not sure where they came from...