[SR4] - Spirit Pact Options

[Machiavelli]

Now that i´m on the run with posting, here another topic from me:^^

- i just overflew the spirit pact section in street magic, but i really don´t see one of them, that really gives the character a benefit. The only one that i would accept, would be the formulae pact, which at least gives me immunity to age. But all the other ones seem quite useless. No immunity to weapons (i remember a pact from the 3rd version where the spirit hid his life in your body which granted this an several other powers) no nothing. Are there some "basic benefits" if you take a spirit pact that I overread? A dream-pact eg. sounds just like a big junk of trouble, so why would somebody accept something?

[Heath Robinson]

Hidden Life is a Free Spirit power that grants the target ItNW and Immunity to Age in exchange for being a wanted man by anyone who takes a fancy to semipermanently tearing the spirit from this mortal coil. It's not a Pact because it's just a little good, and you can take a Spirit Pact as a Quality.

[wylie]

some of the pacts seems more for GM fuff & plot devices

[Machiavelli]

Yeah, that was my first impression, too. But these pacts are so stupid and useless, that you would have to force the PC to accept one. Just another thing in SR4 that is useless because its magic? Hmmmm....

[Jaid]

Drain Pacts: ultimately, the only thing preventing a magician from using high-force spells for everything is drain. adding to the drain resistance of your magician is not useless. in fact, it's quite useful. it takes you from being able to reliably handle somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4-5 drain, to being able to handle potentially 6-7 drain if you make the pact with a high force spirit. that's 4 more points of force on your spells. even more if you spend edge beforehand for rule of 6.

Dream Pact: it's a way to pay for another pact without spending karma. it's one of the few ways a free spirit can gain karma without taking it from someone else, in fact. maybe holding on to your karma doesn't appeal to you, but i rather suspect that there are some awakened individuals who would rather pay for their other pacts with a dream pact than by paying a few points of karma on a regular basis.

Life Pact: magical healing for emergency use. how is it not useful to be able to burn karma to heal yourself in a bad situation? obviously, you'd rather not spend karma if you can avoid it, but if it's an emergency that can change things. particularly considering there is no drawback if you don't need to use the pact. all it does is give you options.

Magic Pact: potentially a bad deal. depends on the magician. a magician with edge 1 and the bad luck flaw, for example, might consider it a bargain to give up his edge to the spirit whenever that spirit wants. and the ability to actually boost your magic attribute? that's a big deal. that could mean more adept powers, the ability to cast higher force spells, or bind more powerful spirits, and so forth. particularly for a mystic adept, i could see this being a very viable choice.

Power Pact: ummmm... excuse me? you can't see the usefulness of this pact? you can't imagine up a use for something like astral gateway? karma draining? astral projection for a mystic adept? regeneration? aura masking? any metamagic technique, potentially including ones that aren't known to anyone else?

[Muspellsheimr]

Basically what Jaid said.

Every pact except Dream is worth taking, & Dream should not simply be dismissed, as it does have very viable uses.


The RAW cost for those pacts, however, is stupid.

[Jaid]

The RAW cost for those pacts, however, is stupid.

that i can definitely agree with. basing it on the edge of the spirit is positively absurd in all cases. even basing it on the force of the spirit only makes sense in some cases. and the dream pact should really be a negative quality, probably, that compensates for other pacts. but badly priced does not mean the pacts are useless, it just means it's time to change around a few things.

[Machiavelli]

Sorry, but dealing with a high-force entity is never a one-way-ticket. Most of the pacts only grant some little additional dice and are definitely not worth the drawbacks that might occur. Especially the dream pact is the most stupid thing i ever heard and everybody who things that this is a cool think, is going to have his own version of "hey dude, where is my car"....and this EVERY DAY. Sorry, but 3 dices plus on magic or drain-tests, are easier to maintain through foci, specializations or quickening (increased attribute) etc. etc. If I would accept a pact with a ghost, I would like to get some really serious advantages.

[Snow_Fox]

Yeah, that was my first impression, too. But these pacts are so stupid and useless, that you would have to force the PC to accept one. Just another thing in SR4 that is useless because its magic? Hmmmm....

or a deal with the devil?
or maybe the sort of temptation for more power to get you out of a jamb, like Harry Dresden having the fallen angel in his head for a few books

[Machiavelli]

Of course it is, but if you gain a pact, you expect a lot of power of it. Most of the pact are only useful for one side (e.g. dram pact) but what does the other side make to accept such a one-sided relationship? What are the compensations? Is it the old "one day, may it never come, you owe me a favour"? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Neraph]

Power Pact: ummmm... excuse me? you can't see the usefulness of this pact? you can't imagine up a use for something like astral gateway? karma draining? astral projection for a mystic adept? regeneration? aura masking? any metamagic technique, potentially including ones that aren't known to anyone else?

I know this chummer little spirit in downtown Seattle that has this thing for feeding the homeless, grok? And well it just so happens I know a Nutrition spell. And it just so happens that little spirit has the ability to regenerate. So's every second tuesday of the month this little spirit shows back up at my flat to thank me profusely for helping him to feed the homeless. And his method of thanks takes the form of reinforcing a bond between us, so he can feed the homeless, and now I can regenerate wounds as well.

<<Edge 1 Free Spirit with Regenerate, Power Pact [5 BP], Nutrition Spell [3 BP]>>

Also works with things like Orgasm (the Edge 1 Free Spirit is obsessed with sex [like Bob the Skull from the Dresden Files]), Fashion, or Makeover/Healthy Glow.

[Heath Robinson]

Of course it is, but if you gain a pact, you expect a lot of power of it. Most of the pact are only useful for one side (e.g. dram pact) but what does the other side make to accept such a one-sided relationship? What are the compensations? Is it the old "one day, may it never come, you owe me a favour"? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Not being vulnerable whilst you're asleep. Dream Pacts are for paranoids, because Spirits don't want to experience being killed about as strongly as you do. This is also a roleplaying game, and re-enacting Fight Club is a perfectly viable reason to take a quality.

[Ice Hammer]

IMO, the concept of spirit pacts are awesome. If done correctly, it has the potential to add another layer to a very rich, role playing atmosphere. Perhaps the mechanics need tweaking to suit individual games. And that's where the Gamemaster should come into play. In fact, in Street Magic, it mentions specifically that Gamemasters are encouraged to come up with their own spirit pacts. So, the best option here, if a player wants their character to have a spirit pact but doesn't find the spirit pact that he or she wants, he or she should work with the gamemaster to comes up with something that will work for them, and for the game that they are in. Just because the examples may or may not be the best, doesn't mean that you couldn't come up with something better (with the GM's approval, of course). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Jaid]

Sorry, but dealing with a high-force entity is never a one-way-ticket. Most of the pacts only grant some little additional dice and are definitely not worth the drawbacks that might occur. Especially the dream pact is the most stupid thing i ever heard and everybody who things that this is a cool think, is going to have his own version of "hey dude, where is my car"....and this EVERY DAY. Sorry, but 3 dices plus on magic or drain-tests, are easier to maintain through foci, specializations or quickening (increased attribute) etc. etc. If I would accept a pact with a ghost, I would like to get some really serious advantages.

no, you're not getting it. with the magic pact, your magic score increases once per day for a brief duration. you can't do that with a focus. you can't do that with quickening. you *can* do that with essence drain, by spending essence, but that's hardly trivial. allow me to repeat that: this is NOT something you can duplicate in any other way. your actual magic stat goes up. if you are an adept, you gain new powers and your max rating increases. if you are a magician, the max force of a spell you can cast or spirit you can summon goes up. your magic score actually goes higher.

the drain pact is extra drain dice beyond what you would otherwise have. no matter how big your drain pool was before, this can increase it. anything where you can say "i'll just increase my drain pool by X", i can say "i can increase my drain pool by X + 3". no matter how high you can get your drain pool without a drain pact, i can get it higher with a drain pact. it is not insignificant. a focus can be destroyed, lost, deactivated, etc. a quickened spell is going to get destroyed by a ward sooner or later most likely. a drain pact cannot be stolen. it cannot be destroyed. it doesn't disappear on an unlucky roll when you pass through a ward.

Of course it is, but if you gain a pact, you expect a lot of power of it. Most of the pact are only useful for one side (e.g. dram pact) but what does the other side make to accept such a one-sided relationship? What are the compensations? Is it the old "one day, may it never come, you owe me a favour"? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

that's up to the player and GM. probably the karma/BP that were used to pay for the pact, or potentially as was mentioned earlier, a dream pact. some even give a trade; the edge pact obviously lets the spirit gain access to extra edge. the power pact gives the spirit another spell. the healing pact gives the spirit karma whenever you use the pact.

and again, you still don't seem to have fully grasped this concept: the core books were not written exclusively for your personal use. you don't own shadowrun, so quit complaining when it doesn't read like you do own it, or that it wasn't written exclusively for your personal use. just because you don't want something in your character does not make it a bad idea, or unworthwhile to everyone else. i personally have never made a magician character that uses a focus. does this mean that there is no such thing as a useful focus that meaningfully adds to a character? no, of course not, and any argument based on such an absurd belief is not going to be hard to prove wrong by anyone who has the ability to apply basic logic. some people don't want to give their GM so much control over their character as to take a dream pact. other people look at it and think "wow, i would really love to roleplay dealing with that". it does not need to be useful to the former group in order for it to be useful to the latter, and the former can just go right ahead and ignore it and there won't be any problems for them. if you dont' want the bloody dream pact, then don't take it. i don't really care. but that's no reason to go around declaring that it is useless just because you don't want it.

[Machiavelli]

Oh boy, i hate discussions like this but i will try to explain you anyway, what my intention really was as i started this topic. Why i do this? Because i don´t think that you got the core of my question.

A spirit pact is nothing you get forced into, it´s something that both sides agree for a specific purpose. Since the beginning of mankind nobody did something for free. If you share things or if you live in a capitalistic world doesn´t change this concept. So what reason does somebody have to fix such a contract? Because he thinks that he will get more advantages from it that disadvatages. Up so far everything clear?

Now we come to the problem: Some of the pacts are (just according to the explanation) just one-sided contracts with no explained use for the other side. So my question was, why somebody should accept something? Other pact-forms definitely have some advantages, but this ones are not attractive because getting some dice or raising the magic attribute for some minutes once per day or whatever (which is - except for an adept, there you are absolutely right - useless, because higher force spirits are likely to summon just because of some additonal dice and the spells you can speak with this, will nevertheless knock you out - you just don´t overcast and die) And now that you realize that the advantages are quite...lets say "limited", you have to think about what the other side will get in exchange for this. And THEN i use a quite funny thing called logic, that tells me that I can get similar (not all, there you are also right) benefits from other sources with lesser "potential" disadvantages. So is there still a need or at least an attraction to get a spirit pact? Sorry, not IMHO.

Of course you can still come with "but it´s roleplaying", but hey, even in your group you won´t find somebody that takes "this very cool looking super-gun that explodes in your face every second shot" just because it fits to the chars. clothes. There is a frontier from which point something causes more trouble than it benefits and except if you create your own pact with the GM, the ones in the book are useless. I was just asking if i understood it right if there REALLY are no additonal benefits i didn´t find in the book (overread or whatever) because as it was written it made no sense to me.

[Neraph]

If your GM allows the "hold dice from spellcasting test for drain test" rule, the Magic Pact (?) is actually quite good. You set up a stonger initial blast and save some of the extra dice you get for the Drain Test. Win-Win.

Also, as mentioned above, having a spirit that is as likely to enjoy death as you are in your body every night definately has its advantages as well.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

My personal Favorites ar the Life Pact and the Power Pact...

[Machiavelli]

I think i am simply spoiled by the "hidden life" power of some free spirits. It would be interesting to combine this power with an additional spirit pact.^^ Powergaming rules !!!

[Jaid]

Oh boy, i hate discussions like this but i will try to explain you anyway, what my intention really was as i started this topic. Why i do this? Because i don´t think that you got the core of my question.

A spirit pact is nothing you get forced into, it´s something that both sides agree for a specific purpose. Since the beginning of mankind nobody did something for free. If you share things or if you live in a capitalistic world doesn´t change this concept. So what reason does somebody have to fix such a contract? Because he thinks that he will get more advantages from it that disadvatages. Up so far everything clear?

Now we come to the problem: Some of the pacts are (just according to the explanation) just one-sided contracts with no explained use for the other side. So my question was, why somebody should accept something? Other pact-forms definitely have some advantages, but this ones are not attractive because getting some dice or raising the magic attribute for some minutes once per day or whatever (which is - except for an adept, there you are absolutely right - useless, because higher force spirits are likely to summon just because of some additonal dice and the spells you can speak with this, will nevertheless knock you out - you just don´t overcast and die) And now that you realize that the advantages are quite...lets say "limited", you have to think about what the other side will get in exchange for this. And THEN i use a quite funny thing called logic, that tells me that I can get similar (not all, there you are also right) benefits from other sources with lesser "potential" disadvantages. So is there still a need or at least an attraction to get a spirit pact? Sorry, not IMHO.

Of course you can still come with "but it´s roleplaying", but hey, even in your group you won´t find somebody that takes "this very cool looking super-gun that explodes in your face every second shot" just because it fits to the chars. clothes. There is a frontier from which point something causes more trouble than it benefits and except if you create your own pact with the GM, the ones in the book are useless. I was just asking if i understood it right if there REALLY are no additonal benefits i didn´t find in the book (overread or whatever) because as it was written it made no sense to me.

and i already explained to you why some people might take those pacts. in some cases, i explained it twice. if the magic pact is really super-amazing useful for an adept (or especially a mystic adept, who likely has a low effective magician magic score, or also especially anyone who has a fair amount of cyber, or who took the latent awakening quality, or any of the qualities that give you magic 1 and some random ability, or a critter who can't afford to raise their magic a lot... notice that this is quite a few reasons someone might take the pact?) then it is a reasonable pact to include. if the dream pact allows you to say "this is what the spirit is getting out of it's power pact that keeps it willing to maintain the pact even though i'm not paying it karma" then it has a use, because now your GM doesn't have a reason to remove your power pact ASAP. the drain pact, like i said, can be added on top of any other method you use to add drain dice. if you can use sustain foci on willpower and your other drain stat, then i can use sustain foci on the same things, *plus* i can take a drain pact. you have lots of dice, i have more. although where you're getting your force 5 (at least, if not higher) focus x 2 to sustain your drain stats at 9, i'm not sure. and most mages i've made, i've had a hard time deciding what spells to take... two improve[attribute] spells may be nice, but they never quite seem to make it onto my list.

it doesn't have to be attractive to you. it's not written exclusively for you. it's written for other people. and that's ok.

or, to put it another way: i have absolutely no interest in a ford F-150 truck. i don't need one, don't want one, and am certainly not willing to pay for the privilege of owning one. this does not mean that i should write to ford and tell them that they're stupid for producing such a useless product, and it certainly doesn't mean that their product is useless. it just means that i personally am not interested in the product. nothing more, nothing less. likewise, you not being interested in those pacts means merely that you have no interest in them. nothing more, nothing less. it doesn't mean those pacts are worthless, or that they should never have been included.

[Machiavelli]

If there is one thing for sure, than that there are a lot of "if´s" in your statement. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

But it is anyway a pity that you just repeat the same arguments all the time while ignoring the drawbacks with might and main.

Having some more dices than somebody without a spirit pact is a nice thing for sure, but just as long as the ghost doesn´t want something in return. Then you have to choose by yourself, if it was worth it. And if a spirit (or better: the GM) is going to stack some packts like you want it.....I don´t know if this is going to happen. Of course a power pact is useful for sore magic losers and burnt out mage and other quite seldom constellations you try to fit into your reasoning, but how common are these guys? And besides that: is a spirit going to support somebody that nearly lost all his power? Why should the spirit do so? Philantrophy? Boredom?^^

I really don´t think that we will get this topic to an end because we simply see the whole thing from two completely different sides. So let´s just stop it. I know I´m right.^^

[Muspellsheimr]

Except the 'ghost' does want something in return - Karma - which is rather specifically stated in the pact descriptions. In the unlikely even the spirit wants something else, that is negotiated on before the pact is taken.

While the RAW costs for the various pacts are fucking retarded, the pacts themselves are very good, & the potential downsides can be compared to drugs; I believe a drug addiction is much worse than what a pact will usually cost, & people use drugs all the fucking time for a variety of reasons (most pact benefits are better than most drug benefits anyways).



I would also like to point out that while Jaid & others may be repeating the same arguments, at least they have an argument. You have provided no support at all for your position. You say Spirit Pacts suck/are stupid, because the spirit might [insert random bullshit here].

[Machiavelli]

As soon as you manage to put something unspecific and abstract like "gamemasters choice" into something that is concrete, i will be able to give "arguments".^^ But usually no GM allows something with massive advantages without ensuring that it brings more than enough problems with it. If this is not so in your group, than i am maybe in the wrong one and everything is fluffy and pink outside my little world.^^

[Meatbag]

But usually no GM allows something with massive advantages without ensuring that it brings more than enough problems with it.

That's a problem no ruleset can cover - the rules don't account for GM fiat.

Spirits already get something useful out of a pact - the Karma it costs to take it. Karma is a really big deal for Spirits, since they can't get it NEARLY as easily as you can.

There isn't anything in the fluff that paints Spirits as metaphysical extortionists. The rules as written say that you offer the Karma, and if the spirit agrees, you get the benefit of the pact.

That's it, full stop, everything else is just a sadistic GM at work.

[Jaid]

As soon as you manage to put something unspecific and abstract like "gamemasters choice" into something that is concrete, i will be able to give "arguments".^^ But usually no GM allows something with massive advantages without ensuring that it brings more than enough problems with it. If this is not so in your group, than i am maybe in the wrong one and everything is fluffy and pink outside my little world.^^

does your GM also punish you for your gear choices by arbitrarily deciding that it all actually belongs to MCT, and they want it back? or that your magician quality actually comes from you having been inhabited by a spirit, and now he gets to take control of your character while you sit there and do nothing for the rest of the session? or that your face with first impression gets kidnapped by thugs and forced to spend the rest of his/her life as a bunraku doll?

it's a positive quality. your GM isn't supposed to make horrible things happen because of it, and if he is, well... that's when you leave his game, because your GM is apparently going to arbitrarily decide to screw you over just because you decided to even make a character. you spent BP on it. that BP represents karma, which you used to pay the spirit. you have already paid the price. if you hadn't paid the price, then you would not be starting off with a power pact, you would be starting off with a free spirit contact, and you would then proceed to negotiate a pact.

weaving it into the story is one thing, but if your GM is going to make you pay for it over and over and over, then that is hardly the designers' fault that your GM is an ass. it's not their job to assume that your particular GM has decided to make you regret ever playing a character under that GM. as such, the book is (thankfully) not written for groups who's GM likes to punish their players for playing the game. in my mind, that's a good thing.

[The Jake]

Now that i´m on the run with posting, here another topic from me:^^

- i just overflew the spirit pact section in street magic, but i really don´t see one of them, that really gives the character a benefit. The only one that i would accept, would be the formulae pact, which at least gives me immunity to age. But all the other ones seem quite useless. No immunity to weapons (i remember a pact from the 3rd version where the spirit hid his life in your body which granted this an several other powers) no nothing. Are there some "basic benefits" if you take a spirit pact that I overread? A dream-pact eg. sounds just like a big junk of trouble, so why would somebody accept something?

Now we come to the problem: Someof the pacts are (just according to the explanation) just one-sided contracts with no explained use for the other side.

Of course you can still come with "but it´s roleplaying", but hey, even in your group you won´t find somebody that takes "this very cool looking super-gun that explodes in your face every second shot" just because it fits to the chars. clothes. There is a frontier from which point something causes more trouble than it benefits and except if you create your own pact with the GM, the ones in the book are useless. I was just asking if i understood it right if there REALLY are no additonal benefits i didn´t find in the book (overread or whatever) because as it was written it made no sense to me.

I think i am simply spoiled by the "hidden life" power of some free spirits. It would be interesting to combine this power with an additional spirit pact.^^ Powergaming rules !!!

Emphasis mine.

Your issues are as follows:
1) You didn't read the rules properly.
2) You are (by your own admission) a self-confessed powergamer.
3) You chose to look at one Free Spirit Power (one of the rare ones mind you - and a power, not a pact) and assume all Pacts should resemble that.

Well guess what? No. It doesn't work like that.

The pacts ARE useful and whats more it IS a two sided exchange. If you read anything about spirits you know they cannot earn karma. The karma exchange is what makes this work. Spirit gives/loans you some power. You give it some karma so it can advance. Everyone does the happy dance.

I would love to be able to summon more potent spirits thanks to a trumped up Magic attribute.
I would love to be able to soak excess damage for when I'm caught unawares and not being Possessed by my Force 12 Plant spirit (hey, I only have a Body of 2!).
I would love to be able to soak that drain from that mighty Hellblast I had to cast to help the team get away.

You get any one of these and more for the cost of a few measly karma. The one power you liked (the Immunity to Age) is arguably the mechanically weakest because it provides little in-game benefit (how long do your campaigns run for?). FWIW, it actually DOES have a two sided benefit too - it enables the spirit to hide its life essence.

These Pacts certainly are situational. That is intended by design - they start at 5BP cost FFS. They're not intended to be uber.

Unfortunately there aren't many 'I WIN' buttons for Shadowrun (although a few come close). If you're looking at spirit pacts to find it, then its time to move on.

- J.