Possession Tradition Tactical Manual, for GMs as well as players Options

[rumanchu]

has the pain editor

Is bioware excluded from the rule that all Shifter implants must be delta grade (RC, p.87)?

[Axl]

Introducing Ursula Shire: shifter magician

Shifter: bear ______________ 80

Body 12 _________________ 40
Agility 1 _________________ 0
Reaction 1 ________________ 0
Strength 12 _______________ 40
Charisma 5 _______________ 40
Intuition 1 ________________ 0
Logic 1 __________________ 0
Willpower 1 ______________ 0
Edge 4 __________________ 30
Magic 5 _________________ 40

Spellcasting 4 ____________ 16
Summoning 6 ____________ 24
Specialization: guardian ____ 2
Counterspelling 4 _________ 16

Spells
Manabolt ________________ 3
Powerbolt _______________ 3
Increase willpower ________ 3
Increase reflexes __________ 3
Mind probe ______________ 3
Control thoughts __________ 3
Physical mask ____________ 3

Nuyen: 200,000 ___________ 40

Magician: voodoo _________ 15
Restricted gear ____________ 5
Restricted gear ____________ 5
Restricted gear ____________ 5

Sensitive system ___________ -15
Amnesia _________________ -10
Sensitive neural structure ____ -5
Bad rep __________________ -5

Contacts
Fixer: connection 1, loyalty 1 __________ 2
Talismonger: connection 1, loyalty 1 ____ 2

Focus bonding
Power focus 4 _____________ 4
Sustaining focus 3 __________ 3
Sustaining focus 5 __________ 5

Equipment

Power focus 4
Sustaining focus 5 (Health: Increase Willpower)
Sustaining focus 3 (Health: Increase Reflexes)

Ceramic knife
Claymore
Flashlight

Form-fitting full body armour
Securetech PPP: forearm guards, shin guards, leg & arm casings, vitals protector
SWAT armour & helmet

Commlink: Sony Emperor
OS: Redcap Nix

Low lifestyle for 1 month
Fake SIN rating 4

[Axl]

Ursula isn't perfect. Sn0mm1s's techniques certainly could bypass Ursula's defences. However this has reached the stage where the GM is having to custom design an enemy specifically to bring her down. Such an enemy would waste the rest of a Shadowrun team.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Is bioware excluded from the rule that all Shifter implants must be delta grade (RC, p.87)?

As far as I know, Bioware is not excluded... any augmentation must be Delta Grade...

Keep the Faith

[Falconer]

Wow, I see people are realizing exactly what I was saying...

Patrick:
The problem w/ the FAQ is that it's old, out of date, has NOT been maintained, and directly contradicts RAW in many places. RAW which was REPUBLISHED and clarified in SR4a in many cases. The FAQ is not a product of 'the authors' but of 'an author'. Look at some of Synner's old posts... even he as line developer had some ideas which didn't make it past the 'council'. I have more experience interacting w/ battletech authors/playtesters. But one of the old guys who used to write/answer their FAQS picked up the moniker 'human magic 8-balll'. Because the rules lawyers learned they could email him a question, get a reply... if they didn't like it, they'd resend it again only slightly differently worded, and get back a wholly different reply.

So no I don't buy arguments based on the FAQ. Erasing it from the web site would be a service... and actually publishing the SR4a errata for the core rulebooks. (unlikely now w/ the troubles... but that's another topic for another thread). I remember chatting w/ Ancient on the IRC about a month back and he stated it's looking nigh impossible to get any kind of errata out then.


Shapeshift spell:
The spell does NOT allow a creature to go past their natural augmented maximums of their NATIVE form. The rule is quite clear, magic cannot augment an attribute past its limits. Keep in mind the spell has an innate limitation on how big or small of a form you're allowed go get into. (+-2 body). Look for a thread a short time ago about using shapeshift or animalform to assume a metahuman form, and people intentionally doing it to change their physical attributes.


Others:
Possession is JUST AS OBVIOUS AS MATERIALIZATION. (digital grimoire repeats what's in SR4a). It's 6-force on the perception check... so a force 6 spirit is blatantly obvious no matter who it is in. Easiest way to describe this is the possessed entity exhibits a shamanic mask or similar. So any kind of HTR should recognize either a high force or any moderately high force possessed character as a threat.

Exactly my point... force 8 spirit is not that far of a stretch. You get 2 initiations, channeling, and centering (for the inevitable drain!). As my GM has learned, I can and will pop a force 9 on the spot when the situation calls for it.

IF augmented maximums aren't kept. Then that force 8 is guaranteed +8 dice to avoid getting hit... +8 dice body to avoid damage, higher worn armor limit (up to +16 more from picking up a shield, slapping on PPP, etc.), Then IF you allow ItNW to stack (which nowhere in the rulebook does it say it does!) it's an additional 16 soak dice. IE: force 8 possession is adding +8reaction, potentially +40 dice armor & body, ON TOP OF the starting dice to avoid and soak damage. It's not a question of can it be abused, it's a question of when and how often.

And forget the minigun... recoil is first big problem (and good luck hitting in the first place w/ -dice from recoil and +dice to reaction to avoid getting hit). The second big problem is narrow bursts DON"T OVERCOME HARDENED. If anything, when dealing w/ hardened armor, you're always better off going for wide bursts to wipe out their reaction pool (every hit then goes towards beating that magic hardened armor threshhold). As others have pointed out... it doesn't matter if you have the troll or they do... possession basically means, your toys are now my toys. (sorta like playing a blue permission/control deck in magic). When you do this, they can and will have so much armor that even 10 or 12 point hits can and will get soaked down to nothing. The whole mini-gun thing is just a red herring.

Gas is another red herring... poisons are normally resisted with body... they just got an increase in body. Poisons also even w/ a speed of 'immediate' only take effect once per combat turn (not pass), and only after the end of the 4th pass.


There is NO CONTEST... possession is almost always stronger than materialization. (look at the best stat lines for materialization... just possessing a MkI security guard, will get you a +3 bod, +3 rea, +3 agi, +3str... no spirit comes w/ a stat line that good for materialization... worse if you possess something beefier... PLUS it has equipment and that equipment stacks according to the possession diehards. Lack something on their side to possess, bring something of your own, or possess a teammate. (the decker or face for example!)

The only time a possession will have more trouble is when you're facing a rigger and having to deal w/ his drones. Then the OR can be rough (and only then if you don't give players access to spirits edge. with edge, it's highly likely a force 6 will get past OR5; generally players should never have direct control of any spirit's edge only the GM should).

I heavily suggest people actually pull out the old SR3 and read what possession used to be. Up to and including the drain inflicted on the caster for having himself possessed! (not just summoning would inflict drain, but when the possession ended as well). Similarly, under the old rules, possessing only used 1 service for the entire time of possession, but when it ended all additional services were revoked and the spirit went free. There are a lot of assumptions people make based on the older rules, and don't realize that SR4 has changed a lot of the core mechanics it effects quite a bit.

[pbangarth]

Ursula isn't perfect. Sn0mm1s's techniques certainly could bypass Ursula's defences. However this has reached the stage where the GM is having to custom design an enemy specifically to bring her down. Such an enemy would waste the rest of a Shadowrun team.

Well, Falconer took you seriously, but I won't. Five of the eight core Attributes at "1"? How did she live long enough to Awaken? She was born a drooling, idiotic slug. Her father would have eaten her and denied he ever sired something so degenerate, if he hadn't been executed first for crimes against humanity.

Then how did she survive her first spell castings? Who told her to learn Increase[Willpower] first, 'cause she sure as hell didn't think of that herself.

I used to think Traveller was the only game in which you could kill a character off in chargen. You have proven me wrong.

[pbangarth]

Wow. I didn't think I had that in me.

[Falconer]

Say whatever you like. I didn't even look at the character. But I have seen players do this.

It only takes Magic4 to get a force 8 spirit. Throw in a good skill and a focus, mentor, and it's not too hard to get 12+ dice vs 8 on the summoning test.

I'm just outspoken whenever I see anything broken in the system. Especially when others can't justify it except to fall back on 'but the book doesn't say not to' defense.


Here's another one while you're at it... skills are capped at 6 or are they? Does a force 9 spirit have 9 ranks in the skill or does it cap at 6. (local GM now stops skills at 6 to limit the effectiveness of high force summonings).

[Mordinvan]

I agree with that. And it happens with a lot of things in SR, not just magic (even though magic gets accused of brokeness a lot more than other aspects). The reason for that, in my opinion, is that everything can be taken to scary extremes, be it the possessed troll, a maximally armored cyberlimb-sammy, or the face with the really big social dice pool. I never liked to condemn an entire concept just because someone could theoretically take it to an extreme level.

A possessing spirit will be more dangerous in a direct confrontation than a manifesting spirit, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with that. After all, you need a vessel for that spirit, either yourself, or someone/something else in your surroundings. That possession test might fail (and I have seen it fail in very crucial moments during runs). Maybe no vessel will be around, in which case you have the spirit possess yourself. That puts your own body on the line, however.
The beauty of manifesting spirits is that they bring another player to the field when you need the backup, without having to rely on a possession test. And everyone except the most disciplined HTR teams will immediately indentify them as the most scary threat and focus on killing/avoiding that otherwordly thing, giving the runners enough space and time to regroup, retreat, or disable the opposition.

Speaking of powreful builds like the big, scary troll possessed by a high-force spirit: In our games one of the guidelines is that extreme measures will most likely result in similarly extreme reactions, as long as the oppostion would have the capability to do so. Sure, you can mop the floor with the street gang as a talented possession mage (as can several other character concepts), but corpsec will definitely call for magical backup once they spot you. For all they know, you could be one of those sheddim or insect spirits or any other kind of terrible extraplanar menace that the security guys have only heard stories about. Since a being possessed by a spirit becomes dual-natured, you open yourself up to attacks from the astral plane, so the wage-mages don't even have to move to your location, but can just pop into the astral to engage you.
Mundane threats shouldn't be discounted, too. A high armor value seems impressive at first, but armor is notoriously unreliable in SR. When it's bullets vs. armor, the bullets will eventually win, because they can never roll badly for their DV as armor can for its protection. 30 armor will protect from 10 DV on average, but that "average" is an important point. Just because your damage resistance rolls will average out in the long run, it doesn't make than one botched roll any less deadly.

30 armor will however always protect against 7 DV if you wish to trade in the 4-1

[Mordinvan]

Yes, but we're not talking about 25 resist dice, we're talking 50. On a 400BP starting character. Who can rip tanks in half. Who can take rockets to the face. Who has the willpower and counterspelling dice to resist magical opposition. Who has access to spellcasting. What if this character isn't a troll, what if he's a shapeshifter? There's no way he's going down in one or two attacks, most burst fire won't penetrate his hardened armor, he regenerates stick n shock damage or laser damage. Direct damage spells still affect him, if they can get through his magical defenses. And what if we give him a pain editor as well? By turning it on before being possessed, he can gain its benefits during possession. Now he is virtually immune to stun damage, if a direct combat spell wants to affect him they must penetrate his Body of insane. I don't even know how to respond to a truly twinked out possession mage. He'd have hardened armor of crazy that could resist normal bursts, he'd be immune to stun damage, if he was attacked by a helicopter he could possess the pilot and crash it, if he was attacked by a tank he could again possess the pilot or use an lightning aura melee attack to disable it, if he was attacked by a mage he'd have counterspelling, immunity to stun, and a body of resist everything you could throw at him. He might be vunerable to astral attacks, but spirits come with astral combat and he'd have other bound spirits he could call to fight for him if he needed to and they'd still have to deal with his huge damage track. As you said, bad rolls wouldn't be too much of a problem if he had a decent edge score. Maybe you couldn't get all of this at chargen, I'd have to make the character to see, but you certainly could get all of it eventually, and then you'd have a character who's only real vulnerability is a GM fiated satellite strike.

Edit: Made the character, 47 resist damage dice, physical damage track with 17 boxes and 18 body, modded high velocity ares alpha as primary weapon, 18P damage at AP -2 with ex rounds, no recoil, 18 dice to hit, regenerates with a pool of 26 each round, has the pain editor and military grade armor as well as a rating 4 power focus, spellcasting 3 with a manipulation specialization, stunbolt and armor as spells, 15 dice to resist combat spells, 4 force 5 guardian spirits bound at chargen with 2 services each. Not subtle at all but he is a one-man army at 400BP.

I'd respond to him with a sniper with a modified thunderstruck rail gun. Ap 1/2 - lots, and blow his head off.

[Saint Sithney]

Killing any character isn't particularly difficult. As has been pointed out, the problem comes in challenging the one player without obliterating another.

But really, that's why teams have roles. You don't expect the teams face to wade into an HRT team with a claymore and catch a desperate rating 15 plastique satchel charge suicide blast. Ol Bear bait might just.

[Patrick the Gnom...]

Is bioware excluded from the rule that all Shifter implants must be delta grade (RC, p.87)?

Crap, forgot that, thanks. So he wouldn't be immune to stick n shock then, you would have to choose between immunity to stun damage as a troll or regeneration as a bear.

[Axl]

"Well, Falconer took you seriously, but I won't. Five of the eight core Attributes at "1"? How did she live long enough to Awaken? She was born a drooling, idiotic slug. Her father would have eaten her and denied he ever sired something so degenerate, if he hadn't been executed first for crimes against humanity.

Then how did she survive her first spell castings? Who told her to learn Increase[Willpower] first, 'cause she sure as hell didn't think of that herself.

I used to think Traveller was the only game in which you could kill a character off in chargen. You have proven me wrong." - pbangarth

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

Perhaps you have missed the point of this. Of course I am well aware that this character is grossly unbalanced. That is the point. The negative qualities alone should ring alarm bells. Ironically, despite these problems, this character could play a role in a serious Shadowrun game. In such a game, Ursula would be severely overpowered.

[rumanchu]

The second big problem is narrow bursts DON"T OVERCOME HARDENED

Source?

Hardened Armor (p.295, SR4A): "If the modified Damage Value of an attack does not exceed the Armor rating (modified by Armor Penetration), then it bounces harmlessly off the critter"

Immunity to Normal Weapons (p.295, SR4A): "The critter gains an “Armor rating” equal to twice its Magic against that damage. This Immunity Armor is treated as “hardened” protection (see Hardened Armor above), meaning that if the Damage Value does not exceed the Armor, then the attack automatically does no damage"

High Velocity Weapons (p.26, Arsenal): "When used to fire narrow bursts, a +11 DV modifier to the attack applies" (emphasis mine).

Unless I'm missing some rule somewhere, it seems clear to me that the aforementioned High Velocity Ares Alpha firing a HV narrow burst has a modified DV of 17P with standard ammunition -- with but a single net success on the attack roll. (Speaking as a GM who has had NPC spirits routinely acefay-uckfayed by players throwing down narrow bursts, I would actually relish a rules citation that negated this tactic).

EDIT: as noted below, I've been made aware of the spectacularly Hidden In Plain Sight rule that applies.

[Mordinvan]

Source?

Hardened Armor (p.295, SR4A): "If the modified Damage Value of an attack does not exceed the Armor rating (modified by Armor Penetration), then it bounces harmlessly off the critter"

Immunity to Normal Weapons (p.295, SR4A): "The critter gains an “Armor rating” equal to twice its Magic against that damage. This Immunity Armor is treated as “hardened” protection (see Hardened Armor above), meaning that if the Damage Value does not exceed the Armor, then the attack automatically does no damage"

High Velocity Weapons (p.26, Arsenal): "When used to fire narrow bursts, a +11 DV modifier to the attack applies" (emphasis mine).

Unless I'm missing some rule somewhere, it seems clear to me that the aforementioned High Velocity Ares Alpha firing a HV narrow burst has a modified DV of 17P with standard ammunition -- with but a single net success on the attack roll. (Speaking as a GM who has had NPC spirits routinely acefay-uckfayed by players throwing down narrow bursts, I would actually relish a rules citation that negated this tactic).

Dev's have weighed on in it repeatedly. If the first bullet can't break through, neither can it's 15 friends.

[rumanchu]

Dev's have weighed on in it repeatedly. If the first bullet can't break through, neither can it's 15 friends.

A friend of mine pointed out the appropriate reference: "Note that this DV modifier does not apply when comparing the DV to the armor rating." (SR4A, p.153)

As an aside, would it really kill the SR writers to reference rules from time to time? NOTHING under Full Auto about this, NOTHING under Armor, NOTHING under Hardened Armor, NOTHING under vehicle armor. It's limited to 1 sentence in 1 section about 1 particular burst type.

[pbangarth]

EDIT: bad argument-- rethinking.

[Whipstitch]

Burst and fully automatic weapons fire is still pretty helpful against powerful spirits and other hard targets since you can use Wide attacks to reduce their (undoubtedly high in the case of Force 6+ spirits) defense pool and score more net hits which will then stage up your damage value. It's not nearly as good as an unrestricted modified damage value to narrow bursts would have been, but it can certainly help give vehicle and drone heavy weapons the extra punch needed to ruin someone's weekend.

[knasser]

I don't subscribe to the view that possession spirits rock over materialization spirits, for a number of reasons already mentioned above. So I won't reiterate. But an earlier discussion about background count (BC) got me to thinking.

BC reduces the Magic Attribute of a magician and the Force of a spirit on a 1:1 basis. BG of 2 means both drop by 2. But, the maximum Force of spirit controllable by a magician is equal to twice the Magic Attribute. Therefore, the upper limit is reduced at a 2:1 rate. So, theoretically, a decent BG could create a state in which a magician is 'in control' of a spirit beyond her normal ability to summon.

What effect would this have if such a spirit were A) in the presence of a Materialization Tradition magician, and B) possessing a Possession Tradition magician? Would the spirit still be controlled? Maybe some kind of 'spiritual grandfather clause' would be in effect.

If not, would the spirit just go away? Probably, for both Traditions. But if it chose, for its own reasons, to stay, it is likely that the Possession Tradition magician would get the worse treatment. "I like it here. I like the feeling of toughness and strength. I think I will stay for a while. And, no, your Channeling means nothing to me now. I am in charge."

How does that sound?

I think by RAW, the spirit doesn't become uncontrolled. The text in SR4A, pg. 188 states that a magician may not summon a spirit whose Force is greater than twice his magic attribute. But at the time of entering the area of background count, the summoning has already taken place. I don't know of any other part of RAW that would imply a spirit could go free. It's a nice idea though. If you're group isn't too rules-lawyery, you could work it in. But your idea has pointed out something else to me though. This is perhaps of greater significance. When a spirit is finally released from control, they don't actually need to depart - that's up to them. I've had materialisation spirits stick around before now in my game. The consequences of a possession spirit doing so are even more drastic. Wouldn't you say? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[knasser]

How do you figure that a Street Sam could hit with it? Recoil penalties are doubled with machine guns - so if you are looking to hit with a narrow burst for that 20P aren't you looking at -28 recoil?

Well it's uncompensated recoil that is doubled, which has been mentioned already. Just to illustrate the example. (Btw, if people are going to start talking about Force 8 spirits it's only fair that we break out a moderately powerful Street Samurai for comparison).

Agility 8, Heavy Weapons 5 (spec. Machine Guns), Smart Link, Gyrostabalisation, Gas Vent 3 (Total recoil comp. 9 points)
Cyberware: Foot Anchors x 2 (further +2 recoil comp)

His total recoil compensation is 11 points)

So the Samurai rolls 17 dice, losing 6 dice from recoil (the original 14 penalty, minus 11 points of compesation, then doubled). With 11 dice to roll, he's doing pretty well. And that gets him the
20P damage at -1 AP.

Anyway, I'm not arguing with you about whether a possession mage can be a monster, I'm just illustrating my comment about the samurai. You started talking about who would win between the possession magician and the samurai. I'm not going to contest that point as it wasn't one I ever raised myself. Character vs. character works very poorly in Shadowrun (by design). It pretty much always comes down to planning and who attacks who. What I'm discussing is whether possession mages are handleable in a game. The comment about the samurai was merely a response to comments about how dangerous the possession mage was - so can be a well-designed samurai You don't even want to get me started on riggers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[knasser]

Not to mention that a character, especially a troll, built around possession would be summoning force 8 or 10 spirits, not 6.

See, that doesn't happen in my games. It's just too dangerous. Not for me - for the players! If you're summoning these in down time and binding them, then you're blowing a lot of money on this tactic. If you're doing this during a run, then you're just playing a waiting game until the point you get clobbered. There's a 17% chance of the spirit rolling 4 hits at Force 8, i.e. try this five times and you're going to get hit with 8P. And no, that doesn't mean you get away with it until the fifth time (well it's 80% you don't). And it's a shade under 10% chance that the spirit rolls 5 hits. And then you're looking at 10P drain - not a nice way to start a run. Again, that 1 in 10 runs doesn't mean you get it on the 10th run, it means that by the time you've tried this tactic five times, there's a fifty:fifty chance it's happened.

Okay. pbangarth asked for this to be a discussion of tactics, so this is all getting off-topic. But as he's getting involved himself and as you've raised this issue so much, I'll answer it. Let's take a look at the bear that was intended to illustrate how broken possession is.

Shifter: bear ______________ 80

Body 12 _________________ 40
Agility 1 _________________ 0
Reaction 1 ________________ 0
Strength 12 _______________ 40
Charisma 5 _______________ 40
Intuition 1 ________________ 0
Logic 1 __________________ 0
Willpower 1 ______________ 0
Edge 4 __________________ 30
Magic 5 _________________ 40

Spellcasting 4 ____________ 16
Summoning 6 ____________ 24
Specialization: guardian ____ 2
Counterspelling 4 _________ 16

Spells
Manabolt ________________ 3
Powerbolt _______________ 3
Increase willpower ________ 3
Increase reflexes __________ 3
Mind probe ______________ 3
Control thoughts __________ 3
Physical mask ____________ 3

Nuyen: 200,000 ___________ 40

Magician: voodoo _________ 15
Restricted gear ____________ 5
Restricted gear ____________ 5
Restricted gear ____________ 5

Sensitive system ___________ -15
Amnesia _________________ -10
Sensitive neural structure ____ -5
Bad rep __________________ -5

Contacts
Fixer: connection 1, loyalty 1 __________ 2
Talismonger: connection 1, loyalty 1 ____ 2

Focus bonding
Power focus 4 _____________ 4
Sustaining focus 3 __________ 3
Sustaining focus 5 __________ 5

Equipment

Power focus 4
Sustaining focus 5 (Health: Increase Willpower)
Sustaining focus 3 (Health: Increase Reflexes)

Ceramic knife
Claymore
Flashlight

Form-fitting full body armour
Securetech PPP: forearm guards, shin guards, leg & arm casings, vitals protector
SWAT armour & helmet

Commlink: Sony Emperor
OS: Redcap Nix

Low lifestyle for 1 month
Fake SIN rating 4

Now that is a dreadful character! (No offense. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ). You yourself know that it's horribly unbalanced, your point is to show how possession magic outshines others in combat and forces a GM to pull out artillery that is pitched at the possession mage's level and horribly over-powered to the rest of the team. (Correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think this character provides that. I'll list why.

Firstly, the character is awful at ranged combat. He can stand there and roar if he likes, but he's going to feel pretty silly while his friends lay waste to the opposition and he whittles away at a security guard. So that's the first thing the GM can do to challenge this player without flattening team-mates: start the battle at more than 40m away. It's the 2070's, after all. Live by the sword, die by the gun. I'll grant you that this character would be great in a D&D game, but Shadowrun isn't or shouldn't be focused on dungeons. Have people fire on him from windows, across parking lots, through fences, etc.

Secondly, the point is that the GM response has to be elevated to levels where other party members can't take it. If we're to be realistic, I think that's not the case - faced with this thing charging at them (and it will be chargring else it's useless), I'd imagine every guard would open up with everything they've got at him. It's a great moment when a player builds a min-maxed combat monster (the archetypal giant troll) and finds that all of the enemy are targetting him. When the player protests you just ask: "well what would you do?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Thirdly, this character is much weaker when not initiating the combat themselves. For a character this powerful, you're going to expect decent opposition. A few guards with assault rifles firing bursts are going to badly hurt this character before his spirit can possess him (remember, it's a phase to instruct his spirit, a phase for the spirit to attempt possession and this character's initiative is dire when he's not possessed so he's not likely to get much of a start on the enemy). And keep in mind target number one will be the big scary voodoo dude with the gris-gris who looks like he's summoning a spirit or is starting to glow.

Fourthly, this character has weaknesses that other characters - even other magicians - don't. This is a powerful PC - he'll only be running against serious opposition. Give them an astral magician hovering out of reach. No dual natured creature can catch someone purely on the Astral so pepper him with Stun bolts. His high body and ItNW will count for nothing. A high force spirit will afford some protection but the character will still suffer. Keep in mind that until this character gets Channelling, he can't even use his own Counterspelling skill. Similarly, give him a spirit or two to fight on the astral and you'll likewise be threatening him without impacting on the rest of the group.

Fifth, this character is lighting up like Christmas on the astral plane. Every time he goes through a ward, he'll set off alarms. His team mates wont thank him for that. Of course he can deactivate the sustaining foci and recast the spells, but he can't do anything about the power focus, and Extended Masking is a long way off for this character. And it's not like this is a small tweak to fix - this character is hugely dependent on his foci. If he has to give them up to get into a place or loses them, the character becomes a big dead weight.

Sixth, this character is an absolute liability outside of combat. As I said earlier, for dungeon crawls where the GM plays nicely-nicely, the character is fine. But in a normal Shadowrun game, he can't socialise, he knows nothing, knows no-one. He just sits around and waits for something to hit.

Seventh - and I should have put this in earlier as it's a big one - this character has little sustainability. So he commands a spirit to possess him and attack a group of enemies. Fine - they run away. Honestly, if you were a security guard and a glowing bear in form-fitting body armour came charging down the hall at you, isn't that what you'd do? So great - service spent. I suppose you could command the spirit to "kill" the group of enemies, but you'd probably only make that mistake once as the spirit took you rampaging away from your group all over the compound, city or into reinforcements. . (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Basically, once this character hits running battles, he's in trouble. A samurai can keep pumping out bullets all day long, but this guy will burn through services rapidly. If you as GM want to challenge this player, it's easy - you just keep them under sustained pressure. This character can't take that.

And that brings us on to the risks of summoning. Force 8 has been bandied about a lot in this thread. That's absurdly high. Let's say this character tries to summon such a spirit mid-run (I keep bringing up the cost of binding materials but some insist it's fine to summon on the run). On average, this character will get (against a Guardian spirit), 6 hits against the spirit's 3 (I rounded up in both cases). Then he'll have to take the drain test. As I posted earlier, after he's cast this for the sixth time, he's likely to have been hit with 10P drain. He'll quite likely have been hit for 8P as well. His average drain resistance is, what? WIthout sustained Increase Willpower, an amazing less than 1. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) With Increase Willpower boosting him to WIllpower 5 (see earlier note about foci and having to recast these), a still pitiful 2 hits. So either at the start of the run or during it, he suddenly whacks off half of his condition monitor. I pity him if he ever gets the one in fifty odds of the spirit six+ hits in the middle of a fight. Basically, if the GM can think of nothing else, all he has to really do is wait and the character will have a good chance at killing himself.

And we haven't even touched on the subject of the spirit's personality. For a start, this character does not have Channelling. The spirit is fully in control (and you'd better hope when those services run out that it didn't mind you summoning it and gives you your body back). Even with Channelling, you're still subject to the spirit's whims. Basically, it's at the GM's pleasure as to how much control to give you over the character. The higher force the spirit, the more it's going to dislike being controlled by a "moron". At Logic 8, it's going to know better than the character how to go about fighting battles, etc., so why should it carry out services the PC's way?

Anyway, that's enough of a list for now. Keep in mind that my intention is not to show that this character is useless or unplayable, but simply to demonstrate that he's far from forcing the GM to obliterate other PCs just to threaten him which has been the stated objection he was to illustrate.

Basically, for all sorts of reasons, this character would do very badly in my game. Basically, because my games aren't a series of fights from room to room. And I don't simply mean that my games are combat-lite. They're probably typical. But I play it like Shadowrun, not D&D. The other players would get tired of babying this character around. Tone the character down a bit, he'd be better. As it is, he's a very fragile thing inviting destruction.

EDIT: Sorry - wrong pronoun used throughout. I am assuming from the name that Ursula is a she.

[knasser]

Burst and fully automatic weapons fire is still pretty helpful against powerful spirits and other hard targets since you can use Wide attacks to reduce their (undoubtedly high in the case of Force 6+ spirits) defense pool and score more net hits which will then stage up your damage value. It's not nearly as good as an unrestricted modified damage value to narrow bursts would have been, but it can certainly help give vehicle and drone heavy weapons the extra punch needed to ruin someone's weekend.

Wrong approach. If we're dealing with spirits as powerful as people have been casually talking about in this thread, then just hit them with magic or other spirits. Keep in mind that when channelling, you resist mana spells and powers with the lowest mental attributes of the pair. And close combat in the astral is no nicer than close combat on the Physical. Wolf-pack the magician with a few Force 5's and they'll learn the dangers of exposing themselves to threats the rest of the team can't help them with.

[knasser]

I'm going to throw in a thought here. It seems to me that most people here only considder using possession spirits of high Force (Force 5+). How about using a Mystic Adept designed for close combat, and with good physical stats? Sure, there'll be a limit to how powerful a spirit you can summon, but couldn't that possibly work reasonably?

It's not bad. It can work. As you point out though, you wont routinely be using very high-force spirits. The problem then, is that your mental attributes will only be middling. It's not necessarily critical but it is something to be aware of. It would make for a nice character concept though and could make a good warrior type. The trick would be to resist the temptation to start trying to boost your spirit summoning ability in chargen until you end up with an average summoner and crap everything else. I'd recommend keeping it fairly balanced and getting the following two metamagics in order: Channelling and Ally Conjuration. Then you save all your karma for the ally spirit. I'm surprised no-one picked up on my tactic about using Ally spirits for possession mages earlier. It is THE way to get the most out of possession as it eliminates many of the major weaknesses of possession. But it doesn't give you the massive high-Force spirits and the posters who are championing the "possession is broken" idea seem obsessed with pushing everything to the maximum in their efforts to demonstrate that. It's ironic as a lower-key approach with an ally spirit makes for a much more viable and impressive character.

Actually, your mystic adept idea is quite nice. I think if I got the opportunity to play, I might try it out, although it's a long-term strategy to make it really impressive.

K.

[Walpurgisborn]

Introducing Ursula Shire: shifter magician

Shifter: bear ______________ 80

Body 12 _________________ 40
Agility 1 _________________ 0
Reaction 1 ________________ 0
Strength 12 _______________ 40
Charisma 5 _______________ 40
Intuition 1 ________________ 0
Logic 1 __________________ 0
Willpower 1 ______________ 0
Edge 4 __________________ 30
Magic 5 _________________ 40

stuff

Focus bondingPower focus 4 _____________ 4
Sustaining focus 3 __________ 3
Sustaining focus 5 __________ 5

Equipment



stuff

No one seems to have mentioned it, but you're limited to the number of focii to be equal to or less than your logic attribute.

[pbangarth]

Okay. pbangarth asked for this to be a discussion of tactics, so this is all getting off-topic. But as he's getting involved himself and as you've raised this issue so much, I'll answer it. Let's take a look at the bear that was intended to illustrate how broken possession is.

I know, I know. I just couldn't help myself.

It might be simpler to say that one could take any type of character and generate a monster which in its own, select 'domain' it rules over all others. Possession mages are not the only ones.

I like the Ally spirit idea, knasser. I will have to examine that one.

I fully concur with the magic attack from astral space tactic. That hurts no one but the dual-natured vessel.

Run away, delay, isolate, and call for backup is standard practice for security grunts. Why should it not be used against possessed teddy bears?