Posessing a cybered character, Does the spirit lose Force (Essence)? Options

[Banaticus]

If a spirit possesses a cybered character, does the spirit lose Force or Essence?

[Ol' Scratch]

Nope, but he doesn't gain access to or benefit from most of the implants either.

[Banaticus]

Even if it's a full possession and the character is completely gone?

[Ol' Scratch]

Yep. It's basically no different than possessing a corpse. Their lack of Essence has little to no impact on the spirit, either.

[Machiavelli]

The spirits mental and special attributes remain the same and are not depending on the hosts attributes. So there is no drawback for the spirit.

[Jaid]

Even if it's a full possession and the character is completely gone?

wait, do you man possession or inhabitation?

because there is a HUGE difference between the two.

if you're talking about inhabitation, then courtesy of what i suspect to be an oversight, hybrid form spirits get to use the cyberware, while flesh form spirits do not (again, this seems like an oversight, but i could be wrong. i could also be missing something in the errata or FAQ, possibly)

edit: in either case, however, the spirit shouldn't lose any essence.

This post has been edited by Jaid: Apr 10 2010, 08:58 PM

[Patrick the Gnom...]

wait, do you man possession or inhabitation?

because there is a HUGE difference between the two.

if you're talking about inhabitation, then courtesy of what i suspect to be an oversight, hybrid form spirits get to use the cyberware, while flesh form spirits do not (again, this seems like an oversight, but i could be wrong. i could also be missing something in the errata or FAQ, possibly)

edit: in either case, however, the spirit shouldn't lose any essence.

An explanation for this could be that a Flesh Form spirit is merely moving the inhabited vessel around and hasn't obtained the level of merge required to move the secondary attachments to the body that are cyberware, whereas a Hybrid form spirit's more complete merge allows it to infiltrate the central nervous system of the host thoroughly enough to gain control of the body functions which control cyberware. Or it just could be an oversight. Either way, there's no errata that I know of which changes the fact that Flesh Form spirits don't gain access to their hosts cyberware and Hybrid Forms do.

[Banaticus]

Ok, so correct me if I make a mistake in the following list.
Start with a magician.
1. Choose some sort of "evil" possession-based tradition (those narrow minded fools merely call this path to power an evil one) (p34, SM)
2. Initiate and choose the invoke metamagic technique. (p57, SM)
3. Summon a Guardian spirit who has the inhabitation power. (p188, SR4A)
4. Invoke that Guardian spirit into a great form Guardian spirit (it gains the power of endow). (p57, SM again)
5. Kidnap some guy, preferably a very strong tough quick martial artist or something, but not an adept -- it really helps if he has low willpower and it'll be really useful if he's really smart, so maybe ignore the martial artist part and just for some whimpy pushover nerd who's a total brain. It'll be nice if he really looks handsome, but that's not as important. (You'll have to wing this part)
6. Put a whole heck of a ton of a lot of cyberware/bioware into the guy, keep him tied down and unconcious for this.
7. Make sure you have a whole ton of ware in the guy, because the more ware he has the less Essence he has and the easier the next step will be.
8. Enchant the guy as a vesse. (p86, SM)
9. Manifest on the astral plane and have your bound spirit endow you with the power of inhabitation.
10. Inhabit the poor shmuck. Take all your binding dice and add it to his roles because you really want him to win this opposed test. He's going to get possessed no matter what, but you want him to win because...

11. Once he wins, you are now a Flesh Form dual natured entity with Immunity to Natural Weapons, you get all of "the vessel's" memories, abilities and skills (which is why you wanted someone really smart) and you look just like he did and you get the free initiate power of aura masking which should help you hide what you did from astrally active people, although your aura will still look human even if they pierce your masking. (p100, SM)
11. However, I missed this, you have to tie to get full access to all his cyberware and bioware with no loss of your own magic.

So now all that remains is to find the perfect host... of course, it would be really cheap if they'd already put the appropriate ware in themselves...

I have no idea what happens to your original body here. Possibly it slumps over dead? Maybe it thinks it's still astrally perceiving, so if put on life support it'd just sit there and wait for you? Is this what Professor X did? Did Professor X possess the body of a cripple just to get free access to all the body's cyberware that was necessary to access that huge mutant-finding machine? Is this why, at the end of that last X-Men movie the professor woke up in the body of that other person -- was his "death" (banishment) enough to send him back to his "original home" (his original body)?

Is this why villains keep trying to capture runners alive?

[Patrick the Gnom...]

Ok, so correct me if I make a mistake in the following list.
Start with a magician.
1. Choose some sort of "evil" possession-based tradition (those narrow minded fools merely call this path to power an evil one) (p34, SM)
2. Initiate and choose the invoke metamagic technique. (p57, SM)
3. Summon a Guardian spirit who has the possession power. (p188, SR4A)
4. Invoke that Guardian spirit into a great form Guardian spirit (it gains the power of endow). (p57, SM again)
5. Kidnap some guy, preferably a very strong tough quick martial artist or something, but not an adept -- it really helps if he has low willpower and it'll be really useful if he's really smart, so maybe ignore the martial artist part and just for some whimpy pushover nerd who's a total brain. It'll be nice if he really looks handsome, but that's not as important. (You'll have to wing this part)
6. Put a whole heck of a ton of a lot of cyberware/bioware into the guy, keep him tied down and unconcious for this.
7. Make sure you have a whole ton of ware in the guy, because the more ware he has the less Essence he has and the easier the next step will be.
8. Enchant the guy as a vesse. (p86, SM)
9. Manifest on the astral plane and have your bound spirit endow you with the power of possession.
10. Possess the poor shmuck. Take all your binding dice and add it to his roles because you really want him to win this opposed test. He's going to get possessed no matter what, but you want him to win because...
11. Once he wins, you are now a Flesh Form dual natured entity with Immunity to Natural Weapons, full access to all of his cyberware and bioware with no loss of your own magic, you get all of "the vessel's" memories, abilities and skills (which is why you wanted someone really smart) and you look just like he did and you get the free initiate power of aura masking which should help you hide what you did from astrally active people, although your aura will still look human even if they pierce your masking. (p100, SM)

So now all that remains is to find the perfect host... of course, it would be really cheap if they'd already put the appropriate ware in themselves...

I have no idea what happens to your original body here. Possibly it slumps over dead? Maybe it thinks it's still astrally perceiving, so if put on life support it'd just sit there and wait for you? Is this what Professor X did? Did Professor X possess the body of a cripple just to get free access to all the body's cyberware that was necessary to access that huge mutant-finding machine? Is this why, at the end of that last X-Men movie the professor woke up in the body of that other person -- was his "death" (banishment) enough to send him back to his "original home" (his original body)?

Is this why villains keep trying to capture runners alive?

You can't get Inhabitation as a PC. Inhabitation is not Possession. Possession is at best temporary. You can't have a spirit give you the Possession power for an indefinite period of time. Your Possessed body has the disadvantage of expelling you whenever your stun track goes over its limit. If you leave your true body alone for too long it will either die or get taken over by a Shedim. Depending on the mood of your GM (which is not likely to be good after you attempt to pull a stunt like this) he may enforce the optional rule giving your host's mind willpower checks every so often to wear away at your net possession hits until you are expelled from your body. If you are expelled from your host's body and haven't been taking care of your original you will die unless you can find another vessel.

There, I think that covers everything wrong with that plan. And Flesh Form Inhabitation spirits still can't use the cyber of their hosts. And sorry if this seems harsh but that is a really munchkinny thing to try and do, especially considering that if you'd looked at the next page of SM you would hae seen the rules for actual Possession listed.

[Banaticus]

There we go, fixed it. Get the inhabitation power, not the Possession power, so that you can use the inhabitation rules (which are one page before the possession rules).

Of course this is a munchkinny thing to do. It's a thought experiment to see how far we can take it. This was directly inspired by the "if a spirit endows you with the materialization power, do you get to keep your focuses when you materialize" thread.

It looks like I just missed two things -- an optional rule that might let the person kick you out of his body... so perhaps we should erase his memory first or something so that there isn't something there to fight back. And, you can only (apparently) either get access to all his skills *or* all his cyber. So it looks like it's going to take two bodies, one (or more?) to give all the skills and then a final body to get all the cyberware, which is going to be tricky because you need to tie on the roll, and it's going to be obvious to people that "something" is in the guy's body.

[Patrick the Gnom...]

There we go, fixed it. Get the inhabitation power, not the Possession power, so that you can use the inhabitation rules (which are one page before the possession rules).

Of course this is a munchkinny thing to do. It's a thought experiment to see how far we can take it. This was directly inspired by the "if a spirit endows you with the materialization power, do you get to keep your focuses when you materialize" thread.

It looks like I just missed two things -- an optional rule that might let the person kick you out of his body... so perhaps we should erase his memory first or something so that there isn't something there to fight back. And, you can only (apparently) either get access to all his skills *or* all his cyber. So it looks like it's going to take two bodies, one (or more?) to give all the skills and then a final body to get all the cyberware, which is going to be tricky because you need to tie on the roll, and it's going to be obvious to people that "something" is in the guy's body.

You can't get Inhabitation, there are no traditions that are both Inhabitation traditions and have Guardian spirits. And what do you mean two bodies? Even if you could get Inhabitation, it's permanent. There'd be no way to inhabit one body to get skills and then another to get 'ware.

[Ol' Scratch]

You can with an Ally Spirit, but that's a whole other kettle of fish. And the inhabitation is still a random roll of the dice (albeit with some minor control), so you're not guaranteed the type of inhabitation you're after. And even then I don't believe all forms of cyberware are accessible, but I'm too lazy to open up my books right now.

[Patrick the Gnom...]

You can with an Ally Spirit, but that's a whole other kettle of fish. And the inhabitation is still a random roll of the dice (albeit with some minor control), so you're not guaranteed the type of inhabitation you're after. And even then I don't believe all forms of cyberware are accessible, but I'm too lazy to open up my books right now.

Because you can't rebind Ally Spirits you can't Invoke them so they can never get Endow to give you Inhabitation. Certainly it's not impossible to gain access to a spirit with the Inhabitation power but there's no spirit with it who can also gain Endow to give it to you.

[Ol' Scratch]

What?

You can give an ally spirit both Inhabitation and Endowment, the FAQ be damned. You don't have to make them into a great form spirit; they're on a completely different level with their own set of rules. If you can have a spirit with Endowment, so can your ally spirit. They don't follow the restrictions or limitations of any one type of spirit, normal or great form.

But fine, I know people around here get their panties in a twist about that. It doesn't matter though. You can still get an ally spirit with both powers by using a second great form spirit to endow it with Endowment "by the rules," and the ally spirit can then endow Inhabitation.

[Patrick the Gnom...]

What?

You can give an ally spirit both Inhabitation and Endowment, the FAQ be damned. You don't have to make them into a great form spirit; they're on a completely different level with their own set of rules. If you can have a spirit with Endowment, so can your ally spirit. They don't follow the restrictions or limitations of any one type of spirit, normal or great form.

But fine, I know people around here get their panties in a twist about that. It doesn't matter though. You can still get an ally spirit with both powers by using a second great form spirit to endow it with Endowment "by the rules," and the ally spirit can then endow Inhabitation.

I...suppose you could. Seems convoluted and again munchkinny but there's nothing actually stopping you. It doesn't seem like you'd even need to spend karma on an extended service as you could have the spirit stop endowing you with Inhabitation as soon as the merge was over and you wouldn't revert back. So yes, I guess you can Inhabit a man you've kidnapped and cybered to hell as a PC. Sounds like a cool idea for a Lich-like villain.

[Ol' Scratch]

And it's a problem easily solved by fixing Endowment so that it doesn't work on innate powers. As it should have been from the beginning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I mean, it's pretty damn dumb that it can endow you with Sapience, but endowing you with one of its skills is beyond the scope of the power. /brainexplosion

[Banaticus]

You can't get Inhabitation, there are no traditions that are both Inhabitation traditions and have Guardian spirits.

We learn from our foes -- we take what they can do and we use it to become more powerful. Resistance is futile, you will be eliminated... I mean inhabitated.

And what do you mean two bodies?

Just do the whole thing over again. Astral manifest from the first new body and...

Of course this is darn munchkinny -- we don't discuss how to serve tea and crumpets on this board... except perhaps over in the "How to use a face" thread...

The next time a runner is captured or "dies" on corp ground out of reach of Doc Wagon, though, this is what's going to happen to them. Especially if they were foolish enough to run against almighty and all good and all wise Aztlan... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Patrick the Gnom...]

Why even stop after getting the skills from one body? If you get a vessel with Flesh Form you maintain the ability to astrally manifest, and I don't see anything preventing you from keeping the skills you stole when you do so. Theoretically, you could Inhabit an infinite number of people and gain skills from each of them, becoming the ultimate skill monkey for no more karma expenditure than it requires to get an ally spirit and invoke a guardian spirit with its ultimate power. Please, someone tell me what's wrong with this.

[Mongoose]

Possession / inhabitation seems like a good way for magical groups to make "supersoldiers". You could get some "volunteers" (voluntary or not), implant them with cheap non-neural cyber or bios (stuff like dermal plating and muscle replacement, good for stats but otherwise to essence spendy) because they won't get benefits from other stuff, then have a spirit use the body.

Hmm- if the subject has cyber eyes, would the possessing / inhabiting spirit be blind? If they can't use such cyber, it would seem so.

[Emy]

Possession / inhabitation seems like a good way for magical groups to make "supersoldiers". You could get some "volunteers" (voluntary or not), implant them with cheap non-neural cyber or bios (stuff like dermal plating and muscle replacement, good for stats but otherwise to essence spendy) because they won't get benefits from other stuff, then have a spirit use the body.

Hmm- if the subject has cyber eyes, would the possessing / inhabiting spirit be blind? If they can't use such cyber, it would seem so.

AFAIK, an inhabiting one would be able to use the cybereyes.

A possessing one would still be able to see, because their visual ability isn't tied to their vessels. (homonculi don't have eyes)

[Megu]

Possession / inhabitation seems like a good way for magical groups to make "supersoldiers". You could get some "volunteers" (voluntary or not), implant them with cheap non-neural cyber or bios (stuff like dermal plating and muscle replacement, good for stats but otherwise to essence spendy) because they won't get benefits from other stuff, then have a spirit use the body.

Hmm- if the subject has cyber eyes, would the possessing / inhabiting spirit be blind? If they can't use such cyber, it would seem so.

I've really thought of doing something like this, but simply using wimp clone bodies (the "tank full o' Reis" approach). Cheap, readily available, you know exactly how they'll work with the cyber and can optimize compatibility, and no moral or more importantly, PR dilemma. I was thinking of having a corp try and use mantid spirits in this way, and point them at the local insect hive. May or may not work out the way they plan. Some variation like that, anyways.

[Ol' Scratch]

I think the limitation is on the active use of implants; ones that require the character to activate or process information from the implant. Smartlinks, Image Links, Datajacks, Cyberguns, Cyberarm Gyromounts, etc. Prosthetic-style replacements and most forms of bioware should work just fine while possessed.

[Patrick the Gnom...]

I think the limitation is on the active use of implants; ones that require the character to activate or process information from the implant. Smartlinks, Image Links, Datajacks, Cyberguns, Cyberarm Gyromounts, etc. Prosthetic-style replacements and most forms of bioware should work just fine while possessed.

Actually, the limitation is on anything that requires a direct neural interface. Smart links and Image links might work but Datajacks specifically wouldn't and unless the spirit could access cyberlimbs through some non-neural, non-matrix function they and all their attachments would be useless as well. Many pieces of bioware would work though, although it still would require a look at the individual pieces to make sure.

[Neraph]

What?

You can give an ally spirit both Inhabitation and Endowment, the FAQ be damned. You don't have to make them into a great form spirit; they're on a completely different level with their own set of rules. If you can have a spirit with Endowment, so can your ally spirit. They don't follow the restrictions or limitations of any one type of spirit, normal or great form.

But fine, I know people around here get their panties in a twist about that. It doesn't matter though. You can still get an ally spirit with both powers by using a second great form spirit to endow it with Endowment "by the rules," and the ally spirit can then endow Inhabitation.

Wait, Ally Spirits can only gain normal powers that a spirit type can choose from, not Invoking Greater Powers. So you're "band-aid" houserule doesn't need to be implemented in the first place.

EDIT: Also, for all sorts of interesting and fun things you can do with Inhabitation, check my signature.

And for access to spirits with Inhabitation, see the Calling rules in Running Wild, also mentioned in the thread in my signature.

[Ol' Scratch]

Wait, Ally Spirits can only gain normal powers that a spirit type can choose from, not Invoking Greater Powers.

No, that's your house rule. "[The ally spirit] also receives one additional power per point of Force, chosen from any powers available to spirits the initiate may conjure." Even if you try to claim "[t]he initiate may give the ally extra powers available to spirits his tradition can conjure" line reaffirms your house rule, which it doesn't and even comes after the previous rule, that's a separate rule from the one I just quoted. And no, the FAQs aren't canonical rules either.

That said, I'm not really interested in arguing it again so I wouldn't really waste your breath on it.