[X] My Assistant

[Megu]

So... how would you guys fix this if you were going to houserule it into being workable? Has anyone got a good setup?

I'm just asking because I'm considering writing up a free spirit character; basically, a sword-wielding onryo. Picture Sadako mowing down corpsec in downtown Seattle Kill Bill style. I don't want to be all OP and shit, but I think there's gotta be something I could use to present to my GM as a free spirit character gen system that is functional without being broken.

[sabs]

So... how would you guys fix this if you were going to houserule it into being workable? Has anyone got a good setup?

I'm just asking because I'm considering writing up a free spirit character; basically, a sword-wielding onryo. Picture Sadako mowing down corpsec in downtown Seattle Kill Bill style. I don't want to be all OP and shit, but I think there's gotta be something I could use to present to my GM as a free spirit character gen system that is functional without being broken.

That's not exactly the kind of thing Free Spirits excel at.

Try something like:
BP cost of being a free spirit: 100
All stats start at 2, force starts at 2.
Raise Magic to Raise force. Raising force raises Max Stat.
Buy stats as normal.

I think paying 100 less BP for free spirit will balance out, especially since you have to pay for edge to get spirit powers.

[Laodicea]

That's not exactly the kind of thing Free Spirits excel at.

Try something like:
BP cost of being a free spirit: 100
All stats start at 2, force starts at 2.
Raise Magic to Raise force. Raising force raises Max Stat.
Buy stats as normal.

I think paying 100 less BP for free spirit will balance out, especially since you have to pay for edge to get spirit powers.

Right. It's rough to make one that can play that way if you use the #2 mechanics. If you use the #1 mechanics you can do it, but there's literally no reason to since they will still excel at casting spells more than they will at wielding a Natural Weapon sword.

I've often desired a character like this. An extra-planar badass that is not a spellslinger. Unfortunately its just not to be found in this system as a player character.

A GM Fiat can solve all of that by creating another kind of free spirit character, as suggested above. I think it's a good idea, myself.

[pbangarth]

That's not exactly the kind of thing Free Spirits excel at.

Try something like:
BP cost of being a free spirit: 100
All stats start at 2, force starts at 2.
Raise Magic to Raise force. Raising force raises Max Stat.
Buy stats as normal.

I think paying 100 less BP for free spirit will balance out, especially since you have to pay for edge to get spirit powers.

Is this part of your house rule? I read RC as saying Edge and all other stats rise with Force.

[sabs]

Is this part of your house rule? I read RC as saying Edge and all other stats rise with Force.

Yes. Basically the house rule is:
Force starts at 2
All Attributes start at 2.
Raising force raises Magic attribute and Max Attribute, but not current.

So for a 100BP your free spirit would have these stats:

str 2/2
Bod 2/2
Ag 2/2
Rea 2/2
Cha 2/2
Log 2/2
Int 2/2
Edge: 2/2
Magic: 2/2
Force: 2

Raising your force raises the Magic Attribute and the Max Attribute
SO lets say you raised your force to a 5. Without spending any more BP or Karma your stats would be:
str 2/5
Bod 2/5
Ag 2/5
Rea 2/5
Cha 2/5
Log 2/5
Int 2/5
Edge: 2/5
Magic: 5/5
Force: 5

This is totally house rule territory.
You're paying 1/2 the cost to be a Free Spirit. But you're having to pay to raise your stats.


You're paying 100 BP to get 120Bp worth of Stats, and the other awesomeness that is being a Free Spirit.
Compare that to a Troll that pays 40bp to get 80Bp worth of stats, reach, thermal eyesite, and dermal plating
It's probably fair.

[Laodicea]

Is this part of your house rule? I read RC as saying Edge and all other stats rise with Force.

That's one of the interpretations that i put as option 1 on the second post in this thread. I think it's wrong. But I'm not arguing that its a silly or invalid interpretation. it's just not the one I would make.

[Megu]

Alright, that does look workable. Thanks man. If and when I get this written up I'll post it so you can see how well it turned out.

[pbangarth]

It just struck me that a Free Spirit PC cannot be an adept or mystic adept, along with not being able to be a technomancer. Too bad. That would have gone a long way towards allowing the non-spellcaster type of spirit to be viable in the RAW build.

[sabs]

Alright, that does look workable. Thanks man. If and when I get this written up I'll post it so you can see how well it turned out.

Your welcome.

I'd love to see the character you build.. if you do build it.
I'm interested to see how balanced it would be.

[Badmoodguy88]

Spirits start with all attributes at 2 including edge. They start as Magicians. They raise each attribute separately. The one exception is force is their magic attribute and essence equals their force. This is my interpretation. I think it is RAW and RAI.

Step one: Read this.

Free Spirit Attributes
Free spirits have a Force special attribute that starts with a rating
of 2. This attribute determines a free spirit’s natural minimums
and maximums for all attributes. It also acts as the spirit’s Magic
attribute. Force increases can be purchased at character generation
for the same price as any attribute. The natural maximum for the
Force attribute is 6, although this can be later increased through
initiation. A free spirit’s Force rating is the natural maximum for
all Physical and Mental attributes, as well as its Edge attribute—
so the player must raise Force if he wishes to raise the remaining
attributes. In addition, free spirits have the same Physical, Mental,
and Edge attributes as metahuman characters, which all start at
2 (their starting Force) at the start of character generation. For
materialized spirits, the Physical attributes apply to its materialized
form. For spirits of possession traditions, the spirit’s Physical
attributes are added to the attributes of the vessel possessed by the
spirit. A spirit’s Initiative is its Intuition x 2 in astral space, and
its Reaction + Intuition when materialized or possessing a vessel;
it gets three Initiative Passes in astral space and two in physical
space each Combat Turn. A spirit’s Essence is equal to its Force. If
it ever loses Essence, it also loses Force, in the same manner that a
metahuman loses Magic with the loss of Essence, except that the
spirit’s Force maximum is unchanged.
All rules on in Shadowrun, Fourth Edition and Street Magic
regarding the abilities and limitations of Materializing and
Possession free spirits apply as normal.

Step two: Repeat step one.

If you do karma gen with the fixed rules then free spirits are balanced but not weak because karma gen favors lower stats like spirits have.
It costs 250 karma to me a spirit, all stats start at 2, magicians is still free as part of the 250 karma cost. Attributes cost next rating times 5 like the cost to improve attributes with karma in SR4.

[pbangarth]

Beats the hell out of me where I got the idea that raising Force automatically raises the other Attributes. I can't find anything that says that except a couple of posts in this thread.

If the text quoted by badmoodguy88 is all there is, then the Free Spirit PC looks pretty gimped to me. You have 150 BP left to do everything, and getting to "all 6s" as per above, you would need to spend 55 to raise Force to 6, and then another 55 for each Attribute, making 440 BP for the physical and mental Attributes and another 55 for Edge. A grand total of 550 BP on top of the original 250 BP. even raising everything to merely an average 3 costs 100 BP on top of the 250 BP start. leaving 50 BP for everything and anything else. The spirit powers don't make up for that.

Am I missing something?

[Badmoodguy88]

nope

But like I said they are much stronger under karma gen because raising all those 2's to 3's is very cheap.

I figure it is just an investment to get a PC that has some interesting possibilities later on.

[pbangarth]

nope

But like I said they are much stronger under karma gen because raising all those 2's to 3's is very cheap.

I figure it is just an investment to get a PC that has some interesting possibilities later on.

Yes, I do see the potential for growth into something really cool... but Holy Cow!

[Mordinvan]

Ah, I see where you're at now.

And I don't have any runners pulling 20+ dice for their actions - usually only around a dozen. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Most sams I know are high teens to low twenties for their primary forms of attack. Lets say human, 5 agility, 5 skill, Specialization, some kind of muscle augmentation R2-3, reflex recorder, enhanced articulation, and a +2 from tac net or similar, and that's not really pushing it all that hard. I'm counting 19ish?

[sabs]

well and under Karma the race is 1/2 price.
250 karma =125 bp. If you were paying 500 karma for the race and you had 250 karma left over, you'd be feeling serioiusly gimped.

[Mordinvan]

Free spirits have a Force special attribute that starts with a rating
of 2. This attribute determines a free spirit’s natural minimums
and maximums for all attributes.

Its the part about force determining the minimum attributes which is causing the confusion. Because if your minimum AND maximum is equal to your force, then all of your stats are effectively equal to your force.

[jakephillips]

Don't forget the flying, invisible on the real world while in the astral plane craziness of that. Need to get to the top of a 70 story research facility the rest of your team has to fly in, sneak in, assend with climbing gear while leaving you to fly up there and materialize silently behind the upper guard and pitch him over the edge.

[Udoshi]

So... how would you guys fix this if you were going to houserule it into being workable? Has anyone got a good setup?

Use karmagen. Even a free spirit(250 karma) at Force 6(another 90) leaves you with 410 karma.

I am assuming the errata'd, Ancient History rules.

[Neraph]

Beats the hell out of me where I got the idea that raising Force automatically raises the other Attributes. I can't find anything that says that except a couple of posts in this thread.

Am I missing something?

Free spirits have a Force special attribute that starts with a rating of 2. This attribute determines a free spirit's natural minimums and maximums for all attributes.

Emphasis mine. Nothing else refutes this. Either "minimums" from above is a typo, or option #1 from earlier is the logical conclusion.

[Badmoodguy88]

I think the "this determines attribute minimums and maximums" just explains why starting force and all attributes are at 2 instead of one. 2 is your minimum attribute, but if you got your force down to 1, through damage or essence drain, then all your other atributes would be 1 and 1 would be your minimum attribute.

A free spirit’s Force rating is the natural maximum for
all Physical and Mental attributes, as well as its Edge attribute—
so the player must raise Force if he wishes to raise the remaining
attributes.In addition, free spirits have the same Physical, Mental,
and Edge attributes as metahuman characters, which all start at
2 (their starting Force) at the start of character generation.

My emphasis on start but it is I think the key word. You really need to read the whole paragraph on attributes all at once. It really should be two paragraphs; one for what the attributes are at the start of character generation and the other about how to raise stats in character generation and after. But size limits and such to fit it all in before the end of the chapter with out a little left over.

You could interpret the line "this determines attribute minimums and maximums" as meaning you need to pay to raise all your stats up to what your force is at the end of chargen but that is even more limiting than just buying stats individually.

You could interpret that stats all get raised for free when you raise your force but I think that is overpowered.

I think they gave you the option to play this metatype but did not want to make it the most powerful choice because then everyone would play this metatype and it would be a very different game.

[Starmage21]

Beats the hell out of me where I got the idea that raising Force automatically raises the other Attributes. I can't find anything that says that except a couple of posts in this thread.

If the text quoted by badmoodguy88 is all there is, then the Free Spirit PC looks pretty gimped to me. You have 150 BP left to do everything, and getting to "all 6s" as per above, you would need to spend 55 to raise Force to 6, and then another 55 for each Attribute, making 440 BP for the physical and mental Attributes and another 55 for Edge. A grand total of 550 BP on top of the original 250 BP. even raising everything to merely an average 3 costs 100 BP on top of the 250 BP start. leaving 50 BP for everything and anything else. The spirit powers don't make up for that.

Am I missing something?

At first glance, this seems like an absolutely awesome deal. People on these boards keep forgetting that the 1/2 a mage you DONT get as a free spirit PC is the conjuring part. The part that lets you conjure spirits with attributes and skills generally equal to force, and you can have multiple spirits who have those stats.

[Neraph]

I think the "this determines attribute minimums and maximums" just explains why starting force and all attributes are at 2 instead of one. 2 is your minimum attribute, but if you got your force down to 1, through damage or essence drain, then all your other atributes would be 1 and 1 would be your minimum attribute.

My emphasis on start but it is I think the key word. You really need to read the whole paragraph on attributes all at once. It really should be two paragraphs; one for what the attributes are at the start of character generation and the other about how to raise stats in character generation and after. But size limits and such to fit it all in before the end of the chapter with out a little left over.

You could interpret the line "this determines attribute minimums and maximums" as meaning you need to pay to raise all your stats up to what your force is at the end of chargen but that is even more limiting than just buying stats individually.

You could interpret that stats all get raised for free when you raise your force but I think that is overpowered.

I think they gave you the option to play this metatype but did not want to make it the most powerful choice because then everyone would play this metatype and it would be a very different game.

You post in here the same two different interpretations I posted in my first post on this thread.

Your first interpretation requires adding something to the plain text (adding "minimums and maximums, only starting at Force 2"). The second interpretation is what the text actually states. "This attribute determines a free spirit's natural minimums and maximums for all attributes."
Period. It does not say "for starting characters at Force 2 only" - it simply says their Force determines their minimums and maximums.

"In addition, free spirits have the same Physical, Mental, and Edge attributes as metahuman characters, which all start at 2 (their starting Force) at the start of character generation." This can simply mean that their attributes start at Force 2 when they start their character generation, implying that when they raise it (as they continue their character generation), their attributes raise with the other rule they have in place (you know, their Force determining minimums and maximums).

It is not contradictory, it is simply a convoluted way to try and explain how their attributes are equal to their Force, just like every other spirit's attributes are linked to their Force.

[darthmord]

Neraph,

You know, reading this conversation a few times has me wondering if the author for that section (I do not know who it was) was being purposefully wordy to meet their guidelines for their section in terms of word count.

There are a number of ways to re-word that section to be clear and concise. I just wish that someone would come up with clear rulings of how TPTB intend this section to be interpreted.

[Neraph]

I completely agree.

EDIT: Even if that means that my current interpretation (and I believe my interpretation to be the most correct and RAW [and I believe that Badmoodguy88 has the same belief on his interpretation]) turns out to be the incorrect one, I want some definitive proof over and above what we've presented here.

This section really does need errata. Reminds me of Manifesting from the core rulebook.

[Irion]

Well actually the rules are quite clear.
You start at two and may raise them up to force.

A free spirit’s Force rating is the natural maximum for
all Physical and Mental attributes, as well as its Edge attribute—
so the player must raise Force if he wishes to raise the remaining
attributes.

Thats very easy to understand I guess.

This attribute determines a free spirit’s natural minimums
and maximums for all attributes.

Well, this wording is quite strange, but in the context it is easy to understand.
The starting force(minimum) is two, so the minimum for the attributes is two.
Which is repeated here:

In addition, free spirits have the same Physical, Mental,
and Edge attributes as metahuman characters, which all start at
2 (their starting Force) at the start of character generation.

So it is obvious.