Player wants to play a Free Spirit Options

[kzt]

I disagree. I think that friendship pact would be one of the ONLY consistent reasons a free spirit would shadowrun at all. Considering the fact that 90% of why shadowrunners run (Nuyen people, lets be honest) is a complete non-issue for a free spirit, what better way to balance it than give the character an absolute vested interest in the other survival of it's group. ANy other reason I've heard so far (Curiosity, Love, the coolness of the material plane) is an unstable reason at best and at worst easily abused so that the free spirit gains alot of Karma for no actual work or risk to itself.

The friendship pact is just dumb. It's completely crippling, it works better to assume that the FS can ONLY gain karma via normal experience. If you don't trust the player to play the character in a way that makes sense don't let them play. Otherwise the logical approach for a player is to ignore the friendship pact and just use one of the other pacts to gain karma. At a crazy rate.

[Ramaloke]

Exactly. You basically force the spirit to be an annoying babysitter for the rest of the team which isn't always going to work out for him or force him to abuse the other ways to make karma. Thats generally a toss up between two bad choices.

[Neraph]

Friendship Pact is terrible. The idea that your Free Spirit PC gets penalized if another player does something stupid and gets killed is pretty much a full stop for me on that pact. If I were GM, Id just allow the free spirit to gain Karma as normal and swap out Spirit Pact for something else or another spirit pact from street magic that doesn't gain it karma.

Why? Because Friendship Pact sucks, and the other methods for spirits to gain karma can be abused horrendously (I've seen people that manage 90 karma/week easily).

That's why you start with your Friendship Pact tied to your Magical Group contact. Not only are your Friendship Pactees nice and safe, it opens the way to you joining a Magical Initiatory Group later. And that last part was inspired by me ( (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

[Yerameyahu]

Aha, but *are* they nice and safe? No risk means you're cheating the game. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Presumably, it's *meant* to be a giant liability.

In all seriousness, the spirit PC rules are utterly unplayable. Make lots of GM calls and house rules whenever necessary, in order to hold things together with spit and chewing gum. As long as people are having fun, it's okay.

[Neraph]

Aha, but *are* they nice and safe? No risk means you're cheating the game. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Presumably, it's *meant* to be a giant liability.

In all seriousness, the spirit PC rules are utterly unplayable. Make lots of GM calls and house rules whenever necessary, in order to hold things together with spit and chewing gum. As long as people are having fun, it's okay.

True on both points. I prefer the analogy that my friend gave his Warhammer 40k Dark Eldar jet bikers - made out of paper mache and held together by hopes and dreams.

EDIT:

On a side note, Neraph, where in DFW do you play?

Closer to the FW part. More in PM's if neccessary.

[Mäx]

The belief that all attributes increase as Force increases is predicated on the notion that determine means equals

If something determines something else and no formula for this is given, then the only logical way is that it determines that something as equal to it.
Also if force 2 determines minimums as 2, then logically force 3 determines it as 3 and force 4 as 4.

Also there are qualities that raises characters maximums in any given attribute, metagenetic improvement is the better one of those as it also raises the minimum.

[pbangarth]

One aspect of the Free Spirit rules that is often overlooked is that Free Spirits use Edge instead of Initiate Grade with metamagics. It is not explicitly stated so for Free Spirit PCs (FSPCs), but the note that tells us that FSPCs default to the NPC Free Spirit rules does lead us to that conclusion.

So the allegedly weak nature of the FSPC gets a huge boost as soon as Initiation starts happening. Outlined HERE is a FSPC I play, built with karmagen and 250 karma used for the 'metatype'. We too went with the version that requires building Attributes separately from Force. I gave her and Edge of 7. Costly to be sure, but this is a flexible dice pool booster that can take any of her ordinary pools and beef them up immensely. I figured, if you use Edge 7 times in a run, you are noob. Of course, I have done so, and payed for it!

After playing her a while, some of the comments above about being the team support person and the dangers of the Friendship Pact became apparent. As she is approaching enough karma to Inititate, I have studied that aspect of her improvement, and discovered the above gem.

Take the Shielding metamagic for example. She currently has Counterspelling (combat) of 3(5). Were she to take Shielding after Initiation, she would immediately bump that to 10(12). For Centering, she would get 7 extra dice for her Drain Tests. Other examples can be found. So, under some circumstances such as the use of a high Edge, the 250 point cost right up front doesn't look so bad. (BPgen worse than karmagen, though.)

[Ascalaphus]

One aspect of the Free Spirit rules that is often overlooked is that Free Spirits use Edge instead of Initiate Grade with metamagics. It is not explicitly stated so for Free Spirit PCs (FSPCs), but the note that tells us that FSPCs default to the NPC Free Spirit rules does lead us to that conclusion.

So the allegedly weak nature of the FSPC gets a huge boost as soon as Initiation starts happening. Outlined HERE is a FSPC I play, built with karmagen and 250 karma used for the 'metatype'. We too went with the version that requires building Attributes separately from Force. I gave her and Edge of 7. Costly to be sure, but this is a flexible dice pool booster that can take any of her ordinary pools and beef them up immensely. I figured, if you use Edge 7 times in a run, you are noob. Of course, I have done so, and payed for it!

After playing her a while, some of the comments above about being the team support person and the dangers of the Friendship Pact became apparent. As she is approaching enough karma to Inititate, I have studied that aspect of her improvement, and discovered the above gem.

Take the Shielding metamagic for example. She currently has Counterspelling (combat) of 3(5). Were she to take Shielding after Initiation, she would immediately bump that to 10(12). For Centering, she would get 7 extra dice for her Drain Tests. Other examples can be found. So, under some circumstances such as the use of a high Edge, the 250 point cost right up front doesn't look so bad. (BPgen worse than karmagen, though.)

That... that is insane...

[kzt]

That... that is insane...

Umm, did you miss the fact that the free spirit PC rules DO NOT WORK?

The basic idea isn't awful, but the implementation is. Given how different spirits and metahumans are in SR, I suspect that it would take a fair amount of playtesting to come up with a generally usable set of rules. That is, rules that don't essentially tell the GM to "make it work".

[pbangarth]

Umm, did you miss the fact that the free spirit PC rules DO NOT WORK?

I've noticed the opinion that their rules are broken. My opinion, based on my experience so far is that the FSPC I play is neither overshadowed by her teammates nor overpowered with respect to them. I think karmagen with the mod (not sure now where it came from) that charges the BP cost in karma for the 'metatype' is the best way to go to achieve the balance I am experiencing.

The Friendship Pact she made was directed by the backstory we made in conjunction with the GM, and her Friends are mostly human and ork gangers, (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif) , so there is a limit placed on her survivability at her current level, but she is (read: I am) considering finding a longer-lived friend for the next bump of Force, which will be a long way down the karma expense list. Any elves in LA?

[nielsk]

Even with splitting attributes from Force, Force itself is the maximum for your attributes and with the friendship-pact force is limited by the numbers of friends. Thus even Edge 7 requires raising force to 7 and then Edge to 7 (one of those requires initiation, just don't know right now, which one) - sounds like loads of Karma…

[Seth]

That... that is insane...

In other threads we have discussed whether free spirits use edge rather than initiate grade. pbangarth and I differ on this.

My (strong) opinion is that when you are a free spirit you can gain a (small) number of spirit powers that are also initiate powers: for example masking. These spirit powers use edge instead of initiate grade. However as well as that you can initiate like anyone else, and your initiate powers are determined by your initiate grade.

As a concrete example centering and shielding are not available as spirit powers, so you cannot spend spirit powers and get them. You have to get them as an initiate, so your initiate grade counts

[Seth]

If something determines something else and no formula for this is given, then the only logical way is that it determines that something as equal to it.
Also if force 2 determines minimums as 2, then logically force 3 determines it as 3 and force 4 as 4.

No. Equals is a very special relationship (and is easy to type that determines). Many things determine how old you look: your actual age, how much stress you have experiences, genetics. Very few of them are equal

[pbangarth]

Even with splitting attributes from Force, Force itself is the maximum for your attributes and with the friendship-pact force is limited by the numbers of friends. Thus even Edge 7 requires raising force to 7 and then Edge to 7 (one of those requires initiation, just don't know right now, which one) - sounds like loads of Karma…

The Lucky Positive Quality allows Edge to go one beyond the Force limit.

Yes, it cost lots of karma anyway, which could have been spent on Skills, other Attributes, contacts, whatever. It's an experiment.

Seth's interpretation about where Edge is used and where Initiate Grade is used is a reasonable one, too. Our group went this way.

[Sephiroth]

Even with splitting attributes from Force, Force itself is the maximum for your attributes and with the friendship-pact force is limited by the numbers of friends. Thus even Edge 7 requires raising force to 7 and then Edge to 7 (one of those requires initiation, just don't know right now, which one) - sounds like loads of Karma…

As pbangarth has said: Lucky quality FTW.


Now as far as the whole attributes discussion, this was addressed by Adam in a different thread some time ago. In it, he clearly stated that when he wrote the FSPC rules he meant for attributes to be raised separately from Force. This is because he felt there was a certain lack of variety in abilities with spirits - a highly charismatic spirit NPC, by RAW, is also quite hard to hit, and a very physically strong spirit is also a genius - among other reasons. His original racial price for FSPC's was something like 185 BP, which apparently was arbitrarily changed, but he still thinks that you get a very unique set of advantages that are worth the price if you know how to use them. But it does not matter, as the GM has already stated that he is going this route so all this discussion about the natural minimums thing is getting off-topic.

[Neraph]

Umm, did you miss the fact that the free spirit PC rules DO NOT WORK?

They work as easily as firing a bow.

[Doc Chase]

They work as easily as firing a bow.

Ba dum tshh.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)