Defenses vs Confusion, and other spirit powers. Options

[Suriyel]

Last time I asked about how many targets confusion can affect. Now my question is "are there any defenses against it, aside from never leaving a force 18 ward?".

Having had the ol' drek hit the fan and finally convincing the team's monkey shaman that A> spirits don't suck and B> we need some spirit support, we called in a city spirit to start using its confusion power on our foes. The course of the run (and several spirits later), spanning from one cyberzombie troll to a pair of opposing runner teams (three spell slingers included)swarming us with spells, spirits, and elementals, proved the value of Confusion. (In other otherwords, how does a melee centric str 6 human adept survive the full onslaught of a troll cyberzombie with SL-2, a ruger thunderbolt? Confusion, superflash grenades, IR smoke, cover, and some good dodging.)

Up until this point, no one in this group had really ever paid attention to nature spirits and their powers, but now that the city spirit is out of the bag, what's the best way to not end up with +6 confusion modifiers to everything, if there is a way at all... (and yes I am aware it is not applied to 'everything' but close enough to count)

[Herald of Verjig...]

The best defense is a good offense. Kill the shaman (if applicable) or disrupt/banish the spirit.

[mfb]

you might check out the "defense vs astral weenies" thread. there's at least one good idea there--swarm the spirit with watchers.

[Backgammon]

Change domains.

[Suriyel]

Thanks for the tips.

We were sorta jumped by the elementals and city spirit, so if we had thought ahead, the watcher swarm might have helped. We didn't expect them to bust through the ward on the van so quickly.

As far as changing domain, I know for shamans they can only be in one domain at a time for determining what spirits they can summon, but say you were being attacked with confusion by a city spirit, while you were in a van out on a city street. Would it work to get access to the open sky and switch to the sky domain? Or would the city spirit still be able affect you since you have 'access' to both sky and city domains? My guess would have to be you'd have to get entirely out of the city domain and not just choose to switch to one of the others available in the location.

But yes, I think Backgammon had the easiest solution of just getting out of its domain. The next trick is making sure those mages don't have LOS on you as you dash to a building... Now that's an idea, got a armored vehicle with people you can't get to but want to, send in a spirit, wait for them to try to make it to the next domain type... Or just fear them out of there...

So greater form nature spirits are something to really fear, since they can cross domain boundaries.

[mfb]

well, you'd still be in the city. only way you could get out of a city spirit's domain is to, well, leave the city. find a good-size park with an open field or some woods.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Or just walk inside a building.

[Luke Hardison]

I'm assuming you mean an occupied building, like a home (so that you would be effectively leaving the city domain and entering a hearth domain); a Stuffer Shack or the like wouldn't count.

[Kagetenshi]

An office building ought to count. They're governed by Nuyen Spirits.

~J

[The White Dwarf]

Leaving the domain is the obvious way to escape the power, as movement doesnt take a success test and if youre in combat youre not likley to fall into the wander off effect.

The confusion power is a complex action and is sustained, so the spirit will be doing little else and penalties as well. It also has to be materialized to affect you. So as a melee-centric adept Id simply run up and kill it, or the shaman. Killing hands or a weapon focus will make it easy, just use your combat and karma pool to overcome the penalties for one round to kill either one.

As to the troll, evasion while you move up or having a mage cast armor on you is about all it takes to nullify the gun fire. Then just /melee-on and drop it. Thunderbolt is 12S, even with just form fit and a jacket your looking at max of 5's for soak if you fail to dodge for some reason (like the confusion power, in that case save pool to soak as thats not a success test), and the bad recoil on the rugar is going to make that second shot even easier to avoid.

But if you have it one mage using a high force stunbolt on the spirit and sending several spirits to attack the troll trumps it all...

[Apathy]

[Zazen]

I'm surprised noone mentioned the Spirit Barrier spell. If you surround yourself and your party with it, all spirit powers are "impeded" through the barrier. They don't say how, specifically, but that's easy enough for the GM to make up.

I suggest reducing the spirits effective force by the rating of the barrier.

[ShadowGhost]

[Railroad]

We've come up with a house rule for this one. Give the targets of the Confusion a resistance roll (Willpower vs. TN = Spirit's force). The successes on the resistance roll reduce the Confusion penalty on a one-for-one basis. We've been doing this for a little while now, and it seems to work pretty well.

[The White Dwarf]

Yea theyre right. As I typed that I went "wait, wtf that doesnt sound right" and checked. I just sucked at block delete and missed the second half of that sentence, which is why the grammer is horrible. It shouldve read just "The confusion power is a complex action and is sustained, so the spirit will be doing little else". While it can take other actions etc; first it has to be summoned, then it has to wait to recieve an order, then it has to materialize, then it has to use a complex action to confuse. By that time the players better have killed something, because few npc shams come wired. And as soon as that penalty hits the team theyre going to gun for the spirit. So at most itll get 1, maybe 2 actions off while the ability is sustained. Thats my angle of thought anyhow.

[Lilt]

I have allowed characters to use the guard power of spirits against confusion, fear, and other spirit powers. Aside from that, Confusion is an awesome power.

After-all: When the targeted character says "I know! I'll *do something to get out of it*" The GM gets to make them make a willpower test to make their mind to do it.

Also: I have played with the effects of confusion being somewhat hallucinogenic in effect whaich can add humor value.

[Mardegun]

Doesn't astral barrier adds it force the TN to the confusion people? I know this works for spells, so I assume it works the same for spirit powers. However the greater question is how to keep the astral barrier up.

However a spirit can't break down a astral barrier that easily. For example lets say six spirits of force 6 are after a mage. If the mage puts up a astral barrier of rating 6, it will take all 6 spirits to break it down. In fact if the mage can just gets 2 net successes they can raise the force of the barrier to 7 and spirits can never break through via pounding the barrier (in the first combat phase)

Correct me if I am wrong ...
The way that astral barrier works are the following:
1) If the power of the attack is less than 1/2 the power of the barrier, the attack does nothing to the barrier.
2) Otherwise the barrier is reduce in power by 1

When the effective barrier rating is reduced to 0, the barrier is dropped. However, if the barrier is not reduced to zero, the barrier is back up to full force at the beginning of the next combat turn.

[Mardegun]

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[Zazen]