Regarding PC Free spirits Options

[ZeroSpace]

Alright, long story short, one of my players is subbing out a character, and wants to play a free spirit, ideally a wild spirit. I haven't ruled this out, or accepted it, I'm just looking to see what I should watch out for, and gather opinions. A question that I do have, though, is whether or not a free spirits attributes automatically increase at char gen, or if they need to be bought up on their own.

[apple]

Attributes do not automatically increase and must be raised sperately - which is one of the main reasons why free spirits als player characters are very weak.

We had one for a very long time in our group. Even starting with 100 bonus Karma (and going to 350 Karma ingame) free spirits as PCs are incredible weak, even if they have some nifty possibilities (materialissation + aura masking + realistic form at will gives a runner team some very funny possibilities). The usual mage with usual spells (and spirits and foki, which cannot be used by a free spirit) is/could be a far bigger problem, when it comes to "raw power". I would say that you need around 500 Karma before a free spirit "comes together", and even then I would bet my ¥ on the mage with an ally spirit, his spirit army and his foki.

So, in short: allow it, a creative player can do some nifty things with the spirit powers, but in terms of raw power the spirit is far behind the normal mage and his possibilities.

Dont forget that a free spirit can only earn Karma like a player character if he has a friendship pact active (which costs valuable points).

SYL

[Udoshi]

Alright, long story short, one of my players is subbing out a character, and wants to play a free spirit, ideally a wild spirit. I haven't ruled this out, or accepted it, I'm just looking to see what I should watch out for, and gather opinions. A question that I do have, though, is whether or not a free spirits attributes automatically increase at char gen, or if they need to be bought up on their own.

Its poorly written, but since Force serves as a minimum and a maximum for all attributes, all their stats DO increase as they increase it.

Its just misleading because you CAN raise your other attributes independently(so can NPC free spirits), but there's no reason to do that since the costs are the same(unlike NPC spirits).


A little bit of CGL history: Free spirits were supposed to cost around 90 points; and be raised independantly, but last-minute editing with a very poor job on the clarity, changed them to be more expensive, but work like NPC spirits do with force being used for everything - essentially, the 250point up front cost factors in not caring about other attributes.

In terms of fixing spirits, the biggest one is how massively they're overcharged for powers, and get no freebies like vision types - change everything more expensive than 1 power point to 1, and you're a lot closer to the '1 power per force + access to everything i had before going free' that NPC spirits enjoy.

I'd also recommend letting them use NPC spirit karma costs, with one exception - change the Force karma to rating x 8 (instead of 10), and make them use their actual initiate grade, instead of replacing grade with edge. Slight reduction in cost (it works out very nearly the same in cost) to make shit not broken when metamagic gets involved.

[Sengir]

Apart from rules which are somewhat open to interpretation, I think the major issue with PC spirits is that they have a personal teleporter with very little restrictions. That lets them ride roughshod over a lot of careful GM plans (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[apple]

Its poorly written, but since Force serves as a minimum and a maximum for all attributes, all their stats DO increase as they increase it.

Hm, can you quote that please from the rule book? In my Runner Compendium it only serves as the natural minimum and natural maximun of all other attributes.

Free spirits have a Force special attribute that starts with a rating of 2.  is attribute determines a free spirit’s natural minimums and maximums for all attributes. It also acts as the spirit’s Magic attribute
[...]
A free spirit’s Force rating is the natural maximum for all Physical and Mental attributes, as well as its Edge attribute
[...]
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.

Magic is the only attribute which directly is linked to force, but not the other physical and mental attributes. Raising the force does not raise the attributes, it only raises the natural maximum. And yes, the layout and product quality of the Runner Compendium was horrible.

, I think the major issue with PC spirits is that they have a personal teleporter with very little restrictions. That lets them ride roughshod over a lot of careful GM plan

Nothing a clever mage with spirit summoning (or an ally spirit) cant do in some way too (usually, there are of course some exceptions). But 3D Movement with Materialisation is restricted the same way as atral projection and summoning. One thing that is indeed almost impossible is the catch a free spirit PC, and with some preparation he has enough seen from the world to have enough "entry points" all over the world to appear anywhere 3 seconds later. So, yes, customs is usually not a problem, as is overflow damage - due to the friendship pact the spirits comes back some days later. However the spirit is very dependant on the friendship pact (without it cannot get any Karma) so if dead runners and NPCs occur in your game you can literally unmake the spirit by killing his spirit pact people.

TLDR: give it a try, you will see that a free spirit PC is no worse than a mage with foci, spells and spirits played by a creative player.

SYL

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Hm, can you quote that please from the rule book? In my Runner Compendium it only serves as the natural minimum and natural maximun of all other attributes.

Well... If Force is a Natural MINIMUM... then it stands that NO STAT may be below the Minimum (which is Force); and if Force is a Natural MAXIMUM, then it also stands that no Stat may be ABOVE the Maximum (which is also Force). Ergo, Your stats are equal to your Force Value. Pretty simple Logic, based upon what you quoted.

[apple]

Hm, was that ever officially confirmed that this is the way to go?

So you mean:

Character creation: Force 2, all mental/physical/edge/magic attribute = 2, raise force to 5 (30 BP), so all all mental/physical/edge/magic attributes are now 5?
During the game: raise force from 5 to 6 (30 Karma), raise everything else from 5 to 6 (like edge, magic, mental, physical attributes?

so the player must raise Force if he wishes to raise the remaining attributes. In

But you cannot raise your attributes indepentently, because they are the same as the force and the force is the minimum and maximum at the same time. And if you would raise the force you would raise every mental and physical attribute as well (beacuse of the natural minimum).

Where is my error?

SYL

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Hm, was that ever officially confirmed?

SYL

Not to my knowledge...

[Sephiroth]

We have had this argument before in some detail, maybe a year or two ago. Tymeaus, it should be noted that the text uses the word "determines." "Determines" is not the same as "is equal to." The starting value for Force can indeed set the minimum value for all other attributes, yes. In that way it is determining the natural minimums, at the start of character creation. However, it does not follow that the natural minimums are always equal to the current Force. Does that make sense?

Moreover, everyone seems to forget this, but Aaron (the freelancer who drafted the Free Spirit PC section in the first place) did say that the intent was for Force just to serve as the natural maximum, not the minimum. He suspected that the addition of the "and minimums" part was either an editing error or was made by someone who wanted FSPCs to resemble FSNPCs. I have quoted him below for ease of reference.

My original intent was to have character-building rules that were finer in resolution than the free spirit rules in Street Magic. I was trying to avoid having a situation in which there were, in the entire world of PC free spirits, only six different kinds (when I submitted my final draft, free spirit attributes started at 1 and the cost was 85 BP). My working theory was that since it was unrealistic to assume that every Lone Star officer had exactly the same stats, it was equally unreasonable to assume that every free spirit had the same stats, and that the rules for attributes and Force were intended for NPC spirits. As a result, I wrote rules that disconnected attributes from Force, but kept them affected by it.

I suspect that whoever had the final say on the rules wanted PC free spirits to look more like NPC spirits, and so made those changes. I'm not sure how many changes were made; as evinced earlier in this thread, I'm still finding changes. As such, I may not be the best authority on the intent of the rules for free spirit PCs.


In order to truly address the issue, you'd have to wait for official errata; I don't have the authority to go around changing the rules as written for anybody but the folks at my table (and then only if there's a consensus). Personally, though, I think it's pretty obvious that Force is the maximum for attributes, not the minimum. I think the best you can do with that "minimum" clause of the sentence is try to convince your GM that six attributes worth of boost should be 10 BP each, but it's a pretty weak argument.

[pbangarth]

I've played several FSPCs in different campaigns, all with the Force providing the maximum for stats and with the player having to pay karma/BP to raise other attributes to that maximum.

There is a balance of power and weakness which gives the player and GM a great deal of pleasure playing this PC in the GMs world. I recommend it highly both to the player and the GM, as long as they both value and provide creative play.

The combination of Materialization, Realistic Form and Mutable Form creates a near infinite number of possibilities for the PC to do espionage and reconnaissance. Yes, the PC is weak in many aspects, but a reasonably high Force makes him/her/it resistant to a lot of damage.

Throw in a high Edge, which itself is limited only by Force, and at the right time this PC can make a spectacular effect on the scene.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

We have had this argument before in some detail, maybe a year or two ago. Tymeaus, it should be noted that the text uses the word "determines." "Determines" is not the same as "is equal to." The starting value for Force can indeed set the minimum value for all other attributes, yes. In that way it is determining the natural minimums, at the start of character creation. However, it does not follow that the natural minimums are always equal to the current Force. Does that make sense?

Moreover, everyone seems to forget this, but Aaron (the freelancer who drafted the Free Spirit PC section in the first place) did say that the intent was for Force just to serve as the natural maximum, not the minimum. He suspected that the addition of the "and minimums" part was either an editing error or was made by someone who wanted FSPCs to resemble FSNPCs. I have quoted him below for ease of reference.

The problem is that the intent of the Writer was changed by the intent of the final Published product, as admitted by Aaron, even. Lacking Errata, it is highly ambiguous. To be fair, when I worked up the one Free Spirit PC that I actually created (but never played), I used starting attributes of two and bought them individually. It does make for a weaker character, but FSPC's are highly customizable, to be sure.

[apple]

well, in that case the recommendation splits.

If you use the rule interpretation of "force = attributes" and you can easily start with force 6, then yes, the free spirit becomes an extremely powerful spirit with a high chance of overshadowing everything except a specialized summoner mage and the hacker. Because, well, with the first 100 karma points he can boost everything to 8 and later to 10+. ... image 12 edge.

If you use the rule interpretation with "Force start at 2, and all attributes are raised independently, then you can accept the free spirit without and hesitation, because only 500 karma points later the spirit will be barely on the level of a competent mage.

SYL

[Bearclaw]

I think if you split the difference you come out better.
Use the friendly interpretation during Char gen, and after generation, he has to raise his force to have the ability to raise his stats. But then the stats must be upgraded individually, like any other character.

[Neraph]

well, in that case the recommendation splits.

If you use the rule interpretation of "force = attributes" and you can easily start with force 6, then yes, the free spirit becomes an extremely powerful spirit with a high chance of overshadowing everything except a specialized summoner mage and the hacker.

Yes, for the low-low cost of 315BP you can have all 6's in your attributes, leaving you virtually nothing for skills, spells, and qualities.

I think if you split the difference you come out better.
Use the friendly interpretation during Char gen, and after generation, he has to raise his force to have the ability to raise his stats. But then the stats must be upgraded individually, like any other character.

This is one of the most sane interpretations. This is also the one I use at my table.

[Mystweaver]

One of the PC's I'm GMing for is a Free spirit.

We use herolab and as such it agrees that force does NOT = attributes. They start at 2 and you have to increase them seperately.

He has Materialisation/Realistic Form/Mutable Form and is a great addition to the group. It is especially useful because he cannot necessarily attend every session - as such its quite easy to give a reason why he's not around - he just isnt (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) A few players haven't figured out he's a spirit though so I hope they dont read this (they don't really use dumpshock so I'm not that bothered).

I allowed him small BP boost on character generation as I didn't want him to be completely weak (but his stats are still lower than the group average).

As others have mentioned above... let your players give running a free spirit a go - friendship pact is essential as they can't gain karma easily any other way (unless you houserule that they can take some sort of karma drain power which is a bit OTT).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

One of the PC's I'm GMing for is a Free spirit.

We use herolab and as such it agrees that force does NOT = attributes. They start at 2 and you have to increase them seperately.

He has Materialisation/Realistic Form/Mutable Form and is a great addition to the group. It is especially useful because he cannot necessarily attend every session - as such its quite easy to give a reason why he's not around - he just isnt (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) A few players haven't figured out he's a spirit though so I hope they dont read this (they don't really use dumpshock so I'm not that bothered).

I allowed him small BP boost on character generation as I didn't want him to be completely weak (but his stats are still lower than the group average).

As others have mentioned above... let your players give running a free spirit a go - friendship pact is essential as they can't gain karma easily any other way (unless you houserule that they can take some sort of karma drain power which is a bit OTT).

There is a wonderful Pact for healing. Character pays 2 karma to the FSPC and then heals a box of damage through the spirit pact. That is also a great way to gain Karma (as a secondary method to Friendship pact it is awesome).

[pbangarth]

The last FSPC I played didn't have the Friendship Pact. I decided a for all intents and purposes immortal being would not want to tie its life Force to mortals.

I gave him the Power Pact, and the GM and I worked out a system in which my PC could not gain more karma in this way than the GM had awarded. Not only did this keep the PC from gaining unlimited karma, and thereby overpowering the rest of the PCs, it allowed for some really interesting role playing and contact building.

My guy was developing a relationship with the L.A. Mafia, offering them the occasionally nearly invulnerable operative with ItNW 12 in return for karma and other considerations, like hooking up with a local small gang that served them and hiring them to keep the PC's home base secure.

[Neraph]

The last FSPC I played didn't have the Friendship Pact. I decided a for all intents and purposes immortal being would not want to tie its life Force to mortals.

I gave him the Power Pact, and the GM and I worked out a system in which my PC could not gain more karma in this way than the GM had awarded. Not only did this keep the PC from gaining unlimited karma, and thereby overpowering the rest of the PCs, it allowed for some really interesting role playing and contact building.

My guy was developing a relationship with the L.A. Mafia, offering them the occasionally nearly invulnerable operative with ItNW 12 in return for karma and other considerations, like hooking up with a local small gang that served them and hiring them to keep the PC's home base secure.

Genius.

I prefer starting with Power Pact and a Group Contact of mages, then spiraling out of control on the 20+ karma per week upkeep costs myself... (<--- sarcasm)

[Jaid]

there is also a pact that allows the spirit to control you while sleeping, is there not? and iirc, during that time, the spirit is able to earn karma?

[pbangarth]

Yes, but presumably that is available to Possession tradition spirits only. And one would have to do all his work when the Pact partner is asleep.

Which could lead to some interesting situations. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

"But I'm not sleepy!"

*stunbolt* *stunbolt* *stunbolt* "How about now?"

[Jaid]

Yes, but presumably that is available to Possession tradition spirits only. And one would have to do all his work when the Pact partner is asleep.

Which could lead to some interesting situations. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

"But I'm not sleepy!"

*stunbolt* *stunbolt* *stunbolt* "How about now?"

well, the alternate solution is to have more than one pact with people who are on different sleep schedules (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Neraph]

there is also a pact that allows the spirit to control you while sleeping, is there not? and iirc, during that time, the spirit is able to earn karma?

Medically-induced coma.

[Bearclaw]

The last game I ran, the two mages were members of the same group. They got lots of cool stuff, for no money, but they had to feed the groups spirit guide.
So every month, they either paid 1 karma, or he got to borrow their body for the night.
The group had 18 members, so their spirit was pretty happy (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mystweaver]

Genius.

I prefer starting with Power Pact and a Group Contact of mages, then spiraling out of control on the 20+ karma per week upkeep costs myself... (<--- sarcasm)

Where is the Power Pact?

[Neraph]

Street Magic, bottom of page 108.