Cool ways to use spirits, Suggestions Options

[Cirenya]

Personnally I find spirits very usefull, both nature spirits and elementals. Both I'm wondering how others are using them?

Elementals I primeraly use for their ability to materilize all kind of fun places (Nothing like a waterelemental in a generator or a fire elemental in petrol tank)

Nature spirits I use for conceil, Accident and confusion

Hope to gets some good ideas

[Backgammon]

I've used Heart spirits to punch in the numeric code to locked doors. IIRC, we rolled half the spirits force against the rating of the numlock, because, although the spirit is familiar with that operation, he might only see it as an abstract action and not know the actual numbers.

Air elems or sky spirits transporting you around is also nice, especially when you need to make an emergency exit through the 34th floor window.

Materializing spirits or elems (earth elems are the best for this) in front of a hail of bullets in order to escape.

Earth elems digging tunnels.

Once had a wind spirit twirl around a piece of glass coated with cyanide.

Edit: Welcome to dumpshock forums!

[A Clockwork Lime]

[blakkie]

[A Clockwork Lime]

Three Force 4 air or sky spirits could not safely carry 120kg. Try 60kg (each one has Strength 1 and you can carry a maximum of Strength*20, though you have less than two Combat Turns to do it before they go POOF).

[Lilt]

High force elementals are useful for killing the world... It's not original but it's a good one.

GMs can make spirit variants interesting. Give Desert(Frozen Tundra) spirits cold aura or ice blast or something. In-general I've made spirits in areas which are classically spiritually strong or naturally rich slightly more powerful. Swamp spirits have this already, I give Jungle(Forest) spirits Binding, I've given Sewer(City) spirits the water engulf power. Some people have made variant elementals such-as Metal, Electricity, Ice, Smoke, ETC. While none of that is canon, it makes spirits more fun (and slightly more powerful).

@ACL: Air elementals can use both psychokinesis and actual strength to help a character down.

[blakkie]

[Kanada Ten]

I've had a free spirit use Concealment on a tundra road and then on the vehicle tracks while using Confusion to make the characters think they were headed towards the town and not in circles. The same spirit also starved the town by Concealing the food and making the communications equipment appear malfunctioning with Confusion.

Another trick is to have a Forest Spirit Conceal a pit of vipers or similar, and then use either Fear or Confusion to drive the targets into the ambush.

[kuroko]

[Joker9125]

the most interesting thing ive ever done with spirit's was this

My character was projecting and we had to get another pc out of the bottom of a lake. so i had an air elemental oxygenate him and an earth elemental use the engulf power to engulf the PC and Air elem and move them undergroung to the top of a cliff. It was a rather interesting situation

[dEdDaWg]

2 levels of initiation

Invoking.

Channelling.

High Force spirit.

[simonw2000]

Props, man. Props.

[Wireknight]

Full load of low-lifespan, Force 6 watcher spirits. Friends in melee bonuses, skill of 6, combat pool of 9. Sure, they might only do a base astral damage of 6L Stun, but as an astral swarm they can seriously hamper even potent astrally active opponents.

Of course, the same goes for any sort of nature spirit or spirit of the elements, but watchers are easier to whip up on short notice. Also, you can do both, i.e. a combined swarm of spirits and watchers, thus providing a number of astral legbreakers equal to twice your Charisma(since watchers run their own tally, seperate from other conjured spirits).

A powerful magician character of mine, when faced with very powerful opposition, recently, conjured forth five great form spirits of the winds and twelve watchers, and did it in 4 combat turns. At seventeen spirits in twelve seconds, he conjured faster than the average person in SR can fire a semiautomatic handgun.

[noname_hero]

[Lilt]

[northern lights]

use a bunch of force 1 ally spirits. say for example a mage with 4 force 1 ally spirits. each one with on of your random spells and your sorcery skill. so you have a few cool spells available, plus, get a power focus to offset some of the loss, or use the spirits as foci.

but use their spell pool and sorcery for spell defense.

imagine 4 spirits each with sorcery/spell defense 5/7 and their spell pool. walking around with ove 30 dice of spell resistance while the spirits are in astral form. and don't complain about losing the magic points. banishing them returns your magic point. so you become practically immune to all spells with no karma cost and a total cost of 4k nuyen

[Joker9125]

Wow if any of my characters ever saw an opposing mage with 4 force 1 ally spirits following him around he would indeed summon 7 force 6 elementals and procede to banish every one of his ally's and just leave him their to live with the shame of being dumb enough to actually put four of his points of magic into something so easily destroyable.

[Herald of Verjig...]

No, you should follow it up by making the twit mundane (one of the mage-duel options in SOTA) and then killing him with a series of stunbolts.

[Joker9125]

haha good idea. What is SOTA?

[Kanada Ten]

State of the Art 2063 a sourcebook for 3rd edition.

[Beast of Revolut...]

Have spirits materialize in front of moving cars. Send watchers to "haunt" Christian Fundamntalists who believe the awakening is evil. Use the accident power on a plane carrying your assasination target. Materialize an air elemental or wind spirit using a tank of cyanide gas. Materialize an air elemental out of natural gas, and watch the fun when people shoot it point blank. Use the movement power to increase the speed of an enemy vehicle, and watch them roll over when they try to make a sharp turn. Use the movement power on a semiballistic as it's climbing and watch it's helpless occupants get catapulted off into space.

[Panzergeist]

Don't forget using movement to speed up an oil tanker coming into the harbor of a large city, or slow down a stunt driver trying to jump a car over live volunteers. Or using accident on a nuclear power plant. Or materializing an earth or water elemental out of hot lava, depending on the GMs preference. Or materializing a fire elemental out of a flamable object being carried by an enemy. Or materialzing a city elemental out of a chunck of the street so as to leave a big ditch for enemies to drive into. Or using the movement power to slow down a plane below stall speed. Or slow down a bullet or missile fired by a plan so the plane runs into it's own shot. Or using movement to speed up a thrown object, turning an ordinary baseball into a lethal weapon.

[Kanada Ten]

Against vehicles, Movement can only affect Acceleration - this includes missiles. For bullets, the Spirit would have to be ordered prior to fireing or on a delayed action as the bullets take very little time to reach their target in Shaodwrun terms. Using it on a baseball and such is a good idea though.

Where can I find information about choosing the Materialization of a spirit?

Accident on a Nuclear Power Plant? I wouldn't think spirit powers could effect entire buildings... But use Concealment on the Emergency Exits and Confusion on the crew...

[BitBasher]

[Herald of Verjig...]

If there was such a thing as a city elemental, you could perform the 6 hour conjuring test on the middle of a road to make a ditch on the road.

Spirits do not use up any material from their surroundings to manifest, they just have a form that fits in.