Bringing back Voodoo, Possession Magic for SR4 Options

[FrankTrollman]

As everyone with the book now knows, Voodoo is not in the basic book. That leaves a number of people high and dry. However, it's relatively easy to port things back in:

The game leaves open the idea that additional spirit types will be introduced later, so it is an option to simply bring in additional spirits that have Possession instead of Manifestation. This is a horrible idea! Possession spirits and manifesting spirits are useful for entirely different things, so if possessing spirits are just another choice every single spellcaster is going to choose to get at least one manifesting spirit and at least one possessing spirit. Remember: PCs get to choose five spirits and most of them are pretty much interchangeable (not to mention the fact that noone cares about sustaining combat spells, and noone ever has in any edition, so you even have a couple of "spare" slots out of the five that can be used for edge-case spirits that won't always be available).

No. The better idea is to allow a player to choose Manifestation or Possession as their primary way of doing things at character creation. Here's how it works:

"Unbound": An unbound summoning goes directly into your own body or that of a willing and able host. There's no period of it being on the Astral Plane at all. You (or a follower) simply become Dual Natured, get a fat stack of physical bonuses, and get relevent powers. And heck, if you summon an unbound spirit into yourself, you don't actually make the drain test until the spirit dismounts.

"Bound": A binding ritual puts the spirit into a single helpless sapient (or ex sapient). The "good guys" use dead bodies, which creates zombies or ancestor reanimation (depending upon who you are talking to), and the "bad guys" use living people captured for this purpose.

This means that Possession Magic (light side) is used by: Ancestor-Focused Animists, Bearsarkers, Houngans, Mahou Shojou, Oracles, and Super Heroes. And it means that Possession Magic (dark side) is used by: Budhist Demon Worshippers, The Dark Moon Kingdom, Petro Houngan, Satanists, The Universal Brotherhood, and Werewolves.

The only difference between light side and dark side is that the dark side people get threat ratings and can use/need living creatures for their bound spirits, and light side magicians do not get threat ratings and can use/need dead bodies to bind spirits. Under no circumstance can Possession Conjuring characters store their bound spirits in the astral plane, but their bound spirits also never cause sustaining penalties. A bound spirit can't depossess.

Since Invoking no longer exists, and the standard spirits (which can be selected) have immunity to normal weapons, it is important that possessing spirits give a smaller immunity to normal weapons than a normal spirit has. I suggest that you get half the effect - that is Hardened Armor = Force, rather than Hardened Armor = Double Force.

-Frank

[blakkie]

[FrankTrollman]

Well, that understanding is wrong.

[blakkie]

Er, that's what i said. Tradition gets built. Then a Tradition is assigned to a PC. Game comes with 2 Traditions already built. Shamanic and Hermetic.

P.S. Also to ease what appears to be your fear that a PC can be built with a mix and match of any spirit type, or mental attribute for resisting drain for that mater, look down a bit further in that section. The last line in that column and then up to the top of the next column where it talks about player and GM working together to define a Tradition that makes sense in the game world.

[FrankTrollman]

I don't exactly fear the idea of people picking and choosing their favorite spirit types. In fact, one of the selling points of SR4 is that you could just pick any five spirits and summon them. It's actually pretty sweet.

So no, I don't think that we should drop the whole advantageous situation where we can let players just go hog wild and take any spirits they want just so that we can be really lazy when we make new spirit types. We have the capability to make all new spirits fully compatible. It would be totally irresponsible to do anything else.

So under thisstyle, if you want to have a "spirit of labor", you can. And then you can have Fey Servitors if that's your thing. Also, you can have Ant Worker Spirits or Zombie Work Loa. The write-up would be real simple:

Work Spirits:
Skills: Assensing, Astral Combat, Dodge, Percption, Unarmed Combat.
Powers: Accident, Astral Form, Concealment, Materialization (or Possession), Movement, Psychokinesis, Sapience.
Optional Powers: Binding, Fear, Guard, Search

This way, a fairy binding hermetic can summon up a Worker Spirit (which is a Knocker or whatever), and a Universal Brotherhood Hive Mistress can capture people and bind a Worker Spirit into their bodies (which takes the form of an Ant Worker Spirit). It retains symmetricality, and you can let players run around through the daisies selecting whatever spirits they want, because no collection is significantly more or less powerful over all than any other.

If you have the option of setting it up so that players have to be kept under rigorous guard to keep the game from exploding, or you have the option of setting it up so you can just let the players pick anything that appeals to them and have balance maintained, what should you do?

-Frank

[Ellery]

Doesn't this kind of go against the philosophy of having all magical traditions mechanically the same? This introduces a new mechanic for a new tradition. That way lies madness, or at least barnacles and bailing wire (see SR4 FAQ...5, I believe it was) according to the developers.

[FrankTrollman]

[blakkie]

[FrankTrollman]

Not everyone who uses possession-style summoning is bad, even in Shadowrun (though most of them are). The point is that the Insect Shamans and the Houngan have spirits that don't have the "materialization" power, but have the "possession" power instead. The entire point of this thread was that this is easy to accomplish.

The question of magical threats is a separate issue. I am curious as to how they are going to handle Toxic Shaman, now that their big trick (being able to spontaneously summon spirits that can cross domain thresholds) is available to literally everyone. But the whole "Magical Threats get arbitrary bonus dice in exchange for doing evil and crazy stuff" mechanic doesn't even need to be tradition specific. It's just a way to give swag to NPCs and always has been, so we don't need anything ultra special to handle that.

Magical threats can apply to anything. The goal here is to make the groundwork for playable possession mages like Houngans so that the Magical Threat template can be layered on top of it with a minimal fuss. Once you've got your PC zombie-makers up and running, your NPC magical threat Budhist Demonologists who take animal spirits out of the great wheel by stealing the bodies of mortals or Wasp Totem body snatchers is simply the act of layering the "Magical Threat" template on an already working mechanic.

-Frank

[hahnsoo]

Also, don't forget about the Shedim and Imps, the free Spirits who can possess.

[Kesh]

I suppose the question is: why do you feel it's necessary to give the "posession summoning" ability to the magician, rather than creating spirits with the posession ability which the magician then summons?

Your first post doesn't really clarify this point. You essentially just say the latter is "bad" and don't give a real reason for it.

[kigmatzomat]

I don't see a big problem. The GM has final approval of any tradition so they can nuke the Munchkinism at its source.

I am a fan of the vodooan style and would handle it thusly:

Voudun
stat: Charisma (lots of negotiation and bargaining)
Mentor: Great Loa only (Erzuli, Papa Legba, Ogun, etc)
Spirits: Man, Loa Rada, Loa Petro, Loa Zombie, Air

Loa Rada are the spirits that possess willing people and share information
Loa Petro are the vengeful ones that can possess the unwilling to wreak havoc
Loa Zombie animate the dead

I tossed spirits of Air in there b/c so many Loa have relationships with weather and Man since at least 2 Great Loa were once houngans.


Insect Shaman
stat: intuition (not a lot of thinking going on here; all instinct)
Mentor: Insect queen (wasp, ant, roach, etc)
Spirit: Warrior, Drone, Worker, Queen, Beast

Each Mentor has their own general suite of spirits.
Warriors are more combat oriented
Workers have advanced non-combat skills
Drones (ahem) service the Queen
Queens grants special powers to the hive
Beast just because I ran out of ideas in the 5 minutes I was willing to spend on this.



Loa and Insect spirits have the posession power. Determining the impact of binding vs. unbound is an excercise I leave to the reader but I would anticipate that unbound spirits can only possess a form for (Net Successes)Minutes while a bound spirit can probably stick around for (Net Successes) hours or days. Possession of the unwilling is resisted by the target's Willpower + Counterspelling and requires (Magic+Essence) successes. Possession of the willing (or dead) is unresisted unless the spirit is unhappy with the idea.

[hahnsoo]

To add my voice to Kesh's, I'd like to know the same thing. I think it's perfectly reasonable to create a tradition that can summon possessing spirits. You don't need to add the ability of "possession" as part of the tradition, just simply allow the tradition to sommon a spirit that has the possession power. Also, Mait Tete loa can be easily translated to the Mentor Spirit mechanic (albeit, with a stranger relationship than most mages with Mentor Spirits).

[FrankTrollman]

[Demonseed Elite]

I'm of the same mind as Kesh, Kigmatzomat, and Hahnsoo. I can say right now that I really, really doubt you'll see different mechanics built into any of the traditions. You will very likely see new spirit types, but even those will be consistent with the spirits in the SR4 book.

Also, I'd like to reiterate that the intent of the tradition design in SR4 is not so every player gets to pick and choose his spirit types during character creation. The tradition creation guidelines are for cooperation between a gamemaster and a player for creating a tradition that fits the character concept (in the cases where the two provided, Hermetic and Shamanic, don't work). In the end, it's the gamemaster that creates traditions based on the player's explanation of his goals. It isn't just "hey, I'm going to pick five spirits I can summon."

[blakkie]

[FrankTrollman]

OK, now I'm just confused. Let me get this straight:

The objectors want to create a new rule where some spirits can possess. And they admit that this creates potential problems and they that this OK because the GM can jolly well walk around behind and clean up after the mess.

Or...

You can do it my way, in which you create a new rule where some can summon spirits that possess. And then this doesn't create any problems at all and the GM can let players transfer characters between cmapaigns and noone can slip something broketastic by the GM with fasttalking or anything.

I am absolutely flabergasted. Ocham would be flabergasted too, and probably cut you with a razor. Making the possession/materialization choice come at the tradition level instead of the spirit level requires:

* Less GM effort, because all the choices come out of the box balanced.
* Less time to explain, because the spirit dichotomy is handled at a higher structural level.
* Less time to write, because you don't need to make new possessing beast spirits for Norwegians to summon.


There is absolutely no advantage to making new spirits over having a tradition choice. All you are arguing for is rules bloat and the potential for a GM to make a mistake and allow an overpowered character who has the best of both worlds. If you aren't personally a powergamer who is trying to sucker your GM into letting you have Loa Rada that possess and Spirits of te Air that materialize separately (thereby being better than any other magician because you have the materializing spirit with the largest attack dice pool and have the option of possessing yourself for greater personal protection and information gathering capabilities), there's no reason why you would support the inherently clunky system of producing extra summonable spirits that have the possessing tag over my proposal. It's more complicated and takes more effort to make a balanced game.

-Frank

[blakkie]

I'm getting very suspicious of your name. :|

EDIT: Ok, i'll bi....er no i won't.....nevermind.

[kigmatzomat]

[FrankTrollman]

[Draconis]

[Cynic project]

[blakkie]

[Cynic project]

Well, for the msot part he is blunt and tells you turth. He works witht the rules and trys to make the rules balanced and or reasonable, mostly balanced. So does he go into the rules and see all the flaws, yes.This isn't always a bad or godo thing. We do nto agre on many things but if you talk to him he will use reason and can be reasoned with.

[blakkie]