Both of you are being retards.

Critas: You cannot just randomly insult someone else in a thread and then act all surprised when they show up and call you out on being an asshole. Its retarded to expect people to just ignore you while you insult them. Saying "Just ignore me" when you're the one that started it is just dumb.

Blakkie: You're just provoking Critas.

Now, both of you, hold hands and make up or I'll make Dad slap your heads together.

wow. y'know, they gave SL James a time-out, and at least his massive flaming rampages were on-topic.

i'm going to make a valiant effort, here, and post on-topic. FrankTrollman had this to say about high-force spirit threats:

I was thinking of running with 450 BP characters because of the mantis spirit at the end. But then I thought of making a free mantis spirit a long-running PC, so I didn't want her to be killed at the end.

So I thought up the idea of her trying to get Yakuza backing so that she could cement her hold over the Barrens and let the roach spirit colony in her basement that she feeds on spread to other apartment blocks. It'll be like Bug City 2.0, except with 5 times the subtlety and hopefully no megacorp attention. Which rules out attacking the gangs directly with her spirits. When the runners manage to track the car, she figures that the best way to wipe out the other gangs is to kill the oyabun and make it look like the other gangs did it. The roach infestation could spread in the ensuing chaos. She's pretty much an unknown in the area and the building she inhabits has been owned by ghouls for years until she wiped them out, so no one knows about her or really wants to check. No one goes near her building or gives it a second thought, and the yakuza won't really bother to suspect that a bunch of (nonexistent) blind HMVV sufferers are the ones to snipe the oyabun. Instead, it'll be a bunch of runners.

The problem: how do I make an assassination on a jury-rigged race track difficult for 450 BP characters? I matched up my characters to the NPC's in the book, and they're better than Red Samurai.

I agree. Goons are a classic way to give everyone something to do while one person takes on the enemy that only they can. The goons could even be low-force male mantid spirits, or something the others can actually damage.

As for the roach colony thing, maybe it's just me, but a mantis spirit "farming" other spirits seems out of character. There could well be roach spirits that she eats, but maybe they shouldn't be under her control; she's fighting them. Add another villain. A little more complexity might give longevity to the idea. (as opposed to one, singular enemy who, if the PCs kill, ends the campaign)

As for making the assasination difficult, well, be smart about the defense, and add one little detail that the PCs didn't know about ahead of time. One little hitch can turn a milk run into a disaster. Maybe the target of the assasination has been replaced by a flesh form bug?

"i know what you're doing! you're using wiles on me!"

farming bugs isn't in a mantid spirit's basic nature. you could have a deviant mantid spirit doing this, maybe, which might pave the way for some really wacky alliances--runners teaming up with other mantid spirits to take out the deviant freak, etcetera.

well, because they're so tast--er, capable.

you are completely useless. and a liar.

the PMs you sent me about a month back, wherein you stated you were trying to change and not be so much of a flaming asshole--where, specifically, you said you were going to try "to play nice with you, Critias, and James." looking at this thread, i think calling you a liar is pretty understated.

right. emo samurai, i'm sorry about your thread. it was whimsical while it lasted.

I feel bad for Emo. He made a hojillion threads a day, and we yelled at him, and so he made a dedicated idea page and has been looking up more answers to questions before he asks them. He's done everything we've asked. Sure, his ideas make some of us cringe sometimes (you have to admit, Emo, some of your ideas have been pretty out-there), but he's creative, and he submits his ideas for feedback with better than average grammar, he's understandable, and he doesn't flame. And what do we do? We poop all over his thread.
I'm sorry, Emo.

I just know that enough gasoline will eventually smother this fire.

Was that pointed at me? I hope my post wasn't inflammatory. When I said 'we', I was referring to the dumpshock community as a whole, so as not to point any fingers or be inflammatory in any way.
Please, no one be offended by my post. I didn't mean it to be.
edit: I probably should've put my previous post in a PM to Emo, though.
Sorry everybody.
Let's talk about Emo's campaign ideas more.

I think that the spirit should go free in the first encounter with it. They gun down the insect shaman, then the spirit goes free. Or if not in the first encounter, at some point along the way. I just think this develops the villain more, and would be fun.

Mantis spirits have two main ways they can show up: True Form and Flesh Form. The flesh form is going to be seven kinds of complicated, because the rules for possession haven't been published. At its core, the spirit is going to have physical attributes of the host's plus the force of the spirit, and then have whatever modifiers on top of that the writers of the spirits and threats section of Street Magic agree upon. I don't know what those will be, so I'd suggest not doing that.

The true form on the other hand, works just like a normal spirit once it's been conjured. The conjuring itself is a weird blood ritual which requires the sacrifice of one living creature and some of the spirit energy gained from killing another spirit that itself required the sacrifice of a living creature to bring into the world, and the rules for that whole thing haven't been written for SR4. Again, I don't know what they'll look like in Street Magic (honestly I wish I did, it would make my life easier). But since this spirit has already been conjured, you don't have to care. That all happened off camera before the spirit even entered stage left, so it's not important.

True form is definately the way you want to go if you want to stay within the rules as much as possible. In previous editions, all male mantids were true form and all female mantids were flesh form, so you might want to make this a cockroach spirit or fly spirit instead if you want to put it in a position of major antagonist. Mantids aren't particularly human-friendly, so really any free solitary insect spirit can perform the kinds of plot hooks you seem to want.

A true form solitary insect spirit is (hopefully) just a beast spirit. Optional powers can be Natural Weapon and Venom.

---

If you really want the whole "hot chick who is really a mantis spirit" thing going... I suggest the following ad hoc house conversion for one:

Take a basic human profile (3s in every physical stat or there abouts. Maybe give her an agility of 4 and strength of 2 to drive home that she is little and hot and maybe Asian).

Add the spirit's force to all her physical stats.

Replace all the mental and special attributes with the spirit's force.

Give her all the spirit powers of a spirit of beasts except materialization and astral form.

Make her dual natured and give her immunity to normal weapons.

Give her the initiate power of Masking, with an effective grade of her Force (which is to say: "good luck on seeing through that, biatch!"). Allow her masking to cover up her continual spirit powers even though it normally doesn't.

That should do. Free Spirits used to have all kinds of extra crazy rules involved, such as Spirit Energy and bonus powers and such, but you don't really have to worry about all that.

-Frank

yes it is me

I'm not into bugs too much....so what if you get a shaman who has an anti-insect spirit totem/metor spirit to come around?

racoon could be slightly anti-bug but the main ones would be

Armadillo
possum
ant eater(s) [more then one type]
skunks(s) [all kinds]
shrikes [it's a perching bird that eats lizards and bugs]
chameleon
gecko
sherews

Just to give your campaign some ideas

I agree with Frank that true form is going to be easier. But his fleshform suggestions make sense too given SR3 rules. You might consider imposing the Modified Attribute cap for the physical stats if you want to tone it down a smidgen. But then again these are normally NPCs so it is quite possible that won't happen with the canon Street Magic rules.

Still a few tweaks from the SR3 rules that you may or may not want to bring forward. For example the part about only insect spirits with wings can fly doesn't really make sense since under SR4 rules generally all the spirits can "fly".

Also there is the SR3 rule that when Banishing a trueform the spirit is treated as having double the Force. Given how SR4 rules work that would make any attempt to Banish a Force 9 insect spirit foolhardy since the spirit would roll 18 dice and the Drain on that is 2*hits DV. Average 12P drain before the spirit uses Edge? Ya, scatch foolhardy and replace that with suicidal.

Hmmm... when she goes free, is she cut off from the insect metaplane? If she is, does she have a greater degree of free will?

Oh, and we should totally have a Desert Flame Wars thread that just has Critias, Blakkie, and everyone else who wants to be involved just hurling insults at each other. It would be funny, and I wouldn't have to deal with it.

Do insect spirits need human hosts for new insect spirits after they become free?

So she should have no problem fitting in. Except for the eating roaches part.

Perhaps the wetwork target is a weaker male mantis. The gang leader's "groupie" in the background is the real master, being the Mother. Ganking the male is going to piss off the female because you just killed Mommie's lunch. Female mantis do something akin to Essense Drain (to death) of the males they summon so that they can gain the strength to summon more mantis spirits (both male and female). The Mother can only summon more spirits after they consume a male in this way!

Back to something mentioned before by mfb, it's unlikely that a mantis spirit would actively get another insect groups hive to grow. For one, that's not how a normal mantis would work, and they do have an underlying insect mentality. But most importantly, the roach's are going to know that the mantis is trying to bug-farm them , and they do have the ability to fight back. One Mantis against a hive is a bad idea, even with 'goons'..

boskop: anti-bug? that's what mantis spirits basically are. The anti-bug bug. They're the bug anti-christ.

back to emo: if you want to really mess with their heads, make the mantid have ties to the Mothers of Metahumans policlub.You can make a full campaign of them with factions of MOM running against them! Imagine their suprise when they find the deepest entrenched bug of them all, Anne Penchyk! Then watch them squirm while they try to expose "the horror of her true self" to the media. Good times. Good times.

Don't bother. I'm finished, and hopefully so is he. Apologies for the disruption -- there was an attempt to take it to PMs, initially, but then I decided "fuck it" and just stopped talking to him entirely. Sorry for derailing.

Are you getting a few more concrete ideas out of the (on topic) parts, Emo? It sounds like the campaign idea/arch-villian part is progressing nicely, at least.

SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!1!!!11!!!!

There. And how is asking for a Desert Flame Wars thread more wise than having a mystical ninja poser in a dank and gritty world like SR4?

Now, see, I told you it was a wise thing to say but never said it was a wise thing to do.

I don't think there's anything to be gained by keeping this open. Emo, if you want, start a new thread for your campaign ideas.