The spirit and the rigger would both be able to control the drone. The spirit has the final say over the drone's physical motion, but the rigger is still in there and can control any of the purely electronic devices.

The spirit has no control over nor awareness of the Matrix connection of the drone. So the Rigger still gets to use his Drone as a pair of eyes and as a repeater to hack from. The Spirit won't be able to stop him from doing that or even know it's happening.

So the breakdown is the spirit gets full control of the drone's physical motion andhe rigger retains full control of the drone's matrix existence. But you should probably use a Guardian spirit instead of a Spirit of Man. A drone whose physical actions are controlled by a spirit with the Heavy Weapons skill is hilarious.

Nope. The spirit can't even perceive the Matrix actions the drone is performing under its nose.

Absotively, the diagnostics would suggest that the motors were out of control - even a small movement by the spirit would have been outside the parameters ofthe pilot program.

Yes.

Note that many spirits with Psychokinesis can also fly (which is a power), and would be able to simply hover themselves around anyway. Air spirits make pretty decent snipers.

-Frank

perhaps for a very light runner, or if the spirit had a very high strength.

keeping in mind that str * 5 kg is how much something can carry around, and iirc air spirits don't have very good strength... (i suppose it could carry more for a shorter period of time maybe, but still not very impressive unless you're already pretty lightweight)...

Boy it took you guys long enough to actually come up with a decent use...

Actually that's one of the things it probably can't do, since a possessing spirit cannot control electronical or digital elements of equipment - just mechanical ones...

Think of all the crying indians! *tear*

you mean it can't spit out the bills, or it can't make electronic transfers?

That might be from people jumping to conclusions before reading the rules... Possession of innanimate objects was never intended to be an uberpower, in fact it has quite a few built in limitations. How much these actually restrict possession spirits is (you guessed it) up to each group and their GMs.

Under the rules Possession spirits are specifically unable to "interface" with a lot of modern technology including AR, DNI, electronics, etc.

But a spirit should, for instance, be able to control some cars simply by making their mechanical components move (though an electric car wouldn't be able to tap Gridlink for power or access the system). Same for certain drones.

If the electronic lock has a mechanical stopper to prevent the cash door from opening, couldn't the spirit move the mechanical stopper even if it couldn't understand that it was controlled electronically?

Does that mean also that a spirit couldn't unlock a maglock?

I would imagine that unless there was a purely electronic blockage (as in, the money spitting device needs and doesn't recieve power unless the ID is verified) it could bypass locking mechanisms.

BTW, I haven't gotten the book yet, so I don't actually know the rules, just what's been said in this thread. So I don't mean to be obtuse about the subject.

why doesn't that apply to ATMs? shovelling cash around is merely a matter of routing power to the correct areas--something a possessing spirit can obviously manage, if it's able to control drones at all; it's not like drones have gas and brake pedals to push, or steering wheels to turn. the fact that those power routings are normally controlled by Matrix commands doesn't factor in at all.

This is correct.

Generally speaking if it has moving mechanical parts the possession spirit can animate them. If, however, a lock uses a magnetic mechanism to move the bolt from locked to unlock, the spirit would be unable to control that.

That would be a no-go. The spirit's aforementioned inability to access the computer side of things makes possession of the commlink pretty irrelevant. You'd control what? The snap on the carryng case? The clip that hooked it to your opponent's belt?

Cyberware is just plain impossible, since it's part of your opponent's aura and not separately targettable by magic.

Now, the ATM plan would totally work. It can't give you a valid transaction, nor can it spoof the system to believe that the machine is supposed to be spitting out money. But it can physically open the money cannisters and feed them out. That's probably not what you should be doing with your time, but it would work.

Here's the problem: the spirit can't spoof the camera feed, it can't spoof the autopilot on the money or the tamper-sensors on the device. All of these are going to be going off like crazy. As far as the ATM is concerned, someone is ripping it open and taking money out by hand (which, BTW, also works). And so it's busily sending out a distress call and taking mad pictures and posting them to Lonestar.

So how is this any better than just taking a monofilament chainsaw to the machine and taking the money? Well, it's no more subtle as far as the folks in Zurich Orbital are concerned, but ieverything looks perfectly normal to everyone standing around in the mall. As far as the security people are concerned, everything loks normal. That means that when the money comes out and the security gets pulled in, it takes a relatively easily Charisma + Con check to make them believe that you're a law abiding consumer and the machine is giving a false alarm.

As long as you do this fairly infrequently, you can probably get away with as much as hundreds of nuyen without drawing undue attention to yourself.

-Frank

You've misunderstood me. The spirit doesn't route power or control electronic subsystems. It has no control over such elements. What it does is animate the mechanical gears, shafts and locks (same way it gets a dead body's arms and legs to move). In a car or drone it could make the wheels or tracks to move by animating the gears and shafts that turn them all the way back to the engine if necessary (though the engine could be dead).

Edit - Frank is right of course. I was assuming an ATM using more than a purely mechanical feed system, something with a magnetic slide lock mechanism.

Of course even if you've pulled it off and ripped a few hundred nuyen from the ATM, you've just spent one of the spirit's services to do it (and we're talking the costs and risks of a Force 6 conjuration to reliably work on an ATM's OR4).

what other function would an ATM serve? you can do all your other banking online, without the help of an ATM.

ATMs would be for the very poor without access to their own comlink or other net access. But probably there would be public terminals not associated with banks, so I'd do away with ATMs entirely. They're unnecessary for most people, so the customer convenience vs. security tradeoff makes them uneconomical to support.

where?

Err I meant to say it's been established here in this thread.

And logically, an ATM has no use in a credstick/commlink world, unless you have multiple bank accounts that need transfers and for some reason can't use the matrix. For flavor I could see Automated Trideo Tellers that do all the banky kinds of things that a real teller might, but I don't know if they'd just leave those kinds of things out on street corners.

First, allies can't be put in your body with the power of inhabitation. Channeling is for possession; inhabitation destroys the mind of the vessel without exception.

Second, I think you shouldn't be able to give great form powers to allies at all. You can only give powers "available to spirits the initiate may conjure." Great form powers aren't in the usual sense "available" to a spirit that you've conjured - they have to be given to it. Previous editions didn't allow great form allies, there's no indication they wanted anything like this in SR4, and for simple game balance reasons it shouldn't be allowed unless clearly permitted. Can you imagine an ally with unlimited use of the storm power? Ridiculous.

Your ally spirit can posses you in the note about possesion traditions, it says that the possesion power replaces the materialization power so it could possese you. Thank you for answering, oh and storm wasnt the one i was worried about i was worried about regeneration.

No, REGULAR non-ally spirits get possession instead of materialization. Allies get INHABITATION or materialization. (It's presented as an option unrelated to whether you follow a "normal" or possessory tradition, by the way.) Inhabitation is what insect spirits do to their hosts. Have you ever heard of an insect shaman with channeling putting an insect spirit into his own body? No, because the rules provide that for inhabitation the mind of the host is DESTROYED. They are different powers. They are different powers. They are different powers. And channeling only effects possession, not inhabitation. Maybe you can make up some hyperexotic and advanced metamagic that allows others to do something like this with inhabitation. But players cannot do it.

And regeneration is far less worrisome as a defensive power than storm is as an offensive one (look at the area of effect! no drain! as often as you like until services run out!). Although I am still glad to see the nerfing they gave to Hidden Life...

I don't understand this second sentence, but I possibly agree with the first. If you're going to make certified cred that easy to get, the dispensing machine would probably encode them as they're issued, so if you simply broke in you'd get blank sticks worth nothing.

Cash as an easy to get every day medium of exchange doesn't make sense in SR. Everyone should have a SIN, everyone should have a commlink, everyone should be able to do electronic payments. Sure, cash will exist in less technological places in the Sixth World, but not so much in Seattle. If you can get it, you probably have to go into a bank and do it personally. Maybe they have to report it to the FBI if you get more than a certain amount, too, or exchange too much for certified credit. Hope your fake SIN is up to snuff...

But this is all rather off topic. Even if ATMs exist, there are plenty of grounds to decide that routine security with wards or restricted access and surveilance makes a possession scheme unprofitable in the long run. There are more reasons to do decide a spirit just can't do it at all.

that's not true at all. the Barrens are full of SINless people. you think all those go-gangs are full of SINners?

I'm talking about from the perspective of the in world powers that be. They don't use cash. Their customers that make them money don't use a lot of cash. The government and corps don't want it easy to use cash. Yes, the barrens and slums have no SINs. Give them a certified cred economy, temp fake sins through low level ganger hackers or organized crime that charge a hefty fee, a fair amount of barter, and, if you must, and isolated cash economy disconnected from the legal SINner society. Need a gun? Pay cash to the gang on the corner. Need something more legal? Pay cash to the mob or yakuza, they use legal channels to buy it for you, and they charge you a hefty conversion fee for the effort they take to launder your suspect, untraceable cash into legal, clean e-money. It's expensive to be poor!

Or put ATMs where the poor need them and it would make sense for legal businesses to provide - in the Barrens Stuffer Shack, with transaction fees that make today's casino and strip club ATMs look cheap. It's a marginal business for marginal players with more than marginal costs.