Cold-Dragon
Sep 12 2006, 12:48 AM
With sacrificing as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if the conjuring mage gave surviving sacrifices (amusing choice of words) to the blood spirit to help pump it up in the first place. Get a few spares, and then just toss it someplace before it gets the mind to try and eat you for dessert.
Slithery D
Sep 12 2006, 12:52 AM
Well, yeah. There's really no reason to conjure blood spirits and forego the special invoked power just to get Fear and Natural Weapon. You do it to get Essence Drain, and you do it to use that power to double your force. The surprising thing would be not to do it, and it only takes one cyberless extra sacrifice to double a spirit of starting Force <6.
Wanderer
Sep 12 2006, 03:15 AM
| QUOTE |
| I consider Sacrifice most useful for binding spirits with uber drain, especially while Invoking them. It's also the best way to cast very high Force ritual magic so that you can actually use the extra successes that come with lots of extra help on your ritual team, especially if you've got someone using Great Ritual to really boost things. If you want high Force spellcasting in combat, use Absorption - you need a friend/ally spirit/spirit of man/convenient enemy to feed it, but it doesn't use up an extra Complex Action or force you to control a victim. |
This is all so very true. But I focused on the combat uses of Sacrifice because I wished to highlight why this technique is far from necessarily being about the sterotypical black-clad psychopathic magician that slaughters babies and virgins bound to a rock for power. There are ways to use it that aren't that much different, morally, from any other combat spell or adept power. Hence it shouldn't be for twisted only. Human sacrifices of innocents, yes. But I can see many non-pacifist mages from several traidtions using it in good coscience with enemies or volunteers as a good substitute or adjunct to Centering and Absorption.
| QUOTE |
Muahaha! I though the same at first, but then I realized why you want these. They only lose one point of Essence/Force per week when bound, and with Essence Drain they can suck a person dry in an hour who can double their Force! Remember, the cap to drained essence/force is double the base essence/force.
So you summon a Force 6 spirit, and rebind it a whole bunch so that you've got a lot of extra services. Then you blood invoke. Then you feed it a whole Essence 6 victim. Voila! You've got a Force 12 great form blood spirit that didn't cost much drain (offset by Sacrficie and in any case stun, not physical). So you trade the great form special power (Storm, Quake, Paralyzing Howl, whatever) for 6 extra points of force. Good deal. A Force 12 great form fire spirit with area of effect Engulf will roll 26 dice on its Unarmed Attack, then do 16 points of fire damage, staged up by successes and down by resistance. And it can nab everyone in a 12m radius. And hit the survivors (riiiiight) twice more per turn at the same time it's grabbing more people with the 12m radius line of sight scoop o' death. |
I stand corrected. It definitely has its uses. I re-evaluate it.
Wanderer
Sep 12 2006, 03:33 AM
| QUOTE |
Centering and Adept centering are the same concept applied to two different parts of SR mechanics. mage centering lessens the stress of spellcasting and similar magical mojo, and adept centering lessens some of the stress on the body that comes from penalties and whatnot.
Now, you could take them together too, unless I missed some part saying otherwise, but all that mans is you get the above benefits to both sides, no doubling up on them or whatever. |
Yep, all true, but my doubt is: does a mystic adept need both Centering and Adept Centering as separate techniques, to use centering both vs. drain and vs. physical/combat skill penalties, or does one technique suffice for both uses ?
| QUOTE |
| Empowering an attuning animals doesn't look like much, but while nonsentient animals aren't as handy as your ally spirits or fixers, the minor telepathic bond and required friendliness between both adept and animal means it's like having a mini familiar - you are one with the pack if it's a wolf, a herd mate/whatever to a horse, a really ugly duck to the ducks, etc. The ability to actually communicate (if simple in itself) gives you that edge with the animal that makes it much easier to actually co exist as partners. |
Yes, however, the issue stands that unless your character concept absolutely, totally calls for having one's own animal companion, this power is quite suck-y, and the hard-earned Karma is btter spent learning other adept techniques, such as Centering, Infusion, Divining, Psychometry, Cognition or Somatic Control.
| QUOTE |
| Attuning items is better than weapon foci's in specific situations: ranged weapons and non weapons. I don't know if you'd benefit much if you attuned a commlink, but at the least that might mean you're so innately familiar with the insides that you can counter attacks on you via hacking more effectively (tricky part, heh). Definite advantage in guns, however, and it can be considered useful as far as cars go to insure you drive away scott free. |
OK, it has some uses for some special types of adepts, such as gunslinger, athlete or artist adepts. Not for the sterotypical close combat adept, too.
Ophis
Sep 12 2006, 04:17 PM
Re centring and adept centring
Since these are two seperate metamagics(dispite similar names there is no indication that one is a varient of teh other) I would rule that mystic adepts who wnat both versions (who wouldn't?) have to buy them seperately like anyother meta magic.
Re Attunement (item)
Where does it say that this is instead of a weapon focus? This means that mele adepts have a choice between power with tricks(killing hands+crit strike+elemental effect+others) or accuracy and defence due tolots of dice(weapon focus+attunement).
Re Attunement (animal)
Yes they are a waste of pages/karma unless you want a companion beast but so are the explosive rules if you don't want to play a character with demolitions. Why do you have a problem with this?
Slithery D
Sep 12 2006, 06:14 PM
| QUOTE (Ophis) |
Re Attunement (item)
Where does it say that this is instead of a weapon focus? |
In the first sentence of its description. "[O]f a mundane vehicle, weapon, or piece of gear."
ThreeGee
Sep 12 2006, 06:47 PM
Deeply dissappointed when I read the description of item attunement. Until I'm a seventh lvl initiate it worse than my +3 Cbt axe, as its incompatible with foci, until I'm fifth it's worse than the smartlinks on my paired Warhawks, as it's incompatible with any sort of electronic interface. One might ask, what's the point?
Just griping with my player head on, btw. As a GM I can see why it's written that way.
Ophis
Sep 12 2006, 10:06 PM
| QUOTE (Slithery D) |
| QUOTE (Ophis @ Sep 12 2006, 11:17 AM) | Re Attunement (item)
Where does it say that this is instead of a weapon focus? |
In the first sentence of its description. "[O]f a mundane vehicle, weapon, or piece of gear."
|
Damn missed that. Paired weapon melee that hopefully doesn't involve pool splitting here I come.
Shrike30
Sep 12 2006, 10:44 PM
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman @ Sep 11 2006, 05:38 PM) |
| Yep. Killing is killing. I can see why blood mages and insect shamans wouldn't be appropriate PCs in some games, but having them disallowed in all games is weak sauce. We aren't children, and it's somewhat insulting to be talked down to like that. |
I've been in games with some players (mostly back in the high-school days) who flat-out demanded access to some of the "GM say-so" abilities (usually to get their rocks off and rack up their body count, of course).
Saying "PCs can't have this" just means that the GM has to say "fuck that, have it if you want" and the ability is back in the game. Saying "PCs can have this unless the GM says otherwise" would work fine with the more mature gaming groups, but for some games it just leads to a lot of bitching at the GM when he says "I'm sorry, I don't want you playing a character whose concept revolves around stabbing his teammates in the back during firefights."
FrankTrollman
Sep 12 2006, 11:55 PM
| QUOTE |
| So you summon a Force 6 spirit, and rebind it a whole bunch so that you've got a lot of extra services. Then you blood invoke. Then you feed it a whole Essence 6 victim. Voila! You've got a Force 12 great form blood spirit that didn't cost much drain (offset by Sacrficie and in any case stun, not physical). So you trade the great form special power (Storm, Quake, Paralyzing Howl, whatever) for 6 extra points of force. |
Why stop at 12? The maximum Essence a Spirit can drain is equal to double its Force. But every time a Blood Spirit drains an Essence Point, its Force goes up. That means that its maximum Essence Drain also increases. So when you raise it up to Force 12 it can eat two more victims and go to Force 24.
And so on. Forever.
There are no meaningful limits built into that power. At all.
-Frank
Slithery D
Sep 13 2006, 12:44 AM
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman @ Sep 12 2006, 06:55 PM) |
| QUOTE | | So you summon a Force 6 spirit, and rebind it a whole bunch so that you've got a lot of extra services. Then you blood invoke. Then you feed it a whole Essence 6 victim. Voila! You've got a Force 12 great form blood spirit that didn't cost much drain (offset by Sacrficie and in any case stun, not physical). So you trade the great form special power (Storm, Quake, Paralyzing Howl, whatever) for 6 extra points of force. |
Why stop at 12? The maximum Essence a Spirit can drain is equal to double its Force. But every time a Blood Spirit drains an Essence Point, its Force goes up. That means that its maximum Essence Drain also increases. So when you raise it up to Force 12 it can eat two more victims and go to Force 24.
And so on. Forever.
There are no meaningful limits built into that power. At all.
|
That doesn't compute. It's just modified Essence Drain, and the max for that power is essence of double your "normal/original" essence, not your current essence. "Normal" essence/force for a spirit is what it was summoned at. Clearly it has to cap somewhere so that Azzie blood mages can't easily kill a great dragon by sacrificing a dozen people to a blood spirit.
FrankTrollman
Sep 13 2006, 08:38 AM
Spirits don't have a Maximum force at all. Their Essence Maximum is equal to their Force. If they have Essence Drain, their maximum is twice that.
If they are a Blood Invoked Spirit, their Force increases every time they drain a point of Essence, and their Essence therefore never increases beyond their Force. So their Essence is always at half maximum. So while there is a cap to how high their Force can get - like Achilles chasing the Turtle it will never actually reach that cap.
When you are Force 1, your maximum is 2. But when you actually get to 2, your maximum is 4. And so on and so on. It's like the author didn't actually understand the ramifications of Shadowrun Attribute Maximums at all.
-Frank
Slithery D
Sep 13 2006, 12:25 PM
I'm amazed that you've so completely short circuited your common sense and bullshit filters. Trade "maximum" essence for "normal" essence - it's not like a human ever starts with less than six. "A critter can only increase its Essence to twice its normal maximum." The normal maximum essence/Froce of a spirit, without Essence Drain, is its summoned Force. Add Essence Drain, and it can double that. Simple. Unabsuable. Necessary. Anything else requires and explanation of why increased essence/force through this power somehow becomes a new "normal" value, while a human vampire with 12 essence doesn't get the same treatment.
FrankTrollman
Sep 13 2006, 05:31 PM
If that was true, the spirit's normal maximum for its other attributes would be its starting summoned values - which in turn means that it couldn't benefit from raising its Force to more than 1.5 times its starting value.
So either your spirit caps out at Force 9 or it caps out at unlimited. Force 12 doesn't enter into this at any point. But Free Spirits and Ally Spirits specifically don't work that way. There is no limit to how high their Force can get if they spend enough Karma on the matter. Similarly there's no limit on how high a Blood Spirit can go.
It's just that while it costs an intractibly large amount of Karma for a Spirit to get to Force 20, a Blood Spirit can do it by killing three guys. It's an unlimited power expansion model that is insane. It's 1 for 1, forever, ith no printed limits.
As for me, I'm just cutting the bullshit out and giving them regular Essence Drain and Essence Loss in addition to their Greatform Powers. The ability to kill people in order to double their Magic Attribute is actually plenty reason to do that. You don't need to have the spirit's Force move to Crazytown and become the Mayor.
-Frank
Slithery D
Sep 13 2006, 05:44 PM
I'm still not buying it. I don't think a spirit has "normal" mental or physical attributes - they feed off Force/Essence, which are pretty much interchangeable. Spirit Force is Essence, just with the name changed to make it fit with other magic ratings (and maybe to keep people like Emo Samurai from trying to put orichalcum cyberware into one).
And since attributes feed of the Force plus/minus formula, they aren't subject to attribute caps. Only limitations on Force/Essence matter. Even if you don't buy this, it's hardly a weird house rule to decide it is so. Blood spirits are still way overpowered, but at least not stupidly so. Your Essence Drain for Magic only rule is a better way to nerf them yet make them dangerous, I'll admit.
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