A true form ally "loses" inhabitaiton and gains materalization...just as if that had been chosen in the first place. It still doesn't get possession.

no, but since possession is part of ur tradition u can give that power to ur ally...

Have fun, I have to go bang my head against a wall.

if that helps u, feel free...

After a fruitless search to try to find the thread where one of the people who actually worked on the book said a couple of weeks back: "Yes, allies get either materialization or inhabitation, not possession," I just simply suggest that you borrow a friend with common sense or develop the uncommon talent of inferring an overall structure from a few basic rules. But having seen how colossally stupid some of my law school classmates were, let's move that from "uncommon" to "rare." It's still nothing to brag about when you don't have it, however.

It's beyond obvious that neither great form powers nor possession are intended to be available for ally spirits. Look at the rules for Storm and try to imagine any game designer in their right mind giving that power in unlimited uses to a player no matter how much karma they paid. If it helps, consider the interpretation that these powers are not "available" to spirits when "conjured" (read: summoned/bound), but are aftermarket extras added on by the summoner himself. Or consider: LOS(A) Engulf is "available" to Great Form spirits as well. Will you allow your Force 4 ally to do the same? Will your GM? Signs point to...no.

Or go look at the spirit powers and optional spirit powers on the, uh, spirit write up. Do you see the great form powers listed there? Do you think maybe they wanted to limit you to the basic list, and that advanced powers available after actual effort and crippling drain are not automatically a free gift to your ally just because someone invented a way to do this?

I don't honestly care what you do in your game, but I do like to think that I can spread critical thinking skills and the ability to think rationally. Perhaps I hoped for too much.

i understand ur concerns, however it doesnt help, if some dev, says it was intended that way or that way, if the book states it otherwise, u know how players can be...

Errata !

Consider the consequences of permitting ally spirits to have Great Form powers like Quake or Storm. Neither causes drain to the spirit like Storm did in SR3, or to the summoner like in SR2. The only limitation on their use is the number of services owed by the spirit.

Scenario 1: Some pro-meta group has a rally on and around the Mall in FDC. A million demonstrators gather in the open, packed tightly together. Some anti-meta mage with an ally spirit with the Storm spirit decides on mass murder. He send his Force 4 ally to materialize in the middle of the crowd and activate Storm power 6 times in less than 10 seconds (2 IP per turn X 3 seconds per turn X 3 turns). Each Storm strike does 4 DV suppressing fire damage to everyone in the open within a 400m radius. If each person is standing on one square meter of area, there could be 502,400 people squeezed into that radius.

Let's call it 150,000. The spirit rolls 8 dice; each of those 150,000 people rolls Reaction + Edge to dodge. If they win (six times!) they take no damage. If they don't, the soak 4 DV with their average 3 body dice. Everyone is going to be hurt; a lot are going to die. If the spirit stays for 15 seconds (5 rounds) he can toss 10 strikes - pretty much everyone will die, a few trolls excepted.

Congratulations, your mage is now the world's greatest single handed mass murderer. Summoning an ally spirit is now punishable by life imprisonment or death in all noncorporate jurisdictions. Governments simply can't trust that kind of power to anyone anymore than they can let you keep a tac nuke you promise never to use.

Scenario 2: Your mage finds a way to go long in the home furnishings/car repair/construction/building repair businesses in a built up area that doesn't nomrally suffer from earthquakes and has a Force 4 ally spirit with the Quake power. He activates it in the built up area and shakes everything within a 4 kilometer radius. The quake lasts four minutes, and lets assume you can't activate it again until the first one dies down. So he takes the time to move from building to building (probably in preset wards), hidden from open astral view, reactivating it as soon as possible.

With a not implausible 3 successes each time, the ally causes lots of car wrecks and shuts down the roads for 4 minutes each time. Lots of movable things inside buildings break. Eventually he gets 4 successes causing damage to ordinary buildings and jamming closed doors in their frames. Some freak deaths probably occur. Spend some edge, and the ally will probably get 5-6 successes a time or two. Now we've got some real damage that needs fixing.

Congratulations, your mage is rich as the businesses he invested in cash in on the repairs necessary. Summoning an ally spirit is now punishable by a very long prison term or the posting of a billion nuyen bond.


Great form powers in unlimited quantities are simply broken. Allow them and the game world will have to do its best to break you. This does mean, incidentally, that Great Form spirits will be forbidden in most jurisdictions, legally permitted only for tightly controlled military use. It's not like great form abilities lend themselves to civilian purposes, after all, even when services are limited. (And with massive rebinding followed by one Invocation and then a big service burnoff, they aren't even that limited for one-time apocalypse circumstances.) They aren't as dangerous as a nuke, but they're worse than a rogue carton of SAMs in a lot of cirumstances. Giving this power away for free to allies is surely nothing the authors of Street Magic intended.

Inhabiting allies can astrally project! They have the Magician quality!

i've already said that i understand!

but i am tired of arguing with my players, because the book is written in a way that leaves space for interpretation.

Except that you're GM. Give a decent reason for your ruling then move on. Don't take any crap. The book is not law, the rules are suggestions.

How does it leave room for interpretation? Invoking is an ability that may grant addiitonal powers to your spirits, it';s not something the spirits come with. If you count powers that are given to spirits by other effects used by other characters, then every spirit has access to every power - even Twist Fate, the Earthdawn power that only Great Dragons have.

See, Lofwyr could receive a Power Pact from a free great form Guardian Spirit and gain Endowment, allowing him to grant his powers to other critters. Then he could decide to give Twist Fate to your Fire Elemental, and then a spirit you conjured would have Twist Fate available. Does that mean that you can put Twist Fate on an Ally Spirit? Of course not!

Since there's a limitation at all, we have to cut it off at the point where the spirits have the powers when summoned. If we include powers that they may gain after other charcaters have performed mighty rituals of power to give them additional powers then there are no limits at all! It really is that stark. Either you can interpret it as not allowing Storm or you can interpret it as allowing Twist Fate - there is no middle ground, and the intended reading is obvious.

-Frank

With great form powers, yes. With Possession, it's not so clear. I can see the potential abuses, however, thematically it seems more appropriate for a voodoo mage to summon an ally with possession. I would like a solution where you can summon a non-abusive possessing ally.

For those borderline morality Hougans, the ally can be summoned into a corpse with inhabitation, but what about your standard fair hougans or hedge witches?

Put it in a living enemy.