What to do with an Ally Spirit?

Most people thinks that your average Ally Spirit is a new cool magical pet, it’s not, nor is it a tool. It is more of a friend who will kick your ass if you push it too far.

Remember, if you abuse someone and they get away they will get even.

That said, let’s see how we can design our new ally.

Choose Force
A force 3 is average and would take care of most mundane problems and would probably not raise too many eyebrows.

Choose form
This is where the versatility of an Ally Spirit can actually shine with materialization power. Pick as many forms as you can because they have a number of tactical advantages.

1. Nude human male
2. Nude human female
3. Invisible humanoid
4. Alien drone (Gigers Alien)
5. Sasquatch
6. Housecat
7. Dog
8. Rotodrone
9. Household Electronics (Commlink, toaster etc)

Ok, now we have several forms, what can they do then? Well, the human forms can offer distractions, wear armor, carry weapons and with time learn to use them and almost become an extension and lifeguard of the mage. The alien? Well, how would YOU feel if an alien suddenly popped up beside you inside your car during a high speed chase? The sasquatch? As the alien but how would YOU feel if a sasquatch popped into your car during a high speed chase and KISSED you?

Remember, only your imagination is your limitation. Besides, an ally spirit with Fx2+an armor jacket aint bad, give them a gun as well and you have something with fast initiative and high armor.

Choose powers
This all depends on your goal but most of the available powers are useful, with an ally using several forms then Realistic form is very useful since they also start with it for free.

Choose Skills
Well, they start with Dodge and Unarmed so a ranged weapon skill is not something to sneer about.

Well, come on, what other useful things have you discovered with ally spirits?

I can't even start thinking about it yet. I have to save up a bunch of karma first. A LOT of karma!

But... I was thinking about giving it the possession power and then having it possess my character. Just kidding, my gm would never allow it and it is just too game breaking for my taste but a fun idea for an npc bad guy!

gunsnammo

So the goal is twinking out the Ally spirit? Sure.

OK, let's consider the powers that Ally Spirits have that are really unique:

First of all, you can mix/match powers any way you want. That means that you can get power combinations that aren't normally possible, but it also means that you can make selections from the optional powers lists over and over again. Never buy powers, because for just 3 more Karma you can get a Force Point. And a Force Point comes with a power anyway - it's a no-brainer.

So there you are with a Force 5 spirit, you can give it 5 powers. Let's give it the Skill power of a Task Spirit five times. Ta-daa! You now have a quite presentable Hacker who has the entire Cracking group and Computer and Data Search. Not bad for 40 Karma, eh? Pop that up to Force 6 for a total of 48 Karma and it not only Hacks at Skill 6, it also has Guard which means that it can Guard itself and it never glitches. Give it Inhabitation and slap it into some poor guy who already had a bunch of cyberware and you can really go all out with the Hacking. Expensive, but impressive.

Alternately, what if we wanted to make a combat monster? Well, first and most obviously we're going to want to make our spirit based on Inhabitation, because that's where the juice comes from. Some paltry fools will try to get you to abduct a Troll or something because they are weak of will and don't know power gaming when they see it. Fuck that, we're going to make a Fllesh Form Inhabitation for our spirit into a Vampire Magician. Boo-yeah!

That's right, we're sending out an ally that "has the vessel's skills" - where the Vessel was a damned Vampire Magician. Also it's still an Inhabited Spirit, so it gets to add its Force (6) to the Vampire's Reaction (somewhere between 5 and , and then it can jack its Reaction up even higher by sacrificing Essence because it can also do that - so you're looking at an Ally that is rolling perhaps as many as 20 dice to Dodge bullets without even going on Full Defense. That's quality right there. And while you're at it, hand out some Guardian abilities - I'm fond of Guard, Magical Guard, and Exotic Melee Weapon - that's a character running around with 19+ dice with a Monowhip and she can't ever Glitch.

If you're willing to capture the BBEG from one adventure and implant your Ally in her, you can go into crazy town and run for public office.

-Frank

You designed the Voodoo tradition, didn't you? I get a pain in my heart every time I look at its spirit list.

I houseruled that possession traditions ally spirits have possession instead of manifestation, which redresses the odd balance of one tradition set having more options than others (because manifest tradition allies can't get possession but the reverse wasn't true). I figured that this was an oversight on the designers part.

Not that it's likely to come up any time soon.

Deliberate or error, appropriate allies in my game are limited to possession. I personally recommend this to anyone starting a new game or converting an old game where it's never come up or can be overlooked. Statring from scratch, consistency between the elements of the game system is more important than consistency with previous systems.

My 0.02¥

-K.

Am I late on the draw by noting that you can always twink out your ally spirit by making it an Ares Viper Sliver gun, and having sex with it?

It's pretty simple:

You have noticed that allies require a separate metamagic, haven't you? That metamagic can provide spirit abilities that basic spirits cannot? That allies are themselves not a basic spirit in the first place? And that the ally rules explicitly state that all allies can be given Materialization or Inhabitation? You can of course change this, but it would indeed require a certain simplicity to think there is a massive error in the ally description.

Are you familiar with the adage that the specific overrules the general? It requires a very strange sort of mind to think that the Ally rules, covering a unique kind of spirit not subject to normal rules, are subject to the normal rules in a way explicitly laid out as operating differently in the Ally description.

This is even sillier than the people who think you can give Quake or Storm powers to Allies. I'll admit that a literal reading of the rules would allow the addition of Possession as an optional/bonus power in addition to the Materialization/Inhabitation choice (although obviously not of much use in the latter instance), but anything else is at best willful blindness.

Every time I see one of these bizarre rule interpretations I expect to see them followed by a link to an explanation of how the Bush administration really blew up the Twin Towers. Of course, the nice thing about Shadowrun is that you can change reality to conform to your beliefs about how the universe should operate. Not recognizing that's what you're doing, however, is a bad prescription for life in general.

I must say my kindhearted and charitable concern for the wellbeing of others does get exhausting at times.

Hmmm. Hadn't spottted that. I think Rotbart wins on a technicality. And as it's a technicality that fits the fluff, I'm keeping it.

Good catch though, SlitheryD. I had forgotten to include Inhabitation in there. However, as this is a subtitution for Materialisation, I would guess it should also be a substitution for Possession. So if you're a Possession based tradition, I suppose your ally can have Inhabitation OR Possession.

After all, you couldn't have a Qabbalist initiate without a golem, eh?

EDIT: Just seen SD's reply. Not convinced. The rules on possession is clearly meant to apply across the board saying:

That's a fair point and you could read it that way. The Ally conjuration process does say follow the normal summoning and binding rules though. I guess you could go round in circles for as long as you like. But for me, either the rules say that possession traditions summon possessing allies, or else I houserule it that possession traditions summon possessing allies. As the designers reasonsing was simply that a voodoo magician from a previous edition might have a materialised ally spirit hanging around and they didn't want to break consistency, I don't much care.

Given the karma sink that Ally Spirits are I don't think it will be too game breaking. Though it may be the best use of the possession power, yet.

Any reason--beyond the sheer burden of running without improving your char while you bank a hundred karma--not to stock up on healing/drain resources and overcast for a high-force ally?

After all, as with any spirit, an ally has basically Fx2 dice at any skill that you give it, casts spells at F force with Fx2 dice as well, has F powers, and unlike spell/skill costs, initial F cost is half what later level-up costs are.

So, with the aforementioned hundred karma (if you can pull that off), you could get what, a F-12 Ally? No need for skills or spells yet, sink all the karma into F. Then, go to town with your new superhero, and sink the resulting karma into a few useful skills and spells (skipping ones for now whose effects can already more or lessbe accomplished by powers).

Heck, sink a few karma into driving, piloting, negotiation, and automatics, and see what you can do with 24 dice. Then, there's the little 24 hardened armor vs. natural. If that's not enough, another 24-32 karma up front (and greater drain risks) will get you F-15 or F-16, and be very, very hard to take down at all.

I'll end with a stupid question. While in general, I'd think leveling a single Ally would be a better investment of karma, is there any reason you couldn't build a small team of Allies?

I play spirits as the greater the force the greater the independence and individuality and the BBB suggests as much. If you've a Force 1-3 ally then it's a loyal servant. Get to 4-5 then it's a friend and comrade, but less so something that you can just give orders to. It's going to recognise the similarity of power and think of itself as an equal. At Force 6, it likely has a lot of its own things it wants to do. If its Force exceeds your magic rating, then I'd probably consider it to try and break free just because it thinks it's better than you.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the binding tests were editted in at the very end, after the Ally Spirit's abilities were determined. I'm still unhappy about that, but the long and the short of it is that even the person who did that never intended that to mean that Possession Traditions were to get possessing allies.

Really, it wasn't.

-Frank

Ah, so they're both 500 in recent printings? In the price list in the back? Or are you just confirming that the descriptive text says that?

well, all i have is the 1.3 PDF, and it says it in the table at the back and in the text in the awakened world section. i didn't check to see if there was any third location that gave a price, but i figure 2 same answers is good enough for me.

and just for the record on the earlier discussion as well, is possession even a power your spirits get? as far as i can tell, there are possession traditions, and materializing traditions, but there are no spirits that are explicitly possession or materialisation. would an ally spirit actually be able to learn a power that doesn't actually come from the spirits within the tradition, so much as the power comes from the tradition?

for example, air spirits are not possession spirits or materialization spirits. they are just spirits. when conjured by a magician of a materialization tradition, they materialize. when conjured by a magician of a possession tradition, they possess. but air spirits, in and of themselves, do not have possession or materialization, they have whichever power the tradition that conjures them calls for.

The wole idea about possession traditions is that they don't believe in their spirits materializing, and thus, they can't... why should there be an exception for Allies?
Allies that possess are not cruel - they are only fitting.

well the summoning circle was dirt cheap actually.

it was the summoning materials (1k times force squared, wasn't it?) and the summoning library (again, 1k times force squared) that were the killers as i recall.

which is rough when you may very well need to put resources as one of the lower three (5k, 25k, and 90k as i recall...)

plus you still need to meet your other basic resources. (plus there's more needed for other magic resources! spellcasting library, enchanting library, enchanting kit/shop/facility, etc, etc, etc)

add onto that the invoking metamagic (basically let shamans bind in 3rd, and allowed their spirits to leave their domains.... ie, the only advantages the mage had over the shaman)... yeah, it was kinda nuts.

Okay, so as I understand it the consensus here is that:

1) Despite what the designers intended, what is actually stated in the book says that Possession-tradition allies have the Possession power in place of the Materialization Power. This is mainly because the specific rules regarding Possession-tradition mages, stating that they always use Possession instead of Materialization, override the general rule for Ally summoning which give Ally spirits Materialization by default.
2) This breaks with all previous editions, as allies traditionally always got materialization regardless of tradition. This is okay though, as so many other integral details have changed from SR1-3 to SR4 with regards to magic that continuity is no longer an issue (spirit summoning, Object Resistance, the mage/shaman divide, etc).
3) The main objection that remains is that it's not fair to give Possession traditions this one chance at a Materializing ally? So, conversely, does it mean that Materializing traditions should be allowed to get a Possession-based ally?

Correct?

It's not really about 'fair' (Posession and Materialization are about balanced)... it's about what makes sense: The whole idea about possession traditions is that their spirits do not materialize.