I know you're joking, but for old time's sake: it doesn't work that way.

Look at that. A Great Dragon after all. Who would have thought.

Gosh, I never saw that coming.

*And* they're rude, Doc Chase. Hehe.

No, I'm not bitter.

Okay, well maybe a little.

And just to show that I am a rules-abiding munchkin..

SM did say "The body of a magician or mystic adept is considered a
prepared vessel for any spirit he conjures, no special preparation
needed."

However in this scenario, it is not the dragon who is conjuring the spirit for his own body. It is an outside party, namely my gang, who is attempting to conjure up a spirit for the dragon's body. Thus special preparation is needed.

SM also said, "Likewise, an astrally projecting character’s
empty body counts as an available vessel, whether it has been
specially prepared or not."

Yeah, that might work. Catching a dragon while he is astral projecting. However, the problem is, I want my ally spirits to inhabit the body with the dragon's body via the true form. That way, my ally spirit will be able to gain all the powers and abilities of the dragons then.

If you inhabit a dragon's body while he is astral projecting, it might be impossible for the spirit to fully gain the dragon's powers.

Now of course all of you might be wondering why I am crazy enough to want to inhabit a dragon's body..

Actually, I want to inhabit a minimum of 5 Great Dragons and another minimum of 100 normal Dragons. Can the munchkins see where I am going with this? LOL..

No i m not joking and it does work that way.

I'll bite - what kind of gang has 'a few hundred Force 20 ally spirits' or 'a few hundred mages burning Edge' and being able to inhabit the majority of dracoform species on the planet without getting found out / nailed by a THOR shot?

it is 5 Great Dragons and 100 normal Dragons.

1. Get the Travelocity garden gnome
2. take a mould of his hat
3. cast a Tungsten hat in the mould
4. get a real gnome
5. wrap his feet in copper wire
6. put tungsten hat on gnome
7. get a railgun

Can you see my plan for inhabiting a dragon?

Some triad gang / magical group whose group members have voluntarily magically bind themselves to the group via magical oaths and whose thoughts are constantly monitored by the head honcho's ally spirits (of which there are a few thousand)..

I suppose you could inhabit the vacant body until the dragon expires (because he was astral too long). ;D

That's not doing anything for the validity of the thread, though it makes the sanctimonious bullcrap I had to wade through earlier more ridiculous by comparison.

Realistically, there's just no way. One Great Dragon leveled Tehran, and the lot of them have rules in place so they can tussle without destroying the planet. The only folks I know of who would have the resources to try something this stupid would be Aztlan, but I don't think they'd catch 105 dracoforms in astral long enough to try this, especially if they started trying it on a couple of Amazonian ones first. Once the warning's out, S-K makes a motion in the Court, NeoNET backs it, anyone who has a dragon as a shareholder votes yea, and the world declares war on Aztlan.

Bovine intervention (seriously, for this I would paint the tungsten rods mottled black and white and install a subroutine that broadcast a moo every time the sat fired) levels major Aztechnology holdings and they get stuck in a pincer from the UCAS/CAS/NAN/Tir from the north, Amazonia from the south, and the assorted Corporate forces from wherever they want to roll in.

Congratulations, I suppose - you've created justification for wiping a AAA off the map.

So the head honcho goes adventuring every day for how many centuries to get the tens of thousands of karma needed to summon his ally spirits....oh wait, that is the topic of the other thread where everyone disagrees with you.

Level grinding in Africa. Asamundo won't wipe itself off the map, after all.

To get the tens and thousands of karma points, there are the drain karma and endowment powers.

It is not neccessary to capture all 5 Great Dragons and 100 normal dragons all at once.

First, you capture/inhabit one normal Dragon. Then another one. Then another one

Sooner or later, you would get 50 normal dragons inhabited by your ally spirits. Once that happens, even a great dragon will easily fally against 50 normal dragons.

That is how you build an empire. One dragon at a time.hehehe..

And oh, did I ever tell you, the head honcho is a draco.

Imagine a draco commanding an army of inhabited dragons.

What sweet irony and poetic justice. Makes for great story-telling, I assure you. A slave who commands an army of gods.

How did you get your ally spirit into his rating 12 staggered wards.
Passed the best physical security money can buy.
Passed the drakes.

Then how did you keep the Great Dragon unaware of what was happening long enough to get the ritual done.
Then how did you stop the Great Dragon from coming back to his body and eating your pathetic Ally spirit for breakfast.

Patty:

No.
No no no no no.

One more time: No.

The world does not work like that. The second you try to inhabit more than 1 GD you immediately get wiped off the face of the earth with a THOR shot. GDs are HORRIDLY WELL CONNECTED and know THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF ANCIENT MAGIC and have had basically since THE DAWN OF TIME to hone their skills. Some two-bit gang is not going to be able to summon force 20 spirits. Atzlan even is not going to be able to field an army of 100 mages with force 20 spirits, let alone "some triad gang". Your standard 400BP runner is a higher professional level than "Some triad gang." Nobody will have that much power save Immortal Elves and other dragons.

Even then, what's to stop Dunkie from using his whopping 12 CHA to summon 12 force 25 spirits of his own (Not to mention the legions of free spirits that probably owe him favors), and then invoking them? Nothing, that's what.

Munchkining in D&D and SR are completely different. D&D has so many dubious rules that work great separately but are easily broken, allowing for that sort of thing. In D&D, almost anything is possible, because it is that sort of world. A good portion of SR world is dependent on the fragile balance of power in the world, and anything that threatens that balance will very quickly find itself in a whole lot of hurt. Munchkining in SR should still be relatively plausible.

This is a bad topic.

Or even if you do, how do you keep him an all his ally spirits from telling all the other GD's in the world what you're up to, and prevent them from making you every imaginable kind of dead.

Haven't you been listening? The answer is, magic.

That, and a ton of rule-breaking.

I seem to recall that to stop Bloodzillas, spirits were capped at the overcasting rate, weren't they?

If so, wouldn't that mean you'd need grade 4 initiates who have spent the 180 karma to raise magic from 6 to 10, plus the 70 karma to initiate, plus the 8*Force ally spirit?

And I seem to remember some sort of cap on ally spirit force as well...

Well, when you're a toxic mage who's GM is letting him write up his own spirits' powers apparently, and apply them in ways not found in any book ( I mean, I missed the part where karma drain spirits can pass karma back to their mage, but w/e) I guess karma isn't much of an issue any more...

karma drain spirits do not pass karma to their mages

karma drain spirits pass their karma drain powers to their mages

that's where the difference lie

Please point out the book and page number on caps on ally spirits.. I am looking for such official limits myself...

where do I break the rules pray tell?

If D is a toxic mage, why not?

You mean aside from where we discussed last time? Like letting your character be a toxic mage with self-designed spirit powers?

But he isn't.

Unless someone else has their copies of the hymnal and SM on hand, you'll have to wait.

The limit is on Karma available, and no one has enough. The reverse Karma drain thing doesn't work they way he wants it to (as discussed in the other thread).

Do me a solid: Ally spirit advancement. What's the karma cost to bind, and what's it to advance?

Is it *8 across the board, or am I thinking of something else?

8 per force to build, 16 per force to advance.

What's the limits on building? I have a hard time believing that they can whip up a 20 force with a Magic of 6.

BTW
Why do we humor his obviously fanciful munchkin rantings?

I just don't recall karma drain being a power available to ally spirits of any tradition. I could be wrong, but I do remember looking and not seeing it.

Dude, I am bored. It is either this or I match invoices to containers for customs filing, and I already have to come in on Labor Day to, uh...labor.

I was with you until I saw this. Now I want to build a 400 BP character to kill your character in your own game (and I can). Capturing one normal dragon and having it inhabited is possible, albeit difficult, but surely you'd be found out after the second (if you survive the second), and definately before you have enough mojo to worry about a Great.

Although I don't like how so many people talk about how Greats are so powerful.. I mean they only have like 12 magic tops in the book. The best thing Shadowrun writers have done is not publish stats for the things they don't want killed - what doesn't have stats can't die, as D&D taught us. I can build a 400 BP character that can go toe to toe with a normal dragon, and arguably a Great as written in the books, but I'd not try it. It's much easier to find drakes and have them inhabited. A troll western drake is nearly the same size as a normal dragon, I'd imagine, or at least big enough for you to ride anyways.

This is true. What the person did was ascribe a GM-Fiat only power to standard Ally Spirits.

For the last time..

it is possible to play a toxic mage who is "grey" and not "entirely black"

and spirit design rules in SM allow you to design the type of toxic spirits which you want for your own toxic traditions

i will start a toxic mage thread in the near future

It's from the Toxic Mage thing where it's powers are "left to the individual gamemaster to adapt".


Of course, that would assume that Toxics are playable, and that the GM let him pick whatever powers he wants.

And I'm always bored. It's this or start drinking early^^

Wrong

I look forward to your contributions in my soon-to-appear toxic mage thread but not here please

Actually, the stats in the book are the minimums for a Great: so Masaru or Arleesh maybe. The established ones are much, much higher. I think Celedyr had his stats published once, and his magic was something like 25. That's not even considering the really big boys like Lofwyr or Ghostwalker.

I thought I already had a thread on "grey" toxics. Also, toxics are playable because there's a sample tradition for them in Street Magic, I think. And lastly, I don't think you can give Free Spirit special Powers to standard summonable spirits for a tradition. If you can, I will be making all my own traditions from this day forth.

Actually, it's clear that the Toxic traditions presented are not meant as playable characters, something that incensed one of the writers in fact. He wanted to make them available as player choices and make them somewhat balanced. But they aren't and they aren't.

Well, If you look at the Great Dragon stats from Earthdawn and do some extrapolations.

A Great Dragon should be sitting at something like:

somewhere between 24-36 magic (either a 12 or 18 regular magic score, and then another 12-18 initiate levels)
Sorcery skill of 12

Stats in the high teens, low 20's
Twist Fate Power
Adept powers, spells, blood magic rituals, contingency spells.
They have threading, which means they could have threaded their counter-spelling, or banishing. So that they're throwing around 40-50 dice for those pools.

Although if a player tried this in one of my games.. well he wouldn't even get this close, because he'd never in a million years have that many Ally Spirits doing weird inhabitation things.

Isn't this what the Invae tried to do? during the Universal Brotherhood Plot line?

Yes but, as D&D taught us, if you publish stats then you have a guide to kill it. Have you ever heard of anyone killing the Lady of Pain? You can't because her stats don't exist. In a campaign I was in, I killed Vecna in 1 round, and I even missed with one of my attacks. The reason I was able to do that is because he has stats. Also, if you have Dieties and Demigods, go look at Imhotep. You don't even have to be level 20 to kill that diety.

My point being, the Great dragon stats that we have makes them killable. The dragon stats that we have makes them killable. The great dragons who have names and no stats remain unkillable, because their attributes lay in the realm of imagination - they don't exist.

*cough* That was me, yesterday. It's hard to say no when the boss drags you downstairs and puts a beer in your hand so the floor can toast the accomplishments over the past quarter.

Agreed. This is more outside the realm of a player and more inside the realm of a metaplot for a new Insect Hive.

Also, a player could conceivably get something like this by doing an Inhabitation of one of the drakkan or whatevers, the other dracoforms, from Running Wild.

Ner - are the posted stats for the dracoform, or the Great Dragon's stats themselves? I remember Survival of the Fittest flat out said that if the runners were going to try to go toe to toe with a great, they were gibbed with no rolls and no mercy. When I looked at the stats for these yesterday, I got the sense that they were for the non-great dracoform variety.

Oh I hear your point loud and clear, and I agree. Just pointing out that most of them do have stats of "unknown" =)