Hey's what's the canon rulings for skill maximum ratings for NPC Free Spirits, PC Free Spirits and Ally Spirits?

I know that there are no maximum skill ratings for NPC Free Spirits. So I can get a force 5 Free Spirit with a ranged weapon 50 skill?

Cheers

Unless otherwise noted, Skills go no higher than 6/7 in SR4A, and 12/13 in SR5.
Spirits, on the other hand, tend to have skills equal to their Force. I believe that PC Free Spirits (SR4A, Obviously, since none exist for SR5 yet) must adhere to the Normal Limits for PC's.

Yes where are the canon rulings that say skills must not be higher than force? for NPC free spirits and ally spirits at least

Free Spirits Attributes all start at Force, PC free spirits have limitations of their Force rating (starts at 2 & can be raised like any other stat to a maximum of 6 before initiation), This Force Rating acts as their maximum limit for all attributes. Skills have a hard cap of 7 this cannot be bypassed by a spirit in anyway that I can see.

Rules for Free Spirits are in Runner's Companion(91), & Street Magic (107)

Ally Spirits receive certain skills at their force (maximum of 7, its not mentioned, but that's the cap of skills period)

Rules for Ally Spirits are in Street Magic(104)

There is no such skill cap for NPC free spirits. A spirit's skills are equal to its Force - if it is a Force 10 spirit then its skills are also 10. FSPCs have to follow the limit of 6(7) for skills, since all of their rules modify the basic chargen rules and are based on said rules.

Ally Spirits are technically NPC spirits. Their skills are equal to their Force.

Now, Dolanar, I'd like you to provide documentation as to why the skill cap is "7, peroid," if you don't mind. And please also look at dragons, great dragons, and a number of the spirits from Running Wild for examples of how there is no such rule.

It was a reasonable assumption as the rules say absolutely nothing one way or the other except a blanket statement. I'd expect some sort of comment saying Free Spirit PC's break the rules of all other PC's if they could go above that skill cap (mind you I didn't see anything about free spirits getting skills at all in the minor amount I looked at it). It was a simple mistake based on a lack of information, it happens *shrug* I at least provided the locations to find out the information for themselves.

Not the best example, but the free spirit "Buttercup" (Street Legends Supplemental) is a Force 16+ free spirit with several active skills above 7. However, the various skills it has do not exceed its Force.

I don't have that supplemental, I think.

Those skills are likely a result of Buttercup raising its Force after it went free and raising its other skills independently, which is essentially what I said about NPC free spirits kinda doing their own thing.

On a second review PC Free Spirits seem to buy skills as normal for any PC. Other Free Spirits appear to have the base spirit skills unless given Karma to spend on other skills. I did not reference any character boxes, simply referenced the direct Free Spirit information & I have had 0 experience with high level Spirits or dragons in my games so their skills never came up for me.

Thing is, Neraph, if an NPC can do it, is there any reason a PC shouldn't even have a chance to do the same? It should be difficult and costly, sure, but not impossible.

Buttercup is also a MarySue NPC who breaks many rules. (namely "Free spirits may *NEVER* learn or use any skills from the Conjuring skill group (being spirits themselves, they can never hold such sway over other spirits).")

Just like many other things in that book... quality control was rather lax and some of the freelancers went nuts demonstrating their ignorance of the rules.


Also Dolonar... the free spirit PC buys force... it doesn't set the max to buy others... that is almost the only attribute it buys because I quote... "Force sets the *MINIMUM* and maximum for all attributes. It also acts as the spirit's Magic attribute." The reason the spirit must by force to raise the other attributes is that raising force raises those attributes in the process by raising the minimum & the maximum simultaneously. After paying 250BP to be a free spirit you have no BP left to buy up attributes as well!

A dwarf has min strength 3 and max natural of 8. 3/8... A spirit of force 4 has 4/4... meaning it starts with 4 and can't go higher than 4. Also don't forget how badly background counts screw up spirits. When your orc takes a -2 to all his attributes and risks evaporating away permanently if reduced to 0 magic, then you have firmer ground to complain).

So by the time you've spent 250BP to be a free spirit... 30BP more for force 5, 30BP more for edge 5. You're left with only 90BP for skills, known spells, assets, contacts, etc.

alright let me explain things in a much easier manner

i wanna bound a free spirit force 5. however i want this free spirit to have ranged weapon skills of say 10 without raising its force at all cos it would be near impossible to bound a force 10 spirit.

as far as i am concerned there are NO canon rulings at all which say that a spirit cannot raise its skills above its force ratings with the exception of PC free spirits.

however the free spirit which I am bounding is considered to be a NPC free spirit which are thus run differently than PC free spirits..

You're looking at a collision between two rules.

The first is for basic chargen, which stats that skills cap at 6, 7 with a quality.

The second is that a spirit's skills are equal to it's force.

This is, in essence, a one-case contradiction, not a two case; that is to say, a spirit's skill caps at 6, or it's force, whichever is greater. Thus, a Force 3 Spirit could have a skill of 6, but a Force 8 spirit can have a skill of 8 but not HIGHER than 8. (The same applies to Sprites, incidently.) Of vital note is that there *is* a cap, and, as such, a force 5 Spirit couldn't trot around with Firearms 10 or what have you.

Not just basic chargen. It's in the Running the Shadows chapter, in Character Improvement, Improving Skills and Skills Groups, Improving Existing Skills: "Characters can only improve skills or skill groups to a maximum of 6, unless they already possess the Aptitude quality for a skill."

So you cannot create a player character with a skill above 6(7) and you cannot improve a skill above 6(7).

Grunts and critters (which spirits and dragons are) can get skill above 6(7) as long as they do neither, since their skill is set at an arbitrary level ex nihilo.

Funnily, prime runners NPC cannot if they are created and advanced as advised ("they should be built using the Build Point System" and "Gamemasters spend these Karma points the same way that players do for character advancement").

Game Balance comes to mind...

Indeed... If I remember correctly, our quintessential Immortal Elf (Harlequin) has no skill above a 7. He has stupid high levels of Magic and Initiation, but that is to be expected of an entity that has been around for 10,000 years or so.

Edit: Yep, finished checking, unless I missed something, he has no stats above the Racial Maximum for an Elf, and Skills are capped at 7. And his Ally Spirit has most skills at Force (12) and some at 1/2 Force (6). Most entertaining. Of course, his Weapon Focus is staggeringly powerful.

Under street magic, there are no skill maximums for NPC free spirits.

Also, there's no canon rulings which prevent a NPC free spirit from increasing its skill above its force, are there?

Bear in mind we are talking about NPC free spirits here. Not PCs.

the general rule seems to be no skill higher than force for an NPC spirit, they also only get certain skills unless you feed them karma to learn others. Correct me if I'm wrong guys, because, I can't find any info in the Free Spirit info about them getting any skills at all.

A free spirit would start out with the normal skills that a spirit of its type would have, which would all be equal to its Force. Page 107 lists how a free spirit can spend karma, and "It may raise or purchase additional skills" is on the list. This at least implies that a free spirit can raise skills higher than its Force, but with additional skills in the same sentence, it is still vague - the cap could still be Force, and the raising of skills could refer to raising one of the additional skills up to Force.

I would think skills would be fairly low on the list of things to improve for a free spirit, though. They can initiate and gain extra powers, or raise their Force, which raises all of their Attributes. I could see raising a few primary skills to keep up with their new Force, especially if they were low Force (and thus, with low skills) when they became free. But raising a skill higher than their Force would be comparatively rare - it's just not cost effective.

Especially since Free Spirits don't seem to generate Karma on their own (I could be wrong about this) but there is a paragraph just before about giving them Karma. PC Free Spirits might, but I dunno for certain.

PC free spirits can get the friendship pact, which lets them earn karma as a metahuman does, but it does have drawbacks, namely requiring one person per point of the spirit's Force - and the spirit loses a point of Force whenever a pact member dies. I assume NPC free spirits can get this pact too, although you need to get the RC to look it up. Actually, part of the text for that is interesting:


I never noticed that bit before, but it strongly implies that, unlike NPC free spirits, a PC free spirit's attributes don't automatically increase when its Force gets raised (meaning that the line "This attribute determine's a free spirit's natural minimums and maximums for all attributes" is merely incredibly poor wording).

That has always been a pet peeve of mine - when they have one set of rules for NPCs, and one for PCs.

it does make finding the correct info quite a puzzle

Well i am looking to build a low force, high-skilled spirit for purposes not revealed yet.

The answer, based on what we're seeing here, is no, you can't summon a spirit with double its force in skill ratings.

That's how I read it, much like any other PC, raising attributes costs individually. Just because your max has raised doesn't mean you get a freebie raise too. I don't mind different rules for atypical player char races compared to their NPC counterparts, largely because its made to make them playable and not unbalanced compared to the other PCs.

Simple answer it's a game have fun with it, if you are gamemastering do what you want as long as your group has fun. However don't look for rules ito back you up if you are doing something off the wall. Just go for it and say it's because i'm gamemaster. If you are not GM talk to them and see if they are ok with it.

Yes Voran... and when that utterly gimped PC spirit walks into a 3 point background count then what.


In case you didn't notice there's not even enough BP for him to get 4's across the board in stats and still have points left over for skills/resources/etc. Something that's trivial to do for almost any meta PC for a fraction of the cost (dwarf/orc/elf)... dwarf 25BP. Bod2, Str3, Wil2. 200BP brings all stats to 4. 30 more BP to raise magic/force to 4 as well. Ignoring edge... 255BP for the stats leaving 145 for the rest of the character.

250BP free spirit alone!... 180BP to raise all 9 attributes by 2 points(don't forget force). Edge is still at one.


This is nothing but another example of poor quality control and inadequate playtesting. Possibly even another case of multiple writers not being on the same page.

Actually try playing a free spirit character under your draconian interpretation and you'll realize pretty quick it's unplayable. A PC free spirit is pretty much inferior in almost all ways to most summoned spirits of the same force already... (the summoned free spirit comes with a large set of 'package' powers, and 1 or 2 optional ones on top... the PC spirit is hard pressed to get more than 3 or 4 total. The summoned spirit comes with automatic stat raises when materialized (example beast gains +7 extra physical stats when materialized). The PC is stuck with flat force.


Toss on the friendship pact... and the spirit has real problems... have 6 friends and Force 6... one dies (not something out of the ordinary for groups that don't play with kid gloves).. .there lose 30karma... and find a new friend since you'll need him before you raise stats again.

I love how every little thing that is "wrong" is suddenly this monumental "example of poor quality control and inadequate playtesting." That phrase is becoming ridiculously overused.

You'll find I use that phrase a lot... it's being diplomatic.

It's not a matter of right or wrong... it's a matter of competence and incompetence.

Most of the current crop of writers (without naming names) are enthusiastic but lack experience/competence. The product line suffered after the accounting issues.

I've done so at home and online with three FSPCs. The limitations as described do make the character 'interesting', but I have had no trouble pulling their weight with the rest of the team. Not 'unplayable' by any stretch of the imagination.


I did choose to lose the Friendship Pact after the first of three such PCs, mostly because I can't see how an essentially immortal being would want to tie its life force to the puny lifespan of metahumans.

There's many reasons why you won't be able to do this.

First of all, spirit NPC's can't have a skill rating higher than their Force. There are a couple of exceptions, but this isn't one of them.

Second, you don't get to design Free Spirits. They come with what the GM says they come with. So you can't decide that the spirit has anything at rating 10, unless you're the GM; and in that case, you can't bind anything since you're not a PC.

Third, the one of the only ways you could design this spirit would be if you created it as a PC, but if you did that, you'd have two characters. Which isn't usually permissible. You could see if a player without a character would do it, but then you run into the problem that free spirit PC's can't usually be Bound normally; and if they do, you can expect them to misinterpret every order they can.

Fourth, the other way you could design a spirit is if you did it as an Ally. Which is fine, except allies can't have skills above their Force either.