Oh fuck no. Peter don't do that please.

-Frank

Can it pretty please fix the moving ward thing, too?

I'd like to hear your argument, Frank.

Care to clarify what still needs fixing with the "moving ward thing" following the last errata and FAQ?

OK, the possession traditions were written and playtested with no caps. I know: I wrote and playtested them.

The primary reason that possession traditions have uncapped physical attributes is that materialization spirits have uncapped attributes. Spirits are very strong in 4th edition shadowrun, and possession traditions are supposed to be a match for the ones in the basic book. The most combat effective spirit you can summon for a materialization tradition is the Air Elemental. It is really good. It flies around super fast, it has an Agility of F+3 and a Reaction of F+4. And it has Elemental Attack, and that's as good as it gets.

Why is that as good as it gets? Because Spirits roll a crap tonne of attack dice and have huge defense pools, but are otherwise fairly offensively anemic. Even Elemental Attack takes a Complex Action to use and is thus substantively inferior to a Heavy Pistol with armor piercing rounds. A spirit is very hard to hit, but a high-endcharacter should have no problem blowing one away in a turn if she actually connects. A called shot from even a side-arm does a base 9P with an AP of -5, meaning that a hit of any sort bypasses the "immunity" of a Force 7 spirit, allowing the Force 7 spirit to roll ~16 dice to soak 10 or more boxes of damage - throw in a second shot and you've got a dead spirit. On the flip side, our Force 7 spirit throws deadly lightning bolts that do a base 7P at -1/2AP. That has got to hurt, a good hit is going a to do a pile of boxes to the victim - but there's no second shot so it's actually weak sauce as an attack. But of course, if he enemy doesn't hit, then your spirit doesn't take any damage at all. The Force 7 Air Spirit has a ranged defense of 11 dice, 18 dice on full defennse.

---

A street samurai gets 4 Initiative passes. A spirit only gets 2. A Street Sam really will run right over a Force 8 or 9 Spirit. She can match the spirit with a full defense action for each of the Spirit's attacks, and gets two more attacks besides. Quite appropriately, the street sam will win. But it's kind of scary. It's kind of scary because the spirit has crazy huge attributes. The spirit has a higher initiative and gets to act first. The spirit rolls more dice on the attack roll than the sammy does and has a bigger base defense pool. These are the things that the spirit uses to keep playing the same game against an advanced street sam who has Synaptic Booster 3, a smartlink, and a Synthacardium.

It's entirely appropriate of course that the spirit loses. The magician is out there doing other awesome stuff and the sammy isn't. But the standard really is that the high force air elemental gives the samurai a run for the money before being disrupted.

---

But back to the possession tradition. It is placed inside a world that already has this as a balance point. Only now you're talking about an advanced magician who channels a spirit into himself - in short a magician who doesn't have a character separate from the spirit. One would hope that the fight between the samurai and the possessed magician would be a little closer, right? And indeed it is - the spirit has higher attributes, starting with the magician's Reaction instead of 4.

But what Peter just said is that he's going back and capping the possession spirit's reaction at 9, and doing nothing to the Air Elemental. Suddenly the Force 8 or even Force 6 Air Elemental has a lower reaction, he's actually easier to hit than the Air Elemental is. He goes later in the round, he rolls less attack dice. He is, in short, in all ways inferior. And to add insult to injury, the possession magician is still removing himself from combat and spending a metamagic technique for the pleasure of having a spirit that is less mobile and has worse stats.

---

It looks to me like Peter and Rob haven't played high-end possession spirits at all, and are making a sweeping change that will have little effect on starting characters and totally invalidate houngans with a substantial amount of experience.

It would be one thing if this was part of an overall plan to make summoning drain much less deadly and spirits in general less overtly terrifying at the high end. But it's not. It's just a statement that possession magicians can't even play the game once things have advanced to the point where Forces of 7-9 become standard.

-Frank

Which is pretty bad, considering that orks and trolls, from a long term min-maxing perspective, are already pretty favored. The whole BP to KP ratio assures that much. I agree when you say there's no reason to aggravate that situation any further. It's already bad enough that I'm always sorely tempted to start out all my possession tradition orks with a single point of charisma since I can just bump it up to two after a couple of milkruns. Lord knows possession trads generally don't run with a boatload of bound spirits anyway.

Does that matter. Throw down a plasteel homonculi and it's way more powerful than any spirit. It does make sense that the metahuman maxes should be kept for a possesing spirit. Otherwise a guy could make a cybered up troll mage with a str of 15 and be possessed up to a str of 25 and he would do insane damage with unarmed. He could also throw people around like they were little rocks.

So glad you asked.

The Question: Can a ward be placed inside a moving van?

The Official Answer: "A physical anchor cannot move more than a few centimeters relative to the ward enclosure when the ward was created." That's the key phrase and it can be pretty tricky. For instance, if you create a domed ward outdoors using a rock as the physical anchor, and then someone kicks that rock a few feet, the ward will collapse. It has moved more than few centimeters from its position relative to the domed ward at creation. But, if you ward a shipping container using the walls of that shipping container as the physical anchor, and the shipping container is shipped across the Pacific Ocean, the ward does not collapse. The entire warded enclosure is moving, so in the relationship between the ward and physical anchor, it hasn't moved at all from its relationship at the ward's creation.

As an aside, this is also why the spin of the Earth doesn't cause the domed ward around the rock to collapse. Because the entire enclosure is moving with the rotation of the Earth. Until someone kicks that rock, the relationship between the ward and stone remain the same.

My Response: This bugs me to no end. Here we describe a rock that moves and loses its ward, and a box that moves and doesn't. So why didn't the dome on the rock move when the rock did? It's not anchored to the ground, it's anchored to the rock. So if the ward moves with the box, it should also move with the rock, ne? I mean, if a ward can move at all, then why does its shape in relation to its anchor matter?

I'm fairly certain that wards were meant to be immobile. This way, nobody ever has to deal with hot ward-on-ward action. You can't set up a ward within a ward, and you can't overlap wards, but a moving ward can create all of the ugly complications that wards-within-wards and overlapping wards would create. What happens when a ward tries to move through a ward? There are no rules for this, I suspect because it wouldn't happen with immobile wards that cannot be created within one another.

The question here is frame of reference. The ward can't move, ergo if the anchor is moved, the ward collapses. But what is the frame of reference when it comes to moving? Obviously, the rock and the box from the FAQ's example are being treated from different frames of reference: the rock moves with respect to the earth, and therefore the ward collapses, but the box also moves with respect to the earth, and the ward does not collapse.

According to the FAQ, the frame of reference seems to be the largest physical object that the ward (which is in astral space, mind you) encompasses. I dislike this precedent, because my magician could just spend a few days putting wards around my buddy's Samurai's bullets, and then he can go about disrupting spirits and astrally projecting magicians to his heart's content, whether they are materialized or not.

If all wards act with the same frame of reference, what could it be? An inertial frame of reference is silly, since the world is traveling far too fast for a ward to ever be stationary. I think the most obviously appropriate frame of reference is the Earth herself, the Gaiasphere that generates the astral field in the first place.

Of course, it would be a lot easier to point out that while the FAQ's quote from page 123 of Street Magic is to the point, it fails to also point out other passages from that page, including "A ward must also extend at least one meter in every direction from the physical anchor that it is attached to [sic]" (therefore it is impossible to anchor a ward to the walls of a shipping container) and "Wards are not portable astral objects" (therefore wards do not move through astral space). This rather neatly smooshes the FAQ's argument.

This is not even mentioning magical lodges, which are a more permanent form of mana barrier and may also not be moved (SR p. 168).

So what? Seriously, you're talking about a guy with a Force 10 Spirit. He does 12P unarmed damage. What's the problem?

For perspectively, let's assume that the character put the same average drain (DV 7 for summoning a Force 10 spirit) into casting a Clout spell - that would be a Force 15 spell, which in turn would inflict a base of 15 stun at range instead of only a 12 stun in melee.

Getting really high strength in Shadowrun is simply unimpressive. Not just because the rules for lifting things are non-funcitonal (seriously, the lifting maximums are linear so work horses and work elephants are about 1/3 of the strength that they measurably have in the real world). It's that Shadowrun has cranes, bulldozers, motorcycles, and forklifts. Anything you can do with super strength you can just do with normal equipment.

In the classic critter lists, an elephant was listed as having a srength of 40, and a steam shovel can demonstrably pick up an elephant while that elephant is carrying its own limit of materials. Having a strength of 25 isn't even a big deal. It puts you off the human scale, but it doesn't put you off the scale of things that people in Ayuthaya experience every day. There are real things in human society that are still stronger, faster, and more super than you are.

So honestly, is that the best you can come up with? If a powerful cybernetically augmented troll magician lord conjures a powerful spirit they can pull a John Henry and lose to the Steam Drill anyway?

Is that supposed to be a problem? Because from here it looks like the big problem is that someone just invested probably hundreds of thousands of and called upon the services of a world strattling spirit and achieved such powrs of strength that a starting rigger could beat by walking onto a construction site and triangle buttoning anything there.

-Frank

Behold the power of the triangle button!

Oh, and the troll would have an unarmed DV of 13, not 12. Str/2 round up. Not that it changes a damn thing about your point, but this is probably the only chance I'll ever have to correct you on anything.

The exception is when the summoning Magician has the Spirit use Possession on his own body. He then has 'captain's chair' control. With the Channeling metamagic, the Magician has direct control.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.

A ward's frame of reference is not the "largest physical object" that the ward can encompass, but rather its relation with its anchor when the ward is raised (note the anchor must be inside the ward).

A ward must maintain its relative frame of reference with regards to its anchor (though that anchor may move around as long as the ward retains its shape). For instance: I want to ward a room. I tell the gamemaster that I want the ward to conform to the walls of the room (although I could tell him I want the ward to conform to a 5m³ of empty air in the middle of the room). I use the aforementioned rock/a magic circle/a series of candles in the center of the ward as the anchor. Once the ward is created, that relative frame of reference (with regards to the anchor) cannot be changed without disrupting the ward. Hence if the rock/circle/candles are kicked away, the ward is disrupted because the walls remain where they were and the anchor moves.

Were the walls able to move and maintain the same frame of reference with the moving rock/circle/candle (such as in the case of a container) then the ward would not collapse (and yes, this works much the same when warding in the open air though there the ground poses a problem, the anchor must be a meter off the ground if you stick to the rules literally). Hence you can ward a container or a car as long as the anchor remains static with regards to the ward. If the anchor moves the limits of the ward must be able to move with it.

The thing to grasp is that a ward's frame of reference is internal. What matters is that it remains at the same relative distance it was originally raised at with regards to its physical anchor (which must be inside it - see your quote below).

All this means is that a ward has a minimum volume and that regardless of its form and shape, its physical anchor must lie at least 1m inside its perimeter in every direction.

So, technically, no warding bullets (although bullets may be used as anchors, though since you can't nest wards you can only really have a warded bullet/anchor on you at any given time).

All this means is that a ward cannot be picked up and moved.

I submit that the fact that magical lodges are a more permanent form of mana barrier is why they can't be moved.

Your reservations were raised and debated when this issue was discussed. It was decided that capping Possession enhancements during normal possession and Channeling is balanced at both the low end and high end.

After reviewing the issue at length it was decided that—besides the ever present possibility of using Possession offensively—a Channeling magician's ability to call on his magical skills and the Possessing spirit's powers at will, the raising of relevant Attributes to their augmented maximums, and Immunity to Normal Weapons represent enough of a bonus in terms of game balance for the cost of Channeling... and consequently there was no need to break the augmented maximum caps.

Should the magician want more physical ooomph, he can always call up a mighty loa of Ogoun (force 12 possession guardian spirit) and have it take over a troll zombie or security guard.

Force 12? Why? The most a Troll can get is a 15 in Body and Strength, and you'll hit that with a Force 10 even if we assume the most puny Troll around (Body 5, Strength 5). You'll cap our Agility with a Force 6, and Reaction with a Force 8 (once again assuming the physical minimums for a Troll).

So let's compare:

Force 12 Possession Guardian Spirit (in a Troll's body)
B 15, A 7, R 9, S 15

Force 12 Materialized Guardian Spirit
B 13, A 14, R 15, S 14

Overall, the Materialized Spirit is far superior. Also remember than the as the Force goes up, the Materialized Spirit just keeps getting better while the Possession Spirit has already capped out (in fact, it capped out at Force 10).

No, the cap is for all possessed living vessels - including those that use Channeling. Frank and HappyDaze are expressing their concerns regarding how this impacts possession magicians Channeling high-force spirits but the caps apply to all possession and inhabitation vessels.

I chose Force 12 because that's the max force a beginning magician can actually call - to underscore that a possession magician could call up a Force 12 spirit just as easily (or not) as a non-possession magician.

At the high end, statistically, the materializing spirit will be better in terms of Attributes, no question. At the low-end it really all depends on choice of vessels and the spirit being called.

Also consider that (a) if the possession spirit is remains on the astral it is equally powerful (and could still tackle its dual natured materializing counterparts on equal terms), (b) if it should jump to the physical at this power level it will be able to take over an opponent almost automatically, ( c) it still uses all its powers at its normal Magic/Force, and (d) it retains Immunity to Normal Weapons based on Force.

As always, don't like the ruling, feel free to change it. I am simply explaining the reasoning behind it.

Yes. This is why the limits being slapped on a possession spirit should be the same asthe limits on a materialization spirit. Which are none, btw.

That's terrible. Seriously, that's really really bad. I can only conclude that you haven't played high end games, because if you had it would be profoundly difficult for you to be flippant about saying that a materializing spirit will be better in terms of attributes. That's what high end spirits are. They have big attributes, that's the whole point, the beginning and end of everything cool that they do.

When you summon a spirit into yourself you are reducing the total amount of beating that your side can take andreducing the amount of offensive potential your side has relative to just summoning a materialization spirit. Remember that destroying a spirit and a magician who are in two places takes at least one more attack than taking out both at once. Remember also that one mage casting spells while a spirit throws fire bolts is more attacks than having a magician merged with a spirit throw spells or firebolts.

In exchange for reducing your side's overall defensive and offensive potential, you're looking at increasing your personal offensive and defensive potential. And that's a good deal if you happen to be in a situation where enemies are throwing area attacks, or where opponents are so dangerously well defended that a lesser attack wouldn't accomplish much.

But if you're talking about reducing your overall defensive and offensive potential in order to merge yourself with a spirit and become a combined entity that actually is both an easier kill and a worse shot than a materializing spirit would be all on its own, that's just a shit deal.

A big conjurer isn't a Mage with a spirit, he's a platform for releasing SPIRITS. If those spirits are weaker, then he's weaker. It doesn't matter if he has immunity to normal weapons or not, because that's not actually all that great of a power.

1. I don't like the ruling. It's mathematically unsound.
2. I strongly encourage everyone to not use the ruling.
3. I strongly encourage you and Rob to rethink this policy because it is very unwise.

-Frank

Actually, Magic is a capped stat, Peter is merely saying that the rule he is writing will cause Physical stats to be capped, but not Mental or Special attributes. It's just a piece of dangerous and turbulent inconsistency. The possession spirits get hosed when using physical abilities, but are completely unaffected whn using purely magical abiltiies (save that their Initiative will be much lower).

As you've doubtless noticed, the game wrks slightly better if you open up all the caps for everyone. And based on the very real chance that even Lofwyr has of simply falling over dead if he tries to bind a Force 12 spirit, it can be said that Spirits already effectively have caps.

However, slapping some spirits with more stringent caps than others is a really obviously bad idea.

-Frank

I disagree the PERFECT place for it is the...

Ohh crap who said anything about a Vampire, Drake, Hell while a better chance of resisting even an enemy mage.

I see it as very useful for that one very high force spirit kept for an emergency.

Sure you may very well on the fly summon and channel Tim the tank, to keep yourself alive (as mentioned), but you have that one service force 12 bound spirit for the Ohh crap.

As mentioned tell him to posses (the biggest threat you have) and you have a low risk (unless somebody goes astral can stop the spirit and tangling with a force 12 spirit on the astral is painful) way that if going to take out MOST opponents... AND give you a very significant extra punch.


You may not intend possesion of enemies but from my printing of street magic I sure cant see anything that stops it, or even implies that this is the case (since there is an opposed roll), and IT is the major advantage of possesion versus materlization.

Weaken enemy AND Strengthen your team....

Nowhere. We were just having a discussion about the tactical utility of using possession on your enemies, so it would be pretty weird if I was also claiming that you couldn't use possession on your enemies.

Uh... sure. I'll just go down to the store and bind a Force 12 Spirit. OH WAIT! If I do that I'll fucking die! Do you know what happens when you bind a Force 12 spirit?

• It rolls double its force (24 dice), getting about 1/3 that number in hits.
• You suffer double that number of hits in Drain.
• That Drain is Physical.
• If you pass out, your spirit tries to kill you, which it is very likely to do considering that it is Force 12 and you're unconscious.

So on average, binding a Force 12 spirit involves resisting 16 Physical damage that can't be magically healed. If you're going to use an example, you should use real numbers.

-Frank

I agree, but I think your argument begs the question. Please help clarify a few things.

Assume a ward anchored to a rock in a cargo container; the ward is in the same size, shape, and position as the container.

If I go inside and move the rock, the ward collapses, right?

If a crane moves the rock by lifting the cargo container, the ward does not collapse, but rather moves, right?

If this last is correct, how is this not moving the ward? What forces are at work that allow the ward to move? Why does the ward collapse when I change its position relative to the warded area, but not the crane? Is the cargo container somehow imparted some magical properties because it happens to occupy a space that corresponds to the warded area, even though it is not the anchor?

Would the ward collapse if the walls are torn down but the anchor left undisturbed? If not, why is the position of the walls important if the entire room were moved? If so, would a person or large object entering or leaving the warded area cause it to collapse because the relative area within the warded area has changed?

If the anchor is moved, what is keeping the ward from being able to move with it? Sure, the ground is an astral presence, but what if my rock was in a skyscraper? Are the physical walls somehow affecting the astral construct of the ward without being anchors themselves? It seems to me that the rules are fairly explicit that the anchor is what is important to a ward, and not what it envelops.

So I can actually kick an anchor placed on top of a building, and as long as the ward moved with the rock, it would not collapse? If not the anchor, what keeps a ward in place when it is in a room, the walls?

Except that the FAQ and your explanation seem to say that wards can be picked up and moved, albeit only when their shape happens to coincide with some physical object.

I'd argue that as a more permanent form of mana barrier, they'd be more robust, but it'd be academic.

Consiering the 'exception' is possesing the conjurer (or possesing the conjurer who has channelling), it certainly seems that posseing others are allowed.



The only possible thing that might limit 'just anybody' would be:

However, my reading implies these count as a 'prepared' vessel for inhabitiation (and or +6 dice for possesion test).

Since possesion is specifically stated as not needing a prepared vessel, then the question comes what other vessels would be allowed.

Damn near anything. In addition to living creatures, I've seen weapons, armor, vehicles, streetsigns, rocks, and dead bodies (do these need to be prepared as Zombies?) all targeted by Possession.

What doesn't seem to be clear is how homonculi (such as a Wicker Man) are ruled. Are these an exception to normal objects since they can move while Possessed? Are they built for a maximum Force or a specific Force - If a Wicker Man is built for Force 6 can it only be used by a Force 6 Spirit or by any Spirit of Force 6 or less?

The wicker man, Plasteel Homucilus, Stone homuculus are all homculi.

The rules also state what 'force' can inhabit.

For you wickerman in example.

You have:

To 'craft' the base form you need to do:

So you would prepare a wicker man at force X and anything up to force X could inhabit / posses it.

You do also have these requirements:

The enchanting test is already mentioned, but you will also need X amount of radicals (depending on the maximum force you want to be able to use the vessel).

Also this might factor in:

So force 5 or above you going to need a few more radicals do to mass.


Wicker Men or other homuculi are covered pretty well.


What is not really covered it what can be possed WITHOUT being a prepared / enchanted vessel.

While inhabitation requires it, Possesion does not, but no clear guideline on possesion non-prepared vessels are given.

The problem is that possession spirits aren't limited to just possessing the mage. In the early game it is a good investment to get yourself possessed, later you have all the golems that are uber powerful. You can also have your high force spirits posses that vehicle that unnamed rigger is jumped into and take over all the physical controls.

Your suggestion of allowing the max be exceeded by initiate grade would be a good rule. You could also allow it for initiates with the channeling power even if the spirit wasn't theirs.

Yeah it is truly awesome. You could bind a bunch of force 4 spirits and have your entire team possessed to buff all there stats up by 4. Much better than learning spells and sustaining all of them to do the same thing.

You could also have your spirits posses a street gang and have some heavy back up if you really needed to.

Hit check point, bunker, what ever you want.

Now we have to get through and speed is of essence not subtlety.


Summon spirit

Task: Remote service - Go attack and kill people in that bunker / guard house / etc.


Eitehr can do it but:

!) Materlization spirit: Materlizes and starts fighting.

2) Possesion spirit picks a person at random to posses (only real way it could interact with the people in th building to accomplish task). Spirit has already 'defeated' one of the guards.

The guards may be hesitant to shoot their buddy, automated system may not even target the guy with friendly RFID tags, etc.


Even if the spirit is killed the instant it posses the target, unless it is banished, the 'vessel' is also dead/stunned and out of action.

Possesion spirit garunteed to take one person out, and a VERY solid condusion tactic. (especially since it is much harder to notice a possesion spirit in a vessel then a materlizaed spirit, you will get confusion as to whats going on.

A glowing pillar of flame and people are ok, Who sent the fire element.

Bob gets twitchy looking in his eyes, and starts shooting people, maybe hes just had one too many BTLs on his off hours.


Possesing an enemy you can not lose. Materlizing a spirit and you may get nothing out of it.