One of my friends and I thought of a neat idea: Rigger Magician.

Pretty easy to do normally, just lose some magic for the control...But what if you did it another way?

Force 1 Guardian Spirit with Posession, bind it, have 8 or so, throw em into random drones, turn of the wireless, get lots of services, and have fun with an LMG rotodrone or 8. No hacking problems, no loss of magic, and if your getting chased by a tank, just pop one out and drive them off a cliff.

/me waits for the rules gurus to make this happen.

Sounds interesting

Wouldn't the spirits' skills override the autosofts? So, wouldn't you have really lousy dice pools?

I'm not sure possession spirits can control the electronics of a drone. I haven't been able to find an explicit statement that says this though, just bits and pieces like lists of mechanical devices they can control but electronics are conspicuously absent from the list. There's also one statement that says spirits can't use DNI cyberware. Personally I don't see the harm in letting spirits control electronics, but I suspect it's an artificial attempt to keep technomancers and mages separate.

Regular riggers would also not have the nifty Movement and Immunity power

No, spirits can't interface with electronics outside of Inhabitation or manual AR systems (if the spirit can physically see the display and manipulate the controls).

Which is why I'd think that a possessed drone would shoot at somebody with the spirit's gunnery skill, rather than the drone's autosoft. Which means using a F1 possession spirit doesn't help much. That said, you could certainly drop one into the LS chopper following you and fly it into a building (might be a good way to pick up a bane, though).

Ok, so does that mean they can't possess drones and use them, they can possess and use them just not fire, or they can and they can fire, but use their skill?

They can possess them and do anything mechanical with them. If it physically moves, they can move it. If it has switches, they can flip them.

If it involves sending or receiving electrical impulses of any sort (without some sort of physical interface, like a switch), they can't do it.

So, they can move the drone around. If the drone is armed with a gun that can be somehow triggered mechanically, they can fire it--but aiming will be with the spirit's own gunnery skill, not with the drone's autosoft.

Also, they cannot use the drone's sensors unless they have a video screen or something to watch (and even then, it could be argued that, say, a spirit possessing a car couldn't see a screen inside the car). Note that drones, unless custom-built for the purpose, would not provide this option.

Sidebar on pg. 102 of Street Magic:

"As a rule of thumb, spirits can control mechanical functions, and not those which require complex electronic, DNI, or wireless controls."

MY blind mage has a scooter that he Grid-Guides everywhere. If he is running from someone or needs to get somewhere fast he summons a spirit with movement and has it possess the scooter then just hangs on as it accelerates itself and blitzes around town.

Chris

Ah, a rule of thumb...That's hardly damning evidence Frank


Regardless, I think I'll do this for micro drones and F6 Spirits of Air from chargen that are F6, turn off the wireless and not have to worry about EW, set the video to 'record session' and just let it fly.

Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy. I'd say that you'd either have to be observing the action, or have to have time to give a detailed order in advance to the spirit. In addition, a roll might be required to determine if the spirit got out too soon (pilot is allowed a crash roll), or too late (poof).

just on a quirky side note, guardian spirits technically can't learn gunnery... it's considered a vehicle skill

(note: it *is* a very reasonable houserule, however).

also note that the spirit would not be able to learn the appropriate vehicle skill to drive (although i would still allow normal use with no tests) and would have to default on that too... no problem for just travelling around, but not so good for when they need to make a crash test. (heck, technically spirits can possess some vehicles that they are simply not capable of operating, although i would allow them to default on skills that technically can't be used trained in that particular case).

All the better for Task spirits, then.

On an even quirkier side note: Spirits can't fire guns electronically, only mechanically. So technically a spirit won't be using Gunnery, they will fire the weapons of a possessed drone with the Heavy Weapons skill.

-Frank

Since possessed spirits can move the mechanical part so things they take over.

Does that mean they can move the parts really fast? Like moving the pistons of the engine to move the car at it's usual speed? Or the props of VTOLS and Drones to make them fly?

Another things I am confused about.

If you have a spirit possess something that is completely electronically guided, like a t-bird that uses electronics to adjust the vectored thrust ports, would the spirit be able to override the maneuvering by not letting the ports adjust latitude?

Raverbane, something to keep in mind is that many of these things, like the T-Bird in your example do have manual controls that let you control the electronics.

As such, a possessing spirit can manipulate the manual / physical controls to make the electronics do whatever is required.

The caveat is there has to be a physical interface of some sort; the physical moving parts. Buttons, knobs, slide rails, throttle adjust, etc... those can all be manipulated by a possessing spirit. This is borne out by the fact that a spirit can possess a gun and make it shoot.

So have your spirit possess a 747. It can raise/lower landing gear, adjust the throttle, trim, attitude, etc. All because those things are controllable via a control panel with physical controls. Doesn't matter if the guts between the physical controls and the actual mechanisms are electronic. The control path is Spirit -> Physical Controls -> Electronics -> Item being controlled (or leave out the electronics if there aren't any in the picture).

The only restriction is it can't be Spirit -> Electronics -> Whatever. There has to be a physical mechanism between the spirit and everything else.

alternately, you could also use the guideline that has been posted for materialisation spirits... iirc, 10 to 60 litres per point of force.