So, one of my players has a spirit bane for Shadow Spirits. I'm thinking I'm am thusly justified in tormenting him with something appropriate that latches onto him and makes his life miserable. However, if he gets less karma than the rest of the team, I think it'll tip my hand.

Perhaps I should start giving out variable karma ... in fact I sort of want to ... but historically I've always simply handed out the same amount of karma to everyone who makes the session. It never seemed completely fair to play favorites, but without doing so, I'm not sure how I can obfuscate the karma drained by the Shadow Spirit from one of the PCs.

Have any of you used Shadow Spirits successfully as banes? If so, any pointers with respect to their karma drain?

Thanks,
Dashifen

You could just not let him know he is getting less karma. Keep track of it yourself and when he wants to spend it if he has enough let him, if he doesn't... well thats when it gets interesting. Too avoid completely repulsing the player I'd allow him to regain most of his lost karma by successfully getting rid of the shadow spirit. Of course this should be of a difficulty that merits such a Karma reward.

Stupid parentheticals. Thanks, Jaid, I never noticed that. And I like that idea, too, Narse, but I'm not sure I'm organized enough to keep track of the karma. I'm an improvisational GM so I don't take a lot of notes either. I like the idea though, so maybe I'll have to adapt.

If it was me running the game, I would interpret the Spirit Bane as "spirits of this type want to kill him" rather than "spirits of this type want to eat him." That circumvents the karma issue entirely.

Death may be the final result, but I see Shadows as being more mischevious in their death dealing. If you can depress the guy until he commits suicide it's so much more fun than just slaughtering him out right

The crucial thing about Karma Drain is to make sure that the PC actually succumbs to the emotion. A dead giveaway of Karma Drain would be that the GM takes control of the PC away from the player, you have to be subtle enough to insert the emotion into what the PC or player would want to do anyway. The simplest counter to this would be to make the GM tip his hand by roleplaying a very cool and calm person, not given to emotional displays.