OK, say I've summoned a big fat possession spirit and allowed it to possess me. I then get double tapped in the head with Stick'n'Shock and knocked out. Is the spirit disrupted?

Street Magic p94 is a bit ambiguous on the subject, on the one hand it could be read as saying that to disrupt a possession spirit that is in possession of a vessel using physical damage one can't get away with just filling it's condition monitor, one must do it enough physical damage overflow to kill/destroy the vessel.

On the other hand it might also be saying that a spirit in possession of a vessel cannot be disrupted by filling it's Stun condition monitor.

I'm confused, presumably an unconscious spirit is unable to maintain the possession power and is forced back into the astral where it's full stun condition monitor causes it to be disrupted.

Or am I missing something?

You completely forgot (I assume) to take the resistance to normal weapons into account. Remember that the spirit has Force * 2 Hardened Armor against all non magical damage. Also remember that the spirit does not have a nervous system and so stick-n-shock will not affect it, even though it will affect the vessel if it could bypass the spirits armor.

OK, forget the S'n'S. The point is, should an attack of some description render my possessed magician unconscious from stun, what happens to the spirit?

The spirit and the vessel have separate stun tracks. Knocking out the vessel does nothing to the spirit. It just means that the vessel will no longer be aware of the spirit's actions. You must fill the spirit's stun track to disrupt it.

Stun damage against the vessel also damages the possessing spirit, I believe.

Second this, and to clarify:

1. The condition of the vessel means nothing to the Spirit after it has made the possession test.
2. When they are together, the vessel gains Hardened Armor equal to Possessing spirit's Force *2, as well as boost equal to Force to all Physical Attributes.
3. The spirit's damage track while in a vessel is the vessel's (with the spirit's augmentations)
4. Any damage against the vessel while the spirit is possessing it go towards the both the Spirit's damage track and the Vessel's when they separate.
5. This can really suck balls for the possessed if the spirit leaves them with more Physical damage than their un-spirit-augmented body can overflow.

Details on Possession sidebar p.102-103, Street Magic. Details on the Possession test p.101, Street Magic

I pretty much stipulated that in the first post, I thought. Except perhaps that first point, unless your talking about Stun.

The question is: Does a Spirit possessing a vessel that gets knocked unconscious from stun also get disrupted?

Bearing in mind SM p94 Disruption, para. 1.

Um.

The first sentence is right. Pretty sure the rest is all wrong.

Physical damage to 'possessed entity' accrues to both spirit and vessel, stun damage only affects the Spirit. The vessels mind has gone elsewhere..

The Damage section of the side-bar on SM p103 says that Physical damage is tracked as a single entity which presumably means stun is not. Of course it fails to mention stun at all anywhere in that paragraph, so is more than slightly ambiguous.

Welcome to SR4! Ambiguity is our specialty! Seriously though, I forget if spirits even have a stun track. Don't they have only one damage track? It's not like they have brains or anything. They also are not alive and so you are really just trying to destroy their will to be in this plane, aka disrupt them. That said, assuming stun damage is inflicted on the vessel, does it affect the spirit or the vessel only? The rules don't say.

I don't see any mention of them not having a stun track in SR4 and that paragraph about Disruption in SM specifically states that materialized or astral spirits are disrupted when either their physical or stun track is full.

Oh, must be confusing previous editions then.

er the only way i can think of to knock yourself out and not the spirit while being possessed is to cast loads of high draining spells through channeling until you collapse. In this (rather unrealistic) case the spirit will behave like any other summoned spirit. If you get knocked out by an outside force the spirit will take the damage as well und thus be disrupted as you said yourself.

I thought I made it pretty clear:



So if a vessel is possessed or inhabited and you hit it with stunbolts or stick'n'shocks until it passes out, it passes out with a spirit in it. If it later regains consciousness it will do so with a spirit still in it. This is done to prevent people from rescuing Queen Euphoria by tasering her until the spirit pops out; and also to prevent Possession summoners from suffering D&D style "Rage Death" by dying instantaneously when their wound boxes fill up (the departure of the spirit will usually cause them to retroactively have less total boxes).

Insect Inhabitation is incurable. And Possession mages don't have their condition monitors shrink when they drop. This part of the rules is working as intended.

-Frank

I understand what you're saying, Frank, but while the mage is out cold, with the spirit in his/her body, could the spirit keep acting in/with the body, assuming it could somehow still be conscious? Or is the point that the spirit goes out, too, and therefore this situation could never arise?

While attached to a vessel there is just a single entity with a single set of condition tracks. When the spirit drops, so too does the body because the entity being tracked is the spirit. It is entirely possible for a spirit/vessel joining to have so much damage on it that if the spirit leaves the body will be dead (hell, spirits can possess bodies which are already dead). It is even possible (in the case of a damaged spirit possessing a vessel) for a spirit to be disrupted with sufficient damage to kill it outright and have the original vessel then take over with some boxes still to go. But you aren't ever in a situation where you have to worry about the body being in a dying state while the spirit is not - you don't even keep track of the two as separate entities until they separate.

When the spirit takes over, the combined entity is the spirit. It has however much damage the spirit had, and nothing else. When the spirit and the vessel go their separate ways, the spirit takes its current damage count with it, and the vessel has however much damage it happened to have before being possessed plus whatever the spirit picked up while in its body.

Note that you can't use a spell to heal damage that a body sustained before being possessed while the vessel is possessed. The fact that the vessel had bullet holes in it is of no more relevance to the possessing spirit than the fact that a possessed rocking horse had wood screws in it or that a possessed corpse used to have several additional organs before some Egyptian dude prepared it in pickling fluid.



Spirits have always had a stun track in every edition of Shadowrun all the way back to the first publication in 1989. Every so often people rant about how they shouldn't have a stun track. This confuses me.

-Frank

Thank you Frank, that clears my original question up nicely.

Why is Docwagon not hiring Houngans left and right?

The second the bracelet triggers you send a big fat Loa to possess the 'customer' and the body can extract itself.

Banishing still removes the spirit right? Is that the only thing that can separate the spirit aside from death of the spirit+vessel?

Would you like to be possessed by a spirit? Especially after the shedim are running wild that might be a less comforting thought.

Plus you would have to be previously "prepared" making it a risk for enemy spirits and free spirit possessions/uhhh that other form.

If you force it through a sufficiently large barrier it will be disrupted.

I wondered if perhaps another possession spirit could oust it from the vessel?

A vessel only needs to be 'prepared' for Inhabitation. A possession spirit gets a huge bonus in the possession check if the vessel has been 'prepared' but it isn't necessary.

Thanks, Frank, that has uber clear! Helps a lot.

This brings to my mind a corollary question to the original post.

If a spirit /vessel duo are stunned to unconsciousness, how does the spirit resist an ensuing banishment?

a) Does it not resist?

b) Does it resist with some modifier?

c) does it resist as normal?

d) Does some other option happen?