QUOTE (Fortune @ May 10 2008, 07:51 AM)
Is there any actual way to force something like a Possession Spirit or Shedim to materialize, even though they cannot normally do that? Perhaps with some kind of Astral Shallows or the like?
Well, a Master Shedim can technically learn Materialization as a Free Spirit Power. Of course, this gets back to my own point from back then that it would be way easier and cooler to just have Shedim nominally fall into spirit categories so that such an obscure occurrence could actually have something cool happen as regards the spirit's physical stats instead of having it revert to plain vanilla.
I mean seriously, the reason that Regeneration has those special effects when it shows up as a Free Spirit Power is to make Master Shedim slot in easily if they happen to get Regeneration as a free spirit power. Shedim, master or no, did not need any special rules at all after we made the regular spirit chapter, because Peter and I hacked together all the Shedim effects into the normal rules. The entire special write up of Shedim in the Threats Chapter just makes things more confusing. Things would have been much clearer, and cooler, and there would have been room for nearly half a page more flavor text if the Shedim had just been listed as a "tradition" of free spirits who happen to hate you.
Because damnit, the Shedim really are supposed to come in different types. The kelp-looking ones (plant), the worm looking ones (beast), the ones that look like holes in space (guidance), the ones that look like balls of fire (fire), and the ones that look like jelly fish (water). The only really unique thing they do is Deathly Aura, which could have and should have been a free spirit power that they happened to have.
They are supposed to come in all kinds of different flavors and do all kinds of scary things. And interestingly, that got totally lost in the drive to make them "special." The fact that they have unique rules made the rules for all of them
the same. Had they been folded into the normal rules they would have been able to have the diversity that they were supposed to. I really think that Shedim, more even than Toxics and Insects, were horribly let down by being given unique spirit writeups in the book.
-Frank