In a living body, would a spirits init be reaction + init like a normal character? Or would it be whatever the init was normally for that spirit type? Thank you!

The description says that the flesh form retains the abilities of the host, natural and augmented, which I imagine includes the host's Initiative and Initiative Passes. The bus is still there, it's just somebody else driving.

Initiative is a calculated characteristic. A Fleshform spirit's Initiative is its Intuition plus its Reaction as normal. And yes, this can be a very large number.

-Frank

Frank, are you at all implying that the rules for Possession as far as a living vessel's Physical attributes are concerned also apply to spirits using Inhabitation? I ask in the interest of clarity for new players.

Yes. Street Magic, page 100, sidebar.

-Frank

Yeah, I read that. The bit that says, "A spirit which attains a good merge with its vessel becomes a near perfect flesh form. The combined entity retains all of the memories, abilities, and skills (both Active and Knowledge) of the host, and its appearance is virtually indistinguishable from that of the original vessel. A flesh form spirit is a dual natured creature (p. 287, SR4), has Immunity to Normal Weapons (p. 288, SR4), any of the vessel's natural and augmented abilities, and also gains the powers of Realistic Form (p. 102) and Aura Masking (p. 98)," right? I'm not seeing the part where the host's Physical attributes are enhanced by the spirit's Force. I see it under hybrid form, but not flesh form. Am I missing something?

If I remember correctly, the part under hybrid applies to flesh form as well. Well, the bonus's anyways. They didn't repeat to save space I think.

The reason I wanted to clarify about the Init with flesh form stuff is because of the vessel examples they give in SM. They did not add up like a normal characters would, nor does materialized spirits init either. So I had to ask to see if I was doing it wrong.

Also as a clarification, this means the flesh form spirit will have 1 init pass instead of the permanent two correct? And if it has the improved reflex spell(if it were a free spirit), it can attain 2 or higher if it makes the check?

Thanks for the input, as always, much appreciated!

Yes, Flesh Form is a continuation of Hybrid Form. This was more obvious back in previous editions and the initial draft when the flesh form was called a "good merge flesh form" and the hybrid form was called a "hybrid form flesh form." The new nomenclature is way easier to say, and was introduced at the last minute by editing. So the body of the text acts like the old clumsy legacy nomenclature was being used and only the differences between flesh forms and hybrids needs to be stated.

Sorry about that.

-Frank

As the rules are currently written, only the hybrid form gets the increases to Physical Attributes. Sounds like an excellent candidate for errata bait; somebody should suggest it to Synner.