*passes out special brownies and puts on some Bob Marl...*
Whoops!
I mean

Here's a shot at a Free Spirit

Jeeves, named such by his former conjurer, takes on the appearance of a well-meaning butler.
Quiet and Servile in his previous employ, Jeeves does not start out as the most forceful character, but as he grows in power and capability, his appearance and attitude will change (trading in a Butler's uniform for a power-suit for example and slowly adopting a more Faustian approach to Spirit Pacts)
Jeeves actively seeks out people with whom to enter a Spirit Pact with when not on a Run, often picking seedier locals around the world to avoid conflicts at home. Although wary of the Matrix, he will try to convince a colleague to use it on his behalf to find more candidates to feed him delicious karma.

BP BreakDown


Or a more complete view

Eek
Forgot to include

"Critiques criticisms and mods welcome"

Jesus, no wonder no replies ^_^;

Your first Spirit Pact is free, as well as the friendship pact. Anything after that is paid for by taking the spirit pact power again =\

No no no...

"The first taste is free."

Ah, I thought that first spirit pact HAD to be the friendship pact

In that case

Realistic Form for 0.5PP for +5DP on Disguise Checks and 0.5PP for 2 Enhanced Senses (Thermographic Vision and Hearing)

I believe that this:


means that the PC gets one free spirit pact, and can choose either any of the ones from Street Magic, or the Friendship Pact. You know, because it says that you get one pact.

I read it different, but that doesnt mean either are wrong. The text seems to imply that ALL PC free spirits get the Friendship Pact power, and get 1 other pact as well.

If it indeed turns out not to be the case, I could see house-ruling in favor of the above for 2 reasons.
1.) Free Spirits require 250BP to start
2.) It isnt abusive to let PCs have one or more of the spirit pact powers anyway, since other PCs must take a positive quality to be part of such pacts.

A comma can be powerful, but it can't change things in other sentences. I'll admit that the sentence about which spirit pact may be chosen is a bit sloppy, but the other sentence about having only one free pact still applies.

Ok, so either your PC free spirit earns karma through running by taking a friendship pact allowing it to actually earn karma, or you screw yourself out of all that and take one of the other pacts for the occasional invocation of said pacts for a single karma apiece?

Maybe not every PC free spirit is especially friendly, and therefore suited to having a friendship pact.

To quote a good movie from a bad company, "Phenomenal cosmic power, itty-bitty living space."

Except that the 'power' isnt phenominal, or cosmic at all. So for that itty-bitty living space you get "power" that is lesser than that of joe street-mage.

There is a sadness in me that grows as I come to understand the free spirit PC rules as they're intended, instead of as I want them to be. 250BPs to be the one on the side-lines waiting for combat so that you can use a few augmentative powers on other PCs just doesnt seem worth it, ever. The only real concrete boon you seem to get from the deal is that over the course of a regular game, youll probobly never have to roll up a new PC.

Fits better that way

Mind you I do believe Jeeves would fill his social/stealthier roles more or less well, especially with the ability to bolt like there's no tomorrow, but he's not quite phenomenal yet

There are other karma gaining options you could take instead of Friendship Pact, some of which are even better than Friendship.

Take, for example, Power Pact. A Power Pact lasts for a single day. After that, it must be renewed. Usually, this renewal costs karma for the metahuman, though it does not have to cost karma and the price is arbitrary. This gives you a great many options.

The most obvious possibility is addiction and extortion. Take Power Pact and Regeneration or a similarly useful power. Give it away for free on the first couple of runs, just long enough for the other players to become dependent on it. Then start charging.


Another way to go would be the Dream Pact. You can't start with an NPC Pact, but you can make one, so start with some social skills and chat yourself up a karma-earning Edgar Suit to wear at night. Repeat several times with NPCs of different social classes and sleep schedules.

There are other options, too, like making Life Pacts with your teammates and then ensuring that they'll get the crap beaten out of them so heavily that they'll be forced to buy healing from you.


Unfortunately, the PC free spirit rules do not remotely resemble the NPC Free Spirit rules, a problem that existed with Shapeshifter and and Ghoul rules in the SR3 Companion and which they actively (and successfully) tried to avoid with every other new option.
One of the rules even implicitly contradicts the basic mechanics for Ally spirits created by magicians.

The two big issues, for me, are the physical stats for Possession spirits and the Power Points system, both of which explicitly and directly contradict the actual previously established rules. The inability to have Inhabitation (with the implication that there are no Ally Spirits with Inhabitation) and the limited power selection also annoy me, but these can actually be justified with some effort.