I am trying to workout the meaning of the rules for Spirit Pacts for free spirits (as PCs).

Reading Runner's Companion,



Does this mean
A: that each time the Free Spirit PC takes the 'Spirit Pact Power', it gets to chose one type of Spirit Pact, and it can then make a Pact with as many people that it can convince to take that type of pact (, assuming they follow the rules, ie PCs take the Spirit Pact Quality)?

Or does it mean
B: that each time the Spirit takes the 'Spirit Pact Power', it can assign One pact to One person?

I am kind of thinking option A from above because the way the paragraph is written in Runner's Companion. It states that this is the pact that the spirit "knows", and can make with other characters, which sort of implies plural, ie can make the pact that it "knows" as often as it can get punters to go for it, but just checking what others think.


Max,
Dunedin, NZ

A makes more sense. It's what I would use.

If those are the two choices, then A gets my vote.

As I understand it, A is correct, each time you take the spirit pact power, you get a new type of pact you can form. You can use that pact however many times you think you can get away with.

That one, otherwise they wouldn't list it as an optional power on their power list (for 1 PP I believe), and it's hinted at in all the surrounding text and on Street Magic where it talks about Spirit Pacts.

EDIT!!!:L Sorry, I quoted the wrong option! It's A!!

Group pacts, which is were you have multiple pacts with more than one person with the same type of pact, is a different power reserved for only powerful spirits. I think I read this in street Grimoire

Here's the shitty part of the deal: The pacts other than Friendship require the other PCs to take positive qualities for, costing them karma. I'm not aware of too many players who would go out of their way to get the qualities unless they wanted them in the first place. Ergo youre wasting your time with any pact other than the friendship pact when it comes down to the point shuffle, which was tight anyway thanks to the whopping 250BPs out the gate.

The only way free spirits come out the gate in any form of playable are a few very specific builds, or through using a loophole in the karma-gen system.

Have a 1 Connection (Modified to about 8 or 9 from a group contact)/6 Loyalty Magical Group contact of awakened NPCs who exist only to Pact your Free Spirit Character, including (but not limited to) Friendship Pact, Power Pact (to get all those wonderful spells you don't want to pay BP/Karma for), and (most importantly) a Drain Pact that you charge 1 Karma a week for (which all of them accept, because Loyalty 6), so you end up generating roughly 600 Karma a week.

The friendship pact was obviously constructed as a way to make PC free spirits viable without requiring them to muck about too heavily in pacts. The fact that they still let them take extra pacts is just an extra cool little thing you can do if you want.

Sounds abusive.

I´d allow it...

A magical group with connection 1. There must be a reason for that. They´d die for your character. I say you get a bunch of idiot worshippers. Wonderful spells from these guys? Try again.

"Drain Pact" is a strong argument. It would not happen in my game. I don´t see a happy medium for that. Sell me on it.

My understanding is that the karma cost of the spirits pact goes to the spirit as payment for service provided (similar to metamagic spirit tutor, Street Magic p.52), reason because higher the edge higher the cost, higher the edge greater the compensation asked for. It's debatable but I think that a free spirit can grant spirit pacts for free (however it would not bound to abide to its terms and could withdraw the benefits any time) if it's inclined to do so.
This is from a logical point of view, from a balance prospective it would highly exploitable by players but would allow them to balance a free spirit with the rest of the team, how? Power Pact + Regeneration.
I would also point out that the same powers can be much better than Friendship Pact, go in the gutter and offer regeneration for 24 hours in exchange of a little karmic compensation, think about how much karma can be racked up (and think about two gangs that fight eachother in an all out clash just to realize the everyone regenerates, well they are going to aim to the heads).

The PCs paying Karma to use the spirit pacts provided by another PC free spirit is just fine and dandy, but what i'm bitching about relates to the other PCs having to take the spirit pact quality to gain the effects of those pacts. Its really just making 2 PCs pay for 1 power, thats really only useful on the PC with the quality's end, since the free spirit cant use those pact powers himself.

Throwing on the min-max hat, what are some of the rorty things you can do with Spirit Pact?

I was looking at a shaman with around 4+ spirit pacts, each with an Edge 1 free spirit....

- J.

Argghh attack of the double post!

- J.