Hi Folks,

i have one question about spirit possession and augmentations.

A Voodoo priest with the channeling metamagic let himself possess from a guardian spirit and become a dual being.

As far as my reading goes the priest gets the force of the spirit as a bonus to his phisical attributes and keeps his mental and special attributes. Also hi can unse his skilles and knowledge, right? Also he can tell the spirit he should use his spirit skills if the spirit has a higher skill that the priest himself.

What about if the priest has some augmentations? I could only find the rule that a spirit can't use cyberware effectively and profits only from passive ware (Bone Lacing come to mind). But what is if the priest has a supranoid gland or a synaptic accelerator 3? Get the dual being the bonus to attributes and the higher IP from the bioware stuff?

Does other bioware (Pheromones, Pain Editor and so on) count?

What do you think?

Thank you and best wishes,
Meschler

As Bioware is usually implanted and used in a form of passiveness I'd say that a spirit is perfectly fine with those modifications his host made to his body.

As long as the person being possessed has channeling, then they can utilize the powers of the spirit that possess them (up to a limit of that spirit's tasks) and access their own skills as well, yes. Don't forget about the task limit, though. For example, if you have 4 tasks remaining after possession, you can't utilize the spirit's powers more than 4 times, if I remember correctly.



Most bioware is passive in nature. Most don't even have triggers, really. The Suprathyroid Gland, that you mention, is an "always on" sort of thing, for example. The Adrenaline Pump -- which might have been what you were thinking of -- can be triggered actively, but may also be made to work passively as a result of strong emotion. The only one that I can think of off the top of my head that really doesn't have a passive trigger is the Chemical Gland. Thus, I'd say that many bioware augmentations would continue to provide their benefits to a possessed character. I'd probably even allow Genetech and Nanotech options, too, as most of those are either passive (Genetech) or self-guided (Nanotech) and do not rely on interactions with the character.

Now, when we think about Channeling, we have to consider this:



To me, this indicates that a Channeling mage can access even 'ware that requires active commands (e.g., a headware commlink or embedded cybergun) as they are capable of utilizing their own skills and capabilities in addition to the powers of the spirit possessing them. This would probably be a GM call for your game, but that's the way I've always played it. Does it make Channeling badass? Yup; but not too many mages have so much 'ware as to make it a major problem.