You always just use the spirit's mental stats during an inhabitation.

Brain mods apply as appropriate. That means that if you give the body a cerebral booster it will do fuck all (the Logic score of the host is over written). However, once the spirit is merged in you can go get it a Cerebral Booster - adding Logic and sacrificing Essence as normal.

I don't actually understand any of this.

-Frank

Unless I'm mis-remembering (too many topics lately on spirit powers), wasn't there a ruling coming up that for Inhabitation, mental stats were capped at the host's levels? Or was that just Possession/Channeling that was affected?

Basically, I was toying around with the idea of using a wimp jarhead to get around that rule, and produce a munchkin ally jarhead. If the rule was only for Possession, and not Inhabitation, then it didn't matter either way.

The rest was an attempt to figure out how a jarhead could get true LOS to cast. Cybereyes+magesight goggles was all that I could think of, since the shape and size of a jarhead is not conducive to placement above the shoulders--besides, you want it deep under armor anyways.

As usual, this is just hypotheticals. I don't expect GMs to allow it, although I *do* still struggle with explaining why corps aren't--allies remove all of the psychological downsides and limited lifespans involved, plus add INW, better stats and skills, and spellcasting (LOS permitting). A jarhead that can Heal/Fix itself, and Stunbolt you as easily as it can put a long narrow HMG burst into you? Ow.

That's great. I actually know several people who could use a brain.
Most of the people driving on the road for example.

A cybereye on the end of a cord is probably a better model. If the jar is just sitting on a shelf of something, the cord can be reeled in so that the eyes are flush with the jar's casing. When the jar gets put into a tank, then the rope gets spooled out and the eyes are basically on the surface of the tank somewhere.

This lets you use all the vision mods on the eyes without having to try to get them piped through the goggles. On the other hand, you can theoretically be targeted by spells this way, since that are your actual eyes out there on the surface of the tank. Better imagine a one way mirrored bubble around them as well.

But how much extra essence to charge for the extra cord that connects the actual eye to the brain?

how about giving the car a brain instead?

like say a "cyborg" brain

Oh that. Peter Taylor announced that the physical stats of non materialized spirits were going to be limited by the augmented caps of the host. That caused, needless to say, a lot of sputtering and invectives.

Whether in response to the arguments or not, when the update finally came into the FAQ, it announced that the physical attributes of a possessed or inhabitted spirit were indeed capped by normal and augmented maximums - but that the normal maximum was the Host's + the Spirit's Force, with Augmented maximum calculated accordingly.

So really there isn't any situation where you can hit a limit because you got possessed. The attributes rise by X, the normal limit rises by X, and the augmented limit rises by 1.5X - so it's literally impossible for it to be a problem. It simply closes a loop where people were contemplating Edging Increase Attribute spells.

-Frank

Don't even get me started on why an unholy alliance between voodoo priestess vampires and succubi should rule the world under RAW--or why monster blood spirits should have wiped out entire cities, Godzilla style, before being stopped (maybe) with nukes. Loopholes and unbound linear progression can be fun to play with on a board, but in a game is another matter.