Ok,im new to 4th edition. Im looking at making a free spirit character. It says 250 bp to make one and that i can "possess" a body adding my force to its physical stats. My question is how do i determine the initial stats of my "host". Do i spend my remaining 150 bp to buy a body and its stats or how do i determine the stats of my host body? Thx.

I assume that you start without a host at all to posess, and are limited in talking to the PCs as a manifested (read: NOT materialized) spirit. OR you can spend gear points to buy yourself a homonculus.

Aha,i didnt think about the homonculus route. That would take care of the rest of the party wondering if a possessed body should be part of the group. Thx for the idea ill check that out.

Or you could just decide not to have a "regular" body and pocess whoever is currently on hand.

True,that might be interesting. Use one of the own enemies bodies against them. Ive been looking into the homonculus rules but they only have a few examples. Im looking at getting a anthroform metal body that i could slap some armor on to appear humanoid. They only have a plasteel and stone version. Both are strong and suck up damage but are not agile at all.

I'm sure you could get something like aluminum, which would be fast and cheap (but not tough), or titanium, which would be fast and tough (but not cheap). On the other hand, possessing your enemies A. takes that enemy out of the fight, and B. means you can go astral and GTFO without leaving behind a few thousand nY worth of evidence.

Ok,i see what youre talking about. I could start with a cheap aluminum kamikaze body to hurt them,when it goes down switch to astral and work on them. Now to work out all this stuff on the sheet.

Do you really want to leave behind your "body" that could in thoery be used to gather information against you and your team? Personally I think McAllister was referring to going strictly astral with the second half of his comment. After all, worse case, just grab some random joe off the street and let corp sec riddle his body with holes, then grab one of them.

Lol,i was trying to be sort of noble by just taking "enemy" bodies over. I guess as a spirit i would have different morals and wouldnt have a problem with grabbing a random person to use as a bullet target.

Well remember that not only are you a completely alien lifeform, made up of pure magical energies, you also shoot people in the face for money, so I wouldn't worry too much about morals.

No, you can't spend more than 50 BP on resources.

I wonder if a Biodrone could be used as a target of possession. That way when your not possessing it, the teams rigger can use it.

Whoa! I get the impression you're overlooking something. PC Free Spirits are NOT the same as other spirits. You don't get every attribute equal to your force; not only do you need to raise your Force, you also need to raise your other attributes and skills. THAT'S what you should use the 150 BP for. And unless I'm mistaken, a PC Free Spirit with Possession does NOT add its Force to the vessel's physical attributes; it adds its physical attributes to the vessel's individually. For example, when you're astral, it doesn't matter what that your AGI is 3 and your STR is just 2, but when you Possess a vessel, you add 3 to its AGI and 2 to its STR.

"For spirits of possession traditions, the spirit’s Physical attributes are added to the attributes of the vessel possessed by the spirit."

It never specifically says that you don't add Force, but I'm pretty sure adding both would be excessive. Materialized Plant spirits have a BOD of Force + 3, but I'm pretty sure a Possessing Plant spirit only adds Force to its vessel's BOD. PC Free Spirits just work differently.

Sure, why not?

Just remember, you could possess ANYTHING... like a car, drone, toaster, gun, enemy mook, surveilance camera, security door, elevator, etc...

Just open your box of limits a tad (as well as channel your inner Kender from Dragonlance) and all of a sudden, the mischief you can perform is quite amazing. B&E takes on a whole new perspective. Infiltration.... cheese for you.

Oh what a life...

"Whew, I'm glad that's ov... Whoah!"

On the general subject of possessing as a Free Spirit PC. You'll find it quite frustrating a lot of the time if your field of tactics is limited to taking possession of an enemy and then fighting with them. For a start, combats in Shadowrun happen fast. You're going to be spending the initial parts of combat possessing someone while the samurai mows everyone else down with an SMG. Sometimes, particularly if your Force attribute isn't very high, your intended victims will manage to shake off your possession attempt leading to more delay while you try to possess someone else (who by this point is probably injured by the Sammies). Against some groups of enemies, the tactic will fail utterly. So the suggestion of keeping a prepared vessel on hand is a good one. Ironically you're more at risk from enemy spirits than your metahuman friends, because you're dual natured all the time and don't necessarily have any direct combat mana spells for use on the Astral. Astral Armour would be your friend in these circumstances.

Anyway, as well as some powerful prime vessel, I'd grab some little cheap vessels for emergencies. Definitely don't forget the benefits of going Zombie. See Troll? Kill Troll. Possess Troll.

There are some severe limitations to playing a Free Spirit, but you also have some great tricks up your sleeve. Unless your GM is quite experienced, the likely sequence of your first few missions is "Run where Free Spirit breaks the game and achieves success in unexpected way. Run where Free Spirit breaks the game and achieves success in unexpected way. Run where Free Spirit encounters swarms of astral guards that pound it senseless and make it wish it had never been summoned."

Play to your strengths, cover your weaknesses, remember that without Realistic Form, it's very obvious when you're possessing something ("Did that security camera just blink / does that drone look kind of evil, to you?") and try to learn the Levitate spell because there's nothing more terrifying than a glowing plasteel hormunculous diving out of the sky at you.

Oh, and I guess whilst I'm at it, never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.

K.