We're playing a game with 2 Free Spirits, made with 350 BP. We realize that they start at a serious disadvantage, but for the concepts involved the biggest disadvantage is the limitation on Spirit Powers. How many Power Points do you guys think Fey Glamour and Vanishing would cost for PC Free Spirits? What about Mindlink?

Mindlink emulates the Mindnet spell, and the 10 BP per Power Point + Edge uses, vs. the 3BP for the spell, this lends me towards .5 PP for the Mindlink critter power, but what could be a good reference for the other two powers? Fey Glamour could be used to duplicate Aura Masking(minus the dice pool penalty) and Realistic Form(with a resistance check), and well as the Phantasm spell(with no drain, sustaining penalty, and 50 times the area). I think 5 Power Points fits. Vanishing could be half a point or a full point. Any thoughts?

Why would they want the mindlink power? If they're PC free spirits they should get a friendship spirit pact by default, otherwise play will be kind of weird (No gaining Karma naturally, have to leave the physical plane for 31 days whenever one of their tracks fills) and friendship pact grants the equivalent of mindlink automatically to pact members. As for Vanishing and Fey Glamour, they shouldn't be given a power point cost because they shouldn't be obtainable by PC free spirits. Both of those powers belong to the Fey spirits that are NPC only for good reason. A free spirit is a spirit that was at one time summoned by a magician and then set free by circumstance, making it only possible for said spirit to have powers that spirits of its tradition have. If you really must allow these powers to be usable by PC free spirits, I would reduce the cost for Fey Glamour (it only affects terrain, therefore it can't be used for Aura Masking, Realistic form, and would only be a limited Phantasm Spell) and Vanishing would easily be 1 or 2 points (provides complete immunity from all kinds of attack and perception, making it great for infiltration and a quick escape from combat). Also, why do they only have 350 BP? Standard is 400 and the Free Spirit build alone costs 250 BP, leaving a mere 100BP left for everything else. Effective Free Spirits are hard enough to build with max BP.

If you read the fluff about the Friendship pact, one would assume that the spirit had known the other PC's for a long enough time to trust them with such a pact, the only show of faith bigger than that is the Forumlae Pact, which literally places the spirit's formulae on the person. It would make very little sense for a spirit who is starting the game with few contacts other than his "brother" to have a friendship pact with people that are no more than acquaintances. And looking at it from a mechanic's point, the friendship pact limits the force of the spirit to how many people are in the friendship pact. To have a force 5 spirit one would need 5 people in that pact other than that spirit, and without the pact one could be a force 5 or 6, and just be boned in other areas. But even with the Friendship pact, it limits the maximum not the minimum, and so you still have to buy up everything. As for karma, there are other ways for a spirit to earn karma than the friendship pact. Other PCs can just give it to the spirit, either as payment, or as a sign of good faith, because being in a spirit's good graces is never a bad thing. A spirit could even charge karma for things like enchanting, spell instruction, or any other sort of assistance(spirit services).

In addition to what MithrilGear said, the guy is playing a possession-based spirit in a Plasteel Homonculus, giving him a really high Body and the potential for incredible amounts of armor and ItNW that ignores a good deal of weapons fire on top of it. It also has the downside of not being able to vocalize, with means he needs a way to communicate other than sign language. He's got a spirit pact(his free spirit pact at character generation) that's a spin on the Friendship pact. It binds two spirits in commraderie, "Hand to hand we stand, and side by side. Though my brother and I may quarrel, none may quarrel with my brother and not quarrel with me. This is my oath: friendship, assistance and the blessings that come of both, until the year has spun anew. May our prosperity desert us, and our talents fail us, should we break this vow of brotherhood." It establishes a mental link, just the same as in the Friendship pact, and allows them to take a complex action to know the location and condition of the other, so long as they're on the same plane of existance, and should one take enough damage to disrupt one the other may choose to take the excess damage that would disrupt them. Example:Spirit A has 10 boxes in his damage track, and get's hit for 13P, Spirit B could choose to take the 4P excess damage that would disrupt his brother. With that in place the 2 spirits in the group can communicate, with Mindlink, the other 5 memebers of the team can communicate with him as well, and each other as well. Something you can't do with the friendship pact.


I realize that they are listed in Running Wild, and are generally considered NPC critters, but at one point so were ghouls and vampires. The rules listed in Runner's Companion for "Free Spirirts" don't really fit the prior rules for creating Free Spirits. However, they do fit the description for Wild Spirits as described in Street Magic, which are also considered as Free Spirits.


Since the GM can allow anything they want, it then just comes down to a matter of game balance, which is what I was asking for help on. I didn't realize that Fey Glamour only affected terrain when I read it, at which point I could see justifying the cost at 3 Power Points. As for Vanishing though, it essentially just accelerates what the spirit could do normally. Which is along the lines of Improved Reflexes, but doesn't allow the spirit to attack anymore than it already could. I could understand it costing 2 power points.


We like to challenging games(and lower powered games), and part of this game is making characters with fewer points(350 BP). You can always get 35 BP from negative qualities, and our GM is awarding extra Karma(not BP) for good lengthy backgrounds in the neighborhood of 2 pages.

The problem I would have with the Vanishing power is that it literally makes the spirit immune to permanent death. Normal spirits can be killed permanently if a mage disrupts them and then goes on a metaplanar quest to their metaplane to permanently destroy them. This is something hard to do to be sure, but Vanishing makes even this possibility nil, as the spirit can just dissapear from existence for a while and come back either when its power has recovered, or when its 31 day time limit on returning to the physical plane is up, or just when its pursuers have given up searching for it. Vanishing is a complete "get out of death free" card for a complex action. Maybe your games are light enough that death isn't really a possibility in the first place, I guess if that's the case then maybe it deserves a low cost, but it seems pretty powerful to give it to PCs. As for mindlink, I guess if you don't want to go with the mindlink spell, it would probably be ok as a low-cost power. I would still say that even 3 points is a bit too high for Fey Glamour, I just can't see it being all that practical except in rather specific situations. Overall, I would still say that allowing PCs to have powers from Running Wild isn't a good idea, but they're your players and your game so who am I to judge.

According to Running Wild, Vanishing does not necessarily take the being to some unreachable place. It may actually go to its home metaplane, in which case it can be hunted, albeit with more difficulty, as a normal spirit can.