I don't subscribe to the view that possession spirits rock over materialization spirits, for a number of reasons already mentioned above. So I won't reiterate. But an earlier discussion about background count (BC) got me to thinking.

BC reduces the Magic Attribute of a magician and the Force of a spirit on a 1:1 basis. BG of 2 means both drop by 2. But, the maximum Force of spirit controllable by a magician is equal to twice the Magic Attribute. Therefore, the upper limit is reduced at a 2:1 rate. So, theoretically, a decent BG could create a state in which a magician is 'in control' of a spirit beyond her normal ability to summon.

What effect would this have if such a spirit were A) in the presence of a Materialization Tradition magician, and B) possessing a Possession Tradition magician? Would the spirit still be controlled? Maybe some kind of 'spiritual grandfather clause' would be in effect.

If not, would the spirit just go away? Probably, for both Traditions. But if it chose, for its own reasons, to stay, it is likely that the Possession Tradition magician would get the worse treatment. "I like it here. I like the feeling of toughness and strength. I think I will stay for a while. And, no, your Channeling means nothing to me now. I am in charge."

How does that sound?

But do you need a high force spirit for this? If all you need is the mobility of a materialized spirit why use a force 6?

EDIT:

Oh, whatever. Fuck it. This is all rehashed and if you honestly know what there is to know about possession spirits and still decide to put them, unaltered, into your game then I say have fun, or at least try. In terms of tactics for possession spirits, get a golem for when he's usable, get armor you can possess your spirits with for when he's not (the armor has the advantage of being mobile, enhanced by the possession, and a good default object to possess when you just want to summon a spirit for utility powers), and otherwise enjoy being the toughest thing in your game.

Never said you did. I'm just saying this is a falling down point for the possession tradition.

Ah, game balance is a different issue all together. And thank you btw.



I think possession, as magic often does, gets a double standard applied to it. For the price of a couple of bound Force 5's, you can get a GE Vindicator minigun that will do a base 20P damage per action phase at -1AP. Put some APDS in there and it's -5. And a moderately decent samurai can hit with it. And that's before we get on to riggers sticking it on a drone to eliminate recoil altogether. Does it have disadvantages? Sure. But so does possession. I think the general rule in Shadowrun is that almost everything is "overpowered" until you misjudge the circumstances and get drekked. It's like a giant game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

K.

How do you figure that a Street Sam could hit with it? Recoil penalties are doubled with machine guns - so if you are looking to hit with a narrow burst for that 20P aren't you looking at -28 recoil? Even if it was only a -14 modifier a mage built around possession would probably still have a reaction around 10-11 which means that the Street Sam would need a pool of 24-25 dice for it to be a 50/50 chance of hitting the mage. On top of that, even if you hit with a 20P attack a mage built around possession would probably be a troll, with a high body, and a Force 6 spirit.
Body 9 (15 with possession), plus let's say 15 more mundane armor, plus 12 hardened armor, plus 1 natural armor, plus the armor spell for let's say 4 more armor. That is 47 dice to soak - even with AP modifiers the troll is going to soak 14 of that on average *if* you get hit - which is very unlikely.

If there was a drone with a minigun couldn't the spirit go possess the drone instead?

More precisely, all uncompensated recoil penalties are doubled (SR4A, p.152). Alternatively, mounting that minigun on a decent-sized vehicle (anything with a combination of Body and RC totalling 14 or more) eliminates the recoil altogether.



You certainly *could*, but it's (probably) much harder, since the test changes from an opposed test (with, most likely, +6 to the spirit's pool) to a Force x 2 (Object Resistance) test -- according to the table in SR4A, that means your threshold for the test is 6+ to possess a drone.

EDIT: too slow on my edit -- svenftw beat me to it

It's an option but the roll would be the spirit's Force x 2 against the object resistance of the drone, which would be 6. It would be hard pressed to get in there without spending Edge, and even then you'd have to roll decently.

Yeah, what rumanchu said. After you stack all of your recoil compensation (and with a minigun it's a sure bet he'd be using a gyro mount) you can get the penalties down to -4 or -6 or so.

If that was the case you just possess the Street Sam then - which is pretty much a guarantee. The only sort of issue then is the drone which is easily remedied (if you can't possess it) by something like accident. A Force 6 spirit will get Magic + Willpower (12 dice) to cause an accident vs the drones Reaction + Intuition - spirit's Magic. This is only if you also ignore the suggested rule of only letting a drone's body apply for recoil compensation and not negate it entirely (otherwise a dog sized drone could mount a machine gun with no recoil).

Remember, if you're playing a Possession tradition mage, your spirits *must* Possess something in order to use powers that affect the real world (unless the target happens to be dual natured) -- Possession *replaces* Materialization (Street Magic, p.34).

Not to mention that a character, especially a troll, built around possession would be summoning force 8 or 10 spirits, not 6. Magic 5 + Skill 5 + Specialization Guardian Spirits + Sun Mentor + Force 4 summoning Focus = 18 dice for summoning spirits. Summoning a force 8 spirit would net you 3 services on average. Then you give your guardian spirit the automatics skill as a power and suddenly that street sam became a whole lot more powerful and under your control. 16 dice possesses any human and while a drone might be harder to outright possess, a drone also tends to have lower dice pools and limited ammunition, while a force 8 spirit possessing a troll has probably 19 dice to dodge on full defense, and even if hit can soak 20 damage with 16 hardened armor, plus military grade armor, plus whatever other twinkiness you want to add to the defense.

Plus, why not take that street sam and make him a possession mage? Possession with a guardian spirit gives you whatever combat skill you need, why not just buy the gun and use it yourself? Now it's the possession mage with a 20P AP-1 weapon, dice pools of 20 or so with no recoil because his body is 23, 16 ITNW + whatever armor it feels like wearing on top of that in addition to 13 straight reaction dice. You can take any combat character build and make it better by adding a possession spirit, that's what is so broken about it.

This isn't a game of rock paper scissors, it's rock paper scissors nuke.

and @romachu: needing a possession target is not a weakness. Any possession mage should have a possession target on them at all times, such as an amulet or a ring, and if they don't there's always the option of possessing themselves.

Sure, the spirit is in possession of the mage and can use Accident as a power. If it is in the act of combat I am pretty sure this doesn't even cost a service since the spirit is fighting in the most efficient manner vs. whatever foe is in front of it.

Patrick, your big trump card here is that a Force 8 Guardian Spirit in a buff troll is dangerous. You know what else is dangerous? A buff troll fighting alongside a Force 8 Guardian Spirit. They'll also have twice the passes assuming the troll has a form of initiative enhancement. They might not be each be immune to most attacks, granted, but they'll have comparable if not better offensive ability and can be two places at once-- that's a pretty decent trade even before you factor in that one of them can take metaplanar shortcuts and travel astrally, allowing them to get anywhere unwarded on the planet in under 4 hours without having to ever get a hold of a vessel. If you want to portray Possession spirits as powerful, that's fine. They are, and as long as you have a vessel available, they'll have better stats. I just find the way you imply that Materialization traditions are the weak sibling in all cases preposterous. There are top end combat situations where the added dice of a boosted up possessed vessel are certainly the best way to handle the situation, but those situations tend to be extremely rare relative to the times where all you need is an extra pair of low maintenance hands that can interact with the meat world while providing Powers, and in those cases Materialization is the pony to bet on.

I agree with that. And it happens with a lot of things in SR, not just magic (even though magic gets accused of brokeness a lot more than other aspects). The reason for that, in my opinion, is that everything can be taken to scary extremes, be it the possessed troll, a maximally armored cyberlimb-sammy, or the face with the really big social dice pool. I never liked to condemn an entire concept just because someone could theoretically take it to an extreme level.

A possessing spirit will be more dangerous in a direct confrontation than a manifesting spirit, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with that. After all, you need a vessel for that spirit, either yourself, or someone/something else in your surroundings. That possession test might fail (and I have seen it fail in very crucial moments during runs). Maybe no vessel will be around, in which case you have the spirit possess yourself. That puts your own body on the line, however.
The beauty of manifesting spirits is that they bring another player to the field when you need the backup, without having to rely on a possession test. And everyone except the most disciplined HTR teams will immediately indentify them as the most scary threat and focus on killing/avoiding that otherwordly thing, giving the runners enough space and time to regroup, retreat, or disable the opposition.

Speaking of powreful builds like the big, scary troll possessed by a high-force spirit: In our games one of the guidelines is that extreme measures will most likely result in similarly extreme reactions, as long as the oppostion would have the capability to do so. Sure, you can mop the floor with the street gang as a talented possession mage (as can several other character concepts), but corpsec will definitely call for magical backup once they spot you. For all they know, you could be one of those sheddim or insect spirits or any other kind of terrible extraplanar menace that the security guys have only heard stories about. Since a being possessed by a spirit becomes dual-natured, you open yourself up to attacks from the astral plane, so the wage-mages don't even have to move to your location, but can just pop into the astral to engage you.
Mundane threats shouldn't be discounted, too. A high armor value seems impressive at first, but armor is notoriously unreliable in SR. When it's bullets vs. armor, the bullets will eventually win, because they can never roll badly for their DV as armor can for its protection. 30 armor will protect from 10 DV on average, but that "average" is an important point. Just because your damage resistance rolls will average out in the long run, it doesn't make than one botched roll any less deadly.

I'm going to throw in a thought here. It seems to me that most people here only considder using possession spirits of high Force (Force 5+). How about using a Mystic Adept designed for close combat, and with good physical stats? Sure, there'll be a limit to how powerful a spirit you can summon, but couldn't that possibly work reasonably?

You know what's even more dangerous than a Force 8 guardian spirit and a buff troll? A buff troll and a force 8 guardian spirit that has just taken over the body of one of your allies. They'll also have twice the passes assuming the ally has some form of initiative enhancement. They might not be as durable, granted, but they'll have comparable if not better offensive capability and can be in two places at once.

Sorry, that felt childish. But really, Possession spirits gain a shitload of abilities and buffs from their possession power and the only argument I've seen in favor of Materialization spirits is that they don't need a vessel to materialize. But vessels are everywhere, that pencil, a doorknob, a stapler, an office worker (sorry, I'm at work right now), all are viable possession targets with ORs of 1 or 2, and if what you need is a pair of hands, then summoning a spirit with psychokinesis is just as easy as materializing a normal spirit. It just seems to me that possession spirits can do everything materialization spirits can do plus a whole bunch of things they can't with no real drawbacks.

@Kyrel: Yeah sure, it could work. The only problem with possessing adepts is that until you get channeling you lose most of your adept powers while possessed.

@Starfish: True, one of the main drawbacks to a possession combat mage is that it is so awesome and overpowered that the GM will be forced to send equally overpowered things at you, thus killing the rest of your team and leaving you mildly bruised. I suppose it's also true that its easier to work with low force materialization spirits and use them as distractions than it is to do with low force possession spirits, but I can counter that with the subtlety a possession spirit can use to apply its powers and have no one have any idea where they are coming from. A materialization spirit can draw fire from a team of corpsec, but a possession spirit can possess one of the corpsec's buttons and lightning bolt everyone else on his team with no more obviousness than an evilly glowing button on the guy's shirt.

Not really, because each level of Force grants you 2 hardened armor and +1 to all physical stats. Losing 1 point of Force can't be made up through other means efficiently.

That could be an interesting concept. A neo-tribal warrior who calls the spirits of his ancestors to lend him strength for the upcoming battle, for example. A guardian spirit would be a good choise here, not only for RP purposes, but also because they have plenty of combat skills at their disposal (remember, you can't access your own skill while possessed unless you have the channeling metamagic).

Sure, but wouldn't corpsec have the same reaction if some Force 8 materialized spirit was wreaking havoc? If a bunch of astral backup can be called to defend a place wouldn't it make sense to *always* call that backup? Also, 30 dice for a possessed troll is *low*. If we are really dealing with a Force 8 spirit. That is probably a Body of 17, 16 hardened armor (which means the DV has to be above 16 to even cause a damage resistance roll), plus whatever physical armor is being worn (at least another 15 pts), plus an armor spell most likely, and don't forget the +1 natural armor. You are looking at over 50 soak dice *if* the DV is over 16.

Yes, a force 8 spirit is always a dangerous threat, no matter in which form it is encountered. Besides, Corpsec will always call for backup once they discover any intruders (unless the runners really look inept enough to just be apprehended). They're neither trained nor paid enough to engage directly, but will focus on locating, monitoring, and possibly stalling any opposition until the specialists arrive to take care of the problem. Summoning a high force (not entirely without risk, anyway) spirit will convince security that a strong response might be needed to deal with the situation, just as being spotted while walking into a secure installation with an assault cannon would.

And even with very high armor, personally I wouldn't feel confident enough to stand in the open and face high powered automatic fire unless I absolutely had to. I saw enough fights where that 25 dice damage resistance test resulted in 3 or 4 hits and the spending/burning of edge just to stay alive.

Yes, but we're not talking about 25 resist dice, we're talking 50. On a 400BP starting character. Who can rip tanks in half. Who can take rockets to the face. Who has the willpower and counterspelling dice to resist magical opposition. Who has access to spellcasting. What if this character isn't a troll, what if he's a shapeshifter? There's no way he's going down in one or two attacks, most burst fire won't penetrate his hardened armor, he regenerates stick n shock damage or laser damage. Direct damage spells still affect him, if they can get through his magical defenses. And what if we give him a pain editor as well? By turning it on before being possessed, he can gain its benefits during possession. Now he is virtually immune to stun damage, if a direct combat spell wants to affect him they must penetrate his Body of insane. I don't even know how to respond to a truly twinked out possession mage. He'd have hardened armor of crazy that could resist normal bursts, he'd be immune to stun damage, if he was attacked by a helicopter he could possess the pilot and crash it, if he was attacked by a tank he could again possess the pilot or use an lightning aura melee attack to disable it, if he was attacked by a mage he'd have counterspelling, immunity to stun, and a body of resist everything you could throw at him. He might be vunerable to astral attacks, but spirits come with astral combat and he'd have other bound spirits he could call to fight for him if he needed to and they'd still have to deal with his huge damage track. As you said, bad rolls wouldn't be too much of a problem if he had a decent edge score. Maybe you couldn't get all of this at chargen, I'd have to make the character to see, but you certainly could get all of it eventually, and then you'd have a character who's only real vulnerability is a GM fiated satellite strike.

Edit: Made the character, 47 resist damage dice, physical damage track with 17 boxes and 18 body, modded high velocity ares alpha as primary weapon, 18P damage at AP -2 with ex rounds, no recoil, 18 dice to hit, regenerates with a pool of 26 each round, has the pain editor and military grade armor as well as a rating 4 power focus, spellcasting 3 with a manipulation specialization, stunbolt and armor as spells, 15 dice to resist combat spells, 4 force 5 guardian spirits bound at chargen with 2 services each. Not subtle at all but he is a one-man army at 400BP.

It is easy to toss around the scary example of the Force 8+ spirit, especially when you ignore the Drain (Physical Drain in your example). All those Attributes and Skills and Foci used to maximize the mage's ability to summon the spirit are expensive. Then there are the Attributes required to resist the Drain (In a "buff troll" who is likely to suffer in at least one of the Drain Attributes). A whole lot has just been spent just to get the character to the point where she can be fit to summon one of these monsters, and survive most of the time. What else is she good for? Seriously. What else do you have BP for?

And if she is mentally buff enough to survive the Drain, she is also more difficult to possess. What a shame it is to summon a monster spirit and then resist its attempt to possess you. Oops. All that Drain and nothing to show for it.

People keep pooh poohing Drain. It will get you. It will! Especially if you keep pushing it with high Force spirits at the edge of your abilities. And whatever damage the summoner carries forward to the possession will affect the combined entity.

Just because you may have the capacity to develop a 50 dice damage resistance pool right at chargen, doesn't mean you can actually build one. Where is the armor that can take advantage of the huge BOD Attribute, as your number suggests? A Force 8 spirit has ItNW of 16, so that leaves 34 dice to come from BOD and armour. So, a BOD of , what 14, 15 (unless the you've also spent a huge pile of BP on the BOD Attribute, along with everything else so far) leaves about 20 to come from armour. Where does she get that kind of armour at chargen? How does she deal with AP that affects both the ItNW and the regular armour? How does she deal with the punishing negative modifiers of over-burdening armour when the spirit leaves her body or is diminished in some other way (services over, Banished, blasted from Astral space, shrunk by background count)?

And we haven't even touched the problems arising from dealing with a spirit that is smarter, sneakier and more forceful in personality than the mage.

EDIT: I see you added an Edit to your post, Patrick. I would like to see how much just those things you list cost in BP. I submit that there is not much left. I see 105 BP just for a Troll with BOD 10. Where are the Drain Resistance Attributes? What cost for military grade armour? Qualities? Magic will be 15 + 40 (to get MAG 5) = 55.

The things in the post take up the full 400BP, and sorry, it's a shifter bear, not a troll, however, the 18 dice summoning pool only takes up about 88 BP without cyber. Drain is healable with first aid, and while this character doesn't have the logic for it, it wouldn't be so difficult to build a character with drain reduction as its focus in addition to being a possession monster. Admittedly, the bear in my post would be taking 2 to 4 drain on the summoning test each time, but with 17 boxes total, I don't think that's too much of a problem, especially considering that he's not likely to take any more. Like I said, 1 force 8 spirit with 3 services is pretty usable for multiple combats, especially with the right services, and the danger of not being able to possess yourself is...slim to say the least as you count as a prepared vessel and the spirit gets its force x2 +6 to possess you. My bear isn't really an example of a character I'd ever want to play, although making him a moster to fight might be interesting if I really wanted to give players a challenge. I'd probably balance things out a bit more, reduce his damage resistance pool down to 30 or so to give him first aid, make him a bird shifter for the extra drain dice, take some utility spells, but I would overall still have a rather overpowered character once combat came around.

Well, sort of.
There are a lot of variables when dealing with a possession mage and high force spirit.

Basic scenario:
Let's first assume this is a starting character using BP (so no metamagic/initiation) and a Force 8 spirit.
At this point, the starting character cannot have the spirit bound (character creation limits the Force of bound spirit to the character's Magic attribute). To bind a Force 8 spirit they will be expecting to soak a total of 6P + 10P on average which to survive pretty much requires a troll with a 9 body to survive. If the GM has spirit resist the binding with Edge the troll is pretty much dead, but let's assume that the troll survives and has this thing bound.

If the spirit does not have Counterspelling (every spirit in SR4A) an OK mage (magic 5), using Edge and overcasting, has a very good chance of hurting the spirit because the spirit will *usually not* use Edge and the possession mage *cannot* command it to use Edge or use his own Edge. An OK mage can overcast 2 Force 10 stunbolts in a single complex action and have only to soak 5P drain twice. This pretty much guarantees that the spirit goes away. A spirit with Counterspelling (most in SM) will need a better mage to take it down but the mage will still have a decent chance. Magic 6, spellcasting 6, +2 specialization, +2 mentor spirit, +2 power foci, +Edge, will be able to hit the spirit (even with 16 counterspelling dice) with a force 12 stunbolt without much difficulty. This might result in 6-9P drain on the mage but it will get rid of the spirit. Only if the spirit is also using Edge will be a toss up.

If the spirit is *not* bound it is highly likely that, along with the above situations, an Edge helped banishing test will remove enough services to send the spirit away.

In most of these scenarios the anti-spirit side should spend Edge to go first as well. If the possession mage goes first (likely with 20+ initiative) your Awakened guys will be targeted/possessed/taken out of the fight before they have a chance to do anything.

Once metamagic comes into play the fight can get easier or harder. Now the possession mage can spend Edge and cast spells, but their mental attributes and skills are lower - so it boils down to most fights (who goes first, who survives the first round, who spends Edge the wisest).

The only paper to the possession mage's rock that I can see is a social adept with Commanding Voice. You can easily get a 20+ dice pool for that particular power even a Force 8 spirit would only get 7 dice to resist. As long as the mage is a metahuman (troll) and can hear the adept the adept could say "End your spirit's services." or any other manner of things to get rid of the spirit.

Is bioware excluded from the rule that all Shifter implants must be delta grade (RC, p.87)?

Introducing Ursula Shire: shifter magician

Shifter: bear ______________ 80

Body 12 _________________ 40
Agility 1 _________________ 0
Reaction 1 ________________ 0
Strength 12 _______________ 40
Charisma 5 _______________ 40
Intuition 1 ________________ 0
Logic 1 __________________ 0
Willpower 1 ______________ 0
Edge 4 __________________ 30
Magic 5 _________________ 40

Spellcasting 4 ____________ 16
Summoning 6 ____________ 24
Specialization: guardian ____ 2
Counterspelling 4 _________ 16

Spells
Manabolt ________________ 3
Powerbolt _______________ 3
Increase willpower ________ 3
Increase reflexes __________ 3
Mind probe ______________ 3
Control thoughts __________ 3
Physical mask ____________ 3

Nuyen: 200,000 ___________ 40

Magician: voodoo _________ 15
Restricted gear ____________ 5
Restricted gear ____________ 5
Restricted gear ____________ 5

Sensitive system ___________ -15
Amnesia _________________ -10
Sensitive neural structure ____ -5
Bad rep __________________ -5

Contacts
Fixer: connection 1, loyalty 1 __________ 2
Talismonger: connection 1, loyalty 1 ____ 2

Focus bonding
Power focus 4 _____________ 4
Sustaining focus 3 __________ 3
Sustaining focus 5 __________ 5

Equipment

Power focus 4
Sustaining focus 5 (Health: Increase Willpower)
Sustaining focus 3 (Health: Increase Reflexes)

Ceramic knife
Claymore
Flashlight

Form-fitting full body armour
Securetech PPP: forearm guards, shin guards, leg & arm casings, vitals protector
SWAT armour & helmet

Commlink: Sony Emperor
OS: Redcap Nix

Low lifestyle for 1 month
Fake SIN rating 4

Ursula isn't perfect. Sn0mm1s's techniques certainly could bypass Ursula's defences. However this has reached the stage where the GM is having to custom design an enemy specifically to bring her down. Such an enemy would waste the rest of a Shadowrun team.

As far as I know, Bioware is not excluded... any augmentation must be Delta Grade...

Keep the Faith

Wow, I see people are realizing exactly what I was saying...

Patrick:
The problem w/ the FAQ is that it's old, out of date, has NOT been maintained, and directly contradicts RAW in many places. RAW which was REPUBLISHED and clarified in SR4a in many cases. The FAQ is not a product of 'the authors' but of 'an author'. Look at some of Synner's old posts... even he as line developer had some ideas which didn't make it past the 'council'. I have more experience interacting w/ battletech authors/playtesters. But one of the old guys who used to write/answer their FAQS picked up the moniker 'human magic 8-balll'. Because the rules lawyers learned they could email him a question, get a reply... if they didn't like it, they'd resend it again only slightly differently worded, and get back a wholly different reply.

So no I don't buy arguments based on the FAQ. Erasing it from the web site would be a service... and actually publishing the SR4a errata for the core rulebooks. (unlikely now w/ the troubles... but that's another topic for another thread). I remember chatting w/ Ancient on the IRC about a month back and he stated it's looking nigh impossible to get any kind of errata out then.


Shapeshift spell:
The spell does NOT allow a creature to go past their natural augmented maximums of their NATIVE form. The rule is quite clear, magic cannot augment an attribute past its limits. Keep in mind the spell has an innate limitation on how big or small of a form you're allowed go get into. (+-2 body). Look for a thread a short time ago about using shapeshift or animalform to assume a metahuman form, and people intentionally doing it to change their physical attributes.


Others:
Possession is JUST AS OBVIOUS AS MATERIALIZATION. (digital grimoire repeats what's in SR4a). It's 6-force on the perception check... so a force 6 spirit is blatantly obvious no matter who it is in. Easiest way to describe this is the possessed entity exhibits a shamanic mask or similar. So any kind of HTR should recognize either a high force or any moderately high force possessed character as a threat.

Exactly my point... force 8 spirit is not that far of a stretch. You get 2 initiations, channeling, and centering (for the inevitable drain!). As my GM has learned, I can and will pop a force 9 on the spot when the situation calls for it.

IF augmented maximums aren't kept. Then that force 8 is guaranteed +8 dice to avoid getting hit... +8 dice body to avoid damage, higher worn armor limit (up to +16 more from picking up a shield, slapping on PPP, etc.), Then IF you allow ItNW to stack (which nowhere in the rulebook does it say it does!) it's an additional 16 soak dice. IE: force 8 possession is adding +8reaction, potentially +40 dice armor & body, ON TOP OF the starting dice to avoid and soak damage. It's not a question of can it be abused, it's a question of when and how often.

And forget the minigun... recoil is first big problem (and good luck hitting in the first place w/ -dice from recoil and +dice to reaction to avoid getting hit). The second big problem is narrow bursts DON"T OVERCOME HARDENED. If anything, when dealing w/ hardened armor, you're always better off going for wide bursts to wipe out their reaction pool (every hit then goes towards beating that magic hardened armor threshhold). As others have pointed out... it doesn't matter if you have the troll or they do... possession basically means, your toys are now my toys. (sorta like playing a blue permission/control deck in magic). When you do this, they can and will have so much armor that even 10 or 12 point hits can and will get soaked down to nothing. The whole mini-gun thing is just a red herring.

Gas is another red herring... poisons are normally resisted with body... they just got an increase in body. Poisons also even w/ a speed of 'immediate' only take effect once per combat turn (not pass), and only after the end of the 4th pass.


There is NO CONTEST... possession is almost always stronger than materialization. (look at the best stat lines for materialization... just possessing a MkI security guard, will get you a +3 bod, +3 rea, +3 agi, +3str... no spirit comes w/ a stat line that good for materialization... worse if you possess something beefier... PLUS it has equipment and that equipment stacks according to the possession diehards. Lack something on their side to possess, bring something of your own, or possess a teammate. (the decker or face for example!)

The only time a possession will have more trouble is when you're facing a rigger and having to deal w/ his drones. Then the OR can be rough (and only then if you don't give players access to spirits edge. with edge, it's highly likely a force 6 will get past OR5; generally players should never have direct control of any spirit's edge only the GM should).

I heavily suggest people actually pull out the old SR3 and read what possession used to be. Up to and including the drain inflicted on the caster for having himself possessed! (not just summoning would inflict drain, but when the possession ended as well). Similarly, under the old rules, possessing only used 1 service for the entire time of possession, but when it ended all additional services were revoked and the spirit went free. There are a lot of assumptions people make based on the older rules, and don't realize that SR4 has changed a lot of the core mechanics it effects quite a bit.

Well, Falconer took you seriously, but I won't. Five of the eight core Attributes at "1"? How did she live long enough to Awaken? She was born a drooling, idiotic slug. Her father would have eaten her and denied he ever sired something so degenerate, if he hadn't been executed first for crimes against humanity.

Then how did she survive her first spell castings? Who told her to learn Increase[Willpower] first, 'cause she sure as hell didn't think of that herself.

I used to think Traveller was the only game in which you could kill a character off in chargen. You have proven me wrong.

Wow. I didn't think I had that in me.

Say whatever you like. I didn't even look at the character. But I have seen players do this.

It only takes Magic4 to get a force 8 spirit. Throw in a good skill and a focus, mentor, and it's not too hard to get 12+ dice vs 8 on the summoning test.

I'm just outspoken whenever I see anything broken in the system. Especially when others can't justify it except to fall back on 'but the book doesn't say not to' defense.


Here's another one while you're at it... skills are capped at 6 or are they? Does a force 9 spirit have 9 ranks in the skill or does it cap at 6. (local GM now stops skills at 6 to limit the effectiveness of high force summonings).

30 armor will however always protect against 7 DV if you wish to trade in the 4-1

I'd respond to him with a sniper with a modified thunderstruck rail gun. Ap 1/2 - lots, and blow his head off.

Killing any character isn't particularly difficult. As has been pointed out, the problem comes in challenging the one player without obliterating another.

But really, that's why teams have roles. You don't expect the teams face to wade into an HRT team with a claymore and catch a desperate rating 15 plastique satchel charge suicide blast. Ol Bear bait might just.

Crap, forgot that, thanks. So he wouldn't be immune to stick n shock then, you would have to choose between immunity to stun damage as a troll or regeneration as a bear.

"Well, Falconer took you seriously, but I won't. Five of the eight core Attributes at "1"? How did she live long enough to Awaken? She was born a drooling, idiotic slug. Her father would have eaten her and denied he ever sired something so degenerate, if he hadn't been executed first for crimes against humanity.

Then how did she survive her first spell castings? Who told her to learn Increase[Willpower] first, 'cause she sure as hell didn't think of that herself.

I used to think Traveller was the only game in which you could kill a character off in chargen. You have proven me wrong." - pbangarth



Perhaps you have missed the point of this. Of course I am well aware that this character is grossly unbalanced. That is the point. The negative qualities alone should ring alarm bells. Ironically, despite these problems, this character could play a role in a serious Shadowrun game. In such a game, Ursula would be severely overpowered.

Source?

Hardened Armor (p.295, SR4A): "If the modified Damage Value of an attack does not exceed the Armor rating (modified by Armor Penetration), then it bounces harmlessly off the critter"

Immunity to Normal Weapons (p.295, SR4A): "The critter gains an “Armor rating” equal to twice its Magic against that damage. This Immunity Armor is treated as “hardened” protection (see Hardened Armor above), meaning that if the Damage Value does not exceed the Armor, then the attack automatically does no damage"

High Velocity Weapons (p.26, Arsenal): "When used to fire narrow bursts, a +11 DV modifier to the attack applies" (emphasis mine).

Unless I'm missing some rule somewhere, it seems clear to me that the aforementioned High Velocity Ares Alpha firing a HV narrow burst has a modified DV of 17P with standard ammunition -- with but a single net success on the attack roll. (Speaking as a GM who has had NPC spirits routinely acefay-uckfayed by players throwing down narrow bursts, I would actually relish a rules citation that negated this tactic).

EDIT: as noted below, I've been made aware of the spectacularly Hidden In Plain Sight rule that applies.

Dev's have weighed on in it repeatedly. If the first bullet can't break through, neither can it's 15 friends.

A friend of mine pointed out the appropriate reference: "Note that this DV modifier does not apply when comparing the DV to the armor rating." (SR4A, p.153)

As an aside, would it really kill the SR writers to reference rules from time to time? NOTHING under Full Auto about this, NOTHING under Armor, NOTHING under Hardened Armor, NOTHING under vehicle armor. It's limited to 1 sentence in 1 section about 1 particular burst type.

EDIT: bad argument-- rethinking.

Burst and fully automatic weapons fire is still pretty helpful against powerful spirits and other hard targets since you can use Wide attacks to reduce their (undoubtedly high in the case of Force 6+ spirits) defense pool and score more net hits which will then stage up your damage value. It's not nearly as good as an unrestricted modified damage value to narrow bursts would have been, but it can certainly help give vehicle and drone heavy weapons the extra punch needed to ruin someone's weekend.

I think by RAW, the spirit doesn't become uncontrolled. The text in SR4A, pg. 188 states that a magician may not summon a spirit whose Force is greater than twice his magic attribute. But at the time of entering the area of background count, the summoning has already taken place. I don't know of any other part of RAW that would imply a spirit could go free. It's a nice idea though. If you're group isn't too rules-lawyery, you could work it in. But your idea has pointed out something else to me though. This is perhaps of greater significance. When a spirit is finally released from control, they don't actually need to depart - that's up to them. I've had materialisation spirits stick around before now in my game. The consequences of a possession spirit doing so are even more drastic. Wouldn't you say?

Well it's uncompensated recoil that is doubled, which has been mentioned already. Just to illustrate the example. (Btw, if people are going to start talking about Force 8 spirits it's only fair that we break out a moderately powerful Street Samurai for comparison).

Agility 8, Heavy Weapons 5 (spec. Machine Guns), Smart Link, Gyrostabalisation, Gas Vent 3 (Total recoil comp. 9 points)
Cyberware: Foot Anchors x 2 (further +2 recoil comp)

His total recoil compensation is 11 points)

So the Samurai rolls 17 dice, losing 6 dice from recoil (the original 14 penalty, minus 11 points of compesation, then doubled). With 11 dice to roll, he's doing pretty well. And that gets him the
20P damage at -1 AP.

Anyway, I'm not arguing with you about whether a possession mage can be a monster, I'm just illustrating my comment about the samurai. You started talking about who would win between the possession magician and the samurai. I'm not going to contest that point as it wasn't one I ever raised myself. Character vs. character works very poorly in Shadowrun (by design). It pretty much always comes down to planning and who attacks who. What I'm discussing is whether possession mages are handleable in a game. The comment about the samurai was merely a response to comments about how dangerous the possession mage was - so can be a well-designed samurai You don't even want to get me started on riggers.

See, that doesn't happen in my games. It's just too dangerous. Not for me - for the players! If you're summoning these in down time and binding them, then you're blowing a lot of money on this tactic. If you're doing this during a run, then you're just playing a waiting game until the point you get clobbered. There's a 17% chance of the spirit rolling 4 hits at Force 8, i.e. try this five times and you're going to get hit with 8P. And no, that doesn't mean you get away with it until the fifth time (well it's 80% you don't). And it's a shade under 10% chance that the spirit rolls 5 hits. And then you're looking at 10P drain - not a nice way to start a run. Again, that 1 in 10 runs doesn't mean you get it on the 10th run, it means that by the time you've tried this tactic five times, there's a fifty:fifty chance it's happened.

Okay. pbangarth asked for this to be a discussion of tactics, so this is all getting off-topic. But as he's getting involved himself and as you've raised this issue so much, I'll answer it. Let's take a look at the bear that was intended to illustrate how broken possession is.



Now that is a dreadful character! (No offense. ). You yourself know that it's horribly unbalanced, your point is to show how possession magic outshines others in combat and forces a GM to pull out artillery that is pitched at the possession mage's level and horribly over-powered to the rest of the team. (Correct me if I'm wrong). I don't think this character provides that. I'll list why.

Firstly, the character is awful at ranged combat. He can stand there and roar if he likes, but he's going to feel pretty silly while his friends lay waste to the opposition and he whittles away at a security guard. So that's the first thing the GM can do to challenge this player without flattening team-mates: start the battle at more than 40m away. It's the 2070's, after all. Live by the sword, die by the gun. I'll grant you that this character would be great in a D&D game, but Shadowrun isn't or shouldn't be focused on dungeons. Have people fire on him from windows, across parking lots, through fences, etc.

Secondly, the point is that the GM response has to be elevated to levels where other party members can't take it. If we're to be realistic, I think that's not the case - faced with this thing charging at them (and it will be chargring else it's useless), I'd imagine every guard would open up with everything they've got at him. It's a great moment when a player builds a min-maxed combat monster (the archetypal giant troll) and finds that all of the enemy are targetting him. When the player protests you just ask: "well what would you do?"

Thirdly, this character is much weaker when not initiating the combat themselves. For a character this powerful, you're going to expect decent opposition. A few guards with assault rifles firing bursts are going to badly hurt this character before his spirit can possess him (remember, it's a phase to instruct his spirit, a phase for the spirit to attempt possession and this character's initiative is dire when he's not possessed so he's not likely to get much of a start on the enemy). And keep in mind target number one will be the big scary voodoo dude with the gris-gris who looks like he's summoning a spirit or is starting to glow.

Fourthly, this character has weaknesses that other characters - even other magicians - don't. This is a powerful PC - he'll only be running against serious opposition. Give them an astral magician hovering out of reach. No dual natured creature can catch someone purely on the Astral so pepper him with Stun bolts. His high body and ItNW will count for nothing. A high force spirit will afford some protection but the character will still suffer. Keep in mind that until this character gets Channelling, he can't even use his own Counterspelling skill. Similarly, give him a spirit or two to fight on the astral and you'll likewise be threatening him without impacting on the rest of the group.

Fifth, this character is lighting up like Christmas on the astral plane. Every time he goes through a ward, he'll set off alarms. His team mates wont thank him for that. Of course he can deactivate the sustaining foci and recast the spells, but he can't do anything about the power focus, and Extended Masking is a long way off for this character. And it's not like this is a small tweak to fix - this character is hugely dependent on his foci. If he has to give them up to get into a place or loses them, the character becomes a big dead weight.

Sixth, this character is an absolute liability outside of combat. As I said earlier, for dungeon crawls where the GM plays nicely-nicely, the character is fine. But in a normal Shadowrun game, he can't socialise, he knows nothing, knows no-one. He just sits around and waits for something to hit.

Seventh - and I should have put this in earlier as it's a big one - this character has little sustainability. So he commands a spirit to possess him and attack a group of enemies. Fine - they run away. Honestly, if you were a security guard and a glowing bear in form-fitting body armour came charging down the hall at you, isn't that what you'd do? So great - service spent. I suppose you could command the spirit to "kill" the group of enemies, but you'd probably only make that mistake once as the spirit took you rampaging away from your group all over the compound, city or into reinforcements. . Basically, once this character hits running battles, he's in trouble. A samurai can keep pumping out bullets all day long, but this guy will burn through services rapidly. If you as GM want to challenge this player, it's easy - you just keep them under sustained pressure. This character can't take that.

And that brings us on to the risks of summoning. Force 8 has been bandied about a lot in this thread. That's absurdly high. Let's say this character tries to summon such a spirit mid-run (I keep bringing up the cost of binding materials but some insist it's fine to summon on the run). On average, this character will get (against a Guardian spirit), 6 hits against the spirit's 3 (I rounded up in both cases). Then he'll have to take the drain test. As I posted earlier, after he's cast this for the sixth time, he's likely to have been hit with 10P drain. He'll quite likely have been hit for 8P as well. His average drain resistance is, what? WIthout sustained Increase Willpower, an amazing less than 1. With Increase Willpower boosting him to WIllpower 5 (see earlier note about foci and having to recast these), a still pitiful 2 hits. So either at the start of the run or during it, he suddenly whacks off half of his condition monitor. I pity him if he ever gets the one in fifty odds of the spirit six+ hits in the middle of a fight. Basically, if the GM can think of nothing else, all he has to really do is wait and the character will have a good chance at killing himself.

And we haven't even touched on the subject of the spirit's personality. For a start, this character does not have Channelling. The spirit is fully in control (and you'd better hope when those services run out that it didn't mind you summoning it and gives you your body back). Even with Channelling, you're still subject to the spirit's whims. Basically, it's at the GM's pleasure as to how much control to give you over the character. The higher force the spirit, the more it's going to dislike being controlled by a "moron". At Logic 8, it's going to know better than the character how to go about fighting battles, etc., so why should it carry out services the PC's way?

Anyway, that's enough of a list for now. Keep in mind that my intention is not to show that this character is useless or unplayable, but simply to demonstrate that he's far from forcing the GM to obliterate other PCs just to threaten him which has been the stated objection he was to illustrate.

Basically, for all sorts of reasons, this character would do very badly in my game. Basically, because my games aren't a series of fights from room to room. And I don't simply mean that my games are combat-lite. They're probably typical. But I play it like Shadowrun, not D&D. The other players would get tired of babying this character around. Tone the character down a bit, he'd be better. As it is, he's a very fragile thing inviting destruction.

EDIT: Sorry - wrong pronoun used throughout. I am assuming from the name that Ursula is a she.

Wrong approach. If we're dealing with spirits as powerful as people have been casually talking about in this thread, then just hit them with magic or other spirits. Keep in mind that when channelling, you resist mana spells and powers with the lowest mental attributes of the pair. And close combat in the astral is no nicer than close combat on the Physical. Wolf-pack the magician with a few Force 5's and they'll learn the dangers of exposing themselves to threats the rest of the team can't help them with.

It's not bad. It can work. As you point out though, you wont routinely be using very high-force spirits. The problem then, is that your mental attributes will only be middling. It's not necessarily critical but it is something to be aware of. It would make for a nice character concept though and could make a good warrior type. The trick would be to resist the temptation to start trying to boost your spirit summoning ability in chargen until you end up with an average summoner and crap everything else. I'd recommend keeping it fairly balanced and getting the following two metamagics in order: Channelling and Ally Conjuration. Then you save all your karma for the ally spirit. I'm surprised no-one picked up on my tactic about using Ally spirits for possession mages earlier. It is THE way to get the most out of possession as it eliminates many of the major weaknesses of possession. But it doesn't give you the massive high-Force spirits and the posters who are championing the "possession is broken" idea seem obsessed with pushing everything to the maximum in their efforts to demonstrate that. It's ironic as a lower-key approach with an ally spirit makes for a much more viable and impressive character.

Actually, your mystic adept idea is quite nice. I think if I got the opportunity to play, I might try it out, although it's a long-term strategy to make it really impressive.

K.

No one seems to have mentioned it, but you're limited to the number of focii to be equal to or less than your logic attribute.

I know, I know. I just couldn't help myself.

It might be simpler to say that one could take any type of character and generate a monster which in its own, select 'domain' it rules over all others. Possession mages are not the only ones.

I like the Ally spirit idea, knasser. I will have to examine that one.

I fully concur with the magic attack from astral space tactic. That hurts no one but the dual-natured vessel.

Run away, delay, isolate, and call for backup is standard practice for security grunts. Why should it not be used against possessed teddy bears?