I was looking at getting this for my SRM character, but the last paragraph (SM pg. 55) has be worried:



Previously it says that it only cleanses an area that has a permanete source for X amount of time, this new (doesn't work) limitation seems a little harsh. I'll be playing with radom GM's, and my opportunity to use this will not come up much, but when it does I'm afraid either the author (through cheesiness) or GM will just wave off my ability to temporarly Cleanse an area.

What thinks the crowd. Am I missing anything; are there other guidelines somewhere?

GM discretion in a SRM game usually means it won't come up when the GM is a CGL Demo Team GM. Cleansing gets rids of Astral Signatures and faaast and is a gateway to Filtering. If you are in a large area of background count Filtering lets you set up a short term funnel that moves with you where Cleansing is more of a grenade-like effect.

I think cleansing is a good buy for SRM's although Centering and Shielding (and situationally Channeling/Invoking for summoner builds) are stronger choices.

Cleansing also lets your adepts and spirits fight better in an area of background count and for that nothing else will work to restore their lost dice.

Cleansing is nice becuase it lets you just wave your hand and get rid of all your evidence of spellcasting (your astral signatures).
It also lets you take Filtering, which will work on any background count, but just for you - which can be advantageous if you can stick enemies with the penalty and ignore it yourself.

What other metamagics do you have?

I'm initiate level 3, and I have Quickening, Masking, Extended Masking so far. I'm at 175 career karma, so elite level mods only.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'elite level'. Is this a missions thing?

I cant say enough good things about Centering. That and a Centering focus make spamming Armor, Barrier, Area Thought Recognition and Trid Phantasm possible.

Elite level, as in the adventures are going to be authored for players with a lot of karma. It's not going to be a "beat up those gangers b/c....". I mention this, b/c BG counts may appear more often in these types of missions.


Edit: Centering isn't needed, as a mystic adept I don't combat cast. I stab things with a weapon focus.

I am not a fan of quickening but the other 2 are awesome IMO. I like carrying a pack of focuses with me and no one seeing it. I'd go with centering next, I do not like drain. After centering I'd take filtering. As for the permanent source thing I think that is the exception not the rule, most more recent sites of mass murder etc are cleansable. I think you'd have to be at a well known site from today almost a tourist attraction of a bad event level of place for it to apply. I don't think missions usually has you in places like that, and besides occasionally a archetype is supposed to be at a disadvantage in a scenario.

Edit to add NM on the centering part. But I'd take adept centering then.

Yeah, that was my exact thought: "Well, if you're picking up grade 4, that makes Centering rather good, doesn't it?"

But if you're a -mystic- adept, then yeah, you get randomly screwed over by background count, or even a mana static spell. Cleansing's nice, then.

Then Adept Centering and do a lot of called shots.

Is there a reason you Initiated twice for something you could get from one Spirit Pact from chargen?

Huh? What spirit pact does that.

None of them.

There's a pact that lets you pick up a spirit power. There's a power available to free spirits that functions as Masking and Extended Masking--I assume that's what Neraph was referring to.

Also in case it wasn't clear from the first line of my post, you're wrong.

I just read the Free Spirits powers, and I'm not so sure which one of you is wrong. Which power are you referring to?

You mean the one that lasts for 24 houers and maybe possible can be renewed if you can bribe the spirit sufficiantly to do so.
Yeah that one definedly can be taken instead of maskin/great masking

Yes, I mean the one that you can take and the GM can take away from you if he's a dick. That one.


Aura Masking.

No, its the one you can have for more then 24h if your GM is nice and you spent somethink to bribe the spirit every 24h.

Aura masking costs 3 Power Points, so that is a 15BP quality at least. Why do you think it is so much better than initiate twice for somwhere between 18 and 29 karma?

Because I'm talking about getting a Power Pact and getting it, not playing a Free Spirit.


Yeah, and having access to a spell the spirit otherwise has no way of casting without learning itself is called bribery. No GM except the jerk-iest would actually take it away after 24 hours if the spirit is actually receiving something for it.

None but the most pushover GM ever, would let you keep a pack that lasts 24h a time for forever.

You'd have to negotiate everyday, and how long before the spirit is bored with your spell list? I personally think that only a "dick" of a player would expect to get to use this power everyday from a free spirit that may or may not needs a spell you can cast.



Aura Masking is sustained, so I'd have to walk around with a -2 dice penalty and I'm the perception guy of the group.

1) How about you got it from a Spirit who's out to feed the hungry of the world and you have Sustenance? He comes back to you begging to keep the pact going.

2) Sustaining Powers does not grant a Sustaining Penalty from spells.

EDIT:



You gain the Power, so you'd be under the rules for that Power also.

How about every spirit get's the magician quality, so after he/she/it gains 5 karma is learns Sustenance?

It's a hard-knock world out there. Spirits don't spend Karma using human intelligence, so what makes you think he'd spend it on that spell and not save up for a higher Force? Karma is hard enough to come by without all the additional costs a Spirit needs to stay alive.

The same thing that lead you to believe that a free spirit wants feed meta-humanity, and you just happen to have the spell to do it.

Subjective musings aside, from a GM stand point, you are wanting to take a cheap quality that will allow you to mimic TWO meta magics, that requires a spirit to continually grant you this power in exchange for it being able to cast one of your spells, and get it 365/24/7. Is your GM going to say, "You know... mages are underpowered, this seems both fair and reasonable in the realm of Shadow Run reality".

A good GM may grant you this one day a week, or every day for the first month or three. A dick GM will grant it to you every day, except that day you need it

So you want to convince your GM that you found the one spirit with 1 Edge and Aura masking? Let's have a look at the rules:

and the Free spirit description:

which is freelancer slang for "this stuff looked really cool when we thought about it at 3am, but by the time we were too drunk to playtest it." So it ends up like all of your ideas: pray that the GM forgot to grow a spine.

That being said, Aura Masking from an Edge 1 spirit is not Extended Masking, more like Slightly Improved Masking. It can only mask 1 extra aura and will never increase later. That will not be enough to mask the typical Power Focus and Improved Reflexes, so getting Masking with your first Initiation will bring almost the same effect for cheaper, and the Masking dice pool will increase over time. You would need a 2 Edge spirit to have a functional Extended Masking, and you can Initiate for cheaper than that. I still don't see why you consider it a must have.

Frankly, if you want to abuse the Spirit pact rules, don't take Aura masking, take Essence Drain and Regeneration For 5 BP each, of course.

I never stated anything about the actual Force of the Spirit, nor how many points I hypothetically spent on the Pact.


It's almost like you're jealous. It's almost funny because you automatically assumed I got it from a Edge 1 Spirit, when, as I stated just above your quote, I have never listed how many points should be spent on this or from what Force/Edge the spirit was.

I also enjoy your sentence fragments.

You still haven't anwered, but I'm getting used to put you back on tracks.

Force 1: barely better than Masking, and Masking can be obtained cheaper.
Force 2 and up: Initiation can be cheaper, and will get more powerful over time.

Yet you made it sound like it's a must have. So why do you consider it so good?

That's what I actually said. How is that me making it sound like a must-have?

EDIT: The board is giving me problems with my post. I'm trying to fix it.

Not cool.

You need a reason not to use Spirit Pact. This makes it sound like it is the default option for you. Why could you consider it so, if not because you think it is better? I didn't mean must-have as "any magician should have it", but as "any magician who wants some masking should have it". So why do you consider Spirit Pact / Aura Masking better than Initiation? If you don't, why in the first place did you ask for an explanation?

I consider Aura Masking a faster way to get (Improved) Masking, especially at chargen. When you can't Initiate at chargen and you need (Improved) Masking, you can Spirit Pact.

Also, the questions I ask are often supposed to make people think about the reasons they made decisions. Socrates is famous for using a similar teaching method.

*lol* Spin master. Your post, nor your future post supports this. You indicated that Aura Masking was superior and cheaper.

BTW, don't sleight of hand to "sentence fragments", spelling, or grammer during a debate. It's a cheap tactic, and is very 1990.

Made my day!

Spin master? The original intent of my post at the beginning was to ask why someone didn't choose another ability that gives the same bonuses and is easier to start with. I was wondering if there was a specific reason he chose option #1 instead of perfectly viable option #2, not obviously superior option #2.

Then the flamewars against me started.

I'd like to file a complaint against you to your superior. If you don't have a superior, regard this as a general complaint about the status of the biased moderators of the board. Your job should be to moderate, not to partake in e-teasing.

And by using the Socratic Method, you automatically set yourself up as someone talking from a position of authority and/or knowledge in relation to the person you're talking to. On a forum, between equals, that's usually called condescension.

And it's called spin when you retreat from your original position (why doesn't your level 3 initiate have the spirit pact) to another (easier to get a chargen) while trying to maintain they're the same.

And the pact in no way gives the same bonus, unless you want to be insanely cheesy.

You need to stop implying that I believe I am superior to others. I simply stated I am using a method of asking questions similar to one used by Socrates. If I knew of anyone else other than my 6th grade Math teacher and my 4th grade English teacher who used it I would have mentioned them instead specifically because I knew that other people would misinterpret what I said like you did.

Hell, even among equals they ask each other questions as to why they made a particular decision. That is all I did. Then people started arguing with me about it.


It was my understanding that he was creating a character that had 180-something karma. And for the record, a level 3 Initiate with Extended Masking is the same as having a Power Pact to get Aura Masking from a spirit with 3 Edge.

Neraphs basic assumption is that the GM has no spine and takes all the assfucking he cares to dish out.

See my signature please.

You can call it what ever you want; when you start off a conversation in that way (ie. "Justify your decision to me") you are setting yourself up in that way (because it's a teacher -> student method of speaking). You seemed genuinely surprised that you were being taken as such; I'm telling you why you were.

And yes, your sig says quite a bit about you.

Ok folks, even though Neraph thinks I'm biased, I ask all of you to calm down and stop the personal attacks, baiting and trolling. Get back on topic or don't post at all, but a continued posting of opinions will get this thread locked down for 24 hours.

Max, uncalled for.



Assuming that was your intention, the difference is that both your teachers and Socrates were in a superior position. You and the greeks who gathered around for intellectual discussion, came to those people expecting to be taught. On this forum, it reads bluntly that you are claiming one to be a mistake, and the other to be superior. Know a technique, and knowing how and when to use it are obviously two different things.

You asked...


You could have asked...


The former seems to critique, the latter shows acceptance that you could be wrong.

As for the base question of the topic, i think those non cleansable background counts are meant to be an exception rather than the norm and as such shouldn't come up too often.
AS for other metamagics, Adept centering might help on stapping the enemies dead.

Amazing how the formulation of a simple question can be so derisive. That is the same question I would ask in real life - I guess my body language and the inflection of my voice does in fact change the percieved intent of the question.

Always annoying when you realise that once again the internet failed to carry over the tone of your post, causing a major missunderstanding

Human interaction is complicated.

Back to original question: to echo what others have said, Cleansing and Filtering are fantastic buys, especially if you're a heavy spirit user. Though, Centering could potentially be superior if you're more of a heavy spellcaster.

Cleansing, b/c I'm a heavy Quickened mystic-adept. I like the idea of Adept-Centering, and doing +4 DV called shots (melee is under powered).

Sadly those 2 thinks cant be combined as they both take a free action to do.