Sometimes I wonder, if people are not able to do basic calculations or if they are just to fucking lazy to do so.

Assumption:
All attributes are raised with Force.
Raising Force costs as much as raising magic.

Question: How high do I have to raise the Force of my spirit in order to get the hole package for free?

Well lets to the math.
First of all you start with force 2 and all attributes 2. This would have cost you about 90BP.
From 3 to 5 every BP in force is worth 10 BP (nine if you do not raise edge).
So:
Force 3: 80 (90) Free BPs.
Force 4: 160 (180) Free BPs.
Force 5: 240 (270) Free BPs.
This means: If you just raise your Force to 5, you would have gotten Attributes worth 320 to 360 BP for a the Cost of 250BP.

Sometimes I wonder, if people are not able to do basic calculations or if they are just to fucking lazy to do so.

Assumption:
All attributes are raised with Force.
Raising Force costs as much as raising magic.

Question: How high do I have to raise the Force of my spirit in order to get the hole package for free?

Well lets to the math.
First of all you start with force 2 and all attributes 2. This would have cost you about 90BP.
From 3 to 5 every BP in force is worth 10 BP (nine if you do not raise edge).
So:
Force 3: 80 (90) Free BPs.
Force 4: 160 (180) Free BPs.
Force 5: 240 (270) Free BPs.
This means: If you just raise your Force to 5, you would have gotten Attributes worth 320 to 360 BP for a the Cost of 250BP.

So you can't be serious with that, can you?

The advantages of being a meta-planar being still outweigh the disadvantages heavily enough. Particularly access to the Spirit Powers. Fear, movement, and Engulf are all ridiculously good.

If one were snide, one could ask the same about grammar and spelling.

Shouldn't the basic calculation here be 250 BP + 30 BP = 280 BP for raising the Force to 5?

Can be permenantly banished (must buy specific power to avoid)

If someone gets your formula, they own you.

Routine equiptment (like sense enhancing gear, weapons, communications) cannot be used if you take advantage of your primary movement advantage.

Depending on the tradition of the mage, the spirit may well know what a report is and could have been one of the team leaders on THAT report, who kicked off prior to its completion. Or atleast think it is.

@TommyTwoToes

Wich is the äuivalent to: Can only be killed by Thor shot. Well, what a disadvantage.

Well, because it is so much harder to implant a bomb in the head of a person. (Nope, it is not)

You no what a disadvantage is supposed to be? This is at best a limitation. (As a matter of fact, you are unable to make use of most visual sense enhancing gear, since you do not see AR, but thats an other point)

I'll admit that I failed to point out that creatures made of magical fire that do extra special damage to anything they touch probably don't do well with cabinets full of paper, but it's seems kind of an obvious issue.

I'll admit that I failed to point out that creatures made of magical fire that do extra special damage to anything they touch probably don't do well with cabinets full of paper, but it's seems kind of an obvious issue.

explain to me how limitations that limit you are not disadvantages?

I would assume that a PC Free Spirit would earn karma like all other pc?

Free Spirits, both NPC and PC, gain karma thorugh Spirit Pacts. All of the Spirit Pacts in Street Magic are available to a PC, through spending Power points, as well as the Friendship Pact in the sidebar, page 93, Runner's Companion. This last enables the PC Free Spirit to garner karma as do other PCs.

Friendship Pact
A Friendship Pact is an agreement in which the spirit trades its protection and assistance in exchange for a closer connection to the physical and astral planes. It allows a spirit to create a magical bond with a group of sentient people native to the physical plane. The spirit must find a number of people for the pact equal to its Force. Should the spirit’s Force ever increase, it must find another friend to add to the pact within a day of the increase.

This bond more strongly connects the spirit to the physical world. The spirit gains the ability to acquire its own Karma as a metahuman does. The spirit also gains the ability to communicate with its bonded friends mentally in images and thoughts up to the spirit’s Force x 10 meters. This communication is only between the spirit and one or more bonded friends, and not between the friends in question. The bond also strengthens the spirit’s ties to the Earth. it loses the 28-day limitation on returning from its home metaplane and may return as soon as it is fully healed.

This pact does exact a toll on the spirit. Every time a pact member dies, the spirit’s Force rating is reduced by one. Its natural maximum attributes are also reduced, which may cause the reduction of one or more attribute ratings; if a spirit’s Edge is reduced, it also loses at least one Power Point worth of critter powers. If all of the spirit’s pact friends die, its Force is reduced to zero and the spirit dissipates into the astral. To help delay this fate, a spirit may burn one of its own Edge to save a pact friend from death (p. 68, SR4). A free spirit may start the game with a Friendship Pact in place with any other eligible and willing player characters. The people participating in a Friendship Pact with the spirit do not need the Spirit Pact quality.

Copyright© 2008 WizKids Inc. All Rights Reserved. Shadowrun, Runner’s Companion, Matrix, and WK Games are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of WizKids, Inc. in the United States and/ or other countries. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the Copyright Owner, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published. Catalyst Game Labs and the Catalyst Game Labs logo are trademarks of InMediaRes Productions, LLC. Printed in Canada.
Page. 93 RC

That's not what the Friendship Pact says at all?
I read it, and I'm just not seeing that.

Hello pbangarth: I will make this reply quick, ending the evening with my little boy and wife. But will post a little more detail latter tonight.
I would say that you would run the free spirit as you would a normal PC, hard Max at creation would be force 6 which would cost 55BP for the full 6. Then the rest of your stats would be maxed at 5 across the board just for Chargen. As i see it the Free spirit has no racial Max....which means as long as you play and a gain karma you can increase your force through Initiation, then have the option of increasing your other stats as you see fit.

Force is the determining attribute for the free spirit, everything adjusts of it, but if you count each point of force as the PC generation maximum then you would have to spend 25 point to raise force 2-3, then 3-4.....and so on.

Wow, it has been a few years sense i have seen separation of family of that scale. I spent some time down range while in the service, but that was before i was married and had a child. My Wife’s family is a fair grip away being in Australia, but it makes for visiting fun times indeed

Not if you raise Force to where you want it first, in this case to 4. Then raising another Attribute, like Edge, to 3 would cost only 10 BP, not 25 BP. Your example in this post would happen only if the Force were raised by one, and then other Attributes raised, and then Force raised by one again. This might happen if Force dragged all the Attributes up with it, but your PC example above doesn't do that.

I would dare to say, that a spirit already payed for getting the maximum, because they actually started with it.

As a matter of fact I do not see, why there is a limit at all. Especially if your are able to partiallybybass it with surge.

Puplic announcement:
If you want to complain about free spirit rules:
They are about 70 BP too expensive and some powers (I am locking at you too spirit pacts) are just abusiv.

Hello, folks. Sorry I'm late.

I said what, now?

Looking over one post this is a final build that Aaron said was done "right"

That said, I am honored with inside access to some of the developers' thought processes, so maybe I can help clarify things if Synner isn't around and it doesn't lean too heavily on my NDA. =i)

This is a hotly debated topic because the section on PC free spirit characters in runners companion and the section on free spirits in Street Magic are not the most clearly written thing ever.

There's basically 2 schools of thought.

1. The free spirit PC has physical and mental stats equal to its Force, which starts at 2(which you do not pay for), and can be raised up to 6 at character creation, and further by initiation and raising of the Force stat in-game. Raising your Force stat raises all your other mental and physical stats at the same time. You need not raise each one individually.

This method results in a drastically overpowered character in all cases.


2. The free spirit PC has physical and mental stats which start at 2, you do not pay for these 2 points. The Force stat is the natural maximum for physical and mental stats, so to raise any stat, you must first raise force. You then pay for each stat separately to raise it, up to the natural maximum of Force.
This is the method supported by the community DK SR4 chargen excel spreadsheet.

This method results in an underpowered character in almost all cases. The character can still be good if it abuses the hell out of some of the spirit powers such as fear, engulf, and movement.

In either case, free spirit characters fundamentally change the game. Especially materialization free spirits, who can easily teleport themselves wherever and materialize wherever.

(for example, when I put my marriage proposal into Runner's Companion, I put it in three different places to make it more likely to survive the editing process).

If you are indeed able to clarify a few things in this case, that would be most excellent. The below post aptly sums up what is in greatest need of clarification, and what has got us all so divided in our interpretation thereof:

I know this is off topic, but:
1) Did it work?
2) If you told her another way, did she say "Yes?"

First thanks Aaron for clearing up my mistakes, it is awesome to see some support for something that has so many different views.

I do wish to say sorry for my assumption, as I am wrong i hold myself accountable.

I'm fairly certain that the correct interpretation of the rules for free spirit PCs is the latter case. I came up with that mechanic because the alternative was the NPC method, where every stat goes up with Force, but I didn't like that method for two reasons. First, it made for a very limited variation in characters: you couldn't, for example, have a very strong, very dumb spirit, and every spirit that was highly charismatic would also be highly quick and extremely clever. I figured that the rules for NPC spirits were kinda like the rules for other NPCs: not every Lone Star cop has Logic 3, for example, and not every great dragon has Reaction 11. The second reason was simply because if we used the NPC rules where everything goes up with Force, each rating point would cost 100 BP or (new rating x 50) Karma; yes, I know that Street Magic says it only costs new rating x 10 Karma, but a) that's for NPCs, and b) that was written when attributes were cheaper anyway.

To those who believe this to create underpowered characters, I can only offer two ideas. First, you could try quoting previous comments about my opinion that it should have been 85 and begging your GM to give you the extra BP. Second, you could try being creative and maximizing your fairly unique advantages.

I suppose you could also try complaining about it on Dumpshock, but that hasn't seemed to work yet. =i)

So, wait....the 'Increase Attributes Individually' interpretation is balanced for the Free Spirit race costing 85 BP?

Does that mean that the 'Increase All Attributes With Force' option is balanced for the Free Spirit race as costing 250 BP?

So, wait....the 'Increase Attributes Individually' interpretation is balanced for the Free Spirit race costing 85 BP?

Does that mean that the 'Increase All Attributes With Force' option is balanced for the Free Spirit race as costing 250 BP?