So, there's a sometimes heated discussion going on in THIS thread, and I thought I would take a shot at making a PC who does not fail the way so many say a Free Spirit PC would. I present her/him/it here for some creative, constructive comments.

This character is a prospective PC in a campaign taking place in L.A., in which the PCs will be connected to a gang named H.O.D. (Honour or Death). The other PCs are infiltration oriented, so I thought I would build a Free Spirit PC that would meld with and enhance this focus. The alternative for me to play is a Norse tradition combat mage who is a party dude. I vacillate between these two as to which I really want to play.

Story

I have to admit I have never really tried to make a Free Spirit PC. Mainly b/c we never came to a conclusion on the force stat discussion in our local group. On that topic I do feel like their should be a third way, for lack of a better expression. The low skill make nervous, but I guess that just part the build.

We did have a Norse Caster once. Possession tradition alway seem to leads to wacky hijinks. But I enjoyed the background, and with some Karma on him i'm sure it could a solid character.

The Norse tradition is Materialization, not Possession. Still a lot of fun, though.

Fake SIN, Lifestyle, Commlink.

now you own enough to exist and get paid.


ALso, you can go ahead and cross out those spirits. No summoning for you, 1/2 a mage!

Don't need lifestyle, really. No food, go home to Valhalla whenever I want ...

Then you dont really need to spend any money on gear.

I'd drop gaurd and psychokinesis, Lucky, and the extra point of edge. If youre going to suck that bad, at least counterspell for your team so they dont die while carrying you about.
//yes, I realize this is mostly snark, but it's also true.

For BP the only thing I see is that Force would = 55 BP (2+1[10BP] +1[10BP] +1[10Bp] +1[25BP]) spent and Edge=65 BP spent (2+1[10BP] +1[10BP] +1[10BP] +1[10Bp] +1[25BP])

I never thought of using Lucky quality, nice catch

The discussion in the other thread convinced me that the 25 BP for all the Attributes but Force is considered to have been spent at the beginning. See that thread for the details.

@Starmage21: While being carried about as a fly on one of the other's shoulders is a possibility, this PC has other means of travel. Counterspelling is a very useful capability. I don't see where I included in the post that no other teammate can counterspell. I value the advice, thanks.

Under Karmagen
Stats
Metahumanity [250k]

Free Spirit


Norse Tradition

Guardian, Water, Fire, Air,
Earth
Drain: WIL + CHA

Qualities [-30k]

Magician [free]
Lucky [40]
Amnesia [-20]
Computer Illiterate [-10]
Gremlins (4) [-40]


Attributes [30k]

BOD 2 + 1 = 3 [15]
AGI 2 = 2
REA 2 = 2
STR 2 = 2
CHA2 = 2
INT 2 = 2
LOG2 = 2
WIL 2 + 1 = 3 [15]


Special Attributes [215k]

ESS = 6
MAG = 6
EDG 2 + 5 = 7 [125]
Force 2 + 4 = 6 [90]

INI = 4 (2 IP) / 4 (3 IP)


Spirit Powers (7 pts.)

Sapience (*)
Astral Form (*)
Materialization (*)
Banishment Resistance (*)
Spirit Pact (*)
(Friendship)
Immunity to
Normal Weapons (*)
Aura Masking 3.0
Realistic Form 0.5
Mutable Form 0.5
Concealment 2.0
Guard 0.5
Psychokinesis 0.5


Active Skills [24k]

Perception 2 INT [8]
Assensing 1 INT [4]
Spellcasting 2 MAG [8]
Dodge 1 REA [4]

Knowledge Skills(12 pts.) Do you get free knowledge skills under karmagen?

Norse N
English 3
L.A. street gangs 1
Metaplanar Geography 2
Norse Mythology 5
Local Area Knowledge 1
(HOD territory)

Spells [10k]

Stunbolt ( C )
M (F/2)-1
Heal ( H )
M (DV)-2

Contacts [16k]
(connection/loyalty)

HOD:
gang (group) 3/5

Total 521 karma

That leaves room to make a better character. Also I do like the use of lucky.

It's not just the skills that are low - the stats are atrocious also.

Really, without Shapechange or Possession, Free Spirits under these assumed rules are simply not playable until much, much later. Oh, and I suggest Shapechange if you didn't catch that. It'll help you out a ridiculous amount in the survivability department.

I call Shenanigans on gremlins.

The free spirit cannot use the matrix, nor can he interface with most electronics.

Gremlins should just not give that many points.
It's like a Hacker taking a quality that says he's bad at casting spells.

Yes, I saw that, too. But the potential game is using BP. If I had been involved at the start of the campaign development process and thinking of a Free Spirit PC, I would have lobbied for karmagen.


The combination of Realistic Form and Mutable Form allows all that Shapechange does and much more. Not only does it allow that spell effect, but a disguise capability and a 'beneath notice' capability. She can appear to be a chair in the corporate office until needed. And with Aura Masking and Edge 7, she has a pool of 15 to keep prying astral eyes out. Even if they would think to try to look at a chair.

I would have called shenanigans, too, except this is in Los Angeles. There will be lots of opportunity for background count to force a decision as to which powers to drop at the moment. and if Guard is ever dropped, the wheels will literally fall off. I think both the GM and I would have fun with that one.

The other two are almost forced by the design of the PC. We are told the Free Spirit remembers nothing, so I as a player and she as a PC will have no access to prior knowledge even if we wanted it. Same with Computer Illiterate. She is prevented by her spirit nature from reading/understanding computer displays. I had other Negative Qualities for her at the start of the chargen process, but discussion in this thread opened up my eyes to the logic of these choices.

As far as Lucky, goes, not only does it give her an increased Edge, useful in and of itself for a PC with such small dice pools in many areas, but that Edge gives another Power point. I think a high Edge is one of the saving graces of this PC (and the whole type), who I admit has several weak points. How many times in a well executed run will it be necessary to cast a Heal or a Stunbolt? Ideally, none. A group focused on stealth and infiltration should try to avoid the necessity for these. But shit happens. So a few times in a run one needs to hit hard and end it quickly. So you bump a spellcasting pool of 8 to 15 (with exploding 6s) and deal with it. Or your Hardened Armor of 12 isn't enough, and you bump the 18 dice (-AP of the weapon) of damage resistance with 7 more dice or a reroll.

The Counterspelling mentioned earlier is an issue. I originally had her with that Skill, in fact at the best level of all her Skills. I changed it out. I'm still considering. If I dropped the Lucky, and the Edge to 6, then I would have 30 BP for Skills, and still have a damn good Edge. That could give her a Counterspelling of 6, with a specialization in Combat spells, another spell, and one more BP... into gear I guess.

Are you allowed to have an Edge of 7 with a force of 6?

Yes, with the Lucky Quality.

I wasn't sure how Lucky was worded. But you're correct. It lets you have an Edge max 1 higher than your meta-type maximum. Neat.

I'm still not sure I buy gremlins.. but if your GM thinks it'll be cool.

If he tries to drive a car - gremlins. If he tries to shoot a gun - gremlins. If he tries to order pizza for his teammates - gremlins.


We discovered in the Shapechange thread that Mutable Form/Realistic Form is not compatable in that way with Shapechange. It has to do with Mutable/Realistic working as you Materialize, and the spell effect is after the fact. You can't use those abilities on Shapechange because of the duration and other stipulations of those powers. I'll find the thread so you can read it.

I've played killer PCs a lot. I have another PC as a potential in this campaign who is a traditional mage, lots of power, spirits, the whole nine yards. At this point in my gaming life I would like to take a shot at something that is freaky, cool and vulnerable as hell, and work my ass off to keep her alive and useful. with quick thinking and careful planning, I think this PC can do a good job. Yeah, it's a challenge.

In a few days I will meet with the other players and the GM. We will talk over the PCs and figure out which will be the best mix. If I end up with the mage, I will have lots of fun, not the least of which will be talking in character with an accent not too far off the Swedish Chef. Blowing shit up. Doing the 'face mob' on an opponent with a bunch of Watcher Spirits. Summoning just the right killer spirit for the job. Second-role-ing as the groups face. Looking for every opportunity to party and get laid. And hey, if I want 'challenge', the mage-face is an Ork.

See... I flip-flop daily in who I want to play.

Shapechange Question thread. 14 pages of generally decent debate. Lots of questions are answered.

Exactly. Which is why she must keep Guard going, not only on the party as a whole, but herself in particular.
That isn't how I was proposing the powers be used. With Mutable Form, every time she materializes, she can pick any shape she wants. Realistic form keeps the toaster from exuding green mist as it sits there, and actually can make toast. Also together, they allow the PC to take the form of an actual person, and add Force to the Disguise Test pool.

How are Realistic Form and Mutable Form limited in duration?

EDIT: I will peruse the shapechange thread later, but the above question piques my interest.

They are sustained. Since they are sustained, their abilities cannot be used on a creature that is under the effects of Shapechange - the effects of the spell overwrite the effects of the spirit powers. That's what I meant by it.

If you take Shapechange, you can turn yourself into, say, a wolf, and with ~4 successes you'd have 6, 7, 7, 6 for your physical stats, greatly increasing your survivability, but your Mutable/Realistic Powers could not come into play, as those are decided when you Materialize.

EDIT: I was suggesting Shapechange for the Physical Attribute increases, not for the forms you could take. That may be where we don't seem to be thinking the same about it.

OK, I see what you are saying. Though I like the idea of getting better Attributes, in this particular case, PC in the context of a team, I suspect Shapechange is less useful than the Form powers.

Less useful for sneaking around, arguably - but far more useful for staying alive. Though, with such a low spell casting dicepool, I suppose it wouldn't make a huge difference anyway.

Is this build playable? Sure. But it's easily the narrowest character I've ever seen. You'll be the master scout, and that's pretty much it. I guess I just can't get past that a reasonably built mage could summon up a spirit that could outperform you on just about everything that you're able to do.

But hey, that's just me - I don't really understand the appeal of the Full-Immersion hacker character either, and I know there are players that love that.

You're forgetting commlinks.

Every other time my team's mage picked up her or an ally's commlink, it exploded. : D

Right, but due to the certain abilities (or inabilities, rather) of FSPCs, commlinks are basically unneccessary gear. The best you can do is use it like a cellphone, where all commands and responses are verbal.

Even then it's more of a hassle than anything.

Outperform some functions, I can see. One thing that is being missed here is that the Free Spirit PC has no service limits. And no attendant cost to increasing services or increasing duration of service availability.

Another thing is the Edge. Summoned/Bound spirits don't normally use their Edge. This PC would, and have the Edge rating as part of her pool for Aura Masking, making her as hard to unmask as a serious mage. A couple of her Powers, Aura Masking and Mutable form are not available to Summoned spirits. I think these are hugely useful. Actual play may prove me horribly wrong.

In many, certainly not all, combat situations, this PC is Immune to the damage the opposition can dish out. So instead of a scout she can be the bullet magnet. This would have to be played very carefully.

Maybe this PC type is for the player who has done the mages, the tanks and the ninjas, and is looking for something that requires a lot of finesse, not only to thrive, but to survive. If she dies one mission in, despite my best efforts, I guess I will have an answer.

Disrupted. It's hard to kill a spirit.

I'm another player in the campaign pbangarth is talking about and I was just perusing the thread out of interest when I saw the huge boost that karmagen would give the character. Just for fun I built my own character with karmagen and ended up with another 180 karma. Maybe we should talk to the GM about karmagen

Yeah, yeah.

Well starting off by paying 1/2 price for the race really helps

I bet this Free Spirit PC would be much more powerful if he only had to spend 125BP on the race too

your lack of soak and dodge dice do not reflect this. You'll get creamed by any narrow autofire (anyone would, but you lack dodge dice), SnS ammo is still the bane of all things, your combination of lack of dodge and soak dice result in APDS being fairly lethal to you as well. If an enemy mage can figure out youre low body, he can power bolt you as well.

Also, youre absolutely FOOKED if youre in the blast radius of a grenade.

Immunity to Normal Weapons is a quality most groups deal with on a daily basis. Common tricks my group uses to deal with it are listed above as dangers to you. My group uses them all (whoever gets to go first gets to use their trick) to great effect. Spirits and mages are #1 priority targets for us, so they never last til the end of the pass, much less the end of the round.

As I say, judicious use of her abilities are in order. Attempting to be a 'bullet magnet' in the presence of a gauss rifle is insane. Avoiding combat is paramount for this character. If it is unavoidable, then use of Edge is the saving grace. I should like to point out that autofire modifiers to DV do not count for comparison to modified armor value (SR4A p. 150). In other words, there are many circumstances (and determining whether the current circumstances apply as such is my job) in which she can get away with it.

Spirits and mages you can actually determine as such may not last till the end of the pass/round in your games. This PC appears mundane to the mundane perception and even to intense astral scrutiny. Whereas she can tell the other side's mage no problem, unless he too has serious Masking. In fact, in many instances (again, ones I can manipulate to her advantage) she won't even look like a target. That grating on the wall (or spider) down by the floor will still be able to cast a stunbolt, and noone will know where it comes from without some serious, detailed checking. In the middle of combat. If the mage is trying to find her, he is not blasting her teammates. How does a mage figure out a low BOD score, exactly? And if this actually can be done, is it happening instead of an attack on the Free Spirit's side?

Yup, a grenade in an enclosed space will blow her up. It will blow anyone up. In open terrain, a high explosive grenade is the most dangerous to one like her, yet even if she fails to dodge at all, and it lands at her feet (or head with an airburst link), the 10P/-2AP does not penetrate her ItNW.

SnS is a problem. Will the opposition routinely use that expensive ammunition on all targets, especially those that look mundane? I don't know.

As far as soak dice, she would have 12 Hardened armor + 6 worn armor (maybe more if she has FF, maybe less if she just materialized as a chair or something) + 3 BOD - AP -AP (because both the worn armor and the hardened armor are reduced by AP) = 21 - 2AP. That may not be a troll tank, but it isn't shabby.

So, upshot: Is she invulnerable? Hell, no. Is she automatically dead at the first encounter? Hell, no, again.

Definitely not, AP only applies once.
Not once for every armor.

I'm going by what I gleaned from a thread a while back discussing AP and ItNW. If the GM only wants to count AP once in this situation, that's fine with me.

I think that AP should only be counted once, UNLESS the AP was > the Armor Rating.

if I have -5AP and you're wearing 3 Ballistic armor on top of 4 other points of armor. Then the -5AP obliterates your 3 ballistic armor and still carries 2 points over, lowering your other armor by 2.

umm. you count the armors together first and then ably the AP, so no AP carry over.

Our group is also exploring karmagen, and suggested I make up the Free Spirit PC I built above using those rules, as modified by Ancient History's original ideas posted HERE. The primary point is that the BP cost for character type is paid as a karma cost here. So 250 karma points out of the 750 are used for Free Spirit type. This sort of parallels the idea posted earlier for spending 125 BP for the type.

I kept the EDG high because I like it, and because I wanted her Aura Masking power to be as good as it can be. I realize that that one decision kept the Physical and Mental Attributes down by about 1 point across the board. Remember this game will be in L.A. and the team will be loosely associated with a gang called H.O.D.

Here's the karmagen version:


EDIT: 5 Oct 2010 - fixed Knowledge Skills

I like this one a lot more than the BP version. He's a lot less gimped, and MIGHT be able to hold his own versus a summoned spirit.

If you got rid of one of your spells, got rid of your gear, and maybe lowered a skill or two (EDIT: and willpower) by one, would you have enough spare karma to initiate and get another Force and edge point?

DIE? you need some one to banish you permanently at most you just have to sit it out for a while.

Can't initiate at chargen unless GM says so. And karma doesn't carry over to ingame.

While true, most GM's that use karmagen allow it from what I've seen, it just should be something that gets approval before the math is set down on paper.

Unless GM says so.



RC pg. 44.

True. In my experience, to initiate at chargen with karmagen is generally allowed, however, and from how I understand RC. p. 43, it is the expected default, barring blatant problems.

OK, OK! Not "die" but disrupt. Hobnail boot tracks up and down my back already.

Our GM is not allowing initiation at chargen. I thought of keeping 5 karma back as the system allows, so that inititation could come sooner if I wanted it to.

I edited the Free Spirit's STATS in post #36 to fix the Knowledge Skills entries.. I had too many. So this PC has been accepted by the other players and the GM to play in the L.A. campaign we are starting here at home.

I said to the GM last night that I would have fun with this PC, and probably try to milk her abilities to the max, pulling every creative stunt and interpretation I could. Poor bugger... he said he was fine with that!

So, here's the first question:

This PC has both Realistic Form and Mutable Form. Under the description of Realistic Form in SM, p. 102, it says that the spirit can emulate a toaster and actually be plugged into the wall and toast bread. This means that the spirit can plug itself into the electrical system, have deadly current run through it, heat part of itself up to hundreds of degrees Celcius... and take no damage. This would appear to indicate that the spirit can somehow make at least part of itself immune to electrical and/or fire damage.

So, can a spirit that also has Mutable Form as well create some kind of 'inverted toaster' out of itself that has the immune bits on the outside, and walk through the electrical storm or firewall the opposing mage has set up? (Let's ignore for now the ability to go astral and rematerialize.)

Here's the second question:

With Mutable Form, the spirit can take any shape it wants to. Size does not appear to be a problem. So, it should be able to take the form of a fly, for example. A fly with ItNW of 12. (The fly put a hole in the fly swatter?!?) The PC also has Aura Masking, which with the spirit's current Magic, INT and EDG gives it a pool of 16 to overcome scrying eyes. To all but the most magically discerning eyes, therefore, this is a normal fly. One that should be able to pass right by guards of all sorts, both mundane and magical, metahuman and spirit. And in fact sit on the ceiling above the guards and stunbolt them one by one as they try to figure out where the spells are coming from. And if an astute guard decides that fly is a danger, he could try to shoot it. Shooting a fly off the ceiling would have an interesting modifier.

Am I missing something here?

Only works if you keep the spell force really slow, casting of a force 5 spell is a threshold of 1 to notic and force six is threshold 0.

So just multicast low force spells. It's equal more or less you take less drain and is harder to spot.

Yes, I see where this 'noticing' is different from the detection of auras that is covered by the Extended Masking effect of Aura Masking. So multiple low levels spells would be one way to circumvent that 'noticing'. Alternatively, sitting behind the guards while they are looking/shooting at her teammates would be another way. Of course, she would want to be out of any area of effect of allied indirect spells, wouldn't she?

I think the power's function is to make whatever form the spirit takes more realistic, and thus able to imitate some of the imitated object's functions. A spirit toaster can be plugged in and make toast, as you said, and a car spirit can drive around on its own (though it can't use the Grid). So yes, a toaster spirit is immune to electric power and heat insofar as it is appropriate for its functionality as a toaster. But when the amount of electricity and heat it's trying to resist is not appropriate for a toaster (like in a fire, for example) then being a toaster can't really help you. SO if you want to go through an electrical storm or fire wall unharmed, turn yourself into a highly non-conductive or fire-proof piece of armor or something. Resisting those conditions is within the function and purpose of those things.

The downsides to this, if I understand correctly, are that your character may not necessarily know what to turn into in that situation for your idea to work, being a very young ignorant spirit without a human's "common sense," and that you couldn't walk through the fiery storm of whatever yourself. I'm not aware of anything fireproof or non-conductive that can walk on its own, though I may of course be mistaken. You could have your teammates throw you through as a sentient rubber frisbee or something, I suppose...

LOL free sprites can always fly at there speed form interdependent. It's magic you see. Also though tbh a better thing to do would e just to go astral and bypass it that way. As it would be quicker thna invers tostering your self as well to change from you need to go astara then rematrialize. so you might was well go astral move and emtrailiaze on the other side.