My GM is about to start a new campaign (the last was non-shadowrun and lasted 4 years). We play most weeks for a few hours. I have played and GMed on and off for about 5 years since Shadowrun 1, and am looking forwards to playing it again.

The campaign we are to start begins in 2050, and will be fairly gritty to begin. We have 550 karma points for karmagen with attributes costing 5pts per level. We are playing people trying to get out of the Redmond barrens, without loosing our humanity. I am taken with the idea of playing a free possessing spirit, as I have been role-playing since 1983 and haven't played anything like it!

I have already browsed this forum a bit, and would appreciate the community's views on the character.

My thoughts on the free spirit are, compared to a mage that can summon and control spirits are:

* You can use your spirit powers all the time, Mages can use them whenever they want but there is monetary and sometimes physical cost to them
* You are much weaker at magic than a mage as mages can use mentor spirits, cyber/bioware, foci and can claim magical services from bound spirits. This translates into much higher die pools for mages (both drain and spellcasting), and critically mages can sustain spells without it trashing their die pools
* The Spirit powers at high force are very nice. The mage can use them too (summon and control a high force spirit), but will likely suffer high drain, and can only use them carefully.
* The spirit has immunity to normal weapons, the mage has to make do with armour, the spell armour, combat reflexes, increase attribute [reaction] and camouflage (I beleive that you cannot have more than 20die so I will stop listing nice spells sustained by foci)
* The mage has more initiative passes (increase reactions sustained by a foci or spirit is a very nice spell)
* Other Spirits are seriously dangerous to me: their attributes and skills are a lot higher

This lead to the following basis for character design:

* Maximise the number and effectiveness of spirit powers
* Get a number of low level skills, and rely on edge when it matters
* For spells, pick ones that maximise the uniqueness of the character
* Get as much dodge as possible (thats still not a lot) as immunity to normal weapons doesn't work against spirits, mages, physical-adepts

I like the idea of a lost loved one / amnesiac with flashbacks. This gives the GM lots of opportunities to provide plot hooks. It is of course insane to take flashbacks (whenever the GM wants he can disable me for D6 mins) but I think that this weakness makes the character more interesting, and I can buy the weakness off as the plot unfolds

My starting character looks like this:

Background

Former Rastafarian (inspired by character in Dark Angel "its all good") Ally Spirit who cared deeply for its mistress. Normally possesses the body of cougar called Felix. There was a fight, the ally spirit was badly damaged and was set free. I remember very little about this except for occasional flashbacks. For the last two years I have been working with a group based in the Redmond Barrens running the "CMOT" Kebab shop. There are four types of kebabs: Nutrisoy, Krill, Fungi and "Special meat of the day". I provide the special meat of the day (only guarantee is that it wasn't sentient). Rat on stick is one of our top end products, although we need to find big sticks, and its hell sticking a skewer through those armour plated rats.

Our team includes a dwarven physadept/hacker, and elven dog shaman and one other (still to be decided).

I have two main long terms goals: acquire status as a citizen with a SIN and everything, and find out what happened to my mistress.


Free Spirit
Martial arts/Manoeuvres
* Capoeira / Gymnastics dodge + 1
* Focus Will

Skills
* Spellcasting 4
* Unarmed Combat 3(claws 1)
* Perception 1(Visual)
* Assensing 1
* Astral combat 1 (Spirits)
* Outdoors group 1
* Stealth group 1
* Dodge (Ranged) 1
* Gymnastics 1

Negative Qualities
* Dayjob (The GM wants us all to take this)
* Dependent (easy)
* Lost Loved One
* Amnesia
* Flashbacks

Spirit Powers
* Concealment
* Realistic Form
* Animal Control
* Natural Weapon
* Movement or Confusion (haven't decided)
* Accident

Spirit Pact
* Friendship with the player group

Spells:
* Death touch
* Heal (me or someone I am possessing)
* Resist Pain (me or someone I am possessing)
* Mind Read (me or someone I am possessing...not for deep/dark secrets, just for surface thoughts)
* Alter memory (only someone I am possessing)
* Spirit Barrier
* Magic Fingers (so when I am possessing something without hands...)

Equipment
* Huh...equipment???

Contacts
None: I just couldn't squeeze them in. I expect to get them through play

I have a few unknown questions and assumptions about free spirits that I would appreciate feedback on. I would like to get answers to these issues before we hit them in play.
* Free spirits can provide the same services as bound spirits. Does this mean that I can buff the spell casting of our Elven Dog Shaman?
* If I possess a drone/vehicle what attributes can I buff?
* If I possess an already damaged and unconsious body:
** I am assuming that its damage track is kept separate to mine (I note that I can possess dead bodies)
** I am assuming that I take damage when it takes damage
* I assume that when I am possessing a body with a nervous system I am affected by the sideeffect of electric damage
* If the above assumption is true, When possessing a drone that shuts down because of electic damage, how should we deal with that (I assume that I would black out)
* Can I possess a bad guys weapon?, and if so can I stop it activating (unless he looks down the barrel to see whats wrong with it...)
* Can I turn off the realistic form power?
* When I possess a drone or animal how do I communicate with others? I have the friendship pact to communicate with the other players

I would appreciate feedback on my interpretation of spirits vs. mages, the build, and also on how to play and level the character.

Thanks for your reply!

Sadly free spirits are prohibited from using foci (Runner's Companion page 92 "Spirits may not bond foci"

I think this is for materialising spirits: possessing spirits need a vessel. Normally I will want to be in disguise, but I think it will be fun to occasionally start smoking: as an example possess a motor cycle and make it look like ghost rider's bike!

My main unknown though is how to handle damage. Let me give an example:

I am in a fight, and am down 2 body, 3 stun. I possess a vessel thats down 1 body, 2 stun.
During the fight that vessel takes 1 body and 1 stun
I leave the vessel and possess a second one thats down 4 body, 4 stun
How many body and stun am "I" down?

I am proposing that the way to deal with this is to have my personal body and stun, and that vessel's body as separate. Whenever the vessel looses body and stun, I loose them (so if I stay in the same vessel we are linked). However when I leave a vessel and enter a second, I don't think its body and stun matter. For example I can enter a dead body, which almost by definition has lost a lot of body, and I don't start with vast minus's on everything.

I don't think the RAW cover this (I hope I am wrong), so I am interested in other peoples thoughts.

About possession of inanimate objects: the sidebar on SM p 102 states you could increase a vehicle's Body, Armor, or Speed, since those are gross physical attributes. You're basically telekinetically manipulating the movement of the vehicle, so you don't have any access to its electronic abilities, and thus couldn't use, let alone buff, its Signal, Pilot, etc. As far as the Ghost Rider effect, the same sidebar says there's occasionally a similar effect to a shamanic mask, so as long as you keep it to a specific "theme" like smoking/glowing or a pair of illusory eyes or something. Maybe a color scheme.

You can't take Realistic Form as a posession spirit, IIRC. Mutable Form would modify your astral form, disguising you against assensing when you're not posessing a body.

The condition monitor thing I'm not sure about. Researching.

EDIT: I was wrong! Realistic Form means you appear unremarkable when joined with a vessel. And yeah, you can turn it on and off per RAW.

OK, from SM:



So given your example, you've taken 2P 3S damage, you possess an ally that's taken 1P 2S damage. While you're merged you take 1P 1S damage. So when you separate, you're at 3P 4S, the ally is at 2P 3S. You possess again (with a -4 wound penalty to your roll!) another vessel which is at 4P 4S. While you're merged you're assumed to be at 4P 4S, since that's the higher set of penalties, but if you take no further damage, you don't "take with you" that damage when you leave. So you have two CMs at a time, essentially, with both taking damage as one and the worse of the two determining penalties. Of course, since you're buffing the Body of each by your Force as you possess it, you increase survivability quite a bit, even if you're taking big penalties.

I suggest freeing up some points for a group contact of elven mages for using Friendship Pact on. Preferably ones that have a decent holding. This does two things: It does not penalize you for having some of your partymates leave/die, and it greatly increases your lifespan (for what that's worth).

EDIT: Also - it really depends on which interpretation of how to build a Free Spirit you're using to figure out how strong you'll be. It's also a good point of interest to note that while you cannot learn any skills from the Conjuring skillgroup, you can still learn Enchanting, Arcana, and Negotiations, thereby allowing you to use the Calling rules from Running Wild.

You have no positive qualities.

GET THE LUCKY QUALITY NAO.

Also Lightning Reflexes.

That is all.

Neraph's point about Calling initially strikes me as iffy for RAI (spirits calling spirits seems kind of silly) but if done right, it could be pretty interesting: a negotiation of (supposed) equals, one spirit entering into contract with another. The GM would definitely have to define calling, offering, and negotiating in somewhat different terms since it's between spirits rather than spirit and mortal, but mechanically I don't see why it couldn't work.

As for the interpretation of how to build a Free Spirit, I really hope you're making more than 400BP because otherwise you're either looking at a hideously expensive character, or a terribly broken one (if you're going by the IMO-incorrect way of setting all stats at Force for free) . However, wouldn't a Possession spirit not have its own Physical attributes, and only buy up the four Mental ones, like AIs? Maybe that would balance... Of course, how is your condition monitor determined?

EDIT: Again, I am wrong. Possession free spirits have Physical attributes which serve as the bonus added to their vessel's stats. Still, they wouldn't have to be very high to help, even all 1s and 2s improve the vessel, so that's somewhat cheaper than a Materialization spirit.

I appreciate the replys:

Firstly thanks for finding out how to deal with the damage: having a RAW answer is good.

Secondly, I realise that the stats and skills suck, but we are playing characters at about 300bp (550karma), so there aren't a lot of points left! Sadly we are not using the rules in which all attributes equal the force, instead we have to buy each attribute individually. I do think though after a couple of years of Karma we will all be a lot tougher!

I do like the idea of getting a group of mages as a contact. The friendship pact is nice as a communication hub for the players though: even though only I can talk to them, its not a bad hard to bug comms mechanism. Your point that I get (badly) burnt if they die is real, but I need a reason to hang around with those loosers...and them being my friendship pact members is very motivating.

The calling idea is very cool, and I will look into that. I don't have running wild yet, but DriveThruRpg is only a web page or two away, and its probably a good source book for lots of fun possession targets.

are all team members OK with having a free spirit magical threat as a "friend"?

Although we are starting the game, the GM has stated that we have worked as a team together for 2 years. Mostly we are running a kebab shop: but you know how it is in the Redmond Barrens; sometimes we need to do extra-curricular work.

Now one wonders where you get the food supplies when there's a spirit with posession in the mix...

<glitch> reading comprehension failure

<cackle>

Since when were free spirits magical threats?

EDIT: Or do you consider all Possession traditions magical threats?

So the kebab shop is "Cut-My-Own-Throat" (see Terry Prachett for the reference) speciality kebabs. Each day there is the "special of the day". The special is of course not from a sentient source (or so the adverts say).

How is a free spirit any more of a threat than the .03 essence away from being a cyberzombie street sam with homocidal tendencies and a penchant for ex-ex full auto shotgun runs?

Or LMG packing Flechette ammo.

Are you going to name your free spirit Dibbler?

Please do. C-M-O-T Specialty Kebabs, one Dibbler presiding over the register (or the grill, with enough ranks I hope) would greatly entertain me.

Mutable Form only affects the Materialized form. To disguise your astral form you would need Aura Masking.

/yes.

Also pbangarth, did you see what I said about Free Spirit Calling?

my Trid told me that!

I think Makki is just saying they're generally distrusted and feared, especially posession spirits, not that they are "Threat-only" like Inhabitation spirits.

Yes, I did. Seeing as I am playing a Free Spirit in my home game, I checked that out in Running Wild as soon as I read your post. There is some utility to it, but my 'spirit girl' has neither Arcana nor Enchanting at the moment, so this will have to wait either for those Skills or for a helpful contact in the future.

Trust me. You will want to have Lucky. You said you want to maximize the number and effectiveness of your spirit powers and rely on Edge where it matters skill-wise, did you not? Ok. Lucky is seriously a very good choice for that. Even if you have to get rid of most of your spells to free up enough BP/karma, it's still a better choice than those spells at such an early point in your spirit's life (cuz your drain attributes are probably gonna suck). Not only do you get an extra Edge, but you also get another point for spirit powers. And if you're so interested in having a high dodge rating, it'd be much more helpful to have Lightning Reflexes and be able to rely on an innately high Reaction (depending on what you're possessing).

EDIT: Spirit powers are the main advantage of free spirit characters anyway.

Thanks again for all the replies



I would love to take lucky. Lucky costs 40 karma and the extra point of edge would cost another 35 karma... I just cannot scrap the points. The extra power would be cool, but I would have no spells or skills. You are correct that my drain sucks: it will be around 7 or 8 die (I am hoping to get it to 8 so that I can have 2 clear wins) but a lot of the spells are F/2 minus some number. So for instance Death touch is actually easy to cast. Most of the other spells are restricted so a little cheaper than the book cost.

Thanks for the advice (also given above) for lightning reflexes: Its 30 karma and gives 2 reaction. As I progress this will be more and more cost effective. My desire for a good dodge is that spirits are superficially tough, but the moment the baddies know how to deal with them incredibly fragile (battle of wills, narrow burst, stick and shock, other spirits, spells, physical adepts...). Dodge can help a lot with this, but so can a good reactions.

you don't need to buy edge 7 from start. positive qualities exist to leave options for the long run.

HERE is a thread in which I describe a Free Spirit PC of mine in a home game, and will report on her progress. With this PC, I did go the Lucky plus EDG 7 route. It is amazing how she can turn a mediocre Skill into a first-rate Skill. Only seven times, but really, how many times in a reasonably well-thought-out run do you absolutely need a good roll? Seven points of Free Spirit Powers is nice, too.

Don't forget that by taking Psychokenesis you can turn Agility and Strength both into dump stats.

Also, you don't need Enchanting for Calling so long as your talismonger/legger can enchant your Calling supplies for you, and I think you only need 1 point of Arcana simply to do the Arcana + Logic (1) Test to Call it properly - again, your talismonger/legger can research what mats are needed for what spirit you want.

Thanks again for all the advice. There were a number of things that I learnt from this thread:

• How to deal with damage: this was worrying me as its clear that the first time I swap bodies in a fire fight its going to come up
• I had not realised how useful lightning reflexes would be: its cheaper than 2 points of reaction, increases my maximum reaction, and I basically cannot increase my reaction any other way
• Calling looks fun: I have ordered Running Wild, but haven't read it yet. I think I will hold off final design until I have read that section
• As far as lucky goes, I don't think I can afford it, although I would love it. As this is a long running game, and force is so important, I suspect I will increase my force quite a lot so I can probably pick up some more edge on the way (force caps attributes, so if force goes up I can get the edge anyway).
• I have discussed our Kebab shop more with the other players, and had a lot of fun discussing kebabs in the barrens...However I don't want to put anyone off their evening meal...so enough said

I don't think Lightning Reflexes increases the Attribute maximum. It just adds +2.

I think it goes above the natural maximum though, and spirits have few other ways to augment their attributes.

Oh, OK, I see that.

Given the section on page 92 of Runner's Companion telling us that a Free Spirit PC's "Initiative is its Intuition x 2 in astral space", I assume that a Free Spirit PC's Attributes in astral space are defined by its Mental Attributes, not its Force, as is true for normal spirits.

Is this correct?

That is a very good question. Unfortunately, I do NOT have an answer for you. I'm away from my books too.

I can see it going both ways and can see justifications for both ways too.

Anybody? This means a lot to my Free Spirit PC, as her Mental stats are 3s and a 4, but her Force is 6.

As far as I can see by RAW you get your force as mental stats while astral.

I suspect the game designers did not consider this issue, and if they had they would have said "you keep your mental stats".

I would be interested in other peoples views

IIRC PC shapeshifters use some rules differently from NPCs one (can't pin out exactly what, AFB ath the moment) in order to line them up more with less exotic PCs, so I would not be surprised that it is the same for Free Spirits.

Remember we're looking at the Companion, a book many feel rather poor on wording and playtesting, including in the alternate characters concepts section.

Well, I still stand by the "Force determines natural minimums and maximums," but if you've gone the rout you have I'd rule that you'd follow the mental stats as a normal magician and not the more broad rules designed for standard spirits.

Yes, that's the way I've been tending regarding astral stats, too.

I decided to try a Free Spirit PC for a number of reasons:

-"And now... for something completely different..."
-an experiment to see if the two streams of thought for Free PCs were as gimped or broken as people were saying
-select the allegedly gimped version and see if I am as good a player as I think I am and manage to make it a useful PC

We went with Karmagen, and the mod to that system that puts Karma into the metatype equal to the BP required in that system. So, 250 Karma out of 750 went into the selection of this type of PC. I opted to maximize her Edge, including the Lucky Quality, to 7, and this has turned out to be a very good choice. My experience with this PC so far is that she has some weaknesses (Don't they all?), but she is a perfectly viable character and carries her share of the load. My experience has kept me from 'Rule of Cool'ing her to death... so far.

One of my favourite scenes with her was having her materialize with Mutable Form into a Hellhound (female, of course) to distract three of them guarding a facility. Our pixie mage NPC buddy has a pet Hellhound, so my PC studied the pet at length, so her Aura Masking could make a credible copy of the aura of a Hellhound. Playing that was fun! When shit hit the fan and the three turned to go after her teammates escaping through the fence, I used four points of Edge in one IP, the first to go first in the pass (she is kinda slow) and then one on each of three simultaneously cast Stunbolts on the three Hellhounds. The dice were good to her. Two Hounds went down and the third wobbled seriously. The metahuman guards noticed the magic use (duh!) and turned a hail of automatic fire on her. It all bounced off, and she dematerialized to go pick up the hacker on the roof. What pursuit did come after our getaway car discovered the booby trap set by our pyromaniac, vampire mechanic.

As Karma collects, I am thinking of how to spend it, and perusal of the metamagic rules for Free Spirits uncovered a gem, which is that Free Spirits use their Edge rather than Initiate Grade for those metamagics that use Initiate Grade. With an Edge of 7, the possibilities are amazing. This will be a huge equalizer, even for the PC for whom 250 Karma was spent right off the top. For example, she has Counterspelling (combat) of 3(5), but were she to take Shielding, this would rise to 10(12) right away. Of course, a metahuman magician with a good focus could match this, if not right at the first Initiation.

My preliminary judgement is that the assessment that this version of the Free Spirit PC is 'gimped' is wrong. Assuming this judgement is true, the other system, in which Attributes rise with the Force automatically, may give too much to the PC right out of chargen.

I think that as a free spirit you have the choice of getting metamagics as a initiating magician (in which case you use your initiation grade) or you can get a much smaller number of metamagics as spirit powers (in which case you use your edge).

As I am playing a free spirit I would prefer the (much) more generous interpretation of using edge, but I suspect my GM would not support this idea.

Here's what I said in the last email to my GM before he decided to go with the Edge version:

Your comments on free spirits being gimped, and about needing to be on top of your game are I think mostly correct.

However I think that its intended that free spirits are gimped as far as numbers go.

My observations on having played one for a few weeks is that:

• Metahuman spell casters are much much better at spell casting (free spirits cannot sustain spells without suffering minus's to every action)
• Metahuman summoners can do every spirit power that a free spirit can do, many more spirit powers as well, can do them just as often / whenever they want, but find it hard to do them at force 6 or above
• Immunity to normal weapons is nice, but so is being a troll with lots of armour, and high attributes
• Being unable to leave the spirit world is at times terrifying
• There is a lot of talk on this forum about banishing being useless...I don't share that view. A mage with banishing can easily spoil your day
• Wards absolutely screw you up: Without initiation I cannot get through them without letting the creator know I am there. Even with initiation it will take me hours to stealth through (Its usually assensing + initiation grade vs (5 + ward) with a time period of 1 hour)
• You cannot benefit from tacnets or use the matrix
• Guns are the most powerful damaging effect in the game, and spirits have trouble using guns because they cannot take the guns with them when they teleport (Prehaps a good mage can give a troll physical adept with some cyberware and an assault cannon a run for their money...but I doubt it)
• You heal incredibly slowly (attributes low & first aid doesn't work)
• You can be bound by a summoner...and then...without friends to rescue you...its game over

as against which

• You can teleport. This is absolutely awesome. (A human mage can summon a spirit of man that can do whatever the mage wanted to do, much more safely, but even so...)
• You can stealth against mundanes incredibly well...I have played characters as good, and better at stealthing as this character...but normally they take a few years of play to get this good
• You can aid the mage giving them buffs that normally would require them 1000's of nuyen
• Your versatility is incredible: realistic / mutable form or possession allow you to be anywhere do anything
• As a possessing spirit with high force and high edge, I can usually take out one of the bad guys very quickly...even physically very dangerous foes protected with loads of countermagics...

So overall I think that its a good thing that free spirits are gimped: their strength and weaknesses are very different. As buffers of other characters, and as a provider of versatility they are I think unparalleled.

You don't need initiation, do you? You can just get the Aura Masking power and get two masking metamagics in one power.

Aura masking power costs 3 power points! Its really expensive. However it does work really well out of the box, as it uses edge instead of the initiation grade.

So while I didn't get the aura masking (and don't regret it as I will initiate soon), I can see the attraction for it

Others have made this point, and I don't understand it. Why would the game makers create a character type purposefully weaker than other character types? To feed egos like mine? Surely not.

Some general responses follow.

Metahuman spellcasters do indeed have the flexibility to do much of what my Free Spirit PC can do, and more, but I think it is often overlooked that their access to some of the abilities or powers in their arsenal is constrained by layers of actions/material requirements/Tests/timing that the free Spirit doesn't have to go through. My PC's spell list is pathetic. It can however, grow into the specific needs of her team.

The ward issue has already been addressed, though I should mention that the Aura Masking power, just as the Masking metamagic, requires assensing the creator of the ward before the ward can be scammed.

I have never felt Banishing to be a useless skill, and the existence of characters such as my Free Spirit PC (OK, I'm using FSPC from now on) reinforces my belief. We are currently in the middle of a run in which an opposing magician is known to exist. I am worried about him, not so much because of his spells but because my FSPC has used some Edge and is getting more vulnerable to Banishing. One hope is that the GM belongs to the "Banishing is wimpy" school. Being Bound requires being Banished, then Summoned, then Bound... so while it is a threat, again it has layers that each need success for this to happen.

Isolation from the Matrix and its ancillary technology is a pain, but actually fun to play. The Friendship Pact allows some limited communication between the FSPC and her partners, but it doesn't make up for that isolation.

My FSPC doesn't have any firearm skill at all, so wherever she goes she picks up whatever firearm the last guy she Stunbolted has, and she is as well armed as she can be.

In my estimation, her greatest asset is her mobility. It allows her to project her power to wherever it is needed very quickly, and to get herself out of trouble just as quickly. No need to summon and command... just do it. That troll is indeed a danger, but he won't be shooting at her if she materializes behind him as a fly on the wall (or a wall panel... whatever) and then hits him at his weakest point, his mental stats.


Yes, I see them as different, on a different roller-coaster curve of progression, but not gimped.

EDIT: Of course, there is also the minor issue that she is nearly unkillable. You can blow her to smithereens, but she will be back in a few days.

I wasn't aware of this. As I understand it if I take overflow damage more than willpower then catastrophe happens (i.e. I loose my force which decreases my natural maximum, which costs permanent loss to other attributes at that maximum-such as edge). The first time that happens it will cost me around 60 karma, the second time it will cost around 80 karma) In our game we started at 550 and are getting around 2 karma / big session...so that 60 karma is around 8 months real time play.

Your understanding is correct, but it doesn't cause death, but rather a reduction in Force which can, in time, be replaced. This is better than a metahuman PC who is ... dead.

In the case of my FSPC, she has Stun and Physical Monitors of 10, so taking 13P of damage disrupts her and causes the Force reduction. Stun damage doesn't do it, and disrupts her before it wraps around into Physical damage, unless she happens to have collected a total of 23 points of unresisted damage, Stun and Physical combined, in just the right combination to keep her undisrupted until the last blow.

Starting unhurt, she can drop a high explosive grenade right at her feet (in an open space, no chunky-salsa effect), dodge none of the damage, and be unhurt because of ItNW. Even if after DV modifications it gets through, she can come back from it entirely whole. Thats why I say 'nearly unkillable'. This particular example actually is similar to something mentioned (earlier in this thread, I think?) as something that happened to a FSPC who saved his buddies by basically diving on a grenade.

Nice. I need to look at grenades!