One of my player wants to play a Free Spirit and built it already. As a gamemaster I still have some questions in dealing with it.

1) Is it correct that the only attributes the player has to pay for are Force and Edge? Everything else rises automatically with Force (natural minimum and maximum of every attribute). If this is not correct, what is the reference for that?

2) It can't interact with VR and AR. Can it read displays (no e-ink ) though? The sentence about that in the Runner's Companion is not really clear. If it can't read displays, would it be able to see for example a traffic light?
If it can't read displays I'd really need a reference for that.

3) How can it interact electronically with the players? Can it use a commlink like a phone?

4) What can I do as a gamemaster to make life a little bit harder for the Free Spirit w/out racking up astral security too much? Not everything should have a ward, patrolling spirits, an on-site magician, bacterial containment grids and guns filled with FAB now. What standard security measures would there be anyway, that are effective against Free Spirits? I do not want to torture the player, just want to make it challenging for him, too.

I'm going to assume you have a copy of Runner's Companion and Street Magic. If not, I recommended it before delving into such things.

1) No. The Spirit begins with a Force Attribute of 2 and all other attributes begin at 2 as well. Increasing the Force attribute increase the spirits natural maximum for all attributes, but he must still buy those attributes as per normal.
A Force 5 spirit would have a 2/5 base Intuition, but would have to spend 20BP to raise it's Intuition from a 2 to a 4. This is on page 92 of Runner's Companion.

2) It can't read "electronic projections on screens." A traffic light isn't as such, that's more like a flashlight than anything else. If you need a baseline, I'd a treat it like Astral Perception.

3)RAW says it can't interpret electronic projections on screens, but nothing about speakers and walkie-talkies, that sort of thing. I'd say it's your call.

4) Astral space is full of all kinds of dangers and problems. Treat it the same way you'd treat a mage who was always astrally perceiving/projecting.
Just remember this guy shelled out 250BP to be able to play a free spirit, so don't make his life too difficult.

Seems that I didn't dwell a long time in SR-waters. What does RAW stand for?

Thanks a lot for the answer, it really helps. Seems that the player has to rebuild its character because of "A free spirit’s Force rating is the natural maximum for all Physical and Mental attributes, as well as its Edge attribute— so the player must raise Force if he wishes to raise the remaining attributes." which I over/misread.

Actually, all these points are all debatable. For example, "electronic projections on screens" is a great description of a digital movie theater, it isn't a description of an SR computer display. (and this was arbitrarily added and doesn't apply to any other spirit. Why has this never been mentioned when dealing with Buttercup?) The rules for free spirits are as PCs are TERRIBLE! They are unclear, were never play tested, the point costs were just arbitrarily assigned by the developer (hugely increasing the cost Aaron suggested), and somewhat self-contradictory. The insanity with the gaining karma rules makes the entire idea pretty hopeless. Normal point gen produces really wimpy FS, karma gen produces crazy powerful FS.

Couldn't agree more. The rules seem arbitrary, but asked and answered.

RAW means Rules as Written.

I have been playing a free spirit for 6 sessions now, and am finding the following:

• I get karma the same as other players. Who cares what the RAW is
• I have very low attributes and skills (you buy the force and edge and all the other attributes too). My biggest die pool is 12, most of them are at the 5 to 10 level
• I am an awesome utility player: I can keep the players in contact far more untraceably than tech or a mind net.
• In combat I am slightly less good than a mage (I don't have a mentor spirit or foci)
• I can buff everyone else
• The mage can do anything I can, and now she is getting an ally spirit thats even more true
• The strengths and weaknesses are fun to play.
• Immunity to normal weapons is nice, but the willpower/charisma based unarmed combat rules mostly reduce it to "nice" rather than "awesome"
• I can run away really easy...but with the friendship pact...I loose big time (6 months worth of karma playing 1 game / week) should another player die

Surely you guys have played in games systems where the rules are not set in stone...go with it...its loads of fun.

Thanks. I drop the thing with the electronic projections then…bow down before the player (because of the attribute-thingy) and hope he is not too pissed

To which dev may I write a hate-mail?

That's highly debatable, and I side with the other mindset. Your argument for your interpretation never fully answers the unambiguous "force determines natural minimums and maximums" part - you're only argument against it is to say that that only applies to chargen, which the text does not state at all.

I will have to agree that the rules for FSPCs were not properly tested and are pretty awful.

Runner's Companion p. 92:





The thing with the minimums means only the 2 I guess, while the maximums means the Force-rating. It's terribly worded.

They all start at 2 at character gen. If the minimum went up as the Force increased, that would have been written there, which it isn't. When it's not there, you follow standard character gen rules.

You can't disprove a negative.

The only way you can arrive at that decision is by adding something that is not in the text.


This sentence is not refuted by the two you quoted, and in fact can be used to explain those two sentences. Their Force attribute starts at 2, and determines all of their other attributes' minimums and maximums (including Edge and Force [which counts as Magic]), so if you want to raise any of their other attributes you must raise their Force. That obviously would raise their other attributes as well.

That was basically half of the paragraph for their attributes paraphrased.


Yes, actually it does state it. Read it again, and pay close attention to the second sentence in the paragraph on Free Spirit Attributes.

If raising the Force would raise the other attributes, then the sentence would read "A free spirit’s Force rating is the rating for
all Physical and Mental attributes,"
It doesn't. It says "A free spirit’s Force rating is the natural maximum for all Physical and Mental attributes"
If it were also it's natural minimum, it would be in that sentence as well. It isn't. Therefore, one must presume by it's presence in the second sentence of the paragraph and absence in the fifth, that the minimum and maximum are not the same.
The force simply determines the spirit's natural min/max,in much the same way a meta type determines the min and max of a starting character, yet does not define it.
That's RAW.

RAI is pretty clear. If they wanted to say all your Attributes are equal to your force, they would have.


On a side note, Neraph, where in DFW do you play?

To make everything a bit clearer.

What you actually have to start with is the Friendship-pact, otherwise the character couldn't get karma by going on runs. That limits its maximum force to the number of other players in the group (and imho can include high-loyality contacts of the spirit). In addition its maximum is 6 (if there are more people in the friendship-pact), except if he initiates (needs more friends then, too)


(emphasis by me)

The force is the natural maximum rating for all attributes. So, if he wants to raise 1 attribute, he has to raise force.

In addition the force determines the natural minimums and maximums of its attributes. That would mean: Raise force from 2 to 3 and all attributes (incl. Edge, Essence and Magic) go up by 1.

Interestingly in every text passage the book seperates attributes from the force.

E.g.:



Why does it speak here about Willpower if attributes are always equal to the Force?

Everything makes sense and would streamline the character generation with the normal char generation if there wasn't this contradictionary sentence about the minimums. Therefore my guess is that it is worded not correctly because the Force minimum of 2 is the natural minimum for all attributes and the current state of the Force attribute is the natural maximum for the attribute.

Btw. once again the quote about the minimums (which is imho contradictory to the rest):

Okey doke, we'll try this again.

The spirit's force determines it's natural min and max. Determine does not mean equal. Your Reaction score determines your Initiative, but they are not the same.
Force determines a spirit's natural minimum: 2. That natural minimum is determined by the fact that it's the lowest starting Force can be.
Force also determines a spirit's natural maximum; 6 + Initiate grade.
It doesn't determine them to be the same thing at the same time.

The next sentence says that Force acts as the spirit's Magic attribute. If Force was both the minimum and maximum then this sentence would be unnecessary or it would have read Force determines the minimum and maximum Magic attribute. It also implys that a free spirit's Magic score is not the same as it's other attributes. If it's other attributes were equal to it's force(i.e. both it's minimum and maximum) then Magic would be included amounst them.
There is no doubt that the spirit's Magic is it's Force. If this were true of all other attributes, then the text would state this as well, which it does not.

The 4th sentence say "Force increases can be purchased at character generation for the same price as any attribute."
This means that free spirits can purchase attributes. If the force was both the minimum and the maximum, then spirits couldn't buy other attributes.

The 6th sentence I've covered. It says a spirit's force rating is it's natural maximum, but does not say that it is also it's natural minimum, which it would were that so.

7th sentence says that free spirits have all the same attributes as other metahuman which start at 2, your starting Force. If all attributes increased with Force, then this wouldn't be true. They would all start at your Force rating. Were the spirit's Force and every other attribute one and the same, this sentence wouldn't be here.

Lastly, a spirit's Initiative is determined by it's Intuition x 2 Astrally and it's Reaction + Intuition physically. If the spirit's Reaction and Intuition were the same, then this distinguishment would be unnecessary; it's initiative for both would be it's Force x 2. This implies that Reaction and Intuition can have different values, something that cannot be if both their maximum and minimum scores are the same and both determined by the spirit's Force.


The belief that all attributes increase as Force increases is predicated on the notion that determine means equals and only on that one sentence. The rest of the paragraph does not support that conclusion.

In light of that evidence it's pretty clear that free spirit characters have to buy Attributes just like the rest of us.

EDIT
SR4a says that characters cannot have more than one Attribute at their natural maximum. This is not negated by the test.

This can be argued for a while, we all have to agree on 1 thing, the section should have at least been proof-read better.

The bottom line is this nieksk, you are the GM. You have been given a couple of readings of the RAW, you will have to figure out the RAI for your game, not for all of SR4.

Personally, I use the "raise attributes separately" method. Makes more sense to me. Also, if I had a player that had to argue/loophole read the RAW like he was a gold-digger squirming out of a pre-nup, he's the LAST player I'd turn to for a trust issue or to give rules advice. Just me.

As for reading projections, I rule it: Computer screens=OK (at least today LCD or LED), Trid=No way (holographic projection). Com-link would be fine for audio. Heck, I'd even say a Materialized spirit can even use a modern touch screen (like electronic paper).

Does the spirit have a good motivation to be a Shadowrunner? Spirits lack most of the material needs of normal people, so running just for retirement and monthly food isn't a good motivation. And a character without proper motivation is a GM's nightmare.

As for screens.. that all sounds a bit dubious. I'd say that a materialized spirit can perceive material phenomena like light and sound, so when materialized he can view screens and use earphones without problems. However, when he's only manifesting, he might not be able to perceive such lifeless signals.

Make sure you're familiar with how Immunity to Normal Weapons works. The most commonly accepted reading at Dumpshock is that you apply all Armor Penetration effects before checking if the ItNW kicks in. So you can actually damage a spirit if you have a good AP weapon, like a taser, AP ammo, Stick-'n-Shock ammo or a monowhip. Generally, elemental damage has AP -1/2, so elemental attacks (fire, electricity are the most common) are effective against spirits.

An observation about the conversation to date. The worlds seems divided into:

• Attributes = force and free spirits are too powerful
• Attribute Max = force, and you buy them from 2 separately, and free spirits are too weak

Everyone agrees that the text is terrible, and both interpretations can be read as valid

Rather than argue about the same 2 lines of text, how about agreeing that if the force = attribute, the spirits would be too power and unplayable, but if you read it by the equally invalid method the free spirits are weak but playable.

• If you choose the first approach you are banning free spirits from your game (I think). which would be a shame... I have been roleplaying for 25 years now, and the free spirit is a new experience for me. I have played almost all the (non-munchkin) shadowrun archetypes and its nice to have a new one
• If you choose the second approach they are playable and a lot of fun

FYI electronic paper and touch screens have nothing to do with each other. (Electronic Paper on the Wikipedia) There are devices though, that use electronic paper and have touch screen-capabilities added (and get lower contrast from those…)



Yes, I know. I am a gamemaster for 15 years now I guess. Just never had a free spirit in my group, read the character generation rules several times myself and wanted another opinion that isn't biased (those of my players might be) or wanted to know if there's maybe some official ruling already out there I didn't know before (some errata, something in the FAQ that I overread etc).



I hope so. I didn't get character stories yet, for this "campaign" which is about to start. If I would play a free spirit the main motivation would probably come from the friendship pact and curiosity.

I will drop the rules regarding screens when the spirit is materialized (because as someone mentioned before it isn't a problem other spirits etc. have). So he can watch what he wants but still cannot interact with AR and VR.

And the player has to buy force (with the friendship-pact in mind if he wants to get karma the standard-way) and the other attributes separately.

250BP seems like a lot to pay, but keep in mind what you're getting;

* All Attributes starting at 2, including Edge and Magic => 100BP you probably would've spent anyway.
* Immunity to Normal Weapons at 2*Magic rating => If your Magic gets to 5+, this becomes a very powerful ability. It won't stop bosses' Alpha Strikes, but it'll cut down on "wear and tear" by mooks a lot.
* Some sort of Magician-esque abilities (Astral Sight, Assensing, "Astral Projection") => 10BP+?
* No meat body at risk; you can run away through the walls if a physical encounter is too tough => ?
* "Float in and materialize, do your thing, then dematerialize" which Magicians actually can't because they don't get Materialization => ?
* Much less need for equipment => 10-50BP?
* Presumably some spirit powers? I haven't really read up on free spirits.

Motivation is key really. Friendship and curiosity are logical choices, and can actually help bond the party together, so that's nice. But especially with exotic character types it's important that they have more backstory and concept to them than just being exotic.

I don't think having your free spirit begin with all it's Attributes at 2 makes it too weak. To me it's the only thing that makes it balanced.

While I agree with your sentiment that putting the rules in your back pocket is a good thing for story telling, that's working under the presumption that you are a cool ,fun, workable role player, which I'm sure you are.
I'm willing to bet everyone on here is the bee's knees and would be a blast to run a game with.

However, we all that that isn't always the case. If it is than any rules lawyer-ing can be ignored and a good pizza munching time can be had by all. Heck I certainly never follow all the rules to the letter in my game. But if this kid is trying to play a free spirit because he thinks he can exploit a rule to make himself a bad-ass magic user, then it helps to have some back-up if he calls you on being a "unfair" GM.
Players sometimes like to push boundaries to see what we can get away with and it's nice to have a rebuttal so they don't run off with your game.
That's all I'm trying to provide.

This is the theory to let the practice to smoother.

Also, if the kid doesn't have an answer as to motivation, I think you know what his real motivation is

Friendship Pact is terrible. The idea that your Free Spirit PC gets penalized if another player does something stupid and gets killed is pretty much a full stop for me on that pact. If I were GM, Id just allow the free spirit to gain Karma as normal and swap out Spirit Pact for something else or another spirit pact from street magic that doesn't gain it karma.

Why? Because Friendship Pact sucks, and the other methods for spirits to gain karma can be abused horrendously (I've seen people that manage 90 karma/week easily).

I'd say that IF the player can come up with a concept for the spirit that suits the campaign you want to play, THEN you should carefully rewrite the FS rules to something you and the player (and the other players) are happy with that's balanced and fun to play. Because especially that weird karma rule sounds extremely impractical.

Just go about the rule revision process in a fair and open manner. Put up each thing for discussion and write down what you agreed upon. That way you avoid unpleasant surprises and misunderstandings later on.

Edit: To reiterate. Make sure the player doesn't want to play a FS solely due to the current rules, because those rules need surgery. But if he wants to play a FS because it would be fun to play a FS, then fix the rules so that the rules work for the game you want to run.

I disagree. I think that friendship pact would be one of the ONLY consistent reasons a free spirit would shadowrun at all. Considering the fact that 90% of why shadowrunners run (Nuyen people, lets be honest) is a complete non-issue for a free spirit, what better way to balance it than give the character an absolute vested interest in the other survival of it's group. ANy other reason I've heard so far (Curiosity, Love, the coolness of the material plane) is an unstable reason at best and at worst easily abused so that the free spirit gains alot of Karma for no actual work or risk to itself.

I will agree that the wording on free spirits is crap, though.

Oh, I agree, but the Frienship Pact as it is now is just one big liability. For fluff reasons you are absolutely correct, it makes great sense, for mechanic reasons its like shooting yourself in the face.

The friendship pact is just dumb. It's completely crippling, it works better to assume that the FS can ONLY gain karma via normal experience. If you don't trust the player to play the character in a way that makes sense don't let them play. Otherwise the logical approach for a player is to ignore the friendship pact and just use one of the other pacts to gain karma. At a crazy rate.

Exactly. You basically force the spirit to be an annoying babysitter for the rest of the team which isn't always going to work out for him or force him to abuse the other ways to make karma. Thats generally a toss up between two bad choices.

That's why you start with your Friendship Pact tied to your Magical Group contact. Not only are your Friendship Pactees nice and safe, it opens the way to you joining a Magical Initiatory Group later. And that last part was inspired by me ( )

Aha, but *are* they nice and safe? No risk means you're cheating the game. Presumably, it's *meant* to be a giant liability.

In all seriousness, the spirit PC rules are utterly unplayable. Make lots of GM calls and house rules whenever necessary, in order to hold things together with spit and chewing gum. As long as people are having fun, it's okay.

True on both points. I prefer the analogy that my friend gave his Warhammer 40k Dark Eldar jet bikers - made out of paper mache and held together by hopes and dreams.

EDIT:

Closer to the FW part. More in PM's if neccessary.

If something determines something else and no formula for this is given, then the only logical way is that it determines that something as equal to it.
Also if force 2 determines minimums as 2, then logically force 3 determines it as 3 and force 4 as 4.

Also there are qualities that raises characters maximums in any given attribute, metagenetic improvement is the better one of those as it also raises the minimum.

One aspect of the Free Spirit rules that is often overlooked is that Free Spirits use Edge instead of Initiate Grade with metamagics. It is not explicitly stated so for Free Spirit PCs (FSPCs), but the note that tells us that FSPCs default to the NPC Free Spirit rules does lead us to that conclusion.

So the allegedly weak nature of the FSPC gets a huge boost as soon as Initiation starts happening. Outlined HERE is a FSPC I play, built with karmagen and 250 karma used for the 'metatype'. We too went with the version that requires building Attributes separately from Force. I gave her and Edge of 7. Costly to be sure, but this is a flexible dice pool booster that can take any of her ordinary pools and beef them up immensely. I figured, if you use Edge 7 times in a run, you are noob. Of course, I have done so, and payed for it!

After playing her a while, some of the comments above about being the team support person and the dangers of the Friendship Pact became apparent. As she is approaching enough karma to Inititate, I have studied that aspect of her improvement, and discovered the above gem.

Take the Shielding metamagic for example. She currently has Counterspelling (combat) of 3(5). Were she to take Shielding after Initiation, she would immediately bump that to 10(12). For Centering, she would get 7 extra dice for her Drain Tests. Other examples can be found. So, under some circumstances such as the use of a high Edge, the 250 point cost right up front doesn't look so bad. (BPgen worse than karmagen, though.)

That... that is insane...

Umm, did you miss the fact that the free spirit PC rules DO NOT WORK?

The basic idea isn't awful, but the implementation is. Given how different spirits and metahumans are in SR, I suspect that it would take a fair amount of playtesting to come up with a generally usable set of rules. That is, rules that don't essentially tell the GM to "make it work".

I've noticed the opinion that their rules are broken. My opinion, based on my experience so far is that the FSPC I play is neither overshadowed by her teammates nor overpowered with respect to them. I think karmagen with the mod (not sure now where it came from) that charges the BP cost in karma for the 'metatype' is the best way to go to achieve the balance I am experiencing.

The Friendship Pact she made was directed by the backstory we made in conjunction with the GM, and her Friends are mostly human and ork gangers, , so there is a limit placed on her survivability at her current level, but she is (read: I am) considering finding a longer-lived friend for the next bump of Force, which will be a long way down the karma expense list. Any elves in LA?

Even with splitting attributes from Force, Force itself is the maximum for your attributes and with the friendship-pact force is limited by the numbers of friends. Thus even Edge 7 requires raising force to 7 and then Edge to 7 (one of those requires initiation, just don't know right now, which one) - sounds like loads of Karma…

In other threads we have discussed whether free spirits use edge rather than initiate grade. pbangarth and I differ on this.

My (strong) opinion is that when you are a free spirit you can gain a (small) number of spirit powers that are also initiate powers: for example masking. These spirit powers use edge instead of initiate grade. However as well as that you can initiate like anyone else, and your initiate powers are determined by your initiate grade.

As a concrete example centering and shielding are not available as spirit powers, so you cannot spend spirit powers and get them. You have to get them as an initiate, so your initiate grade counts

No. Equals is a very special relationship (and is easy to type that determines). Many things determine how old you look: your actual age, how much stress you have experiences, genetics. Very few of them are equal

The Lucky Positive Quality allows Edge to go one beyond the Force limit.

Yes, it cost lots of karma anyway, which could have been spent on Skills, other Attributes, contacts, whatever. It's an experiment.

Seth's interpretation about where Edge is used and where Initiate Grade is used is a reasonable one, too. Our group went this way.

As pbangarth has said: Lucky quality FTW.


Now as far as the whole attributes discussion, this was addressed by Adam in a different thread some time ago. In it, he clearly stated that when he wrote the FSPC rules he meant for attributes to be raised separately from Force. This is because he felt there was a certain lack of variety in abilities with spirits - a highly charismatic spirit NPC, by RAW, is also quite hard to hit, and a very physically strong spirit is also a genius - among other reasons. His original racial price for FSPC's was something like 185 BP, which apparently was arbitrarily changed, but he still thinks that you get a very unique set of advantages that are worth the price if you know how to use them. But it does not matter, as the GM has already stated that he is going this route so all this discussion about the natural minimums thing is getting off-topic.

They work as easily as firing a bow.

Ba dum tshh.