When a spirit uses Possession or Inhabitation on a character, are the dual entity's attributes limited by the character's maximum augmented attribute values?

Yes. The dual entity's Physical attribute + Force of the spirit cannot be greater than the vessel's maximum augmented attribute. Inanimate vessels have no maximum limits.

Ok so if I play by the FAQ's rules, a kidnapped human street beggar who is inhabited by my Force 20 ally spirit can only have max bod 9..

Yet if I kill that beggar, making him an inanimate vessel corpse and use the same Force 20 ally spirit to inhabit the corpse, that same beggar will have max bod 20..

When you apply common sense to this ruling, what's the actual difference in body hardness between a living body and an inanimate corpse?

My 2 cents that part of the faq is a classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it at the same time..

There is a thread out there somewhere on the boards that features a discussion between frank trollman and synner. Both are/were authors of street magic (if I am remembering it all correctly).

Frank Trollman argued against this update in the FAQ, basically citing something similar as the exact reason why this shouldn't be done.

However, I understand the reason behind it. If you are an initiate with channeling and you somehow (somehow, cuz a force 20 spirit should eat your face) bind such a thing, +20 to your physical stats is really really really nice.

At the same time though, you should take a look at the homunculus options in street magic. Their stats are listed as F+N where N is some number the designers felt was warrented. This brings parity between Materialization and Inhabitation/Possession spirits.

The plasteel homunculus for example is

B: F+8 A: F-1 R: F-1 S: F+8 C: F I: F L: F W: F Edg: F Ess: F M: F Init: F IP 2,

and it comes with Armor 8/8, Natural Weapon Fists: DV (F+7)P, AP0. Not shabby at all and scales limitlessly with spirits force.

I am sorry .. but may I know what is the gist of your post?

The reason why I am finding this ruling particularly dubious is that say you have 2 ultra-enhanced high-level human adepts with str 9, rea 9 and bod 9..

Now one of them get possessed by a force 10 spirit.. now are you saying the possessed adept ain't gonna get stronger than the non-possessed adept?

This new faq is simply a lazy way of trying to curtail a loophole and is completely bollocks.. it goes against the spirit of the rules..

The gist is: The faq ruling is in place to prevent player abuse, and makes no sense, but thats ok, because it doesn't mean possession sucks... it just sucks when used on frail humans who cant possibly take advantage of all the power a spirit could give (as it would probably cause you to fly apart into strips of bloody meat the first time you tried to do anything). Thus you are limited by your augmented maximums because why wouldn't you be.

All this means is that specially designed vessels are better for possession than just shoving a spirit in a limited mortal body.

-edit-

Also, not to sound like a jerk, but this is one of those things thats been talked about, and talked about and talked about. Do some forum searches and you'll find several 10+ page topics about it I can guarantee.

I did find one of those threads but I am here to give my 2 cents about this ruling..

Btw humans are not that frail that they can't take advantage of all the power a spirit can give..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVLxdM233A

All I am saying is a fully enhanced adept who is channeling a high force spirit will easily win a duel over another fully enhanced adept without a channeled high force spirit..

Wait, aren't you the guy who was making outlandish claims about the feasibility of possessing multiple great dragons?

As has been pointed out in every one of those dozens of "the FAQ is wrong" threads:

The FAQ is optional, and is meant to clarify and explain, not be errata. It is not supposed to override the books. If you find a place where the FAQ contradicts or changes the rules, feel free to ignore it.

The FAQ has needed updating for YEARS. It's pretty much a joke these days.




-k

The one and the same.. but forget about the dragons for the time being..

I am just asking for a honest common-sensical analysis of a particular situation..

an adept with channeled spirit is surely stronger than another adept without a channeled spirit, isn't that right?

if that's not the case, then one of my most legendary fights.. a human adept with a channeled spirit against a shapeshifter bear is gonna be role-played all over-again..

By the books, yes.

By the FAQ, not always.

But the FAQ is not supposed to override the rules. The guy who wrote the FAQ said as much.

So, as stated, feel free to ignore the FAQ if you're the GM. If you're not the GM, find out how the GM feels.




-k

Hi Karma,

who were the guys who wrote the rules? i know they were called rob and derry but who were they? and where did they say that the faq is not supposed to override the rules?

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=31056

Second paragraph, third sentence onwards. AH is Bobby Derie.




-k

The FAQ has been a joke since long before SR4 was released, what with its propensity to directly contradict the books and make up unprecedented mechanics to handle well-defined situations.

~J

FAQ by definition is not errata

It doesnt get to override the rules no matter how some people might want it to, In places it pretty much contridicts itself and makes little to no sense. This being the case your GM should just gut instinct it.

I agree with the logic that two top of the line adepts being equal in all ways should be inbalanced by the inclusion of a spirit to posess one thats just comon sense. This being the case that part of the FAQ could be easily ignored by most people.

As has been said elsewhere, the FAQ pronouncement on this issue appears to be an attempt to mollify the fear of many that the possession tradition is overpowered. That fear, in part, is based on a usage of magic that does not take into account all of the limitations that exist for the use of magic in general, possession in particular.

In the adept example above, the first thing that should be taken into account is that it would not be a contest between two equal adepts, one beefed up by a spirit. It would be a contest between an adept and a spirit wearing his counterpart's body.

If they are meant to be mystic adepts, so that Channeling metamagic could actually apply, then a whole host of detractions come into play that would in all likelihood melt the possessed mystic before he even steps into the ring.

I think the FAQ ruling is silly, as much as the OP does. Most GMs I have played with latch onto that ruling with both hands and won't let go for anything. I wouldn't do so. There is no possessed monster of a PC that could not be handled by its own ordinary, commonplace weaknesses just as a materialization tradition magician with his buddy the spirit could be handled, without overbalancing the opposition for the rest of the players' PCs.

And how does that work out?

In order to summon a spirit of Force 20, one needs at least a Magic of 10. For a Mystic Adept, this would be 10 in the magician part of his split, aside from the adept part. Drain from this summoning would be Physical, unless we are looking at a Magic of 20. Let's not go there.

So the Mystic Adept with Magic 10 attempts to Summon a Force 20 spirit. Let's give the Mystic every benefit, so a Summoning Skill of 6 with a specialization in the particular type of spirit, so 2 more dice, plus a Force 6 Focus appropriate to the Summoning. Hell, let's give him an Aptitude in Summoning. That gives him 10 + 7 + 2 +6 = 25 dice, versus the spirit's 20 dice. This assumes that a Force 20 spirit wouldn't consider a human at half its Magic and less than half its intelligence and strength of personality as an inconvenient insect to be stepped on with the use of Edge. An Edge of 20. But the Mystic happens to have Spirit Affinity for this kind of spirit, so it doesn't squash him immediately. Chances (slightly better than 50-50) are the Mystic will get about 1 more success than the spirit, so it arrives.

Then comes the Drain. With the use of its Edge the spirit would get about 22 hits, which would give a Drain Value of 44P. Squash. Without Edge, the spirit gets about 7 hits, which translates to a Drain Value of 14P. The Mystic, who also has maxed Mental stats gets 12 dice to resist Drain. This gives him about 4 hits, so the Drain is reduced to 10P.

oh.

Wait a minute, the Mystic really wanted to use Edge on the Drain Resistance Test. Here he finally runs out of the Max-Minning, and is better off re-rolling misses. So 8 dice give him about 3 more successes. He is at 7P Drain damage. Still up and running staggering. The possession itself will be trivial with that Force of spirit and a weakened resistance on the part of the Mystic.

So after every benefit in favour of the Mystic Adept:
Magic 10... (OK, this is a minimum requirement, but come on, it cost him roughly 230-250 karma to get there after chargen)
Summoning maxed...
Aptitude in Summoning...
specialization...
massive focus...
Spirit Affinity... Edge use only on the part of the Mystic... (sort of related)
no bad luck on any of the rolls...

... the Mystic Adept is 3/4 dead.

Hmmm that is a sound theory..

However I am just gonna summon up a force 1 spirit with drain force/essence power and I am gonna drain the force/essence from the unlimited number of victims around me.

If that is too breaking for you, then I would just summon up a force 1 ally spirit and slowly build up its force with karma to level 20.

.

You can't have Force 1 spirits with Drain Essence.

Drain Essence isn't a Spirit Power.

Yeah, and at force 20, the spirit would IMHO be in control of the host body (even if it is the summoner) and the summoner would have a whole host of issues. The mage would easily get his spirit banished.--That is the down side to posession at this level.....assuming of course:

1. The need to summon a Force 20 spirit is because the opposition is equally dangerous (otherwise why kill yourself).

2. You assume that the spirit objects to be commanded by a lesser being, and will follow the commands to the letter.

3. If the spirit does by chance go free, the summoner is a deadman (see 2).

Side question, would the damage penalties on a recently deceased person apply? Say the human took 14 damage, dies and is then posessed wouldn't the spirit at a 23 body have 14P filled in already (so max damage would be 15P) and the dice pool modifier is -4. Posessing a a corpse as I recall doesn't heal its damage.

And Immunity to Drain.

The FAQ needed updating for years, & it was updated.

The FAQ is a joke because of it's numerous blatant contradictions to the Rules as Written.

Possession is not one of those contradictions.

Possession creates an attribute increase (not a replacement effect) of the Vessel through the use of Magic (paranormal spirit power), and does not provide an exception to the rules on Augmented Maximums.

This is not how it was originally intended to function. This is not how it functions under my rulings (along with a few other changes to Possession & spirits in general). It is, however, RAW.

Essence Drain is a power available to Free Spirits. But raising a Free Spirit or an Ally Spirit from low Force to Force 20 takes huge amounts of karma, and places the situation out of the reach of any reasonable campaign for years and years of play.

The zombie description on page 86 and 87 of Street Magic is a little unclear about what actual stats a recently dead body would have. The suggestion that it would be damaged as much as it took to kill the person is logical, but not borne out by the text.

In any case, the crux of the OPs complaint still stands. A piece of dead meat possessed by a spirit could be tougher than that meat had it been possessed before it died.

The biggest problem is sometimes you are going to muff the roll (40% or so of the time), and then you just explode into a red mist. It's not really a survivable tactic for any other situation that "I am going to die right now" in which case you may as well give it a shot.

Actually, no, that wasn't how it was originally intended to function. I suggest you read this thread for the authors point of view on the subject.

Wow. You are good at reading comprehension. Try again.

Muspellheimr also says it is not how it was intended. He just says the book is not contradicted by the FAQ.

/facepalm

Im Tired Yall!

I just woke up like 20 minutes ago.

Sorry Muspellheimr.

Regardless, the thread is an interesting read for anybody interested in this topic.

A) As Sabs pointed out, Energy Drain isn't a spirit power available to summonable spirits.

B) Building a ally spirit to 20 is doable, but the typical Shadowrun campaign will end before you get even a tenth of the way there.





-k

That's the biggest weakness with the ally spirit rules. Even a force 6-8 ally spirit will break the game wide open, and results in this amazingly retarded 'power cliff' effect when the mage suddenly coughs up this AWESOME power boost after hording his karma - that might never happen because most games won't go that long.

I'm looking at page 92 of the runner's companion. It has a list of free spirit powers.
Essence Drain is not one of them.

Did they add Essence Drain as a free spirit power in Street magic?

Yes, page 107 in mine.

Actually no, the max force(of spirits or spells) isn't a factor of magic based skills and as such is limited to mystic adepts full magic rating.

Edit: How exactly does essence drain help in raising spirits force over time?
Also sabs don't you mean they took it away from the list of powers availebul to PC free spirits in RC, Street magic is after all much older book.

Sigh
Dumb-Ass Developers.

I never know whether to go by the FAQ or not in these discussions.


Yeah, the Free Spirit would be an NPC.

I hadn't checked the print dates on Street Magic and Runner's Companion.

If you let your players gain an ally of a Free Spirit NPC, and you gave him access to Essence Drain.. you're an idiot GM and you get what you asked for

Especially if you give them enough karma to get the Free Spirit NPC up to force 20.

Currently it doesn't matter. A F20 spirit requires 10 Magic minimum, the advantage the MysAd has is things like Kinensics (or whatever its called) that increases skill ratings (but he still dies due to the drain).

It's magic. If you want rationalization:

A spirit possessing a living being cannot completely invest the creature with its power, as it is currently already a well of mana. A non-living/dead body, however, offers no such resistance, so the spirit can easily greatly enhance the physical characteristics.

Also, a possessed creature already has stats. A dead body would not: what is the Bod/Agi/Str of a corpse (Hint: it'd be more akin to a homonculous)?

Oh, sorry i sometimes forget that not everyone has been a shadowrunner even for whole of the 4:th edition, to me and many others it's less about checking the release dates and more about knowing that street magic was relatively old book when RC was released

Also seriously guys, could someone of you explain to me how exactly does essence drain help in raising spirits force(for more then a little while at a time) i can understand how karma drain would help, but not essence drains function in this conversation.

I've been a shadowrunner since 1989
I played SR1 and SR2, then I went and played Earthdawn for a while.
But, I never bought any of the versions not put out by FASA, until 2010.

Agree completely that nowhere in Possession is there an exemption from normal attribute maximums. No exemption means no exception.

Course, my fluff explanation is that the spirit chooses to limit it's own power while in the living vessel to not destroy its vessel and hurt itself in the process.

Correction: A piece of dead meat possessed by a spirit could be tougher than that meat had it been possessed before it died a few seconds ago.

So under the ruling of the faq where possessed living vessels cannot go over the augmented limits, the fight would go as..

a human got into fight with a troll.. human summon up a possessing force 20 spirit and get possessed.. human crossed swords with troll's sword.. but troll's str 15 overwhelm human's str 9 and troll's sword killed human..

a few seconds later.. force 20 spirit possessed human corpse again.. human corpse crossed swords with troll's sword.. human corpse str 20 overwhelm troll str 15 and human corpse cut off troll's head..

talk about karma.. heh

Except that summoning a force 20 spirit would likely kill the human in the first place, you keep glossing over that.

And you are now an expert on magic? Who are you to say that a spirit cannot completely invest a living creature with its full power and yet is able to invest the same corpse of the said living creature with its full power once the living creature is dead?

I can easily counter your theory and say that creatures which has a well of mana or essence is more compatible to integration with a living spirit just because of its mana or essence and is thus more powerful than an inanimate possessed corpse.



it would have the bod/agi/str of previous incarnation.. it is simple logic

Not if you have spirit pacts with spirits lending you magic power.

Not if you use essence drain to raise the spirit force from 1 to 20.

Not if you use karma to raise the spirit force from 1 to 20.

So a force 20 spirit increase the base values of a human. Thus 6/9 becomes 26/29. This is to reflect that a muscle augmented by cybernetics/adept powers will get even stronger if a spirit enhanced the same muscle group.

Paranormal spirit power is not magic casting.

A spirit possessing a living body is supposed to return the body in good, or at least functional shape. When it's a dead body, you don't care about bones breaking, articulations going well past their limits, or having blood flowing so fast through the veins it blows the heart valves. Maybe you could treat that as redlining. Then, if anything causes the body to die, it should disrupts its aura enough to end the possession, requiring the spirit to make a new roll (and use up another service) to possess the dead body.

What makes you think that it would increase the natural value of the human being possessed? Obviously only the augmented value is effected. I don't know where you're getting this idea that natural scores would change on the vessel.


Nope, not magic casting, by which I think you mean spell casting. Just magic. And magic applies to augmented maximums on attribute limits.

SR4A p 68, Attribute Ratings. Notice that it says MAGIC and not SPELLS, not POWERS, not just a subset but a label that encompasses ALL magical enhancement, regardless of source. Thus, all magic sources of augmentation are subject to this limit, as are cyberware, bioware, etc.


No offense, but does this even matter to your group? From what I recall your GM was entertaining the idea of letting you make great dragons into slaves to use as cannon fodder in your personal army. THAT doesn't break your concept of the game world, but that a living thing can only take so much bodily stress above it's natural limits before it no longer functions is ridiculous to you? Maybe that's fine for your table, just don't expect us all to see it that way.

I have seen spirits possess living men in real life and the same spirit possessed men achieve some miraculous feats including walking on fire and levitating and being pierced by spikes without blood shedding..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd-uylXRVec...feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxDg0RcrRVw

A spirit possessing a living body is supposed to make it stronger and more powerful.

A dead body without an existing well of mana/essence is suppose to be weaker than a living body with an existing well of mana/essence.

It is common sense and physics.

You arent seriously drawing some correlation between "possession in real life" and physics and trying to apply them to a roleplaying game are you?

I think we can safely leave out anything about 'real-life spirit possession' here. … And common sense, and physics, in the discussion of what happens when a magic spirit possesses something—facrissake.

Magic is arbitrary. Always, 100%. You can take any position and it'll be right, as long as you stick to it. So, a spirit might use a living vessel's 'power', or it might be limited by it. Either one, equally good.