So, my players are wizkids and they're having a lot of fun with spirits. Especially the possession-tradition guy, who likes to have his spirits possess things like gangers and ganger's cars and occasionally his DrivingAdept friend.

Which is fair game, really, but they're not the only one who can play at it, so I figure the gang has decided to get in bed with a wiz-gang given a blurb in Seattle 2072, the Spectres.


Why the Spectres are going along with this, I haven't decided. Probably itching to get their hands on a lot of free plant-based telesma from the Jungles when and if they help the gang put the screws to them. Possibly also they have a family connection.

I also figure that the Spectres aren't going to want to risk their own astral hides, but calling up and sending a swarm of spirits to disrupt the player's bound and called spirits in Astral space is kosher - and of course, take some zaps at anyone who's projecting. Maybe they have someone with a Possession tradition who could even kidnap the body of one of the resident mages and then hold him for ransom.


Either way, I'm going to need to give my players a kick in the ass because they can't seem to actually do the job they were hired to do - arm and train the Jungle's denizens, and instead they keep fragging with the gang, having stolen three of their vehicles (one of which was admittedly stolen by the gang from the Johnson,) and captured a lot of their men - and Palming an armed flash-bang onto the trousers back pocket of the gang's leader. (He was wearing an Actioneer suit, so he probably didn't get hurt badly, luckily for him.)


Still, what kinds of tactics can a wiz-kid gang use to frag with a bunch of guys who have a bunch of spirits at a set location without exposing their personal selves or personal astral forms to harm?

Sounds like your jungle defense scenario deteriorated a bit?

Yeah, little bit. I wanted them to focus on the physical, but they're escalating with astral shit that they can do (and the Jungle's denizens can't/won't do) too much. So instead of arming and raising a militia, they're trying to do things themselves. I reckon that means it needs to make things worse.

@ShadowDragon8685
Be careful. Astral gives you much more bang for the buck. I do not know how many magicians you have in your group, but one possession mage can make up for a company in the long run.

Why do you have to change things? Really, if they are the most effective force, let them be. The key is making them understand that they can't be everywhere at the same time. Start playing the opposition more proactively. They have a lot of territory to defend, use that against them.

Now as to the spirits:

I tend to think the PCs should have their cake, generally: They are the toughest kids on most blocks, they get to use the high-force spirits, unless they meet some BBEG, who will one-up them. One thing to be aware of is that bound spirits cost a lot of money, so they shouldn't be used in suicide missions. Summoned spirits on the other hand are limited in number.

What I would do is use spirits to sneakily attack deep within the protected area: In astral space, spirits can move past guards and walls, and attack unprotected civvies. A sneaky mage with optical binoculars can give a spirit precise information where to materialize and cause some mayhem. Spririts can also destroy crops, destroy tools, etc. That means they must now tie up some bound spirits for guard duty. Enemy F4 spirits are perfectly powerful enough for this. With maybe a fire aura they can even set fire to things.

The other option is using summoned high-force spirits to directly engage the runners in melee, especially the posession guy, since his ItNW will be useless. A minimum of F6 will probably be required, here. Use something with an elemental aura for added bang. Just take care to materialize somewhere the runners can't directly see the spirit: Materializing is a complex action which leaves the spirit vulnerable until his next action. Spirits have good init, but still should not be left out in the open like that.

The second thing is, when you have a theoretically larger force of mages, you can actually ambush or assault only with a few stunbolts from a distance. A magic 4 mage can easily use F8 stunbolts to knock out individuals, or even patrolling spirits, and then send in their own spirits. They should sneak close to the encampment with mundane means, unleash a few stunbolts, drop a materializing spirit right on top of the now unconscious people, and then pull out quickly before being detected.

Don't forget the ability to Astral Shortcut in street magic - spirits that have been somewhere can basically teleport back there.

This means that the defending spirits should have a massive tactical advantage when setting up ambushes.
Also remember that spirits have a lot of edge, and will spend it to not die. its = force.

You should probably throw an awakened Free spirit or maybe an Ally spirit in there to make things interesting.

One of my favorite tricks is to send a single spirit along with a group of mundanes, to provide counterspelling support. I find its a nice middle ground between letting mages stop all over everything, and always giving the opposition magicians too.

Throwing some other critters in there might be nice, too.

You should also consider if the area is remote enough for large scale summoning of spirits to be completely ignored by authorities/interested parties with more resources than simple gangs..

Allied free spirit? Otherwise every counterspelling attempt would eat up a service unless you'd keep up counterspelling for one target only. 'Protect the group from magic attacks' is a bit too vague for a single service.

The Wid-Kid gang might be hesitant to use it, but FAB III can be a pretty good deterrent. They'll have to keep sending their spirits back to their metaplanes to clean them up. It will also latch onto the groups foci and drain them, which means that they will have them deactivated when you ambush them later. That's if they realize what's going on. They might not. Release it near your target and strike a few hours later. Unless they have the sterilize or cure disease spells, which I don't see many runner mages having taken.

They were hired to raise a militia that would make the Jungles too much of a target for meatspace gangs to bother making serious attacks on, not to beat up gangers with enough overwhelming magical force to make the opposition start to look for magical assistance. Unless they're going to take up permanent residence in the Jungles (which I doubt,) they're not going to be there forever. The farmers wanted them to help them arm themselves, not to wipe out a gang.

So really, they're not even fulfilling the terms of their job at this point, and there's only so far that a good argument about proactivity will take them, unless they plan to wipe out every single gang and organized criminal element in Redmond to ensure the Jungles' safety. They're fixating on the one gang without addressing the larger issue, and since they want to keep escalating things, I'll escalate with them.

Since they are not just not fulfilling the contract but also harming the situation, how about simply making the jungle guys evict them?

Calling rules, I'm telling you.

Spirit Dog


This is literally just a basic free inhabitation spirit. Add in all the Powers from a Beast Spirit and have some fun, or put in a Fire Spirit to do collateral damage. At 1.5k they're relatively cheap also.

In fairness to them, they are doing some good - after this one, they've completely deprived the gang of automotive mobility and their tech, which means the gang will have to spend a few days 'jacking rides and finding a new tech.

They've also tipped their hand, though, and angered the gang, going heavy with the spirits, convincing the gang that they need to make wizkid allies to fight back. So it's a mixed bag.

It sounds like the players are playing a different (and totally better) mission than you're trying to give them. You can either punish them for that, or just roll with it. Which do you think will be more fun?

I don't see why fending them off with crappy guns would provoke a different outcome from wrecking them with magic.

Becuase, unless they hunt down every single person in the area with any criminal tendancies and kill them, things will be no better after the characters leave. Kicking the local criminals asses doesn't cut down crime. More guys just show up to fill the void. Having a militia will make them a bad target, causing the criminals to look somewhere else.

I agree with the idea of the gangs hiring some mojo. Let a couple of fire spirits loose to burn shacks and crops, then a big angry meeting with the Johnson about how they have made things worse. Like a jungle version of a Burn Notice episode.

OK, I hadn't realized that, I thought they were just supposed to help with the gang problem. Ultimately, the villagers have to call them out on their obligation, or the money stops flowing, simple as that. You don't have to escalate to do that, at least not in a way that the game world doesn't require. Escalation could also drive them to even more personal action, because they might believe the villagers couldn't possibly survive.

As long as they are aquiring more weapons for the villagers, going against the gangs should be fine, but if they simply take out gangers for the fuck of it, then the villagers should protest.

Maybe point out to them that they are weakenign their bargaining position: A truce is always best arranged, which means that if they want to persuade the gangs to give up harassing the villagers once the runners have left, it should be clear that it's not just the runners posing a threat. Also, if it becomes a matter of pride for the gangs to wipe out these threats, then the situation is even further aggravated. You are right that they should very quickly proceed with training the villagers and then start negotiating. I'm just not sure about the method to achieve this.

@Bearclaw
The Point is, they they can again only counter it with mojo. To be more precise spirits guarding the shacks or Wards around the shacks. Meaning you will only push them deeper into solving it with magic.

Sometimes you should think about what your response looks like out of a player perspective.
And the gangs bringing the magical heat makes it very stupid to step away from magic... (Which will be the only counter)

Bearclaw, I meant guns-vs.-spirits, not defense-vs.-assassination. The latter was covered at length in the last thread.

It seems like using spirits to beat up the gangs (and obviously take their vehicles and weapons!) is a perfect solution. Vastly better than handmaking bows and arrows, or setting up a whole weapon facility.

I'd agree that it would probably be best to have the customer push them towards a longer-term solution. Possibly after the gang starts to escalate.

The players will have to get back to their own lives at some point, and trying to defend this place at a moment's notice all of the time will make that impossible.

Or someone needs to call Stan Lee...

I was actually thinking of having the gang find some mortars and shell the jungles in retaliation for the runner's attacks - the gang is huddled up in a Colt firearms manufacturing facility (toxic castle) that went dark in the chaos of '66 with a shipment ready but not sent out, which is how the gang are getting their guns.

Thing is, if I do that, they Possession guy will probably just murder each and every one of the gangers by calling up spirits to possess gang members and kill their friends or something.

But then, maybe that's what's gonna happen anyway. Maybe I oughta just give them a reason to do it so they can just loot the factory, hand the guns out to the Jungles' denizens and find someone who can Instruct the local militia in skills (and instruct them in how to not line up shoulder-to-shoulder and get shot down like chumps.)

*sigh* I really should have pushed them towards a lower-magic, higher-emphasized technology vision of Shadowrun. I just can't really cope with all the advanced magic skills the players I have are throwing around. All of my run ideas are meat or matrix, too. I just don't really 'get' the magic in Shadowrun that well.



Yeah. I was actually going to make this kind of a long-term thing, though with less emphasis on the trouble: like, they'd basically have an arrangement wherein they do security consultation, check up on defenses every week or two and whatnot, and in return the Jungle's denizens give them food.

Yeah, allowing magicrun was the first mistake, but you can't do anything about that now. I agree: have the farmers beg them to quit it. As I said, though, killing gangers and stealing their guns seems like a great transition. It solves the problem, in a realistic way, and it doesn't involve the GM saying 'you guys are playing wrong'.

Or you could just pull a "What's this? Haven Lily's are in bloom in the plastic jungle this week? Wow, I guess that means there's background count everywhere for you guys and you probably shouldn't go around tearing up the environment to get rid of them, the farmers don't like that sort of thing."

Of course, your players will hate you.

Hehe. Would it even matter? They're not fighting there, they're attacking the gangs.

It may solve the problem in the short-term, but just annihilating the gang (or otherwise doing a lot of magic to scare them) is probably going to draw an extra response.


Anyway, are there any tricks a magician can use to frag over spirits at range, any kind of spirit which is especially good at doing in other spirits? I mean, without going Bug or Toxic or Blood or something like that?

Yeah, have your enemy mage summon a bunch of watcher spirits. Then send them to attack the PC's spirits every thirty seconds or so. Each separate attack should burn one of the spirits services (combat is explicitly listed as a service, so your PC's can't argue that one). If the watcher spirits are just the one hour kind, your magician should be able to soak the drain easily to keep doing this almost indefinitely. The PC's having to summon those F6 spirits again are going to quickly pile up drain even if they're just a box or two at a time. Make sure your mage has a way to stay hidden while doing this.

ShadowDragon, I specifically addressed the long term: steal guns.

You should also remember that spirits can be targeted by mental manipulation and going against their Willpower is often easier than targeting them with other things. As soon as they're out of sight of their magician (so no counterspelling), control actions or control thoughts on them and make them stop what ever they're doing (use up a service) and then send them to the metaplanes. This breaks the link to the spirit with the summoner, so they think that their spirit is disrupted and they can't communicate with it right away to send it after you again. It's not actually disrupted though. So if it's an unbound spirit they can't summon another one. Depending on how you rule sustaining manipulation spells when the target is no longer in LOS, this could mean denying the caster a spirit until the Spirit eventually overcomes the control. Alternately, have the spirit turn and blast the mage and the rest of the team.

Umm, it's only a service if they have to attack. Any spirit will defend themselves on their own. Although... on patrol they will of course use up services. This is a tricky one, though.

I would tell spirits to just ignore watchers. It's not like they can do any serious damage - generally a standard non-dodge defense will be enough. The watcher attack pack doesn't work too well anymore in SR4, unless I'm mistaken.

I don't think so. 'attack those guys' and 'defend these guys' are roughly equivalent.
The spirit will complete its order to the best of its abilities at its own discretion, unless you burn another service to change exactly how its doing it.

It doesn't have to be a free spirit - Any ally spirit, free spirit, or spirit with magical guard can do this.

Just thought of another idea. Divide and conquer. Spread confusion. Use the concealment power on half of runners in the middle of a combat situation and then have the spirit materialize with the concealed runners between it and the rest of the team (or use an illusion). As written, they can't resist receiving the benefit of concealment. Suddenly half your team vanishes and a spirit appears where they were, at least the first time you're going to start shooting the spirit and probably hit your teammates instead. It's hard to communicate and coordinate an attack if people keep suddenly disappearing. Enhance senses coupled with flashbangs (I can't remember if there are actual mechanics for how enhanced senses deal with those types of effects).

I'm sure your players are already possessing and wreaking havoc on the enemy with their spirits, get creative in your countering.

Yeah, it does get a bit iffy if the spirits are not actually fighting. 9-12 attacks (from 3-4 watcher spirits) a round at 2 dice each probably starts to get through even if it's not much damage and the more powerful spirit is going to have to spend a lot of time dodging. It's like a swarm of five year olds. Alternately, if the spirits are completely ignoring your watchers and just dodging, you suddenly have a spy or an irritating little guy that the mage will have to handle himself.

That's actually sort of nifty, but there is no completely rules-legal way of doing it - friendly fire only works if you're actually shooting at your friends in SR. Random bullets work - at best - as suppressive fire, if at all. You would have to use a powerful illusion, trid phantasm or something, and completely super-impose a hostile image onto them.

Like you are thinking, the gangers can tap the Spectres or whatever magical resources they can to counter with magic.

Or, the gangers could go guerilla, short attacks intended to do some damage to the farm and demoralize the farmers, then bug out before the PCs and their spirit army arrive on the scene. They could attack two places at once, one to draw the PCs and their spirit allies to one part of the farm, and a smaller force to go and make (burn?) hay while the runners engage their main force (perhaps with some magical support from the Spectres).

A few incidents like that, and the farm elders might start to remind the players of their main task, to arm and train them to defend themselves ...

???

If this were true, how does the magician call the spirit when it is not on active duty?

well, thorya's ideas are not RAW here ... if i order a spirit to patrol an area and engage all "targets", it uses up 1 (or 2) services (per sunset/sunrise) - doesen't matter how much targets they fight ...

Sprite/summoner mental link. See Standby for details. Possibly more detail in street magic.

SR4a P. 186

Spirit-Summo ner Link
A telepathic link exists between a spirit and its summoner at all times.
This allows the spirit to communicate with its summoner from astral
space without revealing itself. This link also allows communication
over a distance—though it does not extend to the metaplanes. For this
reason, a summoner will know when a spirit she has summoned has
been disrupted, as she will feel the loss of the mental link.

It depends upon how you interpret the rules and that's up to the GM. It's true that the number of targets does not matter in terms of using a service. I was suggesting that you have multiple separate combats. To me it would seem that each time it has to engage targets would be a separate services. Some of it is also a matter of how the magician treats the spirit and how the spirit chooses to interpret what is and is not a service. Since, if you've pissed a spirit off they can go very literal. For example, patrolling the area and destroying any thing that the farmers have been shooting at for practice as engaging all "targets". Otherwise you can get lots of services with vague enough descriptions of what you want. Such as, "Do anything that I write on this paper." It's just one task. Do what is written on the paper. If the paper is a list of instructions towards one goal that's appropriate for a service that would be fine, but if it's a list like, Use Concealment on me, Use Guard on me, Find the gangers I'm after, Kill them all, Gather up some hookers and blow for me, and then patrol the area and engage anyone hostile to me. It's not going to fly as a service, even if all those powers are technically being used as part of one service.

The list example simply isn't one service, technically or not. That's wishing for more wishes, or just saying 'do whatever I say'. 'Defend this person' typically is one, even if it's all day.

I agree it's not one service. I was exaggerating because I think that a lot of things are really 'do whatever I say' services. I have always felt like Combat being explicitly listed as a service meant that it could not be lumped as a part of a greater service, at least not multiple combats. Though I can see how other people would read it differently, and like most spirit things, it's up to the GM.

How about the vague, "allow us to finish this Job safely?" It might entail all the things on the list. Well, except the hookers and blow. But it's not a service I would allow.

I feel like most people forget that spirits are NPCs and constantly being ordered into combat should get you a bad reputation with them. Which leaves it open for the GM to start interpreting services liberally. Your spirits engage the enemy, in a spirited conversation about the ethics of slavery (pun intended). Your spirit conceals you, with a blanket over your head. Obviously, this should not be the first step, but if players are abusing spirits for everything, it should start to slip towards this.

Defend how, from what? Too vague by far.
Person gets a slap on the back and spirit attacks the 'melee attacker'? Person gets a hug and spirit attacks the 'strangler'.

Taking things even further:
Person washes his hands and your fire spirit drags him away to prevent him from harming himself?
Person draws a weapon and your spirit takes it from him because it makes him more vulnerable to accidents?

Not at all. That's a totally standard service. You're suggesting monkey's-paw-style intentional mistakes; GM abuse.

There is indeed a continuum of vagueness, with some very iffy options… but 'defend this person' isn't one of them. Wishing for more wishes is never okay, and neither is monkey's paw.

All of these killings and whatnot should definately be creating some Backround Count, and that will hamper the magician somewhat.

Yes, it is obvious that you can take things to extremes when you "Interpret" a Service. Most of the time, that is a dick move, unless the summoner deserves such treatment.

Even if the summoner deserves it, these are cases of the spirit *intentionally* misinterpreting (which may not be allowable, anyway). The spirit mystically owes services, and the spirit certainly knows the intent of what the summoner asked (to assume otherwise requires 'dog brain' tests for all spirits at all times). Personally, I think something like that would be interesting, but I know that no one plays it that way. So, any reversion to that is 100% GM-screwing. If the summoner is 'mistreating' spirits (whatever that means), let them resist with Edge; don't suddenly break the magic system.

Agreed. I do not cotton to intentional misrepresentation of a Spirit's owed services. It irritates me no end.

Well, the way services are handled is quite in the dark.

The question is, what can be ONE service?
I would like, that one service has some strict limitations. Like 12 hours, only in one square mile or something like that.
So it would be possible to assume what services can be asked and which can't.

It burns down to the question: "Is do what I tell you one service?"

The question is, how strict are the rules on such formulations.
Guard position X is also a formulation demanding the spirit to defend against every attacker... Which would be strictly speaking several services.

I'm not advocating intentional misinterpretatoin at all. I'm just kind of sick of people treating spirit as persons, while they are in fact as alien as anything can be.
Please be a little bit more creative than just treating them as regular people without bodies.

You might read up a bit on your Asimov and see what he did with his robot laws. IMO there are some nice similarities that could be applied.

If spirits were treated a bit more like things with strange motivations AND perceptions, they would automatically be more balanced.

I agree, but I'm saying doing that requires a *complete* overhaul. Make dog-brain checks for everything, not just when the GM feels dickish.

I'm a proponent of the 'spirits use astral sense everywhere' house rule, as well.