Personnally I find spirits very usefull, both nature spirits and elementals. Both I'm wondering how others are using them?

Elementals I primeraly use for their ability to materilize all kind of fun places (Nothing like a waterelemental in a generator or a fire elemental in petrol tank)

Nature spirits I use for conceil, Accident and confusion

Hope to gets some good ideas

I've used Heart spirits to punch in the numeric code to locked doors. IIRC, we rolled half the spirits force against the rating of the numlock, because, although the spirit is familiar with that operation, he might only see it as an abstract action and not know the actual numbers.

Air elems or sky spirits transporting you around is also nice, especially when you need to make an emergency exit through the 34th floor window.

Materializing spirits or elems (earth elems are the best for this) in front of a hail of bullets in order to escape.

Earth elems digging tunnels.

Once had a wind spirit twirl around a piece of glass coated with cyanide.

Edit: Welcome to dumpshock forums!

Three Force 4 air or sky spirits could not safely carry 120kg. Try 60kg (each one has Strength 1 and you can carry a maximum of Strength*20, though you have less than two Combat Turns to do it before they go POOF).

High force elementals are useful for killing the world... It's not original but it's a good one.

GMs can make spirit variants interesting. Give Desert(Frozen Tundra) spirits cold aura or ice blast or something. In-general I've made spirits in areas which are classically spiritually strong or naturally rich slightly more powerful. Swamp spirits have this already, I give Jungle(Forest) spirits Binding, I've given Sewer(City) spirits the water engulf power. Some people have made variant elementals such-as Metal, Electricity, Ice, Smoke, ETC. While none of that is canon, it makes spirits more fun (and slightly more powerful).

@ACL: Air elementals can use both psychokinesis and actual strength to help a character down.

I've had a free spirit use Concealment on a tundra road and then on the vehicle tracks while using Confusion to make the characters think they were headed towards the town and not in circles. The same spirit also starved the town by Concealing the food and making the communications equipment appear malfunctioning with Confusion.

Another trick is to have a Forest Spirit Conceal a pit of vipers or similar, and then use either Fear or Confusion to drive the targets into the ambush.

the most interesting thing ive ever done with spirit's was this

My character was projecting and we had to get another pc out of the bottom of a lake. so i had an air elemental oxygenate him and an earth elemental use the engulf power to engulf the PC and Air elem and move them undergroung to the top of a cliff. It was a rather interesting situation

2 levels of initiation

Invoking.

Channelling.

High Force spirit.

Props, man. Props.

Full load of low-lifespan, Force 6 watcher spirits. Friends in melee bonuses, skill of 6, combat pool of 9. Sure, they might only do a base astral damage of 6L Stun, but as an astral swarm they can seriously hamper even potent astrally active opponents.

Of course, the same goes for any sort of nature spirit or spirit of the elements, but watchers are easier to whip up on short notice. Also, you can do both, i.e. a combined swarm of spirits and watchers, thus providing a number of astral legbreakers equal to twice your Charisma(since watchers run their own tally, seperate from other conjured spirits).

A powerful magician character of mine, when faced with very powerful opposition, recently, conjured forth five great form spirits of the winds and twelve watchers, and did it in 4 combat turns. At seventeen spirits in twelve seconds, he conjured faster than the average person in SR can fire a semiautomatic handgun.

use a bunch of force 1 ally spirits. say for example a mage with 4 force 1 ally spirits. each one with on of your random spells and your sorcery skill. so you have a few cool spells available, plus, get a power focus to offset some of the loss, or use the spirits as foci.

but use their spell pool and sorcery for spell defense.

imagine 4 spirits each with sorcery/spell defense 5/7 and their spell pool. walking around with ove 30 dice of spell resistance while the spirits are in astral form. and don't complain about losing the magic points. banishing them returns your magic point. so you become practically immune to all spells with no karma cost and a total cost of 4k nuyen

Wow if any of my characters ever saw an opposing mage with 4 force 1 ally spirits following him around he would indeed summon 7 force 6 elementals and procede to banish every one of his ally's and just leave him their to live with the shame of being dumb enough to actually put four of his points of magic into something so easily destroyable.

No, you should follow it up by making the twit mundane (one of the mage-duel options in SOTA) and then killing him with a series of stunbolts.

haha good idea. What is SOTA?

State of the Art 2063 a sourcebook for 3rd edition.

Have spirits materialize in front of moving cars. Send watchers to "haunt" Christian Fundamntalists who believe the awakening is evil. Use the accident power on a plane carrying your assasination target. Materialize an air elemental or wind spirit using a tank of cyanide gas. Materialize an air elemental out of natural gas, and watch the fun when people shoot it point blank. Use the movement power to increase the speed of an enemy vehicle, and watch them roll over when they try to make a sharp turn. Use the movement power on a semiballistic as it's climbing and watch it's helpless occupants get catapulted off into space.

Don't forget using movement to speed up an oil tanker coming into the harbor of a large city, or slow down a stunt driver trying to jump a car over live volunteers. Or using accident on a nuclear power plant. Or materializing an earth or water elemental out of hot lava, depending on the GMs preference. Or materializing a fire elemental out of a flamable object being carried by an enemy. Or materialzing a city elemental out of a chunck of the street so as to leave a big ditch for enemies to drive into. Or using the movement power to slow down a plane below stall speed. Or slow down a bullet or missile fired by a plan so the plane runs into it's own shot. Or using movement to speed up a thrown object, turning an ordinary baseball into a lethal weapon.

Against vehicles, Movement can only affect Acceleration - this includes missiles. For bullets, the Spirit would have to be ordered prior to fireing or on a delayed action as the bullets take very little time to reach their target in Shaodwrun terms. Using it on a baseball and such is a good idea though.

Where can I find information about choosing the Materialization of a spirit?

Accident on a Nuclear Power Plant? I wouldn't think spirit powers could effect entire buildings... But use Concealment on the Emergency Exits and Confusion on the crew...

If there was such a thing as a city elemental, you could perform the 6 hour conjuring test on the middle of a road to make a ditch on the road.

Spirits do not use up any material from their surroundings to manifest, they just have a form that fits in.

All spirits manifest however the player summoning them chooses to describe them. A city spirit can manifest as the cover of Magic in the Shadows for some shamans, or as a car like Christine for a mechanically-inclined shaman, a mass of rats for a rat shaman, or as just about anything else you can imagine. The same is true for hermetic mages.

About the only magicians who don't have much influence over their spirits are hougans, and only because they've already exerted influence to the point where the spirit manifests as human-like figures from their religion.

I was wondering if you, in a firefight, could get a spirit to use conceil at you and thus heigthen the TN to hit you, for your opponents? Haven't seen it mentioned before, but I imagine it to be similar to wearing a camosuit in the right setting. Could it be done, or have I overlooked something in the rule, which prohibit it?

I think conceal only prevents people from noticing you, doesn't make it harder to hit you. Would any of you guys, as GMs, allow a player to use movement on a semiballistic to send it off into space? That would rock.

Hmm... concealment only adds to the TN to locate the subject. I'm guessing once you're located, the power does zilch for you

Ah, I see the rules clearly state that any vehicle can have movement used on it. See what you mean about acceleration though. So, the pilot could slow it down by simply slowing his acceleration. ould have to use it on a semiballistic on autopilot. Do semiballistics normally run on autopilot, with the pilots taking control only in emergenices, or do the pilots control them directly all the time? I assume semiballistics use liquid fuel. A solid fuel rocket wouldn't be able to adjust it's acceleration at all, making it the perfect target for the movement trick. Let's see how useful your new spy satelite is from an altitude of 10,000 klicks.

Chemical Rockets, but one can easily alter the speed of such by adjusting the thrust cavity.

Semiballistics have Acceleration ratings, too. Not sure why you're asking about Movement for helping it get to space, though; it could do that on its own. Movement also only increases your potential speed, it doesn't force you to move at that speed. So what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?

But to answer the question, yes, I'd allow it assuming the power could be maintained long enough for it to happen. The spirit's going to have to deal with some serious mana warps while trying to sustain it for that long, though. It's almost definitely not going to be able to work on a satellite, but I'd allow the attempt.

What Domain does Space fall under...

I think you are misunderstanding. We don't want to use movement to HELP them get to space. We want to use it to send them off into space when they mean to just fall back to Earth and land at an airport. And I'm pretty sure semiballistics can't go into space on their own, having neither enough fuel nor enough air to survive for more than a few hours.

Sky.

EDIT: In that case, no, Movement has no bearing on where or how fast you actually go, only the top speed you can achieve while doing so. Semiballistics could easily go out further if absolutely necessary, but there's no point in doing so and the consequences would probably be bad.

When spirits manifest or materialize can they be seen by ultrasounds?

I am wondering because I work in secure buildings a lot and if you have a pass you need to swipe or hold to a reader, but when you leave the room you just walk up to the door and an ultrasound device above the door automatically unlocks it so you can just walk through. Some you have to hit a button on the door, but it is just a big button, no code. That is even in rooms that need a punch code. I guess it has to do with emergencies, if the oom is on fire you may panic and forget your code and get trapped.

Point being, if the spirit is "seen" by the ultrasound on the other side of the door you won't need a card, he will automatically open the door just by his presence, yeah he might have to hit a button, but it shouldn't be that hard to hit a single button to open the door.

Semiballistics have exactly enough fuel to make it to space. They then use gravity to pull them back down. Suborbitals cannot lift into space on its own, but both vehicles can survive in space.

Semiballistics are like ICBMs with people, and Suborbitals are like the Space Shuttle.

They could use Movement to prevent the Semiballistic from re-entering the atmosphere if they can reduce the Acceleration to zero.

They wouldn't haveto reduce the speed to 0, a slight change in the speed of the vehicle may cause it bounce off the atmosphere into space. It doesn't have to be a big change either.

I stand corrected about Movement. I was misremembering it's abilities.

Oddly enough, after reading those rules, the pilot can compensate for the Movement power by making his own Acceleration and Deceleration Tests as appropriate. Dropping one to a Speed of 0 (from 1,500 with an Acceleration of 60) is going to be very unlikely, especially considering the Hull and Bulwark Rating of a semiballistic and the mana warp it's going to be operating in.

This is assuming Movement will work on any vehicle with a Hull Rating to begin with. Using the rules for Sorcery, the base TN of one would be 17, and that would only increase due to the mana warps.

Maybe you're right by the conceilment power, but if you look at the camosuit, it both add +4 to perception, but also a +2 in to ranged attack, by the CC...
but ofcause I don't know how the power is working... just a thougth as it is a physical power

Manifesting spirits don't produce light and sound, they just project their appearance telepathicaly. Security devices will not notice them. As for semiballistics, they do not have naval damage codes, do they? Anyway, you can't use movement to slow down their descent, because a: they are more than 80 miles up, not technically in space, but outside the gaiasphere, and b: they are not accelerating downward under their own power, but merely falling back to Earth due to gravity. You would have to accelerate them as they move upwards, and yes, the pilot would have a chance the counter this. But it would be awesome if you could pull it off.

Anyone remember Talon's ally?

Hell yeah, Aracos the badass wolf! Ally spirits should all have cool personalities like that.

The manifesting is entirely psysic, and ultrasound shoudn't be able to see the spirit.

P 173, SR3: "Machines cannot percieve it in any way: cameras do not see it, microphones do not hear, and so forth"

When the ultrasound still is based on a physical prensence there would be nothing to detect.

Talon is fucking awsome

Nuff said.

Yeah, it's too bad we don't get to play by the same rules as Kenson.

We do... You just don't munchkin enough.