I'm bouncing around a few ideas on this, but what would the legal status of these people be? They might be otherwise mundane, but they get one or more benefits from a spirit pact. How would the law view them? Would they be classified as some sort of magician?

This seems a really gray area, so I thought I'd solicit comments.

I think you’re likely to be able to collect bounties on them in Quebec (submit head and most of pelt for confirmation), assuming they work the way I think they do—Free Spirit-related?

~J

How would you even be able to tell their status just looking at them if they were walking down the street? If someone's got a Formula Pact, you can only discern that by Assensing. If they had a Power Pact, they might be able to sling a fireball or the like, which makes them like a "one-hit wonder" magician. So, I'm not sure where you're getting "pelt" from.

Quebec has bounties on paracritters of roughly all stripes, including sentient ones and Free Spirits. If a Spirit Pact is what I think it is, a kind of partial-Inhabitation/weakened Hidden Life formalized as an Edge, there’s a real chance that this would put someone under the legal aegis of the Harmful Paranimals Act and thus allow someone to collect a bounty by bringing the pelt to a processing facility.



If spirit pacts aren’t what I think they are, then I’ve wasted your time and apologize.

~J

Ah, no. Spirit Pacts are a more Deal With The Devil™ approach to acquiring power. You approach a spirit or it approaches you and you strike up a deal. You get a benefit and so does the spirit...it may or may not end up being a good deal for you. Formula Pact grants immortality, for instance.

References:
SR4 Street Magic, pp. 26, 108-109
SR5 Street Grimoire, pp. 136-137, 191

I could hilariously see a courtroom drama where a man takes a free spirit to court in order to argue that his spirit pact is null and void.

Then it gets to the question, since magic works on believe, if the judge and the public in general believe that the faustian bargain is broken, does that magically make it so? Or does it not matter what metahumanity law thinks, because magic is magic. And you can only fight magic with magic. The legal system would count as a regular weapon and just bounce off the spirit pact, if you will.

Honestly, I could see it going both ways.

Well, my concern was more the legality of registration/licensing. Would such people be regulated as magicians, for instance? And that's if you could identify then. Admittedly, someone with a Formula Pact would probably be outed in two decades tops, unless they were rich and claimed to receive regular Leonization treatments. Some of the other pacts are less obvious.

I always hated how spirit pacts don't feel like they have a negative consequence. A deal with the devil should theoretically come with some downsides.

Anyway, since this is for the most part a part of awakened progression, I assume it'd fall under awakened licensing and registration. And since that's the case, it'd probably also apply to mundanes that make a pact as well. But the power one only lasts 24 hours, so I don't see that one even be worth starting the paper work for, but I'm sure that legally if you didn't there would be some kind of consequence for it depending on your social/economic situation. After all, the richer you are the less the law really needs to apply to you. But if you're some SINless metahuman, they'll throw the book at you just to set an example so other mundanes don't get any funny ideas of making deals with spirits too.

Well, there is a negative consequence/cost to most deals like this.

The game mechanics configure the cost usually as karma points, but in the view of the character within the frame of reference, there is a loss of 'life force', energy, will to improve ones self, whatever. Sure one is tough for 24 hours at a time, but damn, one just can never figure out how to handle that gun any better.

Then there is the bit about the Free Spirit figuring after a while that it would be better if that puny human, who carries within it the secret name of the spirit, were dead. It got the karma, so what more does it need of the human?

There is also the matter of whether it would ever be detected that a character has a Pact going. How would this be determined? Is there a Detect Magic permanently placed on the entrance to buildings, or a spirit set to guard and watch for tell-tale signs? Seems like a lot of expense and trouble. Yeah, probably high-power, wealthy places can do that.