I was reading the description for the free spirit power “hidden life” and something occurred to me. The power says that any animal or human that is used as the vessel for the “hidden life” power has its attributes increased by the force of the spirit. It does not say physical attributes but attributes which would seem to indicate that charisma, intelligence and willpower are also increased by the force of the spirit. After going back and reading the main book I think an argument could even be made for adding the spirits force to the vessels essence and magic attributes as well. The main book refers to essence and magic as attributes and has them listed under the section describing attributes. Now I relies that a story teller can simply disallow this but I am curious as to if this was written this way on purpose or if it is just a loop hole that one will just have to shake his head over and close?

Keep in mind that if that reading is correct, Reaction would also be affected.

~J

I suppose you can read it any way you like, it could conceivably include magic, essence, and reaction, but I really wouldn't rule it that way. Pretty much nothing increases your essence, and I don't see why this should particularly. The others are similarly dubious.

I'd just crack out +Force to all six normal attributes. Along with immunity to normal weapons, regeneration, and all the other stuff, it's quite enough!

Had not thought about Reaction. Except to reliese that I would have to redo the math. I can understand the point about essence but the magic attribute can be raised through initiation which means it can be raised. At least thats my thought. Bottom line only a truly desperate individual would agree to this as they become the spirits puppet so no allowing PC's to do this. However it does raise some interesting ideas for NPC's. Even if you keep it to "just" the main six attributes the vessel is going to end up with an increased reaction score and mental attributes that are above any of the playable races. If not to start with, then when the spirit becomes more powerfull. Did that make sense?

Yeah imagine a PC getting it, that would just be crazy...

They become the spirit's house, not puppet. However, they suffer (Spirit Energy) points of psychological flaws as a result.

According to magic in the shadows the power of hidden life when used on a animal turns it into the spirits puppet. For the rumors of spirits doing this with humans the effects on the meta-humans mind and will are unknown. It then goes on to suggest that a gm could stick a meta-human being used as the vessel with mental flaws up to the spirits force rating. I “think” the rules are allowing the individual gm to make up there own minds about the side effects for meta-humans and characters. My personal take on it would be to treat it like the old D&D lycanthropy. That when the curse, or in this case spirit decides to take over the character becomes a npc until the spirit releases control.

My group had a PC as a spirit's vessel. Basically the GM made him create the character as a conjurer point wise (even though the guy was completely mundane) and invest spell points into creating the ally spirit. The guy was a non-cybered mundane who would have sucked if it hadn't been for his nigh-invulnerability. The GM trusted the player to not twink out the character into some sort of combat monstrosity, otherwise it wouldn't have worked because he would have completely dominated.

That doesn't mean it isn't still an Attribute, and thus affected.

~J

Ok, so I actually have a character that did this. I created him with the GM to make sure that it wouldn't be twinked (except in doing this it was) and this is what we came up with.

To create the spirit you would have to follow the Ally spirit creation rules in MITS and purchase the Karma as spell points @ 25k a pop (even if mundane) and then create the spirit, which could get you a force 3 spirit with 3 spirit energy and a sorcery of 5. The GM would look at the spells in MITS and choose numbers to corrispond with the spells and make a random roll to see what the spirit would have for spells. My spirit ended up with Manabolt, Mindprobe and control emotion. For powers we gave him only a few, Hidden life obviously, Human form, astral gateway and Guard.

One thing to note making the spirit took a lot of building points out of the character for starting so the attributes of such characters are usually "normal" as in the joe shmoe on the street.

On the mental flaws part, we created a flaw dubbed Perception Jump -5 pts. which the GM would role at the beginning of the session and depending on what the role came out as the flaw could happen during the session at anytime. Perception jump is a flaw that at any time the characters senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, sound) jumps into the entity of the spirit incapacitating the PC's body and appearing as narcolepsy. However, the spirit cannot tell that the PC is seeing through it's own eyes and there is no way to fix it. The way it worked for me was that it so happened that only when i got injured did my PC "jump," this was obviously confusing to me so i was a little more careful about getting hurt.

Anyway, the way that hidden life provided a bonus to the character was excellent. The character recieved +Force to all physical attributes, str, quick, body... NO mental att.s because we determined that it wouldn't make sense, most humans are "smarter" than a lot of spirits in the way of knowledge and since Force doesn't necessarily determine the Mental stats anyway there is no reason to have them affect the PC. Other bonuses were Immunity to age, pathogens, toxins, and normal weapons... which after much searching was found p. 264 Basic under the power Immunity and gives an armor bonus of twice the PC's essence acting like hardened armor. To top that off the PC also got Regeneration.

If you want to raise the force of the spirit you have to give it karma with the same rules as doing so..mundanes at 3 to 1, aspected at 2 to 1, and full mages at 1 to 1. This gets really costly on the karma, but once your physical stats are so high that raising them would be more expensive, you raise the force and instead raise all three.

So in conclusion, what happens when you make a PC with this is you get a character that will mostlikely not die but won't be very good in combat unless the few skills you choose are about 3 all at 6... but oh man is it fun to play.

So if you want to make a character, this has seemed like the best way to do so, the character doesn't seem twinked in that he can be killed by magic or really b****en' characters but overall he just won't die. Which really is what it is all about.

The following is what lead to me posting about the hidden life power. <<In the game I am playing my party was hired by a corp. to iliminate a obstruction to their development of a choice piece of real estate. The corp gave us tons of cash, weapons and mercenaries to back us up in our cleaning operation, plus a great deal of data on the area we were going to. They however did not give us any info on what was causing “their” problems. That really should have tipped us off but when someone waves that kinda cash under your nose you can do stupid things. Any how long story short the “obstruction” turned out to be a young adult dragon that had set up its lair on the conjunction of several mana lines. Lots of shooting, cursing and slinging of magic led to most of the mercenaries dieing plus several party members being reduced to goo before the dragon was slain. That’s when the real problems started. The battle had taken place on Halloween and had come to a conclusion at the stroke of midnight. Upon the dragons death a free spirit was born from the violence and hightend magic in the area and promptly escaped. Fast forward several months as my party recuperated and replaced fallen comrades to find that we are again contacted by the same corp. that is having problems at one of their research facilities in Seattle. Our party having been burned once by the corp. was incredibly leary of doing anything for them ever again. However the Mr. Johnson soon gave us reasons to sign on. It seems that the corp. has swooped down almost immediately after the battle and managed to resuscitate the dragons body, keeping the physical form alive through mechanical intervention. The brain and soul were dead/gone but the corp. scientists and doctors had managed to maintain the body and even encourage it to heal. At some point unknown to the corp. stodges the free spirit slipt past their defences and used the hidden life power on the soulless body and then possessed it. The research facility and the surrounding community where reduced to ashes. >> So what we have is a adult dragon body being used as the vessel for the hidden life power that has then been possessed by the free spirit. The story teller finally came up with the following. The dragons body gets all the advantages that hidden life grants; Immunity to toxins, pathagons, age and normal weapons, its physical attributes are increased by the force rating of the spirit (its mental attributes do not as the dragons brain is dead), Its reaction and essence are increased by the spirits force rating, regeneration and mystic armor. As the dragon was a spirit it also aquired some spirit powers as well as retaining all of its draconic abilities. Through its use of possesion the dragons mental attributes are equal to its force rating and it gains a +10 to its initiative for being materialized. As any one can figure out the resulting “creature” ends up being more powerful than any great dragon and the groups characters have managed to mess up the balance of power amongst the dragons. Lol, its been fun and to be honest the group and the story teller have no intentions of ever having a fight between it and the group as we would die, probably with out it even noticing. The ST does occasionally drag out news reports of the “new” dragon doing impossible things around the globe and generally terrorizing whoever it wants. The group usually blanches and changes the topic quickly. What can I say? We went down a path of absurdity.

Now there's a plot device I need to remember...Unfortunately one of my players is on the boards as well, so he's forewarned too. *pout*

Yeah, yeah... well, don't sweat it Doc. I already knew about Hidden Life back in SR2. I've more than once conceived the idea of making a mage (I played a Hermetic last time I was in a campaign) conjure an Ally and have it Hide its Life inside his master's body. Never panned out that time, but the idea (and huge power boosts) are no strangers to me.

nah, I was talking about undead dragon with hidden life and possession inside it.

Well, if we're going to be seeing Dragons, I would just hope that the offered nuyen payoff would be higher than what we've seen up to this point. A Johnson who tries to hire a dragon hunting team for about 10K each isn't going to get a whole bunch of takers.

Also, just a note: allies cannot have Hidden Life. Only Free Spirits can.

The dragons not dead. Its just living impaired. Really more of a frankenstein monster kinda thing going on as science was responsible for the bodies resuscitation. The free spirit just took advantage of the situation to reclaim its mortal shell and improve on it, lol.

The way you describe it Storm, reminds me of that old Chuck Norris movie "Silent Rage" about the guy brought back with medical science, but essentially a mental zombie. Of course, in the movie (much like your Shadowrun world), he goes around killing people until Norris' character can stop him.

I have actually seen that movie, lol. Our ST is a dragon nut so the idea of a "super" dragon really appealed to him. Partly my own fault as I had been fooling around with magic in the shadows and talked to him about some ideas. Some of the things being discussed now is that as the Dragons body is immortal due to the hidden life power will it continue to grow like other reptiles do throughout there life? Mostly its a discussion on if immunity to age means no growth occurs at all or it does continue but without the side effects of old age. Some one who is immune to age can still increase there stats in the game system so the power obviously does not just "stop" the body in time, so to speak.