Last session left me with many questions to ponder about.

1. If people gather around one day and say "We wanna do astral quest NOW", what will they have to overcome to enter? There are some words about question they have to answer and stuff. What question/task do you, people, assign to players?

2. If players just wander around Astral, what difficulty should I give to quest?
Party with shaman, adept, gunbunny and mage.

3. If there is manastorm/vortex, and player receives 6L damage in few turns, if he can regenerate, does this damage fades away too? What about casting stun damage, does regeneration help?

4. How long it takes for manastorms to disappear? Hours? Months? Centuries?

5. Can mage bond allied spirit to his body, getting spirit powers (immunity to weapons and other small stuff)?

P.S. I now know why I chose those Shadowrun books. I have been programmed every time I come to this site - all 3 books are up there as topics when I enter

1 and 2. In MitS it says that if there is no question, the difficulty of the quest is 1D6. (MitS, pg. 92) So you can make up whatever sorta wacked out thing, and when they reach the end have the guide say "And why did you do this, exactly? A search with no goal has no purpose" and give 'em karma for actions only. REALLY wrack 'em over the coals if they get the Charisma challenge. *laugh*

The rest I'm not sure on, but I think manastorms can last a while if powerful enough. Isn't there a perpetual 'storm in Australia? And there may be a way to bond a spirit to you so you can get powers...but most of them include the spirit taking over you. Like shedim. :grin:

1 and 2. I don't know any way for non-initiate-magicians to simply decide they're going on an astral quest. Do they, perhaps, have a friendly spirit with Astral Gate?

5. No, a mage can not bond an ally spirit to his body. An ally spirit can have inhabiting power (MITS.108), but when inhabiting he is NOT using his Materialization power. Since Materialization is what gives the immunity to normal weapons, such a spirit doesn't get this immunity. Also, inhabiting can not be used to possess people, just a dumb mundane animal or a homunculus (MITS.108).

p.s. For a random Astral Quest, I would role-play it. For example, to the meta-plane of Forgotten Realms. With a 1D6 quest 'rating' they can get some pretty interesting challenges. Or they can show up on a metaplane where someone has 'summoned' a group of 'spirits' and the team is what showed up. The summoner has achieved one service and the team must complete that service before they can go home.