No, those are your Powers - not the Spirit's. You can use Fear or Confusion if they're the possessing spirit's Powers, but not the ones from your list. Your Special Attribute is written over for the duration of the possession.

Basically the only reason free spirits PCs can't have inhabitation and a few other spirit powers like wealth and astral gate is that it is game breaking. At least I think that is why it was made against the rules.

You could have done something funky like given your ally spirit inhabitation and then rolled up the new character as a free spirit minus inhabitation and astral gateway. It would still be house rules but it would not have been ridiculously rules breaking. You could have explained it away as the merging went strangely because of a fluke and the odd situation of an ally inhabiting its willing creator and the spirit designed to have the same personality as its creator. You could still do the campaign you are planning and have it happen. You could say when the spirit gets disrupted for the first time and its vessel is destroyed it loses the ability to inhabit. Roll up the new character as a new free spirit with some of the old abilities if you are generous but not the insane stats a force 8 ally spirit has.

Just so I am sure I have it straight:

It is being argued here that a vampire with Channeling possessed by her own Spirit cannot use her own Powers because neither Street Magic nor Digital Grimoire specifically mentions "powers" alongside "skills" and "fine motor control".

Do I have it right?

"Possessed by her own Spirit"?

The question was, can a Spirit use the vampire's Drain Essence power, except subject to the Spirit's Essence limits. Honestly, wouldn't it be easier to just houserule a horrible Essence Drain Spirit into existence (if there isn't one already)?

Yep, that's the question.

"Possessed by her own Spirit" to mean a spirit she has summoned/bound, I assume

It would be easier, but you'd have to actually find said spirit and banish/rebind it in order to get a power you already have. Nowhere near as interesting as not losing your powers in the first place.

Besides, in an actual game Essence Drain is the power I'm least interested in keeping during possession. Typically my character is likely to consider the experience better than sex and I'm not letting my spirits have all the fun!

I didn't mean for a vampire to summon it, I meant for abusing and destroying the game. Obviously, that's the real goal, so… It's what the thread it explicitly about, anyway.

I don't get what you mean by this.

Invoking Blood spirit metamagic? I don't think there is another way to summon spirits with Essence Drain.

Sounds right. Anyway, the point is that bootstrapping Pun-Pun tactics would instantly be nuked by any GM, even if they were legal, which they probably aren't.

As a GM I'd consider the use of regeneration at least, since it is passive. I don't think it would be any more game-breaking than the standard possession rules are themselves.

Yeah, certain 'physical powers' would almost certainly be okay (as above), and other exceptions are available for the GM to consider. However, this thread is asking about baldly abusing a power, so… This isn't the Char Op boards, we don't have to assume the GM is in a coma.

The question is whether a channelling vampire has access to his own powers or whether the possessing spirit suppresses them. It was suggested that it would be easier for the GM to create a spirit with vampiric powers, but if the vampire PC can't summon it then it's not very useful.

Where 'useful' means 'available to break the game', in this case.

Aside from any discussion of cheesiness or game-breaking power, I'm just wondering whether the lack of specific reference to "powers" is missing from alongside "skills" and "fine motor control" is simply because no one writing the rules had thought of a vampire who belongs to a possession tradition. Did vampire PCs show up in the texts after Street Magic and Digital Grimoire?

Whether I would want such a thing for a PC in my game or not, I don't see how someone who could channel magic through himself to cast spells or summon spirits would not be able to channel magic through himself to use vampire powers. What's the difference? Do you have access to mana or not?

As a GM, I could fall back on the old standard, "It ain't spelled out in the rules, so you can't do it." But I hate that kind of treatment of the players. I like outside the box thinking, and if the players use it.... so can I!

And this is supposed to stop us on Dumpshock from squeezing the books until they spit a random answer?

No, no, Traul, I wouldn't think of trying to stop anyone on Dumpshock from doing any kind of squeezing.

It is not all good, and too good to be true. If the vessel has some vulnerability so does the spirit. A spirit possessing a vampire would have vulnerability to wood and silver that would bypass it's normal weapon immunity.

Don't base your decision on weather the spirit can use the vessels powers because of a tweakish loopholes or possession already being powerful.

Possession is putting all of your eggs in one basket and then making the basket stronger, versus sending something off to tank for you and after it is destroyed still being undamaged.

The whole essence drain thing already has some things that make it impractical or impossible, and really it is basically just a loop whole to get something like bloodmagic.

Aren't those called "Horrors?"

Actually, this thread really was meant to be about the access to powers question. The Essence Drain Escalator (as I now like to call it) was just a silly notion that occurred to me at the time of posting. I definitely wouldn't allow it in my game.

Can you quote us a rule on that one?

As if vulnerability to wood and silver are even minor concerns, anyway.

Spirits do not lose their vulnerabilities when they have possessed something. The Spirit still has the Vulnerability. And since the spirit is bolsetring the person possessed with HIS Spirit Magic, then the joined entity (as it were) is STILL vulnerable to the material that forms its vulnerablity...

Well, they are to those who are vulnerable to them I would bet...

Not when those are magical monsters.

I noticed you answered Neraph's question about the vessel's vulnerabilities by talking instead about the spirit's vulnerabilities. Are you saying both are true, and do you have the rules reference he asked for? Just curious.

I think that they would both be true, if both parts of the combined possession possess vulnerabilities. If The individual components possess the Vulnerabilities, and the book does not indicate that they lose them when possessing, then they should still be there, don't you think? Lack of specificity does not negate the general rule after all...

Those things'll kill you, you know.

Probably...

I was referring to Pun-Pun vampire-spirit monsters, of course. Even if you have a silver-plated wooden stake.

No sir, the vessel has the vulnerability. If the spirit's Special Attributes and Powers overwrite those of the vessel, would the vulnerabilities be overwritten also?

EDIT: Read the other 4 posts. Was answered, more or less.

Don't forget that the vessel's physical attributes are not overwritten – they're included. And since vulnerability is invariably a physical phenomenon, the argument that a vessel's vulnerabilities remain does have some merit.

The least of which is that the Spirit's Vulnerabilities would apply at a bare minimum... I am inclined to include all vulnerabilities if they have them though... as the physical body does not lose those vulnerabilities from what I can tell...