Experimental Template: Ride-Along

[jadecourtflunky]

I was thinking a bit, and looking at this power in the custom powers section gave me the idea for a challenging and fun character to play: A spirt stuck in some person's head.

Bound Spiritual Entity [+3]
Description: You are a spiritual entity imprisoned in a physical object, you have no body, and cannot act in the physical world without a bearer.
Effect:
Unbodied. You cannot take physical skills,  you cannot move yourself, and you cannot communicate verbally and other neat things.
Communicate with Bearer. You are able to telepathically speak with the bearer of the object you are tied to.
License to Possession. If you have the domination ability, you qualify for the possession upgrade, and you can possess your bearer.
Called to Bearer [-1]. You have the ability to tie yourself to the bearer of your physical prison, and you can teach them to call your prison to their hand.

Switch the "in a physical object" to "in some dude's head" and give yourself a couple powers I made up:
Empowering Spirit -1
You cannot take powers yourself, but you can give them to the person you are bound to. Any powers/stunts you have (unless they say otherwise) are conveyed to your host.
Creature of Spirit-1
 You have no body, and as such, you are unable to be "hit". Eliminate your physical stress track and add 2 boxes to your mental stress track. Magic made to target spiritual beings can hit you, and fire can damage you, but you take it to your mental stress.
At this point you can give your "bearer" powers in order to assist him/her. Maybe you have the ability to take over your "bearer" in a fight, and assist hiim. I think this would be really fun to play.. please give your opinions.

[Katarn]

I like what you have so far.  Definitely throw illusions (perhaps Great Glamours-like ability) in there, look at more of Lash's abilities.

[devonapple]

I'd want another couple of short examples of how day-to-day existence is going to be for this "character," as well as a few suggested conflict situations. Nothing too fancy, no turn-by-turn. Just general outlines of how you envision that this would be played. Then we can reason from effect. Because at the moment, I think this is just a supernatural creature who has Aspects like "My Body is Not Mine", "Chuck's Body" and/or "Chuck and His Stupid Mortal Needs."

[jadecourtflunky]

Everyday life would be heavily influenced by the spirit. Also, the spirit doesn't have to be like Lasciel... I imagine a guy like Bob getting in someone's head and for some reason, being unable to leave... *shudder*. Depending on how long the spirit has been in, and the nature of the spirit, things may be different.
As for combat, here are a few examples:
Sam is on the night shift at his job as a security guard. He doesn't know it, but a RCV is sneaking up behind him. Billy (the spirit) alerts him and the fight ensues on even ground.
Sam is in the midst of a shootout with a few thugs when Billly enhances his host's vision and accuracy so that Sam can take them out easily.
Billy is in control and taking out a some other thugs, killing them all, when Sam stops him. Sam appareantly wants to show mercy. Billy tries to resist, but Sam takes over again and uses the situation to intimidate information out of the other thugs, then calls the cops.

[devonapple]

My thoughts so far:

Get the Beast Change power so you can switch between two different skill sets.
Take Human Guise - it's free anyway, and covers any contingencies.
Invent clever Aspects, keep a decent Refresh rate, and refrain from purchasing Demonic Co-Pilot, so you can Invoke those Aspects for bonuses rather than rely on the baggage which Demonic Co-Pilot brings. Failing that, convince the GM to allow a "nicer" Demonic Co-Pilot for maybe 2 Refresh.

Sam is on the night shift at his job as a security guard. He doesn't know it, but a RCV is sneaking up behind him. Billy (the spirit) alerts him and the fight ensues on even ground.

Could be the player Declaring/Invoking his "Billy the Spirit" Aspect to make the Alertness check.

Sam is in the midst of a shootout with a few thugs when Billly enhances his host's vision and accuracy so that Sam can take them out easily.

Could be the player Declaring/Invoking his "Billy the Spirit" Aspect to make the combat check (if Billy is just another pair of eyes) and/or Beast Change to switch to a new set of skills (if Billy is a combat monster).

Billy is in control and taking out a some other thugs, killing them all, when Sam stops him. Sam appareantly wants to show mercy. Billy tries to resist, but Sam takes over again and uses the situation to intimidate information out of the other thugs, then calls the cops.

Situations when your spirit is in control and the host body wants to stop it sound like a GM or Self-Compel which is bought off by a Fate Point.

Buy any Magical Powers without any restrictions, as it seems to me that there's not really going to be any limit on when they would be used. And situations when those powers would "go away" are probably going to be either Extreme Consequences, or a Major Milestone during which you shuffle your powers around.

Edit: Admittedly, this is the less fun, "no need for a custom power" method.

And since we're using Bob as an example, the player could be getting lots of Fate Points from accepting Compels from his "Billy the Spirit" Aspect or any Aspects which reflect the trials of having Billy along for the ride.

While it is tempting to build this from the perspective of the player being the Spirit, who relies on an NPC host to do things, it's just going to be easier to do things from the Host POV.

Now, if you want to be able to Switch bodies and return... well, then we're talking some serious Powers.

Also, this is just a suggested way to do it in a way I think may be an elegant solution to what I feel is more of a role-playing challenge than a power-build challenge. Now that I've laid this on the table, if a new Template or Power is going to suit more, I'm happy to help develop it.

[jadecourtflunky]

Sorry if I made this unclear: The player IS the spirit. I found this to be really interesting, so I wanted to try it, but I wanted to get other people's opinions beforehand.

[sinker]

So as I understand it this is two characters(players) inhabiting the same body? I could see issues with that simply because the body can only perform so many actions at once. Or is the spirit the character and the body is just random NPC? That could be fun.

[jadecourtflunky]

The body's just an NPC. Although, If I were GMing for this, I would allow the player to say what the body does, and the GM would compel to make the body do things the spirit doesn't necessarily want.