I am hoping to create a collected list of FAQs for spiritualists and clarifications in one spot. I’ve included text from the rulebook whenever possible to save everyone time looking things up! If you have a question to add, please be courteous of staff time and energy and include any relevant skill and rulebook text (which may answer the question for you!).
Skills and Clarifying Questions as Related:
Walk With Spirits: To use this skill, spend 1 arcanum and say “Walk With Spirits”. For the next 5 minutes, you are incorporeal. When the effect ends, you take the Weakness effect and cannot use Walk With Spirits again until the Weakness effect ends.
Can people hear you say “Walk With Spirits” in the actual world? I.e. will someone know when you do this in front of them if you don’t otherwise tell them?
Being Incorporeal: Since you as a player cannot literally become incorporeal, you should avoid using this skill as a way to body-block without taking damage—if you’re in tight quarters, move somewhere else.
Is it appropriate, in open spaces, to utilize the Incorporeal state to trick individuals into shooting you if there is no one behind you who would otherwise be shot in your place? What are best practices here to keep things interesting tactically while not breaking important physical limitations (like not actually being a ghost and therefore blocking bullets).
Continue to carry anything that belongs to your character, such as weapons, if you wish. However, you cannot pick up or move items while incorporeal—this includes furniture and doors.
Can we pick up objects while corporeal and then bring them with us (if they are small and handheld) to an incorporeal state?
Weakness: For 5 minutes, you can’t use Parry, melee/thrown weapon calls, or melee/thrown weapon augments. You may fire a gun (and should still call the effect it was loaded with), but you cannot reload.
I understand that Offensive Effects (Cleave, Disarm, etc.) cannot be used. However, while suffering from Weakness can you use:
Duration Effects: Disengage, Disease, Root, Silence, Sleep, Speak With Dead, and Weakness?
Special Calls: I Curse Your Spirit, Death, There is No Escape?
Vials: Heal, Purify?
Elixirs: And their effects?
Spirit Displacement: You may spend a use of this skill and a use of Walk with Spirits reflexively in response to any melee, thrown, or projectile attack (except special calls or those with the Arcane prefix).
Special Calls listed in the rulebook are: I Curse Your Spirit, Death, and There Is No Escape. Can Spirit Displacement be used on all other non-arcane attacks? Including Subdue, Assassinate, and Critical?
Reveal: You can call “Reveal” once as a touch skill. Use of this skill requires an appropriate prop, such as a seeing crystal, pendulum, etc
if you use reveal on someone and nothing is revealed, has the skill been used up?
If a spiritual/arcane perception tags allows you to resists the next “Weakness” effect, can I resist the auto-applied “Weakness” that I get from dropping Walk with Spirits?
It might be worth putting the body of the FAQ in a google doc or something like that, since after a while forum posts automatically get closed to editing. We ran into this issue with the schematics list posts.
People can hear you say it, if for no other reason than because it’s awkward from a meta standpoint if they OOG can but IG cannot, if that makes sense. (Following on from that - you are not obligated to be loud enough that you give away your position if you’re hiding from someone, but nor should you say it as quietly as possible so nobody notices it when you’re otherwise speaking at a normal volume - basically, the spirit (heh) of the rule is you should probably speak at “conversational” tone for the situation you’re in, whatever that may be)
It’s totally ok (and a hilarious tactical trick) to trick people into shooting you when you’re intending to act as a distraction rather than a physical blocker, because in-world it’s non-obvious who is and is not a ghost.
Yes.
As a refresher when reading this answer, here’s the text of the Weakness effect: ·For 5 minutes, you can’t use Parry, melee/thrown weapon calls, or melee/thrown weapon augments. You may fire a gun (and should still call the effect it was loaded with), but you cannot reload.
Physical Effects: Tend, Reveal? Yes, you may use these while weakened.
Restorative effects: Awaken, Heal, Mend Limb, Purify, Revive, Spellshield, un-effect? Yes, you may use these while weakened.
Duration Effects: Disengage, Disease, Root, Silence, Sleep, Speak With Dead, and Weakness? If these are delivered by packet, you may use them. If these are delivered by gun, you may shoot a gun loaded with these effects if it is already loaded, but may not load a gun with this effect until you are no longer under the effect of Weakness. If these are delivered by melee weapon, you may not use them.
Special Calls: I Curse Your Spirit, Death, There is No Escape? Same answer as Duration Effects
Vials: Heal, Purify? Yes, you may use these while Weakened. Note that other vials may exist which confer the ability to use other calls - for those, refer to the relevant answer above.
Elixirs: And their effects? You may drink elixirs, throw powders, use perfumes, or use non-weapon augment oils. You may not use weapon augment oils. Note that the effects of an elixir may grant you the ability to use a call covered by one of the previous answers. Refer to that answer as relevant.
That is correct. Note that you may not use Spirit Displacement when you are unconscious
Yes, it is used whether or not something is found.
Oh I have a couple too (I think I know the answer to one of these, but it’s good to have them somewhere official)
Do you have to bring an object held on your person incorporeal with you, or can you choose not to? For example if your hands are tied or manacled to each other, can you choose to leave the rope or manacles behind, effectively escaping?
does that answer change if the object is anchored to a much larger object that you couldn’t bring incorporeal if you wanted to (for example, if the other end of the rope is tied to a tree or the manacles are chained to a cell wall)
On Sanctify Spirit when used on a ghost (rather than a corpse):
how cooperative does the ghost need to be?
Does it need to be within a certain area? (Arm’s reach? Same room? Line of sight?)
Within that range, do they need to be standing still?
Does it matter if the ghost(s) is/are trying to kill you as long as you don’t stop the ceremony?
Hi staff–fresh question that came up recently. Is it true that Walking With Spirits while on a boat would cause you to fall through the boat into the aether? This was expressed on one mod but seems to not be general knowledge. Given that all our spiritualists have been on a boat, we figured we would have some basic sense of if we can or can’t do this.
In the same vein–are there other surfaces that spiritualist would fall through when Walking with Spirits? Happy to do research to understand the why behind this, but would love to be able to RP this mechanic correctly.
If that was provided as a clarification, it is incorrect - in general, Walk With Spirits regards IRL solid surfaces as solid for “not breaking everyone’s brains all the time” reasons. We reserve the right to put Surfaces Ghosts Don’t Respect in mods and such, and will put tags in relevant locations.
The text of Silver Bullet is:
Silver Bullet (2) With 1 minute of roleplaying and the expenditure of 1 arcanum, you can augment a gun so that its next shot has the “Spirit” prefix, in addition to whatever call it would otherwise have.
Can a spiritualist prepare an unloaded gun so that whatever is loaded in it next is a Spirit [X]?
If so, can you carry an empty Silver Bulleted Gun and a loaded regular gun at the same time?
Can a spiritualist and a gun-loader work on the same gun in tandem? (So it goes from empty to Spirit Pierce in a minute instead of 1:55, for example?)
The skill says that you “augment” a weapon, which implies Spirit Blade is a weapon augment. But the rules for melee augments say that if you call a weapon skill through the weapon, the augment is lost.
Is this an intended interaction? Is Spirit Blade supposed to end if you try to Spirit Cleave through it?