So You Want to Play a Spirit Loa?
A spirit loa is a living person who can willingly allow dead spirits to possess him/her in order to gain access to the deceased person's abilities.
The main lore article on spirit loas is here
The RPG mechanics rules for spirits loas is here
There are two main reasons to play a loa PC.
1) The idea of interacting with a bunch of dead NPCs sounds kind of fun.
2) You want your character interesting supernatural power that only requires you to read about a couple paragraphs rather than pages of rules and spell lists.
Character Archetypes
No player character should just be one thing. This rule certainly applies to spirit loas. If character concepts were a meal, spirit loa powers are a spice added for flavor, not the entree. Your character isn't just a loa. He is an investigator loa, or a bounty hunter loa, or a warrior loa, or a loa priestess.Spirit Loa Experts
The "Expert" Archetype is the most obvious character archetype to add loa powers to. Spirit loas can pick up free dots in almost any ability on the fly which is great for jack-of-all-trades style characters. You can also nudge abilities you are already good at it to buff your character from "good" to "outstanding" buffing a ●●● into ●●●●●. "Investigator" is a particular sub-type of "expert", but it pairs well with spirit loas. You can of course boost your trait ratings in investigator friendly traits like Alertness, Empathy and of course Investigation, but a clever player that's not afraid of roleplaying has a great tool her toolbox. You talk to ghosts as informants or spies. Some ghosts are crazy or liars, but that comes with a territory. Even if you are investigator talking to living Persons of Interest, figuring out who is being truthful and who is lying comes with the territory.Spirit Loa Warriors
Spirit Loa can let you temporarily add dots to almost any ability on the fly. This certainly includes Archery, Brawl, and Melee. So Spirit Loas can make effective warriors.
From a min-max perspectives, it is usually more effective to just take the dots you would have put into Spirit Loa, and sink those dots into Archery, Brawl, and/or Melee. So if your only goal is to be a formidable warrior, you probably shouldn't play a spirit loa.
If you want to play a warrior who has a brain and a heart, a spirit loa is a good character. A disproportionately high number ghosts are murder victims, so a spirit loa adventurer is not likely to be a "murder hobo", but that doesn't mean that spirit loa is going to be a full on pacifist. Most loas are going to have a pragmatic outlook that death is sometimes necessary. When a spirit loa has decided "This situation requires the application of violence", he is going to be relentless.
A spirit loa warrior is likely to get a lot of requests along the lines of "please avenge my death!" or "please protect my loved ones!" from various ghosts. A spirit loa warrior can easily fit into "adamant avenger" or "steadfast guardian" warrior archetypes or even "judge, jury and executioner" warrior.
by Me with Hero Forge
Spirit loa priest
Most Scarterran spirit loas are either very religious or very non-religious depending on how they mentally and emotionally cope with constant interaction with the dead. by Basia the Loa
Whether a theurgist or not, a lot of priests and priestesses have a focus on honoring the dead. A spirit loa who is a priestess is going to look at her dealing with dead as a holy calling.
A lot of religious ceremonies are intended to honor the dead, and spirit loas can communicate with and channel the power of the honored dead. But then there is the restless dead, ghosts.
There are two ways holy figures can deal with the restless dead. Priests and priestesses can help ghosts resolve their lingering issues and join the ranks of the honored dead or they can deem a ghost a lost cause and exorcise them to oblivion. A spirit loa is likely to be doing this a lot, either as a gentle savior of ghosts or a brutal exorcists. An PC loa priest is likely to do a little bit of both acting as sort of a holy judge.
A spirit loa who is also a priest or priestess can be an interesting character concept whether or not your character is a theurgist.
If youare playing a theurgist, who is also a spirit loa, you don't have to base your sphere choices on being a spirit loa. One thing worth keeping in mind is that every sphere uses an attribute + ability rating to cast, and since spirit loas can boost almost any ability, you can use spirit loa to improve your casting dice pool before critical castings.
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