How an Inhabiting Flesh-Form Spirit Ally would improve its vessels skills?

Question

In my previous question What Attributes does a Flesh Form Inhabitating Spirit Ally have? the answer was that the SA would "inherit" so to speak, the vessel's memories, attributes and skills and that it could be improved with -wares an exercise if its magician would choose to, with this idea I let my player do all of that but now he wants to improve his SA skills, at first I said no because it would fall within the effects of the Ritual of Change but reading the rule it speaks specificly about increesing the force of the spirit. which in a normal spirit would increse its skills and atributes but an inhabting spirit would not be like that, skills and attributes would be the vessel's not the spirit's so that got me thinking,

• How would that work?

• An inhabiting spirit would use any skill (the vessel's and the spirit's) at its force in ranks but with the vessels's atributes?

• Does the vessels skills must be improved independantly from the spirit's? if not so, should he had recalculated all the SA's skill to equal ranks with force?

Answer 1

Short answer: Your player needs to perform a Ritual of Change on his Flesh Form Inhabited Ally Spirit NPC.

Long answer: Although the description of the effects of Flesh Form makes it seems otehrwise, just remember that it is still a physical body inhabited by a summoned Spirit. Rules-wise, you're still dealing with a Spirit Ally, even though it was given a physical body to inhabit.

The only difference is that, in Flesh Form, the Spirit has it's original skills and abilities, etc, replaced by those of the physical vessel it was given, whether it is a metahuman or a creature. No need to recalculate anything, just replace the Spirit's original scores by the body's, and keep the Spirit's Force noted down somewhere.

Thus why, in order to increase the skills of it's Spirit Ally, your player must perform a Ritual of Change. Which isn't exclusively to increase the Spirit's Force, but to increase anything in your Spirit Ally, as written on Page 202 of Street Grimoire (Emphasis mine):

Sometimes you want to give your ally spirit a little more oomph—add new forms, powers, skills, or spells or increase the spirit’s total Force. This enhancement requires first modifying your ally spirit’s formula. Modifying the formula requires either an Arcana + Logic [Mental] (Force x 5, 1 day) Extended Test or a metaplanar quest.

The rebinding ritual, known as a Ritual of Change, must be performed in a magical lodge with a Force equal to or greater than the ally. Spend the usual amount of binding reagents, and pay Karma equal to all the relevant changes to the spirit. However, increasing an ally’s Force with a Ritual of Change requires 16 Karma per point of Force beyond the spirit’s initial Force.

An Inhabitation Test is not necessary for inhabiting allies, but the conjurer may choose to provide a new vessel for the spirit to merge with.

So, in order to increase the skills of his Spirit Ally, your player will have to pay with his own Karma at the normal cost, if he succeeds in the Ritual.