Usually played by a [GM hand puppet], these spirits can be summoned with stats ranging from 1-10, depending on the amount of energy put into the summoning spell.
For example, if a Shadowrun psi puts three points of energy into summoning a watcher, it will have IQ, HT, WL, ST, CH and DX 3.
Watchers are usually not very smart because of this, but will obey orders and do simple tasks. They are very useful for sending simple messages, as they (like most spirits) can move incredibly fast and ignore physical obstacles like walls. Smarter watchers can be scouts, but are likely to alert magical security systems.
I always imagined watchers looking like this
This may be incorrect, but I believe that "watcher" is a term used to generally refer to very weak spirits, and that there is no "generic" watcher type. They may very well look like that, though... -zebediah
Psis, those who practice [Psionics] usually refer to the entities they summon as "thought forms."
2002/03/07 21:18 EST (via web):
In the original Shadowrun cosmology, Watchers were a distinct type of spirit which any magician could summon. They couldn't become fully material, and used a "name a duration in hours and get the force back" mechanic instead of "name the force and get the number of services". As a result they tended to be *very* weak --- Force 1 or 2 --- but stick around long enough to be useful as spies, head-sitters, etc. I still need to think about it some, but at first blush I greatly like the "Watchers are weaker versions of what you normally summon" idea, Jesse. --bts
2002/03/07
You should like the idea, Brian--I stole it from you. --zebediah
