How do you run the spirit mask's "measure of protection"?

Like the title says: how you run it? When I first played the game, I had it prevent possession until it was removed, but then I reread pg 87 description of the spirit mask and felt I overdid it - especially when I considered that I gave them something much closer to “immunity while worn” than “measure of protection.” Now I am wondering if I should only have assumed it resists (blocks possession from those) spirits whose force is less than the mask’s quality, and rolled that quality to determine the protection when its equal… something like that.

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In my game, we allowed the Spirit Mask to be expended as a special armor in certain circumstances assuming it was close enough in Tier. If the tier was too high, I would convert the rest of the Tier into damage. Alternatively, I’d break the spirit mask and make it so that the player had to do a LTP to get access to it again.

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Yeah, in my campaign we’ve done kinda similar; it can protect you like armor against something supernatural (which we do as reducing harm by 2 levels as a base). I’d also say it gives the user a better Position when attempting supernatural things as well.

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As someone who is playing a Whisper, I gotta say I’m not sure how John intended for that wording to be interpreted but I am completely against Udachnik and Michelle’s approach to this, simply because of the way the Special Armor section is worded on page 54:

Special Armor
Some special abilities refer to your special armor. Each character sheet has a set of three boxes to track usage of armor (standard, heavy, and special). If you have any abilities that use your special armor, tick its box when you activate one of them. If you don’t have any special abilities that use special armor, then you can’t use that armor box at all.

And, on their character sheet, Whispers have the option to choose Warded:

Warded: You may expend your special armor to resist a supernatural consequence, or to push yourself when you deal with arcane forces.

This means that, allowing the Spirit Mask to be used as Special Armor from the get-go, would render the Warded special ability pretty much useless and not worth of being unlocked by the player.

I think that something along the lines of the mask Quality vs ghost Force dice roll like SaveMeJebu5 would be much more appropriate for that reason.

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I’ve been using the spirit mask more to increase effect when attuning to inspect wards, arcane locks, etc. Used defensively, my first instinct is to allow it to give a bonus die on a resolve resist roll once per score, or to crack it and need repairing if used a second time. But really whatever the scenario suggests, I like creative uses of gear.

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You said what I didn’t think to: giving mechanical benefits like special armor, or outright reducing incoming harm, these diminish the impact of abilities that do the very same things. Good point! Considering that, the benefit could simply be better position instead.

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increase effect when attuning to inspect

Yes, of course, this! I just meant…

Used defensively

The way i’ve see it used before is affecting NPC threat level. I.e., without a spirit mask, getting blasted by lightning channeled from the ghost field or life-drained by a ghost is not something one fully resists, probably only reducing the effects of the consequences, but with a spirit mask on someone can fully resist it.

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