Suddenly, having one of my Player's make a Jedi Magician seems to hurt my head less.

... I know how to build a Jedi/Sith character, complete with a working lightsaber. Kinda.

Free Spirit character with Natural Attack to look like it.

It was asked by another poster, but *why* do you feel the current spirits are so vastly worse than others of other traditions?

Personally, I've played hermetic mages and never found myself wanting for other abilities, but then again I may not be missing something simply because I've not used the other spirits before.

If you like other types of spirits so much...why not simply hire someone of that tradition to summon one, then Bind it to you? Seems a heck of a lot easier than any of the other options, and it fits the personality/world view of Hermetics ("Spirits/Elementals are tools to be used.")

Of course, the hard part would be finding some sucke...er, kind soul willing to let you Bind one of their ancestors/gods/whathaveyou.

A lot of the power of the new spirits, particularly Guardian and Task, is the ability to do just about anything you need them to do. So, on the fly they're really powerful; if they're already bound with their powers set, not quite so much.

They aren't really lacking, but the element based spirits seem to kind of duplicate each other in ability quite a bit. Sure each one is a bit different, air has noxious breath for example but they don't give the same ability spread as the new spirits. Still a pure hermetic is perfectly fine spirit wise.

You know, if a Mage wants spirits, they just need to go to the liquor store and...

I got confused again, didn't I?

One thing I've thought about adding is the Technomancer metamagic(forget what TM metamagic is called) that allows access to one more sprite. The mage and technomancer duplicate so much in form a mage version of that metamagic would fit IMO.

Yeah, I have a metamagic house rule that does that as well. One extra spirit type per.

I've been meaning to go back to hermetic. I've done a lot of Black and some Shinto, but the Int (as in intelligence - I have to remember to say Log for my audience here) caster's calling my name again.

What would solve the problem to some degree without massive cheese of going "You know, magic isn't an ordering of the universe. It's African gods who ride people around for sex rituals," is if mages had the equivalent of the Sprite Link TM Echo. Take an Initiation or a 15 karma metamagic buy to get access to the spiffy new things.

Technomancers get all the best rules..

See perhaps I'm in the minority but I've always felt that echo was a bit overpowered for technomancers. Sprite link's only saving grace is sprites are a LOT less useful then spirits are. I think giving the exact equivalent to mages would be a mistake.

Well, it's fairly powerful for any non-voodoo tradition I suppose. But I guess that's the point for me, I would rather have this option instead of "roll voodoo or have gimpy spirits". The marginal benefit of this power over some of the other potential metamagics really isn't very high. (Of course, I ix-nay the whole "buy a metamagic for 15 karma thing" so that may have some bearing)

See this is where I have confusion. The only reason other spirits are "gimpy" is because you can't use them to directly turn you into a juggernaut. Which really, if that's your thing, go for it. To each their own.

IMO it's just not fun playing unstoppable characters. Sure it's cool for a couple of sessions, but once you run over the opposition time and again, why continue. May as well just handwave each encounter at that point.

Actually, I don't do possession spirits; I've never liked the flavor. And my players seem to agree with me, since we've never had a possession tradition mage. But even as materialization spirits, the new ones are superior. So, first point set aside, there's no such thing as an unstoppable character. If you find yourself running over the opposition, your GM needs to be doing a better job.

Power is a relative thing. If NPCs have access to the new spirits (and mine do) it seems fair to allow my PCs some way of getting them that doesn't involve re-rolling/playing a tradition that doesn't fit their concept. I suppose I could just ignore them entirely, but that seems kind of weak - it's not like I don't let my street sams use gauss rifles.

I'm kind of coming to the opinion that given sR4s deviation from summoning differences between traditions that maybe they should have just left the spirits blank and let the player pick 5. No matter the traditions you can come up with an argument for why X spirit fits, and with the ability to create traditions it is better than hermetic but with X spirits traditions coming up all the time.

Street Magic Spirits can Counterspell.
That's a very significant thing.

Having access to that means that you can send B&E Sam to do his thing with astral CSpelling support while the mage tries to Face his way through a different checkpoint, hook up the Hacker's signal repeater so he can break the sensor field on that hallway Sam needs to slink down.

Well, an Easy Fix would be to add Magic Guard to all types of Summonable Spirits as an Optional Power. I think that this would work out okay, without being too overpowered. Any Opinions?

If not all spirits then at least some of them, air and earth are good thematic candidates in my mind. Man would make sense but is already pound for pound one of the best spirits out there.

Sure, I could get on board with that reasoning... Makes a lot of sense to me... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

If spirits in fact did weigh anything.

Also, I think it important to mention that the new Spirit Powers are expressly stated to be possibly available to existing spirits. Just ask GM.

Yep, you have plenty of options to get the new spirit powers with the cooperation of your GM that don't mean you're trying to "directly turn you into a juggernaut". I like the metamagic one mostly because when I'm a player, I enjoy the roleplay of interacting with spirits, and the idea of learning new types to summon is full of win - that's not to say it's the best or only way though.

And if none of these ideas work for you, then why not use the rules for Calling Spirits in Running Wild (Pages 174-182). They just may fill the void that you are wanting to fill. Just do not expect them to fill it in the way that you imagine.

I love the Calling rules. The next mage I play is probably not even going to have any of the Conjuring group - only Arcana, Enchanting, and Negotiations.

With one of my characters i created a completely new magical tradition that fits my requirements. He can call 4 fixed types of spirits and one kind that comes random. this way, he can virtually call anything without being broken. Maybe this could also be an option?