Summoning Elemental: Basics, Is it there all the time, or not? Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[RainOfSteel]

I did do a search back as far as possible on Summon Elemental, but the topic titles for the hits I got did not look like they covered my question.

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SR3 p.186 says: "A master need not use all the services of an elemental at once. At the time of its summoning, an elemental is bound to respond to calls from its master. The elemental then departs, vanishing from the physical and astral planes altogether until is is called."

I have run into a gaming group that insists that a mage's elementals sit there within x meters all the time, continuously, until their services are used up. When I point to the above, they shrug and dismiss it with, "Then how does an elemental appear inside an astral barrier?" This also goes to legality, as in the city we're playing in, you cannot legally have an elemental of higher than force 3, and since your elementals are all sitting right there continously, any authority that assenses you and picks up an elemental at higher that force 3 has busted you. They also don't seem to play the Exclusive Complex Action required to make the Elemental appear, either (its sitting there, so you can order it to do whatever, whenever).

Naturally, we are playing it the way the GM wishes. I didn't get to ask a whole lot of questions, because I wasn't interested in arguing it out other than going, "Uh, what? What about, <here in the rules>?" So I never got around to asking how Elementals can follow a mage across astral barriers.

My question to the board is: Has anybody ever heard of or otherwise played an interpretation of the SR3 Elemental Summoning rules such as I have described here?

Is this sort of thing common and I'm just a newbie, or what?