More Fun with Spirits Options

[Liminaut]

Small party infiltrating an installation with a lot of physical security but not much astral security. My character is a summon monkey -- a full magician specializing in summoning spirits.

I summon a bunch of force 3 spirits of man, each with the spell Improved Invisibility as a spirit power (my character has the spell). I summon one for every member of the party, and put them on remote service, having them sustaining Imp Invis + concelment on their person.

GM: "There's a guard post by the front gate."

US: "We moon the guards as we walk past."

GM: "I hate you."

The trick can be stopped by ultrasound or watcher spirits, but it's still fairly cool. It lets the whole party come on infiltrations.

[ronin3338]

Unless there's a dual nature guard dog, or a mage on Astral watch...


... either of which would choose the mooning as the opportune moment to attack :D

[hobgoblin]

hmm, concealment + improved invisibility? butter on bacon?

anyways, im still thinking that a spirit can only do one service at a time, so its either the spell or the concealment.

[Big D]

Wait, what about the unbound spirit limit?

[TBRMInsanity]

A spirit can do more then one service at a time it just uses up more then one service at a time. If I was the GM I would just but a closed gate with ivy all over it as the main gate. You are going to have to open the gate to get in and you can't astrally project through living material.

[nick012000]

Yes, you can. That changed from SR2 to SR3.

[UndeadPoet]

Big D is right with the limit. Only 1 summoned non-bound spirit at a time. Do not forget that.
Bound spirits up to (Charisma).

[Hunga]

Once an unbound spirit is set on a remote task, it is released and no longer counts towards the summoned spirit limit.

A spirit can use a power on more than one target and have it only count as one service.

Technically, you only need 1 spirit on 2 remote services to sustain your whole group's improved invis and concealment.

[ronin3338]

[mdynna]

Nope, everything he did is canon (I just checked). An Unbound Spirit can perform a Remote Service which counts as all of its remaning services. But 1 Remote Service can be a combination of "services" (like casting/sustaining a spell and using Concealment). Plus, Spirits on a Remote Service do not count towards the Unbound limit.

The catch is: once given a Remote Service the Spirit will perform it until its time runs out or it is destroyed. It cannot be given a new order or be recalled.

[mdynna]

I think I will house rule that the Spirit must have enough "non-Remote" services left in order to perform everything requested in the Remote Service. Ie. If it only had 1 Service after the Summoning test you can't sent it on Remote and say "do this and that", only "do this".

[Shrike30]

I houseruled that Unbound spirits on Remote Service count against the Bound Spirit max. It solves certain bizarre problems (like the "swarm of spirits" technique, where you start summoning right after sunup, and tell them all to go on remote service and attack the target building right before sundown).