Continued spirit discussion, from the Security Armor thread Options

[Shrike30]

[Nim]

Yep, I was thinking sort of along those lines...the parallel to Contacts, that is. For a parallel to Loyalty, though, I was thinking of a reduction in the number of dice the spirit rolls to oppose the summoning, rather than a hard cap on tasks owed. Basically, the ones you have a good relationship with don't mind your calling them, so they don't fight it as hard. I haven't run the numbers yet, though, to see if that really pays off.

Also, I'd want to go back and read through the SR3 stuff about Free Spirits, to make sure this could be set up in a way that would still mesh with those once SR4 has them (presumably in Street Magic).

[Shrike30]

That's actually a better way to do it, I think. It means that lower-skilled summoners would benefit more from that "Loyalty," as their fewer dice would yield more net successes and thus more services. As I had it, the only advantage to a high "Loyalty" was that the higher-end summoners didn't bump into a hard cap that the low end summoners generally don't hit at all.

You had an idea in the quote about losing out in combat reducing the Force of the spirit. You might want to do it in such a way that the spirit "heals" after a proper amount of downtime (a point of Force a week, or something like that), but you could always bring it back sooner.

A continued spin on the change to "binding:" if the caster hasn't ever used this spirit to maintain a spell to the point of draining it's force, the spirit's reaction to the caster being knocked out by the drain might well be neutral or helpful, if it has no fear of being in an extended contract with the summoner. If he's drained it in the past, though... that could very well cause serious relationship issues with that spirit.

[Nim]

Alternately, the penalty for getting the spirit 'killed' in combat might be a Loyalty decrease, rather than a Force decrease. I think it'd be good for there to be some negative consequence, though, so that magicians are risking something when they send a spirit into a deadly situation.

[Abbandon]

lol all this came from a discussion on security armor? Crazy mages lol.

I like your idea's. What i wanna see are some fleshed out examples of things you can do for your spirits to improve there loyalty. What the heck could a spirit possably want from a meatbag. (hmm maybe one thing would be to let him possess you or someone..., build a little shrine in your medicine lodge?, maybe your spirit has a friend who is being abused by another mage and he wants you to kick his butt.)

[James McMurray]

Giving him spirit energy (in the form of karma or properly processed rare radicals*) would probably help.

* Normally referring to minerals, magical objects, dual-natured materials, etc. However, withthe proper spirit and summoner mentality those radicals might include political dissidents. :)

[stevebugge]

[Nim]

Non-Free spirits usually can't just randomly manifest without being summoned (outside of certain special locations, at least?). So they might well have favors they'd want done that are better done by mortals. Like, say, "There's this mage who knows my name, and he keeps summoning me and treating me badly. Arrange for him not to be able to summon me any more, and...."

Also, there's always Karma. IIRC, there's well-established support from previous editions of magicians giving karma to spirits to strengthen them.

[James McMurray]

In SR3 you could give free spirits karma. IIRC binding spirits also cost karma.

[Abbandon]

Summoning spirits...

Im for the known spirits = easier to summon
unknown spirits = harder.

You dont really have to sift through the astral yellow pages to find a certain spirit, its more like you are calling out to him and drawing him towards you.

I think it would be kool if a mage is just sommoning a spirit in order to just make it fight or something it could be of a specific element but its force would be random(including overcasting force). This represent the mage just casting a net out and catching the first spirit he can.

If he wants a specific force spirit then he needs to goto the astral and do research or maybe he learns the name of a spirit from another magician or something.

[Shrike30]

Hell, I always looked at drain from summoning as being the mage feeding mana to the spirit in exchange for the services it would provide. Obviously, the really cool spirit stuff doesn't start showing up until you start sinking karma and radicals into the spirit, but the lowest common denominator of payment for services has always been mana/drain.

[Shrike30]

[James McMurray]

Maybe a base force of 3, with any successes used to increase it?

[Abbandon]

The thing i liked most about my random force spirits was that a mage never knew if summoning a spirit would possably flatline his ass or not hehe. Kinda made it scary.

[Crusher Bob]

Well:

'Average Street Mage' 6 dice: 2 hits
'Average Wage Mage'/Nonspecialist runner 9 dice: 3 hits
Powerful nonspecialist 12 dice: 4 hits
powerful specialist 15 dice: 5 hits
OMG! teh tweak monkey!11 21 dice: 7 hits

So at 1.5x hits (round down) this would give (assuming force 1, 1 service free)

average street mage: force 4, 1 service or force 3, 2 services

wage mage: force 5, 1 service or force 3, 3 services

and the tweak monkey could get: force 11, 1 service or force 6, 6 services

Dosen't look too bad so far.

The worst case is tweak monkey + mr lucky with around 30 dice, who could get force 16, 1 service or force 10, 6 services

using 1.5x hits round up, nothing free:
average street mage: force 2, 1 service
wage mage: force 4, 1 service
specialist: force 7 1 service
tweak monkey: force 10, 1 service
lucky tweak monkey: force 14, 1 service

Personally, I like the free force & service version as it means that lower level mages can summon useful spirits. Force 2 and 1 service is pretty craptacular for someone who is theoretically at the 'professional level'.

If we add that spirits will only use edge to increase drain when the summoner uses edge or has the appropriate spirit bane flaw it'll probably stop most edge monster summoning cheese.

[Shrike30]

I ran this idea past the shaman in my group, and he seemed pretty receptive to it, especially the changes to the binding rules (the possibility of a "friendly" bind). One of the things we discussed was the possibility of having the "binding" contract specifically forbid draining, in which case the Loyalty of the spirit would kick in to reduce the drain from the bind.

The standard 6/6 max a Contact has wouldn't work out for a spirit (as they can go well beyond force 6). At the same time, letting a character grab a 12/12 Spirit at character creation seems pretty nuts. So...

The maximum combined rating (Force + Loyalty) of a Spirit known to a summoner is equal to (2xSummoning)+Initiation level. This would let a Magic 6, Summoning 6 uninitiated magician know a Force 11, Loyalty 1 spirit, a 6/6 spirit, or a 4/8 spirit.

The "Favors" rules from Contacts could probably be ported over to use with Spirits, too. The summoner could ask the spirit for a "favor" (something like performing bound spirit tasks when they're not bound, sticking around beyond sundown when they're not bound, overcasting a huge spell, or performing services without pay (basically, getting a service without having to summon and taking drain)), and that favor's magnitude would be based on the force of the spirit. Unrepaid favors or overuse of favors would affect Loyalty the same way they do for Contacts.

I'm really liking the idea of summoner skills essentially working out kind of like being an Astral Face.

[Nim]

What effect are you looking at for the loyalty, Shrike? Reduction in the spirit's dice in the opposed test?

[Shrike30]

Yeah, that one struck me as being a distinct improvement over my initial idea, benefitting lower-level mages in a way that "increased max services" really did not.

[Nim]

If you go with the idea that having the spirit's name is /required/ in order to summon them, then you should allow Loyalty 0 spirit 'contacts', to represent a spirit whose name you know but who you have no relationship with. If you learn a name in the course of play, that's about where it would start.

Also...as it currently stands, any spirit whose Loyalty equalled their force would be almost an automatic summon (requiring just 1 hit from the magician) and would incur the minimum Drain (DV 2).

If your 'known' spirits were the ONLY ones you could summon, that might balance out okay: easier rolls, but less flexibility. I'm not sure. Might need to increase the base difficulty of the summoning a bit to keep the Loyalty bonuses from making it too easy. Thoughts?

[Abbandon]

I think making random summoning more difficult is a good thing. it doesnt make much since for a mage to just summon spirits as the need arises because we already know spirits dont want to be called and resist it. So what kind of mage would put a team at risk by doing it so randomly? Only a desperate mage. All the other spellslingers would have whipped up some spirits in advance requiring some "leg work" and studying to get names or atleast trying to get one with the right force and element.

Loyalty should be like an attribute for spirits. To go from loyalty 1 to loyalty 2 you would have to have performed 4 services for the spirit. Or double the whatever the next point of loyalty is.

[Shrike30]

Sufficiently built summoners basically don't take drain anyway, even when uncorking F6+ spirits from their bottles. However, knowing a 6/6 spirit would eat 12 BP at character creation, not an insignificant investment of points.

I'm tempted, given these rules, to up the number of dice spirits normally roll when they're summoned. Maybe to the 2xForce rolled when you bind a spirit in the RAW, since there's going to be opportunities to reduce this built in?

The big scary spirits people know (the F9+ ones) would probably have low loyalty, due to the whole "Force + Loyalty maxes out at Skill+Skill+Initiation Rank" thing. Summoning them wouldn't become that much easier, and the lower-end spirits aren't the ones causing large issues with the game. Getting a higher-end spirit disrupted (with the possible penalty to Force or Loyalty, depending on the circumstances) would be mishandling a fairly potent resource.

My concept of this revolves around only knowing a given number of spirits (probably equal to Cha + Your Other Important Magic Stat, or Cha + Summoning). This would, among other things, prevent a bit of the "summon the spirit of man with the 2 spells you want sustained at the moment" MInAB annoyance we're seeing right now, as summoners would be less apt to use up a bunch of their spirits and BPs to be Reflex + Armor or Invis + Silence carriers.

We should figure out a BP->Karma conversion ratio for upgrading/meeting new spirits later on in the character's life...

[Nim]

[Shrike30]

I think we could leave the binding rules as-is... the mage takes drain again, and also spends Binding Materials. That's a reasonable sacrifice. The whole "they don't knock off Loyalty if bind them with Spell Binding allowed in the contract" thing just seems like a good idea.

Tying spell binding in to Loyalty (as well as Force) might be a good idea, too... for every day of Binding, the spirit is -1/-1. If it runs out of Loyalty before it runs out of Force, interesting stuff could happen...

Expand more on your worldview conflict vs favors thing... I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[Nim]

[Vaevictis]

If it's A, then how does a summoned spirit that goes free manage to stick around?