Stupid Summoning Question Options

[Enin]

I will sound like a huge noob asking this, but I'm having trouble finding an answer in ze book...

Can a magician summon a spirit while projecting?

[DireRadiant]

In SR4 yes I think, SR3 no.

[pbangarth]

Summon, yes. Binding requires materials to be consumed in the Binding process, so that can't be done, as they won't come across into the astral.

[Enin]

Thank you sir, does anybody have a pagequote, or round about place to look for the ruling?

[TheOOB]

That is not a stupid question. In any case, yes, you can summon spirits in the astral plane, and there is all kinds of non-sense you can pull off because of it.

I generally rule as a GM that spirits really don't like materializing away from their masters material form, especially when they are materializing into a dangerous situation. This is mainly for game balance(so that magician can't send waves of spirits out with no physical danger to themselves), but I find ways to justify it. Usually I just say that the spirit uses the magicians mana to materialize, and it is more difficult, possibly even painful to channel that physical mana from a distance.

EDIT: Can't find a page num at the moment, it's late and I'm tired. As a purely magical action that summons an astral form tough it makes sense that it has to be cast on the astral, heck I could see an argument that it can only be cast on the astral(though many canonical examples exist of mages in the meat summoning spirits.

[The_Vanguard]

Every magical action should be possible on the astral as long as the rules don't say otherwise. Physical spells e.g. are outright forbidden.

Keep in mind that a mage can only have one unbound spirit under his control and that it will have a signature that can be traced back to him. Additionally, you might want to consider ruling that sending a spirit to another plane constitutes a remote service.