Calling, What's the deal? Options

[Tomothy]

I noticed a few comments about 'calling', something about arcana and negotiation? Clearly in one of the books I havent read, could someone fill me in?

[Neraph]

Read my signature about spirits. It's in there.

[knasser]

I noticed a few comments about 'calling', something about arcana and negotiation? Clearly in one of the books I havent read, could someone fill me in?

Running Wild has rules for "calling" rather than summoning spirits. Summoning is making them appear and getting them to do things. Calling is a ritual process (that even mundanes can do, although they'll need a few materials provided by the awakened) and merely gets a Free or Wild spirit's attention. It's then up to you to negotiate with them as you would any other PC. Quite nice.

K.

[Rasumichin]

Calling is the way to go if you want some lunatic NPC to awaken Cthulhu.
Or something similarly monstrous.

It allows bargains with all kinds of outlandish or downright terrifying spirits.
Want your own shedim squad? The Wild Hunt to chase down your enemies? The Grim Reaper?
No problem, just dig up some arcane texts, get ritual materials and there ya go.

Too good to be true?

Of course.
You cannot demand anything from these beings.
You make an offering and it's up to them to accept ot to simply lob off your head and eat your soul.
Good social skills will come in handy, but there's some nasty caveats when dealing with fairies and the like.
They have very...unique views of how to do business.
Simply saying thank you could make them think that they are allowed to take you as their slave for the next few decades.

[Neraph]

Rasumichin is half right, and slanting it to be worse than it is.

With Calling you can Call any spirit type at all. You can try for a Shedim, or the Wild Hunt, but you can just as easily get a Watcher Spirit or a F2 Fire Spirit from the Hermetic Tradition. You do have to spend reagents equal to binding Mats of the same Force that you'd bind it with, but the huuuuge upswing is that it becomes an Opposed Negotiations Test, which, as we all know, most spirits do not have Negotiations, and it's really easy to get a high dicepool for it as a player.

If you want to go after the wierd spirit types, expect it to be wierd. However, completely by the way the rules are written, it vastly improves the way summoning/binding would work for a standard character. You make the Opposed Negotiations Test (after a couple other steps) and your Net Successes are the favors it owes you.

Gold.

EDIT: It should be noted that the Pornomancer would be able to get a large favor list from even a beefed-up Wild Hunt, so Rasumichin's argument is semi-invalid.

[Ancient History]

<nods> Lars did good with the Calling rules. The initial concept, I'm a little shaky on the timeline - either I told Syn about it and it jived with his idea and he told Lars about it and it jived with his ideas, or else we all ended up thinking about the same thing at about the same time. I found this old e-mail:

Syn,

Had an idea re: the spirit entities idea. Instead of having a metamagic to let you summon and bind them like free spirits, I propose a parallel system calling Calling and Bargaining. Basically, Calling works like summoning except that the spirit has to choose to answer - using enough of the right materials (unique for every class of spirit entity) can influence them, but even if they come the caller can't bind them - no True Names - but they can bargain with them, trading a service for a service (Binding test, the number of hits equals the maximum amount of services).

I think this is neat because it makes the spirit entities different-but-uses-similar-enough-rules-to-avoid-confusion, it forces the players to treat them with a bit more respect ("Okay, so these guys can't use metaplanar shortcuts but I can't summon or bind them either, and banishing is only temporary. Hmm."), and I like the idea of imposing a magical service on the magician (spiritual quid-pro-quo!).

Or I might be going slowly mad with lack of sleep. If you hear me talk about "power knacks" for dragon-related critters, tell me to go say hello to my pillow.

-Bobby

[knasser]

Rasumichin is half right, and slanting it to be worse than it is.

With Calling you can Call any spirit type at all. You can try for a Shedim, or the Wild Hunt, but you can just as easily get a Watcher Spirit or a F2 Fire Spirit from the Hermetic Tradition.

Where are you getting that? Reading the passage myself it says Free spirits, Wild spirits and those described in the Magical Threats section of Street Magic. I can't see a mention of calling regular tradition spirits and that doesn't appear to be the intent of the calling rules generally. If you have a reference, I'd be interested to see it, but otherwise, I think the above is a mistake.

but the huuuuge upswing is that it becomes an Opposed Negotiations Test, which, as we all know, most spirits do not have Negotiations, and it's really easy to get a high dicepool for it as a player.

Incorrect. The book says negotiation "should be handled by roleplaying, but Negotiation Tests (the Spirit rolling Force + Edge in the Opposed Social Tests) may also be used."

Even if you do go to just using a negotiation test, there are a number of things to keep in mind. Firstly dice pool modifiers are going to come heavily into play, I should think. Assuming that the spirit considers itself more powerful than you (which I would if I were an immortal wild spirit whose aid was being sought by a mortal), then it's probably going to have an edge in any attempts to persuade it to do you favours for free. And some of your normal social modifiers aren't going to be useful. Pheremones? Doubtful. Specialisation in spirits? Probably not. But most importantly of all, you're not summoning and binding a spirit as a magician would. Even if you manage to fast talk the spirit into agreeing to something, there's little to stop it changing its mind later. What Calling does, is open a line of communication to a new player you can contract with, but it's unlikely to be a route to getting freebies. Neraph's game may differ.

K.

EDIT: Quick note - the paraphanelia also often includes "exotic reagents" which is Street Magic language for side-quests. This isn't going to happen without GM support. Calling is more for plot development, imo, than general usage.

[Tomothy]

Ta.

I'll have to check out Running Wild.

Edit: This does give mages a way to find Free Spirits, which they can then assense and attempt to bind.

[Neraph]

Where are you getting that? Reading the passage myself it says Free spirits, Wild spirits and those described in the Magical Threats section of Street Magic. I can't see a mention of calling regular tradition spirits and that doesn't appear to be the intent of the calling rules generally. If you have a reference, I'd be interested to see it, but otherwise, I think the above is a mistake.

How interesting. I could have sworn (and technically I did in the above, after a fashion) that you were able to call any spirit. Very well then. In my defense, it's been months since I've looked at the material.

Incorrect. The book says negotiation "should be handled by roleplaying, but Negotiation Tests (the Spirit rolling Force + Edge in the Opposed Social Tests) may also be used."

So basically it says Opposed Negotiation. Gotcha.

Even if you do go to just using a negotiation test, there are a number of things to keep in mind. Firstly dice pool modifiers are going to come heavily into play, I should think. Assuming that the spirit considers itself more powerful than you (which I would if I were an immortal wild spirit whose aid was being sought by a mortal), then it's probably going to have an edge in any attempts to persuade it to do you favours for free. And some of your normal social modifiers aren't going to be useful. Pheremones? Doubtful. Specialisation in spirits? Probably not. But most importantly of all, you're not summoning and binding a spirit as a magician would. Even if you manage to fast talk the spirit into agreeing to something, there's little to stop it changing its mind later. What Calling does, is open a line of communication to a new player you can contract with, but it's unlikely to be a route to getting freebies. Neraph's game may differ.

If you read my thread about free spirits, I specifically outline a way to get a F1 Blood Spirit to agree to whatever you want really easily. If you want to roleplay it, that's easy. If you want to Opposed Negotiate, we're talking about my dicepool of X - M, where X = actual dicepool (which is high), and where M = the modifiers which the GM feels like not allowing (some of which I would agree with, but even Spirits can smell), which will still be higher than the F1 spirit's dicepool of 1, Exploding. Charisma 1, defaulting, adding 1 Edge.

EDIT: Quick note - the paraphanelia also often includes "exotic reagents" which is Street Magic language for side-quests. This isn't going to happen without GM support. Calling is more for plot development, imo, than general usage.

Welcome to RPGs, where nothing happens without the GM's permission. Welcome also to Theoretical Optomization, where we assume that everything with rules works as the rules are written, and where when a ruling could be smudged by the GM, we instead favor on the side of the rules.

[knasser]

So basically it says Opposed Negotiation. Gotcha.

The important point is that your comment on spirits being easy because most of them don't have Negotiation isn't correct, because it's actually Cha + Negotiation vs. Force + Edge. And your "basically" is inappropriate. You're cutting out the fact that it doesn't need to be (and the default in the book isn't) a Negotiation roll.

Welcome to RPGs, where nothing happens without the GM's permission. Welcome also to Theoretical Optomization, where we assume that everything with rules works as the rules are written, and where when a ruling could be smudged by the GM, we instead favor on the side of the rules.

There's a difference between 'a GM can arbitrarily change any rules and nothing happens without her permission' and this case where the book explicitly recommends using "exotic reagents" which are exactly defined as those things that a GM handwaves into existence, usually as the result of a special quest. It's disingenuous to try and pretend that raising these is the same as the GM over-writing any other rules in the book. Dismissing what I've said as 'the GM could change anything' doesn't apply. I'm not saying "hey, let's abandon the rules and handwave things because a GM can". I'm telling the OP exactly what the book actually suggests. There are a few cases in Shadowrun where GM handwavium is the actual stated approach. Unique magic items is one. Spirit calling is another. That's *a lot* different to discarding printed rules.

You say it's been a long time since you read these rules. I suggest you actually go back to them for the context you're obviously missing.

but even Spirits can smell

Can Storm Wraiths, beings of living smoke? Can Free Earth Elementals and Grim Reapers? And should any of these spirits be subject to the tailored pheremones designed to make a primate appear more dominant or sexually compatible to its kind? Maybe yes, maybe no. A Wild or Free spirit is something a GM makes up. It's up to the GM. And that's not house-ruling anything any more than a GM saying anything else about a spirit she creates. I'm illustrating how much variety there is in spirits and how easily a "pornomancer" could quite easily find themselves not the monster-negotiator they thought they were.

And anyway, I refer you to my earlier post, social rolls are not mind-control, nor something that lasts when there's no substance to back it up.

K.

[Rasumichin]

Can dogs smell?
Of course they can.
But you need Critter Pheromones if you want bonus dice on your Animal Handling test.
I wouldn't say that Tailored Pheromones do you any good when bargaining with a fae.

Of course, this still leaves a lot of other sources for social bonus dice.

I'd guess that First Impression, Kinesics, Increased Aptitude or Glamour still work.

Other stuff that shouldn't make a difference in this case would be Biosculpting or Fame (a spirit is not gonna give a damn if you are an internationally revered sex symbol on the material plane).

On the other hand, there's also a few negative modifiers i'd ignore in this case, such as those from infection or the freak modifiers.

[Banaticus]

This does give mages a way to find Free Spirits, which they can then assense and attempt to bind.

No, you must make a quest past the astral plane to the metaphysical plane to find a spirit's true name to attempt to bind it. Simply assensing it doesn't help you (although it would help you recognize the true name when you go on the GM-written/GM-approved quest to find its true name.

[Rasumichin]

You can also assense the place where the spirit went free.
It usually leaves an astral imprint of the true name there.
Street Magic doesn't mention how long this lasts, though.

[Tomothy]

Lastly, if a metaplanar quest is out of the question, a character who has very carefully observed the free spirit’s aura (achieving 5+ net hits on the Assensing Test) can attempt to design a functional spirit formula from scratch.

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, I thought one of the weaknesses of Free Spirits was a formula right out there where they become Free. At least, it's in the Free-Spirits-As-Characters section.

[Draco18s]

Or I might be going slowly mad with lack of sleep. If you hear me talk about "power knacks" for dragon-related critters, tell me to go say hello to my pillow.

Is that a reference to The Other Game's Monster Manual 4 and the Xorvintaal* template?

*Yes, I even know how to spell it without cracking the book. I love the template. It makes dragons (at least the D&D ones) somewhat more exciting, unexpected, and powerful. Fluffwise it actually makes them seem like local regents, rather than cave dwelling monsters who have an Int score that just so happens to be high enough to know all languages, but doesn't really mean anything on any grand scale. Default-dragons are also (terrible) sorcerers, they get caster level 6, tops, in 20 HD. Hell, I'd swap out 6 levels of sorcerer to have a "regenerate from death (unless it mutilates my body)" ability as a player. And to get two to four MORE powers? DEAL.