Angel Summoner, quick and easy Force 9 spirits Options

[kerbarian]

A bigger concern is the hail-mary Force 12 spirit (basically unkillable except with Banishing, with an average of 24 dice pools). Any Magic 6 mage can attempt this; a Magic 6 + Summoning 6 mage has a reasonable shot if he spends a point of Edge for Second Chance. The drain is going to be a bitch: probably 8P or 10P, but the mage can probably resist 3 of that for 5P or 7P damage. Not good, but as a hail-mary it's actually not bad. It doesn't even have to be the PCs doing this. Suppose you're a bad guy shaman who's doing some unsavory things. One day, a bunch of guys bust into your compound and start killing your guards. Why not try for a big nasty/invincible spirit to hopefully kill the intruders before they get to your room? Add Invisibility and Stealth and hopefully they won't find you before your spirit turns them into pulp. When you fight any other dude with Ability 6 Skill 6, you're facing a dice pool of 12. When you fight a summoner with Magic 6 Summoning 6, you can face a dice pool of 24. You could say the Shadowrunner team should have taken more precautions and been sneakier, but what other BBEG with Ability 6 Skill 6 would warrant such caution?

My solution? Cap the Force of a summoned spirit at Magic x1 instead of Magic x2, or alternatively let spirits resist summoning with Force x2.

Yeah, that's pretty worrisome, actually. Unpredictable and potentially serious drain is a check on PCs summoning high-force spirits (in theory -- except that the numbers aren't actually that scary if you build for it, per the OP) but not nearly as much of a check on NPCs.

If a strong but vanilla magician (Magic 6, Summoning 6, drain attributes 5 each, 10 boxes physical condition monitor) summons a Force 12 spirit, he'll generally pull it off without dying. Assuming he has 1 point of Edge to spend on the attempt (either for summoning or drain, decided after observing the initial summoning roll), he has a 79% chance of getting 1+ services and being conscious afterwards (9% chance of going down from physical damage). On average, he'll end up with 1.9 services and 4.2 boxes of physical damage.

As a side note, this is what I used to calculate the probabilities, averages, etc. It's python and a bit sloppy -- I can explain or comment it if anyone is interested:

[ Spoiler ]

CODE

from operator import mul

nCk = lambda n,k: int(round(reduce(mul, (float(n-i)/(i+1) for i in range(k)), 1)))
pHit = 1.0/3
pmf = lambda dice, hits: pHit**hits * (1-pHit)**(dice-hits) * nCk(dice, hits)
roll = lambda dice: map(lambda hits: pmf(dice, hits), range(dice+1))
avg_result = lambda probs: sum(map(lambda tup: tup[0] * tup[1], enumerate(probs)))
def eroll(dice):
    final_roll = [0] * (dice + 1)
    for (hits, prob) in enumerate(roll(dice)):
        for (edge_hits, edge_prob) in enumerate(roll(dice - hits)):
            final_roll[hits + edge_hits] += prob * edge_prob
    return final_roll

svcs = [0] * 13
dmg = [0] * 25
success = 0.0
for (smn_hits, smn_prob) in enumerate(roll(12)):
    for (spi_hits, spi_prob) in enumerate(roll(12)):
        if spi_hits >= smn_hits:
            for (smn_rehits, smn_reprob) in enumerate(roll(12 - smn_hits)):
                for (dr_hits, dr_prob) in enumerate(roll(10)):
                    svc_count = max(0, smn_hits + smn_rehits - spi_hits)
                    dmg_boxes = max(0, spi_hits * 2 - dr_hits)
                    svcs[svc_count] += smn_prob * spi_prob * smn_reprob * dr_prob
                    dmg[dmg_boxes] += smn_prob * spi_prob * smn_reprob * dr_prob
                    if svc_count >= 1 and dmg_boxes < 10:
                        success += smn_prob * spi_prob * smn_reprob * dr_prob
        else:
            for (dr_hits, dr_prob) in enumerate(eroll(10)):
                svc_count = max(0, smn_hits - spi_hits)
                dmg_boxes = max(0, spi_hits * 2 - dr_hits)
                svcs[svc_count] += smn_prob * spi_prob * dr_prob
                dmg[dmg_boxes] += smn_prob * spi_prob * dr_prob
                if svc_count >= 1 and dmg_boxes < 10:
                    success += smn_prob * spi_prob * dr_prob

success
sum(dmg[10:])
avg_result(svcs)
avg_result(dmg)

[PriorityKarmaGen]

Lolwut? No, they don't, but that's roughly ten city blocks off the point. If he's capping out on defense at 2 hits, anyone only ever needs 3 hits to hit him, at which point he goes down like a 5-nuyen hooker.

Sorry, I meant limit, not threshold. Defense tests usually don't have limits, unless you're using it with a skill like Block, Dodge, or Parry.

But they can all do more than one thing. This guy can only do one thing, and curls up in a wheezing ball when asked to do anything else.

If the samurai or the decker have the skills for it, yes. That's my point: Angel Summoner doesn't have any significant capability not directly related to conjuring the biggest spirit he can. Also, Concealment is not a panacea, especially not for this character: with no Sneaking skill, he's defaulting to 1 die (Agility 2 - 1). If he tries to get past anybody with 13 Perception dice or better (not unlikely), they buy a hit and see right through the Concealment; and that's assuming he actually gets a hit on his 1 die. If he rolls a 1, which he'll do roughly one in six times? No Concealment will help him.

The only thing you need to summon high force spirits regularly are Spellcasting 6, Summoning 6 (specialty), Increase Willpower, and high Willpower and Charisma/Logic. Everything else is gravy, especially if you only summon high force spirits for emergency situations. A mage has most of this anyway -- the additional investment needed to summon high force spirits is very small.

In the example character, he has 15 skill points and 9 spells to play around with. He makes a decent face with 8 Cha -- he defaults 7 dice, and 1 skill point gives him 9 dice. Don't forget the character has 6 Edge. If you don't like using Edge for flexibility, swap it with attributes for (EDIT:) 6 more attribute points at the cost of 5 edge. If you need more skills, you can give up (EDIT:) 5 edge and 2 attributes (which probably increases your drain taken by 1) for 18 more skills and 5 points in skill groups.

You can nitpick the example character all you want. It doesn't change the fact that the only way you can turn Attribute 6 Skill 6 into a dice pools of 18-24 with only a small investment is through Summoning.

Yeah, that's pretty worrisome, actually. Unpredictable and potentially serious drain is a check on PCs summoning high-force spirits (in theory -- except that the numbers aren't actually that scary if you build for it, per the OP) but not nearly as much of a check on NPCs.

If a strong but vanilla magician (Magic 6, Summoning 6, drain attributes 5 each, 10 boxes physical condition monitor) summons a Force 12 spirit, he'll generally pull it off without dying. Assuming he has 1 point of Edge to spend on the attempt (either for summoning or drain, decided after observing the initial summoning roll), he has a 79% chance of getting 1+ services and being conscious afterwards (9% chance of going down from physical damage). On average, he'll end up with 1.9 services and 4.2 boxes of physical damage.

And if he wants to up his odds of staying conscious, a Force 9 or 10 spirit is probably "invincible enough".


I just realized that capping Force at Magic x1 is probably not enough, especially if Power Foci increase your Magic stat instead of just adding dice. You could still summon Force 9 spirits with a Force 3 Power Focus. I think solving this problem either requires nerfing the stats of summoned spirits (halving the force or subtracting X from the stats across the board), or increasing the opposition to the Summoning test to Force x2.

[kerbarian]

I just realized that capping Force at Magic x1 is probably not enough, especially if Power Foci increase your Magic stat instead of just adding dice. You could still summon Force 9 spirits with a Force 3 Power Focus. I think solving this problem either requires nerfing the stats of summoned spirits (halving the force or subtracting X from the stats across the board), or increasing the opposition to the Summoning test to Force x2.

I think specifying that Power Foci don't affect whether drain is physical or stun would help a lot. Increasing the opposition test to Force x2 makes summoning scary and unreliable even at low levels -- maybe keep the opposition test at Force but change the drain to (Force + spirit hits) instead of (2x spirit hits)? That's a bit more drain on the low end but definitely makes things tougher at the high end.

Unless this makes it into the errata, though, we're just talking about house rules. I really would appreciate some errata with the specific intent of making balance fixes -- here's hoping!

[Lionhearted]

Did they remove the part where high force spirits tend to use edge to resist being summoned?
Which tends to make most aspiring magi attempting to summon the four horsemen go splat...

[Draco18s]

Did they remove the part where high force spirits tend to use edge to resist being summoned?
Which tends to make most aspiring magi attempting to summon the four horsemen go splat...

That was not a real rule...

[Lionhearted]

Hm, it was probably a suggested solution to the aforementioned problem then... Was pretty certain it was listed in SM as an optional rule though, bah... the boundaries between RAW and house rules blurs sometimes

[Shinobi Killfist]

Between Body 1, a blitzed immune system, an allergy to pollutants (in other words, 90% of everything he's exposed to, unless he's doing his running exclusively in virgin wilderness where there's nothing to run against), and zero ability to do anything remotely athletic (run, jump, swim, climb, not that any runner has ever had to do any of those things...), he is literally weaker than a kitten. Also, your math is wrong: he doesn't have 19 dice to summon spirits, he has 17: you forgot the -2 penalty for his allergy, which in an urban setting affects him 24/7 and penalizes every single roll he makes other than soak and drain resistance.

The moral of this story is that if you minmax the living fuck out of your character, you get someone who can do precisely one thing unbelievably well, but folds like wet cardboard when asked to do anything else (like, say, be a functioning shadowrunner).

That is sort of the nature of the priority system. Something is getting dumped hard. d and E pretty much suck at pretty much everything except race and C is kind of crappy as well for most options. Being a mage means one of your higher options is probably gone, want decent resources well C is higher is gone as well, something whether its skills attributes or both are getting dropped to D or E. Expect a lot of dump stating in this edition, more than 4e by a long shot. And mages with 12 magic skills, don't expect them to have much flexibility outside of magic. Look at the archetypes, the occult investigator gave up all of the sorcery skill group to be mediocre at talking with people and the amazing ability to impersonate her own race.

[pragma]

As a side note, this is what I used to calculate the probabilities, averages, etc. It's python and a bit sloppy -- I can explain or comment it if anyone is interested:

<snip>

Thanks for posting this. I've been itching to write a probability calculator (and dice roller) for SR5 and this will likely save me some time. You're a champion.

[FuelDrop]

The thread title reminded me of this. It was probably meant to.

[PriorityKarmaGen]

What do you guys think about a houserule nerfing the power level of spirits? This would only affect the spirits that are summoned; NPC spirits can be adjusted upward (just double their Force).

Abilities: Replace F with F/2 across the board, round down (Edge is now F/4). For example, a Force 5 Spirit of Earth gets 5/2+4 = 6 Body. Minimums are still 1.
Skills: All skills are at F/2+2 rating. (I want to say round up for this to make power jumps finer, but that will be harder to remember.)
Optional Powers: 1 per 6 full points of Force. Optional powers keying off Force now key off Force/2 (round down).

Summoning: Force up to Magic x2. Opposed test: Summoning + Magic [Force] vs. spirit's Force. Drain is (Force/2) + spirit's hits, round up, min 2.


There are four effects:
1) This caps the strongest spirit characters can possibly summon to about half the previous level.
2) If a character wanted to summon a spirit with Force = their Magic in the RAW system, they can still summon a spirit with roughly the same power under this house-ruled system. However, this will be harder and they will need more Summoning/other skill boosts. Since I changed the drain formula, they'll take more drain (if you want them to take the same amount of drain, change the drain formula to Spirit's Hits on the test).
3) Lower-level Spirits are more useful thanks to higher skill ranks.
4) It creates finer divisions in Spirits' power. EDIT: in a perfect world, physical attributes and Magic round down, skills and mental attributes and Essence rounds up. Makes bookkeeping harder though.


The funny thing is here it might STILL be too easy to summon a Force 18 Spirit, which is the equivalent of the RAW Force 9 Spirit. The OP's character has 19 dice and can reliably succeed with Edge. Again, that requires the Power Foci to add to Magic instead of just adding to the skill tests. Changing/clarifying the Power Foci can prevent this.

I'll put some benchmarks below for Force 6 and a Force 12 Spirits below, comparable to a Force ~3 and a Force ~6 Spirit under RAW. The short version is the Force 6 Spirit gets you a competent fighter, comparable to a freshly-generated character who has combat as a secondary focus. It only averages 5 points of drain. A Force 12 Spirit gets you an extra freshly-generated Street Sam, but will average 10 points of drain.


Force 6 benchmark of Beast and Fire spirits:
A Force 6 Spirit would be the lowest Force suitable for combat, thanks to getting their first optional power. The expected drain is 5S (assuming 6 Magic). Anyone with Magic 3+ can summon these. (There seems to be a typo with the Spirit of Beast's Natural Weapon. I'm going to assume the DV is (Force + Str)P by RAW, so (Force/2+Str)P by this houserule.)

A Force 6 Beast Spirit gets 6+2D6 Initiative.
A Force 6 Beast Spirit attacks with 4 (Agility) + 5 (Unarmed Combat) = 9 dice on its Natural Weapon. The DV is 3 (Force/2) + 5 (Str) = 8P.
A Force 6 Beast Spirit has a defense test of 3 (Reaction) + 3 (Intuition) = 6 dice. It resists damage with 5 Body and has Hardened Armor 6 vs. normal attacks. Against normal attacks with 0 AP, it gets 11 dice to resist plus 3 automatic hits.

A Force 6 Fire Spirit gets 9+2D6 Initiative.
A Force 6 Fire Spirit (melee, Energy Aura) attacks with 5 (Agility) + 5 (Unarmed Combat) = 10 dice. The DV is 1 (Str) + 3 (Magic, Energy Aura) = 4P with -3 AP.
A Force 6 Fire Spirit (melee, Engulf) attacks with 5 (Agility) + 5 (Unarmed Combat) = 10 dice. The DV is 6P (Magic x2) with -3 AP.
A Force 6 Fire Spirit (ranged, Elemental Attack) attacks with 5 (Agility) + 5 (Exotic Ranged Wpn) = 10 dice. The DV is 6P (Magic x2) with -3 AP.
A Force 6 Fire Spirit has a defense test of 6 (Reaction) + 4 (Intuition) = 10 dice. It resists damage with 4 Body and has Hardened Armor 6 vs. normal attacks. Against normal attacks with 0 AP, it gets 10 dice to resist plus 3 automatic hits.

Compared with a Force 6 single-target Indirect combat spell, assuming Magic 6, Spellcasting 6:
Drain 3, 12 dice to hit, 6P DV with -6 AP. The hit and AP is better, and this is more immediate assuming a surprise situation where a Spirit hadn't already been summoned. The Spirit can attack more than once and doesn't require LOS. This seems to be roughly even.

Force 12 benchmark of Beast and Fire spirits:
The maximum that can be summoned by a Magic 6 mage, and he will need something beyond Summoning 6 to make this reliable (specialization + a focus could work). The expected drain is 10P.

A Force 12 Beast Spirit gets 12+2D6 Initiative.
A Force 12 Beast Spirit attacks with 7 (Agility) + 8 (Unarmed Combat) = 15 dice on its Natural Weapon. The DV is 6 (Force/2) + 8 (Str) = 14P. It also delivers a 6 power venom with the attack.
A Force 12 Beast Spirit has a defense test of 6 (Reaction) + 6 (Intuition) = 12 dice. It resists damage with 8 Body and has Hardened Armor 12 vs. normal attacks. Against normal attacks with 0 AP, it gets 20 dice to resist plus 6 automatic hits.

A Force 12 Fire Spirit gets 15+2D6 Initiative.
A Force 12 Fire Spirit (melee, Engulf + Energy Aura) attacks with 8 (Agility) + 8 (Unarmed Combat) = 16 dice. The DV is 12 (Magic x2) + 6 (Magic, Energy Aura) = 18P with -6 AP.
A Force 12 Fire Spirit (ranged, Elemental Attack) attacks with 8 (Agility) + 8 (Exotic Ranged Wpn) = 16 dice. The DV is 12P (Magic x2) with -6 AP.
A Force 12 Fire Spirit has a defense test of 9 (Reaction) + 7 (Intuition) = 16 dice. It resists damage with 7 Body and has Hardened Armor 12 vs. normal attacks. Against normal attacks with 0 AP, it gets 19 dice to resist plus 6 automatic hits.

Compared with a Force 12 single-target Indirect combat spell, assuming Magic 6, Spellcasting 6, +3 dice:
Drain 9, 15 dice to hit, 12P DV with -12 AP. Pretty comparable, but the Spirit stays for the whole combat (or soaks lots of damage).

[PriorityKarmaGen]

Huh, I just realized. By RAW, a summoning a Force 6 Spirit is basically Summon Street Sam. All that cyber and attributes and weapon training is duplicated by Magic 6 Summoning 6. Your own pet Street Sam for only ~2 points of drain!

That sounds balanced.

[Grinder]

That is sort of the nature of the priority system. Something is getting dumped hard. d and E pretty much suck at pretty much everything except race and C is kind of crappy as well for most options. Being a mage means one of your higher options is probably gone, want decent resources well C is higher is gone as well, something whether its skills attributes or both are getting dropped to D or E. Expect a lot of dump stating in this edition, more than 4e by a long shot. And mages with 12 magic skills, don't expect them to have much flexibility outside of magic. Look at the archetypes, the occult investigator gave up all of the sorcery skill group to be mediocre at talking with people and the amazing ability to impersonate her own race.

Character generation in SR5 makes me cry. Getting rud of BP or Karmagen turns out to be an incrrdible stupid move - and for what reason? Just to get back the old school feeling of SR2? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

[xsansara]

Just first off: I think this a valid character concept. Depending on the group you can be a very valuable asset. I think you overlooked the Spirit Affinity quality, which gives you extra dice to summoning AND an extra service. Still, if you want to limit yourself to stun drain, I think you need to stick to F6 and save the F12 for the afore-mentioned Hail Mary. The RAW is quite explicit with the extra-dice wording.

I completely overread the section on spending reagents to reset the limit on hits. I was on the verge of dismissing spellcasting, except for utility. Let's take a Stunball F2 with likely no drain, but with 5 reagents making say 4 damage to everyone. Which is a the same cost as a Flash-Bang, with only half the effectiveness. Much better than my earlier calculations... No seriously, this makes Combat Sense, Mind Probe, Increase Reflexes, Swarm (-6 Ini for a bulk of opponents), Mob Control and Mob Mind useful spells again. Especially the last two are now almost overpowered. 140 Nuyen to gain control over a bunch of people at likely no drain... way cooler than a grenade.

[Irion]

Character generation in SR5 makes me cry. Getting rud of BP or Karmagen turns out to be an incrrdible stupid move - and for what reason? Just to get back the old school feeling of SR2? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

Have to disagree. It is better than BP but worse than Karma.
The point with BP is, that beeing a mage was just to darn cheap. Now you really loose something.

It has still the same problem like the BP system mostly that you are able to get some things cheaper in chargen than in game and the other way round, opening the floodgates for minmaxing.

@PriorityKarmaGen
The problem with just scaling with half force is, that force is used for some stuff. They would still be powerful considering magic...

No sane system as anything scale stronger than linear. Thats the main issue with spirits.

Normaly going from 5 to 6 gives you less benefits then going from 4 to 5. With spirits it is the other way round. With that kind of scaling it is impossible to keep stuff balanced. Either low level spirits will be worth nothing or high level spirts will kick the shit out of you...

The best way to deal with it is to say there are lets say 4-5 levels of spirits. (3-4 for SCs and the last for dragons)
At each level you get a full grown out spirit and with additional successes or by taking addition drain or whatever you get to add stuff to your spirit. So for example an extra hit is a service, one additional power or up to 4 points on non-special attributes(augmented max: force+4). And so on. (So raising force by one would cost you maybe 1 hit and +2 drain)

The four "levels" would be tamplates like:
1: Force 2, few skills, one or two powers
2: Force 5, modarate skills, around four powers
3: Force 8 etc.
4: Force 12 etc.
5: Force 17 etc.

[FuelDrop]

One houserule I'm considering is that spirits don't roll to resist summoning. They get half their force (rounded up) hits automatically, or force hits if you've pissed them off enough to make them spend edge. Just came up with it so not sure how balanced it is, but it does make powerful spirits harder to summon.

[Jhaiisiin]

Character generation in SR5 makes me cry. Getting rud of BP or Karmagen turns out to be an incrrdible stupid move - and for what reason? Just to get back the old school feeling of SR2? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

Without getting too much into this (because I'm not sure what I can say), I can vouch that nostalgia and going back to SR2 days had no bearing on the chargen choice at all.

[Elfenlied]

Did they remove the part where high force spirits tend to use edge to resist being summoned?
Which tends to make most aspiring magi attempting to summon the four horsemen go splat...

Spirits, by default, don't get to spend Edge on anything unless their Summoner wills it so by spending a point of his own Edge.

I've never liked the "Spirits use Edge to resist as roll whenever the DM feels like it". Basically, it led to even more mage optimization, bad blood between people at the table, and copious bribing with food/intimate favours.

[Tanegar]

Spirits, by default, don't get to spend Edge on anything unless their Summoner wills it so by spending a point of his own Edge.

I've never liked the "Spirits use Edge to resist as roll whenever the DM feels like it". Basically, it led to even more mage optimization, bad blood between people at the table, and copious bribing with food/intimate favours.

Wait... there are groups which will offer me intimate favors as bribes? Where do I find them?!

[Elfenlied]

Wait... there are groups which will offer me intimate favors as bribes? Where do I find them?!

In good old depraved Europe (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tanegar]

In good old depraved Europe (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

And me stuck on the Puritanical side of the Pond. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Jhaiisiin]

See, there's a downside to us being colonial heathens.

[Draco18s]

And me stuck on the Puritanical side of the Pond. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

http://xkcd.com/592/

[Lionhearted]

Spirits, by default, don't get to spend Edge on anything unless their Summoner wills it so by spending a point of his own Edge.

I've never liked the "Spirits use Edge to resist as roll whenever the DM feels like it". Basically, it led to even more mage optimization, bad blood between people at the table, and copious bribing with food/intimate favours.

Tend to get away with it because I adhere to the philosophy that a GM plays with the players, not against then... Thus you only tend to invoke such things when people are taking the proverbial piss "You're summoning a F9 great form air spirit to conceal your shoplifting?"

Wait... there are groups which will offer me intimate favors as bribes? Where do I find them?!

In good old depraved Europe (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I can vouch for that bribes range from karma to pizza to cross campaign favours... Takes good self control to GM here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Elfenlied]

Tend to get away with it because I adhere to the philosophy that a GM plays with the players, not against then... Thus you only tend to invoke such things when people are taking the proverbial piss "You're summoning a F9 great form air spirit to conceal your shoplifting?"

If I could summon F9 spirits without killing myself, I wouldn't stoop so low as to shoplift.

I can vouch for that bribes range from karma to pizza to cross campaign favours... Takes good self control to GM here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I have seen everything from food, free drinks, free lessons (for college exams) to physical favours from both genders being offered. No one has ever accepted the latter in our group, but I've heard about one group a friend plays in where it did happen and resulted in considerable drama.

[Draco18s]

I have seen everything from food, free drinks, free lessons (for college exams) to physical favours from both genders being offered. No one has ever accepted the latter in our group, but I've heard about one group a friend plays in where it did happen and resulted in considerable drama.

Male troll NPC once offered my male elf character physical favors in exchange for a lower price on the van we were buying.

I declined.