They seem to be where all the power is.
There was a thread a while back about cheesy SR teams.
This one trumps all.

Summoning Specialist, Elf Shaman with mentor spirit that grants bonuses to spirits of man. High Summoning skill, High Binding skill, Elf Cha 7, Will 6, Dwarf Will 6 Other drain attr 6. Magic 6 (worth it in this case due to twinkitude) F3 Summoning focus for spirits of Man, Fire and Air. F2 Power Focus. F3 Binding focus for Man, more if desired. Whatever spells desired. Stunball and heal certainly. Maybe lightning bolt and coldwave as well. Invisibility and such helps.
Be sure to include Edge. Lowball physicals.

Technomancer Specializing in Compiling Sprites. Dwarf with Will 6 Intuition 6 (Exceptional Attr) Logic 6, Resonance 6. A handful of useful complex forms, not too much though, and don't worry about high ratings. Not as much to cheese out, but countered by the fact that matrix progs are limited to rating 6, while sprites and complex forms are not so limited. R12 Crack Sprites get sent in to do all your hacking, R12 Fault Sprites handle the cybercombat. Edge is more important due to the lack of foci, mentor bonuses and such. Physical is even less important, you don't need to be doing anything in that area.

Face specializing in medicine and chemistry. Uses various nifty tricks (CS grenades, suppressive fire, flashbangs and flashpacks) to keep people down while the mage gets the big monster spirit to take them out. Uses first aid on them when they take damage from drain/fading and keeps people in tip top shape.


Really, what can that team not take down easily? Matrix wise is a sinch, sending in R12 sprites to do all the work for you.
Need to infiltrate the place, no noise? Stealth group at 3, agility 1 usually gets 1 hit. -12 to their perception tests generally means they won't be seeing you.
Need to wreck some things. F12 fire elementals eat stuff alive. F12 Spirits of Man casting coldwave can kill everything around them while leaving electronics safe.
F12 Spirit gets 4 hits on the opposed test.
Magic + Summoning + 5 for foci gets a minimum of 17 dice. + Edge or specializations and you can do even better. If you fail, so what, try again next time
Need more services? F10 spirits are not that bad either. If you need long term F6 can still do some heavy damage and you will get a truckload. You can even bind those ones relatively easily.
The 8DV of drain? 12-13 dice on that as well will bring it to 4, which is manageable for your first aid Face to take care of, and with RAW you can keep a F6 bound spirit of man with Innate Spell: Heal on hand to take care of what gets by.
All of the above applies to sprites except it is a little trickier to get the services. However F8 Sprites are substantially better than anything else that they will run into, being 4 dice ahead of anything non-techno in the matrix on most actions.

Heck, by specializing the type of run you accept (only datasteals or only smash and grabs) you should never end up doing things in the flesh, so to speak and even then you should be okay.

Of course, anything they can do, the corps can do better, but does anyone else have a problem with the sammie waiting around for the F12 spirits to nail eachother? Where is the room for the Hacker or the Rigger when the techno can summon up and bind a F6 Machine Sprite with Targeting and Dodge Autosofts to take care of the drones? Or heck, just bring the drone along and send the big ol F9 machine sprite with all of the above and more. Suddenly that Steel Lynx is rolling lots of dice to defend, and likely more than most sammies to attack. Some may be able to get 18 dice, but if you feel like showing them up go with a F12 and eat the drain. You get one service, but kill the sec guards is all you need!

The team will be lucky to survive more than a few runs before someone dies from drain or fading. Drain code for force 12 spirits and sprites goes up to 24P, but even the not so unlikely 12P is highly deadly. Even if they are so twinked out that the risk of death is well below 10 %, they WILL die eventually. Why wont people go out and try this already? I´m sure it´s not that great. Roleplaying-wise the characters would have to be complete psychopaths.

As for spending Edge, remember that spirits have more Edge than any character. If a force 12 spirit spends Edge, you will roll against 24 dice (that means 8P drain avarage, 48P max). If a GM makes the fair decision to have high force spirits spend Edge against you, summoning can turn nasty fast. Even if your not foolish enough to go for force 12.

Well, odds are after about 50 or so summonings you'll get hit with that nasty 16P (or worse) drain from the force 12 whatever. Odds are pretty good (about 5 in 6) that you'll score 5 successes or less and be eating at least 11DV, which, unless you've also got a good body, has killed you. Of course, your face is there to stabilize you and get you back on your feet, but now a large part of the effectiveness of the team is gone, and will probably result in the death of the entire team.
There's always a chance that the spirit/sprite will roll massive drain, and you'll roll crap resistance, and die. The odds are small, but not THAT small. If all of your strategies rely on doing this over and over, the odds become very good that you'll kill yourself.

As previously noted, if you do this 12 times you are going to die. Not "be heavily inconvenienced," not "be a total non-asset for the mission," die. Your character is going to cease to be within 2 months of game time.

It's like the character who straps themselves with as much C-12 as they can carry. Sure, there's pretty much nothing you can't kill, but the character dies doing it so it's not much good to anyone.

That being said, the Dwarf Hermetic First Aid Specialist can keep a pretty good stream of Force 8 air elementals going, and that's pretty unbalanced (double teaming a fool with monstrosities that roll 19 dice on engulf attacks is darn unfriendly). But the guy who reaches for the F12 spirit had better be prepared to write up a new character, because that's going to happen if you start raising hell like that.

-Frank

*devil's advocate side-switch*
Still, if you do this tactic just this one time (yeah, right) you get a pretty solid burst of nigh-unstoppability, which can be pretty difficult for a GM to plan for. This lets characters FAR outperform their "normal operating capacity", if you will, and display extremely unpredictable levels of effectiveness.

Yeah, but the problem is that it isn't just the F12. I was just exaggerating for the sake of craziness and ubertwink ackshun!!!

The actual twink will do as Frank suggests, well I suggest F9 actually, getting 3 optional powers and not a noticeable increase in danger except for the possibility of an extra 2 drain. Max 18, you should be able to get that to 12-13 by spending edge, and be stabilized by the medic.
This is worse yet in the matrix, where R9 exists only with technomancers and sprites. Even then it is only really plausible in sprites. It gets worse though. A R6 crack sprite is as good or likely better than any starting hacker or technomancer unless the techno threads a R6 complex form and has a high skill to go with it.
You can multiply your power exponentially just by compiling an assortment of R6 sprites right before the "run" and you will be highly likely to do this without drain.

F6 spirits are not much better, and make excellent spell casters for high drain spells you don't want to cast yourself. Or sustaining their own spells for spirits of man on your team for as long as you want to, up to the next sunrise/sunset.

It seems to me that summoning and compiling are the quickest, best and most efficent route to power for any team. They are not as versatile but can cause major problems for nearly any character.

I am trying to avoid it becoming sit and watch the mage do your job version of shadowrun. As it stands, the only use of street sams is when the plans go awry and you need to make surprise tests. That is when their boosted reflexes give them the edge.
As it is, including the Face in the team, you can get max Reaction and initiative and be able to provide enough distraction and cover for the mage to get the spirit going. Takes two turns, one to summon, one to order. That is the only real disadvantage. Being an Adept may actually be a good idea for the theoretical face.

I see the problem (even if not as tough as you post it). As I posted elswere, I think Mages & TM are just too powerfull, especially with all the externalized warez.

But you know what. After 2 or 3 Runs with a group using this MO, i´d throw "Mentor" (from Threats 1) and his Matrix-Equivalent after them... Or simply just let every Spirite they compsummonile use Edge for resistance, as they are getting on the Spirites (read the GMs) nerves. Maybe give tham temporary Spirit bane after so much runs. Sure I´d be telling them in the first place that such overspecialized runners are going the road of extinction in the first place, before they even start.
Don´t forget, unlike spells and programs, spirites are NPCs, even if a bit alien ones.

If you don´t wanna do that, just houserule. If your not the GM, but rather the Cyber-Samurai in this team, with the Mage and the TM being the GMs girlfriend, you´ve got me fealing with you. (Maybe just just blast the Spirite-Fans PCs in there sleap, over and over, until they build less munchkinized PC that do have some character after all )

But I´m generally with the majority in this threat, that such a MO will burn the PCs real soon even with F9.

So, about my comment earlier... Now that we are in the right environment, could I find out what´s behind that "right... if you say so"?

I´m just saying that it seems strange that you concider it unballanced that mages can easily step into the territories of more technologicly orineted character types, when in fact there is now a very real choice for hackers, riggers and street samurai to get a bit of magic as well. The truth of it is that there are no artificial bounderies between character types anymore. Knowing magic doesn´t even mean magic is your main area anymore. If this means everyone will be more or less a magican than so be it. Keeping the mage count low is not as important to me as having a character creation system that doesn´t put up bounderies preventing you from making the character you want. For the record, I don´t agree that magic is overpowered. If it was it would force people who wanted to play strictly mundane characters into it, and I don´t believe it does. I´d hate it if it did.

Being a magican with all the powers a SR3 magican had requires you to have spend 15 points on the quality. Level an all new attribute. Then you need Spellcasting, Counterspelling, Ritual Spellcasting, Summoning, Binding, Bannishing, Astral Combat and Asensing. 9 skills! I have a hard time seing any starting character opting for all those skills. Because they want to be able to do other stuff too. So they´re not really more powerful than before, just more versitile. Everything is more versitile.


And being able to put eye mods in contacts and things like that bennefits mundanes equally to magicans, btw. In both cases it means more essence for other stuff.

True - eliminating mundanes eliminates the problem of mundanes being dominated by mages.

Don't forget that there are places where Magic simply doens't work, or doesn't work right. A background count will put a crimp in any mages style, a mana warp will ruin his day.

What's that you say? There aren't any rules for those yet?

Well, that sucks.

Still, it's pretty easy to house rule, and street magic should come out "Any Day Now" tm.

Pleas don´t get me wrong. I realy like the possibility to build a less powerful practitioner with competences on other fields. I´m pretty much a builder of more versatil, less specialized characters my selfe most of the time.

The thing I was bitching about is just that, in many groups the GM does not pay attention to the advantages of implants (thoug I´d derail this threat by going into the detailes, which is not my intend, so I wont elaborate on that). Whith that plus advanced XY Spells in susstaining foci, your average sam looses his ability to shine in an adventure prety quick.
I have to confess, I´m allso a hater of all-magical groups, simply because thats powergaming IMHO, as long as you are not allso playing an all-magical champign.

So IMO (allso according to the original topic) the GM has to regulate this a bit, which works well, if you keep the disad´s of externalized warez in mind (contacts can fall out or your PC can forget them after all). Otherwise, you´r playing Earth Dawn with guns, which is ok, if you like to, but I don´t.

Magican and decker characters in my SR3 game has always felt dominated by street samurai. So far in SR4, nobody´s felt left out.

I guess I´ve had your problem only backwards. The samurai players have found a way of making optimal characters, while the magicans can hardly manage their abilities. Shredding some of that magical potential for mundane things has made it easier for them.

Deckers got hacked in all the old editions, its the first time, thay are realy coming. I´d not say it used to be that way with Magicians.

Now -we only played SR4 twice yet- my players feel dominated by Hackers, but thats because they don´t have one there own!

I think PP is right thoug, it will balance out, but for newcommers it probably wont, until street magic´s out. (and Unwirred and Augmentation and Arsenal).

I have often heard the edge using spirits house rule. I am not sure how I feel about that.

It makes the summoning test more risky and less reliable, which seems to be a good thing. It also exponentially raises the difficulty for high rating stuff. Also a good thing in my book. Wish you could do the same with a mage casting a F12 stunball, but c'est la vie.

Let's look how it stacks up.

F4 (what used to be fairly average)
Summoning, will likely spend Edge to get dice. 8 dice vs yours. Not too dangerous.
Binding, will probably still use Edge to add dice. May reroll failures if necessary. 8 or 12 dice vs yours, depending. Exploding dice says you should get 5 hits on the summoning test with 12 dice.
F6 (used to be top of the line)
Summoning will again add dice. 12 dice, getting 5 hits. Dicey dicey.
Binding is super dangerous. Looking at 7 hits with the reroll option. Maybe 8. That's a drain of 14-16DV on average.

Wow. That ramps up the lethality quotient quite a bit. And that is just F6.

I think I like the Edge using house rule.

But wait, what about sprites? This doesn't solve the techno problem at all.

Note that while it is arguable whether a spirit can spend Edge when summoned, it can't spend edge while being bound. Also, you can't buy dice and reroll failures - you can only spend Edge once on any test.

-Frank

why can't it use edge to resist binding?

I've ruled that not only will a spirit sometimes use edge to resist summoning, but that they will NOT spend edge on any task for the summoner. They just don't CARE enough about what the summoner wants to use edge for him.

I also don't give my players control of their summoned spirits. They can give it orders per the services it owes, but I decide how it goes about doing that. That can really, really tone down how powerful spirits are.

The same is true of sprites, in a way. When you (The GM) control it's actions instead of the player, you can have it make non-optimal choices. Additionally, you can rule that a technomancer has to use the command complex form to convey orders to the sprite, like any other agent. His successes determine how well the sprite understands his orders; communicating with an alien intelligence such as a sprite should be difficult.

I don't see why it being under your control prevents it from using edge. Just because you control it doesn't mean it likes serving you, and it's not like you can ORDER it not to spend it's edge, given that edge is a game term and not an actual Thing in the game world.

I´d second the funny PlatonicPimp.

It would use Edge "instinctively", to save its nack, i.e. to dodge when its attacked or if it feeles threatened by its summenor, to resist binding. I´d not have every spirite ever use Edge to resist the mage, only if the particular domain is somhow hostile (like the sirits of ubehebe in the mojave) or if the mage has cind of a "bad reputation" amogst spirits (you never know whome they´ve talked to on thair home plane).
Also a spirit will more likely spend Edge egainst a mage, that has spirit bane and may even spend Edge in favor of its service holder if he´s got spirit affinity AND is allways very nice to his spirits (not in a sexually abusive maner).

The Edge/spirit thing is not a house rule. They do have Edge, and there are no services that involves forcing the spirit to spend it. It´s perfectly canon that distributing Edge is the GM´s choice. Having spirits be mindless slaves to the summoner is in fact against the spirit of the canon ruleset. They are forced to preform your agreed upon services, that´s all.

Hmm. Here's what I think I will do.

Spirits always use Edge to resist summoning and binding, unless it is a spirit you have an affinity with. (May up the cost of spirit affinity for Magicians and Mystic Adepts, this is a big advantage, it lets you summon F8-10 spirits if you need to, which is a big thing.)

Sprites get an Edge trait equal to their Rating that they use to resist compiling and binding. Since Technos can not get as many nifty bonuses for these tests, Sprites are overall more friendly and helpful to the techno, and may even use Edge on tests on behalf of the Techno.

That should even things up again. Have to test it out to be sure.

I wonder if the developers will do anything to curb spirit power, or do we have to wait for SR5?

For my game, I will have spirits use edge for their own benefit only, which has very little to do with the summoner's desires. Edge to resist summoning will only be used when attempting to summon a spirit in a very inappropriate environment, or if the spirits don't like that character (i.e. player is abusing spirits and ticking off the GM-me) Spirits will use edge for the summoner only if the summoner has been good to the spirits and has role-played summoning and spirit relations well.
Not sure about sprites.

Against the Spirit

::edit:: in reference to mintcar. Dang you people post fast.