Your take on it does take it down a notch, but only so far as the spirit gets a -2 dice penalty for each spell sustained.

I still think it's overpowered, especially when combined with remote service.

The GM portion of my brain is whispering to me that there are some very nasty awakened critters in Nova Scotia. Awakened critters that have the ability to track back from a spirit to it's summoner.

Awakened critters that hunger for Magician braah-aaaainnnss!

FrankTrollman is right, the remote service rules for unbound spirits are also part of the issue here. Once you send out the spirit on remote service it does not count for your spirit limit.

I don't see where it implies that at all. Especially:

Remote Service
... The magician sends the spirit off to perform a particular task (or set of tasks, if more than one service is owed)...

There's nothing saying that previous tasks are ended, or that it can't do more than one thing at a time.

The moment I first read that line in the rules I turned cold, for I thought I heard the whisper of a thousand dead munchkins call out we have found a portal, we are coming. Then I realized it was just my own devious mind.

There is a rule suggestion in a sidebar for GMs finding that bound spirits are being abused to have them cause a +2 penalty to their owner similar to sustaining a spell. No need to stop there, extending that to extra unbound spirits as well since whoevere was writing that suggestion probably forgot about the ability to have multiple unbound spirits on remote service.

A lot of the nitpicker provisos, and stipulations got cut in the bulk that was shed going SR3 to SR4. Exclusive actions are an example where this is generally for the better. But if you play with people that are prone to being dorks they do get some fresh material to work with until the GM can see through it and shut them down again.

No, the same number of dorks control issues are on the GMs hands. The dork just has new and exciting ways to express their inner dorkness!

That made me think... changing the wording of the above passage concerning Remote Services to include the line about how it ends all previous services won't affect the magician who simply remote services a spirit of man to sustain a spell.

Grr... The problem really does seem to be with how the remote serviced spirit doesn't count against the maximum unbound spirits -- which I don't really have a problem with except in these two cases:

1) when the spirit is remote serviced to destroy a person or thing. (I don't like the idea of a spirit being summoned/commanded to attack every two IPs).

2) when used to sustain the Innate Spell power. (while sounding like a clever use of the power, it's to much work to GM for npcs).

I couldn't care less if bound spirits were used for the above, because there is a sensible limit.

I'll need to restrict, in my games, what types of actions unbound spirits can perform while on remote service.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I agree with Frank about Guard, Movement, etc... So, I don't like the idea of remote serviced unbound spirits are able to be used to sustain any Power.

This is, btw, the dumbest rule I've ever seen. Considering that one of the most powerful abiilties of a bound spirit is to maintain a spell for you, and this involves burning out the spirit, why would anyone ever do that if maintaining a bound spirit required the same expenditure of effort as just maintaining the spell yourself?

Throughout the main book there are constant enclosures on the power of bound spirits. The authors really seemed to think these guys were going to be problematic. They aren't. Unbound spirits, OTOH, are game breaking.

---

Problem 1: Drain on Unbound Spirits is generally too low (until you get to high level spirits, in which case it is too high). Conversely, drain on Bound Spirits is too high.

Solution: Change Drain on Conjuring to Half Spirit Force plus the hits the spirit gets on the resistance test (instead of zero + double hits).

Problem 2: The remote service rush is unstoppable. You can summon a spirit and tell it to wait 50 seconds and then fly across the world and attack Yakashima’s complex. Then summon another one and have it wait 44 seconds and fly across the world and attack Yakashima… Or you can tell a spirit to wander the world maintaining Guard and Movement on you while it checks out the Riviera. Or whatever. You can get unlimited amounts of whup-ass or power usage maintained indefinitely for free.

Solution 2: Close the remote service loophole. A spirit on Remote Service counts against your one unbound spirit limit. And it still comes with the drawbacks of Remote Service, so you can’t give it any new orders and you no longer have a telepathic link to it.

-Frank

It's funny because it's true... I laughed out loud when I read that

EDIT: Is there a topic that exists on DSF that lists the things in SR4 that REALLY should be changed for game balance purposes? If not, there should be.

Secondly, any spirit you summon contains your astral signature. Sending spirits off every minute to attack a corp is, thus, suicidal. Heck, sending spirits off on remote service can be suicidal because of this.

* This brings up an interesting item, since from the reading I take, you can summon up to your Charisma worth of unbound spirits, one at a time, and stick each on standby. Then when you need one, you just call it out as a simple action and sent it to work. When you're done with it, just release and bring out the next.

That is an interesting way to read that line. I read it as bound spirits on remote service, because of the earlier line about what happens to unbound spirits sent on remote service.

There is wierdness in the word this and the nonplural total. Have to think about this some more, and reread that section. It is a spectacularly poorly worded dangling if the rule is suppose to mean what you suggest. But that wouldn't be out of character for the book.

That is clearly (well, maybe clearly is too strong of a word) referring to bound spirits, not unbound spirits, on remote service or standby, as it references the latter part of the previous sentence.

But, it would be an interesting fix to the problem... Just ignore the contradiction:

Remote Services (unbound spirits), pg 178
Once a spirit has been given a remote service, it is technically
released.

Atleast that would put a more reasonable limit on the number of spirits which could be summoned and remote serviced without binding.

I think that your houserule of having remote serviced unbound spirits count towards the bound spirit maximum (charisma) of the magician is the most simple way to solve the problem. Nice.

At what Force is it generally accepted that Immunity to Normal Weapons is too high?

Obviously Force 12 is extreme... but what about something more commonly seen by the PC group? To me it seems to work as intended up and including Force 6.

I think you're probably right. However, any game I run will probably see that house ruled. It's just too neat a solution to the potential problem.

The logic at which I arrived at the previous reading is that spirits on remove service are mentioned as counting agains "this" total. In the previous section, it specifically mentions that remove service "releases" them so they don't count as your one unbound spirit any longer. Thus, it follows that it means that spirits on remote service count against the Charisma limit.

The errata to fix it should simply be the addition of the word "bound" at the start of the second sentence.

No reference to it besides:

A spirit will perform the services it owes
until the next sunrise or sunset. At that time, regardless of
any remaining services or what it was doing, the spirit will
depart and return to its home deep in astral space.

(there's a few others, actually, but to the same effect).

I (and I hope everyone else) takes that to mean sunset/sunrise from the location of the summoner, and not the current location of the spirit . I'd get nit-picky and rule that it is referring to sunraise/sunset at the place of the original summoning.

I won't venture to answer that directly since I haven't run any numbers yet. I can tell you from personal experience (on both sides of the GM screen) that Force 6 definitely starts to fall into the "Too Nasty" column.

Here's the core problem, as I see it:

If you attack a spirit in melee with a nonmagical weapon, then it's rolling its Unarmed Combat ( = Force) plus its Agility ( = Force +/- X) to avoid or minimize that attack. Then, if your base DV + your net hits isn't higher than its Immunity ( = Force + Force), you simply do no damage. If it is higher, then the spirit soaks on its Body ( = Force +/- Y) plus its Immunity ( = Force + Force). Then it applies that damage to its appropriate damage column: Physical ( = 8 + half(Force +/- Y) boxes) or Stun ( = 8 + half(Force) boxes).

If you're talking ranged combat, then substitute Unarmed Combat and Agility for Dodge and Reaction.

So in summation, the spirit gets to mitigate damage by rolling Force + Force +/- X + Force +/- Y + Force + Force dice, unless your net damage is less than 2xForce and you do zero damage anyway. That's 5xForce +/- X +/- Y.

The sums of the "+/- X +/- Y" factor, representing bonuses and penalties to Agility (or Reaction for ranged) and Body, range from +1 to +3 depending on the spirit type. Someone might want to check me on that, as I'm working from memory here.

~~~~~

In any case, to damage a spirit you have to punch through 5xForce+1 dice at the minimum, 5xForce+3 at the maximum and that's provided its Immunity doesn't make you ineffectual right off the bat. That sort of means that you need to, on average, be able to pump out more than ((5xForce+2)/3) DV per attack to start putting a dent in the thing.

Remember, too, that for every 2 points of Force you're giving it an extra box of damage capacity on both the Physical and Stun tracks.

So, I dunno, figure up the average DV output of some runners and plug that in to see when Force starts to get too crazy high to deal with.

i realy love that interpetation.

but be careful about that standby bit, as you cant keep them beyond the sunrise/sunset swap unless they are bound (atleast thats my take on the whole thing given the info so far).

It hasn't been that way since 2nd edition (and even then that might have only been foci and not spells). The spell could potentially be attacked on the astral (even then, I'd only even consider it for mana spells), but the person could not.

EDIT: Oops, not even that is true. The spell's aura shows up on the astral and you could track the caster using the link from the spell, but that's about all you can do. Only foci can actually be attacked.

Exclusive Action rules all gone, go bye-bye.

I looked, but can't find any rules for attacking active foci from the astral plane. I'm sure it must be possible... Can someone point me to a page number?

Thanks in advance

The section on astral combat (p 184) explicitly mentions that weapon foci are on the astral plane, as well. Finally, all active focus collide with mana barriers (p 186).

It can be drawn from the above that active foci are present on the astral plane. Anything present on the astral plane may be attacked. Thus, active foci can be attacked on the astral plane as your GM wishes and rules.

Of course, the same logic applies to spells, too. So it may be that spells can be attacked as well, if the GM wishes.

EDIT Oh, and we have: