Oh, what page is this on? Handy to know.

And with a taser, it's only 4 points of hardened armor. Stick and shock ammo can damage even a force 6 spirit if it hits (since you need 1 net success to hit). Not necessarily well, but it's a darn sight better than standing there doing nothing.

I didn't consider the facet of the summoner realizing when his spirit gets blown away. I suppose if there was a mage hired to leave a spirit there, he may or may not report if one of his spirits got gacked (his job is only to summon and bind it there--whether he'll waste his precious time later on depends on his contract and how much he's paid, I'm sure). But it's probably best to consider that there's always the chance he will notify someone, or there could be an on site mage. Ah well. I suppose even spirits can't be everywhere at once.

Why do you say that? Drain should be simple enough to handle. Most boes the spirit can give out for binding is ten. With a Will and logic of 5, that gives am average of appx 3 successes, which is only 7 boxes of damage, and most likely stun at that. And Force 5 can't stand up to that much magic. Even a Force 10 spirit goes down pretty fast from a manabolt (although it'll probably go first).

They roll 10 dice against about 30; there's no contest, even if they both use Edge.

Isn't it double their force that they roll against binding? or are you including Edge? Even so, that would be 15 dice. If you reroll failures, you couldn't have 20 sucesses, as it's only the failures that are rerolled. The exploding dice can give you more, but as I understood it, although it's debated, the spirit doesn't get Edge to resist binding. What am I missing?

I'm afraid that's no longer the case. According to pg 178, bound spirits (as opposed to conjured ones) aren't released when assigned to Remote Service or sent out on loan. So, if a mage tells them to guard a site for the next twenty years, they have to do so, and count as bound for the whole time.

Ah, I see. Nasty stuff.

It costs 5 karma and a few hundred nuyen to buy a combat spell. What is he, a Pussy shaman?

... Er, Cat. I meant Cat.

Well, he's playing a frenchman with combat paralysis and ineptitude in several things combat related. He's decided to run with the stereotype, it seems.

They double their force to resist binding, and the Drain is 2 per hit on the binding resistance test. So before they add in Edge (which could of course provide unlimited Drain), a spirit can potentially generate four times its Force in Drain when being bound.

So the chances of dropping Lofwyr with failed binding are very small, they are nonetheless there, and he presumably has lived thousands of years by not taking chances like that.

-Frank

out of idle curiosity did he grab 'Surendering' as a specialization for Etiquette? 'Surrender' for a specialization for Negotiation? 'away from the germans' as a specialization for Running?

Sorry couldn't resist asking...

i wonder if that would be as funny w/o the codine...

I don't think the player of our mage reads DSF. I'm the gun toting hacker of the group. But yeah, "Jim syndrome" is not uncommon in my gaming group.

Well, atleast he's roleplaying well to the (american) sterotype of a frenchman well.

Not a "swarm", per se, but more than 4. The only person who saw them, and knows the exact number, is said Frenchy, who , although he returned to his meatbody almost immediatly after retreating - didn't bother to radio you guys a warning.

Yeah, well, I think when spirits show up with not a word from frenchy, it will be rather obvious he bailed on us, especially since he took every opportunity to try to weasel out of doing anything useful.

To be fair, they did kick a lot of ass during certain periods of the middle ages and early industrial age. But yeah, they've had a less-than-stellar record in the last couple hundred years. Hopefully they won't be saying similar things about us (Americans), after we've been around more than a few hundred years.

Wait, what? A mundane can notice an astral-only spirit? Page number for that rule?

I know it was possible in earlier Editions.
And the only thing i was able to find about the remote possibility, that it is still so in 4th, was this one (emphasis mine):

The second sentence indicates that the following explanaitions and rules may also be used for spirits.
But, it is the only place in the whole paragraph, where spirits are mentioned in this regard. The rest only talks about magicians practicing magic.
So, it may, or may not be possible to notice spirits on the astral by just normal mundane senses.

There is a rule for when an astral form passes through a physical form. That'd apply, I guess.

EDIT: Intuition + Perception (4) with +2 dice for being awakened.

Ah yes, of course.
But that could be a feedback from the mundanes aura reacting to the astral form passing through. So it could be argued, if this was a mundane sense.

I referred to seeing with your eyes the astral form as it "shimmered" through to the physical plane.

I don't think this happens. You'd get a chance to notice if the mage were summoning in front of you, but not after that.

Do you mean the noticing the spirit from the physical plane or the aura interaction? Because all I remember from SR3 is the aura interaction.

Hey, maybe the spirits acquire a new target when they hear someone a couple blocks away is capping a real-cop in the head w/ ExEx ammo.

Ha. I'll keep that in mind, but I don't want to be a bully.

I think to begin with, spreading word of his antics in hopes of raising his Notoriety would be a good response. It would hit him where it hurts and it would be mostly due to his own actions...

Well, that's a kind of, um, ign'ant perception. Napoleon (who was a right bastard) nearly conquered Europe, but unfortunately for him (and especially for his army) decided to get involved in a land war in Asia. Or at least very Eastern Europe. During the winter. Bad idea, but getting to that point was part of some serious military power.

Going back a bit earlier, in which language does "Charlemagne" mean "Charles the Hammer"? Hint: not American.

No less a military giant than Caesar repeatedly praised the Gauls, who these days would be the French, Belgians and Swiss, among others. Heck, they *sacked* Rome in the 4th C.

The French were more than tangentially involved in the American Revolution, too. So if "the perception" is what you say, it's pretty pathetic.

And also I don't think it's a good thing for Americans to say the French are cowardly because they surrendered to Germany -- it was quite a while later that the US got involved in WWII.

(Sorry about the off-topic-ness)

Um ... so, maybe the Frenchman character can learn about the Resistance or the Holy Roman Empire or the Gauls (I think they had Druids, might be an interesting color on the magic), and decide to become a bit more useful. Being the only astral character on a team, he should be able to deal with spirits if they're going to encounter spirits. Combat Paralysis is fine; heck, he can be cowardly even, but if he's missing critical useful skills, he's a burden to the team