no Hyzmarca is always deadly serious.

the other thing to remember about loffie is that he is almost certainly a double digits grade initiate. I'd say at least grade 12, He will have centring, and there is no point him summoning a spirit of more tha force 12 really so he risks 48 boxes of stun, though 16 is more likely. He resists with and edged (reroll failures) resist on Cha+will+Init grade, about 36 dice, so call it 20 successes. Seems reasonable to me.
Binding is something you do carefully, when you have time for rest and only a looney does it alone with out somesort of Safety net ready.

Or, more likely, he'll use his Twist Fate power to force the spirit to reroll its successes.

More often than not, Lofwyr won't suffer any drain. 36 dice on the damage resistance test, and the spirit scoring an average of 2 hits for a Force 18.

Here are my cents (both of them)

I feel, as a GM, that spending edge for spirits, mooks, and assorted other NPCs is rude, if not downright mean to my players. My players have their 3-5 edge points they get to spend per session. Typically, they won't get any edge back over the course of the session.* They have to save that edge for the important rolls, since they only get to use it 3-5 times over a 4-5 hour period. My mooks, on the other hand, are like mayflys. They're not saving their edge for anything, since an encounter with Shadowrunners is probably the most dangerous (and not to mention last) encounter of their little mooky lives. Thus they can spend with abandon, which seems a little unfair. Especially since I feel that Edge is supposed to be, well, the Edge that awesome people (i.e. 5w337 with a capital "5" Shadowrunners) have over the less awesome (i.e. Captain Speedbump and his Mook brigade.) If I am feeling particularly magnamonious towards my adorable little NPC army I will let them spend a point on that last soak roll that will keep them from going into damage overflow. Even then, if the mook lives he will lay down on the ground, try not to draw attention to himself, and pray to his Mooky Gods that the runners are there on business and not for revenge.

Edge for spirits is even worse. I like summoning to have a little bit of danger to it, but only in the right circumstances. When the shit is hitting the fan, and the runners are getting their hoops kicked left, right, and sideways, and the bruised, battered, and Drained mage needs a Force 6 spirit to bail them out right now (cue Sweet-ass Guitar Riff) then yes, I want that summoning to be dangerous, and it is, even without spending Edge. When the Mage is summoning a force 3 spirit because he needs a fourth for bridge that night, I don't want the spirit hypothetically rolling 5-6 hits, knocking the mage on his ass, and potentially burning his house down. That kind of summoning, should be pretty much a no-brainer, and if the spirit can't spend Edge, it is.

Um... I'm done. Except for the footnote. But that doesn't really count.

*Although there are exceptions to this, my rule of thumb is that if I imagine a sweet-ass guitar riff going on in the background of a PCs action, they get a point back. This is almost inevitably the point they just spent on the aforementioned action as my players have a corollary rule: If one can imagine a sweet-ass guitar riff playing in the background of an action SPEND EDGE.

@Waltermandias: sometimes I give major evil villains and not-so-faceless-ninja-thugs one or two points of edge to make them a little meaner and spice up the fight. So far that hadn't been a problem. And my players know that. I see my major NPCs as PCs played by me, the GM, so it's only fair when they have the same advantages than the PCs. Back in SR2-3 I gave my NPCs a karmapool, now it's Edge.

That's definately reasonable Grinder, and I agree that Villain McCharacterfoil should have a little somethin' somethin' that puts him above the common thug, I'm just opposed to juicing up mooks and such.

Doesn't BBB suggest giving groups of mooks a group accessable edge?

Yes it does, and it's never very big, say 2-3, unless the mooks are professional mooks. (a living contradiction)

I use that edge to add uncertainty to combat, like, one goon acting first than everyone or having a (slim) chance to injure the cybered-up sammie with his club 2, ag 3 swing. I do not find polite spending Edge to eliminate PCs, If I want them dead, they would die anyway, Edge or not.

As for spirits, as a rule of thumb, spirits do not roll edge for resisting summoning (it is overkill), nor they spend edge either while at the service of a character.

As I play it, Spirit NPCs, those with exceptional stats and personality could spend Edge while helping a character, as well as resisiting summoning. I just make that condition clear to the player beforehand. So far, two spirits usually summoned by the conjurer in my group have gained personality and judicious use of Edge. One became a friend of the PC and is waiting for the Ally rules to come up and the other was quite mean and finally attained freedom.

But that's just how I run things,

Cheers,

Max

Awww, I thought you were going to make your sig something to do with "Captain Speedbump and his Mook Brigade" I was disproportionatly proud of that one.

Your average mook probably has an edge of 1. 2 if he's been a mook for a while. I probably won't bother spending that edge in my games very often, mainly because it slows things down. But if it's warranted and could help (say in rerolling soak dice to go from dead to almost dead) I'll do it. Of course, the almost dead mook is just as out of combat because he dove on the ground and started begging for his life, he just gets to go drink a beer with his buddies after hes out of the hosptal.

I greatly enjoyed "Captain Speedbump and his Mook Brigade."