What is a good countermeasure for keeping a spirit from just 'appearing' (IE manifesting out of the astral plane) in a rather inconvienient spot (like infront of your face while you are driving) without having to resort to magic? Or is the only way to errect an astral barrier/cover the place with living vines and have a mage with you?

Also, is there any way to evade an astral persure without a mage friend, or are you just SOL if one picks up on you? (I guess you could give them the run around for Magic hours, but how do you know when they give up? What if they have a buddy they can lead to you to pick up your trail when they get 'tired?')

If you are in a dark allyway and a force 5 spirit appears infront of you and you left your assault cannon at home, how do you defeat it? (without a mage holding your hand again).

Also, it could Movement itself and catch pretty much anything.

See above Kanada. That strongly suggest that the use of materialization is considered 'free' when it is a required part of the action. 'Required' is variable, there is no reason why it wouldn't use this when it could.

I would also like to point out that spirits will singlemindedly persue any orders issued to it, otherwise they would be worthless when their version of 'attacking' is to just sit there and miss intentially until the enemy spellcaster disrupts it.

Also note that you don't always need to bind a spirit, hence the use of the example of a remote service. It certainly shouldn't crawl to the target location at 1 meter per combat round because you didn't tell it to go at x velocity in y form and execute tactic z, though if you should there is nothing inhibiting you from ordering it to go to the target as fast as possible, engage it and switch between astral form and physical form as needed in order to persue them.

You are saying that the only thing stopping this from happening is if the mage gives the wrong orders... I don't consider incompetency as being a good argument here. The quote specifically says that it can do it, and the need for it can be defigned by the mage (as an alternative example "If there is a mage, engage him in astral combat before attacking the other members; there is no reason to pointlessly endager yourself from more threats than you have to face.")

Like I said, specifically excluded.

Specifically exculded from what?

To clarify, because the orders are trasmitted by a telepathic link - the continuous action is attacking, everything in between I don't see why the mage wouldn't have any control over. If he wanted it to switch targets that would be something else, but switching forms seems akin to being part of how it moves.

Bwahahaha, agreed. I think we both have the mind that we don't want to clutter up the boards. Hm, interesting take on it, it makes much more since that it would use more than what it normally would on a remote service. Definatly agree that it would be rediculous if it went all out on every order.

But the question is, does that mean you send it on a 'remote service' if you want it to do more than normal? I don't think it would use its other powers than the one it mentioned (materialization and astral form) unless it was specifically instructed to attack with that particular attack.

I'm persuing this from a devil's advocate standpoint because I want to iron out every possible argument that may come up in game. I feel that spirits should be used based off of intuition (like, 'dude, don't be lame and make a fire spirit appear infront of the driver to make him crash.'), but my players (well, player... then again I am probably going to kick him out of the group) prefer to take things as litterally as possible to get away with as much as possible.

Don't mean to be generating any hard feelings for debating this so intensly, like I said, I just want to make sure I don't miss anything.

I think I was comming off rude with my past arguments, I think it's a side effect of me playing devil's advocate from the standpoint of a munchkin , so again sorry about that.

Edit:
Already several very good counterpoints have been brought up, like the momentum point, which would even go so far as to suggest that if it did appear it wouldn't hurt the car or driver if it was hit, as while it has force (haha, no pun intended), it doesn't have real mass and as such would have no real physical effect on the world. Seems this could be taken two ways: the world disrupts it (in that it can't pass through walls for example, and it is struck it has no effect on the striker but it does effect the spirit), however it can put force upon the world (in the form of transfering energy from it to the target when it choses).

In this regard I consider the car thing debunked, as the spirit would likely be nearly killed when it materialized and was struck by the car, though of course if it was sufficiently powerful enough the strike may not even hurt it at all if it doesn't overcome its force armor.

I'm still up in the air about the astral movement thing, but the logical way of explaining this is that it only uses astral movement to A) Get to the target, and B) to pursue the target if and only if the target goes astral during that time and somehow loses its body. I could say that this is simply how services work, and that to demand that it use it repeatedly cost a service each time it is called back to material form.

Edit 2:
Bah, I totally missed this. The spirit is stationary when it materializes relative to the astral plane. *smacks head*. That would make since as it would appear without its momentum relative to the rest of the world.

Wholeheartedly agree with what you just said. Makes perfect sense now, thanks. It would be logical to assume that the telepathic link is broken once it begins its remote service since recieving the order is the last thing it owes you (carrying it out afterwords is part of the contract), so it would want to break the telepathic link as soon as possible since it doesn't owe you anything else.

And [remote spirits] don't count against your limits anymore, either, which is nasty overpowered in the hands of a munchkin conjurer.

[e] Man, I even checked before I posted that last edit, but you squeezed in there...

I would agree that [the spirit range] moves with the astral form of the summoner, and I'd use the telepathic link tied to the summoner's consciousness as the reasoning (since Essence is tricky here). [e] That means telling a spirit to defend your body while you go for a jaunt is a Remote Service. Hey, watchers do have a purpose!

One of the problems I'm encountering is my group's conjurer using spirits to essentially cast from the astral. If he's on the astral and needs to cast a spell that affects something on the physical, he either whips up a spirit on the spot with the spell or uses one of his bound spirits, and has them Materialize and do it for him.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can manage this? Astral strafing runs were something I had hoped were dead this time around... and now I'm finding they just require the strafer to use Conjuring instead of Sorcery.

Unless he has spirit affinity with spirits of man. Then they'd gladly overcast... hehehehehehhh....

One recourse mundanes might have against spirits is drones. You can order a drone to attack anything that appears suddenly inside your car and drones are pretty fast- get one with a machine gun and give it the order and it will hold its action until a spirit attacks, then blast it. It's not perfect, but aside from making friends with a mage (or just having someone else in your car to blast the spirit) it's the best you're going to do.

Wards. Ward your car. Ward your home. If you're being chased by a spirit duck into a public building that is sure to have some type of warding such as an airport or a courthouse.