Full Version: Security Armor
James...just out of curiousity, what's your take on spirits for your game? Are they actually ongoing characters? Is it possible to summon the same spirit again, later, and have them remember you?
It hasn't really come up yet, but they are fully fledged NPCs. Nobody has yet tried to summon the same one as before, but I'd allow it, most likely with a penalty to the conjuring test and/or an increase in time as you're forced to sift through the astral yellow pages rather than just grabbing whatever lands under your finger first.
Also the casters in my group have yet to try binding anything. Low force spirits aren't really worth the effort, and an army of them would detract from everyone else's fun. High force spirits are likely to smack you around on the binding test, especially since they'll probably be using their edge in order to avoid slavery.
Also the casters in my group have yet to try binding anything. Low force spirits aren't really worth the effort, and an army of them would detract from everyone else's fun. High force spirits are likely to smack you around on the binding test, especially since they'll probably be using their edge in order to avoid slavery.
| QUOTE (Brahm) |
They didn't have much grounds before, either.  Especially for Bind. Outside of maybe you not letting them know up front that it could happen that the spirit would resist using Edge? |
The spirits had rolled Edge the last 3 times he'd bound one at that Force, nobody was unaware of the fact that they were doing it, and I've got a group of players that understands math. The fourth time he tried it, it killed him at the beginning of a session. The whole skullpop/arguement/"fuck it" chain was a bit of reorganization in our group when I informed my twinks and their proteges that GM rulings existed for a reason, and I was going to close down the game if it continued to be a lot of combating their egos every time something detrimental happened in-game.
| QUOTE (Shrike30) | ||
The spirits had rolled Edge the last 3 times he'd bound one at that Force, nobody was unaware of the fact that they were doing it, and I've got a group of players that understands math. The fourth time he tried it, it killed him at the beginning of a session. The whole skullpop/arguement/"fuck it" chain was a bit of reorganization in our group when I informed my twinks and their proteges that GM rulings existed for a reason, and I was going to close down the game if it continued to be a lot of combating their egos every time something detrimental happened in-game. |
Good, then you can play in my game.
I haven't come up with a way to justify it yet, but I'd be tempted to say that spirits only (and always...) spend Edge to resist summoning when the magician spends Edge to PERFORM the summoning 
| QUOTE (Austere Emancipator) |
| Current Years Army Budget Materials |
Im SOO entertained right now.
I love the ammo budget...
5.56mm $214,555,000
7.62mm $113,555,000
9mm $3,848,000
12.7mm $125,112,000
I will NEVER gripe about the cost of an afternoon at the trap range again. 3.8 million usd in pistol bullets... thats NUTS.
| QUOTE (Nim) |
| I haven't come up with a way to justify it yet, but I'd be tempted to say that spirits only (and always...) spend Edge to resist summoning when the magician spends Edge to PERFORM the summoning |
I'd disagree with that. I'd imagine that summoning isn't necessarily a big deal to a spirit. But I would say that a spirit always uses Edge to resist binding.
| QUOTE (James McMurray @ Jun 22 2006, 02:31 PM) |
| It hasn't really come up yet, but they are fully fledged NPCs. Nobody has yet tried to summon the same one as before, but I'd allow it, most likely with a penalty to the conjuring test and/or an increase in time as you're forced to sift through the astral yellow pages rather than just grabbing whatever lands under your finger first. |
See, I was actually thinking it'd be interesting to go the other direction. Give conjurers a bonus to summon known spirits, and a penalty to pull in a total stranger. Of course, if you have a habit of using and abusing your summoned spirits, the ones you know best don't LIKE you very much. It would reward characters for making nice-nice and paying attention to their interactions with spirits.
It'd be a larger departure from the RAW, but you could even go so far as to say conjurers can ONLY summon a (non-Watcher) spirit if they know its name. Let them have a certain number of known spirits to start with (determine their type and force and write it down). Then, the names of new and more powerful spirits becomes another valuable reward that characters can receive as part of their pay / have as a personal goal / etc etc.
Oh, and reduce a spirit's force by 1 every time it's killed (disrupted?) in combat. Will discourage conjurers from using spirits as disposable resources.
All of that would be house-rules, and they'd change the dynamic, but I don't think they'd do violence to the flavor of the gameworld.
Geekakke: I agree with that. Freethinking beings do everything they can to avoid slavery. Since there's no risk involved in spending edge to resist it, there's no reason not to. That is unless the summoner is willing to do some bargaining, but in that case he could instead summon the spirit and bargain rather than summon the spirit and bind.
Nim: That's not too bad of an idea (both of them). If it comes up in my group we'll definitely discuss both methods. For the name knowing it would require a lot of retconning to make the campaign shape that way.
Nim: That's not too bad of an idea (both of them). If it comes up in my group we'll definitely discuss both methods. For the name knowing it would require a lot of retconning to make the campaign shape that way.
Let's move this pretty heavy derail of the thread here. I started a new topic.
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