That sounds good. With reach bonuses it gives an average sammie a decent chance of wounding a spirit unless its force is absurdly high.

But not when they're on the astral plane I thought. Shouldn't that only work when they're materialized?

I thought the same thing you did and I argued it for a while until I found this passage in the rulebook.

Mana invisibility is kind of the odd one out here though... Although mana illusions can work on the astral plane, casting invis would mean an aura which would not be invisible. It wouldn't matter if you assensed that it was an illusion or not - the point is YOU CAN SEE IT - therefore, not invisible

The problem it's too easy to summon high force spirits.

Ernie, the summoning nuclear weapon, of the firebringer totem.
(magic 6, summoning 6, totem bonus, best conjuring foci he can afford)

On average a force 6 spirit will cause on average 4 DV in drain.
A force 9 spirit will cause will cause on average 6 DV in drain.
A force 12 spirit will cause on average 8 DV in drain.

High Magic, High Summoning, and some edge and you can make a starting character who can summon a fire spirit so powerful that it will slaughter 99% of any oppositon you might meet in SR4. ( including probably most non-great dragons )

I don't have a house rule for this yet. My players are SR3 veterans who look upon the idea of casting a spell or conjuring a spirit at a power level great enough to cause physical drain as something limited to burn-outs or desperate astral projectors or the insane. Even though the door to abuse is open, the psychological barriers remain.


Possible Houserule
----------------------------------
Probably the best method would be to change the summoning test from

(Summoning skill)+(Magic Attribute)+(foci)+(mentor bonus) vs (spirit force)
to
(Summoning skill)+(Magic Attribute)+(foci)+(mentor bonus) vs (spirit force)*2

and then change the drain test from

(Number of spirit successes) * 2 DV
to
(Number of spirit successes) DV


As a result if you summoned a spirit whose force equaled your magic attribute then you'd be doing good to get one or two services which to me sounds about right. You really shouldn't be able to summon things which are more powerful than you. On the plus side you wouldn't be blowing your brains out with drain either.

Close, but not quite. If the party has a mage that summons monstrous spirits, they should be going on runs where monstrous spirits are necessary. Otherwise they're not being challenged. At least that's my opinion on how runs should work. Some folks like to have characters that are always on top, others like to have characters that are so overpowered by the opposition the at thoughts of actually entering combat is enough to force a save vs. death magic.

Our group does what yours does. Overcasting and oversummoning are things done in desperation. I know if I were able to cast spells and I could choose between being tired (stun damage) or having blood shoot out my ears (physical damage) things would have to be pretty desperate for me to do the latter. While OOC we may know that there are no long term effects of overcasting and that 4DV is the same penalties physical or stun, IC we know is that it hurts like hell.

True, however, it is possible for a force 12 spirit to cause a drain of 24.

Especially, if you play with a rule that spirits have an edge equal to their force.

In this case it becomes important for the Summoner to get on friendly terms with a small number of Spirits. Perhaps buying them with loyalty ratings. Or making them more friendly to him buy offering up Karma. The loyalty rating would be the chance that the Spirit wouldn't fight the Summoning with Karma, and allow the Summoner to "Drag" it across the dimensional barriers.

Possible, but quite improbable.

I don't, but even if I did allowing the spirit to use edge to refuse summoning is a slippery slope. According to the book spirits hate binding more than summoning. But binding is done with the Force*2 resistance. But allowing spirits to use edge would make the task ridiculously hazardous. The player would need to use edge to compensate.

A lot of players, especially those who play hermetic types, treat their spirits as mindless automatons. To them spirits only have personality that you give them. I wouldn't feel comfortable forcing a viewpoint.

Making players ( especially karma sinks like magician players ) pay karma or edge for something they didn't have to before is also highly impractical. The players would hate it. When making a house rule like that I try to "sell" it to the players generally as a game balance issue. This one would never fly.

Spirits resist summoning using willpower? You could also say that spirit resistance is simply the magician doing the heavy lifting when it comes to pulling them out of the metaplanes and the spirit doesn't care either way. It should also be mentioned that watcher personalities generally reflect an aspect of their summoner and in the two examples in Shadowrun literature and adventures of non-Ally summoned spirits going free so did the spirits. Different magicians see spirits differently.

From a game mechanics point of view the player may view it as highly punitive. The player may see using edge to give him an advantage in binding a spirit, but he'll balk at it being a virtual requirement. Also for binding its impractical. An average magician would only have a 50-50 chance of binding a spirit equal to his magic attribute if he used edge as well and the drain catapults when spirits use edge to defend against binding.

Average Drain for binding
---------------------
Force 1 : 1 DV -> 2 DV
Force 2 : 3 DV -> 5 DV
Force 3 : 4 DV -> 7 DV
Force 4 : 5 DV -> 9 DV
Force 5 : 7 DV -> 12 DV
Force 6 : 8 DV -> 14 DV

Since their willpower = force, that's one way to view it.

Then why do more successes grant more services? If the spirit didn't care either way the number of services would probably be set rather than flexible.

It's cool though. Obviously our opinions differ.

It's just that I see many people (not necessarily you) complain about how powerful spirits are. But those same people usually let the mage control the spirit as if it were a mindless slave, let the player determine when and if the spirit spends edge, and don't have the spirit do much about avoiding slavery.

Because after the summoning or binding of the spirit the magician only has so much energy left to get services. While for a low-force spirit the magician didn't expend as much effort getting the spirit there so he has the energy to get more services.

Well, I house-ruled back in SR3 that summoned spirits don't have karma pools of their own. The house rule was ported to SR4 and karma pool became edge. As for letting players treat spirits like mindless slaves. I pretty much guilty. It's pretty much how hermetics did it in SR3. I'll let the magician player roll for the spirit ( after the summoning or binding ) and control it to a limited degree.

Actually, I'll take that one on.

In previous editions, SR was pretty explicit about different traditions seeing spirits differently - shamans generally thought of them as self-willied, but many hermetics considered elementals to be CREATED, rather than conjured, beings. MitS goes on for a little while in the fluff-text about how the jury's still out on who's right, and what the true nature of spirits actually is.

Someone with that particular hermetic point of view would argue that you're not calling an independent spirit from elsewhere and forcing your will on it - you're using your will to shape a spirit out of the material of the metaplanes and give it temporary consciousness. It's a construct, like an AI. And like an AI, it can sometimes surprise you, and can potentially even go rogue, but it's still a created thing. They might say that the variable number of services isn't because the spirit is 'fighting back', but rather is a measure of how good a job you did in constructing it. A more talented mage can fashion a more durable, more useful servant.

Still waiting to see what Street Magic will say about this, of course. In SR3, there were far clearer differences between nature spirirs and elementals, so there was more room for that difference of in-play opinion. Personally, I like the idea of spirits with an independent existence better, but some ambiguity and uncertainty in the worldview isn't a bad thing.

The sad thing is that even though I like the idea of the characters in the world not knowing what the real answer is yet, I find it hard to resist making a decision as a GM