I haven't started a SR4 campaign yet, but by the looks of it spirits look almost impossible to deal with unless you have magical support. One way of dealing with them is of course to have magical support always, but that seems silly in a lot of encounters that the NPCs always include a mage (or be able to call in astral support).

A standard Force 5 spirit seems almost to deal with - it has 10 points of hardened armor. The few options to deal with that as a mundane that I can see

- Sniper rifles, shotguns and grenades have the DV and AP to take them down.
- called shot +4 DV and a bit of luck, you can take one down with a heavy pistol.
- Ex-ex or APDS ammo.
- tasers, stun batons and stick-n-shock have -half AP, being able to penetrate their armor.

It still seems like a lot of effort to take down a spirit before it does a lot of damage(especially with Engulf seriously impeding the enemy's ability to fight back), and a mage could sit back and each time the spirit dies, just summon a new one and send it against the enemy. Of course there is drain to worry about, but spirits still seem like a very risk-free way to do a lot of harm.

If you go into higher-force spirits, it quickly becomes impossible for anyone in a reasonable way to counter them, but I guess that the spirits using Edge to resist the summoning is a good way to handle that.

On top of that spirits have a whole host of other cool powers.

Those of you who have been running SR4 campaigns, what are your impressions of them? Do the mages just use them to get everything done? Do they leave the street sams feeling envious of the spirit's sheer durability and combat power? Are you using house rules to keep spirits in check?

Your analysis is spot on.

Try searching on topics older then 90 days should return lots of hits on this topic.

Shadowrun:

Magic > j00.

This is me asking similar questions.

The way I've handled this is that spirits of Force 5 and higher resent being called away from their homes and use their edge to resist the summoning fairly regularly. It's made mages wary of overusing large spirits.

Consider using monowhips, as well.

steve: I like that idea. It gives a reason for spirits to use edge to resist summoning without making summoning useless.

I like your idea Steve.

I'd make it more detailed.

Like :

Roll 1D6+2. If the result is higher than the Spirit Force, the spirit cooperates normally and isn't harder to conjure. If the result is lower than Spirit Force, the spirit is unhappy about being conjured and will use edge to resist conjuring as well as be generally uncooperative if successfully conjured (try to find loopholes in order and so on).

Apply the following modifier to the roll :

If you lost a spirit in the past hour (Through banishing or combat) : -1
If You lost 2 spirit in the last 24 hours : -1
If you lost three spirits in the last week : -1

These three penalties are cumulative, so if you lost 3 spirit in the last week including two in the last hour alone, you are at -3. Basically, spirit are resistiing because obviously you are acting like a mad general sending his troops to their death and it resonates in your aura.

If you have more spirit than half your charisma binded to you : -1
(Slaver! )
If you have the max amount of spirit binded to you : -2
If you have no spirit binded to you : +1

Aletrnatively, it could be (binded total force level of spirits / Charisma) * -1

If you are known to release your spirits before the end of their services : +1
(GM discretion ; basically if your normal modus operandi is usually to conjure a spirit, give him a task and then release him once completed even if he still owed you 2 services or 21 hours of servitude, it would reflect well on you in the spirit world.)

If you make offering to your binded spirits in order to honor/feed them (depending on your leanings) each week : +1
Suggested price of 50 X force weekly in various incense/talisman/live chicken or whatever accompanied by an appropriate little ceremony fitting the magicians tradition.

For fairness, I'd make the roll to see if the spirit will resist using edge first, to let the magicians decide if he wants to use edge himself for the conjuring.

So, off the cuff, that's something I'd try in my campaign.

Obviously, these numbers could be tweakes 8 day till sunday to achieve the desired result.

I like that idea, too, except I think I'd go for something a bit simpler than Charon's method. Don't get me wrong, Charon, it's a neat idea, but I think it sounds like a little too much bookkeeping for my game. If I were going to implement this rule (and I might) I'd probably go with spirits using edge to resist when their force exceeds the summoner's magic rating. The idea being, "Who the hell are YOU to summon ME?"
Quick. Easy. But I agree that high-force spirits sometimes need to be kept in check. Then again, for me that problem might be better solved by using one of the summoning drain house rules.

Basically the point of my convoluted alternative to what Steve was proposing is simply that I like the occasional spirit resisting but I want it more random as well as incorporate the idea that if you treat your spirits well or badly it would modify the likely hood of whether they'll be a pain in your neck.

Simply declaring that all spirit above force 5 (steve) or above your magic rating (you) makes it predictible ; you know exactly when you will face a resisting spirit and when you won't. With 1D6 there is some randomization.

Sometime you'll get a friendly force 6 or a bratty force 4. And that makes it more likely that a player will gamble and then over-conjure.

''Well, I'm low on edge but there is 50% chances that my force 5 spirit will behave so let's take a chance... Awww, crap.''

Some House Rules I currently use with Spirits


1) Summoned and Bound Spirits do not have edge. Only Free spirits have edge. If the magician wishes it he may lend the spirit a point of his edge for a test. I've had this one ever since SR3 only now its edge instead of karma.

2) When resisting summoning a spirit uses 2 x Force dice like it does in resisting Binding. The difference is that the drain becomes 1 point of drain per spirit resist success not 2 like it is for binding. This prevents the summoning of monster spirits.

3) You don't have to summon the spirit first in order to bind the spirit. In that case the binding process summons the spirit for the sole purpose of binding it. This allows a character to have an old style hermetic who can bind spirits but cannot summon them on the fly.

4) Controlling one spirit does not cause a modifier. Controlling more than one spirit causes a -2 modifier for all skill tests per extra spirit. Spirits on "standby mode" don't count toward this total. Furthermore any summoned spirits can be given a "remote" task do not count either.

Street Magic suggests a couple of nice alternative rules to restrict Spirit Edge. I'm particularly fond of the one that suggests treating a magician's bound spirits as grunts with a common Edge pool.

charon, I like the aspect of the offerings to spirits to placate them and make them more responsive to the calls of summoning. It reminds me of things such as the chinese tradition of making offerings to their ancestors.

Maybe another +1 if the summoner does regular offerings to their spirits (mainly something for those of shamanic traditions)? Might be a bit much actually. Or vice versa, if they don't make regular offerings, the spirit might not be as receptive depending on the tradition?

Sacrifices don't really work for Hermetics. Spirits are just tools for them.

laser,flame throwers, and fire house....

Spirit summoning has worked pretty well in my games so far. The drain cost and difficulty in summoning a high-force spirit has been prohibitive enough to keep the tactic un-abused. This is because my players don't min/max.

A min/maxed mage specializing in summoning was able to summon a force 10 with an essentially starting-powered caracter in the summer campaign at my local game store. That seemed excessive to me. Of course, he had to beat 10 dice in an opposed test, and likely had to resist around 6 drain. If he blew all of his edge on the summoning, then he didn't have it available later, but who needs edge when you have a force 10 spirit?! Not sure how many tasks he got out of the thing.

If I see it become abused in my game, I'll probably steal a lot of the ideas here. I also have some ideas for roleplaying high-force spirits when it begins to happen, but for the most part, I think the idea that a mage with more dice than his spirit can simply subjugate him and exploit him, and that's just the way it goes, is fine with me, but there are indirect consequences.

Additionally, the idea that best way to deal with a spirit is to have a mage on hand is also okay in my opinion. Shadowrunners are best to learn early to be prepared. Going on a mysterious run without magical backup is a risk, as it is without a hacker or face. A good GM should always be ready to provide an opportunity for PCs to avoid certain death just because they had no reason to anticipate that force 10 spirit.

Dread Polack

I really like Charon and Steve's house rule about placating spirits, it leads exactly where I want the game to go. Conjuring Spritis shouldn't be something straight and predictable since these entities are by definition alien and unpredictable...

I've always tried to goad my players into the roleplaying aspect (one of them often leaves sweets and milk in a small plate for his spirits) to convey the feeling of different traditions (insisting on the deference usually demonstrated by shamans)

The idea of giving twice the spirit's Force for simple conjuring albeit with a lessened Drain Dv seems good to me as spirits can really IMO be much too powerful as soon as the opposition is not magically loaded (which , according to the stats should be the usual acse whenever they get in a fight with gangs, policlubbers, standard beat cops etc..)

Geek the mage first.

Copied from the "Is Possession Overpowered" topic

A House Rule Just off the top of my head...... Perhaps Banishing could be used as a form of counterspelling to resist spirit powers ( like possession ) that counterspelling doesn't cover.

Might actually give folks a reason to raise their banishing skill. ( There are safer methods of taking out spirits than banishing them. )

What do you think?