What can they do that normal bound spirits can't? I just don't see a point to summoning one without being able to give it aura masking and other broken spirit powers.

It is a power focus that can't (easily) be taken away. They can be taught any skill other than Conjuring that you know (for free help on Teamwork tests). They can cast spells (which was much cooler back when Spirits of Man couldn't do the same). You can cross the Materializing/Possession divide with your Ally.

And, um, that's about it I think. Is it worth sacrificing something like 50 karma for a decent one? Well, it certainly *used* to be, back when spellcasting was a unique and cool ability, and Task spirits couldn't learn any technical skill for free.

Power foci aren't all they used to be, and an ally's aid sorcery isn't quite like a normal bound spirit, as it's not limited to a specific spell category. If you're a generalist who casts spells often from different categories the ally is immensely more helpful than a bound spirit with it's nuyen and binding time costs.

Compared to a power focus, an ally trades the ability to aid conjuration tests in return for unlimited use spirit powers, astral overwatch, no need to activate (with perhaps minimally clever standing orders and a free action to tell it what to do), no danger of accidental deactivation from wards, etc. And, of course, optional powers involving a variety of skill use, although those cost karma over and above the the base power focus equivalent.

Ally's shine for stealth operations where the target has no astral overwatch. Use realistic form - let it be a dog, a small child, a beautiful damsel in distress. Get it close to the target without suspicion and put that unlimited Influence power (an absolute necessity for an ally) to use, or if it has Spellcasting, a high force Death Touch when that sec guard leans over to pet the stray doggie.

Ally's also are helpful when a summoned spirit might be wrong for an unexpected task or when you're running low on services and don't have the time or stun condition monitor to summon a new one. Give your ally standing orders about what to do in certain surprise situations, like spirit bolting the fire elemental that's been sent to force you to stop providing counterspelling or spell support.

Quicken a Detect Life/Detect Magic spell on your ally. Have him periodically take the Simple Action to scan for activity when you're worried about something sneaking up on you or you're advancing into unknown territory. The ally can avoid crashing through wards and busting the quickened spell, as you simply use metaplanar shortcuts to bring him to the other side.

If you've got the karma, do something fun with the ability to give it any skill you have. Take a useful skill at level one, pay 5 karma to give it your ally at Force. Any firearms skill can be useful as a terrorist/distraction skill that won't necessarily invite a magical alert/response. The ally stuns an out of the way guard (spell/ability/unarmed/whatever), takes his gun, and in realistic human form starts shooting up the place. He does some damage, doesn't take much in return, doesn't look like a magical threat, and raises hell away from wherever you are.

Pay 5 karma to give your ally enchanting. Have him make orichalcum when you're not doing anything else.

The only real complaint I have is the extra karma cost to make an ally an effective spellcaster/counterspeller. This stuff used to be free. Giving free skills of the sorcery group wouldn't be a terrible houserule to try to balance out allies if you think they're much less useful than before.

Another houserule could be to allow ally and bound spirit aid sorcery to stack. The description annoyingly and somewhat awkwardly let's you do this with aid study already. Punish them for the teasing semi-confusion in the way they worded this.

Ally spirits are one of those things that I think are cool and just a little bit creepy, akin to owning a sentient pet. But I've never actually had one, mainly because the karma involved in making the spirit remotely awesome? Kind of a pain in the ass. At least, it was in third edition. I take it that it hasn't gotten much better. Here's a couple of ideas that I have put no thought of balance into whatsoever.

1) Halve the cost of the ally spirit after setting it all up, so instead of fifty karma, it costs 25.

2) Make the ally spirit basically a PC. Run it through a similar chargen, have it gain karma on its own, and maybe have somebody other than the summoner play it.

Actually ally spirits can be quite a bit of fun.once you have the cahanneling metamagic and summon an ally spirit with equal force to your willpower and pay five karma for possesion. Now you have an unstopabble mage with a sword or whatever. totally cool for mystic adepts.

You can do that with normal spirits. The point was that ally spirits aren't any better than normal spirits, which you don't pay karma for.

I like Slithery D's ideas, and it seems as if they were mostly ignored. I think I'll paraphrase them and add a thought or idea.

Ways an Ally is better than a Bound Spirit

An Ally's Aid Sorcery is not spell category specific. This is big. You'd need to have 5 CHA and bind 5 diffferent spirits to get this effect without an ally. To be effective, that means youre binding 5 high force spirits. Five dangerous Drain resistance tests. With an Ally, it's only ever one.

An ally is your best friend. They will step in and save your life if you're in danger. No tasks needed, no delay in ordering it to save you, you don't even need to be aware you're in danger. If the ally notices someone threatening you they will act to the best of their abilities. Even if that means disruption. That's a big deal when talking about spirits.

Spell Sustaining was absolutely useless. With an Ally, it no longer is. Before the limitation was it ate through your services so fast it was useless. With an Ally, there is no service limit. You'll never have to sustain another spell again. Also, since an Ally isn't category specific, it can sustain any of your spells, not just one category.

The powers of Realistic Form and Sense Link make for interesting recon abilities. Your Ally can blend in and share what she's seeing with you, the shaman Hides-in-Van. You'll never have to show your face in public, and if your Ally gets a reputation, spend 2 Karma to get her another form.

Having an Ally means you have a spirit that Quickening spells on is worth doing. They're there forever. AND they can metaplanar shortcut to places where that Detect Enemies or Detect Individual spell can actually pick something up. Such spells make an Ally great for recon and bodyguard duty.

Your Ally can be very good at anything you're willing to buy a rank of. They can be a world-class violinist, an alchemical genius, or even a deckmeister who uses holoscreens and AR gloves. If your team is lacking in some area (or several) an Ally can pick up the slack and more. The limit in this case is your imagination, something I thought emo had quite a bit of, so it surprises me to hear this from him. The possiblities an Ally spirit grants are grand and boundless. Take advantage of this. Don't make another badass spirit or your spellcasting buffer lackey, make it another character. That's when the Karma is worth it.

The part below is clearly abuse and more then likely only really sadistic mages will do it. I put it here for munchkins. Don't look if you hate munchkins

Frank, if you're right about the whole Spell Sustaining thing, that's a BIG mistake (on the editors part, not yours ). I think this needs to be looked at and considered more carefully for the next errata.

In the mean time, here's my stance. Since in the core rulebook Aid Sorcery, Aid Study, Spell Sustaining and Spell Binding are all grouped together and limited by category of the spirit, I think it would be safe to assume that Ally spirits can do all of them regardless of category. Since spirits are critters, the limitation on sustained powers equal to Magic should apply here too. This helps prevent Force 1 Allys that sustain all your spells. If you want lots of spells sustained, you have to summon higher Force.

You're probably right about the Copy/Paste demons, but I don't think completely discounting the idea is neccesary.

I'm really getting the impression that the Ally is an investment.

At first, it's a comparitive Karma sink.

But after you've had him for 5-10 runs, and invested in him, suddenly, you're paying 10 karma for something that would be 25. And eventually you make it up.

And it's nice for RP.

Plus if you give the ally your form, you can use it to establish an alibi for the mage. Unfortunately, to complete the package, I can't see a way to give the Ally Aura masking without having it go free.

Mages seeing through disguises of any sort isn't a new thing. Their second sight doesn't actually put a damper on most plans. Remember, mages are scarce, good ones even more so. If not having a mage covering a place will make the story or the run more entertaining, then by all means use the "they couldn't afford a security mage" card. Few things are less fun than being busted by the guy that can see everything. It sounds like GM magic, even though it's in the rules. No worries though. There is no real effective way to record auras after you read one, so identifing you later gets hard the longer that particular mage has had since he assenssed you.

Being completely undetected in a high security area is unlikely in any circumstance. Don't let little things like a mage's second sight put a damper on Allys. Also, you shouldn't give the Ally your form, but rather establish a reputation through the Ally while it uses a different form. That way no one really knows your face.

Whatever you do, make a high force Ally to begin with. The cost goes way up after you create it (16 per force point!).

You need the summoning step for the chance for the Ally to go free, grab a blow torch and get medeival on you for all those times you used the Resist Drain service ...

I noticed. That's another Drain Resistance test. That makes the process harder and more dangerous, as it should be with high Force spirits. Your hits don't matter, the spirit's does. So what's your point there? That improving later costs more Karma and is less dangerous, and so it is unbalanced/unneccesary?

It's not a waste of time if you get your ass handed to you during the summoning. The summoning (or multiple summonings if you fail) affects the binding test made after it. Starting out, a high force Ally is more dangerous and difficult to summon because of the back to back drain tests and the damage modifiers. The process should be quite the event. The ritual of change not as much. That would be more low key, like most initiation. Hence one less damage resist. Maybe I'm missing something, or misinterpreting what you meant. It doesn't seem as superfluous as you make it out to be.

Hmmm. Perhaps rather than assuming the Ally starts off liking you, you used the summoning as an Ettiquete test where the Ally starts at suspicious and each net hit beyond the first improves its disposition by one step.

Or you could make the ritual of changing cost as much as the original binding would and make its spellcasting skills come in at caster level like in SR3.

if u can conjure the right spirits, give ur ally endowment and regeneration that plus possession and the metamagic channeling and u r almost invincible... ( as long as u dont oppose a tank of course)

Don't forget some of the critical points in the concept of 'Ally spirits are foci with legs' not mentioned yet:

1) Perma Aid study: By investing whatever crapload of karma, you've basically acquired a 'membership discount' card. It doesn't lower karma costs for learning, but they do make it that much easier to learn spells later on. Then if it's a nice spell, you can teach it to the spirit later in a changing ritual for 3 karma.

2)Ritual Spellcasting: Possible the best(?) thing in my eyes is that you now have a reason to use ritual spellcasting on a semi solo basis. All those things you couldn't do because you didn't have someone to place spotter or otherwise was just solved by having your ally spirit aid you in the ritual magic. Perhaps more hilarious is if you can bind multiple spirits, you could make your own circle of super power...granted, that is real costly, and probably never going to happen with players (that doesn't rule out 2-3 players each with a ally spirit teaming up for a larger circle, however).

3) Endowment: True, this is probably a game breaker on some powers, but it can provide some interesting effects when both spirit AND mage are wielding half a dozen pschokinetic hands to lift the battle tank out in the street up and chuck it over one of the skyscrapers (again, I exaggerate a little). Since some powers are basically pseudo metamagics, this is a way of getting a few metamagic tricks you didn't get for taking ally conjuration or whatever (and sharing it with your other mage buddies on a hourly loan).

4)Technical details don't neccessarily give an ally spirit a label of man, beast, fire,water, etc (not one I recall or noticed while scanning the section anyways). It's true that, when it is surrounded by fire and breaths and eats it, it probably qualifies as a fire spirit, but since the section never brings up "So your ally spirit can't touch a glass of water without screaming" it leaves the suggestion that ally spirits have no such template. This helps and hinders the 'can't sustain any spells' arguement, alas. I guess I stuck this in in order to converse, heh.

5)Resist Drain risk: For all that this hurts a spirit, bear in mind that the spirit is still a sentient creature (sotospeak). If you reward your spirit for its sacrifices, such things won't be held against you if you don't abuse it too much and pamper the spirit afterwards. How do you reward a spirit, you ask? Very simple: try things. A spirit doesn't eat, but that doesn't mean eating food isn't a novelty to it. Just be careful it if takes a liking to sex.

Oh the embarassment of having your ally spirit caught on a news cam 'doing it' in the park, quite possibly in a not-so-human form, and you happen to have a spirit fairly well known to you. Would you ever show your physical face to the world again after that? Maybe if you're shameless, but since mages are held responsible for AWOL spirits, you'll probably get charged with indecency, child trauma, maybe rape if the spirit got over zealous, and a few other laws depending on just what you got yourself into.

(plot hooks galore for your more entertaining runs)

i'm surprised no references to dikoted AVS form ally spirits has come up yet...

The wording of the this section leaves so many loopholes for cheese. Such as the

Each also gains a number of extra powers equal to the force. From powers availible to the spirits an initate MAY cnjure.

You could take that as any spirit he could conjure such as free spirits or great forms. So know you have energy drain regeneration and storm all availible for a measly 30 or so karma.

Complete and utter cheese if your gm was stupid enugh to allow it.

But if you are of a possession based tradition, the spirits you control have the possession power and thus you give Possession to your Ally.

If I was going to try to snag a free spirit power for my Ally via the above loophole, it'd be Spirit Pact.

I think we've all missed the real reason to have an Ally spirit.


It's to have someone that you can dikote, use like a workhorse, fuck like a whore (literally), and still springs back to provide you with emotional and physical support.



Or, simply, to get something you know, without the tinest shadow of a doubt, is your friend. Something that in the Shadows, is worth it's weight in karma and orichalcum.

Okay one quick out of context question what is dikoting, i keep hereing it pop up and i dont know what it is

Wah-hah-hah. I thought that was part of the Shadowrun collective conciousness.

Dikote™ is a process wherein any metal or other material is impregnated with bazillions of nanometerscale diamonds. This makes edges unbelievably sharp, and the material incredibly hard, leading to more durability and a better cutting surface.

In short, it was to blade weapons what firepower ammunition was to heavy pistols:
A rationale for allowing them to do decent damage.

Channeling was meant to be used with conjuration - ally spirits are the familiar equivalent - hence the materialize/inhabit option, but not possession. I'm not sure you couldn't give an ally spirit possession as an optional power, however. I didn't see anything that denied the option.

In which case ,the spirit would then need a capable vessel to possess or whatever, if I recall correctly. I'll study up on that in a few and find the snags.

Thus far, the only snag I can think of off the top of my head is that if you can only give powers that spirits you can summon can take, then you can never take possession unless you're a possessing tradition to begin with.....that also pretty much excludes almost the entire list of new powers as well, since they don't tell you which of those powers are available to other spirits.

That was one thing I didn't like, heh, that they left that info out.

Plus, if your Ally is Inhabiting something, they can't zoom around on the astral possessing things. It is one with it's original vessel and can't possess something else at the same time. The new vessel would absolutely have to be imbued with a copy of it's formula or else using the vessel is not possible. And if this were to happen (after a lengthy inhabitation ritual) the old vessel would be DEAD.

Giving Possession to Inhabitation spirits does not work. For many reasons besides BALANCE

I believe inhabiting lets you use astral projection if it you get it from some means, but I can't recall if I read that. That would be the only way a inhabiting spirit could use possession.

I'd say that since they already have the Magician quality, they have astral projection.

By suggesting Possesion, I was envisioning an ally possessing a corpse with the magician having to change out the corpse every once in a while due to decay (or because the body you found in your neighboor's garbage turned out to be important). Having the ally possess the mage as sort of a split personality would be a generally bad idea for a possession based mage as it prevents him from summoning possession spirits upon himself, reducing his versatility.

Tonight i will write up ome ally spirit house rules using some of the material here and on the spirit pact thread. To make thetests worht something. Ok will post tommorow.

PM Me any suggestions not here or there if you want

Inhabiting spirits can't project. They're permanently merged with the vessel.

Edit: Found Page.

I think the inhabitation process is stressful, so I can't imagine how you could make the Tests and be the vessel.