Is being able to throw a fireball yourself cool, or is being able to summon a living one yourself better?

Yes.

I agree.

Aye.

Affirmative

You're all wrong and your mothers look like hippopotami.

I totally agree with the first 2 replies but not the last few. Their points are all valid, but the third posting was eloquently put.

A simple yes, implying "both"?

Wrong. Setting fire to something is obviously cooler than conjuring something that can make fire.

Amen.

I prefer spellcasting. So much so, in fact, most of my magically active characters have been Sorcerous Adepts in previous editions (I've yet to make a mage in SR4, but they all see karma-intensive enough it seems like that trend may continue).

I'm a big fan of spellcasting as well. It just seems so much more versatile in both the long and short-term.

But power... think of the POWER!

Spellcasting is more fun, more versatile and more powerful.

Bye
Thanee

Anything you can cast, a spirit of man can cast bigger and better. All you need is one net hit for the spirit of man to appear (which you average if your Magic + Summoning is Force +3) and then the spirit casts your spell of choice with a dice pool of double its Force.

So if your dicepool is 7+, you conjure spirits who are better at spellcasting than you are. The breakeven point is, amusingly enough, the minimum Force for a Spirit to know one of your spells at all. How awesome is that?

And there are 10 spirit types to choose from, all of whom do cool things. So much so that you can make a legit argument that you don't even need Spirits of Man. So really, the entire spellcasting discipline is a subset of conjuring that perfectly reasonable people might decide not to take on the grounds that the rest of the options are better.

So there's no way I'll agree to spellcasting being more "powerful" than Conjuring. Although it is pretty neat that Stun Bolt is the best answer to spirits - there's nice Rock/Paper/Scissors going on there. And that's probably why the advocates of Conjuring andthe advocates of Spellcasting are essentially equal in number.

-Frank

Hardly an objective analysis.

Oppenheimer: Nuclear weapons are more powerful than a slingshot.

SL James: Hardly an objective analysis.

Well, I'm sold!

Sorcery, all the way. It's more fun

Spells over spirits.
You always have the spell handy, but the importance of spirits cannot be overlooked.

It's just a spell can save your neck, whereas a spirit must be told to.

I'd rather be able to do something myself than to have something done for me.

Then again, there's something to be said for having others do all the hard work