Ok, I have a bound spirit that I assign to search for the holy grail for which I somehow have a mental image of. How long does it search before it gives up?

Oh, and the answer that it would be up to my gm is not the answer I'm looking for as he asked me to post this for him.

gunsnammo

well, I guess as long as it takes won't help then?

Another thing that may be important, this is assuming that the spirit can't find the holy greail then, right? 'cause if it can, that changes things.

Probably would never return, considering anything as magical potent as the holy grail would be warded in the least and guarded by some hefty spirits/cult/anchored spells or whatever.

More importantly, asking a spirit to do something near impossible without some support will only make it angry towards you.

So if your asking the spirit to search the world with nothing but a mental picture, he may bring you back something that looks like the grail. But more probably you'll just make him and his friends mad. If its a task he'll be at for a long time, your GM should probably require you to pay Karma to make it a semi-permanent task.

Now if your GM wants you to find the holy grail and simply didn't give you any means to hunt it down, decided it was unguarded in some ditch, and thinks that a spirit loves giving up years to one service...and wants to roleplay you eagerly awaiting the spirits return in the hopes that he found it, then you don't even need a book or the boards help.

If you as a player are just wondering how long a service is and what you can feasibly do with it, consider that spirits have sapience and edge and would resent such a service as much as you'd resent your boss expecting you to fly unaided to the moon tomorrow and bring him back some cheese.

What you're going to want here is a maximum number of attempts before the test fails. The book suggests (dicepool) attempts before the test is a success or failure, but personally I prefer (Skill +3) tests. Regardless, a Spirit is going to be making a Search test every Initiative Pass and it gets two of those every 3 seconds.

So a Force 6 Spirit would repor failure after a little less than 20 seconds as per the book.

Now, it's a bound spirit. You could plausibly give it an extended task to search for the Holy Grail everywhere in which case the GM might allow it to reuse the power again and again for up to a year and a Day, coming up empty about 3 times a minute...

-Frank

er...no, not every initiative pass - the interval on the search power is 10 minutes.

well, there is taht one where if you want to set a spirit on a remote task for a long period , such as 'guard this site', you need to pay karma equal to it's force, which sets it for most a year and a day. That's in SM pg 94

In SR3 bound elementals just hanging around or engaged in a long term service lost a service per 24 hours elapsed. Bring that back if you the feel need, or even make it kick in at sunrise/sunset. It's not like spirits got weaker in the move to SR4.

Interesting ideas but I guess I chose a bad example to use as we seem to have gotten stuck on the search power. What about magical guard? Could I bind a plant elemental and then tell it to provide counter-spelling for the entire group for a year and a day? I'd say not likely. Seems a bit abusive to me.

I also like the idea of setting a limit on how many times the spirit can try before it gives up but since search is an extended test it is really only trying once. The threshold and interval just determine how long it takes to succeed. At least that's how I interpret it.

gunsnammo

The optional rule about limiting attempts that Frank referred to actually limits the number of rolls made when performing an extended test. It would mean that if you don't succeed within a certain number of rolls, the action is considered a failure. In this case, it would cost a service, even though it didn't succeed.

for the counter spelling, I'd say sure. You're going to run into problems pretty quickly though. Say.. as soon as you walk in to a warded building. Or if it's a higher force spirit, as soon as a LS mage sees you w/ a Force 6 spirit without a permit. Spend your karma how you like.