Anyone come up with rules for this? I'm wondering about Owl; he gives 3 bonuses for a small penalty to combat spells. Was this because combat spells were judged to be important to mages, more so than other spell classes? As for Gryphon, why is there an additional "Charisma must be at least 4" requirement when he isn't more powerful than any other mentor spirit?

I'd like to come up with rules for making your own mentor spirits, maybe even ones with more bonuses and penalties than the usual "two bonuses, one penalty."

Perception/Assensing are presumably treated as a single bonus. The adept ability improves both, after all.

Of course you are.

I remember that in SR3, the Dragon totem had bonuses to mountain spirits, manipulation spells, and detection spells. In return, they had to have Intelligence of 6 and had a hard time going back on their plans or giving things up. I think the same kind of stacking should be possible in SR4.

Obviously it can be, but mentors went the way of the traditions - standardized and interchangeable parts following a basic rule.

If you go that way Emo, maintain a resemblance of balance by increasing the mentor spirit cost. Right now you get your two boni in exchange for one malus and 5 bp.

How about three boni in return for three mali?

You already have a standardized formula for creating balanced Mentor Spirits. You don't really need a standardized formula for creating broken ones.

Boni and Malus.

I love it.

Take a look at the Wise Warrior mentor spirit...

Bonus to combat and detection...-1 dice to all tests if acting dishonorably until the character atones...

That is somewhat unbalanced and would only be close to balanced if you have a good GM working with the character...I could certainly see people abusing it with a weak GM.

Point is, that there already are archetypes that show some imbalances, so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to create more if you need to.

I've got a player who wants to have his Mentor Spirit be the semi-extinct Tasmanian Tiger.

I've got some ideas, but I'd like to hear any of your ideas on how this might look.

I dont have street magic so i dont know if there was anything in there about making your own mentor spirit but I have a character stuck in the creation process because i dont wanna make a mentor spirit if it is unbalanced.

Why do some negative qaulities of mentors cause willpower tests and others just take away dice from other places??

Also if you never plan on using something is it even right to take a massive hit in that area or not be able to use it at all which is really no penalty at all or are you just following your mentor spirit. What if the penalty you make will never affect your character?

Didnt the older shadowruns make you live in the same environment of your mentor spirit or you got no bonus's. Is that still in the game. Cuz I'd like to use some really exotic animals as mentors like Turtle.

Is it safe to take insects as mentors or does that make you vulnerable to being possessed ?

I wanna finish my poor mage so bad

How about some kind of system where you buy traits up for advantages and lower the cost back down for disadvantages. Start with a base cost of 5 and not allow them to be cheaper then that. That would give you a base advantage and the fact that mentors can help you learn, then add say 5 per additional advantage except for imbalencing ones which cost 10. Attribute requirements could lower by 5 and high requirements could lower by 10. You could even limit when they will show up as a disad.

I was also thinking what if your mentor spirit could get better based on inititation because you were more connected with it.

And my patience was rewarded

If you take a mentor that gives you a penalty on spells you never plan to cast, that's not abuse. That's good rp. I mean, why would a mentor that frowns on combat spells be running around with a mage that likes to drop fireballs?