It says that bound spirits will continue to perform a service for as long as they are able. This seems a little too powerful. I could have a spirit performing a power on me for hundreds of years as long is it stayed bound (and I stay alive).

Yes. I'm tempted to borrow and modify the "24 hours hanging around costs a service" rule for bound elementals in SR3 and have an extra service lapse every day whether the spirit is doing something or just chillin' in astral space. If you're a real dick you could even have an extra spirit used up every dusk/dawn.

I would say you can have a spirit lending you its power for as long as you want. The spirits, however, would need to stay relatively close to you in astral space with a visible astral link between you and the spirit, thus being an easy target for banishing/attack. A disrupted spirit is unable to sustain a power after all.

How are they an easier target when you're around to help them out if they're attacked?

In any case, remote service would eliminate the closeness requirement. If you're willing to lose a spirit slot you can have an earth spirit dig out the foundation of a mountain for as long as it takes unless you impose some limits.

They are easier than when they are on the metaplanes...

Spirits have a maximum number of targets they can sustain most of their powers on. So by having your movement on for 400 years from your spirit you aren't particularly increasing the number of movements your spirit can sustain. Same with Guard or Innate Spell: Increase Willpower.

It's not something you couldn't do by summoning an unbound spirit every day and detailing it to that task. So really, what's the problem?

Bound Spirits are an accounting trick. The new capabilities you gain are generally worthless (spell sustaining doesn't last long enough to tell your teammates that you are using it), and the old abilities are... old abilities. The biggest unbound spirits you can throw around are massively larger than the biggest bound spirits, so binding really isn't a "power option". What it is, is convenient. Sure, it costs thousands of and uses hours instead of seconds and causes such incredibly random drain that even great dragons have a legitimate chance of death from supposedly minor conjurations... but each service is forever.

When you go through all that shit to have Guard up, you have guard up! In two months time when you're sitting in a swimming pool in the Carib League, you have Guard up! And three days from now when you have to pinch a loaf at sundown in an Applebees bathroom, you have Guard up!

That's the whole point. I honestly have no idea why people are flipping out about that facet of spirits. It's not game breaking, it's just convenient.

-Frank

Applebee's Still exists in 2070?

It could be worse, by 2070, all restaurants could be.....Taco Bell. :shudder:

Wait... you can give a bound spirit a task with indefinite (as opposed to just really long) duration and it'll keep doing it forever?

I thought that was what long-term binding was for, and that's only 366/367 days...

Guard may not be significant but I have a high probability of successfully summoning a force 9 spirit of man, that will give me inc reflexes, combat sense and improved attribute intuition (for Sharman drain, also improves initiative) and whatever its standard powers are sustained on me for the foreseeable future for only 9000 nuyen (note at time of casting lower force spirits of man where sustaining increased intuition and increased willpower on me, and I have edge waiting for both drain roles, I wont loose consciousness)

Edward

Eh why waste the money

for 2000 I can summon a force 9 unbound, have it use those powers on me, then give it a wad of cash and tell it to go to the local casino and play blackjack conservatively until just before sundown, returning to give me my winnings (chance for it to use all that edge)

since it is on remote service, it does not count as my one unbound spirit

Here's a better question: are spirits, bound, unbound, or free, even allowed to play the slots?

I suppose a free spirit can get around that snag, but what's to stop the unbound spirit from ghosting into the machine, examining it until it figures out how it works, then using a power to make a killing?

Someone upstairs will get mighty pissed at being cheated, and a spirit is very likely NOT to have an understanding of why they're angry for it collecting money for its summoner.

I would assume that casinos are restricted to metahuman only, with possible exceptions for free spirits who were known to the casino.

Heck, they probably have mondo mana barriers around casinos to keep people from casing them with spirits, or using a watcher to peek at the dealer's hand.

For that matter, I'm sure they have a bunch of house spirits watching for magic use... there will be no mind control spells inside a casino unless a player starts winning too much.

maybe a restriction on spell and power use

BUT

Vegas is in the NAN and there are casinos in Aztlan, where spirits have rights and can get citizenship

If you love it, make sure you love it for a reason other than it 'being possible'. This is one of the big debates that vagueness made bigger still. It is only possible because we can't neccessarily tell if it's not possible.

I don't love it because it's munchy. You should know me better than that by now.

I like it because it's imaginative.

y'know, I was thinking that surely this couldn't be right, but heck, the spirit in the chapter intro was tasked to use its powers all night.

Dang.

In some ways, this is far worse than the debate over whether Movement is the basis for the modern economy, because it directly impacts all gameplay; if you can just summon a few F6 Spirits of Man (at little or no drain) and have them cast spells and use powers on you, and then order them off to go guard your apartment (when you're out of range from it) all day, then why not buff up every morning in the alley behind the stuffer shack? IPs, reaction, even stat buffs can all be had for little or no drain, especially for a centering initiate.

This is wrong. I don't know how to fix it, but this is wrong.

Well, I can see why I would want to turn off Movement, Concealment, Armor, etc., but there are a few very passive spells out there (Combat Sense, Deflection, Improved Ability, Improved Reflexes) that I can't see anyone turning off, unless they were in a place where *any* sustained spell auras were frowned upon.

The spells and powers that interfere with "looking normal" could then be laid on by a daily-summoned unbound spirit or two, without having the karma cost of quickening.

One thing... if your spells get dispelled by a mage or a mana barrier, does it necessarily cost an extra set of services to get them put back up, or can you word your instructions so that the service includes replacing the spells if they are dropped without your order?

One more thing... if you have masking, does it work with spells cast on you that you did not cast yourself? I would think so, but I don't recall the text offhand.

Remember that when you set a spirit to cast and sustain spells on you that you are essentially losing he use of that spirit. It has a -2 penalty for each spell it is sustaining and its Drain won't go away until after the spells do. Further, each spell costs a service. If you're doing this with Unbound Spirits, you honestly won't have any spirits when you need them because you can only have one unbound spirit (the languageon page 178 that says that an unbound spirit on remote service doesn't count as your unbound spirit is an error). You seriously have to question whether you'd rather have a sustained spell or two or the use of a Force 3-6 bruiser following you around, and usually I'd prefer the latter.

Now, as to your other question of whether you can get spirits to turn spells back on as part of a single service - the answer is yes. Sort of. If you define the service not as "use power" (which is open ended in time) but as "physical service" (which is not), then you can get the spirit to use as many as all of its powers as many times as required with a single service. The problem being that this is a one task set up. You can have it fight a battle or help transport your car to the drop point in the Trans-Polar Aleut or whatever. That's one-way and one "task", which has always been defined pretty circularly.

So that's not going to normally get you Improved Reflexes all night. It'll get you Improved Reflexes for one combat, and the spirit will turn them back on if they get dispelled. But as previously stated, I can think of much better uses for a Force 6 spirit than spending its life sustaining two spells on me.

-Frank

Do spirits face the -2 penalty for sustaining powers, as well as spells?

The way you get around the argument with the casino is to have the spirit playing poker. Use a task spirit with the skills gamboling and psychology (if your game to summon force 9 give it knowledge corporate so it understands why you’re doing it this way). With its gamboling skill the spirit will win consistently, with its psychology skill it will keep the other players at the table (loosing often enough to leave them thinking they have a chance) the house is taking a percentage of each pot so they don’t care if you win all the time. Also the spirit is sing no powers other than its skills so no amount of astral investigation will get it accused of cheating, it is not cheating.

The use of spirit services is confusing, some say every use of a power counts as a service, some say anything you fraise as a single order is one service. For example, “keep the spells I gave you and the movement power active on me until I order otherwise”

The intention was that people would send their spirit out on a remote service and that then they'd have to summon a whole new spirit and suffer drain if they wanted to do anything good. In short, having an unbound spirit count as released was supposed to be a disadvantage.

What people actually do is summon mid-level spirits that they can conjure all day, and then send them all on the remote service to wait until noon and then go blitz the Aztlan border - causing each and every magician to be able to field an army of thousands with little or no effort or risk. That's... unfortunate.

So yeah, that's going to be errataed. The exact wording movs around, but the gist is that sending unbound spirits on remote services is something you want to avoid. You can't give it any more instructions and you can't summon new spirits until you dismiss it or the task is done.

-Frank

It does need an errata because p. 178 specifically says they no longer count towards limits. The two entries contradict themselves and will be corrected in upcoming printings and the errata.

Having gone the extra length and actually read the SR4 binding rules, I can answer this one. BBB pg. 180:

I'm crurious about something. Does anyone play in a game where the GM play up how Spirits dislike being bound? There really isn't a game mechanic for it, but if you go around binding spirts a lot, does your GM impose any penalties for doing so?

Those spirits probably don't have to worry too much if the summoner dies pretty quick, but it is listed that spirits have a dislike of being bound, particularly if they weren't really needed in the first place. A spirit isn't going to take it as badly if you offer compensation or else are very polite with your 'please put this collar on' moments. Being spirits can also tell if you've been a naughty summoner, it's doubly true you want to be on good terms, or one of them will attempt to squash you post haste when they have an excuse.

Usual Suspects?

Well explained, laughingowl.

Well that table on p179 says, "Unbound Spirit Services" and "Bound Spirit Services"

So really it is not saying that some of these services are bound services, and some are unbound services. It is a list of services, of a very generic type, that are assigned to unbound spirits or bound spirits.

But that's all just semantics isn't it?