I'm thinking it should be limited to the amount of hits the enemy spirit scores. I mean, all it does is get rid of one enemy combatant; a manabolt could do just as well with a higher chance of succeeding with a single blast with much lower, non-variable drain.

Is this one of the rules that wasn't really playtested at all?

Dunno. What is the real difference between trying to manabolt a force 20 spirit into oblivion vs trying to banish it?

Stunbolt > Banishing any day of the week...

I think it should be just a base thing like drain = the force of the spirit
You would still have the same test though to reduce tasks owed though.

Banishing a spirit should be easier than calling one...

Banishing can be useful in that once you've banished away all of a spirit's services you can take control of it. This allows a magician to have any spirit without regard to tradition limitations.

Why not jsut give banishing 0 drain? Its not like the spirit wont attack yoou while you are banishing it, so you pay with time already. Astral combat does not have drain either . . .

Because conjuring doesnt have a competitive alternative like stun-bolting, which it has to be balanced against. Furthermore you are not automatically attacked while summoning. Furthermore summoning is, even with drain, pretty powerful, banishing is not.

I think the reasons are so obvious I dont really have to state them.

Game Balancing

or

Destroying is easier than building

Just choose. If you want banishing to be useless, well thats your choice.

Another option would be: Spirits get spell resistance dice equal to their force, because they are spirits and know/used to magic stuff.

You quoted the reason yourself...

Hmm... I like that last option Serbitar. Sourcery is already a touch on the uber side. Allowing it to supercede banishing is just another example.

If magic resistance doesn't sit well, maybe it would be possible to give spirits some low level of counter-spelling, maybe half the spirits force (round up). It could be said this makes summoned spirits a bit uber, but really all it does is make banishing more important.

I considered that spirits with counterspelling could be a problem, but were a summoner to request a spirit protect him and his group with counterspelling, it would use up a service.

Anyone see any gaping holes in this idea?

Game balance is everything.

And giving every Spirit the power would be kind of OK, but I dont like it because it would make them even more useful (and take away diversity of spirit types).

So I would go for just "force" extra spell defense dice.

I'd go for force/2, just to stop them being nigh unstoppable without banishing

@NightmareX

It's been covered serveral times before. You've made to key assumptions that turn the tables drastically on how feasible Summoning a spirit like that is.

1) Average rolls, which you rounded down to boot.
2) Conjurer using Edge and the spirit not.

Average is 6.67 hits, and there are better than even odds that the Spirit will roll 7 hits. One in 5 times it'll be 18 boxes of Stun, one in ten it'll be 20 boxes.

If they use Edge? Even just the average opposing roll by the spirit means that if your hypothetical conjurer has a Body of 15 they'll be spending Edge to have less than 1% chance of not going from fit as a fiddle to hitting the floor. Good night conjurer, been nice to know ya.

Yes you can pull it off. But the risks are pretty damn substantial, and the mage is still dealing with P damage that can't be gotten rid of with Heal. Without Binding, which is truely insane, the conjurer is going to retain that damage longer than the spirit is around.

Well, who cares about Force 20 Spirits. Force 12 Spirits are already the destroyers of worlds.

Question for you though, have you ever actually seen a mage in any game banish and then resummon a spirit on the spot?
I have never seen it done, ever. It's just a stupid mechanic that would be the equivilant of breaking down a house into its most base items, like stacks of wood and nails, then rebuilding it just like it was before. All just to change the name on the door. You suffer more drain that way than just blowing up the house and building from square one.

Note that the bansishing/summoning combo is only efficient when performing on rank 4 or below spirits. Realisticly though, most mages (Read: Shadowrunner/initiated wagemage) will have a rank 5-7 spirit or even higher if they are using edge. At this point, it becomes more efficient to just blast the spirit with a stun bolt than banish it.

Then you have to note that if a spirit is bound, the Magic stat of the owning mage is added into the spirit's resist. So a force 4 spirit could have a 10 dicepool to resist banishing. Thats on average 6 stun drain, if not more with actuall rolls.

IMHO, Banishing as a skill right now is not worth buying nor using.

I can easily see your point, Konsaki.

Making spirits more resistant to sourcery through counterspelling is my personal favourite suggestion from this thread, making banishing more useful, but even so, the drain could well be debilitating, nonetheless.

Spirits are already walking the borderline of being too powerful. Giving them blanket magic resistance would push them over the edge.

I think it is a better idea to adjust the Banishing rules themselves in some manner, rather than adjust other things (which have wider ranging effects) in order to remedy them.

Thats why I prefer the 0 drain for banishing rule. You spend karma, you should get something for the buck.

I have to disagree with you there, Serbitar. It's my opinion that the drain should be toned down, not snuffed out.

By dropping it to 0 drain, no matter what, you open the possiblities of no one using spirits anymore due to the cost in drain to summon them and the fact that almost any other mage with Banish has an 'I win' tactic against them for no cost.
This also greatly reduces the 'threat' of super high rank spirits, the ones in the 10+ range. This is mainly due to the fact that you can now throw an army of mages against the super spirit and effortlessly keep re-banishing it until all it's tasks are gone. As of now, no mage would try to banish any spirit above rank 4 or risk more damage than an overcasted stunbolt is worth.

With drain equal to the spirit's hits, you would lessen the impact of the random drain, but it would still be a risk for mages to try to banish a raging spirit. Think about it, you have to make the resist roll already anyways, so it's no different roll wise than before, but makes things a good bit easier without being totally effortless.

How does this change with foci?

Um... if you have a banishing foci you add its force to your banishing pool... Same as RAW.

I'd say that banishing temporarily reduces magic if the enemy spirit gets net hits, which recharge at 1 point per hour. I'd also say that banishing give no drain. Therefore, there's high risk but lots of utility.

I thought losing at banishing in 3rd edition made you lose magic.

It's high risk, but potentially infinite utility.

It's also another reason to get bound spirits: enemy magic loss.

@Konsaki: Try to compare banishing against Stunbolt. With a force 9 Stunbolt, you will most likely get rid of spirits up to force 6-8 or so, with a drain of: 3.
Banishing has to be considerably better (Because you spent Karma for it).

What do you think of my rule, Serbitar? Does the math check out?

The magic idea is not ad, would be like fighting a ward then. The question s whether this is anti streamlining, by adding mechanics where they dont belong to.

Is it balanced? That's where I'm interested. Sometimes you just have to add more mechanics to make things add up.

A notation, here ... for the magically active without access to Stunbolts, Banishing is dang handy.

Such as an Adept.

"Can't go all Buhddist Palm on that toxic fire spirit, soooo..." *pulls out prayer beads* "Time for Plan B."

What about Banishing Drain being equal to the Spirit's Net Hits or perhaps Net Hits x2 with the RAW min of 2 DV?

That way if the Mage is sucessful at Banishing then she doesn't take much Drain, but if the Spirit wins than the Mage is the one who soaks up the Magical Feedback? Because as it has been stated, I'm fairly sure that a Spirit who doesn't want to be Banished will make sure to target the offending Mage first as being the greatest threat...


But I agree that something needs to be done because I don't think I've ever taken Banishing as a Skill after I realized that a well placed Manabolt or Stunbolt does the same job better.

Net Hits (I would go with x2, so it's closer to how summoning works mechanically... because of streamlining mostly, and x1 is probably too low) could work well. That will often be no Drain or not much Drain, but there is still a risk involved, if one roll goes high and the other low. I definitely like that better than no Drain at all.

Bye
Thanee

I'm liking the magic loss option, personally. Maybe have the magic regen at a rate of about 1 per hour. I wouldn't have the magician suffer permanent loss though, if magic reaches 0. I'd just say they fall unconscious. Potentially more perilous, but not too bad.