Has anyone experimented with summoning over their own magic?

I had a friend who did. It was... messy.

It's not the act of summoning that's so bad. It's when the mage thinks it's a good idea to try to bind that Force 9 earth elemental he just summoned.

Seriously, the mage in my campaign oversummons once in a while. It's a risky endeavor, as most magic is. Sometimes, he comes out of it unscathed, with a powerful ally (usually for combat). Sometimes, the spirit's resistance to summoning hits him so hard in his astral face he's nearly out of commission. Those are the risks you take.

There are times were it is better to oversummon. If you are at 10/11 stun damage, you might want to oversummon so you dont fall unconsious, but all that damage is physical now and takes longer to heal.
What really sucks is when you have a Magic/Resonance of 7 and need to summon at rank 8 to oversummon... Thats a huge potential to do major damage if the spirit is lucky.
There is also a houserule I know of that anything summoned at rank 7 and above can use Edge at the GM's whim. That could really hurt.

In the hypothetical situation game I have done it 3 times, rolling luckily each time. I managed to take 0 drain twice and 2 drain once. I have 11-13 dice depending on how I use the power focus. Though I also have 5 edge, which I can use if things get nasty. But heck no, it isn't something I am going to do on a normal basis. The 3 times I did, it was due to urgency, the 3rd time in particular was against an overwhelming force of enemies. Though if you have a magic attribute of 5 and you oversummon a force 6 I don't think that is much more risky than a force 5. Not only that you get 2 optional powers for the spirit instead of only 1. Which is always nice.

I would think binding even more difficult. You would most definitely have to use edge. Once for the binding test and once for the drain. If the spirit ever gets a lot of hits though you can kiss your character goodbye.

Summoning over your Magic is not that hard, really (too easy in fact). Binding, now that can get ugly.

Bye
Thanee

That's a bit more circumstantial, oversummoning in a gunfight can get tricky. It would almost be easier to just banish the other guy's spirit and have your buddies make him dance with automatic fire.

My mystic adept summons over her magic fairly regularly. However, her magic is only 2 for the purposes of summoning, so it's not quite the same thing....

In the 6+ force range the drain can be murderous; so save it for downtime. If you get lucky enough on your rolls, you might as well double your pain and bind the little nipper.

Unfortunately, summoning is much like have children. The drain is consistently more than you expected the first time out. After that you get used to what a mess they make.

Unfortunatly you can't banish your children back to the plane they came from.

If that was a permanent banishment, I would probably actually consider having children...

As to oversummoning in combat situations: if you have to summon a spirit that powerful, that quickly, you'd best keep your mouth shut because the pile of **** you're in is probably up to your eyeballs.

Oversummoning out to approximately Force 12 is well within the realm of possibility. And for a climactic battle, it may well be worth your while to simply go to the hospital and send a Force 12 Spirit in your place on Remote Service.

Practically speaking, the limit on summoning is not skill, but drain resistance. After all, if you are dropped by drain, the spirit appears in angry-face mode and you pretty much just die.

Drain Resistance is pretty much capped at soaking an average of about 8 boxes. That means that any conjuration which is handing down (or which could hand down within 2 standard deviations) 20 DV is essentially impossible even for Great Dragons. Which means that any binding of Force 11 or Summoning of Force 22 is off-the-charts impossible for anyone in the Shadowrun world except as a Plot Device where the magician dies in the process.

-Frank

It's never really been my shaman's style to summon much. He gets 8 dice to summon, and that's only 2 semi-reliable hits, so he usually sticks with force 3 spirits, which can be fairly easily banished. With my Magic of 5, oversummoning would start at 6- a scary proposition considering I also get only 8 dice to resist drain, which averages 4 at that point. I don't mind taking a couple points here and there, but it's really not hard for a force 6 to hit you with 6 or 8 points of drain.

Dread Polack

My players usually do their summoning and binding during down time, with one mage summoning, and a second mage ready with mana bolt if the first one drops from drain.

...now granted, this happened while a mage was Binding & not summoning but it illustrates the peril of doing such things during "downtime"

a little Downtime adventure

And this would have been better in-game how?
At least with it happening during downtime, healing can happen.

...nearly didn't. the conscious one had only 2 damage boxes left & barely made it to her street doc contact. & she had to take the other mage with her. The binding took place only a couple days before the Fixer called with the job because of other things the character did in the time since the last mission.