Was anyone else disappointed with how all spirits are the same regardless of your tradition. Granted possession traditions have spirits with possession instead of materialization but otherwise a fire spirit is a fire spirit is a fire spirit. I was thinking that a spirit should be modified in some way depending on what type it is. For example a fire spirit from the Aztec tradition is a detection spirit and from the Christian theurgy tradition is a combat spirit but they both use the exact same stats and have the exact same powers. The only difference being the spells the spirit can provide magical assistance with. Has anyone else come up with a way to make the different spirits different.

what about the bonus powers? they can make spirits different. and even if two fire spirits are of the same level, they might be quite different in their appearance. think of a fire elemental (hermetic) and a fire spirit (nature spirit of a shaman). and nowhere is stated, that they behave exactly the same. indeed, even two spirits of the same tradition and power do not have to be identical twins. they're sapient entities, after all. the GM can make the difference.

In fact most spirits are just a derivate of their Force Rating.

Sure, there are some different abilities and some modifiers, but at the end of the day, the bigger difference is whether the spirit is Force 3 or Force 6.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, the easiest way is for the GM to choose the order of the bonus powers depending on which tradition (and personal oputlook) the summoner has.

The rest is just in flavor and descriptions.

Thats the point, the only difference is the way the spirit is described. I would think that a combat spirit would be better at combat than a detection spirit of the same type. A force 4 fire elemental might manifest appearing as an angel with a sword vs a human made of fire but their stats will be identical. In combat, with out outside forces, odds will be 50/50 to who would win, the combat or the detection fire elemental.

If you'd like you could always set up the spirits in advance for your mages/shamans. For example:


Strezbeth'er
Force 3 Water Spirit
Personality: Strezbeth'er doesn't like being summoned by women, and will likely oppose any such summoning attempt. In fact he dislikes anything to do with women, regarding them as some mysterious abomination of nature. He'll refuse to attack, spy on, or in any way interact with any female of any species and will instead provide rather bloodthirsty alternatives. If need be, a spirit bond can force him against his femphobio, but doing so will incur his lasting animosity.

Then just choose Stresbeth'er's powers. Players can choose whether to summon him or some other spirit.

If you'd like, you could even take Stresbeth'er as a contact, giving him a random loyalty rating and connection rating equal to Force.


Just a thought.

Hmm. Well, the rules aim to have a generalized description of spirits, so that they don't have to write individual stats for 5 spirits per tradition...which is a Good Thing. On the other hand, it sounds like you're talking about varying them by their affinity within a given tradition. You could do that in a general way without too much trouble. Give a smallish bonus based on affinity to something appropriate...it'd give people a reason to summon the Combat-affinity spirit for their tradition when they want a bruiser, but the Detection-affinity spirit when they want a scout.

Need to get back to a book before I have good suggestions on bonuses, though. And to balance them, you'd want to also have some penalties...otherwise you're increasing the overall power of conjuring, and by all reports, it doesn't need a boost.

EDIT: To clarify, I mean 'All combat-affinity spirits of all traditions gain {some bonus, some penalty}'. So the fire spirit summoned by a conjurer for whom Fire is associated with Combat gets a spirit whose stats are noticably distinct from those of a fire spirit summoned by a conjurer for whom Fire is associated with Illusion.

I don't know, personally I like the fact that only real differences between any given Fire/Air/ect Spirit is the Force and Role-playing Descriptions. It makes my job as the DM slightly easier.

funny hats?

I actually try to make every spirit different according to the summoner's tradition, type, force and the specific place the spirit was summoned. -a remainder of old shadowrun domains... -

I am running a gaming group quite regularly and also some other players who get together to play very ocasionally. That makes for a dwarf conjurer, an hermetic mage, a japanese cat shaman and a retired Cuban houngan. It makes life easier for me to have ditinct spirits ready because I haven't got to make up a completely new and flavorless spirit every time these guys try to summon something. BTW: @cetiah, in my opinion the most difficult / important part is the manifested form the spirit takes!

The players have quickly picked that up and now they are handling spirits like contacts. So it goes: "I would like to summon that indian tracker spirit" instead of "I want to call a spirit of man with search". It improves roleplaying dramatically

Perhaps I could post the spirits list so other GMs could pick up ideas....

Well 2bit I supose you could say that if you wanted to be disparaging, but I prefer to think of it as "flavorful fluff".

Seriously though in my campaigns, the truth about Spirits is that for the most part (After all one always should have the exception to the rules in order to confuse the theory.) they really are nothing more then the manifestations of the Summoner's own Psych given life through Mana so varitions of the Spirits will ultimately come from Summoner herself, and not so much from the Tradition.

In practice it works great for fleshing out the spirits summoned via NPCs, while it usually takes several sessions of feeling out the probable psych of the PCs to 'dial in' the Spirits to what I consider to be the "proper feel".

I prefer the spirits to have more personality then just a force rating. I don't tend to think of them as aspects of the summoner's personality. I treat them more like a combination of World of Darkness and SR3. The Elementals were all bland and simple minded. The spirits of the domain were based on someone local. The spirits of man were ancestors and acted more like the ancestor spirits from Mulan. Totems acted like old wise men with a bit of mischief in them. The only spirits that were based on the summoner's personality were Watcher spirits.

Also I allow Shamans to have local spirits as contacts but in domain and local based groups. They have a loyalty rating in general that starts at a 2 but can go up or down depending on how you treat them and they get the word around about you. They can provide some low level services for free because of this. If you treat them really nice then they may actually attack someone who tries to attack you on their own!

Hmm, Garrowolf, using the Contact System for minor Spirits is something that I hadn't really thought of, and is something that I'm definately going to figure out how to fit in my Unified Magical Theory based campaigns. Thanks.

No prob. I think that it puts an interesting spin on the shamans and makes them go more back to their roots. It would explain why shamans in history had domains if they were focused on the spirits of a certain area.

One idea that I always liked but haven't been able to use yet is a spirit that gets the shaman to hire shadowrunners. Imagine having a spirit as the Mr Johnson speaking through a shaman! He might pay them based on things hidden in his domain by someone he doesn't like. He could even put strange geasa on the actions of the runners while doing his run based on the spirit's logic or needs. It could be as simple as having everyone wear a blessed red scarf so he can keep up with them. Or it could be aligning some rocks in order to improve the energy flow in the area.