Thought occured, on a possible plot thread.

Take a free spirit of any genre except ex Ally/Ancestor spirit for now, who is not a great form spirit.
Take an initiate with Invoking.

Would it be possible, with possible complicity of said free spirit, for the wizzer to super size the free spirit? In theory?

My game is in SR3, so at the least- the free spirit would have to give up its True Name to even begin this er, ritual.

I can see one argument for and one against. Any advances?

Thanks.

Interesting idea…

Well, I think invoking (but I should check) is not really granting you the power to enhance a spirit, but more allows you to invoke a stronger spirit… So great form spirits, with better abilities, are already great before being summoned. Nowhere is it written, AFAIK, and except for allies, that summoning allows you to enhance a spirit's ability…

I guess you could argue that indeed you can enhance the abilities of an allied spirits, but I don't see how it's really different than when giving karma to a free spirit.

All in all, I think the karma procedure is fine for it…

EDIT: Ok, forget it, I'm wrong. MitS specifically tells you you make the test for the spirit to grow in great form, and that if failed, the spirit remains in normal form. Then my argument would just be that great form free spirits already exist…

Remember the Invoking has to be done at the time the spirit is first coming through, i.e. the initial summoning and not usually something you can do afterwards.

The concept is you are summoning a more powerful form rather than supercharging a pre-existing spirit.

That said, one could make the argument for a ritual to sort of re-summon a particular spirit for an upgrade, but just to be clear this would be in the realm of houseruling.

Although I can see the potential for this, if you allow this let's look at the next logical step the players will want to do.

PC Free Spirit who gets supercharged by the party's mage through Invoking.

Now you mention you are still SR3 so Free Spirit PCs are not a thing yet, so I do not know the exact limits on your table and if you do or do not blend the edition edges a bit.

And like Freudqo said, there is already something in place for spirit advancement via Karma, plus any sort of modified Invoking ritual should not serve as a shortcut around the costs for such a power upgrade otherwise every spirit would be clamouring or bargaining for it.

They complain that they never got a chance to minmax.

The Magician in our Last Game had an Invoked Ally Spirit. It was pretty cool.

Dang, got me on a new character idea I might never use. But I do have one question (SR4 related): How was the Great Form Power handled? Pick one from the five spirit types that're part of the magician's tradition?

For SR5, an Invoked Ally Spirit would probably be more trouble than it's worth. You've got a single spirit that's taking up one of your bound spirit slots and two of your minion slots. If you've got a Charisma of 3, that means you can perform only one Watcher ritual at a time, unless you also happen to have a homunculus.

Well, since an Ally Spirit is simply an upgraded Spirit (Formula must be applied to a Bound Spirit), and an Invoked Ally even more so, it was pretty simple. The spirit started out as an Air Spirit. Upon Invoking and application of the Ally Formula, it gained the Great Form Power as an Air Spirit (in this case - Storm). It was pretty straightforward. And how we would approach it for any such application in the future. Descriptives may be fluffed differently based upon Tradition, but the power would work essentially the same.

Yeah, in SR5, it seems a waste. But there are a lot of things about SR5 that are a waste. *shrug*

Interesting ideas, thanks everyone.

Glad to say there are no PC free spirits in our game and though I don't quite rule it out, it is in extreme x extreme possibility that anyone could convince me of the validity of playing one in SR3.

Strangely, as most great forms are lower force it is rarer for them to go free.!?

Thus as a pure plot device, I shall ponder all the ramifications raised before going any futher.

SR4 and SR5 would have less threat to the F.S. than in previous additions raising balance questions, but qudos for GF ally spirit idea. Most intriguing.

Even if it is possible to do, the next question is it probable?
Would a F.S. trust a powerful conjourer with its True Name and all that entails? Dealing for karma seems safer..
Perhapes a Unique focus could serve the same function...
Would I want to introduce the possibility of a PC wizzer superszing a bound F.S. in the future?

As for needing the True Name:
You can do a Metaquest for that i think.
Though finding it out and forcibly supersizing a free spirit that wants you dead because you know that name does not sound like a good idea to me . .

Unless, Stahlseele, they're after the endless pot of gold that is a big-ass free spirit with the power "Wealth".

I think I remember a SR3 mission that involved a free spirit invested in a body (Voodoo stuff) that wanted its "freedom" by the hired team killing off it's masters. They reason they were playing with fire was the "Wealth" ability as well as all the other fun things you can do with a high-end spirit-slave on a leash.

-Tir

In some little non-official supplement/article I remember someone binding a spirit with the wealth power into a gun and used the ability to generate a nearly limitless amount of ammo in the weapon so it never needed reloading, after all it just generated from it's pool as needed and they didn't have to be permanent.

Obviously not a normal use of the power and probably wouldn't pass most GMs but yeah, you can see some crazy stuff when playing with the spirits.

i'm thinking i read about that in the ancient history archives.

SR4: the Ally Spirit has its own spirit type and is not an upgraded "former tradition spirit". Nothing in the SM indicates that you upgrade a previous spirit. Before conjuring an ally, the initiate must fi rst prepare a unique spirit formula which shapes the ally spirit’s essence and dictates its abilities and powers There is no further reference to any other spirits, just that you need to create a unquite formula.

But as a houserule we too are using the "former spirit" system as well, especially for speed and greater powers.



Actually, Endowment as SR5 invoking power opens the door for many new fun things (materialisation, rift). But yeah, no more ally spirits with strenght/con/agi/rea 20. :-/

SYL

SR4 strictly by the rules: you dont pick a greater form power (only the other bonuses in the table like higher attributes or the LOS ability), as ally spirits have no elemental/tradition type.

However one argument would be that an ally spirit counts as "every spirit" for the elements/tradition, just like sorcery/formula learning services (fire elemental = combat spells, ally spirit counts as every element for example). I suppose most GMs won´t have a problem if the group follows this argument and adapts the sorcery service rules as a general rule.

SYL

Indeed that was it.

Going back into the files we find the following:

However, You must use a Bound Spirit, and since it is not an Ally before you perform the ritual, it obviously must be a spirit you can summon, yes? You Summon a Spirit Normally, following Normal Rules, Then you Bind the Spirit, Again using normal rules. THEN you apply the unique formula to transform the spirit into an Ally Spirit (paying Karma to craft the Ally Spirit in the formula's image). Since you Must summon before you can do anything else, the spirit MUST, by definition, be a spirit you can summon normally.



I would say that it is pretty cut and dried (The caveat of requiring normal Summoning and Binding rules tells me that you cannot summon a spirit you are normally incapable of summoning as the basis for your Ally). Yes, You need a unique formula, but you must first summon the ally as a Normal Spirit, and then bind it as a normal spirit.

There's the edge case of a banished spirit being summoned by another magician. In that case, spirit type isn't limited.

Definitely an extreme Edge Case, especially since it is so immediate.

Ah, no?

As per rules: you create the formula, you summon the ally spirit based on the formula, you bind the ally spirit, you pay the Karma, the ritual is complete. You can of course invoke the great form during the binding or later during the rebinding.


(emphasize mine)

You summon already a Ally Spirit in the very first sentence. What you have described ("summon normal spirit, applying the formula after binding") is not part of the rules. Perhaps house rules?

SYL

Invoking happens at the time of Binding, not Summoning, and can be done during a re-Binding, when it is actually easier to succeed. So, if you could set up a situation in which a Free Spirit can be Bound, you could Invoke it, too. Such a situation is described in SR4's Street Magic, page 108.

It's SR3. No binding test.

I quoted the rules and page number, go back and look. You use NORMAL SUMMONING and BINDING rules and then apply your ally formula, so you are still constrained to your base spirit package. No summoning a Shadow spirit to be your Ally, for example. If you are departing from that, then you are using the house rule.

Edit: While the Topic is marked SR*, the OP is indeed referring to SR3, so sorry for the clutter.

Don't worry about clutter, its a general question, not edition specific.

While my game is SR3 admittedly, I have and will steal anything I like that makes sense. SR4 magic rules are better written for logic/balance having been evolved from the former editions.

It the new things that need destruction testing.

As an aside, you might actually be able to convince a Free Spirit to go along with this ... for a while. Having played a FS PC, I could see him saying, "Sure, you can do this for one set of services, and I won't even resist very hard. Try it a second time, and I'll push back with everything I have," [Edge], "and the minute I get free I'll blow your brains out your ears."