I'm thinking about leaving out my Binding skill in my next mage character because I'm not seeing a great benefit to bound spirits. Here's my reasoning:

Say the mage has maxed out his Spellcasting, so his Summoning and Binding skills are maxed at only 4 points each.

If a mage has Magic 5, Binding 4, a Power Focus 2, and a Binding Focus 3, that's 14 dice total so he gets an average of 4 hits or can buy 3 hits. A force 5 spirit rolls 10 dice for 3 average hits or can buy 2 hits. Therefore, the mage is only netting 1 or 2 hits. Since the binding materials cost 2500 nuyen per binding, each service is costing the mage a month's living expenses! He could buy a brand new drone for the cost of each binding. And that isn't even counting the 30,000 nuyen and 3 BP he spent on the binding focus and the 50,000 nuyen and 2 BP spent on the power focus. Even if he maxes out his Edge and uses that in the binding roll, he'd only have 2 more services per binding.

Since each service is costing as much as a couple of missiles, you'd expect the spirit to be a devil in combat, right? A force 5 fire spirit has a (7 + 5 dice) vs (defender's dice) chance of hitting and can do 5 hits of fire damage which is resisted by 1/2 impact armor + fire protection. Nice, but not exactly an overwhelming force.

If combat isn't your thing, it can do a Search or Guard you against fire instead. Meh. There are all kinds of spells, devices, and unbound spirits that can do that for free.

I suppose you could use your service for a +5 bonus to one spellcasting roll, but since he just spent a fortune on a binding focus, it would make more sense to get a Spellcasting Focus instead.

If he maxed out his Charisma to say 5, he could keep 5 spirits bound at a time. He could spend one service each per turn over 5 turns and sick 'em all on a target all at once. That would be impressive, but awful expensive at 10,000 nuyen per combat. If the mage had invested heavily in Charisma (along with his heavy investment in Binding skill, Magic, Edge, foci, and binding materials), unleashing a horde of bound spirits is a nice ace in the hole.

Without a high Magic AND a high Edge AND a high Charisma AND a high Binding skill AND a large bank account, it seems like the only use for Binding is to conjure an ally spirit with the Ally Conjuration metamagic power.

I think I must be missing something here. Am I using the wrong spirit or the spirit incorrectly for combat? Is a lower force spirit still effective in combat? Are there better uses for a bound spirit? Is there a way to get more than 4 or 5 services from a bound spirit which lowers the cost per service to a more reasonable level?

Er -- isn't Binding the only way to get the traditional Elemental powers? (p.178) Unbound spirits can't do things such as Aid Sorcery or Aid Study.

In any case, you can only have one unbound spirit at a time, but a number of bound spirits equal to CH.

Yes, you did say the second part. However, you mentioned nothing about learning spells.

Edit: Yes, spirits are a bitch in combat, and the more there are, the worse it gets. (The watcher swarm has a long and infamous history at Dumpshock.) All other things being equal, properly played drones are much, much, much easier to neutralise than properly played spirits. Word your commands broadly (but carefully, canon text tells us that spirits don't like being bound).

Tactically, try to use their powers rather than their simple fighting ability. Always keep in mind that spirits can get into places drones can't. Most effective, think of them as team support to make everyone else's attacks far more efficient, rather than just another fighter for your side.

But I don't do the classic Dumpshock number crunch. Rather, I make the environment work to bend the numbers in my favour. Spirits lend themselves to those kinds of tactics.

i suppose it all depends on how available resources are to you. spirits are in general much more useful than drones. if nothing else, binding spirits allows you to assign the spirit to protect teammates etc.

your force 5 spirit may not be much better than a combat drone, but you can sneak it in past security, you don't have to spend money repairing it, you don't have to supply ammo, and it's basically undetectable until you use it. furthermore, most spirits have nifty abilities, such as concealment, search, guard, magical guard, etc (note: spirits are no longer limited in domain. a fire spirit doesn't guard you from fire, it just flat out guards you).

additionally, bound spirits can provide such things as sustaining spells for you (a sustaining focus at chargen goes up to 3 and that's it... not gonna cut it for some spells), can perform remote services without using up all their remaining services (so that you can use the search power and still be able to call on an unbound spirit), can boost certain rolls, and so forth.

so yeah, it's expensive, and it's not something you should use all the time. but it can make all the difference when you need it. when bad stuff starts happening, you will be grateful you have a couple of force 4 spirits in reserve.

(also, binding is the skill used for binding free spirits and such... depending on how things go in your game, that can be useful).

and, just for the record, you do keep the services from when you conjured the spirit, you know =P

which means that for binding, you're looking at services equal to a normal conjuring + a binding ritual each time, provided you always bind a new spirit rather than re-binding.

To cover everything that bound spirits can do, you'd need:

• several power foci
• several sustaining foci
• quickening (+ karma spent to quicken)
• instructor or skillsoft

... all of the spirit's Force level.

And that's not counting their regular abilities (multiplied, because bound; rather than only the one unbound).

You can even loan out a bound spirit to a team member -- seems odd initially, but it only costs a Simple Action to give commands. Loaning out one or more spirits pre-combat allows several spirits to be commanded simultaneously to different actions maybe even changed on the fly, using only a single Simple Action (of several people). (Trust me, makes for one hell of an ambush or counter-ambush.) Alternately, maybe the infiltrator who is on-site could urgently use the services of a spirit, but the mage is nowhere nearby. A loaned spirit covers it.

Spirits are versatile, allowing you to use their abilities for what you need at the time -- without having to have all those technological contingencies upon you at all times.

Bound Spirits have a few useful things:

1) 'Aid X' services. These are extra dice you can't get any other way.
2) An 'Oh drek!' button. Bind a few high-Force spirits and just have them waiting in the wings. When the situation really drops in the toilet you suddenly have a bunch of extra power available, and you don't really care about the expense at that point.
3) Spell Binding. Use Force 1 spirits (cheap and easy to bind) to sustain your buff spells for 1 day, long enough for a high-danger intrusion. Does make the spirit community hate you though.

For point (2) use Spirits of Man rather than Fire Spirits. A Force 5 Spirit can chuck a Force 10 Manabolt if it needs to, and also has nifty powers like Concealment, Influence and Confusion. Since you're Binding in downtime and hence have time to recover you can even go for a Force 7 or 8.

Yes, going through high-force bound spirits to throw and use them in combat regularely is really an ineffective use of ressources, and I'm glad that it is so.

Bound spirits are meant as your hidden ace in the sleave, or as distraction to be thrown at your enemies so that you can flee while most of you and your team is either incapacitated, wounded, or simply dead, and you need to flee without needing to summon such a being afterwards and taking drain, when you have better things to do than to summon a spirit powerful enough on the fly.

The bound spirit might be that one thing that keeps sustaining that spell that you don't have the time nor the nerve to sustain yourself (like keeping up the physical barrier, while you stabilize and heal your dying chummer).

It can even be bound with an important spell, which will in the end kill your spirit, and which he'll heavily object, but do anyway, because it's bound to you.

They can also act as spotter for ritual spellcasting.

You don't always need force 5+ spirits for every run, and you don't even need several of them. If you were forced to do so in the first place, that means that the run is more than dangerous, quite clearly even absolutely lethal, and therefore means that your Johnson would pay you a sum that would enable your team to retire for 1 year without having to work, surely.

Unless your gaming session always had some competition that runs with stats of 5+ in abilities and skills, a normal force 3 or 4 spirit is more than enough for battling grunts, if used accordingly. And only then, when you're in big trouble, because they outnumber you and have you cornered.

They're a nice option to have, not a necessity, and also, not that many. If they were, your run better be worth for all the trouble to begin with all that binding.
1 or 2 should normally be enough.

Using bound spirits is expensive. But can accomplish amazing things.

Spell Binding and Sustaining are incredibly powerful. There's nothing like going into a sustained facility penetration run with your street sam in security armor, with an armor spell, improved invisibility, and levitate all running and powered for an entire day.

Want your entire team to fly for a day? 4 spirits spell binding Levitate can do it. Works great for an impromptu parachute drop.

Aid sorcery for that extra 4 or 5 dice just for that final ooomph, or to save your butt when your down to your last few DV.

Bound spirits, powerful and expensive.

Remember you need Binding for your Ally.

Several Bound Guidance/Guardian/Plant spirits with counterspelling equal to their force really wreak havok on enemy mages.

Way too expensive. If you need to wreck another enemy mage, simply let your teammates shoot a bullet in his head, while you shield them against the magical attacks or banish his own sustained spells. Unless you're on that special run where your Johnson will pay you so much that it is still viable to use so much bound spirits.

Expensive is a relative term. If you make 15k on a job and spend 3k its still profitable. Besides, cost per service goes down as ability goes up especially when edge is involved. Binding is the one way a mage can take all his leftover edge and really profit solely from Edge he didnt spend anyway.

If you use a temp spirit for day to day and save the armada for critical moments then its not so very expensive unless you want the added effectiveness of numbers... and when you need the armada its drain-free and on call. One complex action and a group of the same type of spirit can be ordered into the fray. Regenerating, counterspelling Great Form Plant Spirits are just SICK with how powerful they are!

Well, your 3k-expense-example would either be for at least one force 6 spirit, or 2 force 3 spirits, or 3 force 2 spirits, or whatever mix you can make and so on. That's either not many, or not really powerful when expecting to need them in dire situations. Which is not to say that this isn't bad, but it clearly shows that you can't have all too many powerful bound spirits if you're doing a mediocre payed run.
Also, the higher the force, the lesser services owed to you, edge or not, and the more expensive it simply gets. And who's not to say that the spirit will use edge to try to avoid being bound to you?

In the end, it's all upon the individual team members how they want to maximize their profits and if they believe they need it or can take it.

We all remember SR 3, where hermetics needed to pay 1k for every force point. But then again, they also recommended higher pay for runs (because they had more insane prices... Like paying 100k for a lousy cyberarm... Not that the current SR4-cyberlimbs are that much better, though they reduced the prices massively ).

Just a note from the dice pools from the OP:

Only one focus can apply to a single test (p191 under Bonding). You can't use both a Power Focus and a Binding Focus on the same test. If you have the Binding Focus, use its dice for the Drain test instead. You can more than make up the dice with Mentor Spirit advantages (which go for any test with that Spirit type, Summoning, Binding or Banishing) and with skill specialization.

If you are serious about Summoning, you can also take Spirit affinity to make sure that they are less likely to use Edge against you, or to kill you for your presumption in binding them if they get loose. Watch out for abusing the spirits though, or using them to abuse the game, as the GM may invoke the Bound Spirits rule on p178.

They can give access to helpful buffs such as movement and concealment, cast and sustain spells if they have the Innate Spell ability, effectively one shot opponents with Fear, and provide a massive force multiplier. Ordering a spirit to kill all your opponents is a single service, so you can do some rationing with their services. Plus, they have a decent survivability rate with their Immunity to Normal Weapons- a swarm with your support can take down opponents faster than they can drop the spirits.

Having them sustain your spells is generally not worth it- 1 service per force in combat turns of sustaining. That burns out real quick. Note that as mentioned before, Spell Binding will mean that spirits hate you- be prepared to have tons of Edge used against you anytime you summon or bind, and they will kill you if they go free.

So, overall, expensive but very useful.

Well, spell binding won't make all spirits to hate you immeditately, but if you use if often, then yes. Spell sustaining can be worthwile, especially then, if the spirit is high force.

One aspect I haven't seen mentioned that pertain directly to the utility of bound spirits is how your GM handles spirits' services. If he is nickel and dime-ing you on the services, bound spirits really lose their sting. The Force 1 idea for sustaining is a very good idea, especially at only 500 nuyen. The key for bound spirits is to structure the services in a way to ensure one service lasts for a very long time, as to get most utility for your nuyen and reduce the opportunity cost.

Binding is not something I even do, or have had the chance to do in the current SR4 campaign I am playing. That and I don't think I even have the binding skill for my current mage. It was lost in the stead of other skills I deemed more necessary for the character. I have been just fine summoning 1 spirit each time it became necessary. The only thing I have been missing out on are the services exclusive to binding. That and any ally spirits I might have decided to get if I had taken binding. Though, I am thinking that number would be 0.

Binding is an option, not a necessity. It allows them to achieve a much higher potential effect, albeit at expending a much greater personal cost.

Sometimes your team might agree to fund a bonding ritual if they know it'll allow the team to achieve goals they otherwise would have more trouble achieving.

It's a bad idea to regard them as magic bullets for your magic gun. Unless you can get them cheaply (see below), use them where you get lasting and meaningful benefit from the services, or when it's a matter of life or death.

Services on the cheap:

• Keep summoning materials on hand, use them when the time is right.
  Let's say your daily routine includes summoning a force 4 spirit at the start of most days, if not one in the morning and one after nightfall. Lets say you were lucky and scored a large successes today, and the spirit scored none. You thus have a spirit that owes you 6 services. If you just summon one to bond, you might only get 2 or so services.
  
  Remember, SR4 has a very high variance. Although the expected number of rolls from 11 dice (5 magic, 4 skill, 2 totem or power focus) is 3+1/3, the probability of the same conjurer getting 6 or more successes is actually reasonably likely to occur... I did a spread-sheet and it came-out just above 4%, meaning a character can expect that many successes once or twice a month (twice if you summon at sunset too).
  
  If you factor the fact that you'd probably summon even more often if you're picky, opting to dismiss and re-summon if you don't get 2 or more services (happens about 30% of the time).
  
• Consider using edge on the bonding test.
  Not only do you greatly increase your chances of bonding your chosen spirit, you also get another service for every extra success. The net result, combined with waiting for the above lucky summon, could reasonably be 10 or more services... That's 200 each, which is a fair bit cheaper than equivalent options.
  
  Yes, you're down a point of karma, but wouldn't you say that a few services from a respectable force spirit can be as useful as one re-roll on a check? Sure, there are some functions which spirits can't replicate, but aren't there some things spirits can do that karma can't too?

i assume he's confused karma pool with edge =P

Actually, you can use karma. If you burn a point of Edge on the summoning test, you'll score an automatic critical success. You then spend karma to replace that Edge point. Expensive, but occasionally worth it, as you can earn 4 services from a force-10 spirit that way.

Eep... Jaid's right. Edited.

Not played for a while, seem to have slipped back into 3rd edition mode... Partially.

Another point:
I'd expect a bound spirit to more readily spend its edge to assist the character, whilst I'd expect a summoned spirit to only spend its edge on self-preservation.

Depends. One conjurer who got bad vibes will surely entice every spirit to actively try resisting the binding ritual, with edge if it needs too. After all, their life depends on it.

And mad props, here, for the Life and Death notice.

Let's say that you're down to your last Physical box and, in the process of not getting more, you now have a happy pile of 7 Stun damage as well.

Bad day for you.

Luckily, you have a Spirit of Man on call! *ding!* No need to make summoning rolls and risk a Bad Scene, he's right there, ready to serve! Cast a heal spell on you, then, if needed, can conceal you and whisk you away, all quiet-like.

Yeah, that was an expensive one-way ticket, but at least it was to a destination that you'd like.

AS a sideline to the whole thing if you are going to be a frequent summoner / binder, then raising enchanting becomes well worth it.

If you can make a Enchanting+Magic (force, 1 day) extended test, you can cut the cost from ¥500 to ¥400 right off by buying radical instead of the binding ritual materials.

If you by the raw materials ¥50 per unit and process them into refined yourself (Enchanting + Magic (number of reagents, 1 day) Extended Test) you can cut the cost to ¥200 per force of spirit (4 refined units).

If you have a fair amount of downtime you can cust the cost even more by processing the raw into radicals:

a 28 day process (requiring you to tweak it every 8 hours), can process up to your magic in materials. a simple Magic+Enchanting (2) test suceeds. Only 2 radicals (per force) are needed for ritual materials. So 'buying' your goods it is possibly only ¥100 per force of spirit bound.

If you really have time to kill you could gather them yourself for totally free binding, but 1 raw per (survival+intution: 8, 1 hour) test to get a single raw really isnt worth ¥50 IMO.


Still a binding process at ¥200 nuyen per force with an extra 2 days thrown in for 'processing' isnt such a bad gig.

If you really like binding, and get the Invoking Metamagic ability, you can get great form spirits.

Guardian and Task spirits have Endowment ability, if greater form and you rolled well. This will allow them to give you one of their powers, and they have combat, physical and technical skills as optional powers.

So, your Guardian spirit force 6 grants you heavy weapons rank 6, while your Task spirit force 6 grants you Gymnastics 6, or Demolitions 6.
Give your Guardian spirit a grenade launcher or HMG, and he can watch your back.

There are other options out there as well.

So, I would say binding is usefuk.

That's of course assuming the heavy drain of an invoked force 6 spirit didn't knock you down.

An aside from Binding - is 'cast and sustain this spell on me' a suitable service for a Summoned spirit? If so, you could issue it as a Remote Service, allowing you to Summon another spirit. While everyone's armoring up and checking their weapons before the run, the mage Summons a spirit and orders it to buff him. It sits down on the floor to sustain the spell as he Summons the next. Half a dozen spirits of man later he lies down for an hour to clear his head, then goes on the run. All the spells vanish at sunrise, but hopefully he's well clear by then.

2 things (to 2 separate posts):

1) having a spirit in the astral with the orders to do something if you go unconcious is a bad idea. specifically, when you go unconcious and the spirit is present, the spirit goes uncontrolled, iirc. you could give it other contingent orders though, imo.

2) they closed the unbound service summoning nonsense. you can't send infinite spirits on remote services.

Any good math majors out there? /em duck ...


Looking at break points:

If having a spirit to sustain spells.

What is the most effective level at a given dice pool... (turn per nuyen).

Not counting downtime 'binding', just ¥X spent on ritual material versus Y Services (*Force) equal Z turns of sustained spells.

Seems to me a low force 2-3 spirit with ALOT of services is likely cheaper way to have a sustain spirit then a single high force.

Also on a related note:

Can Ally spirits Sustain spells?

"An ally spirit follows the standard rules for spirits with the following exceptions:"

Goes to gives changes to Aid Sorcery and Aid Study but no mention of spell sustaining and spell binding.

Likewise a little later:


An ally spirit’s services are never exhausted. Ally spirits can be called upon to perform any service possible of an unbound orbound spirit (p. 179, SR4) an unlimited number of times. Such services include Aid Sorcery and Aid Study (see above), Loaned Service, Resist Drain (see below), Spell Binding, and Spell Sustaining, among others. Note that ally spirits do not count towards the initiate’s limits on bound or unbound spirits.


Specifically mentions Spell Sustaining .. Now the question. the 'exception' section says Aid Sorcery and Aid Study, the ally is not bound to a particular catagory of spells, should this also be for Spell Sustaining? or is this limited by the home plane of the spirit.

So is a pile of force 1 ally spirits in the mages bunker the 'cheapest' sustaining foci out there?

Force of spirit doesnt limit the force of spell.

Unlimited services used at a rate of 1 per turn, doesnt run out...

Nothing I can see limits more then one ally spirit.

So mage a few force 1 ally's in the mage's bunker and mage has sustained:

Force X Increase Willpower
Force X Increase (other drain attribute)
Force X (why not if going to be sustained) Increase Reflexes
Force X Increase Reaction
Force X Increase Body
Force X whatever you want.

All for potential 8 karma (for sustaining ally spirit) (not counting the intial intiatation).

Seems fair to me, a metamagic power is definitely not a cheap investment. Also, you can't hide the ally spirit like you could hide a focus or quickening sustained spell with extended masking. And a low-force ally can get disrupted fairly easily. Besides, a criminal has to take Flexible Signature, Masking, and Extended Masking before he can even think about taking another metamagic so it'll be a while before he can Ally Conjuration. Cheap allies sustaining your spells seems like a great alternative to Quickening.

Urgh. I get so mad about that sometimes. Here's what the document said when I sent it into playtesting and editting:

Except that they look different on the astral. And spirits are astral beings. And the Image sent to the spirit by the magician can easily be an astral image. I'd allow it.

They don't look different. They only have a magical potential. You don't need astral perception to look for a reagent. What you need is the knowledge to find and then to distinguish them, made by a Intuition and Survival test. Which even a mere mundan human might have, while on the other hand a spirit doesn't, with perhaps the exception of a force 3 task spirit.