How does one handle banishing ally spirits?

Street Magic says "An ally spirit's services are never exhausted"

Since Banishing reduces the number of services it has, does this mean it cant be banished?

Or are they treated as free spirits for the purposes of banishing?

The issue hasn't come up in game for us yet, but it's been one I've been shaking my head over since SR4 came out. It's easiest just to treat them as free spirits (ie services = Edge).

I've crossed the Banishing skill out of my book. The various Stun spells will disrupt spirits with a whole lot less danger than using Banishing skill. If in the unlikely event you've got a possession spirit holding someone hostage, just hit them with an Influence spell to force them out. Banishing sucks, dump it.

Banishing only has one real use, which is to take control of spirits that are capable of doing things that the spirits your tradition normally summons cannot. For obvious reasons, it is undesirable for that to be possible with Ally spirits, so Allies cannot be Banished.

-Frank

Thanks alot for the input. Dumping banishing sounds like a very likely choice to make.

Edited Initial title for clarity

Yeah, never ever picking up banishing for any reason at all.

Guys stop suggesting choices that have nothing to do with the character or the thread!
If he has a background in banishing let him pick it up! Gawd! (sorry for rant, but it seems like the SR4 form is turning into a character optimization form, They are NOT the same thing!)

Back on topic:
Ally spirits get the banishing resistance power. Check its description.

I'd just go with Frank's ruling.

I'm sorry, I have no beef per se with character optimization, I just like to know what I'm getting into when I read the title. If its about how banishing is a useless skill then more power too ya. Heck I'll probably even read that thread and comment, but when I see someone asking a mechanic question it kinda gets to me when people don't answer the question and instead say how it is useless. See what I mean?

Exactly. I can't speak for anyone else, but my point with my post was that I wouldn't even bother with figuring out the ins and outs of Banishing when you're better off using a couple of spells instead.

Banishig has 4 "uses".

1. Adding to melee attacks of Will against Spirits.
2. Disrupting a Spirit.
3. Pushing a possession spirit out of a host.
4. Taking control of someone else's spirit.

The first 2 uses of Banishing are extremely Marginal. Stun Bolt is more likely to work and less dangerous. The third use is of almost no consequence in reference to Allies, since very few Allies ever Possess anything.

The last use of Banishment does not function at all against an Ally spirit, because even if you power through its large piles of services and Banishing Resistance, you still haven't paid for the ally and can't control it.

Since it is the final aspect of Banishing which is the money maker - the thing that you actually cannot do better and for less drain with spells - I consider the statement "You Cannot Banish an Ally" to be a correct one. Sure, you can still punch an ally spirit and add your Banishing in to the dice pool for doing it - but that is, I assume, not what people mean when they ask if they can "Banish an Ally". Banishing to my mind means Pokemoning: where you actually seize a Spirit that you would otherwise be unable to conjure in order to extend the options of your magician. That is not possible with Allies from a mechanistic or game balance stand point.

-Frank

This somehow means that either Banishing needs to be reworked and made somehow preferable to simply stunbolting the target spirit, and/or somehow make Ally Spirits somehow vulnerable to banishing.

Perhaps making Banishment so that it actually reduces the Force of the Spirit instead of simply reducing services might be the better way to go, like it was in SR 3. At least, I think it was so in SR 3, right?

Now, how this might go with the "Taking Control"-side aspect, I don't know yet... Perhaps make it so that you can only get one service out from the very weakened spirit (and it needs to regenerate his lost Force points by 1 per hour), so to somehow avoid this 'pokemoning'-stuff.

And then perhaps add some rule that you can only then bind the spirit if it has returned to full force again.

I dunno, somehow like that. But I think Banishment somehow really needs to be made more desirable.

Why? Not every single Ability or Power or Tactic has to be created equal.

Why not? It's after all a game, in the end, and everything should be somehow viable and fun to use.
The rules are far from being perfect and balanced, and game-balances are what make games fun, in the end.

But the Skill is viable as is, and has a clearly defined use that cannot be gained in any other way. I don't see the need to make Banishing an uber-Skill.

Who said to make it an uber-skill? And who thinks that my suggestions are making it into an uber-skill?

I'd just like to see it be more useful. We acknowledge that Knowledge skills are less useful than, say, Automatics, by having them be cheaper. Making Banishing more useful would be in line with that.

Or you could make it a Knowledge skill