I'm playing in a large Shadowrun group. There's six PCs all told. We've basically got redundancy everywhere, and my covert ops specialist got gacked last game.

We've got a social adept without astral perception, and a mage who hasn't once used a summoning skill. That's it for awakened characters. I want to add some magical redundancy, and be the polar opposite of our existing mage. So I really want to play a summoning shaman.

This is where it gets tricky. I've read the rules for spirits and for summoning them, but I fall apart when I try to understand the potential implications in using them outside of combat.

From my understanding, here is what I know:
1) Drain from summoning spirits is incrediably variable compared to casting spells.
2) Spirits are incredibly versatile due to optional powers, and are most effective at Forces in multiples of three
3) Mages summon ranged spirits, while shaman summon melee spirits. Edit: For combat purposes, not as a whole
4) There are tons of things that spirits can do outside of combat, and those possibilities are extremely dependant upon tradition because spirits can only do things within their associated baliwick.

So my question is, what should I consider if I want to build a primarily summoning magical character? What weird and wonderful things can my minions do for me?

More specifically, should I take Magic 6 to be able to summon Force 6 spirits to get that second optional power without taking physical drain? Given the huge variability of summoning drain, summoning a Force 6 spirit could outright kill me if I take it as physical.

I tend to ask open-ended questions and then soak up what everybody brings up; it's how I learn about such things. Thank you in advance to those who respond!

I would advise you, in the strongest possible terms, not to take the silly disad that limits you to just summoning. Take combat paralysis first if you really need the points that badly.

Watchers are hugely useful. They are pretty stupid, but they can do really cool things, like find people who are not hiding in a ward. This is in addition to keeping people from sneaking up on you while you sleep and telling you when the cops pull up outside. I missed for a long time (until someone pointed it out) that you have a seperate watcher count and real spirit count.

The drawback of being a really effective summoner is you need to have multiple bound spirits. It's hard and expensive to get good bound spirits and hence you need to think hard about using the services. But having 5 force >4 spirits to keep the 8 yaks who ambush you at the payoff from killing your ass is usually a worthwhile tradeoff.

The really clever tricks someone else will have to go over, as I can't remember any that are not pretty obvious.

Well, in SR hard usually equals dangerous. Clever summoners have their mage and adept buddies cover them during the binding process, so to keep an irate spirit from beating the unconscious summoner to death.

Ok, lets see what I can add to this.

First off, mage spirits and shaman spirits are -exactly- the same mechanicly, the only differences are entierly fluf (And the shaman getting beast and the mage getting... water? I forget) So there isn't a focus on ranged for mages and melee for shamans, maybe someone watched too much Shaman King.. anyway.

Second, the drain isn't all that veriable. It is twice the hits generated by the summoned spirit. Which is at absolute max for a force 6 spirit 6 hits and thus 12 drain, of course your much more likely to encounter 4-6 drain, which might be a bit painful depending on how good you are at resisting, but isn't life threatining.

Also, as far as I know, what the spirit can do outside of combat is utterly -not- dependent on the tradition, see above. -How- you go about getting your spirit to do stuff may be different based on tradition, mages order, shamans ask, but -what- they can do isn't affected.

Lets see, as for things to consider.. The single point of essence for some bio-cyber goodies is always something that you need to think about. Platelet factories come to mind to help reduce drain, along with trauma dampeners. Cerebral boosters help with logic which (I think, not looking at book) increases the max number of spirits you can have (Know it helps in some way at least)

I also suggest focusing on more boosting type spells, you can have your spirits sustain them for a little bit for you, and you'll need fewer damaging combat spells because you can use your spirits to fight. Oh, and conjuring foci are a must of course. That's all I've got for you off hand.

Oh, nearly forgot, there is a genemod as well as a symbioyte out there that gives you a bonus to willpower based tests (including drain resistance) which you may want to look into.

Glyph and kzt are wise. The Aspected quality is just plain stupid; it gimps you on the astral and basically forever closes you off from ever learning to effectively Counterspell on your own, which is frankly unacceptable, even if you can summon Watchers and Spirits with Magical Guard.

Anyway, here's my own tips. If you choose a tradition with Man Spirits consider taking the time to learn the Heal spell even if you never intend to cast it yourself. Having bound Man and Task spirits with Innate Heal and the First Aid skill on call is like having a Doc Wagon contract except this particular ambulance crew has Immunity to Normal Weapons and doesn't give two shits about extra territoriality laws. I also wouldn't suggest going all the way up to Magic 6 either. Physical Drain is indeed dangerous, but passing out during a binding test isn't necessarily all that much better and you can use the 25 points to buy a Mentor as well as two full points of Edge which can be saved for Drain tests and other emergencies.

Yes, I agree with Whipstitch. I would recomend strongly against attempting to summon bind force 6 spirits. even if you can do well on this most of the time, due to the vary variable nature of the drain (as you pointed out) it is only a matter of time before you get screwed. In retrospect, summoning force 6 spirits isn't necessarily a bad idea, but like I said, I wouldn't attempt to bind without centering and several initiate grades (unless of course I was disparate and could spare the edge). Which brings me to my next point: if you plan on binding spirits I would invest in a high edge. It is just plain useful if you know that you are going to be making several potentially high damage resistance tests (which you will be). I would say that as a conjuror focused magician, drain resistance becomes even more important than for a scorcery based magician. Oh and would second the spirit of man with heal (not sure how they get first aid, but.... whatever). One seriously saved my ass once. (I had left my meatbod in a van with some of my teammates, who apparently couldn't succeed on crash tests... so several overflow boxes later...)

Well im just gonna cover some newbie stuff I have learned from trying to learn about summoning and magic.

-Have a summoning foci dur.
-If you dont need the extra abilities a Bound spirit can offer dont bind them! Who needs all that drain.
-Learn what each type of spirit is good at, they each have different powers and optional powers.
-When you do bind a spirit always make sure to rebind him before you get to low on services. If you screw up a REbinding the spirit will just laugh at you instead of want to kill you.
-shamans use charisma to resist drain, mages use logic so pump whichever you are going to be. Logic also limits how many active foci and maybe some other things to though so dont neglect it.

I cant get into summoning only characters.

I would just like to point out if you have a decent edge pool for resistance and/or the invoking test. Invoking is incredibly badass. BADASS I say!

Chris

My personal advice is not going for force 6 spirits, at least not for the second optional power. It is very good to have one high-force combat backup. Preferably of the "Guardian" variety for Counterspelling and a weapon skill of choice.

The rest of your spirits should be at force 4 - you can reliably get many services out of them, reducing cost per service even further than the lower cost per ritual. And a dicepool of 8 is good enough for some tasks.

Tips on usage? See spirits with counterspelling, see weather control, see task spirits for technical skills and guardian spirits for mundane weapon skills. And echo kzt. See watchers!

Save up for and bind a decent ally spirit. The mage in our group did so, and now she has a shiny new Force 5 ally spirit. I don't think she realizes what kind of scary she has just yet ("I have a fuzzy little exploding kitty!").

Seriously, now that I'm no longer half asleep, invoking is something you should really look at. If you can edge to roll- or reliably have enough to dice get above 6 successes on a Binding+Magic+Spirit's Force + conditional modifiers roll, then you get a LOT of goodies all for multiplying the binding drain by 50% which for most Force 3-5 spirits is survivable.

Let's look at the advantages -
- Spirit gets +1 reach and +1 die per hit on the Invoking Test to resist banishing- a handy money saver right there.

- Gains access to an additional optional power. I mean, you were contemplating going up 3 on force for this.

- All of your spirits LOS powers become LOS(A) - Accident, Compulsion, Elemental Attack(!), Fear, Influence, Movement(!), Psychokinesis. I'm sure you can see some of the potential uses.

- Great Form powers, this is one of the main reasons you get invoking these things are insane

- And then for every hit you get over 5, your spirits physical stats go up by 1. So you can have some really combat strong low Force spirits.


Anyway, again, just explaining my random shouting earlier. Oh, also Combat Spirits are gods. A spirit wandering around with grenades/rockets/monowhip whatever is freaking scary.

Chris

I haven't played a summoner yet, but here's what I've seen while watching them.

Drain is highly variable. Know your limits.
High charisma for binding more spirits, and a tradition that uses that charisma for drain (a little twinky, but it's not much of a stretch).
High magic for more dice. And once you initiate a couple of times, you'll be pushing the limit of spirit force.
Binding is essential, since you want more than one spirit at a time. What's the point, otherwise?
Invoking is a must (after initiation, obviously).
There are six basic types of spirits, and each tradition gets five. Spirit of Man, with its Innate Spell optional power, is damn handy.
Certain spirits are best at combat (beat, fire). Air spirits generally don't get hurt or do damage in combat.
Binding costs money. It's also difficult. But worth it.
The Aid Sorcery service is nice.
Best use (IMO): getting at people inside enemy vehicles where you can't target them with guns or spells.
A force 9 plant spirit engulfing a room is really something to behold.
Firestorm is pretty cool too, and draws somewhat less attention than earthquake.

Storm is impressively destructive. Also, with Guardian, Task, Guidance, and Plant there are 10 spirits types and you get 5. You can't beat Guardian, Task, and Man for versatility, task for any active skill, Man for any spell you know, and Guardian for any weapon you want to stick in it's hand. I've been known to summon Force 5-8 spirits and have them carry multiple grenades, stand next to people and pull the pins. I'm possession tradition, and I asked the spirit to kill everyone in the clearing with hostile intentions so he possessed one of them, walked up next to the other two, set off two grenades which pinged off his immunity to normal weapons, then the spirit put a grenade in it's mouth, duct taped it(every soldier always has duct tape right?), activated it and then vacated the body for the last kill.

Chris

Echo DTF. Non-possession traditions can use guardian spirits in an ensign-redshirt role. No runner should ever establish a fixed firebase instead of, well, running. A guardian spirit of decent force on the other hand can do that. Plus it leaves it´s own astral signature, not mine.

The weather control thing is pretty powerful. Pouring rain messes with thermographic vision, washes away most traces you might have left and brings negative perception mods. Guards tend to stay inside, too. Intensive fog is natural for seattle at least and does most of the same. Use another service to enhance your stealth and you are basically indoors. Storm is a great way to have an inconspicious lightning attack on a sattelite dish your targets communication depends on.

I actually find that Logic traditions are better at conjuration than Charisma traditions. Drain is your limiting factor, and you'll rarely actually get yourself up to your full compliment of bound spirits (I've seen it done once in over two years of playing with he 4th edition rules).

Basically the biggest limitation in your life is how long it takes you to recover from your forays into conjuration where the spirit rolled well. That's more a question of your First Aid dicepool than anything else.

-Frank

Suggestion: Read the power descriptions, all of them. This is really the only way to know what spirits are good at what. For example there are some incredibly badass powers that only one or 2 different types of spirits have, like Influence. Also someone mentioned that air spirits rarely do damage in combat. I disagree, an air spirit with elemental attack will mess people up just as bad if not worse than a beast spirit (higher AGI, ranged attack -> less chance of dodging, + elemental effects). Spirits deafinately have their niches. I wouldn't use spirits of man for combat, but they have a host of really useful abilities, especially if you want to be more subtle.
Powers I recommend: (from memory)
Elemental Attack
Elemental Aura
Concealment -- (Better than invisibility IMO)
Influence
Movement
Innate Spell
Engulf

Those are the first tier ones. but it should be noted that many others (e.g. Accident, Confusion) can be really useful in some circumstances as well. Also note that high force spirits are often more capable than characters at any tasks they can preform. So when you want to blow up a building summon a task spirit with demolitions. (The suggestion of a Task spirit with first aid above was excellent, just hand it a medkit when it shows up, and you're ready to go) I should also note: if you can you should probably bind any spirits you might rely on for healing, if you get hurt, the last thing you want to do is summon.

PS. the thought of an air spirit with elemental aura and a monofilament whip sends shivers down my spine, sure it doesn't know how to use it, but it gets to attack you for 12P when it does connect. (IIRC)

Yeah, accident is really useful to avoid drawn out chases, whether you are being chased or the chaser. It's one of those powers that really screws up whatever clever plans the GM had.

See, I use movement in chase situations. Westwind 3k? Top speed is now 48.

Recall that it is only a complex action to summon a spirit and only a simple action to call one, so it very much something you can (and should) do during combat. Getting chased and don't have an air spirit on hand for movement? No problem, summon one this turn and have it manifest next turn, no problem.

Also an unbound spirit lasts all day so you can easily summon one in the morning (or evening) and have it on call before you engage in any high risk activities. With the high (rather silly IMO) rate that stun damage recovers you can very easily call one at your max magic, wait a few hours for your stun to heal, then go to your meet or whatever.

The same philosophy can apply for binding a spirit. Don't be afraid to overcast on this, so long as you survive the initial casting you will easily have enough time to heal up even from the point of near death in the week or so most GMs give in between runs (again due to the silly fast healing rate).

Now while spirits can be deadly, they are better at delaying and distracting opponents then taking them out. Are well placed force 6 or so manabolt/ball is MUCH more effective at taking down most of your opposition than the spirit will be. That said even a pretty weak spirit (force 4 or so) is likely WAY better at soaking damage then you are. So don't be ashamed to send a wind spirit or something charging forward to distract your opponents so you can dish out the spell doom.

Things to look out for?
#1. Other magicians. They are best equipped to counter your tactics.
#2. Drones. These can carry the heavy weapons to deal with your spirits and are much more resistant to your magic then most metahumans.
#3. Other spirits. While not necessarily a huge threat to you, you are likely much better equipped to deal with them than the other members of team. Make a deal with them, they handle the drones, you take care of the spirits.

Oh and a couple contacts you probably very much want to have.
#1. Talismonger. Duh, you need focuses, and ritual material for your binding.
#2. Hacker/Decker. The matrix is likely your weak point, and you have little dealings with it. So it pays to know someone who DOES deal well with it. Someone who can handle your digital security, run the occasional data search for you, and the like.
#3. A mentor. GMs are a sucker for this one. They always love getting to play a character who 'taught you everything you know' and is more powerful than you. Play up on this. Because while they are gloating that their NPC is more powerful than you, recall that this also means that they probably have access to more powerful magical learning. And as your mentor, its probably their job to teach you some of that stuff eh?

To answer the original post, the best way to specialize in summoning is to be able to take the drain. I second what Karaden said. If you are going to be a spirit summoner it would be a good idea to take a tradition which has it's drain stat as CHA. I would then suggest you be an elf. Max out your Willpower and Charisma to one below your racial maximum. Also make sure you make good friends with whomever has a high first aid skill on your team. With bioware, symbiotes, and genemods you can have drain dice approaching 16-18. If you want to go with a non-CHA tradition, then I would suggest getting cerebral boosters and only going with Intuition based tradition. If you went logic, that would force you into have 3 stats that need to be high. At least if you keep it a CHA or INT you are only forced into 2 stats needing to be high. The CHA you need for spirits anyways, and INT you need to have a chance in battle and perception.

EDIT: Almost forgot, greetings Karaden, I see that you are relatively new. Based upon your post in this thread, it is good to have you join in the Dumpshock community. One last thing to note in the case you were unaware, some of the members here bite but not too hard and usually they let go.

I'm a big fan of either elved or dwarves with a logic based tradition. I prefer to play logical characters and with a dwarf you can have a Wil of 6 and a Logic of 5(7) for not too heavy an investment. Add in some more tech or positive qualities or what have you and you soak drain like a crazy person. I've never really needed more than 4 bound spirits at once, but YMMV on that.

Chris

EDIT: Oh, I've seen a symbiote mentioned several times as providing bonuses to soaking drain, maybe I'm just overlooking it repeatedly, but which one is it?

The mender symbiont would help with healing drain that was actually taken, but else I don´t know.

Doesn't the Stalwart Symbiont give you +1 Willpower?

The true power lies in DTFarstars way. Logic is the only possible drain attribute that can get an easy and cheap +3 attribute bonus. One can do without if one can make do with force 4 or 5 spirits. The main trick for a conjurer is having decent edge.

You can whistle up one powerful spirit on short notice anytime. It only fights back half as hard. Use the edge for drain. The basic utility spirits are what you bind, because you get more services per ¥ and don´t really care for much power. The really big spirits are whistled up on short notice, and usually all services are expended before sunrise.

Edit: Stalwart symbiont: Only to resist fear.

Yep, since the ol' Stalwart also clocks in at 30,000¥, 0.2 essence and 16 availability along with a stupidly dangerous drawback for such a minor effect, I consider it a frontrunner for the title of worst piece of bioware in the game. It's basically the Guts quality except it would cost more and could get you killed (provided that you could take it at chargen to begin with).

Anyway, I really agree with what Ryu's saying about keeping around a modest Force spirit for basic utility, which is why I'm about to take a moment to shamelessly plug Plant Spirits as the best canidate for all of your bound cannon fodder needs. First of all, a Force 3 Plant Spirit can come right out of the box with Guard, Magical Guard, Concealment, Silence and Movement; only Guardians can really match that at Force 3 in terms of bread and butter "Oh, hey, the Sammy can't do that!" powers, and in doing so they lose their big advantage, the ability to take a firearm as a weapon skill and even then they don't get Silence. Plant Spirits also start out with 3 body in exchange for a penalty to agility, which isn't that big of a deal because, well, frankly, just about all Force 3 spirits suck at offense anyway, and the 6 body at Force 3 means that the Spirit can do a good job at what's really required from such a low Force grunt: soak a few rounds meant for a player if necessary and provide lots of powers mundanes can't. It only gets better with Invoking and binding bonuses from Foci, mentor and specializations as well; a Great Form Plant Spirit with Regeneration is stupidly durable, even if it is only Force 3 or especially 4, and at that low of a Force it's easy to simply increase it's services every few runs with minimal risk. About the only drawback is the darned low movement rate. Granted, there will be many times where a specialized, higher force spirit is just what is needed, but as Ryu said, that's what on-the-fly summoning is for.

The only reliable way to sustain such high force spells is either doing it yourself or an ally spirit and even that last one isn't that reliable as you will have to recast whenever you go through a ward, so need an ally that can survive with you. I prefer not to sustain too many spells myself, but I dunno that's up to you guys.

Chris

yeah, you're not gonna be using magic to cast and sustain any decently high force spells for quite a while after chargen. [edit] at least not without taking any penalties from it, that is. [/edit]

in order to sustain your force charisma at 12 as an elf, for example, you need a minimum of a rating 6 sustaining focus. and you'll be recasting a force 6 increase charisma spell every time you go through a ward, pretty much. you know, 30 runs down the road, when you can actually get and bind a rating 6 sustaining focus. same basic situation for the willpower, you'll need a rating 5 focus for that though.

Why 6 and 5? I would assume if you are attempting to max your drain stats then you are either buying the as high as possible at startup or using karma to up them right after. So with no exceptional attribute or genetic optimization that would be Force 8 and 6 for an elf for cha then wil respectively.

Chris

that's the *minimum* force of focus required. you must be casting increase charisma at force 6 minimum to get to charisma 12 (and yes, you are correct that it is more likely that the elf in question will have charisma 7 or 8, but my point above still remains that it isn't happening anytime soon)

Force 8 Increase Stat spells are trivial (2P drain), you can cast them all day with no risk. Sustaining Foci for high force spells are a bad idea. I've been doing ok with eating the 4d active skill penalty from sustaining a pair of them most of the time (which 2 changes, frequently), with occasionally using bound spirits to sustain them for a few critical rounds when heavy artillery (or invisible, stealthed, levitating high velocity border crossings) are required.

Honestly haven't had to breach many wards, I'm usually well outside of the target supporting the technomancer, projected scouting or preped for hot exfiltration and fire support. I'll see how that changes when I summon my Sacred Tree (low force Shinto Ally Spirit that I intend to keep back at the shrine). Likely I'll just be maintaining more spells on my allies and actually get some use out of lightning ball.

Amazing responses. Thank you all!

We're running off the core book alone, so a lot of the things mentioned here aren't available to me. I should have mentioned that out the door.

One of the things that I'm having problems with is the different traditions having different types of spirits used for multiple things. It confuses the everliving crap out of me, and is the reason I mentioned mages using ranged combat spirits. The fire spirit is obviously intended to use elemental attack while the beast spirit should be using natural weapon if it's intended use is hurting people.

If a spirit isn't listed as one of the ones I can summon, then I flat out can't use it, can I?

Yes, at least by core book rules. There are (few) free spirits that might negotiate with you, but that is a technical "No, you could" only.

Often the most damaging way is using indirect ways of causing damage. Fear them into leaving cover, Accident them into being occupied with themselves rather than you, Disguise the adept so he reaches close combat range. Or Confuse the guard so there won´t even be combat.

I would highly recomend getting magic in the shadows because it opens up so many different options. course if you're already confused more options may ot be better.
my 2 yen worth. and I've pretty much always played mages.
haven some spell casting since it's a better way to get rid of spirits than banishing.
decide what you want you're spirits to do... are they buff bots for you (man) melee (beast) ranged combat (fire)
are their other powers going to be their primary use... fear confusion engulf (oneof my ersonal faves)
consider role playing fluff also, how do you relate to your spirits, do you bargain with them or treat them like slaves or something in between.
My favorite summoner was actually from the mits book, a voudoun summoner with a charisma of 7 boosted to 11 or 12.
As to drain it is more variable and can be quite lethal, so have somebody (your party's other mage) on hand o blast the sucker if you pass out. A buddy of mine found out the hard way when he summoned a spirit that got 12 successes and he got none (knocking him out) and my mage had to keep him from getting fried. Binding spirits is even more dangerous so it's a good idea to have things that improve your drain resistance ability... either boost spells or the edge.

Actually, I'm of the opinion that the combination of Energy Aura and higher agility makes Fire and Air spirits the better overall combatants than Beast spirits any day o' the week.

Fire spirits are one of my favorites for combat. Elemental attack, energy aura, and engulf - and those are standard powers.

The "standard powers" there is definitely a key word. Optional powers are great, but like I was saying earlier with Plant Spirits, sometimes you just can't beat having a good suite of powers right out of the box. If nothing else modest Spirits are a LOT easier to rack up a bunch of quick services with, and sometimes all you really do need is an extra set of hands or a minor bonus here and there.