i just thought about this a little bit, and i stumbled over something that seems problematic to me . . if a mage has his lodge, that counts as aspected background to him or doesn't it?
and if it doesn't there,s still the geomancy for example or just building the lodge soewhere where there is an appropriate background count allready . .
so if the mage trys to summon a spirit in there, and the spirit is aspected to him and his way of magic too . . does the spirit get stronger than the mage targeted at? let's say he's in an level 3 backgrund count aspected to him and he has a magic of 5 so he is effectively at magic 8 and tries to summon an level 10 spirit . . only 2 levels above his own magic, so usually it would probably not be too much trouble . . but now comes the background again, because he is summoning a spirit which is attuned to him and thus to the background count .. does the spirit go to force 13? that would mean the ghost is suddenly 5 levels above the magician . . and then there still comes the time of leaving the background again . .
thoughts? ideas? comments?

and another thing: if your lodge is aspected to you, to maybe +3 and you throw in a manastatic of force 3 with 3 successes, your mage would stay at his usual magic while the ghost would take a hit of 3 to force and be easy to summon or is that wrong?

Without having my books here, but didn't aspected background count only give bonus dice?
And no real raise of your magic.

PS: nice avatar

A couple of complications with that.
- Lodges by themselves do not provide aspected background count (or any other for that matter).
- When summoning a spirit the spirit does not arrive until after the test, so no need to modify the spirits dicepool.
- As Zak mentioned Aspected Background Count only provides a dicepool bonus for magic and drain resistance tests.

So a mage could set up his lodge in a zone of aspected aspected background and nab himself a few bonus dice whenever he decides to summon or bind a spirit.

Alternatively he could throw down mana static (making sure he doesn't have to overcast to bind and his lodge is still of sufficient rating) and take a hit to his conjuring dice pool equal to the rating of the background while the spirit takes a hit to his resisting DP equal to twice the background counts rating.

Whether the spirit resent getting weakened and then being bound more than getting bound at all is up to you to decide.

hmm . . so the spirit does not benefit from the aspected background count, untill it is propperly summoned and bound to the magician?
but the magician gets to use all of the bonuses?

While it makes sense for a summoned spirit to get the same benefits as the mage, this only would be applicable in the case of binding and not summoning.
So when binding the mage in question is better off with unaspected background since this hits the spirits DP twice as hard as his own. Binding a spirit in aspected background count is basically a zero sum game in regard to services, and bad for drain since every hit the spirit gets on his reistance test counts twice, while the extra dice a mage gets to resist drain do not.

hmm . . could one COMBINE those?
could the mage be in an aspected background Level 5 and conjure an Force twenty Spirit in an unaspected background area of force 5 just on the other side of a large room for example?
so the mage would be at 5+5 and the spirit would be at 20-10?
yes, i realize that is munchy till nowhere and back but still *g*

Since positioning or even presence of a spirit during binding rituals is not covered by rules in either the BBB or SM you're on your own.

But given the situation proposed the F20 spirit in an unaspected background of 5 would roll 30 dice ( (20-5)x2) and the mage would need at least a magic of 8 to overcast binding a F15 spirit rolling Magic + Binding +Background in dice, and takes physical damage from the drain highly likely killing himself in the process.

yeah, my math is off, i know . . i ain'T all that secure in the SR4 rules as i don't plan on evr playing that "thing" . . others may like it, i will stand beside SR3 untill the very end . . i just try to ask some questions and discuss rules as i understood them . . which, granted, will be poorly most of the time . .

First off, aspecting only happens at background 3 or less.
Second, two domains of such high background count shouldn't be that close to each other.
and third, the spirit makes it's resistance roll on the Metaplanes, which do not have background count.