I'd glanced through the spirit section and discovered that many spells can be replaced by spirit powers (concealment for invisibility, air spirit movement for levitation and so on and so forth) however, this brought me to my question.. what spells really cannot be duplicated by spirit powers?
lets ignore the fact that spirit of man got the innate spell optional power...

We don't have to ignore that. The magician must know the spell for the spirit of man to cast it, so it does not replace knowing the spell. It merely multiplies the entities who know it.

One of my players had a character that was a very skilled conjurer that had 1 level in spellcasting simply so he could learn spells. Then used spirits of man to cast what spells he knew and needed, at the moment. It wasn't the most effecient way to go about it but did make for interesting play.

Yeah, I've done that before. Having a bound Force 4 Spirit of Man with Heal on call can be rather handy.

Lets see, off the top of my head, mana static.

Well, just off the useful ones I can think of off the top of my head: Physical Mask, the ever popular Mana Static, Trid Phantasm, Fix (task spirits can repair, but much like heal, it stacks with every other form of recovery), Shape [Material], Mind Probe, AnalyzeTruth/Compel Truth, Area Thought Recognition, Heal (again, stacks and is just too vital), Alleviate Allergy/Addiction, Antidote/Cure Disease, Physical Barrier, Resist Pain, Increase Reflexes, Deflection/Combat Sense, Mob Control, Interference, Pulse, Turn to Goo, Power/Stun/Mana Ball, Awaken and Analyze Device.

What about, Increase/decrease attribute?

that's increase [attribute] and decrease[attribute] you mean? worth it some of the time, but not nearly as generally useful as, say, levitation or influence are. it's the kind of thing that would be nice to have, but not as high priority as other kinds of awesome available to you.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of decrease/increase attribute spells. They're often an awful lot of work just to get an extra hit.

Yes, but generally if you take decrease att for log and cha, you'll be able to freeze most characters in their tracks by taking a guess at what would be their lowest attribute. (Face? Go for log, sammy? Go for cha, Mage? Go for stunbolt )

I like to use a charisma decrease offensively, since alot of combat type NPC's tend to have Charisma as a dump stat.

"If a Mental attribute is reduced to 0, the victim stands about mindlessly confused."

Yeah, but unless you whip up a ranged version what you're dealing with here is really just a cut rate version of Turn To Goo. It has potential since as you pointed out, a lot of characters out there are only going to have a 2-5 charisma while orks, trolls and dwarves will usually have body in the 4-7 range, but I wasn't really thinking about custom spells when I created my li'l list. There's advantages, and the fact that you'll at least cut down on their charisma even if you don't score enough net hits to exceed their attribute, but I'm not so sure I'd go so far as to say it's worth the increased drain.

Heaven for forbid! I wouldn't get close enough to cast that spell on the landshark, myself!! *whips the spirit of man into action* hehe

Smells of something.. can you smell it to, I think its a Spirit bane (man) coming up

Compulsion can take care of some of the mental manipulation spells, but IIRC, it's a great form power. Are we counting Great Form abilities?

Ok so how does Decrease [Attribute] vaguely compare with the spells/effects like confuse, orgy, chaotic world, bugs, etc. Those spells all boil down to -1 per net hit. Many have a clause where the target is helpless if the minus exceeds willpower.

Willpower tends to be pretty high, as its usually the resist attribute for mana spells. Decrease charisma and the like are sometimes preferred, because while a sammy might have a body in the double digits, and a willpower of 4-6, he likely only has a charisma of 2-4, if that.

Personally, I'd go for Decrease Logic. No metatype has a Logic bonus and two of them have lowered caps. Cerebral Boosters might be a bit of an issue, but even that'd be no worse than running into an Elf Shaman or Face.

Like I said earlier, if you're going for decrease attribute spells to incapacitate people, take both cha and log.

Ok I can see the advantage of totally winning someone by virtue of a weird resist test. But shouldn't a mage or spirit be able to rock on anyone resisting with only 4-6 dice? Do you think that is enough of a benifit to justify a the karma cost when confuse and nightmare are free and can't be counterspelled, and the list of top notch spells spells whipstich posted was longer than you can start with?

I'm not quite sure what you mean? How are they free?

Confuse and Nightmare are spirit powers, so you don't have to pay karma/BP to have access to them if you are ever going to get them. All the tradition I've been interested in playing have had access to one or both of these powers so the idea of paying to learn a spell that does the same thing a little better in some cases seem like a really bad buy

I still can't find the nightmare power in any book I have. Page reference?

And you do pay for spirits, with drain. So they aren't free, (particularly because spirits tend to be much worse in the drain department than spells are).

I was thinking of SM's fluff for guidance spirit's engulf, which I see on rereading isn't really relevant. Here it though


You were having issues find "Nightmare" because I was making stuff up >_<

I see. Well, confusion still isn't that great of a power, considering it doesn't stop them from taking actions like the bugs spell can.