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Riley37
When a mage wants to bind a spirit, and has some time and binding materials, she first summons a spirit, then binds it. If she happens to do well on the Summoning Test, and the spirit does poorly on its resistance, then the mage starts with a spirit that owes many services even before Binding. Since Binding can be expensive, it's a lot better to spend 3K nuyen.gif binding a F6 spirit with 10 services, than to spend 3K nuyen.gif binding a spirit with 2 services.

So if she summons a spirit and gets less services than average, she might just dismiss the spirit and summon another one, repeat until she gets a higher-than-average result, and THEN start the binding process. Assuming that she can handle the Drain, by having a maxed Drain Soak pool so that she gets 0-1 Stun, and/or if she has time to rest.

My GM imposed a nifty houserule to limit this: mage makes a WIL roll, and successes are how many re-summonings the mage can try before Binding. After that many tries, the mage is done for the day.
fool
it makes no sense unless you're going to limit them to only summoning that many times regardless of whether they are trying to bind or not. That could really crock mages since most of them would only be able to summon spirits ~ 5X/D. What if you're on a run and need to summon spirits more often?
yeah mages can sit there and do summoning tests over and oner till they get a large number of services, but they take drain each time which can be limiting.
Cthulhudreams
Doesn't drain limit the number of spirits you can summon? Unless you are summoning a force 1 spirit or something.
sunnyside
Like a lot of things if you give your players all the time in the world they can do a lot.

Heck your hacker could make a fortune writing up expensive code.

The key is to actually make them roll everything. They'll take drain, and they'll lose days.

But more importantly when they want a force 6 spirit sometimes the dice will hate them. And they'll be looking at too much stun damage to handle.

Also for fun you could do the following without a house rule. A bound spirit knows it's being bound. And spirits seem to have an idea what this caster has done with other spirits. So if you're a spirit and you know that you're going to be bound for many more tasks than your used to and you know why. Well, you just might resist harder, i.e. you might use a point of edge on the resistance test.

And that hurts. It hurts bad.



fool
I personally really don't like the idea of spirits using edge to resist summoning/binding.
However, keep in mind, that it is perfectly possible (I've seen it) for a mage to summon a force 4-6, not get any successes and get knocked out from the drain. The only reason the mage survived was that the DM allowed me to say that my mage was there to help. Otherwise that would have been one cooked mage.
Wesley Street
QUOTE (fool @ Apr 14 2008, 08:35 PM) *
I personally really don't like the idea of spirits using edge to resist summoning/binding.


Why not? Is that against SR4 rules? I run a group that has a Christian Thaumaturge and a Mage Detective. Whenever they successfully conjure a combat-related spirit it decimates mundane enemy ranks. Frustrates me as a GM to see my carefully placed troops easily wiped off the map in a round but what can I do about it other than whatever I can within the rules to prevent their summoning?
W@geMage
I usually apply a cumulative -2DP penalty for repeat/failed actions. It's also a nice mechanic to limit certain extended actions that wouldn't have a chance of failing otherwise (like decrypting stuff).

I would only make my Spirits spend Edge if they were mistreated OR a slim chance if the Mage summoned a Spirit with a higher force then his Magic Rating.
If the Spirit would think it had a good chance to knock out the mage with its drain and become free, I would also make it an option.

BUT => I would not make the Edge dice count for the drain.
So a force 10 Spirit spending edge to gain his freedom would throw 10 exploding dice that would cause drain and 10 exploding dice that would only affect the services. Otherwise its a guaranteed death sentence for the mage.

Crusher Bob
Hmm, looks like a slight hole in the wording of the binding rules.

The way I read it:

The number of 'unbound' services that a spirit happens to have is irrelevant in binding. The number of bound services are only those generated by the binding test. If you only get one net hit on binding a spirit, you'd need to try re-binding it to atually get any bound services out of the spirit.

So there is no point is dicking around with re-summoning spirits that you intend to bind, since the number of unbound services the spirit owes don't really matter.
fool
QUOTE (Wesley Street @ Apr 15 2008, 09:42 AM) *
Why not? Is that against SR4 rules? I run a group that has a Christian Thaumaturge and a Mage Detective. Whenever they successfully conjure a combat-related spirit it decimates mundane enemy ranks. Frustrates me as a GM to see my carefully placed troops easily wiped off the map in a round but what can I do about it other than whatever I can within the rules to prevent their summoning?

IIRC, In the summoning rules it says the spirit, to resist a summoning, rolls 2xforce not 2xforce+edge which would equal 3xforce
Now, under edge it says characters can use edge for tests, but then do we consider summoned spirits to be characters?
I understand the rules to be that services owed on original summoning carry over to binding. But I don't have my bbb since I'm at work now so I can't quote the relevant passages.
if you're having trouble with pc mages being too tough, give the opposition more mages, better tactics, and the anathema to the spirits. Often in older editions, when there where multiple elementals, we'd just skip rolling out combat and compare forces of totals and decide from there what the results of spirit combat is.
Particle_Beam
QUOTE (fool @ Apr 15 2008, 08:03 PM) *
I understand the rules to be that services owed on original summoning carry over to binding.
What? Nah, can't be, that would make binding spirits way too good, and give extra-services. I'm absolutely sure that it ain't so.
crizh
The wording of the Binding rules is quite clear. One net hit is required to Bind the Spirit, additional hits add additional services owed.

That Summoning services carry over is the only way the text of Binding makes any sort of grammatical or logical sense.

Incidentally, this means that re-binding is a mugs game.

DTFarstar
Unless you are rebinding invoked spirits or spirits you have worked with for awhile and work well with. I threw down edge on an invoking test in one game and I had an invoked F4 Air spirit with something like 11 or 12 hits on the invoking test. I'm not letting my F4 spirit with the stats of a F11 spirit go just to get a couple more services out of my binding.

Chris
crizh
I concede, a point well made.
Jetm
Personally, I think the whole Spirit Summoning/Binding thing needs to be tweaked a little bit. It's way too easy to abuse. You could theoretically summon a Force 12 Spirit, burn edge to succeed, bind it, burn, and have a rating 12 Spirit with 8 base services (since burning to succeed counts as a critical success). I toyed with the idea of making a summoner to demonstrate this to my GM, and he threatened punch me in the face if I tried it.
WeaverMount
Hey I'm actually the GM who made this up off the cuff. Just a bit a mechanics check summoning spirits generate drain with one stat then doubles it. A magician tests it down with 2 stats and bonuses. This means your nova-coked elven shaman with some low level foci can likely have +4 dice drain dice than a F6 spirit. This mean you can expect them to test down all the drain with average rolls. If they aren't over casting it's stun damage. That means they have to roll poorly to take damage. Even if they do take damage on a fluke summoning an hour or two of rest is all they need (Assume Body 3 + Will 5 = 8 dice per hour healed). For a moderately optimized magician summoning spirits at there magic just isn't a dangerous thing to do, and they can very safely keep doing it until they totally rock the spirit. Even a worst case scenario is for a force 6 spirit is 12 stun. Any magician worth there salt should be able to get a hit or two and stay on there feet. Then rest for 4 or 5 hours and be fine wake up and say "Man that really really shouldn't have happened" and do it again with plenty of confidence. Summoning just isn't limited by drain if you don't have to do anything else. On a run, the risk of having to eat some wound penalties for the rest of the night is scary and limiting. A 90th percentile roll means is that you have to rest up for hour or two, it is not limiting.

Now as for the fluff on the will roll. Summon a spirit is as painful as a punch to the face. Most likely it's as bad as an average roll from a pro fighter (with 4s across the board). Maybe though it's as bad as a good face punching roll by Bruce Lee (with 6s and 7s). So if you are on a run, and the Adrenaline pumping and you really need a couple more services you can subject yourself to the punch easy. It's life or death. Or near enough. Chilling en casa, when you have day or two were you need to lay how man times are you subject yourself to that level of punishment? I think something derived from a will roll is appropriate

EDIT: all this is about summoning. Binding force 6 spirits even with a magic of 6 is still crazy risky and basically requires major bonuses, time, money, edge and RL luck. You can limit binding just by actually rolling it RAW
crizh
QUOTE (WeaverMount @ Apr 16 2008, 04:00 AM) *
Summon a spirit is as painful as a punch to the face.


If you fluff the drain roll. I don't see any reason to assume that the summoner suffers any discomfort if he successfully negates all the drain.
DocTaotsu
QUOTE (Jetm @ Apr 15 2008, 09:24 PM) *
Personally, I think the whole Spirit Summoning/Binding thing needs to be tweaked a little bit. It's way too easy to abuse. You could theoretically summon a Force 12 Spirit, burn edge to succeed, bind it, burn, and have a rating 12 Spirit with 8 base services (since burning to succeed counts as a critical success). I toyed with the idea of making a summoner to demonstrate this to my GM, and he threatened punch me in the face if I tried it.


Doesn't burn (for a critical success) mean that you permanently lose edge? Isn't that... a really bad idea? What are you going to do when you run out of services?
WeaverMount
Actually I think they had to burn 2 edge. The drain for binding a force 12 spirit is the twice the hits on 2xForce dice. That means you should EXPECT to get hit with 16P you need to soak. If your mage has a body of 3, they would need 15 soak nice to expect to survive the expected drain. And you could be looking at as much as 48P ... which is some scanner - tastic head asploding drain.
WeaverMount
crizh, honestly it's mostly a meta-game thing. I don't want to deal with a magician 'taking 20' on a summoning/binding. It is however so powerful and so expensive magicians would logically try to get the most out of it, so some degree of re-summoning makes sense. If I may speak for Riley37 I think that we both wanted to feel like the character was making optimum choices, and we wanted some reason to not sit there rolling dice for 10 minuets. Another reason I invented an off the cuff ruling was that the character is currently off stage in the wings. It would be unfair and count to the story we are telling for me to hit that character with anything, I made up a die roll that would yield results in a range I was comfortable with, and seem appropriate.
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