Find out what you can bribe the Free Spirit in, and get it in great quantities.

"OK guys, the Spirit wants Pixie Sticks. Lots and lots of Pixie Sticks!" "Well, we have one Pixie." "No... The sugary snack food." "Oh..."

*looks around*
either everybody missed the comment about first binding lower force spirit to boost up before summoning big bad or everybody discarded it as being too something else O.o

I will look for a rules quote tomorrow (assuming I remember), but my understanding is that, by RAW, the only time you are considered to have no chance of success is if your Dice Pool is reduced to 0 or less. Basically, if your Dice Pool > 0, you can Burn Edge for a Critical Success.

As for an easy & effective way to kill a Force 12 Spirit, that any character should be able to use - a White Rabbit. Seriously, only Holy Hand Grenades can stop a White Rabbit.

You're only allowed to spend one point of Edge on any test. As far as I'm concerned you can spend Edge to get extra dice and activate the rule of six or you can burn a point for a Critical Success. Not both. Therefore you're hits are limited by you're dice pool, putting hard limits on what is and is not possible.

That's a Long Shot Test you're thinking of.

By RAW, spending Edge and burning it are two separate things. You can only spend Edge once per roll, but you can burn it as often as you like (there's just no need). You can even burn Edge when your Edge pool is zero; the stat is considered separate from the pool. For example, when you have to make an Edge test, you don't roll your remaining Edge pool, you roll your full stat.

In my opinion that's slicing it pretty thin. The intent is to stop you using Edge twice on the same test. Spending Edge, screwing up and then Burning Edge to pull your ass out of the fire seems a bit abusive to me.

Spirits don't assist in conjuring tasks AFAIK.
They'd be useful to bump up your drain stats by sustaining buff spells, but that's it.
Directly, they aid sorcery tests only.

The only time the RAW states you cannot succeed in a test is if your Dice Pool for that test is 0 or less. Therefor, if your Dice Pool > 0, you are considered to have a chance of success on any test. If you have a chance for success, you may Burn a point of Edge for an automatic Critical Success.

If your Dice Pool = 0 or less, you cannot Burn an Edge for a Critical Success. You can, however, use a point of Edge for a Long Shot test.

Also, I would like to point out that Burning reduces your Edge Attribute by 1. Using reduces your current Edge by 1. If you have an Edge Attribute of 5, with 2 current Edge remaining, you may Burn 2 points of Edge, reducing your Attribute to 3, but still have 2 uses remaining - Burning does not directly affect your current Edge.

Burning Edge & Using Edge are two separate things. You may use Edge once per test. There is no limit to how often you may Burn Edge, excepting your Edge score.

By RAW, you may reduce your Dice Pool to 0 or less via Called Shots, environmental conditions, etc, then use Edge for a Long Shot test. You now have a chance of success, and may Burn Edge for a Critical Success. Using & Burning Edge are two separate things, and do not limit each others uses.

I have actually used that once before - and a good thing I did, otherwise it would likely have been a TPK. Called Shot 4, Called Shot bypass Armor, Long Narrow Burst, Critical Success to hit = Dead Sniper.

I think I'll stick with my opinion that the second is a sub-set of the other.

Burning is more extreme than Spending. If you can't spend and then spend another you sure as hell can't spend and then burn....

Burning Edge also has significantly more extreme penalties than using.

Using Edge is a temporary reduction in your available uses.
Burning Edge is a permanent reduction in your available uses, and reduces the bonus dice from future uses.

There is no reason to limit Burning Edge based on when/how you Use Edge.

Generally just because you summon it does not mean it is going to straight up try and kill your party. It might try and kill the mage who summoned it (or just might kill the mage through overflow of trying to bind/summon it.) Not all spirits will straight up attack your party, but if you try and kill it you are asking for some serious hurt to be brought down upon the party. The spirit might just dissipate, or say to you that it wants you to do it a favor, or might just fly out the window. If you are loaded up to kill it during the binding ritual a LOGIC 12 INTUITION 12 spirit will know what is going on that you guys are here to dissipate it if the binding fails. Spirits do not like being dissipated as it hurts like a mother lover. As a GM I would rule it would roll edge to resist binding as it does not want to be used by a bunch of piss poor runners who think they can bind it to even a single service.

Trying to bring the hurt might be the biggest way you can get the hurt put on you.

General rule of thumb. Never summon something bigger than your head.

How abusive it is depends on the player and GM in question. However, the legality of it is pretty clear. The BBB makes a distinction between spending Edge, and burning it.

As Muspellsheimr pointed out, burning Edge carries its own penalties with it, so it's not something to be done lightly. I really don't see anyone burning Edge very often, even without additional restrictions. However, when faced with 20P Drain, that's pretty much your best option.

Only bad part of this is the Metaplanar shortcut that spirits can take. It's just a short hop into the metaplanes and then back to our world.

Well, firstly I must apologize for starting this thread before an unanticipated weekend away from technology. Secondly I must say I am overwhelmed by your outpouring of good ideas.

I will start near the end with a thoughtful post that colored my re-reading of each idea. masterofm: I like your thoughts. I take from that the idea that the conjurer should go somewhere remote and alone and do nothing to put down her spirit if it should go free. The spirit may be merciful when it sees no threat. We can just look back as far as Deus to see what a powerful being does when it feels untrusted. Perhaps one task spirit with first aid would be left alone to stabilize and treat the dying conjurer, or perhaps she should die in her folly and allow the Force 12 spirit to return to its astral home to play Texas Hold 'em. On the other hand, a Logic 12, Intuition 12 being must surely understand why a weak being would take precautions when begging from it the services that only binding can produce. Any little mortal had damn well better fear it! After all, the book does describe spirits as being quite vengeful when going free in such circumstances. Perhaps we should not trust in the good graces of the mighty being after all. None-the-less I will keep in mind the way the relationship between conjurer and spirit could be tainted by our precautions.

I see 4 general ideas coming from the community. I will address them in this order: 1) Conjure it from inside a bomb. 2) Bad-ass adept. 3) Bad-ass caster. 4) Big-ass gun/stick-n-shock

1) Put the F12 lodge inside a bunker coated with explosives on the inside.
While at first I liked this idea despite the cost of building the large bunker, it has several problems. The one of greatest concern to our dying conjurer is escaping the enclosure before it goes boom. Several bound spirits engaging the F12 as proposed by Adarael might slow it down. Powerful mana barriers and/or wards especially of the offensive variety (thank you Rasumichin) might also help greatly. Unfortunately, our being thrives with no physical presence. There is no way to get our conjurer out before the super-genius decides it should disappear into the astral. God help us if it spends its time busting through the wards/barriers and rests up before seeking justice. After reading masterofm's thoughts, I also decided this would create the worst working relationship even in the event of a successful binding. Sorry, but this one is declined.
A subset of this one is the conjure-into-a-deep-hole-through-fiberoptics idea. Our very evil gm has decided that this won't work.

2) Bad-ass adept.
We currently have no-one on the team capable of going toe-to-toe with a Force 12 spirit of anything. Our fixer is a fairly well connected guy, but I'm not sure we can afford to pay a world-class combatant to risk death even if we could find one. Our conjurer is a little ahead of her team in this effort. I will keep looking.

3) Bad-ass spells.
This one could work. A little edge is not too much to ask a hired spell slinger nor teammate for a 3 second job--especially one that may or may not even be needed. Unfortunately the spirit has edge too. Lots of it as noted by De Badd Ass. Probably more of it than everyone put together unless we hire lots of spell slingers. This also limits us to spirits without Magical Guard. If we get a spellslinger that can punch through 12 conterspelling dice and edge we're left with the "I'm not sure we can afford to pay a world-class combatant to risk death even if we could find one" problem. This can be helped with aid-sorcery services as The Jopp mentioned (indirectly), but I fear it won't be enough.

4) Big-ass gun/stick-n-shock
These ones that at first looked least likely and least useful will probably be the ones I back. I haven't fully decided between one big gun that depends on surprise so the F12 doesn't dodge and many many stick-n-shock guns that whittle down its dodge. Unfortunately it may take a ton of shots to whittle down a reaction of 12 and edge of 12. All this before it gets a chance to go astral. I think the mighty mana static spell is a wonderful addition to either one of these strategies.

Now, some tangents. While there are several ideas to weaken the spirit, I stuck with mana-static. Running away is very problematic with a being that can pop into existence inside your car. A high background count that is close enough to escape into but far enough away that it doesn't foul the conjuring site might be hard to find. Unless it was high background from happy happy joy joy stuff I would also fear what kind of spirit we would get.

Similarly there is conjuring within a background count. While this was not suggested it might be a good way to limit drain. (Depending on the GM's ruling of drain. Is it actual Force x 2 or modified Force x 2 that it rolls?) Unfortunately I will now shy away from this due to masterofm's cautions about the spirits attitude. We do not want a monkey's paw situation with our big genie.

FAB III: I need to re-read (and will do this in the morning) but doesn't FAB III split when it gets around Force 6? I believe our beast could engage this stuff in astral combat and destroy it. I think it would survive the FAB's attacks. In the end it's no more than a offensive ward.

Burning Edge: Our bastard GM has made a very limiting but agreed upon ruling that burning edge provides 4 automatic successes and may be stacked with spending edge. This may not be enough to live through an unlucky roll. Burning edge is expensive (in karma) and I'm not sure how you'd write that into a contract for hired help. It's quite a lot to ask of your teammates. Even the conjurer wants to avoid it if she can. (She's a bit karma hungry. Must be saving up for an ally.)

Personal responses:
Riverbane mentioned a clever strategy of binding it 12 hours and 2 seconds before sundown/sunup. While I like this, my understanding is that the binding can be successful, but if the mage gets knocked unconscious, it goes free. It doesn't have to go home when the sun breaks the horizon anymore.

Stahlseele: Unfortunately spirits only add their force to physical attributes. It is not useful for conjuring nor drain, and I don't want to put our conjurer in the position of having to withstand area effect attacks even with a greatly boosted body.

apollo124: I'm afraid we might not have time to die on a RATING 12 astral quest what with the beast clawing and tearing at our unconscious bodies. As for raising magic to 12? Our conjurer is impatient. (Though Rasumichin's suggestion of the adrenalin pump would help immensely in that case).

Awards:
While many people had wonderful and helpful advice for surviving the drain, that was not the subject of this topic. I can give no awards for those suggestions.

Rasumichin: You have been disqualified for using the false plural "boni." Sorry.

Coldan: You get an award for speedily suggesting mana static + sniper. Simple. Elegant. No massive explosions.

Sunnyside: Your idea of drones with stick-n-shock wins the lowest skill award. Drones have no skills per se. Quite the welcoming committee.

Ryu: I think your one big 50,000 gun might be cheaper than all the drones we'd need for something with that much reaction and edge. It's all good if we can give it to a teammate too.

masterofm: bonus award for your thoughtful step back from the whole process. Do-nothing may be the best thing.

Honorable mentions:
Heath Robinson for the biggest boom.
Jaid for a sound understanding of the mechanics.

Okay, even with that house rule, you should definitely be thinking about burning Edge. If she actually gets hit with 20P Drain, odds are she's going to go past her overflow instantly. The only way to survive this is to burn Edge, and invoke the Escape Certain Death clause.

Very nice but it does not answer the topic's question. I'm more interested in creative ways to kill things than ways to avoid the need. That's the reason I liked the explodo-bunker so much.

I told you - you just need a White Rabbit. It will rip the spirit apart. Of course, you may not be able to control the White Rabbit; keep a Holy Hand Grenade on hand just in case.


The reason behind this is not to increase your Drain Resistance, but to increase your Physical Damage Track / Physical Damage Overflow, significantly increasing your chances of survival.

Let us assume for now you have a Body 3 character. 10 Physical renders you unconscious, 14 Physical renders you dead.
Now, possess this character with a Force 5 spirit. 12 Physical renders you unconscious, 21 Physical renders you dead.
Your chances of remaining awake have increased, your chances of surviving have gone up significantly, even if the damage you actually take was not altered.

Personally, I calll them Vorpal Rabbits, sense I'm not sure they have to be white, and they seem to have the ability to instantly cut off heads and limbs.

On a more serious note, If your not a possession tradition, is the possession option even avalible?

Sure, if you know the right people. And I'm sure it cheaper than hiring a Magic 8 guy to fight a force 12 spirit head to head.

When humanity falls, squirrels shall inherit the earth.

If I recall correctly you can only take the Metaplanar shortcut to somewhere you've been before. If you've only ever been in the dark, windowless chamber hundreds of meters below the Earth the only place you can go is home.

Shame, I kinda liked that one.

Stick-n-Shock Drones is pretty good. Suddenly I'm liking a warehouse with a rail system fitted inside and dozens of Rail Drones.

The Ares Sentinel R is one of my all time faves. Cheap, legal, comes with a weapon mount, System Rating 4, can't be easily hacked and doesn't suffer from recoil.

Cracked Programs are cheap so Clearsight 6 (Opti 2), Targetting 6 (Opti 2), Tac-Soft 4 for starters. AK-97's are cheap, which makes smartlinking them fairly cheap.

Total cost, less than 4000 each including Ammo.

Although, technically, you're on thin ice with Stick-n-Shock. It still has 12 points of Hardened Armour against electrical attacks so you're going to have to use Called Shots and get three net hits to do any damage. A Logic 12 Spirit may well realize that it can just ignore such attacks from Drones that only have 10 Dice to start with...

Hmmm.

Smacking it down with Mana Static would certainly make your life massively easier. Although 'an uncontrolled Spirit may be brought back under control with a Summoning Test.' (BBB p180) so it might just be a lot easier to have a second Conjurer standing by in case the first screws up.

Re-Summoning it avoids the second pitfall I was going to mention.

If your GM is evil, which apparently he is, a Force 12 Spirit that knows your going to Disrupt it if it goes Uncontrolled will try to go Free when it becomes Uncontrolled. If it does all you've bought yourself is 28 days and the Spirits undying enmity.

Your character would need the metamagic -channeling- to be able to summon or bind the spirit. If the mage does not have this possessing themselves would be useless as they couldn't really be able to preform independent actions. Scaling up bound spirits to work towards a force 12 spirit is a good idea though if you are a possession mage w/ channeling. Also a spirit might not like to see it's spirit brother used in such a way and if it edges against you in either test you are in a world of death. Remember a spirit does not have to attack the mage. Generally a spirit will attack a mage if the mage critical glitches their summoning or binding rolls + it is really what the GM cares to do. If I put myself in the spirit's eyes I might not even kill the mage (assuming they survive the process) and just wander away hoping that the mage learned his/her lesson to never try this again. Would probably be something to laugh about with it's friends back on it's own plane. Also how does your mage treat your spirits? Are they cannon fodder or are you merciful and treat them with respect when it comes to most situations. I'd imagine that you would start getting a bad rep with spirits if you mistreat your spirits and can be another decision on if the GM will spend edge rolling against your character trying to summon or bind the force 12 spirit.



But first lets just look at how good of an idea trying to summon a force 12 spirit is. Before you even envision that if the character is a karma hoe the best option I could suggest is to buy up your dice pool w/ foci. Get a high level power foci, or a foci that will help you with drain, summoning, and binding tests (the first you will need to help you stay alive the other two will help you have a chance of getting a service.) You will need a lot of dice because generally a max speced out character can net you about 17 dice (8 logic troll [you will see why], + 6 for max skill, +2 specialization, +1 for drug usage) might not get you as far as it's 24 dice. Is your tradition logic based, charisma based, or intuition based? Logic based tradition will probably be the best idea for this build. Trying to punch out your racial max is also good idea, and also if you are looking to take crazy massive physical I hope you rolled up a troll with a high body or else you might just want to let this idea go. Logic is easy because of cerebral enhancers can help you cap your racial max in logic stat. Summoning a force 12 spirit will on average will get about 4 successes so that is 8 physical right there. Now probably 4-5 of that can be helped by a drain test (assuming you have quite a lot of dice to resist it.) Even with edge you still might not resist all of the 8 physical. Maybe you have 1-2 P on your sheet now, and also assuming you were able to get enough hits to have a single service. Now let's say you are now trying to bind it. This crazy spirit will now deal out 16 P on average with a possibility of a lot more hurt, which means you are now reeling from the damage, not to mention you will probably have to spend edge to hope that you will get enough hits to gain a net hit on binding the creature (that's 9 hits you need.) Now back to the 16 p and most likely you will resist 4-5 again if it decides not to spend edge on either test. This might keep you on your feet, but it could also knock you right the heck out if you are not a high body troll. The amount of body you will probably need to stay conscious is probably around 9-10. The averages are not helping you even if your character is specifically statted for summoning/binding.

So lets run down what you would need for your character to even have a chance of summoning a force 12 spirit.

Your character will need 9+ body, max attributes for your summoning/binding stat, high skill stat, high level foci, at least 4 edge. This will give your character a chance of summoning/binding a force 12 spirit. Anything other then what I have mentioned I would just tell the mage to go home before he/she kills him/herself. Lets just work with the math first before you attempt to bring a force 12 spirit into the world as it will probably save your ass in the end.

@ crizh - the spirit gets 12 dice to passive dodge, but don't forget the burst rules. A long narrow burst from a drone is pretty vicious, but all a spirit needs to do is just take an action to go to the astral, and this beast will win initiative.

This is what will go down if I can look at the situation. The mage goes down hard, and the drones have been holding a single action which means they will each get a single shot on the spirit. If the spirit does not go down right then and there it will proceed to go into the astral. At this point you are screwed, because all of your drones are useless, and a spirit of that power will just move right out of the manastatic and now you can only attack it on the astral. It will have 24 dice to counterspell 24 dice to cast force 12 spells and take no penalty. It is a beast and if you don't dissipate it instantly you will probably lose everyone who decided to tangle with it unless you were able to summon and bind a force 10 spirit and a force 8 spirit which would probably be more of a challenge then the mages in your party.

A character needs Channeling to control their physical actions while willingly possessed. Unless you have a Gesture Geas, magical activities (spellcasting, summoning, etc) do not require physical action, and so are not restricted by possession.

Impotent and subdued with the exceptions of Channeling and issuing mental commands to the Possessing Spirit.

Endof.

So let the impatient drekhead go somewhere nice and quiet to commit suicide. On their own.

It's a Force 12 spirit. What makes you think it hasn't been there, or knows someone who has? It's way smarter than anyone in the group.

I'll just put the Kibbosh on that straight away, if you don't mind.

While, fluff, many traditions appear to summon the same individual spirits time and time again who gain more and more experience of the sixth world, crunch, each new summon is vanilla and has absolutely no chance of having a random list of favourite vacation spots.

God, can you just imagine the mayhem players would cause with that sort of nonsense.

'Ah, yes, but I am summoning an ancient spirit that has visited the inner sanctum of the Aztechnology Pyramid many times....'

Not likely pal...

I think he was thinking more like 'if a spirit has been summoned before to this world why would it tell the person who summoned it where it's been and what it's done?' It might be a closed book as far as it is concerned to the spirit. It might not ever have to tell the mage how it was summoned and where it has been (maybe a spirit is only compelled to share it's experiences from when the mage summoned and bound it.) It might have even been summoned in the 5th age of magic the last time it was on earth so asking it questions would make no sense and probably confuse the mage (maybe this was back when it was force 3 and has now grown up to be a bad ass force 12.) Maybe it can travel to the last location it was summoned, but it might not really be that magical floating city residing above mount olympis as it crashed thousands of years ago. It would be almost as if the mage tried to ask about the plane the spirit resides on. I really doubt mages would be able to make sense of it and might even dismiss it as just nonsense. I mean how much is really known about spirits? Can they be summoned into other metaplanes? Are they always truthful and just blindly serve the mage? A force 12 spirit knows that it's bigger and badder then anyone in eyesight, and probably has had enough time to think things over while the mage is begging for services as their brain starts to leak out of their ears. It probably doesn't need or want to tell this piddly mage the last time it was summoned and the details involved.

I think it would be cool personally if you summon a force twelve and it has some twists to it even if you bind it with a few services. Like it only speaks or takes commands in a dead language that was used in the 5th age (although I know that mages have a form of telepathic link with the spirit so that wouldn't really work.) It would be pretty cool though.

While I am down with all of that sort of fluff the net result is that it end-runs a major piece of crunch and allows spirits to escape confinement with trivial ease and then insert something large and sharp up your unsuspecting bottom.

If you want to include fluff like that then you are going have to alter 'Meta-planar Shortcuts' to include text to the effect of 'since it was last Summoned' to prevent player abuse.

Add any fluff you like to justify it.

'The Earth has moved vast distances in space since previous visits and previous co-ordinates are meaningless'

'Fluctuations in the Manafield that happen in between summonings render previous experience worthless'

It has an unbalancing game effect and therefore has to be countered.

That's false? I thought it was just pretentious.

Unless you use it for the singular, of course...why does everybody use foci and nexi as singular?

And remember, even in the fluff Mages don't agree whether "summoning" a Spirit is calling forth an existing being or is "merely" aminating a mana field with aspects drawn from the Mage's own thoughts and beliefs. Hells, forget spirits for a moment, they can't even agree on what the metaplanes really are.

just my two cents... havent read the whole post so sorry if i ask something already answered:

couldnt you summon a highleveld spirit on a plane, which surrounds the earth so that there won't be sundown or sunrise for the people on the plane ?
You could theoretically summon even a level 24 spirit... or higher...

or have i forgotten something?

Heck, head for the Arctic Circle and go nuts....

well also an idea.. haven't thought of that... might be cheaper.... but might also be less comfortable

Don't get me started on Spirits that last six months at a time...

You forgot that a force 24 spirit will average out 16P for your drain?

well more like 16 p and then 32 p if you want to bind it... that and you have to be magic 12 to summon a force 24.

Have you read Nosferatu? Nasty...

The way I see it, unless you have really, really powerful characters, you have three options, and two have already been mentioned:1) Buy him off. Really, find a contact for the spirit and make nice. A force 12 spirit is a rare thing, one mad at a character means he's dead unless he smiles and pretends he's more than a little slow. The "He didn't mean it, he's a bit dim. What can we do as a token of our thanks for letting us all live?" option may be your best bet. It's also a great hook for a run if your GM likes it.
2) The "Who?" option. Hang him out to dry and come up with a new character. Any character that gets a force 12 spirit that mad at him probably deserves it. If your game is a "noir" style game this is probably the most realistic answer.

3) The D.B. Cooper option. Hide. Really good. Change your astral signature, your look, your name, your residence, everything you can. Disappear so well the spirit never finds you. Of course your GM may make you retire the character.

Honestly, I don't see any other way to survive.

There are a couple easy solutions. The first super easy no mus no fuss solution is to get behind an F6 ward. Astral project some where far away, and with less than 1 hour until sun up/down. If you get KOed you are back at your body and the spirit has less than one hour to find you. If you are behind an F6 ward they have 1 shot to make a threshold 11 test on 24 dice. Not likely. If you are as over cast happy as this build would have to be, you could even throw up a 12F ward bumping the threshold up to 17. That's unlikely even even if they blow edge on the test.

A similar option that is likely to be available to a magician of this power level is Flux. Pull a similar astral projection stunt to start off. But once the magical is KOed the team revives them, and the magican starts using Flux to completely shutdown the tracking attempt. Just Flux until the clock runs out.


What trumps all this though is having another magican to watch your back an uncontrolled spirit can be brought under control with a simple summoning test.

Um, this guy died about six hours ago.

Astral Projection, max time = Magic hours.

For that matter, can you summon while you're astrally projecting?

And even then, remember that this is a Binding test, not a summoning. Even if a spirit can only use the metaplanar shortcut to go places it's been with its current summoner, odds are that you probably didn't summon it in your secure circle.

Trying to bind a huge spirit like this right after summoning it is suicidal. You need to take at least a small break in between, to push off some of your Drain and the associated penalties.

Ok, so you would have to use shade and/or Astral Gateway.


About the summoning I get the impression from my co-GM that summoning and casting on the Astral used to be more complecated in 3rd ed, but in 4th it's I don't think there is any mention one way or the other.

given that binding requires the use of binding materials, i generally would guess that you need a physical form to bind.

also, to the buried chamber idea, i should point out that the spirit would be on a remote service simply by being that far away. since the service is just to be that far away, and remote services nuke all remaining services, it would then cease to have any remaining services, and have completed it's remote service, and would simply be able to return to it's home plane.

Then detonate only the first 50m run, and detonate additional 500m

I chose 600m because that was the limit. Force 12 Spirit, Magic x 100m = 600m.

If you want to be Anal about it, 599m. OK?