So one of my players asked me a question today:

Given that the number of spirits you can bind depends on Charisma, what happens if a magician's Charisma is reduced, whether by a Reduce Charisma spell or the after-effects of drugs?

Do some of their spirits become unbound (potentially going free if their Force is high enough)? Can they just not bind any more?

Similarly, if Charisma is increased somehow (again, magic and drugs seem most likely, or using the optional Cosmetic Surgery rule from Augmentation), can the magician bind more spirits?

The specified limit on bound spirits is Charisma, not natural Charisma. So yes, the current limit can be changed around. Excessive spirits would have to go free, as you are not allowed to have more bound spirits than Cha.

I don´t think that there is an implant that increases Charisma, and the cosmetic surgery rule I found also gave +x to social tests.

Aye, the only thing I've seen that raises charisma outside of qualities is the genetic optimization.

And magic...

and nova coke

and karma...

I don't believe this possibility is specifically addressed anywhere. As a GM, I wouldn't take away any excess bound spirits if the character's charisma dropped. If they're already bound, they stay bound, but you couldn't rebind any currently bound spirits, to add to the number of services they owed you, if you had more spirits than your charisma should allow. You wouldn't be able to rebind any spirits until you voluntarily dismissed some, or used up their services and lost them, in order to achieve a valid number, after losing charisma.

Daxtier has it the only RAW implimentation of the charisma limit is



So where's that Wudowaka and nova coke!

If your Charisma drops, your maximum number of bound spirits also drops. If this goes below your current number of bound spirits, you loose them (although I would allow the player to choose which are lost, or default to the lowest Force).

I agree, but it does not per se say that. The interpretation of "condition.consequence" is also very strong, our "limit.limit" one is not the only one.

If your lowered charisma meant that one of your spirits went unbound, how would you decide? Most recently bound spirit? Currently active spirit? Random selection?

Player selection.

I imagine a scenario in which, for whatever reason, the shaman runner, with charisma 4 and 4 bound spirits, gets high on nova coke. He's flying high for a few hours, then he crashes and sleeps it off.

It makes no sense to me that, when he wakes up, all but one of his spirits will have abandoned him. Somehow, while off 'on call' in astral space, where they had been left to their own devices for a week or more, they decided that the passed out shaman no longer had the force of personality necessary to maintain control over all four of them. They drew astral straws and the water spirit had to stay put, while the other three went their separate ways.

To me it makes a lot more sense that the character's charisma comes in to play only when they are actively trying to bind or rebind a spirit to get more services from them. A spirit doesn't get to welch out on the services it owes because it no longer finds the magician to be as charming as he seemed when it was bound.

I think the way Ryu and Muspellsheimr interpret things is perfectly valid, and no more or less correct, but I'd make a different call.

My 2 cents worth falls with Ryu and muspellsheimer.

Charisma is more than the ability to talk someone/something into doing what you want. It has an astral element that represents personhood and projection of self. If that projection is impeded, then it temporarily loses some of its ability to enthrall spirits across space/astral space.

Charisma is the astral correlate to Strength. If you lose Strength temporarily, you can't carry as much.

Peter

More accurately, if you loose Strength, even temporarily, you must still drop some of what you are carrying down to your new limit.

I can still see Draxtier's point though. While you may own more gear than you can carry. If all you have is a knife and your clothes on you, it doesn't really matter if your strength drops down to a point where you can't carry your 8 grenades, 2 smgs, and panther cannon.

I think the rules clearly point out that you lose the spirits when your charisma drops. However I can still see the argument for not doing it with a temporary drop in certain circumstances.

Using the same analogy from before, yes, once your Strength returns to normal, you can again carry your full suit of equipment. You must, however, go retrieve it before you can do so. In this case, retrieving your equipment means rebinding your lost spirits - you can again "carry" your full 5 spirits, but you must first go get what you had earlier dropped.

It's not an unreasonable stance, and does seem to fit the strength comparison. One thing a GM might consider as a middle road is to require a new summoning test, but not require a new binding ritual - instead, ignore the net successes of the summoning. As long as it gets at least one net success (and even if it gets 20), consider it a re-instatement of the bound services of that spirit. Or, if you want to consider the successes, require one net success per bound service recovered, and cap the net successes at the previous number of bound services. Just a thought.