I have a player that summons a spirit of beast (platypus) with the confusion power and fear. Aside from mana static or ebbs and suggestions on how to combat the confusion and fear bomb. The player has agreed to not summon the use the platypus of doom.

I would rather not have a prime runner mage randomly walk by and banish the spirit and beat the mage silly.

A spirit protecting the NPC's with Magical Guard? Players abusing a spirit? Have the spirit begin using Edge to resist the summoning. Make the players realize that these are entities that are likely older and far more powerful than the PC's themselves. They don't like being pulled away from their home metaplanes and told what to do by some impudent mortal.

Actually they do. See, spirits grow in force by "eating" magical energy. When a mage summons a spirit, he's effectively saying "I'll give you some magical energy if you do things for me." The spirit counters and tries to get the LOWEST number of tasks out of the deal it can (maximize profits).

High force spirits tend to have more failed summonings due to them saying, "fuck off mortal, you don't have anything you could offer me." Essentially saying that the amount of payment the spirit will get is so low for the tasks that it decides it'd rather stay unemployed (and it's already a force 10, screw going to the material plane I OWN MY HOME PLANE BITCHES, why listen to the piddly little mages?).

I think tech2.0 is concerned about the abuse these powers heap on the opponents of the summoner, and wonders how to deal with a power that seems to be overcoming typical opposition, not so much how the spirit itself might be abused. Correct me if I am wrong, tech2.0.

Issue brought up by earlier posters still may apply, though. Confusion and Fear become really nasty when the spirit is of larger Force, and so you should ensure that all the difficulties attendant to summoning high Force spirits are applied: everything from drain during summoning and binding to arrogance on the part of the spirit. It should be really tricky to control a creature that is twice as smart and willful as the summoner.

The problem was the player would summon the spirit most of the time as a force 5, but once as force 10 and have the spirit use confusion then fear. the play has agreed to not summon the spirit so much as everybody has seen what happens. I don't want to just beef up every goons wisdom or add a mage just to banish every encounter. Adding more bodies or primes seem like a GM vs PC move.

Funny story, I managed to summon a force 10 spirit once with my bear shaman . . . an 18 year old girl . . . I remained concious through liberal applications of edge on my resist drain test, and the GM glitched the spirit's resistance test.

Fun times, fuuuuuun times.

That is what happened for the force 10, I glitched he did not. bad day for goons.

I critically botch at least once a game. That's why I now have a Force 16 spirit to deal with.

Clearly that spirit hadn't been summoned in a while and was desperate.
It still took a lot out of you though (force 10's feed hard and deep, but that one served you a while for it).

First of all, if you are fighting a group, remember that each of these powers can only be used on one target at a time and both take a complex action to use, so the spirit can't freak out a whole group at once and, in fact, will take a fairly long time combat-wise freaking out multiple opponents. Also remember that each use of a power commanded by a summoner is one service. So using confusion and fear both on two goons is four services (and would take 4 separate complex actions, plus the actions required for the summoner to direct the spirit in what it wants done). Also remember that mana barriers may block mana-based critter powers that aren't always on (which fear and confusion both are), so wards or such are effective. Finally, remember these are LOS powers, so any goons that are somehow concealed from the spirit's sight are immune.

If this doesn't work, think about what would happen to a magician who went around summoning bad-a$$ spirits to terrify and confuse every goon he fought. It would be sort of like if a Sam brought a Gauss rifle to fight all the local street gangs in the area - it would move up the food chain. Yeah, the low-level goons get wasted, but then higher ups like the Mob or Yaks or Triads start wondering who this powerful person is and whether he's a threat or could possibly be controlled. Lone Star starts getting interested - who is this person a why is he using these powerful spirits all the time. They start trying to search for him by noticing traces of his aura left at crime scenes through the action of his spells and spirits and try to bust him. And these groups know about the magician's modus operadi - a powerful beast spirit - and prepare accordingly.

Remember the "Me Troll Mage" tactic I posted(the one that the mage casts Armor on the troll while he hides behind the troll)? An MO can function very well as bait too.

As a tangent, this is why if your target has any smarts, you do not rely on countermeasures for his past tactics. Especially with game mechanics like SR, it is far easier to develop a second line of attack than further improve a very good existing method.

Last time he glitched the spirit's opposed test, my GM ruled that it meant that the spirit was a bit stupid... It wasn't that good for us, even if he owed the mage a lot of services (I guess that made it even worse).

[cough]Bulldrek[/cough]

Only if the mage is major stupid about the way he words his instructions.

'Kill every Orc in Seattle' is one service and the Spirit will continue it's rampage until Disrupted or sun-up/down.

How competent is the rest of the team? Is the computer and fire support on par with the spellslinger? If not then you'll want to "upgrade" them before considering my suggestion. If they're of similar power, then it's time for the team to start hitting harder security. The kind of security that requires F10. I'm of course talking about Hard Corps Security, an Ares Macrotechnology subsidiary separate from Knight Errant.



There's other possibilities you might want to explore first, such as possession tradition security mages. Breaking into the homes of Ex-Tir Nobles in Seattle. And even game focus changes, such as putting the team as security or bodyguarding. Conjuring a Force 10 Spirit everyday to protect some executive or field researcher would be undesirable, and it'd give other team members lots to do.

Does it manifest? If so, Stick-n-Shock FTW. Or Stun Batons. Or Shock Gloves. Or Flamethrowers. Any weapon that halves armor = really easy to get around ItNW. I know because I favor mage NPCs, and my party prefers SnS ammo (they're trying to be nonlethal).

(emphasis mine)

Materialize.

Wagemages aren't exactly rare. Uncommon, maybe. Security at a facility of any significance is likely to include at least one wagemage for security purposes. If that still irks you, then consider adding more technological challenges such as security drones.

I shoulda known better. Thanks.