I've been playing Shadowrun for many, many moons but my group has come across a subject that we have never considered before. Can magicians from different traditions assign bound spirits to each other?

More specifically, I have a close combat mystic adept (shaman) who, for flavor reasons, has none of the conjuring skills. Purely by chance, another player happened to make a hermetic who has a strong focus on summoning. Could the hermetic grant me the services of one of his bound spirits to sustain my spells? And if so, who's viewpoint would be used? For example, if I were to use a manipulation spell, would it require the spirit to be of man since that's the shamanic outlook, or earth since it's a hermetic mage's spirit? (I might have the aspects mixed up, I don't have the books with me atm)

There are rules about donating services to another party. I believe they are in Street Magic.

They might also be in the BBB as well.

They are in the BBB. You are looking for "Loaned Task" under tasks available to bound spirits.

True.


Gotta catch 'em all, gotta catch 'em all!

Yep, I knew about that part. I just wasn't sure how inter-tradition spirit use would work.

A magician or technomancer can even loan services to vanilla-normals.

Cool, cool. And how would one determine which spirit to use to maintain a given spell? As per page 179 of the BBB, the spirit has to be of the appropriate category for the spell. Say I'd like a spirit to maintain my deflection spell, would I ask to borrow a spirit of man since I'm a shaman or would I ask to borrow an earth spirit since it was conjured by a hermetic? Or does it matter so long as the spirit matches manipulation for one of us?

Umm... It would work as the Summoner's spirit classification?

Ex: A shaman using a Hermetic mage's Earth spirit to sustain a spell could only use it to sustain Manipulation spells instead of Health spells. Mainly because the spirit is formed and imprinted by the mage summoning it, not the mage using it?

Does that make sense?

Actually, yeah. Now that you say that, it seems fairly obvious and I don't know why I didn't think of it.

I know that your shaman doesn't conjuring skills, this is still cool as multi-mage party trick.

Summon a spirit and have your teammate banish and summon it. then evoke it. good times. good times.

Like a magical "Chinese Firedrill"...

For example: An aboriginal Air spirit is going to remain looking like a "terribly wise platypus" (ROFLWAFFLES!!!!1!), even if the hermetic mage it's loaned to Air elementals normally look like mini tornados with eyes.