Since unregistered sprites only last for 8 hours and spirits only last until sunup or sundown, is it even possible to register a sprite of Rating 9 or higher or a spirit of Force 12 or higher (assuming that you get about 12 hours of life out of an unbound spirit)?

Yes. The sprite sticks around until the registering (or spirit/binding) is done and either succeeds or fails. The 8 hour limit is not enforced during the registering process.

Dear gods....

OK, folks, you heard it from the big boss. Sprites/Spirits sticking around is canon.

All she said was that they stick around while you register or bind them. As for registering sprites, the technomancer has enter a VR meditation with the sprite for a number of hours equal to the force. The sprite ain't doing nothing, the technomancer ain't doing nothing. What's the big deal? As far as the magic goes, it's a ritual to bind the spirit, so that's all the mage is doing. No big deal either.

The problem was that now, you can bind a force 18 spirit/sprite, whereas before it wasn't possible. Heck, if you've got the stats for it, there's now no limit to the size of the beastie you can bind.

Previously, you could only register a Force 8 sprite, because of the time limit. Now imagine a Force 16 Assist Operation dice pool!

You need a pretty epic character to pull it off, though...

Not really. I've personally had a Force 16 spirit appear and be bound in my game, when I thought the spirit stuck around. That spirit could almost break a game by itself. The PC was a dedicated summoner, but hardly one of the uber-builds.

There's also the burning Edge trick, where if you fail, you burn Edge to beat the spirit's roll/drain. It costs you 9 karma, under SR4.0.

By all means Cain, quote me the rule and page reference for your "Edge Trick" because I certainly don't see it in Spending Edge (p. 67, SR4) or in Burning Edge (p. 68, SR4). Note: I'm using the SR4 book not SR4A, since you called that one out specifically.

The closest I can see, is achieving a critical success, but that second line of not being able to buy it if you can't achieve it puts a stop to a lot of crap. (Unless of course, you ignore that part of the rule...)

And I'm assuming the cost you quoted is for an Edge of 3, burned to 2 and rebought?

Mmm... I guess you're right. At least it's quite possible. With edge burning the GM still has to agree that "the character is capable of carrying out the action" and decide that the spirit won't also be burning edge, though I don't know if I'd resort to things like this.

My games have always been real gentlemanly, so this have never even come up. Still (or maybe because of this) I like the fact that there's no hard limit on what you can do.

Besides, those pesky Great Dragons need their double-digit-force spirits

Which is a Teamwork Test, & thus not going to exceed your skill rating, & is not guaranteed to be maximum bonus.


And this has been covered numerous times in the past; the game defines 'no chance of success' as 'dice pool of 0 / no roll allowed'. Regardless of the threshold, if you can roll, you have a chance of success.

Not sure what it was in previous editions, but according to SR4A, raising an attribute is 5x new, not 3x new.

Muspellsheimer--I would also say that without the Rule of Six, on a Dice Pool of 10, it's impossible to get 14 hits and thus preclude the Burn. And as the Burn does not allow the rule of six, it would be impossible to do.

It's simple. You spend Edge normally, giving you exploding 6's and thus a shot at infinite successes. When that fails, you burn Edge for a critical success. You could have rolled it normally-- and in my games, I've witnessed it happening without burning Edge-- thus, it's fair game for burning Edge.

And before anyone gets their panties in a twist, allow me to remind everyone that the rule only prohibits *spending* more than one Edge on a particular action. Burning Edge is a separate animal, and you can burn however much you like. There's just no reason to do so.

Bottom line is, the time limit was the only thing preventing bound force 18+ spirits from appearing in the game. There's ways around everything else.

Yeah, Muss' has tried to convince me of this before and I ain't buying now either.

You cannot Burn Edge on a test you have no hope of achieving. Period.

Next you'll tell me that Mr Lucky can spend Edge to have a pool and then Burn Edge to get four net hits.

I don't think it needs saying that you can't Burn Edge on a test you could not succeed at without spending Edge.

Because there is no such thing as a test you cannot succeed at if spending Edge is allowed.

Frankly if I were GM'ing and someone tried this the Spirit/Sprite in question would Burn Edge in retaliation.

On the subject of the OP, good luck Registering anything higher than Rating 9 Sprites. Without stupid amounts of submersion and massive amounts of karma spent on Resonance there is an effective cap of about 25 Dice on your Registering Dice Pool.

Other little things help. Especially Widget Crafting. But it was a question that came up in my game yesterday, since I wanted to try to register a Rating 9 sprite and our party mage wanted to try to bind a Force 10 spirit. Thanks for the answers!

You'd think that the people who wrote the rules would realize this. Based on the rules, you'd be wrong.

Binding a Highforce spirit is easy. Travel north of the artic circle, such as Longyearbyen during late Apirl. Summon any force of spirit you wish. You have weeks to bind it.

So the question is, Why does Cain hate technomancers.

Time isn't really the problem.

DP's and Drain are the problem. Possession Traditions have a slightly easier time of it but after a certain point you are working out how many boxes of damage you can survive instead of how much Drain you can absorb. You don't want to get into an Edge pissing contest on the Binding Test for a Force 16. You could easily end up having to soak 40 boxes of damage.

And you are considered to have a chance of success if you can make a roll, regardless of how many dice you are rolling.


You cannot succeed at an action you cannot actually perform, which is where the limit on burning Edge is supposed to apply. You cannot succeed at summoning a spirit whose Force is greater than twice your Magic, regardless of if you use Edge or not; thus, you cannot burn Edge for a critical success. Similarly, you cannot cast a spell at something you do not have a link to, & cannot burn Edge to do so, or you cannot attack a target beyond your weapons maximum range, & cannot burn Edge to do so.

It says this where? Page reference?




No you don't even get a test in those circumstances and therefore by your own logic have no chance of success.

A test you cannot succeed at is one where you have insufficient dice to meet the threshold or where the GM has ruled that circumstances make success impossible.

You are also ignoring the factor of degrees of success. You may succeed at a task with only a single success. Critical Success is only achieving 4 net hits on the test.

Drain, for example, is not a success test with a threshold. There is no success or failure. A Critical Success is, arguably, only 4 net hits which is far from ideal on a Drain Test against a high Force Spirit. The same could be argued about opposed tests.

And what happens when the Spirit counters with it's own Edge. What happens there?

Binding and Registering aren't one of those tests, though. You have dice, and with the potential of exploding 6's, you have a chance to succeed.


I've personally witnessed a PC summon and bind (and invoke!) a force 16 spirit, when I forgot about the sunset rule. It's be awfully petty to tell him he can't burn Edge when he rebinds the spirit. I mean, it's clearly not impossible-- he did it once, he can do it again.


I call GM cheese. NPC's burning Edge, except for HoG, is the ultimate in cheap and unfair GM tactics.

but it's not cheese when the players do it?

it smells rather like a male bovine critter deposited a load of excrement in the general vicinity of the above quoted statement.

I will say this
There should be a fair, equitable system for when GMs burn or use Edge. Without such a system, the game merely boils down to favoritism.

I have fair system at my table: If it will totally screw the party, I use Edge.

BlueMax
/not lying
//makes them try to never rely on on action
/// I like it that way

while a force 18 bound spirit would be absurd spirits seem to get on the broken side past force 8, its just a matter of degree past that point. It would be rare IMO for anyone to be able to pull off binding really high force spirits on a regular basis. And I really don't care about the burnt edge issue. If a player wants to abuse things they will find ways to abuse things, deal with the player not the rule that works fine in most cases.

No, because it costs the players Karma to pull it off. They can't burn Edge forever, while the GM can.

Oh for heaven's sake, the same tired old argument again?

Apparently, it's still a problem.

It's still a problem only to those who feel the need to convince others to come around to their own view. Most of what has been said here has been said before, and no one seems to have changed his mind.

I have to admit, though, that I am surprised by Tiger Eyes' revelation that spirits stay around during the Binding process. That seems to me to have come out of left field, and I really don't understand it.

Tiger Eyes, is there any chance you could explain why the Binding process overrides the sunrise/sunset limit for unbound spirits? It isn't as if the binding takes effect at the beginning of the ritual - the Test happens after the ritual is over and uninterrupted.

The original Roll & Keep rules for 7th Sea had a system that tried to keep things fair and equitable. That game had a mechanic similar to Edge and GMs pool was based on the number of players and their stats. Instead of players having an Edge stat, they got a number of dice equal to their lowest attribute. GMs got 1 dice for each player, plus the value of the highest attribute of the PCs. If you wanted a system like that, here is how I'd adapt it to SR4:

GM has an Edge pool that is equal to the highest Edge score of any of the PCs plus 1 per PC in the group. So, a 4 player group with the highest Edge of 3, would give the GM 7 Edge dice to use. Their pool would refresh at the same rate as the players. I'd add in that if a GM Burnt an Edge, it would permanently reduce their pool; however any PC that Burnt an Edge point would increase the GMs pool. GMs pool is all they have for any and all uses throughout the game (Hand of God survival, reroll failure, etc., the NPC limits of Edge would further limit some things since a GM couldn't use 4 Edge throughout an encounter for an NPC with an Edge of 3.)

This isn't how I handle things, as I don't have a problem with Edge abuse in my game. But if you want a way to 'balance' players and GMs to prevent Edge shenanigans, then thats what comes to me off the top of my head. Anyway, just my two cents.

Simple. It is no longer an Unbound spirit once you begin the Binding process. It is still not considered Bound until you successfully complete the ritual, but once said ritual begins, it moves from Unbound to 'Being Bound'.


We have always run it this way, because it does not make sense otherwise.

I call foul on this line of reasoning...

If you have a threshold of 12 becasue the Spirit that you summoned rolled really well, you have no chance of success if you have a dice pool of 10 (unless you spend edge)... Period...

Argue that one...

Now, when you spend edge, that rational becomes somewhat nebulous because of the Rule of 6...

But... If you chose to spend that Edge to attempt such a foolhardy task as binding a Spirit beyond your means, then by all means do so... When you fail, You cannot "Spend/BURN" additional Edge to garner a Critical Success... You were incapable of success before the Edge expenditure originally, and you failed in your Edge gambit when you were still unable to obtain the requisite number fo successes... so at that point, You have failed... Suffer the consequences...

Yes... It is the same tired argument all over again...

Yes, you can. I'm not at home right now, but the books make it abundantly clear that spending Edge and burning it are two totally separate things. You can indeed both spend and burn Edge on the same test.

I think he meant that you can't use edge to make the impossible possible, and *then* burn edge to do the impossible (now possible due to exploding 6s). Not that the rules disallow burning after edge use in general. Point being that success should be possible in the first place.

crizh said it well... You can't use edge for this "Because there is no such thing as a test you cannot succeed at if spending Edge is allowed."

Burning edge is still a viable option, as the hits needed seldom exceed your dicepool. I guess each GM will handle this in their own way.

Choosing the "right" environment for binding and observing sunrise/sunset is a matter of style. A binding ritual finished in the first morning light is a very nice moment.

The real trick to getting powerful spirits is a combination of Invoking, Centering, Power Focus, Centering Focus, Binding Focus, Trauma Damper, and Platelet Factories. With that you can summon up force 7-9 greatforms regulary - spending edge on the drain test. (Yep, I know. Start saving up on the karma and ¥.)

I'm pretty sure Power and Binding Foci are incompatible. Unless you can still use Binding Foci for drain which I'm pretty sure you can't. Can't check the PDF's just now as they are on my WinXP partition....

RAW, the only focus capable of increasing Drain resistance is the Centering focus. And if your concern is for binding 'powerful' spirits, I would disregard Centering & take Sacrificing instead.

At least pre-SR4A they could. It is IMO their premier use.

Thank You Zormal... That was exactly what I was saying...

Crazy high level spirits (and I presume sprites?) just break games. Most sane GMs would be forced to say, ahhh no, not allowed in my game... for game balance reasons.

I wouldn't say they break games, but it does force the GM to apply a decent response. At one point or another reality will come knocking at the characters door. There are a lot of groups out there that would love to get their hands on a character with such power.

If word gets out that a certain mage has these awesome Spirits bound to him he WILL (sooner or later) become the target for (unwilling) extractions, memory wipes, insert any and all badass megacorp/syndicate tactic.

If any of my players would decide to try stuff like this I would tell them the potential consequences if they screw up the summoning/binding + the consequences if the shadows got word of this feat. But if they somehow pulled it off I see no reason to deny them their moment of glory.

PS: I don't allow the burning of Edge to get a critical success in a contested roll, so this hasn't occurred yet. The most anyone tried to bind was 7.