When an awakened character binds a spirit, are the materials used up in the process or can they be reused?

Yes.

They are consumed in the process.



--EDIT--

Just "yes" didn't seem fair

What about when they rebind the spirit? it says [quote]"...use the same material components again..." and then lists the price again. Is this saying that you buy new components to rebind the same spirit or that you use the same materials? Where in the book does it say the components are consumed?

What this is saying is that you will need more of the same type of materials as before, so if you bound a force 4 Fire Elemental, you'd need 4 units of binding material that is specifically for Fire Elementals, so no using your Spirit of Man binding material leftovers to attempt a re-binding of a fire spirit.

...which, sadly, makes rebinding quite unattractive in almost all cases. Dismissing your used up spirits and resummuning others to bind usually nets you more services per Nuyen (as you get to make two tests to accumulate services while only needing materials for one of them)...

There is nothing that I can add to what Typhon has said rules-wise. I just wanted to add that in terms of role-playing, I try to invest some flavour into what the PC is buying and using. It's a little deflating to say "I use 1,500¥ of binding materials" when they could say "I light the sandalwood bonfire and begin invoking the spirit."

You get problems with this because you role-play yourself into a corner. The next thing you know is that the PC has bought some sandalwood saplings and is trying to grow their own binding materials on the roof of their squat. But with a little careful forethought, I reckon it adds to the flavour of the game These are sample bits of flavour that I'll either use in my game or have been used on previous occasions.

• Burning sandalwood and other fragrant / rare woods: Summoning a powerful spirit of flame
• The entrails of a dog which had been fed the entrails of its parent dog, which had in turn been fed the entrails of its own parent dog: Summoning a Beast spirit (what else) with the entrails held on high and invocations screamed at the sky (that was a shaman, obviously).
• A Seal of Solomon in gold, lain into the floor with pain-staking precision. The Jinn (high force Spirit of Man ) appeared in the centre of the seal, the mage trying to bind it whilst the gold slowly bubbles away as the spirit strains to escape the process.
• Feathers of a Thunderbird for summoning lesser air spirits (nice and portable, one feather per spirit, but illegal in both UCAS and the NAN).

Just some suggestions.

K.

I don't recall off the top of my head, but do the rules for using Enchanting to gather telesma and other materials cover binding materials? If not, I'd imagine it shouldn't be that hard to adapt them for such. Would give some rules backing to the "self-gathering" mage (and means they don't need to wait years for those saplings to grow ), and some possible adventure hooks for the GM.

It does give rules for Binding Materials. They're classed under Ritual Materials and take an Enchanting test and four refined telesma / two radical telesma per rating point. So if the GM lets you use the cheaper forms of reagents, you could actually save a small amount of money. at the cost of some time. But really, I don't think most players should be concerning themselves with saving the odd 100¥ here or there and if they've paid for the Enchanting skills then personally I'm all for giving it to them. I love more flavour for my game

We did the same thing at our table Knasser, the Hermetics (back in SR3 when they were the only ones that could, but I guess we'll do it with shammies too now) would bind a spirit they would need a large quantity of the element they were going to summon, so Summoning a fire elemental required the materials to create a large bonfire, air elementals required large amounts of incense, earth elementals would require large blocks of clay or semi-precious rocks and water elementals would require a kiddy pool filled with water, rubber duckies optional


Still not sure what a mind elemental is going to require, a pile of brains perhaps ? hrm, maybe a some grave dirt or if you wanted to go for the new age angle a large amount of quarts crystals?

A mind elemental? I'm not sure - a sustained Mind Link spell across multiple participants who focus on creating a gestalt entity under the guidance of the summoning mage? An entity which remains after the scafolding of the linked minds is withdrawn. It would then betray the odd memory, personality quirk of any of the or emotional impurities in the meld.

Or if you wanted to go with a more emotional impact, you try to coax it out of the emotions of a large number of people. What would an joy elemental summoned at a festival be like? Or a sorrow elemental at a tragedy? You could create equivalent costs for whatever materials you needed to direct / focus the emotion - maybe your quartz crystals.

I know that it was mostly a throw away joke, but I'm going to run with this. The reason I'm avoiding brains as a component is that this is very scientific thinking rather than magical symbolic thinking. If there's anything that SR magic's worldviews and SR's science worldviews disagree on, then its the nature of mind: Chemical processes in the brain or something that is distinct from the body. Seems wrong for magic to concede the point when summoning a spirit.

If you want something that does seem spiritually intuitive to me, a void. An area blank of thought. At most, the slow unconcious life-urge of plants but ideally nothing. Then it would seem natural that a mind should arise in such a vacancy as nature abhors a vacuum. So far as I know, all the biggest religions (and I don't really want to go into this, but I'll mention it) begin with a mind emerging from the void. I know Egyptian myth did and I know in Taoism that's the case. Other religions go without saying.

K.

p.s. You do realise that you probably inherited the "large quantity of the element you want to summon the spirit of" from a certain Other Game which had that as the spell component right back in boxed editions?

I had my first use of the binding-skill yesterday evening and it (or I) sucked like hell. Before that i didn´t had the materials because my local talismonger is an incompetent brat.^^ I tried 2 times to bind spirits and both times it didn´t worked out (spirit got more successes than I).
I could have used edge for the re-roll, but it was right before a big run and i thought that i had more use of it to an more important point of time.

But before i forget what i wanted to ask:

1) i managed to summon the spirit (fire-spirit / 5 net successes) and tried to bind it. The materials where about 2.500 Nuyen (in the german book the text says 1.500 Nuyen per force-point, the equipment table says only 500 Nuyen) and the ghost got one success more than i had for the binding test. We thought that the materials had been used up, and i KNOW that i have read it somewhere that this happens, but we couldn´t find it neither under the corresponding sections in the core-book, nor in the street-magic-book. So where the f**ck did i read this? Please help me.

2) does this only happen to me, or is binding really a pain in the ass? The stupid ghost gets dice double his force and the chances to bind a force-5 spirit are nearly 50:50 if you don´t excel in binding. I have magic 5, binding 4 and a specialization for fire-spirits and even that is nearly balanced.

3) if binding fails, the spirit becomes uncontrolled NO MATTER how may successes i had on the previous summoning test? AND the materials are used up? AND he is going to beat the shit out of me?

I can't find it explicitly stated that the binding materials get used up even if the binding fails, but the closest interpretation of what it says suggests that. After all, it just states that the binding process requires the materials, there is no statement that if the process fails you get to keep them. To be complete, I can't even see anything that says they get used up, though that was true in previous editions. So unfortunately the best I can offer is that in my own game I run it that the materials are used up regardless of success or failure. The sammie doesn't get her expensive missile back just because the target dodges.

But that does suck that your character lost out. I would say that your character took too much of a risk in trying to bind a Force 5 spirit. Magic 5 and Binding 4 are good, but without enhancing it further with Foci or Mentor bonuses, a Force 5 is actually slightly ambitious. I guess it depends a lot on the power level of the game. In mine, even a Force 3 spirit is pretty useful (a "teleporting" servant that can set fires, damage electronics, take down security guards, scout out the terrain or distract enemy spirits, Aid Sorcery). A force 4 will probably be about the standard "Go To" level for binding when our group finally gets a magician (assuming they are into binding at all).

I do have some good news for you regarding (3), however. The spirit only goes uncontrolled if you are either knocked out by the drain during the binding process or if you Critically Glitch the test. (SR4A, pg. 189, main text and in side bar). There's nothing to suggest that you lose existing services either. All that normally happens if the Binding fails, is that your spirit isn't bound. You can even try again, if you want to!

Hope this helps. I'd advise either grabbing some Force 2-4 elementals (using the cheaper, low force ones for more inventive purposes) or grabbing a Spirit Focus. Or both. Specialisations in a particular type of spirit are a cost effective boost as well.

K.

Great, thank you especially for the last answer.^^ We had to overflew it yesterday and we kept the research short to not interrupt the game. The next time i know it.^^