So why would someone ever try to banish a bound spirit? Even an unbound one would be scary to get rid of.

Allow me to explain: Mage with 5 banishing and 6 magic vs Force 5 bound spirit with a caster with magic of 5. so 11 vs 10 dice. Lets say the spirit owes 4 tasks.
Round 1: mage gets 4 successes vs spirit's 3 (1 net success, down to 3 tasks)
Mage now resists 6 drain. Lets say he has a 5 will and 5 logic, so 10 dice. Lets say he roles 3 successes. He takes 3 damage (and is now minus 1 die)
Round 2: Mage gets 3 vs spirit's 3 (0 net successes)
Mage now resists 6 drain. He gets 3 successes. Mage takes 3 damage. And is now at -2

At this point the mage is now at a disadvantage in his dice pool. The fight is not looking good for him. That is without taking into consideration hat the spirit has his own edge to spend in this encounter, and without having the spirit actually attacking the mage. Let alone the summoner of the spirit.

I'm hoping that I'm doing the math wrong, or that I miss read the rules. I really don't want banishing to be completely worthless. Please someone, correct me if I'm wrong.

Banishing always has been vastly inferior to the option of simply blasting a spirit away with something like manabolt or spiritbolt. It actually would have surprised me if SR4 had changed that ...

Bannishing is only good for Pokemon Mages. I think there was an option somewhere that allowed you to fight the initial summoner for control over his summoned spirit thingie. But that was about it.

It's always been easier to just blast a spirit, I suspect that the 'banishing' option was written in for 'atmosphere.'
also remember the originally aspected mages could do either sorcery or conjuring, not both. Banishing is a way for conjurers who did not have access to mana-bolts to deal with spritis. In our game aspected conjurers do a good business with the public, as mediums, and dealing with clearing out haunted houses.- think of Whoopi Goldberg in "Ghost"

And of course if you're slightly crazy with a highish Charisma, you can take Banishing and some Tai Chi (via the Martial Arts quality) for doing Attacks of Will. Which I've half pondered for my aspected Mystic Adept, simply because it might be easier than getting combat spells of usable level...

and for role playing it might be better to banish a psirit than to get a rep for trashing them in combat.

Think of Harry Dresden and how he deals with smaller faeries.

If you want to save the vessel, banishing is probably the better option against possessing (or maybe even inhabiting) spirits.

A force 5 bound spirit with 4 tasks is pretty impressive, because that caster with Magic 5 is rolling against the spirit's force x 2 to bind him, with the spirits total hits x2 being the drain he has to resist. Even a super dedicated binder of one type of spirit (Magic 5 + Binding 6 + Specialization 2 + Mentor Spirit 2 + Binding Foci 3 = 18) is going to be looking at 2-3 services per binding. And if you've noticed the spirit, the Binder has probably already used a service up: "Kill those people!"

Edit: Binding for Summoning. Duh!

This is the way to get a spirit that is outside your normal tradition set.

And here I thought that having a magician of another tradition as a contact and paying him to assign his bound spirits to me for some remote service goodness was the way...

If you want to pay for foreign spirits that is an option as well. Stealing spirits is only costly if you wish to bind them. This also has the benefit that the binding mage cannot revoke the usage rights at will since you bound them yourself.

There are a few threads bouncing about somewhat similar and I was posting in another less relivant one when something occured to me.

I, Mr. Generic Hermetic Wizard banish and then re-summon (and possibaly bind) a spirit controled by Mr. Not-So Generic Houngan Voodoo priest man.

Do I have a possession capable spirit in my roster of tricks now? No doubt an angry as all hell spirit (Ghede does NOT approve this message and will no doubt make you sad for your imputance). But its still mine right?

Got it in one. You can have the spirit possess you and everything; you can even bind and Invoke it if you're brave.

I can't recall but are there any modifiers or Positive Qualities you could apply which would aid in Banishing?

I'm thinking of some aspected conjurer or dedicated shamanic full magician perhaps who treats spirits as either gods or friends and is able to develop a strong rapport with them. I mean the fluff text is quite clear in discussing spirit abuse, but surely the inverse could be taken to mean that magicians who treat spirits well will get a good rep in the Astral, and thus more inclined to trust them over Mr. Average-CorpSec-Hermetic-Mage?

- J.

I'm not sure if Spirit Affinity would apply to banishing or not. I'd tend to think not.

But other than buying that edge, I can't think of any way of "building a good rep" in the spirit world.

If you want friendly spirits then get spirit affinity. You can also take spirits as contacts or get the free spirit pact. Mentor also allows bonus dice for spirits as do foci.

I don't think any spirit appreciates being summoned and bound so treating your spirits well just means they won't attack you if they are released. I for one would allow a spirit who has been abused to turn on his master if "banished". I would also allow the spirit to aid the banisher with its edge to help free it.

What about not sacrificing them to take Drain? Helping free spirits? Emphasis on protecting astral domains and removing Background Count where you can?

- J.

Those may earn you cosmic brownie points, but by RAW, they don't give you an advantage with spirits. Only Spirit Affinity does that.

I understand that. I'm just wondering what sort of ad-hoc rewards would a GM be inclined to give?

As a GM I'm a fan of using the carrot and not just the stick (i.e. treat spirits well or they will burn you and you'll go to Hell). I'd award circumstantial bonus personally if I had a player in that situation.

- J.

You can always give a PC the edge at a karma discount, or even free. That'd be a good reward.

OK, I need to read up on 4th Edition rules here, but here's what I know from 1st-3rd Edition concepts. Banishing (Conjuring skill) a spirit is more dangerous/risky than simply attacking it with spells (Sorcery skill) or in astral space (Astral Combat skill - yeah, I added this one myself but linked it to Sorcery as a default).

In the latter cases, you merely "disrupted" the spirit and sent it back to it's native metaplane until it could recover and return to the physical/astral realms. now this would normally be enough to get you out of a fix in a firefight encounter, but long term it was no solution. the spirit could return within a lunar month minus it's Force in days, and it would be back to it's original Force too. Some spirits were also immune to being "disrupted" like this - mostly Free Spirits with the hidden life ability.

Banishing, however, completely and irrevokably destroys the spirit. It utilised a contest of wills between the banisher and the spirit in which neither of the two could perform any actions except to continue the contest or end it. You also temporarily reduced the Force/Magic of the contestants depending on the successes generated.

Banishing as well as spells as well as normal weapons only disrupt spirits in SR4. If they are bound or free they can return after the same time as in earlier editions. Only destroying a spirit on its metaplane truely destroys it.