Ok so absorption doesn't let you hold a charge that long. Binding oh say an F12 spirit takes half a day. Do you see the drain happening all at once at the end of the ritual per the letter of the RAW, meaning that you could be zapped at the end just before you finish? Or do you see the drain "taking place" over the course of several hours, and would by fluff require several "doses" of spells cast at the binder

You can't use absorbed mana to negate binding drain. It can only be used for spells.


If you want to negate binding drain with metamagics, I strongly recommend Sacrificing and a heavily augmented troll.
(Seriously, using RC rules and creative augmentation you can have a metahuman pincushion who can negate 6 points of drain for you at one time without dying, assuming that you have someone on hand to Stabilize him immediately)

I'm imagining the troll who's been Sacrificed to almost-dead several times, brought back several times, and then I'm imagining the troll who's emotionally abnormal and *likes* being that close to the edge of death.

"Your friend here is mostly dead" but with Fezzik rather than Wesley.

There's an alternative: get a cow, summon a Guardian or Task spirit, use Invoking to make it a Great Form spirit with Endow, and just before you sacrifice the cow, have the spirit Endow it with sapience. Triple the sacrifice value, and you can always get another cow, especially if you're at the slaughterhouse which supplies Aztechnology with beef for the high-end food market. As I said in another thread, if you only use the cow for beef, tallow, bone powder, leather and ornamental horns, you're not using *all* of the cow; if you're gonna kill it, use its death for something too!

Thanks for pointing out spells only; that's in the text of Absorption, and good for game balance.

This thread is a lot less interesting now that I've noticed that "s" in the title. I need to get some sleep...