With my current character, a Mage with a Magic attribute of 8 and Summoning/Binding 5, binding spirits with invoke has been a bit of a gamble. While I've bound a F6 Air Spirit in Great Form, any subsequent attempts have usually ended with me eating 16+ points of drain, which, needless to say, renders the whole ability kinda useless.

So, how can I make this more reliable? I've got no Foci thus far, but my lifestyle incorporates an aspected domain. Summoning/Binding are also unspecced; the spirits available to me are Guardian/Air/Man/Guidance/Task, and the tradition is Materialisation based, with Wil+Cha as Drain attributes. What specialization do you guys recommend?

Well, for one thing, quit trying to summon at F6+.

Half the beauty of Invoking is that you can get more bang for your buck from lower Force spirits provided that you have the dice to consistently score 3 hits or more on the Invoking test, which actually isn't that hard if you have a mentor spirit, specializations or foci. Even a Force 3 Spirit can serve well as a second line combatant with LoS(A) Engulf and an extra Optional Power, and you can still always summon real bruisers on the fly if you really have to. Plus, it's quite cost effective to bind weaker spirits since it's easier to rack up more services when summoning. Jacking up a weaker spirit to Great Form status can end up being the difference between using Astral Gateway every once in a blue moon and being able to have the ability on call for multiple sessions.

there's nothing safer than knowing there's a force7 great form plant spirit with B18 A14 R17 S19 up there to help you out, if things go wrong
but i used Edge 3 times....

i usually use my sustaining focus with Increase Willpower for Binding processes

Well, our games tend to be pretty high-powered and deadly, with everyone else sporting a dicepool of 18+ on their main abilities, and most enemies have at least some degree of Cyberware and/or IP boosters, so I don't really think a F3 Great Form will make any difference, since its dicepool is so low that everyone simply resists the Engulf.

Force 3 isn't as bad of a deal as you might think with the right spirit selection. For example, a Force 3 Great Form Guidance Spirit can provide decent counter spelling backup via Magical Guard to any mundos in your group and can wield LOS(A) Fear, which is Magic+Willpower vs. the target's Willpower. That means they have at least even odds against nearly anyone and will average a net hit against a Willpower 3 opponent. It's not lethal, but it can definitely take a target out of combat for a turn or two or force them out of cover, and with their Great Form power they can force things to go dual natured, which is rather fun if you're well-suited to ambushing people with your Astral Form. Perhaps that's not as scary as a high force Spirit, but the binding materials are cheaper and the drain is a hell of a lot safer, so you can actually make a good run at meeting your bound spirit maximum without spending an arm and a leg, and the number of services you get is high enough that spending them on a trifle becomes less of a big deal. Besides, you can still always summon a Force 6+ spirit on the fly if you really want a big bruiser. I tend to go that route anyway, since a Force 6+ spirit will usually be a fairly competent threat of whether it has GF powers or not, after all. Heck, such Spirits often don't really need any extra optional powers anyway, so Invoking them is a pinch redundant.

Ok, Guidance spirits seem to be a prime candidate for low Force invoking. Looking at Air in particular, Storm with a F<6 seems kinda lackluster, and even though I have a Force 6 Air Spirit invoked (optional powers are Elemental Attack, Energy Aura and Fear) with 9 successes on the invoking table, the Elemental Attack/Engulf with LOS(A) seemed to be way better than Storm.

The thing about Storm is that it has a truly massive area of effect by street level Shadowrun standards-- you're just not going to be able to find other stuff in the books that threatens physical damage over a 600 meter area, much less one you can call to your side quickly. It's just something that's more useful as a GM tool than a player ability, that's all. I'm sure an army would find it to be a fun way to ruin somebody's day, but runners generally want to both up the intensity and the discretion.

Great Task spirits have Endowment.

Here's a link to a thread with some ideas about the Endowment power.

Highlights from the thread include things like giving yourself the Materialization power, never glitching again for 500 bucks and a point of karma, enhanced senses like Low-Light or Thermal for the same, counterspelling for yourself and force other members of your party at the level of the force of the spirit you invoked, and for Mystic Adepts, a force 1 spirit can give you Astral Form so you don't have to worry about not having access to the astral like a full magician.

Also, on the handling the drain front, you can always summon/bind one or two Spirits of Man with the appropriate Increase Attribute innate spells. Just have them cast and sustain them while you do your summoning/binding. You should also do the Invoking/binding during downtime so you can recover from your wounds, or do it in a sterilized med facility with someone or something with extremely high first aid skill and a med kit (this can include a Task spirit) to heal away the damage. If you are overcasting and afraid of instant-gibbing yourself due to drain, you might also want to use the Shapechange spell to take the form of something with more body. All those hits divided by 2 turn into extra damage boxes.

Just use Edge. 16 DV Drain should be no problem to survive (no need to resist it completely, as you do not do Binding in the midst of a firefight, anyways).

Or do it the broken way and get a Pain Editor.

Bye
Thanee

Of Course, a Pain Editor will not work if the Force of the Spirit is greater than the Magic Rating of the Summoner...

Keep the Faith

since he has a magic 8 i farkin hope he aint summoning great form versions higher than his magic..

Yeah, I would hope, but this IS Dumpshock, and there are more than a few references, here in the forums, to Force 10+ Spirits beiung summoned...

Keep the Faith

What kills me about it is that people don't seem to accept that by the RAW the practice of binding powerful spirits is roughly as safe and sane as shooting yourself with an APDS loaded heavy pistol. I mean, I'm sorry, but it just shouldn't really be considered routine, no matter how people try to spin it, particularly since you can't just magic away drain damage.

I am in total agreement with you there Whipstitch... I cannot fathom that myself, but there are a lot of arguments for the practice... Just not from me... as for teh healing from Drain... Apparently First Aid is the magic Bandage for that... Something else that I do not really agree with either...

Keep the Faith

Yeah, I mean, I don't forbid it at my table or anything, particularly considering that a Magic 8 Magician is a pretty powerful customer and shadow running is so dangerous-- You can after all make the argument that not having the backup is more dangerous than taking the risk in a somewhat controlled environment. But with that said, I do find it a li'l off when people discuss it as a routine thing. I mean, ouch.

Indeed... With me having witnessed a gigantic beatdown on a Summoning from a Force 5 spirit (10 Successes for resisting Summoning, 20 Boxes of Stun), I just do not want to even contemplate spirits close to the double digit range, even if they are ONLY Force 10...

Keep the Faith

In a way the randomness is the saving grace and the worst part of the whole deal. You get so much power out of the deal and from time to time you don't even pay much for it, so I can totally see why someone would be tempted to bind a big hitter. Of course, other times it's like getting hit by a not-so-small vehicle. It's a toughie.

Well, First Aid kits don't work vs Drain on our table, so you're actually limited to binding them during downtime (which isn't that much of a deal, since we have a Technomancer). However, I would like to avoid getting implants for my character, since it just doesn't fit her. And no, that wasn't a double-entendre

In our games, having a few higher-level spirits at your disposal is crucial, since the opposition usually employs weaponry able to wound anything beneath F6.

depending on tradition the mage might see drain from summoning/binding as sacrifice or symbol of worthiness. so, the more damage taken the better...
it's not like people cut their hands or eyes for mumbo jumbo reasons - oh wait, they do.

Binding high force spirits is just brutal. Force 8 means its rolling 16 dice to resist you it will usually be causing 10DV in drain and 14+ isn't outlandish. Still I do not like the shooting yourself comparisons. Physical damage covers a wide range of types of damage and getting shot just exaggerates the visual a bit too much IMO. My way of looking at it is more along the lines of exercise fatigue. Stun drain is aerobic exercise, physical drain is muscle building weight training. When you are trying to bulk up the muscles a bit you are tearing the muscles and when they rebuild they get bigger and stronger. That is why when you weight train the fatigue lasts for a couple days and not minutes to hours like with aerobic training. You are tearing those magical muscles down and if you go to far you have a magical hernia or even a total collapse and die.

But given the randomness of spirit drain it is not wise IMO to bind high force spirits often because eventually the dice will go against you.(day one if you are me) Summoning though, eh unless you have TJ's tables rule going where all spirits above a certain force use edge you can be fairly safe in summoning force 8 spirits. Yeah its possible the DM will roll 8 for 8 successes but it is really unlikely. Still I'd say my spirits hover around force 3-5 normally and if I am expecting a big fight or am caught off guard by one I'll risk a force 8. Though the concealment power is just awesome sauce at high force so I can see going for high force there a lot. Add in invoking and you are just insane to go for high force great forms. 15DV drain on average for a force 8, who can shrug that off? Even if it is stun only you need 5-6 hits on your drain test to stay conscious and not have the spirit go free. It rolls 6 hits on its 16dice and you need to resist 18 DV and even with edge most mages are unconscious there.

Agreed. That's why I tend to summon my heavy hitters on the fly and bind li'l guys en masse. I use bound spirits for their modifiers and utility powers as opposed to expecting them to actually win fights, which is why as crazy as it sounds I've been known have Summoning specd in Guardian or Fire spirits while having my Binding specd into Task, Guidance or Plant, for example. As far as combat is concerned, just because a Force 3 can't solo can encounter doesn't mean that they can't contribute, after all-- there's still penalties for being outnumbered in melee or having defended against multiple attacks in a single pass. Likewise even a guy with a Will of 5 is likely to break if 4 Force 3s start force feeding him Fears. Beyond that, there's the simple fact that Spirits can let you have a proxy in a few places at once, which is pretty nice when you consider what Movement, Concealment, Guard and Magical Guard can bring to the table. There's also the potential for Task Spirits making teamwork tests together, which can get pretty ridiculous pretty quick, particularly since bound spirits stick around long enough to meet even Extended thresholds.



I only made the comparison because they don't have a damage code listed for say, the kind of cell death that occurs after crushing trauma, so guns are a better analogy for the severity of injury we're talking about in terms of pure lethality. Unless you're pretty specialized or holding back dice, you're going to resisting the drain with roughly a ten or so dice and not much else while binding a force 5+ spirit can easily result in damage codes of a DV of 5 and up, so as far as straight line comparisons go it's fairly apt.

Where does it say in SR4 that you can hold back dice from Spellcasting/Summoning to lower drain? I looked for it, and it was nowhere. I know SR3 had it, and my understanding was that it was intentionally done away with.

Hrm. I'm away from book, but there's a pretty decent chance that it's one of those things that I've allowed for so long that I couldn't tell you for sure if it's RAW or not, because usually I can just point right at a page number by memory, and in this case I cannot. I'm almost 100% certain that at least dice from foci can be withheld to resist drain, but like I said, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong because for once I'm drawing a blank. Sorry about any confusion.

The ability to withhold casting dice for drain was removed in 4e.

The ability to withhold focus dice for drain was removed in SR4A.

It seems like SR4A is forever tweaking things that never bothered me a whit. And yet the grenade rules...

Oh well.

Hear, hear!

Yeah, this is one that caught me by surprise, as I was convinced it was still around, and even told a new Shadowrun player he could do that. I then double-checked to give him a page reference, and to my surprise, it wasn't there!

I considered house-ruling it back, but to tell you the truth, my players never take drain damage, so making it a little tougher so that they MIGHT take a box or two when they cast too hard is not a bad thing. Maybe that is why they took it away in SR4/SR4A, was to make it a little painful given the new dice mechanic.

Giving up dice to reduce Area-of-Effect IS still there, though... Doesn't seem consistent. Still, it is a "meh!" from me either way.

Of course, back on topic, the loss of this option when Binding/Invoking/Banishing Bound Spirits makes it even MORE risky in 4th edition, as this is one of the few times when Drain becomes significantly high.

Actually, my point was that I hate grenade rules :-/

Or cast Shapechange multiple times, following this list, to get up to a Body of 12 (plus extra damage boxes from extra hits): http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=940920

I would not allow this as GM, nor I think would many others.

Well, it is mechanically not very smart... for each spell, I would enforce that you would have to maintain it to keep the baseline body rating to qualify fo rhte next spell... so after 2 spells, you have lost 4 Dice, and then it is -6, -8, -10, etc. By the time that you have actually climbed that ladder, you have so many dice penalties that you are pretty ineffective. I mean really, -12 to any action (Sustaining 6 Spells) is just brutal. Good luck doing anything... You could, of course, sustain them with Foci, but that route leads to addiction...

Keep the Faith

You could also have spirits sustain them.

With a possession tradition and the Channeling metamagic, you could channel one of the spirits to increase your Body stat. Depending on the force of the spirit, it might be nearly as effective as a whole chain of shapechanges.

Indeed, forgot about that one...

Keep the Faith

Just wanted to ask what tradition you have, It looks nice for my next PC elven summoner... or is it a custom tradition ?

Looks Custom to me... what with the 4 most favorable spirits out there...
It appears to be a variation of Voodoo, but with Water replaced by Air, and the Spirits are Materialization rather than Possession.

Keep the Faith

It's a custom tradition based on Greek mythology, where every spirit represents one of the Greek gods:
Zeus=Air
Athena=Guidance
Hephaestos=Task
Ares=Guardian
Hades=Man

Of course, you could switch some of them, e.g. Poseidon=Water, but it's a shame you're limited to 5 spirits per tradition. With the Greek gods known for their capricious nature, Charisma seemed like the proper Drain attribute. My mage, who happens to be an elf girl, has an Ally spirit named "Hercules", who combines some of the gods' traits.

Or, if you go toxic, I suppose you could call him "Kratos"

Do you have any Flavor/Fluff text describing the Tradition at Large?

Keep the Faith

Yeah, I've got a general description that we use in our group. Note that the original was written in German, and I've translated it on the fly:
The Greek Tradition
Concept: With the rise of magic in the 6th world, the belief in the Greek pantheon has experienced a revival. Greek magicians typically worship the pantheon of the twelve Olympians, though the worship of lesser demigods and heroes is not unheard of.
Combat: Guardian
Detection: Guidance
Health: Air
Illusion: Man
Manipulation: Task
Drain: Willpower+Charisma
Modern Greek religion is based upon the worship of the twelve Olympians though rites and ceremony. The traditional pantheon consists of Zeus (King of Gods), Hera (Queen of Gods), Poseidon (God of the seas), Demeter (Goddess of fertility), Hades (God of the Underworld), Hestia (Goddess of Home and Hearth), Aphrodite (Goddess of love), Apollo (God of art), Ares (God of War), Artemis (Goddess of the Hunt), Athena (Goddess of Wisdom), Dyonisus (God of Wine), Hephaestus (God of craftsmanship) and Hermes (Messenger of the Gods). They typically reside on Mt Olympus, with the notable exception of Hades.
Unlike other faiths, the Greek gods are not infallible; in fact, some were rather infamous for their vices and debauchery. The results were demigods, and some Greek revivalists believe that their powers are derived from such divine intervention. Others view it as fate’s will, for even the gods themselves cannot defy fate. All agree, however, that the gods are capricious, and to earn their favor, one must tread carefully.
Some see themselves as oracles, interpreting fate's will, while others call upon the denizens of Elysium and Tartarus to assist them.

No, it was removed in the fourth printing. The Anniversary is the sixth printing.

Interesting... I like it...

Keep the Faith

My bad, sorry.