This seems to be glossed over in the rules. Each tradition has 5 spirits associated with 5 different categories of magic. So what does this mean? If I'm a hermetic mage going into battle, must I summon a fire spirit? will my spirit of water look at me like I'm crazy if I ask it to fight or go look for something? It says that this association limits how a bound spirit may serve the mage. I just don't see much explanation or details. Any input would be appreciated

All this means is those are the five types of spirits that you use to sustain those types of spells, something almost never done because frankly there are better ways to do it.

Those types are also used for Aid Sorcery and Aid Study.

yeah, essentially if you want the aid sorcery, aid study, sustain spells services, etc, you have to use a spirit that is linked to that kind of spell. fire spirits are linked to combat spells, but can still perform non-combat services like search or guard (as in the anti-glitch power... provided they actually get those powers, that is) .... just don't ask one to aid sorcery for your detect life spell. a water elemental can be ordered to bash in that ganger's head... but don't ask it to help you learn manaball.

ok, I guess that makes sense. Hardly seems worth the distinction.

Why? Other wise any spirit could do anything, and the distinctions of the Traditions would not be very distinctive, would they?

Keep the Faith

What I'm saying is that the Distinctions,as they are, seem insignificant. the only difference is what spells they can help you with. Big deal. If your traditon sees water spirits as illusionists, but you can have it do whatever, then what's the difference? it can't sustain your combat reflexes?

Keep the tag line

Well partially it also provides for what spirits the tradition CAN summon. I will agree that the distinctions are not huge, but by the same token without distinctions like that we get into why have traditions on specifications on such things at all. The crunchy bits are not show stoppers I'll concede that but they do provide a glimpse into the traditions mindset.

Agreed... and there is nothing stopping you from fluffing out the tradition a little more. When I use a tradition, I always go to the trouble of fluffing the individual spirits into something that more resembles the tradition... Instead of a Fire Spirit for the Black Magician, it is a Demonic Deceiver Spirit thta attempts to coerce you into doing its own things (even though its powers never change). It makes the spirit a little more interesting than just "Fire Spirit," and it differentiates it a little more from the Standard Hermetic Fire Elemental (Who has their own flavor text that is different than the Wujen's Spirit).

The reason that there is very little differentiation (in the books) is so that they (the authors) do not have to do all the work. There could be an infinite variety of Fire Spirits and an infinite variation of said spirits by Tradition. Rather than use up page space/word count on the differences, they leave that to the individual tables and GM's. Some people may not like that (The Authors are lazy, or whatever), but I, for one, actually do. My ideas of a Fire Kami may be (and probably are) different than someone else's ideas... At least for me, this keeps the game a little more personal.

Anyways...

Keep the Faith

Trust me, when Peter Taylor and I were writing the Traditions for Street Magic, we easily could have gone on and on with detail about the spirits for each. But not only is that a bad use of word count, but in my opinion, it's less fun! If a player has a really cool idea for his spirits based on his tradition, I don't want to invalidate that because I put my spin in print in the book. I prefer to present guidelines and inspiration and let the players and GMs take it from there.

No, I know that Demonseed Elite... which I appreciate very, very much. I enjoy doing that kind of work myself... especially if I learn something new in the research process that is generally involved with such a thing.

Thanks for the Consideration... Great Work!

Keep the Faith

Actually I think this is part of the problem.

Especially w/ custom traditions... people just pick the best spirits and normally pair it with intuition. No thought is given to any symbolism other than combat is guardian... why because guardians are fighters.

No thought is made to the philosophical basis of the spirit picks and how they fit into the traditions.

Just a sentence in each one would have been enough. According to chinese mythology the fundamental elemental energies of the world are air earth wood metal and fire.... (wuxing). (kinda boring as most others I'm aware of are more based on the old greek idea of air earth water fire and aether). I'm an engineer not a writer... but I'm sure a professional writer could find a way to quickly summarize the animating idea/philosophy behind the tradition and link it to it's spirits.

It looks like your talking about two different things here. Custom traditions are a different story because the player and GM are making them up, they may not be using the guidelines in the presented traditions at all. Now, custom traditions are supported by the mechanics of the game, but if players and GMs are using them to just make cookie-cutter power-gaming traditions, that's a disservice to the idea. I might not like it, but it's their gaming table.

The second thing you seem to be saying is there isn't enough material in the tradition descriptions covering the spirits for that tradition. That's debatable, though I did try to describe at least a bit about the spirit relationships in each of the traditions I wrote. To take your Wuxing example, if you look at page 43 of Street Magic, the whole second paragraph of the Wuxing tradition description talks just about the spirits. It doesn't specifically say "fire spirits will look like this and do this..." but it does give players and GMs some guidelines on how to present the spirits.

I don't want to hijack, so I'll only say this and not reply further on this first portion. (consider it just gamer feedback)

Most often when I point out it is supposed to be something worked out WITH the GM and not told to him... you get angry responses like you see in some posts. It's *MY* character, and the rules say I can do this. And the way that paragraph in the core book is written it does tend to favor that interpretation.

You write as if it's a cooperative GM and the player making it up. No thought is given to things like, how does this tradition fit into the rest of the game world... who exactly teaches it?! (most often followed by self-taught)... where do you go for spell formulae specific to your 'tradition'... etc. There's a lot of ways to make life hard on them (spell research alone takes forever and a day!). A lot of other things aren't tradition specific like foci. A tradition of one is going to have a hard time finding research materials and such to bulid it's magical lodge. Nothing is written in such a way as to encourage such things as what is the animating philosophy of the tradition and build from it.


On the more on thread portion.
This lack of a core animating philosophy differences does tend to make all traditions more or less feel 'the same'. I don't like prior eds where every tradition had it's own special rules. I really like the 'grand unified theory' of magic approach in 4th.

But what you're describing there is more cosmetic. How it looks and acts is cosmetic (and eats up word count)... the bigger question which allows people to get a better idea of what is suitable is WHY it acts and is associated. This is what tends to be lacking. This gives the GM a much better idea of... the fire water spirit was ordered to do this... and in this circumstance what fits best w/ the spirits view and interaction in the world... (IE; why does the spirit act the way it does when it has some latitude). Or why will the spirit use edge/be uncooperative to fight the summoner if the means go against it's raison'detre.

Those reasons and such, do tie into why this spirit is with this tradition and why is it bound to this school of magic.

All true. Yes, if the players are given full latitude to customize their own traditions and the GM takes himself out of the process, it can be abused. Or it can just be lame. There's always that trade-off when you give groups options to customize things. How each gaming group plays it is their prerogative; in my gaming groups where I am the GM, if a player told me they wanted a custom tradition, generally I'd have them tell me what they are looking for, thematically, and then I (as the GM) would design it (with some feedback and compromise from the player). Obviously, that's not how every gaming table does it, that's just how I did it.

It's a philosophical thing about gaming, I will admit. The things I write tend to be written with some cooperation between GM and player in mind and with the idea that the GM makes the final calls. We could write it as hard-asses, eliminating group latitude so it's RAW or nothing, but I don't personally like that approach, so it's not what I write.




Well, there's a lot of flexibility there even within a spirit type. One Earth spirit may not act the same way as another Earth spirit, even within the same tradition. Let me give an example, falling back on the Wuxing tradition mentioned above. Let me portray two different Earth spirits. Earth spirits, in the Wuxing tradition, are associated with the Detection school of magic. So both spirits will be flavored as being "detection-oriented" members of the Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy.

Diamond-of-the-Five-Winds: Diamond-of-the-Five-Winds is a respected official in the Celestial Bureaucracy, a historian of the Celestial Record, an observer of all events, large and small. She appears as a man-sized white Eastern Dragon, her scales shimmering as if made of diamond. Diamond is a passive observer, her job is to see all things and record them, but not to interfere. If summoned, she will be very cooperative if asked to assist with a Detection spell or asked to track and observe something and report back to her summoner. She loathes attacking or otherwise interfering with an event and will resent being bound to do so.

Fa'shu the Tireless: Even the Celestial Bureaucracy needs someone to do its dirty work, and Fa'shu is that spirit. He is a bounty hunter and a tracker, a tireless stalker of those that must be found and brought to justice. He appears as a tall, muscular man of Mongolian descent, the dust of endless roads covering every inch of his skin. Fa'shu has little patience for academic pursuits and will bristle at the idea of tutoring flesh-bound magicians. He lives to track and hunt his prey and would much rather be ordered to bring down the unjust or find them wherever they may hide.

So, yeah, two Earth spirits from the same tradition, with different outlooks on life.

the openness makes sense. I like creating my own look and feel, and i appreciate the responses. I just felt like I was missing something. Leaving it up to the individual spirit is interesting. Could throw an element of surprise into the whole spirit realm. Of course my players might just think I'm a dick when I tell them their air spirit has no interest in fighting, so its doing a real half ass job of it.

As long as your consistant about it they shouldn't really have a problem, sure they'll be annoyed when their air spirit really doesn't want to fight but they'll be quite pleased when they get a spirit that materializes to pummel their enemies without consuming a service because it's itching for a brawl or that makes tactical decisions they might not have thought of because it's in their personality to do so.


One thing I briefly wanted to touch on is this seeming belief that if your good to your spirits you should always get more miles out of them, sometimes I think it's just as reasonable to think your spirits will provide better services because their pants wetting afraid of you.

Hasn't been my experience, although I could see how that'd happen. Still, it's kinda irrelevant. No amount of wuxing summoning fluff can make a dull custom tradition more interesting.

While I generally try and limit Summoners to mostly use spirits in their traditional roles, lest they upset them, I really do like this example and idea. It encourages mages to rebind spirits whom they decide mesh really well with them on a personal basis, otherwise, they get a slightly inconsistent result from their summonings.

This is how a guy gets an Ally Spirit.

The differences in spirits are insignificant mechanically. The GM can add some personality fluff to the spirits, but end of the day they all will fight when you tell them to they all have a very similar power set etc. In previous editions the differences within your tradition were not much larger than they are now but the differences between the spirits a hermetic could summon vs a shaman were much more significant. I preferred the less homogenized traditions of the past even though I felt mechanically shamans had a solid edge on mages.

Hasn't been in mine as well. So far people have basically taken the mechanics of a different tradition and re-written the fluff to fit a tradition they like. Or at most changed a possession to non-possession or the opposite. But the lack of guidelines will lead to that in different group types and it is something I wish they had spent more time on to help GMs with unruly groups.

i got the impression the personalities were slightly based on what powers you wanted the spirit to have. if you summon a spirit with the elemental aura and elemental attack abilities, odds are you're getting one that prefers fighting over other activities, for example. this also has the advantage that the more powerful the spirit is, the more personality you wind up giving them

Well, part of the problem is that it's a "Traditions don't kill games, munchkiny Magicians do," kinda deal. For example, it might rub people the wrong way to see a tradition with Man, Guardian, Guidance, Beast/Plants and Task all listed, since other than plant/beast all of those are generally considered to be the "best" at particular niches. And yet, if it's a tradition that's based on life, ancestor worship, reincarnation or personality archetypes as opposed to drawing upon the elements, such a setup could rather make sense, fluff wise. Would such a tradition have less redundant abilities than one that focused entirely upon elementals? Yes, but ultimately it isn't very pronounced unless the Magician in question really goes out of their way to wring some sort of advantage out of every type. After all, most traditions have at least one type of Spirit that is excellent enough that you could concentrate on it to the exclusion of other spirit types and still be in very good shape-- once specializations are factored in people tend to stick to one or two types anyway, I've found. And then there's the niggling fact that the Voodoo tradition already does feature a classic Guardian+Guidance+Task+Man+Whatever grab bag, so it's not like such a setup was ever really considered taboo by the devs to begin with.

Well voodoo is close to that. I do think it is a powerful set up, and I even made a Necromancer tradition which other than the fluff rewrite was voodoo but not possession and it was fairly powerful. With the dark father as mentor I interpreted the water spirits as symbolizing a transition to the great beyond, much like the river Styx. I am not sure it was the best set up, for example air is IMO better than water. And I am sure people can find reasons for the other spirits being awesome as well. Still like I said I don't see it as that big of a deal since it was using an existing tradition rewriting the fluff and changing one part. Heck in many ways possession is a better tradition, a bit less versatile except with watchers but more of a combat powerhouse. One metamagic into the game and geek the mage first becomes a fairly difficult proposition. Was that broken, no more than voodoo IMO. And while yes players are the problem in this scenario a simple line reinforcing that this is a GM call not a player one would have done wanders to curtail problems in this arena. Sure it should be obvious that this is a GM call, but you need to reinforce game basics here and there.