I'm trying to create a spirit hunter type character (Think Constantine).

I dont usually play magic characters and I haven't dealt with spirits much other than shooting them. What would some good spells be?

Manaball?
Mana-Static?

I would go mystic adept. Pick up enhanced reflexes as a adept power, and maybe another .5 power points in detect magic. Then drop the rest into magician. Now you can cast two spells a combat turn and don't need to sustain increased reflexes.

As for spells, having mana/stun ball are always nice because spirits only have one condition track. But if you're going for a Constantine feel, I'd drop plenty of points into banishing, so you can just send the buggers back where they came from. An elemental spell or two might not be bad. If you have digital grimoire, there is a fire/water spell that catches the vulnerabilities of both fire spirits and water.

Banishing, while being underpowered compared to spells, is so much more fun fluffwise...
If you want a spell, look at some of the restricted target ones. Slay Spirit etc...even the Spirit Zapper might be fun

Banishing pays off, if you run into a Guardian spirt or something like that.
Or two guardian spirits assisting each other with counterspelling.

Can you counterspell spells that are not aimed at you?

since you add counterspelling to resist illusions and those are aimed at nobody, i guess so.

Slaughter Spirits: in case they mob you. You can drop it right on yourself; you won't be harmed, they will, and the drain is manageable.

Mana Static: against more powerful spirits, just take (part of) everyone's Magic/Force out of the equation.

Mana Static would also go well with Banishing, to soften up powerful spirits. Otherwise, Mana Static just paves the way for more mundane weapons.

This is a little odd.

There is a spell in Street Magic called Aspected Mana Static, but I cant seem to find the details of the spell anywhere.

Mana-Static creates a NO MAGIC IN HERE Zone. If you leave it, you are okay again. If a Spirit enters, it has a HELL of a Problem.

I get that, and there is a spell CALLED Mana Static, but there is no listing for ASPECTED Mana Static.

I would assume it's a more targeted version of Mana Static, but I dont see it anywhere.

*snickers* because it's been ruled out of existance . . mostly . . because it was so horribly overpowered ^^
actually, aspected mana-static 6 would have given the caster a +6 on every magical test in there and given everybody else in there a -6 to any magical test.

Thats kinda awesome.

yes, it is, kinda . . but it's still part of the reason why people bitch about SR becoming Magerun more and more . .

If I am correct about it, there was nothing stopping you from putting it in a Force 6 sustaining focus and walking around with it. (Since you would have been able to reduce the range of the spell, by withholding dices.)
It would have been the emo toy for magic.

Exactly. Which is the reason why the officials tried to make it disappear . . by not including it in the newer books anymore. i don't think it's been errataed out of existance, but simply not printed again. and that did not go as planned either . .

Especially considering it's on 189 of my digital Street Magic but it seems to be missing from the listing.

See what i mean?
it was so overpowered that it could not be dispelled anymore.

Aspected Mana Static creates a Background Count aspected to your Tradition of Magic. ANyone with the Same Tradition as the one who casts it gains the benefits of the Aspected Background Count. Those who are not of the same tradition suffer the consequences of being in a Background count.

Nice spell... But not the most useful there is. It is Area Effect, so you must actually concentrate to move the AOE once cast. Putting it in a Sustaining Focus does nothing to move the AOE. It just sustains the AOE at the point of Spellcasting.

Play an obscure Tradion. Bam! Instant monopoly on magic in the AOE. If that isn't a useful spell, what is?

Well, burning a simple action (IIRC) every pass to move it around with you, is kind of a hindrance.

Ensures you will not cast and move... which is damned inconvenient.

Of course, it is a great convenience for those Corporate Facilities that employ mages (Hermetics). Or those Vodoun Posses... Etc. You know, those people that you are running against.

Don't forget that astral entities in a Background Count take damage every turn, and that a spirit's ability to resist that damage is decreased because the spirit's Force is reduced by that same Background Count. That gets pretty nasty.

I guess you'd just need some Astral Barrier spell to keep them in the area, and you'd have a kind of killing jar..

You mean, a Trap.

@Ascalaphus
I thought this was only true for |BC| > 6.

The main problem is, that it(aspected mana static) would stack. Normal aspected BC of 2 form the Lifestyle rules plus another 6 from this spell lets you summon and bind very good spirits... (And resist the drain handsomely)

Set up shop somewhere and geomantically aspect background count to yourself. cast aspected mana-static at highest safe level. overcast mana-static AGAIN on highest safe level. have a spirit sustain it for you. summon something that is MUCH bigger than your average dragons head. Problem Lofwyr? ^^<Trollface>

What? Spirits get damage in background count? Since when? Reference please.

If the spirits force is not higher than the BGC and the BGC is not of the same aspect as the spirit, a spirit simply vanishes in BGC.
So Force 3 Spirit in Force 3 not aspected to spirit = Force 0 Spirit = no more spirit.

Of course, but the question was about this part of the post "". Never heard of it.

quite probably because, as far as i know, that's not true.

Yeah, i was already questioning my sanity. So we are now at least 2 people that don´t know anything about that...but it would be nice.^^

My bad, I remembered incorrectly That only applies to mana voids. It talks about damaging "characters who expose themselves to astral space in a mana void". (It could be argued that that would also apply to spirits who aren't disrupted simply by being there.)

Never mind, you inspired me to another version of the mana-static-spell.^^

Huh? I could have sworn that spirits have both tracks, and that maxing out the stun track on them only disrupts them.

bah, seems i have been wrong all this time. Tho i find nowhere in the books that specifically state that they only have one track. The only way to tell is that any reference to such is in singular form...

I would not agree... I would use the higher of the 2 BCG's... Why would it stack? It should just overwrite.

They do have both tracks, and Maxing out either track disrputs them. Many people use the spirit as a Mook, however, which uses a single track. Makes it easier to track the mooks that way.

I agree with tymeaus. In SR equal benefits are barely ever stacking. Usually the higher one applies. The mana static spell description is one example for this.

It's Hard not to agree with him I find. His facts are usually spot on and he seems to have sound judgement.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. Incidentally, almost everything stacks in SR; this is one of the rare exceptions.

No sarcasm. Calling it like I see it. Since i'm passing out kudos, you've always been solid also Yerameyahu. Just my opinion.

We can all sing 'coom-bayah' over skype later.

Hah, well thanks. I wonder why people have the idea that a spirit only has one track, though. Hmm. Oh well, the point is that it's easier (less drain) to kill them with Stun; in that sense, they do have one track.

I'm going to go with the tunnel vision answer also. Everyone thinks 'stick 'n shock or stun bolt when it's spirit killin' time. It's really too bad that banishing isn'tmoreeffective. Wouldbe perfect for this concept.

I thought Mana Static was a Permanent Spell, so the artifical Background Count fades over time. I never saw Aspected Mana Static, but I'd rule it out of a game, not just for being OP, but because I can't see how a simple spell would manage to tie in the emotional forlackofabetterword 'energy' that aspected domains have. Maybe, MAYBE if I was feeling nice and was suitably bribed, I would let a player sculpt a certain site towards their tradition similar to Geomancy and cast Mana Static in a ritual, but it would still only last for a matter of hours.

Depends on the timeframe. if the spirit is a shot time summoning then yes disrupting (filling the damage track) is easier. But if it is bound, then it will be right back once the disruption time have come and gone (or the summoner takes on some drain to bring it back). So SNS-ing a remote task spirit out for your hide may well see it come back again by the end of the month (i think its task still applies past a disruption).

hrmf, seems that SR4A claims services are lost. But street magic gives no such blanket claim. Instead it makes the statement that unbound spirits still count the passing of day/night cycles while disrupted, but bound spirits will return once the period of disruption has passed.

So in essence, banishing applies differently depending on it being a NPC spirit (less of a long term issue so just SNS and be on your way) or bound PC spirit (given the time and effort sunk, and that a NPC mage take no long term cost from attempting banishing).

Hmm, by the way, does it anywhere say wether or not BGC is applied only once towardss spirits in there?
Let us say a Force 6 spirit is in a Rating 4 BGC. It has it's Force lowered by 4 down to 2. But now it's a Force 2 Spirit in a Rating 4 BGC . .

That would be rather dubious. It's not a new spirit, so the BGC wouldn't be applied again.

While it's in the BGC, it's an F6 spirit functioning as if it were a F2 spirit.

Sounds like the same kind of logic someone applied to comlink response ratings when loading more then OS rating programs...

But if it had been a Force 4 Spirit, it would have gone poof immediately.

? O.o

You load 2 programs on your Response 2 Commlink. This is your processor limit, so your Response is reduced by 1. But, oh no, now your Response is 1 and you have two programs running! This is twice your processor limit, so your Response is reduced by 2. Your Response is now -1, etc, etc. It's fairly easy to say no, that doesn't happen, stop being silly, though.

Nah, if we would say that, we wouldn´t have this forum. This is all about nickpicking and asking if the rules are good or not...so don´t stop.^^