I recently stumbled upon this April Fool's snippet of Runner's Companion for Dragon (not drakes, but dragons) player races:
http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/download/p...ers_preview.pdf


The part about dragons being able to summon all 10 types of spirits reminded me of Technomancers' Sprite Link echo. I always thought there was a magic version for conjuring extra types of spirits. But going through my SR4 and SM, I can't find anything like that. Did I miss something?


Closest that I have found is the Spirit Affinity quality. But from the description, it doesn't seems like it will allow mages to summon more types of spirits (in fact I'm not sure what actual benefits that 10 BP quality gives).

MINDCONTROL other mages to summon, take a crapload of drain (and possibly die from it) a spirit you can't summon, then - if the mages lives- let him "give" you the spirit first, or -if he died- quickbind the spirit.

there are house rule ideas for metamagics that let you conjure an additional type of spirit. like the echo does.
and Ancient History has some ideas about it in his Ancient Files I think.

what you can do is, banish any spirit you want (first have to find one ofc), then summon it for your service

Thanks! So there really isn't an equivalent of Sprite Link for mages, I was afraid that I somehow missed it.

No, and for good reason. Sprite Link is arguably a little too good of a ability given that some of the balance factor to the various streams is the strengths and weaknesses to their sprites. For spirits who are far far more useful and deadly then their sprite counterparts the ability to "catch-em-all" would be just atrocious.

I don't think that's quite a legitimate way of gaining control of spirits you couldn't otherwise conjure.

In my experience the most common interpretation of RAW is that this is a viable means of bringing a spirit under control that you could not ordinarily summon and extends beyond the base 10 to other types (toxic, shadow, etc.).

I'm in that camp and would put forward the argument that a "Summoning Test" does not necessarily mean you are summoning. Therefore, the two statements you quoted do not together imply one cannot bring into service a not-quite-banished spirit that isn't in your tradition (wow that's a lot of negatives for one sentence!). I wouldn't call it a cast-iron argument though.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=447316
didn't FrankTrollman write the SM chapter about Spirits?

I can't quote for 4th, but in 3rd and previous editions, dragons were unable to summon Spirits of Man or Ancestor Spirits. Ghostwalker was particularly interested in both of them for this reason.

Well I can see the argument for these texts overruling the tradition limitation:


but I think that's a risky route to follow. If we allow:

coupled with these:

would allow allow spirits to "make a Summoning Test" against a recently uncontrolled fellow spirit. My point being that if you say the line in Banishing establishes a "special case" that overrides other rules such as tradition limitations, it could be argued it overrides other rules such as spirits cannot conjure spirits?

I would think the line in Banishing means any magician in LoS can make a Summoning Test (subject to all the restrictions that normally apply to them Summoning, and subject to them having the Summoning skill at rank 1 or more) to bring the uncontrolled spirit under their sway. If an exceptional case were being established in Banishing, it should be made with clear delineations as to what it does and does not override.

Okay, I may be odd, but I would have to say that you can NOT use banishing to then take control of a spirit type that you aren't capable of summoning normally. Here is why:

Terms like Fire Spirit, Water Spirit, are actually terms that are more for game mechanics than anything. Spirits are part of a magician's magical theory and paradigm. That is why sometimes spirits have different names, such as fire spirits being called salamanders by some summoners. Beyond the names, these spirits will take different forms based upon the magician that summoned it. For players, this is all fluff. For characters, these differences are enough to keep a hermetic from understanding shamanism.

Off the top of my head, I don't know of anything that allows a magician to change their path (or a Technomancer to change their stream, etc) once they have started on it. That being said, using banishing and then summoning in an attempt to control an unfamiliar spirit type just seems to go against the way a character views their magic. Just because the shaman calls upon the spirits of their ancestor to protect them from the toxic spirit (an example of a role-played banishing test done thru a shaman paradigm) they do not suddenly have the insight to try to take control of that foreign spirit. They still have no idea of how to communicate with it on a magical level.

In my games, sometimes fluff just overwrites the defense-attorney style dissection of the various written rules.

SM 104
SM 106

that's our problem solved.

@Caadium, If you want to overrule rules by fluff, that's your decision. But the question here was, wheter a mage can, and by hard interpretation of RAW, he can. After Banishing, the mage has to make a "Summoning Test", which seems to be different from summoning a tradition-specific spirit from the metaplanes.
The best interpretation is, that the Summoning skill has more than one application, just as the Computer skill is used both for Matrix perception and using devices, or the Counterspelling skill for both spell defense and dispelling.

Well said.

My concern hasn't yet been addressed, however. Imagine a situation where a human possession mage and an ally spirit (both having the Magician quality) are in LoS of a materialisation earth spirit that has become uncontrolled through the use of Binding reducing its services owed.

Both the ally spirit and the human are Magicians. The ally spirit is normally forbidden from using the summoning skill (and does not have the summoning skill). The human is normally forbidden from summoning or binding materialisation spirits. Both the ally spirit and the human are normally forbidden from controlling this spirit. And that's where I would stop.

Trollman says this spirit "can be controlled by anyone whether their tradition is appropriate or not". The Binding text says "any magician within line of sight".

Then we get to the idea that this Summoning Test does not necessarily mean the mage concerned is summoning anything.

The proposal is to rule that the human can make a Summoning Test on the earth spirit despite the fact that he cannot use the Summoning skill on it (because it is a materialisation spirit and he is of a possession tradition and the Summoning description forbids the skill to be used across traditions).

If you are going to say that, then the ally can also make a Summoning Test on the earth spirit despite the fact that it cannot use the Summoning skill (because allies and free spirits cannot "possess skills from the Conjuring skill group" however they still "are capable of all magical tasks" such as this Summoning Test which doesn't summon anything).

I think the cleanest interpretation is to say that the line under Binding does not explicitly state that it overrides any of the normal limitations and therefore it doesn't. The magician must be in LoS, must be conscious, must not be immobilised, must have sufficient actions left in the current turn before the spirit departs, must be of an appropriate tradition, must have a Magic attribute higher than zero, must have the Summoning skill at a rank higher than zero, must be permitted to use the Conjuring skill group, must be permitted to use the Conjuring skill group on spirits of this particular type, must not be under the effects of a Control Actions spell, must be present on the physical plane (or can you summon while projecting in 4th? I'm AFB again), etc. etc. etc.

It just seems dodgy to me to claim the human in the above scenario can implicitly break rules but an ally spirit cannot.

If you make each extra type of spirit that can be summoned as a meta-magic, then that would address your balance issue.

That is my point. This is not a case of clear-cut RAW. It is a case of trying to interpret the rules. If something is ambiguous enough to cause this type of debate on RAW, then I default to other things (such as fluff) to help me interpret them. Laweyers get paid good money do argue their personal interpretation of the Bill of Rights here in the US. Language gets ambiguous in all things, including games. You read it as working one way, I read it another. I refuse to submit this to the Supreme Court for a ruling, so I'll agree that we see it differently.

In this case, the rules don't say if it does or does not specifically work. I am not overruling the rule for fluff, I'm letting fluff guide my reading of it. The best interpretation to your opinion is the one listed above about the use of summoning skill. My interpretation is that the skill is what allows for that magical communication with spirits of their magical philosophy. I will admit, a lot of my interpretation is a hold-over from old shadowrun versions. Magic might be one system now, but I still see spirits of one tradition as different from other traditions even if its just fluff based.

Let's say that we agree to disagree on how this set of rules combine to work.

Bullshit. Provide a single rules quote that supports that.


Summoning Tests do not automatically mean summoning a spirit, just like an Unarmed Combat Test does not automatically mean making an unarmed attack. Summoning a tradition-appropriate spirit is, in fact, a specific application of the Summoning skill, & by extension, summoning tests.

Additionally, in this particular case, the spirit is rather specifically not being summoned - it's already fucking there. All you are doing is taking control over it when it would otherwise have been banished.

I'm with Yerameyahu: it doesn't say clearly that you can ignore the normal restrictions.

Gaining access to spirits of a different is pretty major. If that was intended, it should be said so in the text explicitly, instead of only leaving an avenue of possible interpretation in that direction.

---

That said, I'm a big proponent of metamagics that allow access to new spirit types.

Usually there's the FAQ for clarification of RAI (I know about the FAQ's reputation in the forums). Anyways, the closest to a semi-official clarification is FrankTrollman's statement, and because I agree with Caadium to agree to disagree, I go with Frank, as he's the biggest authority to comment on the matter so far. The topic is in the official forum, too, but no comments there.

Edit: I even argued with a friend, whether one can banish and summon a Free Spirit. But we agreed that the need of the spirit formula is written very clearly.

It would not surprise me if the various authors had understandably different ideas about how this section was to be implemented. Trollman's post shows one rules-as-intended... quite likely congruent with his own proposals during the writing of this section of the book. I am not convinced though that it's a faithful representation of the rules-as-intended by the consensus the authors came to in the final formulation which became the rules-as-written. Maybe that consensus changed over time, accompanied by iterative edits which left the final description ambiguous.

I too like the idea that metamagic could be used to expand individual mages' capability to give them that extra "betcha didn't know I could do that!" trick.

@Bodak...

IIRC, Summoning, Binding, and Banishing are all skills that do not allow you to default. Thus if you do not have the skills, you cannot use them even if you contrived circumstances to otherwise allow. So your example of an Ally Spirit fails. He cannot use the skills (they are banned / forbidden to Spirits) and therefore cannot use them even though the Mage in the same circumstance **can**.

Ok, it's been a while since I was a child myself and I had to look some stuff up, but I had time to kill. so here we go:



The pokemon franchise never really vanished, but only with the Horizon Group buying Nintendo and all its brands massive world wide popularity was brought back to the world of Pikachu and his friends. The biggest success was the introduction of the Pokemaster MMO AR game, that one will find on 2/3 of today's kids' commlinks. With children being raised by trideo in general and by their Pokemon AR pets in particular it was only a matter of time till some started believing them for real. For those awakening during puberty randomly summoning spirits it was obvious to believe in summoning actual Pokemons. A new magic tradition developed and soon got picked up by Horizon, of course.

POKEMON, Gotta catch 'em all!
Concept: Followers call themselves Trainers and believe to summon actual Pokemon, which rank between pets and friends. Summoning is an act of great self-confidence and ambition, only then can one get control of a spirit. Every Pokemon represents a specific element are believed to have a weakness against another element.
Combat: Fire
Detection: Air
Health: Plant
Illusion: Water
Manipulation: Earth
Drain: Willpower+Charisma
For obvious reasons, this tradition is mostly found among freshly awakened children and many of them might get reeducated sooner or later within the corp apparatus. This is especially common for those who also have the ability to use sorcery, as they usually cannot explain what to do about it. Therefore most Trainers are Conjuring or even Spirit Type Aspect Magicians, some might even be gifted with a Spirit Knack only.
While many Trainers try to meet up with others to let their Pokemon fight against each other, the true goal of so called Adventurers is to meet and maybe even catch all different kinds of Pokemon. They will live up to that Code of Conduct with no one stopping them.
Although most Trainers treat their pets as good friends who don't mind fighting for their master, some toxic followers are known to abuse their pokemon as mere tools. Statistics suggest they usually suffered a bad childhood.
It's common for Trainers who are unable to live an Adventurer's life, to settle down and advertise as a Gym leader. Gyms come in an indefinite number of appearance and are usually set up via AR decorations as children can't really afford a real volcano for a fire gym. Adventurers may drop by, if they can find it and may challenge the leader to fight him to increase their reputation. There are even rumors about Gym leaders using Geomancing techniques to aspect their Gym for their distinctive element, making it extra challenging for guests.
Although a Trainer can only summon five basic pokemon by himself, these will change their appearance and advance as the summoner's training advances. By using the metamagics Invoking and Ally Conjuration initiated Trainers can control even more powerful or personal Pokemons. To get a hold of the missing types, they use the techniques of Banishing plus Summoning spirits from different traditions inconsiderate about their believes.
Following up is a vague definition of the elements, as they can be summarized, but keep in mind, that every tradition, even every single summoner, has different believes.
Fire Spirit (Fire element, Smoke), Spirit of Air (Ice, Flying, Electric, Smoke), Water Spirit (Water, Ice), Plant Spirit (Grass, Bug, Poison, Smoke), Earth Spirit (Rock, Grou All nd, Smoke), Spirit of Man, Guidance, Task, Guardian (Normal, Electric, Fighting, Psychic, Ghost), Beast Spirit (Normal, Fighting, Ground, Bug)


Edit: Just found the Line Developer's statement of the Oct08 chat

This. Is. Hilarious.