This is similar to my thread on drones. I know summoning spirits is an important element of effective Shadowrun play, but how do you utilize it most effectively?

So, here are my questions.

What spirits are best for which common tasks?

Is there any tradition that has a truly standout spirit list?

What sort of tricks are available to get the most utility out of summoning, binding, etc?

The short version:
Spirits of Man are very blatantly the best type of spirit overall. There are niche uses for other spirit types, but Man brings almost every utility power you care about and is also really good at fighting. How they roll is with Innate Spell (Stunbolt).

To be good at Summoning, you don't actually need a whole lot of dice. Spirits roll Force, you roll Magic+Summoning+Specialization+Foci bonuses + possibly Mentor bonus. What you need is a high Drain soak, because the damage you take is their hits x2, so it is really spiky - F5 spirits will sometimes zap you for 6S for daring to summon them.

Very broadly useful spirit powers: Concealment (hide like whoa), Search (find things like whoa), Movement (go places like whoa), Fear (very hard to resist, since it's just straight Willpower, no Counterspelling or anything). Magical Guard (lets the spirit provide counterspelling for your team; you can teamwork counterspelling which is cool).

Good idea: If you don't need a big spirit for something particular, you should have a low-force spirit hanging out with the standing order "if somebody gets into a fight with us, help out." You can always dismiss it for a bigger spirit.

Type by type:
Man: Win and awesome.
Fire: Good at killing people with Engulf + Elemental Aura (Fire); this makes its melee attacks do damage like whoa. Also flies.
Air: More utility than Fire and hits slightly better with high Agility, also flies faster. Basically fire but better.
Water: It has Weather Control, but other than that is overshadowed by other types.
Earth: crap
Beast: more crap
Plant: oddball spirit type. Plant spirits have Magical Guard, Concealment, Movement, Search and Fear, and are hella tough, but they have trouble attacking with anything other than Fear. Basically, they bring all the utility powers to the yard, and are extremely hard to kill. The only real drawback they have is that with their low agility and no flying, if you want offense that isn't Fear they don't bring it very well. Silence is niche but nifty.
Task: Win and awesome for utility because of the "Any technical or physical skill" thing. Fail and suck for everything else.
Guidance: Divining but otherwise rather meh.
Guardian: Oddball spirit type. Guardian spirits are decidedly meh at fighting normally, but they can come with any Combat skill. Carry around a Guardian Spirit Care Package of some armor and a machine gun, and you have a very solid combatant... but the gear doesn't go with it when it dematerializes, which is a weakness.

Traditions: Voodoo just very blatantly has the best spirit selection.

EDIT: Ninja’d by Umaro, but I’m still going to post this because he's a ninja

I am not an expert on spirits, and my friend UmaroVI is (so if he corrects me, I default to him since he plays a mage), but here is my understanding:

Materialization and Possession are fairly balanced in that Possession mages can grab channeling and compensate for a low magic (because they have ware or chose not to buy it up) with the spirit’s magic, and replace their spellcasting with the spirits (if man). Possession is obvious however. Materialization mage and a Materialization Spirit together are better than the self-possessed mage because they get to attack twice and the mage isn’t dual natured all the time. Figure out which one you are though, as they differ. Low force possession spirits are better than low force materialization spirits (because they can possess melee weapons for bonuses or corpses). High Force possession spirits will run into augmented maximum caps while materialization spirits will not.

In terms of kicking ass:

Guardian – if you are willing to give it gear it will kick a lot of ass, it does require more work.

Man – Nearly as good, but will be spamming your attack spells (like stun bolt) instead of using an AR

Air is very useful

Fire does not provide concealment but is fully capable of murdering people.

Water is slightly less good at murdering people (I think this is due to accident, energy aura, and energy attack being optinal powers for it and it has no way to get fear)

Earth and Plant spirits come in at the middle of the list because they are just average (not bad)

Beast Spirits are down here being sad, they have fear and can get concealment, noxious breath or search, so it’s not that they suck, they are just less good. All spirits are decent at pwning people so it’s a relative thing.

Task and Guidance spirits are for niche activities rather than pwning people, but are quite useful.

Make sure you have 1 good battle sprite then the rest are just for utility. Voodoo has the best Spirit list.

For using them: I’ve seen Fear, Concealment, Fear, Movement, Fear, Search, Fear, Engulf, Fear, Noxious Breath, Fear, and Innate Spell all used to great effect. Know what your spirits do.

Also, getting your spirits to assense someone is usually better than doing it yourself.

Lesson one: Never summon anything bigger than your head.

Thanks for the info, guys. Very informative.

Why would these two be the only ones able to fly? I thought this fell under the general purview of spirits may look like wtuff, but really aren't" handwaving for every spirit?
Do spirits actually have movement speeds laid out somewhere?

Yes, right in the boxes with all their other stats.

They used to all be able to fly in older editions and can still do so on the astral, but in SR4, only air and fire can fly. Spirit movements are on page 302-303 of SR4A. I believe none of the ones in Street Magic can fly either.

yeah it's kind of weird, because the rules for free spirits state that, because spirits are not physical beings, they can automatically fly. Yet not all the spirit types can fly, and they all have different speeds.

It's only the difference between flying and floating. ALL materialized spirits can move in 3 dimensions, unhindered by gravity, even a spirit of earth, but only spirits of air and fire can actually FLYYY and have the skill to "sprint" and whatnot when flying.

Looking around a bit more, all spirits don't care about gravity (SR4A p. 186). However most spirits that aren't fire or air stay close to the ground. I'm not sure if I consider normal metahuman speeds (30kmph) to be merely "floating". Does this mean that spirits of the earth can just hover dramatically several inches off the ground if they feel like it? Does that mean they can run up buildings but merely prefer to take the stairs? Can they punch planes out of the sky?

Honestly, if all spirits can fly but just don't feel like it most of the time, then they really do have flight because their summoner will remind them of their ability to fly. On the other hand, being a flying dude isn't the auto-win button it often is in some games since everyone has a gun.

Edit- I'm very meh on the flight means they have the flight skill! A force 12 fire spirit can almost double his speed if he spends 2 simple actions for flying. He also could just use movement for x12 speed for a complex and it stays up. Or he could astral and travel 5000m for two complex actions. Having that skill isn't that important.

Flying is a Skill, just as Running is. All spirits can move in three dimensions. Only those with the Flying Skill can increase their speed the way Running Skill can increase one's speed on the ground.

Hollows are pretty good, but Don Kanonji probably disagrees.

I disagree with the Guidance-Spirit. It is VERY good.

It pretty much has access to a metamagic (One of the most gamechanging/gamebreaking even). And has straight up the best engulf (Stun damage, no armor possible.)

Divination is the reason to use it. The engulf is in theory good, but its low agility means in practice, not really. The extra dice a Fire or Air spirit rolls help more, and it's not hard for a decently large spirit to kill people plenty dead already.

Ah and that... i find untrue (Well, depending on how big your head is anyway.)

Through the way the overall powerlevel is rising with spirits i found that being just incredible ballsy with summoning/binding, willing to use edge and prepared some security, the RETURNS for that risk are steadily rising.

Using a Force 3 spirit isn't THAT good (even though he can/might crack a low-risk situation... but you could probably do without it anyways. Rise it to 4: okay, 5: Whoa, nice. 6: AMAZING. And from that one Spirits become a "Get out of any situation but social per service"-card.

While a Force 6 spirits can pretty much go toe-to-toe with any usual enemy, you can assume a Force 8 one can take a whole group without fail. The spirit power are even worse. They seem to be scaled to be risky but worth it at force 3... unbeatable at force 6. And it goes HIGHER.

Mindcontrol: Spirits. Instant incapacitation: Spirits. Extra-combatant on level of equipped and good beginner samurai: Spirit. Debuffing: Spirit. Become near undetectable (if you have moderate stealth): Spirit.

I might by a bit cynical about that all, since i am gm for a group with a pixie mage (VERY good at summoning). But yeah, she does overall more damage than the whole other team, can jump over most legwork/detective stuff with use of Claivoyance/Mindcontrol/Suggestion/Memory alteration and Mind probe.

A good summoner is his own team. (Everything but certain high-society, matrix, and social problems can be solved by spirits, their powers and a bit of added magic.)

Sorry, I mistyped: "Never summon anything bigger than your ego."

Only one Bleach comment since I started this thread, even with the description being what it is? It's almost like these people aren't even nerds...

Summerstorm: I believe CanRay was quoting an old webcomics ad. Dork Tower's advertising contained that line, at some point.

I don't think there are ANY mages in SR capable of that.

Actually I think they are all capable of that, as everything will be smaller than their ego.



Edited to add smiley (not trying to be rude).

-D

"that" = "summoning anything bigger than your ego"


"that" = "never summoning anything bigger than your ego"

And so 17 pages of counterarguments begin.

The problem with summoning a F6 or F8 spirit is the "net hits = services" bit. They roll 6 (or 8 ) dice to resist your summoning roll (4 skill + 6 magic + 2 focus/mentor spirit). 12 dice versus 6 is good odds for 2 tasks. 12 vs. 8 is good odds for 1 task.

The really bitch part is the drain. A F8 spirit will knock you on your ass, pretty much all the time. It's got good odds (53%) to hit you with at least 6 stun, and risky odds (25%, 10%) to hit you with 8, 10, or more stun (25% chance to do "at least 8" and 10% to do "at least 10").

And that before any Edge Expenditures are figured in...

If you have magic 6, that stun damage from the force 8 spirit is more likely physical damage. And that can be risky on the fly.

At 1:30 in the morning I didn't feel like double-checking spirit drain S/P. I was pretty sure it went physical, but I never play a summoner.

Aye, physical.

Well, i just have the following observation in my group: a highly specialized mage doesn't "get" drained. In my case it IS a pixie (which is awfully miss-statted, in my opinion), but with a bit help here and there any mage can be that good.

Of course "on the fly summoning" of something REALLY big can seriously cramp your style with some bad luck, yes. But let's make it this way:

Say you are a good mage, say: 5 Will+5 whatever and have miscellenious bonus dice (extra willpoer/whatever, centering and/or foci for 4 points) That is a drainpool of 14. Say we also have 4 Edge just in case. You are summoning something with neutral of better disposition. And made sure you can appease the spirit (so it doesn't edge out on you).

Summoning begins. You are calling, say a force 10 spirit (which IS totally insane) and get one net hit for one service. Drains will be.. OH NO... BAD LUCK: say 14 physical (which is unusual high).

You throw your 18 dice , get maybe 6 hits (which is low): you get 8 damage.
Now your friend uses first aid: -2 dice because you are a mage. Get's say 5 hits: You are down to 3.
You throw on some NoPaint, and start the run. Any opposition you accidently encounter can be vanquished without any problems (Other than someone rolling better than you and banning the spirit)

Of course it is not universal, foolproof or anything. But just the scale and possibilities are just so skewed and weird. I, for example oppose that spirits should have skills at their force-level. They can be better than the masters of skills (metahumans) on a world they don't even belong.

Maybe with taking down the skill level to 2/3 round up or something? (Oh... and maybe a slight dent in the hardened armor?)

This is a problem with the medical rules and really shouldn't be used as a "don't worry about the drain" downside of summoning.
That said, I've abused the healing rules too. But first aid is really too fast for its benefit.



I don't know how we should do spirit skill levels, but you're right, that they shouldn't exceed "6" and probably shouldn't scale 1:1 with Force.

Especially considering that Watcher spirits are "always force 1" and thus their skills (all two of them) are at 1, making them pitifully useless at the exactly two tasks they're supposed to be the "go to" for.
(In 3rd edition they had special rules for finding people, that was more guaranteed than the Search power other spirits had).

Don't forget your First Aid Threshold, and Time Requirements. With a Threshold of 2, you only healed 3 boxes, not 5 (so you are still sporting 5 boxes of damage), and you still spend 3 full combat turns healing those boxes. Also, for The time required (IF IN COMBAT, OR ON THE FLY), it should be enforced as No Movement, because it is really hard to first aid and move at the same time.

And with only a single net hit for services, chances are good your spirit is gone on the first banish attempt by a competent mage.

For unbound spirits, yes. It's really the only reason to have/use banishing.

It would still be easier to stunbolt the spirit than Banish it.

Generally, because you're rolling either Spellcasting or Banishing + Magic and need more hits than the spirit gets by rolling Force.

Except that the stunbolt needs F+Net Hits to be >= 10, whereas the Banish needs Net Hits to be > Services, which is unknown value.

Except that you don't have the bonus dice to banishing that most people have to spellcasting.

And it's an extra skill...

It's more the drain than the dice pool. I'm AFB right now, but IIRC, stunbolt's drain is F/2 whereas Banishing's drain is identical to Summoning: spirit's hits x2.

Stunbolt is (F/2) - 1. I use it.
All the time.
With impunity.
It is my very large hammer.
And all my targets are nails.

I am disapointed that my GM forbade multicasting (or I would, and be about 30% more effective). I don't see why though, as he made melee combat a simple action. I can, on average, down a single target in a complex action. The two melee people can down 1 target in a simple (albeit 50-50 odds for them to still be conscious) and often get to take out two.

Yea those are some odd houserules Draco, lol. Does he let you multicast non-combat spells at least?

Anyway yes my point was, in the "Summoning for Beginners" thread let's never, ever suggest that someone take Banishing. It's strictly a trap, less effective, more drain and requires a skill that is otherwise 100% useless.

Are you telling me you are going to reliably get more than a single service from a BOUND spirit of Force 10? I call Shennanigans at that point.
I will agree that Stunbolt is a great spirit killer though... Unless cast at a Force 10 Spirit with Counterspelling...

Spellcasting and 4 spells is more flexible than the entire Close Combat skill group, is ranged, is only defended against via attribute plus a rare skill, punches through Immunity and is effective on the astral. It honestly seems pretty fair to me even if it's a bit of a flavor change to make melee combat pretty nasty. Really, it's the relative rarity of counterspelling and the fact that combat spells depend on an attribute/skill combo that most magicians would be taking anyway that has always been the trickiest thing about magicians. Even a utility oriented spellcaster can add glass cannon to their resume for the karma cost of learning Stun Ball despite the fact that Spellcasting would still be quite viable even if combat spells did not exist at all. Really, I've long felt that combat spells are as good as they are largely because the Combat Mage is a long-standing archetype that few people really want to get rid of.

I actually disagree with this sentiment, but I do get where you are coming from. In a game where Force 10 Spirits are common, then Banishing is no good. In a more sane game, where spirit levels are from 3-6, it is quite good. Of course, Spiri... Errrr, Stun Bolt is often a better choice due to Drain curves, as long as the spirit does not have counterspelling.

A bound spirit resists with Force + Summoner's Magic. It may only have one service, but the odds that it has more dice (and thus more hits) than you is pretty much guaranteed.

Again, I call Shenanigans... Unless, of course, you are using overpowered spirits (any higher than Force 6). If you are, then the argument is going to go nowhere.

You said "force 10" and I said, "yup, force 10" and now you're saying "bullshit, unless force 10"

Make up your bloody mind.

I'd also like to point out that my group doesn't roll around with F10 spirits. An occasional F8 as a GM-tool? It's come up. We've never fought against them, they're a deterrent.

My problem here is that a "sane game" as defined by TJ isn't really representative of an awful, awful lot of games out there. In any case, an anti-spirit skill with the caveat of "Unless the Spirit is a Force 6+ meanie" isn't exactly something I'm in a rush to add to my repertoire.

Banishing works against any unbound spirit fairly equally well across the board (fewer dice to resist, but a larger number of services). Drainwise, however, it's more effective to use Stunbolt in nearly all cases (as the spirit has the same resistance pool of Force, but it's stun track is the same length, all the time, and hitting that threshold is much less drain-inducing).

Not to mention that if a magician sic's a spirit on you, you can't really know for sure if it's summoned or bound (do you want to risk that extra 6 dice it gets to resist?)

The only reason to have banishing is to go "pokemon" on other mage's spirits (banish them, and then resummon them yourself to get spirits outside your discipline). And even that is a marginal use.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the pokemon tactic. I just think it's weak sauce relative to what else a magician could pick up with the same points.

Oh, agreed.

These things are all relative, really. It's kinda like how monks in 3.x wouldn't really be a "trap" option if it weren't for like, every other class ever.

I've seen some really good monk builds.

But yeah, if it weren't for "every other class ever" they'd be ok.

(In the pathfinder game I'm in, we've got a monk who I'm pretty sure is going to get errata'ed: he never runs out of kii and never runs out of hitpoints. Every time he crits (and he built TO crit: flurry gets him 6 attacks, and he crits on a 17, so on average 1 kii gained back every round) he gets a kii back, and damage dished out is also healing*).

*I think, I don't recall the exact details, but he has some ability to heal himself based on "hitting things."

Even against a Force 3-6 spirit, you could Stunbolt it or you could try to Banish it. And Banishing is going to be less effective, cause far more drain and, worst of all, requires you waste BP/Karma on the Banishing skill. And of course against a very high force spirit you simply won't be able to beat its rolls with Banishing, but stunbolt will do the job.

If you want to roleplay a spirit exorcist of sorts you absolutely need to convince your GM to houserule Banishing into something useful. It just doesn't work in its current form.

Yeah, I should point out I'm not really familiar with Pathfinder. My experience with D&D mostly boils down to those not-so-halcyon days back before people decided that maybe it's best to pretend that Polymorph never happened.

Indeed, I hate that tactic. Fortunately, we have never had an occurence, at our table, of said tactic.

No worries. I'm not terribly familiar with pathfinder either.