If a character has two or three Force 5 or 6 Spirits every session wouldn't that burn through a huge chunk of their earnings each Mission (and maybe some savings on a low paying job)? Per the book that should cost 5,000 to 9,000 Nuyen if I understand correctly (500 Nuyen per Force per Spirit; Spirits limited by Charisma). Is there some magic item or something that reduces or eliminates the "ritual materials" expense?

Nope. No such help exists. The magician needs to be very careful about when and how often service are used.

This one of the things that limits the power of magicians; something that is often overlooked by those who argue magic dominates the game. It does so only if constraints such as this one are ignored.

Why would Missions be different from normal play.

I can tell you that once you get to a high level of play, it's very easy to keep a force 8 and some force 5/6 bound to you. Around 70-100 karma, I don't remember which, while I was saving up for a weapon focus still, Papa Chango had nothing else to spend his money on. And since he could bind them with multiple services, and didn't need to use up all their services in a mission-- we always had them as a safety net. Then again, we were doing top tier missions.

(p.s. GenCon 2010 was great when the GM said, "You have a force 8 GREATER form spirit bound!?", and the gm that witnessed the roll was still in the room to confirm Papa C got it last mission legally.)

mapfl, forgive me if I lowered the spirit's force-- I think the F10 was a normal spirit.

Yea, money isn't really the deterent people think it is considering wared characters have to scrimp and save for even a marginal upgrade where as mages essentially have no other costs.

If you want to stretch that precious nuyen then specialize your next character heavily into a summoner's build. Things like a mentor spirit bonus, specialization, a bound Power Focus 4 (bought at chargen using restricted gear), Home Ground and a high Edge pool can total to a goodly number of dice that have open ended sixes. If you get a ton of hits then that's more services per set of binding materials.

I also suggest Magesight Goggles so you can attack around corners and using a force 1 spirit with the Guard power as you are Binding so you cant glitch although that's a general suggestion.

With a strong summoner-type build and Invoking metamagic that's heap big mojo which offsets the steep cost in BP of how very specialized you are to leave you able to do good things.

Personally, while i will concencede that asking a spirit to guard you is within the rules itself I'd never allow it to prevent glitches on spellcasting or summoning tests, the guard power is soemthing that needs a serious rework if we ever go to another edition.

House rule it away brutha-man! :-)

Except this is the Shadowrun Missions forum.

No houserules.




-k

Why should a spirit be less able to prvent a magical catastrophe than a technological one? Guard also works on matrix actions.

My guess is that LurkerOutThere thinks Guard is too widely applicable. Accident would appear to be the "counter-power" to Guard, and it affects only the physical world.

As for me, my teammates really appreciate my Free Spirit's Guard power.

EDIT: OK, that PC is not in Missions, but still.

Limit yourself to short-term spirit services where possible. The material cost is only for Binding. You really shouldn't need a squad of spirits for a Mission unless you're trying to solo it.

You could make a rule of thumb for yourself:

"Summoned spirits to save you labour, bound spirits to save your ass."