Every time a magician dies or takes deadly damage his spirits have the opportunity to become free spirits. A knowledgable player knows one takes the spirits force and makes a TN6 or TN4 (in too many instances) test to see if the spirit does so.

If the player is present when they go free or has previously encountered them, he has a good idea what their native plane is and can do an astral quest to it to learn the true name (this is about the hardest part of the process.) Then the player/magician only has to do a conjuring test (with +3 dice) vs the spirits force (+1 usually because the spirit is so new it hasn't been able to gain karma for more spirit energy) and needs only 1 success.

Now the player has a bound free spirit with virtually limitless services (including remote services), it may be a type he couldn't normally conjure, and he can increase its Force by getting/giving karma to it (which will help pacify the spirit from constantly trying to go free.)

How do you avoid this without looking obvious?

You trick him once.

A free spirit was working along side the killed mage. The free spirit has masking and is very potent. It creates a fake astral quest, gives a fake name and then KOs the shaman after the unsuccessful conjuring ceremony and frees all the spirits he had bound.

-You can fudge the rolls. Mentioned only for completeness, because I know how you feel about that

-Give it the wealth power so that it goes off and buys itself some karma (and thus higher spirit energy) right away. That's what I'd do if I were a newly freed spirit, after all.

-You can give it the personal domain power, doubling its spirit energy while in the domain. Combine that with the last suggestion and you'll be able to push a force 6 spirit up to 10-12 for purposes of the astral quest in a mere few hours. And best of all, it makes perfect sense for a vulnerable new spirit with these powers to do that quickly as possible.

-You can have someone else bind it first. Kinda lame.

-Have them plot their controllers destruction just a little more effectively. Nice high-force spirits should be able to do that pretty well.

Or, even in a foce 6 astral quest he's likely to have taken some gamage and be suffering some wound penalties when he gets to the citidel. In this wounded state he has to fight and defeat the spirit. Have the spirit beat him like a red headed stepchild, which it ought to be able to do since he should be wounded.

One of the best ways to keep gamers in line is the old rule "do unto others as they do unto you."

If your players constantly aim for head with EX-explosive ammo, make NPC's aim for head.

If they are summoning and binding free spirits, then run them up against baddies who do the same thing, but have more.

Or best of all: Tutor. Binding free spirits like that can easily count as cruelty, especially if they do it more than once.

-Slapstick

I agree with modesitt except for the case of called shots to the head. The PC's should not me immune to their own methods. That's not one upmanship, its just an eye for an eye.

My bad, I was thinking about permanent banishing, which does work that way.

tisoz, if characters are getting too many free spirits in your campaign, feel free to reduce the chances of a spirit going free. I feel that the TN for going free is far too low. A 50-50 chance of a Force 1 Spirit of Man going free is absurd. An alternative to raising the TN or requiring more successes is to use the SR3 main book rule that Nature Spirits simply depart if they become uncontrolled. Therefore the only Free Nature Spirits will be naturally occuring ones or shamanic Ally spirits that have become uncontrolled.

To emphasize that Astral Quests are not to be done lightly, you might decide that the following two rules mean that every failed Astral Quest results in a roll for magic loss:
1) Every Astral Quest results either in Success or in disruption of the magician. (Astral Quest, MitS.90)
2) A character who is disrupted in Astral Combat must make an immediate check for Magic Loss. (SR3.176 fourth paragraph)

In my own opinion only, i wouldn't roll to see if a spirit went free unless it was force 5 or highier. Force one spirits should know that going free when their that weak is a BAD idea.

Ourteam, thats how i would read those rules.

First, a pointless house rule. Then a thought, and finally a "balancing" mechanism.

I would have no problem allowing a magician whos player I trusted to go on an astral quest to find/create a free spirit; this summons the free spirit and leaves it predisposed to talk (and more likely to just leave if it's not happy instead of attacking), but nothing else. Just because it's a better way to let players introduce free spirits than the cheap factory trick shown below.

Second, if a player can pay the free spirit's price, I'd have no problem allowing them to "hire" one. Granted, such a price is more likely to be karma or some other magical object than simple nuyen, and is likely expensive for any spirit likely to make a difference, but hiring a free spirit shouldn't necessarily be impossible.

And that leads to the third point; if the player continually "pays" karma to keep the free spirit happy, well, a low-force one should have little impact on play, and a high-force one should expect payment consumerate with its power. A free spirit that's treated well and fed regularly shouldn't be any more imbalancing than any other ally (or Ally), and one that isn't... well, you've played D&D, you've handled Wish spells before, you know exactly how much fun an evil GM can have twisting words. That fact, plus the negative reaction most awakened beings will have if you make a habit of this, should make a flock of enslaved spirits more hassle than it's worth.

Oh, and BTW Ourteam, that's how I've always handled those rules. I might let it slide if it's a special story set in the metaplanes, but anything you'd normally take an astral quest for should come with an attached risk.

I couldn't disagree with Modesitt more.

Do unto other has always been a golden rule in our games. It's always worked both ways however and as such, it finds it's own balance.

Some of the sams have some APDS ammo. If they start firing nothing but, word will spread and surprise! Bad guys will start using them against the PCs. Your mages exploit the free spirit rules by binding "endless" free spirits? Why the heck would they be the only ones who thought of this? I, as a mage, don't do it because it's cheesy. This is all that is required for the GM to not abuse those rules himself. The GM knows the rules, he knows it's possible and he knows it's not right so he shouldn't do it. If either one of us starts, the other is free to follow.

It works amazingly well when you have reasonable players. Why don't we snipe everybody that bothers us? Because the GM doesn't send snipers after us, because let's face it, if the GM starts using snipers realistically, we're all dead. Hence, we limit our uses of snipers and our GM does the same.

There are a million and one things that can be abused in games, we can spend all our time looking for loop holes and abusing them then arguing about rules needed to fix them or we can say "Hey see this? Pretty stupid eh? Ya let's not do that ok? Good... let's get back to the game."

There's nothing wrong with making your PCs understand why you think a rule is cheesy than by drowning them in the cheese and saying "see? isn't this shit? Please don't do this anymore and I'll stop too ok?"

Sunday

Edit: It should be noted that this addresses the tit for tat atitude more than this particular rule. I have not looked at these specific rules to see if they are easily abusable. I've never had this problem so it's never come up.

I really don't see the problem with the concept, personally (other than the Shaman vs Hermetic thinking). He'll either make a mistake one day or draw the wrong kind of attention, but it's not really a big deal. Binding too many free spirits (basically more than one) is a very dangerous thing to do. They'll get together and plot; and then a single slip of the tongue will land him in serious trouble.

Also, I have never rolled to see if a spirit goes free. Only if they would go free by personality do they. I think the GM deciding is in the rules with rolling randomly as the quick and easy way, no?

Another way to deal with it is have the spirit attack him when it goes free (esp if he was the cause), so he'll either have to kill it or flee. Magicains can mask their own spirits as well, correct? Not going to happen too often, but still for low force ones...