I remember seeing as early as 4th edition that counterspelling can be used to counter critter powers, however I cant seem to locate the rule in 20th. Could some one point me in the correct Direction?

So far, only Innate Spell can be counterspelled unless it's a spirit being used to sustain a spell.

yeah, counterspelling can only counter Innate spells (like the Spirit of Man's Innate Spell tells you to pick an existing spell from the summoner) and spells from the sorcery skill, including spells being maintained by spirits, mages, sustaining foci, and quickening/anchoring. It makes Critter Powers something far more dangerous as a result, especially from intelligent sources, like HMHVV infected powers.

Yup, just spells, including those cast by critters.

Makes various Adept Powers which give you dice against things like "mind altering magic" more valuable, as they state they do in fact count against things like critter powers. It might be more efficient against Mages to simply get Spell Resistance, but these specialized powers give you fuller coverage for their specific kind of magic.

~Umi

We've experimented with a HOUSE RULE, just so there's no confusion that it's an actual rule.

Use the Banishing skill as counterspelling for critter powers. It makes the skill actually valuable and have a point. Net result tended to be that people got the entire conjuring group, rather than only summoning & binding and ignoring banishing.

Give it a try if your group is finding that spirit/critter powers are a bit overpowering. YMMV but it works reasonably well.

Quite like that... Banishing/Critter defence

That... actually sounds pretty brilliant.

You're absolutely right about how useless Banishing is. It's often far easier just to overpower a spirit than to banish it - instead of spending points on a special skill that only works on spirits, you instead put those points into being better able to kill EVERYTHING, spirit or not.

Astral Combat has a similar problem, in that the only people who are ever going to use it are Magicians who astrally project, and at that point they might as well just cast a mana spell instead.

~Umi

How do you 'overpower' a spirit?

A) firepower -- countered by the ItNW just about everyone complains about (at Force X 2); the higher the spirit Force the far worse this gets; works only on the material plane except for weapon foci which do ignore ItNW but require melee combat skills

B) spells -- countered by... Counterspelling, possibly augmented by Shielding, either the summoner's or in some cases the spirit's own; the higher the spirit's Force, the worse this gets; negatively affected by mana barriers like wards

C) Banishing -- affected by neither ItNW nor Counterspelling, but affected by the summoner's Magic Attribute and the Spirit's Force X 1; the higher the spirit's Force, the resistance gets worse but the number of hits needed tends to get fewer; not affected by mana barriers like wards

It doesn't look to me like Banishing is all that much worse than either of the other two.

I think it's the idea that the drain for Banishing can be really high, when something like casting a spell at a spirit can have the same effect, much lower drain, and the spell is useful in other situations.

Yes, that is important to consider. But it is one factor out of many. As an addendum, I forgot to mention that Banishing-then-Summoning is the one way one can take over someone else's spirit, even one of a type one normally can't summon.

I don't see Banishing as being necessarily better, but neither do I see it as 'useless'.

For the sake of argument, we'll say it's not -- but it is the only single-task option you mentioned. If you are good at shooting spirits, you're good at shooting at anything. If you're good at casting spells at spirits, you're good at casting spells at anything. If you're good at banishing spirits, you're good at...uhh...banishing spirits. And that's all.

Yeah, I don't totally disagree with you. But compared to other options, it seems really "sub-optimal" as a skill choice. If you try to banish a bound spirit, then the spirit resists with Force + summoner's Magic. Gets harsh really quickly. You would take this skill solely for flavor.

And I'm not against taking skills for flavor, all for it really. But it would be nice to have both, a flavorful skill that's useful too

I like the idea above of having Banishing also act as counterspelling-for-critter-powers. Or maybe the idea that Banishing drain is straight hits, not hits * 2. Or maybe Banishing drain is F/2.

You also use Banishing as a Magician or Mystic Adept to make an attack of will against a spirit. This uses your Charisma as your base damage and your Will as the base stat. It also ignores the immunity to normal weapons power. We find it useful when facing spirits with Magical Guard or when we just don't have other options (too much drain or background count, especially aspected). Sure, you may not have as many dice to make this attack but it is another option.

pb:
Now look at the resistance role for BOUND spirits... they commonly get more dice to resist banishing than to summon then in the first place. And binding is done at the summoners convenience when he can take some downtime to handle the drain... banishing doesn't have that option since it's done in the heat of combat, but the drain is exactly the same as trying to bind it in the first place. Unbound spirits don't banish either... they owe no services. Even free spirits get banishing resistance.

If the spirit gets 2 successes it normally does more drain to you, than if you had just stunbolted it in the first place as well. So like others say it's normally easier to just blast the spirit into smithereens than to attempt to banish it.


Umidori:
I don't think astral combat is a problem really... a mage needs a point or two to defend himself (I normally get 1 or 2 ranks with a specialization in defense). Toss on an increase wil spell in a focus (increase wil, while projecting, increase ref while in meat). And a mage can match most spirits especially with a touch of edge in defending themselves in astral. Then just like you say, a mage nukes the target with a spell. But still having that increased wil helps a lot on astral (resisting spells, soaking astral damage, astral combat contest of wills).

Wait, what? As I understand it (and taking a quick glimpse right now at the SR4A Astral Combat rules), you don't use your Astral Combat skill to defend on the astral - it's only usage is to attack. Defending simply uses the Astral Equivalent of your physical attribute, in this case Intuition standing in for Reaction.

Am I missing something somewhere?

~Umi

How's that now? How do you get an unbound spirit to do anything without services?

I think he means wild spirits? Non-summoned spirits

Yeah, wild spirits... free spirits... get banishing resistance. (a bunch of freebie services == edge... you need to blow through refreshed daily).


Umi: yeah... astral combat is one of the worst explained things in the book... the GM for the only game I'm in right now just uses willpower for everything (sometimes I forget that is a houserule). Basically astral combat is treated like a physical attack (melee) only astral.

dual-natured spirits/characters would defend and attack with willpower + astral combat.
projecting mages/spirits would attack with logic+astral combat, intuition+astral combat.

Even going back to SR1... defending against astral was linked to willpower not your astral stats.

I agree with you that in many cases it is more painful to Banish than to Spellcast. I argue that there are more ways to confound Spellcasting and physical attack than Banishing. Visibility, Counterspelling, barriers, etc. Those ways are readily available to opponents of all sorts, and really should be part of the repertoire of any team, corp or facility. Can you use guns and combat spells more often? Absolutely. Will you be glad you took Banishing (at half the price of other, single Skills if you bundle it into the Sorcery Group) when the other forms have been thwarted? Damn right.

My leopard-shifter adept (and I'm sure many, many other dual-natured critters) would like to disagree with you on the word, "only".

I always forget that shifters are dual natured. But to be fair, shifters aren't "people".

~Umi

LOL

To be fair, in his eyes you're either predator or prey, and metahumans are, for the most part, prey.

Yes, there are Situations, where bannishing is better to get rid of a spirit. BUT (and this one is big one) in those situations you are mostly fucked anyway.
Yes, if a mage with the shilding metamagic is protecting his spirit high force spirit, which also has counterspelling, you have to banish. (Denpending on the question how the teamworktest gets handled it can be even worse (if the lower dicepool is always supporting))

But yeah, that means you can't cast spells at all, while there is an enemy mage, who can burn you to hell. This situation also implies that there is no way to "shoot the mage in the face". (Maybe he is hiding behind a high force barrier and bullet prove glass)

While the high force spirit (summond) with couterspelling is also often more vulnerable to banishing than to "stunbolt" it is not by much. (Considering the fact, that your spellcasting pool is normally higher than you bannishing pool and that you need only ONE NET-HIT for the spellcasting to work. While bannishing may even take several)

Than there is the issue with drain. The good old stunbolt has no problem with drain. Force 12 only gives you 5 points of drain.
Bannishing a force 9 spirit hits you with 6 point on avarage. (If you are unlucky above 10 points are possible. Knocking you on your ass)

So yes, the force 9 spirit rolls 18 dice against your spell and only 9 dice against your bannishing attempt. Thats true. The chance he will resist your spell is much higher than the chane, he won't be "injured" by your banishing. But how much help it is, depends on the mage who called upon the spirit.
Had a good role, used edge, aspected-Bd, high dice pool and he two will have a lot of net-hits. (Assuming he did not use any services)

Even worse it gets for bound spirits (don't even thing about great form spirit with banishing resistance).
Those things get hits out of summoning AND binding. So if you are not dealing with a weak mage, you won't get rid of the spirit on the first try.

/agree.

Most of your points are valid, and I have already acknowledged them as such. I'm not trying to say Banishing is a better Skill, merely that it is not a useless Skill, and that in certain circumstances, it is the best option. Personally, I would like to cover all the angles if I can.

The above argument suffers from circular reasoning. "No point in building your Banishing pool because your Banishing pool is weak anyway." And if you buy Banishing as part of the Conjuring group, it is as high as your Summoning and Binding pools and half the cost. Now, for your mage these may be lower than your Spellcasting pool, but if spirits are so tough and useful, why would you limit yourself so?

You only need one net hit for Spellcasting to work, not necessarily to destroy the spirit. The same is true for Banishing. In order to have a strong likelihood of destroying the spirit with one spell, you have to cast a high Force spell. This raises the Drain and often makes it Physical. Banishing Drain never goes Physical.

Ummm... If I Remember Correctly, Banishing a Spirit higher than your Magic Rating makes the Drain Physical...

I just checked and didn't immediately see it otherwise I would have called it hours ago. If you can find a reference by all means post it.

Yes please. I've read and reread the section a few times and can find where Summoning and Binding a spirit with a Force greater than your Magic causes P drain, but nothing in Banishing says the drain can be P.

Then again, maybe it is intentional that Banishing drain is nothing but S damage to make it more enticing to use against spirits, as opposed to potentially having to overcast a spell to do significant harm to a spirit.

That alone makes it much more palatable in my opinion. I had always thought it could do P Drain like Summoning.

It doesn't say the drain is stun either...

So call it unclear RAW.


This is a good one for addition to the FAQ!

True, but:This would likely be where we're getting the 'Banishing is Stun damage' bit from.

Well I stuffed an entry into the questions for FAQ on the main boards...

Interestingly, under 3rd ed... the banishing drain was always deadly stun if the exclusive complex action was lost (effectively an extended opposed test). It went on until either the spirits force or your magic == 0. Also if the mage was successful he didn't take drain (though he might have termporarily reduced magic score). If he lost... deadly stun, AND check for permanent loss of a point of magic. (he very well might have prefered the damage to be physical than lose that!). So it's radically different mechanic than currently exists.

The quote SpellBinder finds above and the explicit Drain progressions to Physical for Summoning and Binding but not for Banishing are indeed the sources for my observation. Yes, this is very different from earlier editions of SR, as is so much of SR4A.

Should have fleshed it out more.
The one reason is with spec. You can get spellcasting(combat spells) giving you a +2 bonus, but banishing(spirit X) is useless in most situations. (Considering the fact, that we are not only talking about the spirits mages are able to summon but also any kind of insect spirit and so on. So unless GM allows you banishing(all hermetic spirits) you are kind of in a bad spot.)

As a matter of fact spirits can't support banishing (as far as I know) only spellcasting. Here you get yourself another 4 dice easy.

The situation is, you are meeting a big bad evil spirit of really high force.
And if a Force 9 spirit is adding edge to the roll to resist, you are toast anyway! (Spirit edge beeing overpowered anyway, thinking about some free spirits in certain campaigns, having around 8-9 edge. Beeing able to one hit most runners, even those 400BP+300 Karma kind...)
So there is not really a differance here...

So lets keep it straigt:
It is only better against summoned, high force spirits with counterspelling. (Or spirits getting high counterspelling from their "mage")
And here it is only a viable option, if your bannishing pool is at least around the summoning pool of the mage. (maybe 2 or 3 dice less...)
You got fewer means to add to you pool.
With summond spirits it is also a good idea to "geek the mage". (Here you end up with the question if it is possible to counterspell spells on the physical from the astral plane...

While true, there are situations in which having the skill can be usefull, those are limited. The only reason for having the skill are the restrictions during char-gen.
In BP you spend only 8 BP more to get this skill, while adding even one additional skill is not worth it. (You only get 8 Karma for 8 BP)
In Karma-Gen you are also restricted in what you may take. So it is likely that you have some Karma to spread around. And there is nothing big in Karmagen a mage might want to buy for cash...

This is why I've house-ruled that all banishing foci are general purpose.

WRT specialisations I've replaced spirit types with Attack of Will, Vs Bound, Vs Summoned and Vs Free

Heh. Hehehehe. hahaha!

Seriously, Force 9 spirits are not that difficult with a 400 BP character (properly optimized), let alone with 300 karma! What 400 BP + 300 Karma character do you have that is not capable of this? Did you build a mechanic and then put all your karma into piloting and cyberwarfare? Does SnS not exist in your games? With 300 karma have you not been able to buy, say, a flamethrower, laser pistol, or railgun?

I believe that Irion is discurring the use of Banishing Spirits from the field, not the ability to remove a Force 9 Spirit from the field by any means.

Though I have to say that a 400 BP + 300 Karma Character should have absolutely no issue with banishing a Force 9 Spirit, if that is his focus.

@Neraph
Yeah, if I give them 3 million cash and he is buying himself a banishing focus(correct type) 6++ (If they even are allowed to higher than 6) yeah, yeah, yeah, no actually not.

But yeah, bannish a free spirit with 9 points of edge and have fun.

So yeah, we were talking about bannishing, so well the laser pistol is not much help with that, is it? (And it begs the question if you are allowed to modify it and to which extend. You would need the big laser gun to begin with anyway, or at least the rifle)

So yeah, have fun getting 9 net-hits against 18+9 dice... (And a powerfoci would not even work...)
So lets take a look at that


So lets even get a dwarf with full maxed out willpower you end up with around natural 10 augmented 15.
So 15 dice+7(skill)=22 dice. Now you need the correct bannishing foci for the spirit. Ah, well. Lets even give you the correct spec and the correct foci force 10. You will still only have 34 dice. Hit it with all your edge and you are up to 41 dice... (Unlikely to succeed)
Still, you would need to soak the drain, if you manage to bannish it with one try. (Which will be around 20 boxes)

Sure you may shoot it, true. (Which we were not discussing here, but anyway) Does not change the fact, that it may still one hit most runners... Overcasting force 18 is a lot of damage or just an elemental attack of force 9 around 18 to 22 dice to hit, still good.
Considering that physical attributes are mostly above force.
The results of that will depend on the specific situation, which weapons you have on hand, what kind of armor etc.. And a gauss rifle is mostly not in your backpack.
Still, you are here rolling against around 9 to 14 dice to dodge your attack.

So, yeah you can build runners which can defeat said spirit in specific situations. And yeah, even a 400 BP runner, can kill this spirit if you make all the little choices around the fight to his favor. But thats quite a general statement. A 400 BP runner can kill a force 15 spirit, if he happens to have is finger on a detonator, while the spirit is sitting on 1t of TNT.
In short: Everybody can be killed by everyone, if thats what the GM wants.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Should not... Has a lot. Talking about free spirits. It is just how the rules work.

Irion...

Why do you assume that a spirit is going to resist the banishment? He gets to go home with no more services owed to the puny human. I would think they would likely assist that process, or at least not resist it.

A free Spirit is a different animal, though. How often do you see a Free spirit with services owed to someone else. For Free Spirits, you use Firepower, not Banishing.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Yeah, at this point, you are right. A normal spirit would not use edge. But unfortunatly the rules state, that they resist with force (or force+magic of the binding mage).

For the free spirit it is not about services. A free spirit gets "edge" virtual services for the purpose of bannishing (Banishing Resistance). Refreshing every sunset/sunrise.
(I made a misstake it is a magic+bannishing test, so you are able to use a powerfocus.)
They are bannished if their edge is reduced to 0. Though a force 9 free spirit with an edge of 9 would need up to 18 hits to get bannished...Silly...

So the only kind of spirit you really can bannish is the summoned spirit. And here it is only a good option if he is protected by counterspelling and his force is not high enough to cause you serious drain issues or if it could take you two tests. And you will never know how many hits the mage summoning the spirit had.
And since this mage could choose the type, using everything from specs, mentor-dice to the powerfoci to help him with the task. You are probably down to Magic+Skill+Powerfoci.
And while the mage could probably even rest for an our, you will be fucked if you fail the test.

So even if you have bannishing 6 and Magic 6 and a powerfocus 4 and you are facing off against a force 10 spirit with counterspelling, it might be better to use a force 10 stunbolt (with spellcasting 6 (spec combat), powerfocus 4 and a force 6 spirit with aid soccery)

Or versus free spirits Force plus Edge, and edge is the number of net successes the magician needs to banish the free spirit...never much cared for the drain resulting from either banishing or counterspelling (I am sure there is a reason).

On the above, I apparently missed where Irion mentioned banishment specifically for the whole post. All I caught was what I posted - that a 400 BP + 300 karma character couldn't reliably defeat a Force 9 spirit. Re-reading it I see where he talks about banishing.


Where exactly are you getting 18 services from a Free Spirit? Banish Resistance only gives + Edge Favors, not Edge x 2.

And the number of hits have to overcome the remaining Edge of the Free Spirit, not the full rating. As far as Summoned or Bound spirits of High Force, those services to be reduced are likely to be few.

@Neraph
The free spirit gets his available edge reduced, when bannished. So you need to reduce it to 0 in order to get rid of him.
A force 9 spirit has a maximum of 9 points of edge so you need a maximum of 18 hits (or 19 depends on your interpretation) to get rid of him. (If he has spend edge, you need less)

Unless I read it completely wrong, You are not reducing his Edge, you are reducing his Services, which in a Spirit with Banishing Resistance, is equal to his Edge. They are NOT the same thing.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein

Having to reduce 9 is still not 18 hits. Where are you getting that? How are you doubling it?

Those rules you provided above: the one is an excerpt of the other. Banishing Resistance is the rule and Banishing a Free Spirit explains it a little further - they are not two separate rules that stack.

Maybe he assumes that the spirits scores 18 hits with his 18 dices?