You know, given that Summoning is only a Complex Action.

Yes - bind spirits offer more powerful services like aid sorcery. And there is no statement like an elemental army ... Its one of the strongest mage skills possible, especially in the long run when you start to amass 10+ service per spirit

SYL

Since Binding is never in conflict with summoning, yes it is a usefull skill.
The thing is, that Binding allows for additional spirits.
True, a summoned spirit can go up to force 10, even for starting characters. For a bound spirit force 6 seems the most you will be able to do. (No use of edge assumed here)
True, a force 10 spirit may fight 2 force 6 spirits easy.
But nothing prevents you from having this spirit too.
Binding up to 4 costs only 4+4+6+8=22Karma and enables a mage to add an addtional use to his most used attribute in the most potent manner in game (spirits are by far the strongest asset you get in a normal game).
And those spirits enable you to boost your most often used and most powerfull attribute...
On a sidenode this skill is essential for the most powerfull metamagic technique (ally spirit).

Not to mention the ability to have your spirits last past a sunrise/set.

It's also useful not to have to worry about drain at the point of needing a spirit.

I didn't read it explicitly stated, but you can only have 1 spirit summoned at any particular instant, if memory serves. However, you can have a LIST of bound spirits; up to your charisma. A Shamanic Elf you walk into around the corner could be literally packing 9 spirits in his pocket: 1 summoned and 8 bound. And the bound only functions, like maintaining a spell, have already been mentioned.

In short, I personally would never ever take a mage or mystic adept with summoning and not binding voluntarily.

It's on p188: "A magician may only have one unbound spirit summoned at any given time, and no more bound spirits than her Charisma attribute."

saved again. So yeah, 9 spirits on an elf. 10-12, if he's been extremed on natural.

You can only summon on spirit at a time (Watchers not included), you can bind as many spirits as you have Charisma (IIRC, at least.).

Which means if you're going for Temp Spirits, you can only get one. Full-time spirits, however, you can have a few.

EDIT: Just woke up, and saw this has already been answered. I should go back to bed.

Yeah, as stated you can only have one summoned spirit at a time, but up to CHA in bound spirits. You can also call on bound spirits at the snap of a finger without risking drain.

In my game I use a house rule where summoning a spirit takes F mins to complete, so bound spirits are even more useful, but obviously this is irrelevant at your table.

Everyone else makes it sound like a no brainer. It's always been a toss-up to me.

Reasons not to take binding:
1 Binding costs money. Summoning is free, but binding takes materials costing 500 * force each time.
2 (Obvs) save the skill points
3 Spirits get 2*Force d6 to resist binding, as opposed to Force d6 to resist summoning, and then you have to soak 2*[total hits] (not net) drain. This means that on average you can soak the drain for summoning spirits of twice the force that you can soak the drain for binding.

Reasons to take binding
1 Services - as mentioned above, bound spirits can help in more ways. They dislike being used to soak drain, but Aid Sorcery in particular can be quite useful.
2 Invoking - This metamagic grants additional powers, and relies on a binding test. Even better, it increases the value of low force spirits, making binding a better value.
3 Banishing - when you banish an opponents spirit, you can immediately make a binding test to put it under your control before it flees to the astral.

To me, taking binding as a skill makes sense when you already know banishing, have a relatively high charisma, a little nuyen to spend, and can initiate and grab invoking. I don't put it on every magician with summoning, and I don't feel like I miss out.

Certainly at CharGen, when points for mage builds are at a premium, Binding can be passed over. But most mages are gonna want to take it at some stage in order to boost the number of spirits at their disposal for the times things get hairy ...

When I play magicians, my binding skill is always the skill I set at 6, and I often play high edge specifically for good binding. Spirits are where a magicians power is. Sorcery, while useful, has disadvantages and is often less powerful than mundane tools that do the same thing. Conjuring is amazing however, not only does it grant you extra actions by means of a high attribute high skill spirit with immunity to normal weapons, many(most) spirit powers just work with little to no resistance or disadvantages(compare concealment to invisibility).

When you summon a spirit, you are limited to one spirit, and if you run out of services, or you need a different type of spirit, you need to summon again. Since summoning drain is highly variable, this can be inconvenient or even outright dangerous(a force 6 spirit can cause between 0 and 12 drain, which can be nasty when you're already wounded).

Bound spirits, apart from having more options they can perform, can be called at any time with no drain, and you can have multiple out at once. If your team is targeted by a Red Samurai strike squad, a fire spirit will help, 6 spirits will likely win the fight on their own.

The cost of binding, while not irrelevant, usually isn't a big deal. One you get a couple sustaining foci and a decent power foci(and maybe an essence of 'ware), you have little demands for your money(at least compared to a street samurai/hacker/rigger type character). Magicians get better via karma, not nuyen, so dropping a few thousand even for only a couple services isn't a big deal. Even early it's well worth having a couple low force spirit bound, because even a force 3 spirit can be very very useful.

My Opinion: Yes, Binding is absolutely worth it.
Many of the above posts cover why I think so.
Chief among the reasons is because it is a force multiplier.

I guess what a lot of people do not realize is, that bound spirits should be used in a different manner than summoned spirits.
To send a force 4 bound spirit in the fight means, that you just lose a lot of money. It will probably even be unable to hurt anybody.
And trying to get force 6 spirits cost a lot of money 3k and you won't get a lot of successes. Making it expensive.
So you use bound spirits for stuff you can't use your summoned once. For example to make your first spell count.
Those 4 dice can be the differance between: The enemy mage and some drones survived the manaball and boom.

That is assuming that A) your bound spirits are weaker (they should be) and that B) you have the luxury of choice. The point I thought more was that bound spirits give you an extra spirit more than an alternative one, and should you need them both, or however many, that they can join ranks next to the summoned one. I would always summon one as well when possible, but many hands make, etc etc.

How so?

Magician without Binding: "I summon a Fire Elemental with a complex action."

Magician with Binding: "I snap my fingers and five Fire Elementals show up ready for my commands. My command is, 'Hug that troll with all the grenades on him. A lot.', and then dive for cover."

Thank You CanRay, that was exactly my point. Multiple Spirits are always better than a Single Spirit when things go South.

Just remember that the bound spirit services aid sorcery, and aid study... only allow you to use a spirit of greater or equal force to the spell/object you're researching/crafting. Only give bonus counterspelling/spellcasting dice to spells of lesser force than they are... (given how often combat spells in particular are overcast... this tends to make aid sorcery combat not very useful most of the time).


Also binding gets expensive (500 per point of force). And is generally best done in off-time given the large amounts of drain it tends to result in.

Just so. I, and I imagine most people posting here, walk around with bound spirits in tow (as many and as high force as I can afford without killing myself) and then summon another spirit to do on-spot "heavy lifting" jobs. My summoned spirit is typically over-cast, as well. Bound spirits are for when you need the extra oomph in a pinch, or for the tasks that only a bound spirit can perform.

At a few demos I've run, I've had a cowardly magician who used Summoned Spirits against the PCs rather than face them himself. Gives the group a challenge without being overkill.

But, as I never get to BLOODY WELL PLAY...

This is why our group seems to have no less than 3 GMs for shadowrun, and we ping-pong back and forth, depending on who shows up. RL > game, after all. Though it get's bloody confusing to keep track of who-got-what-when, it means everyone gets to play. Have GM's get base (not RP or extra) karma for their own character when they host, and away you go.

It certainly keeps things from being purely repetitive. Each of our GMs has flaws in how they play, and one likes to pit you up against higher numbers, regardless of whether you are capped or not (bloody skill 10 NPCs). We keep telling him that unassociated persons would NOT construct a bank vault in a french restaurant, with gas and electrical subduing systems, to catch one team with NO RELATION TO ANYONE IN QUESTION, and then air-lift the bloody thing over the Pacific with several freight helo's.

I tend to get overly convoluted in terms of conspiracy theory. Go figure.

But yeah, even in the crap we put up with, we assume anyone who can summon spirits short of a Merlin Hawk can bind them. For good reason.