So now we know it is highly unlikely no matter what version you are playing. But hey at least in third you got a karma pool so it might be possible. With loaded dice .

To make it "if the force of the spirit is higher than your own magic" does not fix anything. It only delays the point at which you have to deal with the problem.

The point is, that a Magic 10 mage might be able to summone a force 20 spirit, but this again is very risky even without edge.
The higher your magic, the closer the Force you can summon without risking your life to your magic.
Talking about binding, the effect is even much worse.
A magic 10 mage is very unlikely to bind a force 12 spirit. (Not talking about the time it takes to do it. Without sleep regulator Force 24 is a quite a dead end anyway)

Binding is in general not the real problem. It is summoning.

Of course it is hard if spirits over 4 start spending edge.
Just make two changes to soften it up.
Edge for Spirits: Force/2
Spirits ADD it before the roll and don't use it to reroll. (This would make binding too hard, even for force 6)

So lets take a look at an force 8 spirit. (Those are quite powerfull. I would say they can kill a mundane runner up to 100 Karma (and fitting gear, not delta for one billion) on their own.

To summon this spirit:
The spirit resists with 8+4=12 dice (of those 1 out of 6 is rerolled on the avarage. Bringing it up to around 14 to 15 dice). So lets be nice and say 15 with 5 hits.
That means to summon him you should have at least 20 dice in your summoning pool. Thats doable.
And you should be able to resist at least 8 points of drain.
You might need to spend edge but this is doable for a mage with 80 Karma. Considering the mayham this spirt can cause... I guess it is more than a fair deal.

To bind it you need first of all 8 hours and some materials.
Now the spirit will resist with around 20 dice (with rerolls around 24).
So you should have at least 30 dice in your summoning pool and you should be able to resist around 11 points of drain...
Thats probably possible for a 140 Karma mage.

What this rule does is, that it closes the gap between summoning and binding an inch and making both a bit harder.

Right now a 50 Karma mage can easily summon a force 12 spirit (if it is not using edge). But to bind it, would still require a lot more Karma. (The spirit would have the same dicepool to resist as the force 8 spirit after the rules above)

@Powerfocus
Well, it is possible to buy it if you are a shame/face at the same time. You have to consider the fact, that street cred ads to your dicepool. So having an increase Charisma spell sustained for 9 to 12 charisma, 6+2 from your skill helps a lot. If i am not misstaken contacts may help too. Now, you still need a good edge attribute. The high Karmacosts mean, that you need at least 150 Karma to even go there. (You won't get around to spend some on your way.)
You may end up with at 9+8+X(Situational bonus, contacts, mentorspirit etc. pp)+15 street cred= 22 dice +x. To make things simple lets say 25.
Use edge to reroll and you get around 13 hits on your first roll.
The 10. roll (with reducing the dicepool) will still offer around 5 hits.
That means you will have made it around week 7 to 8....
Granted, if you do not have an high edge attribute (5 to 6) , well you probably need 10 weeks...
So by the rules, it ain't a problem. If you let a "real" face handle the job, (s)he will get it for you in about 3 to 4 weeks, probably.

Binding does not require a test.
Creating the focus is much harder, with the decreasing dicepool. It is not depending on time but on rolls.
That means something like 144 hits is highly unlikely unless you get 30 dice or more. How to get them at this test, without spending insane amounts of Karma...

I suggest you look at the 'spirits and edge' section of street magic.

It pretty much suggests that spirits will spend edge if they're more powerful than the summoner to resist. That's where our house rule is based off of. Also why I disagree with the blanket... anything over force 4 edges.

Also... depending on how much the summoner (ab)uses the spirits under their care should come into play as well... these are supposed to be RP'ed NPC's after all. Alien to this world but still NPC's. Similarly in the core rule book... is further proof that spirits are far more likely to fight a binding than a summoning as it radically changes the nature of the summoner/spirit relationship (uncontrolled spirits sidebar).


By the time you have magic 8 or 9 mages wandering around in a game... a spirit of 8-9 isn't going to be a huge issue compared to the amount of power creep already in that game.

@Falconer
My argument is, that the "spirit uses edge if force is higher than magic" helps a lot in the early game. There a mage will probably only have a magic attribute of 4 or 5, depending on the build.
But as soon as you leave this area and he increases his magic it gets less and less usefull.

Force 20 spirit will probably be never anything you have to worry about, but a force 8 spirit is bad enough at it is.
They tend to have around attributes a bit over the 8 and skills at 8, giving them quite high reaction rolls, good chances to hit something etc.

This ruling makes the magic attribute even more important than it is right now. It is allready the most powerful attribute in the game.

In addition to that it makes everything over your magic attribute just impossible to bind and very hard to summon..


Well, it depends. Magic 8 from 5 are 105 Karma. The question is how much money you give per point of Karma. If it is 5000, there won't be such a power creep. 505000 nuyen, well thats twice your starting gear as a sam... (minus the money you used up for lifestyle etc.)
It can get you something and you will probably bring down a force 8 spirit with it. (But again this depends on what kind of spirit we are talking about and how the spirit acts and how you handle surprise tests etc.)
A stupid spirit is quite easy to defeat, if you interpret the rules against the spirit. A spirit acting smart, an other kind of problem. It really depends on how you read the rules and how you roleplay a beeing with logic 8 and intuition 8.