Sorry if I'm covering old ground, but my searches have been fruitless.

1) Familliar Ordeal

MITS states that making an ally spirit can count as an ordeal if the karma cost of the ally is greater than or equal to the karma cost of the initiation w/ ordeal, and that the magician does not lose a point of magic in conjuring the ally spirit. First, does the karma spent on the ally count as karma spent towards the ordeal? I'd say no, but then, why make a minimum like that except to limit a karma cost reduction cheese? Second, if the magician doesn't lose a point of magic to the ally spirit, does he gain a point of magic from initiation anyway? I'd say no, as the spirit of the law seems to be that the magic gained from initiation replaces what would be lost in making the ally, but it's not explicit.

2) Senselink

Can this be used for remote spell targeting? I think so, since you do have LOS from the ally's POV.

3) Forms and stats

In a lot of ways, the rule that the ally's stats remain the same regardless of form make no sense. If I give an ally a form as large as a troll, does it get +1 reach? Why wouldn't it? If it holds a sword in its materialized arm at that size, the sword can extend farther than if the form were smaller. Of course, this can lead to incredible cheese in ally form (if it's a pillar of flames, can it actually burn things? If I give the form the actual organs and appearence of a great dragon, can it breath fire and have hardened armor?), so I think a few balances would be needed. Suggestions:

a) Limit ally form size/nature
b) Charage extra karma for forms with special abilities
c) Balance special abilites with flaws in the form (can work with (b))
d) GunnerJ is full of shit and there's nothing wrong with the form rules.

4) Other powers

What would you think of allowing allys to have normal spirit/elemental powers for an added (probably substantial) cost? I wouldn't try to get it past my GM (our team's characters give him enough trouble already), but I'd allow it for players if I GMed. If it is allowed, should there be limits based on tradition (shamans can give their allies nature spirt powers, mages elemental powers, etc.)?

5) Ally Demeanor and "Treating it Well"

Does the summoner get to chose the personality of his/her ally, or is this up to the GM? It would suck for an ally of high moral standards to be summoned by a person with few inhabitions for the right price, or an active, adventurous spirit to be summoned to a boring lump who just wants to live in quiet. Does this have an effect on how the ally likes its treatment? Would the active and restless spirit restent a master who never wanted to do anything? What constitutes the bound of "good treatment?"

6) Death, etc.

I might have missed it, but I don't see a section in MitS dealing with ally spirits dying. Do they? If an ally takes deadly damage and goes over overflow, is it gone for good? What if its disrupted by stun damage?

2) No, Senselink is magic and magic cannot be used to enhance LOS, per the rules. I might allow indirect fire of Elemental Manipulation spells, but it wouldn't be simple.

3) Search. This has been discussed in detail. (Not saying it can't be again).

4) I've considered it, but usually one power in place of Power Focus.

5) Both the GM and player come to an agreement about the Ally. Ultimately it is an NPC.

6) It is disrupted by physical damage in the say way as stun. Look under the Inhabiting power.

Ally spirits and manifestation

Ally spirit appearances?

Ally spirit info

Searched the old form for you Hope some of it helps.

1) No, the Karma spent for the spirit does not help with the cost of the initiation. The Karma restriction is so that you don't get a tiny little ally in order to get a big savings on your initiation. (E.g., a zero Karma-cost ally)

For an ally conjured as part of an initiation, you don't lose the Magic Point when you create the ally ... but you have to check for Magic Loss when you lose or banish the ally. Yes, you do get to keep the Magic Point you gain from the Initiation.

For a regular ally spirit, you pay the magic point up front, and don't lose any more when you lose the ally. You can even get the Magic Point back if you banish such an ally. (MitS.113)

1) Yes, he doesn't lose the point of magic. Summoning as an ordeal is the only way to go

2) Hellzma-NO.

3) Game balance purely, with some definite distinctions. If the form doesn't have hands, it can't do jobs that require them
Also, think about carrying a matress. Matresses aren't that heavy, they're just big and awkward without good handholds. the larger you are, the easier it is to manage their bulk, and I would apply that. keeps people from having the gnat with the strength of 15. leverage still aplies.

4) You have to declare when you summon it what type of spirit it is. It may be possible to buy other powers of that spirit's type at set costs, however I would greatly advise against this. why?
An ally elemental could always have aid sorcery on. now you're getting (force) dice to all your sorcery skills for having an ally.
And this would give a large bonus to shamans since nature spirits have many more powers available than elementals (to make up for their decreased stats).

5) the answer is "Both" do you get to choose the demeanor your friends have? no. but they all have demeanors you like. With your ally, it's a chunk of yourself. It's not you exactly, but if you're a kill crazy fiend, it won't be mother theresa. I try to imagine the character's best friend and go from there.

6) like any other spirit. death=death. but disrupted means it can come back in 28 days -force, or you can astral quest to bring it back.

Next question: Can a magician have multiple ally spirits? I have the crazy vision in my head of some poor wizard with 4 allies all clamoring for more karma, attention, and shiny things.

Dunkelzahn (apparently) pulled it off; there's nothing that says I can't have more than 1, but you'd better be earning karma by sweating if you've got more than 1.

@Moonstone Spider:

I hope none of those allies have alternative forms as babies who need to be changed. That would just suck.

Don

I was thinking more of the unholy spellstorms you could command if you had 4 allies, all with the sorcery skill, working at once.

Got a question for allies and ritual sorcery.

Isn't it better to have the ally act as a ritual partner than as a power focus in ritual sorcery? You'd have your spell pool, plus the sorcery pool of your skill + ally's skill. That's a lot more than having just your spell pool + Spirit's force + your sorcery skill.

Don

The PC pays karma equal to the ordeal, goes through all the rigamole, gets an ally spirit and access to a new Metamagic technique.

Well: Technically the ally would provide more dice that way but it'd need to know the spell at the desired force too which costs karma.

I personally am all for a more defined set of rules for ally spirits forms. As-for getting into a materialised ally spirit: The form of the ally still takes damage but it won't be bothered by it. I'm wondering about a karma cost system based on cost, availability, and overall stats of a form. IE: You could have a main-battle-tank ally form, but you would need more karma than god to pull it off. You could perhaps scale it so that if the creator knew how to make an item (a main battle tank or a sword, for example) then it would be cheaper.

Hmm. I have another question: Can allies bond foci? Could an ally helping-out in a ritual use expendable foci to add even more dice? Could they themselves bond and wield weapon foci?

I don't think so. They don't have karma. They don't earn any, since they're not independent beings. I would think a free spirit could, but even they have to have their karma donated.
Although, I think if a PC came to me with puppy-eyes and wanted to donate (at 1:1) some karma to their ally so they could bond a weapon focus, I'd definitely consider letting them.

Free your spirit. Then you can donate at 1:3 ratio.

For years we've allowed a magician to have multiple ally spirits. We've found that allowing a magician to have one more way to use up Karma hasn't unbalanced the game.

My biggest point of contention is with the Senselink being used as remote targeting and forms having stat changes. Yes, I understand that they are intended for game balance (even though MitS does not explicitly prevent LOS from senselink). This is not a mystery to me. My problem is that they don't make sense.

As for senselink, comparisons to clairvoyance are not potent. Senselink is not clairvoyence, it is the direct substitution of the ally's senses for the its master's. MitS even states that you can use the ally's astral senses to assense things. In what way does this not logically count as LOS? SR3 explicitly states that assensing can be used to target for spells. Also note that this is an important enough issue that I think if it weren't allowed by canon, it would be explicitly nixed. But as far as I can see, it wasn't.

It's not like it's terribly imbalnced, though. No more so thatn a drone rigger using his remotely controled autogyro to fire its minigun at a target he can't see. There are some differences, so I might impose a TN modifier of some sort, but just not allowing it makes no sense.

Now as for forms: I'm glad that someone mentioned the fact that a larger spirit should be able to handle a large and unweildly thing better, not because of weight but because of physical leverage. This is just basic physics. But it's also basic physics that if your arms are longer, you have longer reach.

I'm not suggesting this as a way to munch out but as a way to counter potential munching and find a more logical solution than simply making all materialized spirits have the same stats, no matter how absurd it is. This has the added benefit of being more fun in that it allwos for greater creativity in form design, as well as utility and a cost to balance it. If you want to make a huge spirit form with +3 reach, the only thing stopping you is an illogical game balance mechanism. Wouldn't it be more sensible to have to pay for mechanical advantages in materializaed form, or limit the types of forms that can be taken for one karma?

GunnerJ, if you could use Senselink for casting spells (other than in Ritual Sorcery which I would allow), don't you think they would specificlly mention that? They went through the trouble of mentioning Astral, but not spells, why? Think about Eyes of the Pack, it replaces the mage's sense but also can't be used as remote spell casting.

I'm with OurTeam on the topic of mages being able to summon multiple allies. You may want to apply the ally against the Charisma limit of bonded spirits though, or at-least apply them on another counter in the same manner as watchers.

I am torn as to wether or not the sense link power can be used to cast spells through the sense link power. On one hand it is very powerful, on the other the sense link allows the character to percieve through the spirit's senses. There is also the fact that astral attacks can't reach the mage through the sense link, shopuld it then be possible for the mage to attack astral entities through the link? It's not a spell, so it's not subject to the same restriction as clairvoyance. There's also the fact that if the spirit can see the target, it can cast spells anyway. The sense-link and aid power abilities also can't be used simultaniously as aid power is exclusive.

What it really depends on is wether the GM considers the senses to have been altered in the same manner as simsense ETC do. I suspect many would say that it does, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has played that it is possible to cast through the sense link.

I don't recall the restriction be limited to spells, but rather "Magical Effects" or something of that nature. I think they would have stated it counts as Line of Sight if it did because that is a huge deal in Shadowrun.

Question: If an ally spirit wears armor (or any spirit for that matter), does the armor reduce the power of the attack before the immunity to normal weapons applies?

Assuming yes: If a force 4 spirit is wearing armor clothing, could it take damage from a rugger thunderbolt burst fire? Why do I ask this? There are two ways to look at this:

Reading 1:
Attack does 12S
Subtract 3 for armor, attack does 9S
Base power of attack unmodified by burst fire is 9M.
This is greater than the rating of the hardened armor -> the attack gets through
Immunity to normal weapons lowers attack power by 8
Attack does 12-3-8=1S damage
Or
Reading 2:
Attack does 12S
Armor effectively lowers base power of each bullet by 3 to 6M
This is less than the rating of hardened armor -> the attack is ineffective

The insect shaman could still sneak up on him and fireball him when he's asleep, or a mage could have a fire elemental amterialise and fireball him. Or whoever it was could use ritual sorcery to fry his ass.

On an interesting note: Would an ally materialised as an insect have the senses of an insect, thus very poor eyesight?

There is no prohibition against having multiple ally spirits. However, since you can only repeat most ordeals with GM permission, you cannot have multiple Familiars. If a mage wishes to have multiple allies, and spends the full magic point and karma for each, I can't see how it can be unbalancing in the slightest.

Also-- since one can't cast through a clairvoyance spell, I'd say that you can't cast through senselink. It seems that anything that isn't your own eyes looking at the target doesn't count.

Unfortunately, the way the rules are written its not possible to declare one way or another what the authors intended when they threw that ally ability in. Personally, I'd rule that it doesnt work that way

Ultimately, the character is the source of the spell, not the ally and thats a very important point. How would you rationalize the power of the spell getting from the mages body (which is still occupied, he's not projecting anywhere) to the target? Every instance of spellcasting that I can find still refers to even straight mana spells being thrown or directed in some way. Is the mana being channeled through the ally? Should the ally have to take drain along with the mage?

Berzerker-

SR3 p. 181, Spell Targeting, goes into detail about what is allowed for line of sight and what isn't. It basically says magic cannot be used to alter your vision for purposes of spell targeting. The only acceptable forms are metahuman vision enhancements, cybernetic enhancements paid for with Essence, mirrors, fibre optics, and optical lenses.

The rules for Sense Link make no mention of augmenting these rules, thus those rules are not augmented by the power. The power would have to specifically state that it can be used to cast spells in order for it to be permissible since it does not fit into any of the allowed forms of visual enhancement.

Note that the rigger isn't using the gun in his hand to shoot. He's using the one on the drone. Your rigger analogy is false. To make it true it is to say the Mage sees what the ally sees and orders it to attack or cast a spell.

To answer opne of the original questions:

Target:Wastelands pg.124 says that:
"It is rumored that some angatkuq have access to secret rituals or metamagical techniques that allow them to create tupilak with the spirit powers of Accident and Fear."

Tupilak are ally spirits, in game terms, so... there's your canon source for creating ally spirits with other powers. I wouldn't make it common, though, and limit the extra power(s) to a few specific ones determined by the tradition of the mage.

GunnerJ, you started this thread by asking a question, but it seems you've already made up your mind anyway and are just looking for validation of your interpretation.

I agree there's no point in continuing the thread because at this point I don't think anybody's really listening to each other's arguments anyway.

However it works out in your game, good luck and I hope you have fun with it. In the long run, that's what's important anyway.