This in short. Imagine I said "50% of the reason you play a street sam is so you can be a very good rigger", would you not flip out over being able to do everything a rigger could...no hot-sim or jack-in needed...for 6 skill points?

Since the summoned our bound spirit will have the conjurer's astral signature, anyone able to assense it successfully will be likely remember it, and possibly know who to come after for what the spirit does on the conjurer's behalf. I wonder if that also extends to effects the spirit has on the physical world and powers it uses.

How about a house rule that if the spirits Force is higher than the conjurer's Magic, the mana treat isn't so tempting and the spirit could feel indignant in performing services, so will roll edge to avoid it. The Spirit Affinity quality avoids the Edge expenditure, and the Spirit Bane quality will make the spirit spend Edge regardless of the spirit's Force.

SR5 fixed the wrong problems, really. Overcasting and oversummoning were the main problems, along with builds that could reliably summon high-Force spirits. Force: 5 spirits aren't so bad; they are tough, but beatable, and spirits are limited to a set number of services. I think the biggest mistake was trying to bring immunity to normal weapons on par with the new damage codes by making it stronger - it was already too strong, so leaving it alone would have been best.


Ironically, before SR5 made deckers and riggers their own special "character classes" again, you could do that. In SR4, it was not inordinately difficult to make a sammie/hacker or sammie/rigger.

Street samurai have always been less powerful than riggers or dedicated summoners, in every edition. They are for people who like being physically tough, and kicking ass personally rather than through an army of minions. They remain an extremely versatile role (although SR5 did kind of mess them up, even more than they did mages).

And honestly, I wouldn't have nearly as much of an issue with spirits being powerful, hard to kill SOBs if they were the only thing that particular mage could handle well. Just as the rigger's machinegun drone doesn't really offend anyone even though ti could match a sammie.

The issue is that said mage is still a personal wrecking ball as well. He never had to make the call "well, I'm gonna be able to summon spirits well, but that means my direct personal utility is going to take a slug, and it means my raison de etre is going to be summoning, and thta means my other magic is going to be second class, at best." Sort of a throwback to the shaman/mage initial traditions. Nor does a mage of great slaughter (or mind rape, or insert preferred magic here) ever need to detract from his great slaughtering to be good at spirits.

He still has his all purpose mage ability to rock house or manipulate reality unimpaired. He doesn't even need to slow down his maging. Its like finding the rigger is also a gunfighting monster-tank who was given those drones for free.

So, there is virtually no cost to being a summoner, chargen wise. Its is as you pointed out, very much like buying up hacking 6, a R6 commlink, and some programs to script kiddie SR4, only without the having to buy a link or programs part.

Which leaves evening it out in the game mechanics - which is where we see drain or the lack thereof. You would think "hey, no problems, this was free at chargen which means in game there's going to be something getting in the way of an extremely versatile and powerful ability" But there's not.

Oh, so you don't have to worry about a whole extra attribute, having to set some sort of priority allocation to E that you'd otherwise have been able to set higher, and deal with the fact that you're not gonna get to have very much if any 'ware (and that any you do have directly reduces your abilities)?

Going the magic route entails a much more notable opportunity cost than "hacking 6, good 'link and programs".

So did anyone actually want to talk about mechanical ways to balance spirits?

Or just argue about what's RAW and dismiss mechanical means that are optional rules?

I think there are three obvious ways to balance spirits:

1. Use the distraction optional rule from SR4, but all the time. So the mage is basically taking a sustaining spell penalty constantly when they have a summoned spirit (-2 to pretty much everything) to maintain their connection and control. Do not allow a focus or other means to decrease this. Now the mage pays for the spirit in stun damage and decreased ability across all other skills while he's got a spirit out. This does nothing to keep mages from summoning higher force spirits and may just encourage some players to go for a higher not lower force spirit. Do not apply this for watcher spirits.

2. Increase the drain from spirits, either by increasing their resistance dice (which also makes summoning high force spirits less of a problem) or increasing the amount of drain per hit from the spirit. This is essentially adding their Force one more time to their resistance pools, what some would call letting the spirit use edge to resist. Yes, this is an optional rule, but how can you propose mechanical fixes if you're not even willing to consider the optional rules that were present in previous editions?

3. Weaken spirits so that mages don't have easy access to mini-gods. Most people seem to think that ItNW is the big offender here, and it can be, but I've always found the powers, astral movement/materialization, stack equipment with their other abilities, and the possibility for ridiculously high attributes/skills to be more of an issue. ItNW is easily handled by making it equal to hardened armor equal to the spirits level, rather than twice. Suddenly only high level spirits are really immune to everything and the rest get a nice little bit of automatic hits/armor that protects a little but are still manageable for security forces and other things. For powers, like concealment, they roll their Force + Magic and the number of hits they get is the strength of their concealment. Having them use a power again because of a bad roll is another service.

There is also the possibility of introducing another mechanic. Specifically, mages taking drain through their spirits. In these rules, the spirit is basically a manifestation of the mage's own magical power. A mage is no longer bound to a certain number of services from a spirit, but the spirit is drawing on the mage to perform the tasks. If the spirit uses a power the mage rolls against F drain (maybe let the mage have a spirit use a power at a lower Force to reduce the drain). If the spirit is attacked, the spirit passes the damage back to the mage and the mage rolls to resist drain for any damage that exceeds the spirits force (i.e. DV-F = Drain). So sending your F9 spirit into a barrage of machine gun fire might not hurt it at all, but could fry your brain. When the mage goes unconscious or dies, the spirit dissipates. Spirits can still be scary strong, but the mage pays for every bit of that strength. This probably needs tweeking to work well.


The first approach worked fine at our table with the penalty applied any time you summoned a spirit above your magic level. But we haven't had a lot of problems with spirit abuse, though I can readily see its there. There were also a variety of manatech options in our world for dealing with spirits that made them way less scary and everyone was aware of the attack of will option, which sometimes is more effect than shooting. Anyway, I would love to hear some other people put out some ideas for balancing spirits.

I like the houserule of nerfing the spirits' stat line. In the spirit statistics, replace all instances of Force with Force/2 (1 optional power per 6 Force, Edge is F/4, etc.). Skills round up, attributes round down (it's better if physical attributes + magic round down and everything else rounds up, but it's slightly more complicated). I think you'll need to give Spirits an additional bonus like +1 to all attributes and skills so Force 6 Spirits are functional in combat (which is +2 dice pools so they roll on average 8 dice to attack). Adjust drain for all Conjuring skills to compensate for this (easiest is probably Drain = spirits' hits, not spirits hits x2; making it scale off Force some way would also work).

This still lets starting magicians summon a non-super optimized Street Sam equivalent, but it's now a lot less reliable (they resist with 12 dice instead of 7) and that's the most powerful spirit they can summon.

Note this only affects summoned spirits; NPC spirits' Force can be adjusted accordingly so they remain just as powerful as they were before.

EDIT: By the way, Immunity to Normal Weapons isn't even the biggest offender. The fact that spirits' dice pools scale at Force x2 is the biggest problem. Immunity or not, it's hard to hit a Force 10 spirit which gets 20 dice to not get hit and 30 when taking full defense. This nerf means spirits' dice pools scale at Force x1 which addresses the fundamental problem with summoning.

if i was to suggest anything, it would be to remove random drain from spirits and set the value to be based on force, probably at least F + 2 or so.

increase by another +4 (so total of F + 6) or so for binding.

yes, this will significantly increase the drain. that's kinda the point. summoning a force 6 spirit is now always 8S drain for a magic 6 magician, which is non-trivial (in contrast to the expected average of 4S drain). binding a force 6 spirit is 12S drain, which actually has a decent (but not by any means guaranteed) chance to KO the mage with all the resulting drawbacks. going much higher is something that you don't do lightly. taking that much drain as *physical* damage is a significant cost.

it cuts off the high end of potential drain, but significantly beefs up both the low end and the average. best of all, it's very very easy to adjust to where we want it. if we want force 5-6 spirits to be roughly where starting shadowrunners can safely summon, you simply adjust how much the fading is. it has the drawback of reducing the chance of pulling off something incredibly awesome, but it also has the advantage of meaning that a force 3 spirit is always a less worrisome thing to summon than a force 6 spirit.

i would also suggest, alongside of that, giving the summoning tests a threshold of 1/2 force (round down). probably 1/2 force + 2 for binding.

oh, and use the astral limit for hits instead of spirit force.

but really, i'm not sure you can really balance it particularly well based on the "average" rolls. if it's based on a set number for drain and threshold, we can get a much better picture of how difficult it is to summon a spirit, and it gets a heck of a lot easier to place spirits where you want them to be; if you want force 9 spirits to be the standard in your game, you simply adjust the drain value accordingly, without having to consider those unlikely scenarios where the spirit might roll 7 hits on 9 dice and suddenly your summoner is facing 14P drain when the "average" value you based it on is the assumption that there will be 6 points of drain (3 hits expected = 6 drain expected)...

so, if you want 6 drain for force 9 spirits (although i can't imagine why you would want to, i feel that's way too low), you set the drain to F - 3.

this is simply so much easier to balance for than a range of possible die roll outcomes. because the thing is, too much randomness doesn't lead to balance. there's too much potential to get the massive risk (which kills you, and tends to ruin gaming sessions) or the massive reward (which tends to break gaming sessions because you suddenly have the unstoppable juggernaut smashing everything in your path at little to no cost). neither extreme gives desirable results; neither of them really are balanced; one is broken in one direction, the other is broken in the other direction. the only time we're getting what might be considered balanced results is when you hit some narrow band of possibilities in the middle.

which leads me to conclude that if the only desired results are in that narrow band of possibilities somewhere in the middle, it makes sense to discard all of the undesirable results and only keep the ones in our ideal range.

I think changing drain to flat scaling off Force has a lot of merit. I don't think it's enough to control Summoning by itself. Again, the problem is how +1 Force gives the spirit +2 dice on everything. If you scale it so a Force 5 spirit results in a reasonable amount of drain for a normal magician, then an optimized magician with maxed out drain resistance stats can summon a Force 8 spirit with a reasonable amount of drain and can go up to higher Force spirits if need be. The scaling is still too much.

Summoning tests having a threshold of 1/2 Force is pretty good, but Edge or really high base dice pools can still let you reliably summon high Force spirits. I think the best way to control spirit abuse is to put a hard cap on the most powerful spirit that can be summoned. Nerfing how spirits scale also reduces the incentives to min-max summoning.

the thing is, if you want to put a cap on it, it shouldn't be a cap that can be reached at chargen. and frankly, what you can reach at chargen is already plenty enough to start causing problems.

plus, since we're ultimately talking house rules at this point, you just set it to what fits for your campaign. if you know your characters are super min/maxers and will be able to laugh off 8P drain like it's nothing (which... well, let's just say that's certainly not common), and you want force 6 to be the maximum practical force to summon, you can just increase the value until it hits the appropriate amount for your campaign. if you think the most they'll want to risk is 10 drain, it's very simple to figure out that if their cap is at 10 drain and you want force 6 spirits to be the high end, you just make it force + 4 drain. you just find out what drain value starts to make them think twice, pick what the max force spirit you want to show up consistently is, and then you set the drain for that force of spirit to that drain value.

but ultimately, i would consider 8P drain to summon a force 8 spirit to be "for special occasions only". unless you specially build for it, healing naturally can take an awfully long time.

Wow, some people really stoop low...

To spell it out for you: The reason most people want to play a Streetsam is because they want to be a tough, surgically enhanced killing machine, with abilities at the peak of metahuman levels. Denying a mage their spirits is like denying the Streetsam Cyberware... sure, there's still Bioware around, but most Streetsam players want both. Ditto for mages wanting both spells and spirits.

It's not about denying them its about balancing them. That street Sam looks kind of lame when a Mage routinely summons up spirits surpassing his peak human abilities.

As long as spirits can't use guns, the streetsam will outdamage and outrange them. Let's take a F7 spirit, which is high force yet can be summoned without risk of dying (though it can still knock out the mage cold) by a starting mage with Exceptional Attribute (Magic). In short, it's the most badass spirit a mage will willingly use, with most mages opting for lower Force. Let's make it an Air spirit, since they've got the best offensive DP and no situational weaknesses like Fire/Water spirits. The spirit has the following attack options (assuming it takes Elemental Attack and Energy Aura) and Defense DP:
Elemental Attack: Complex Action, DP 17, DV 14, AP -7, 0-7m range, possible elemental effect (usually electricity)
Melee Attack: Complex Action, DP 17, DV 11, AP-7, melee range (Reach 0), possible elemental effect (usually electricity)
Engulf: Complex Action, Initial DP 17, subsequent DP 12, DV 14, AP -7, Gasmasks and similar gear grant immunity
Defense: DP 18
Soak: DP 19 (if Hardened Armor works), DP 5 (if it doesn't)

So yeah, it looks pretty badass. Do note that it is the mage's main source of damage in any given fight. Our sample mage could potentially muster up a F7 Lightning Bolt, but that one does DV 7 AP -7, which is laughable when compared to handguns larger than a pistol. Also, the Drain is 4 on that spell, which a standard mage (Assuming Logic 6 and Willpower 5) will not fully soak on an average roll.

So, let's compare those numbers to those of Mr Streetsam. I will assume a similar degree of optimization, since the sample mage above is already specialized and tricked out as fuck in order to reliably summon F7 spirits. The Streetsam in question will have Agility 9 and Strength 9 (easily doable with cyberarms) for the purpose of offense, Reaction 5(7) and Intuition 5. He has 6 ranks in his combat skills, with an appriopriate specialization and will utilize a smartlink. Also, he has an implanted Reflex Recorder. I will list a couple of the most popular weapons that are available at chargen; most streetsam will be able to reasonably use two of them with the listed proficiency.
Enfield AS-7 with APDS: Simple Action, DP 20, DV 13, AP -5, 0-150m range (0-10m without penalty)
Ares Alpha with APDS: Simple/Complex Action, DP 20, DV 11, AP -6, 0-550m range (0-25m without penalty)
Katana: Complex Action, DP 18, DV 12, AP -3, melee range (Reach 1)
Unarmed: Complex Action, DP 18, DV 11, AP 0, melee range (Reach 0)
Defense: DP 12
Soak: DP 28 (assuming Body 5, R2 Armor on both cyberarms, Alu Bone Lacing, Orthoskin R3, Armor Jacket)

As we can see, the streetsam has higher DP than the air spirit (which is a glasscannon; expect most spirits to have lower DP for offense), does slightly less damage with slightly less AP, vastly outranges the spirit, dodges worse but soaks a lot better. Furthermore, he can utilize Burst Fire/Full Auto to further enhance his offensive advantage, and armor mods such as Nonconductivity do not gimp his damage (whereas Nonconductivity R6 completely neuters the Air spirit). Also, he is not as situationally vulnerable as the spirit is; turning off wireless reduces his shooting DP by 2, which is a lot better than the spirit getting hit by something that bypasses its ItNW.

In conclusion: The biggest, baddest spirit an optimized mage can summon out of chargen (without gambling his life) gets outperformed by a similarly optimized streetsam, who even incurs fewer risks while doing so.

Or the spirit just casts Fear and effectively takes the street sam out of the fight and will likely have several combat turns to kill him at his leisure. It isn't like anyone is going to outrun the spirit.

Unless specifically instructed to kill the target, a Shaman's Air Spirit would likely just use Fear to get rid of it in - it's the tradition's Illusion spirit, and so is liable to be less given to being combative. Similarly, Air spirits are Detection for Hermetics, so what they'd do in a fight lacking instruction more specific than "help us fight" is an interesting question.

In other words, what I'm getting at is that trying to use anything other than a Spirit of Fire (for hermetics) or a Beast Spirit (for shamans) to directly fight is gonna burn through services very, very quickly.

Is that RAW somewhere? That doesn't sound familiar.

Would it be better if a Shaman uses a Spirit of Man who uses Fear and Control Actions/Thoughts to off the enemy? Falls right under the manipulation umbrella.

Summoning has always been one of those things and once again we are back into NewAge über build RPG gamer territory. Everyone complains that in newer editions of games these days that every option is the same as every other option and then when something isn't it's THE power build or a bad thing because it isn't the same same thing they've just been complaining about.

Look at things like the West End Games StarWars D6 system. That's been dead for years (the D6 thing itself had a bit f a resurgence but they didn't have the SW licence anymore). It's still alive in many online forms though and still one of the best systems FOR playing StarWars and parts of that were unbalanced (alien races, force users, cybernetics) but it reflected the setting wonderfully (so much so their catalogue was provided to Timothy Zann for writing the Thrawn Trilogy). But balance isn't a PVP mechanical thing as much as many people think it is when it comes to tabletop RPG, that's for MMORPGs and Wargames. Balance is about the Players being able to have fun RolePlaying their Characters in the Story and the Setting of the game. It sounds increasingly that many people are just trying to WIN and at that point you are doing it wrong (I don't say that often).

There is nothing wrong with a Soft Limit, the premise of the whole game is based around Soft Limits. Spirits in SR have always been much as they are (although the Divide of Traditions helped that more back in 3rd and will be nice to see what happens in the magic book). I really don't see where the problem is. It's all part of the group effort and good for the character s often good for the Runner Team.

ummm... no.

you're going to have problems if you ask them to help you learn a combat spell, or something like that.

but a spirit of air will do just fine in a fight, whether it's associated with combat spells or not. if you tell them to help you fight, they will help you fight. if the task is "kill my enemies", they're not going to fear them and hope they run off a cliff or something... they'll move close enough to fry them with electricity and melt their face off. the range may not be great, but an air spirit's effective range is it's movement plus it's attack range, and when you factor in movement, the spirit has plenty of range.

Yes, you can give them the task "kill my enemies". Certainly an option. Now they won't worry about anything to do with protecting you - no Concealment, no Movement, no Confusion, no Accident...

The nature and agenda of a spirit is correlated to the tradition of the summoner - why would you ever think that the tradition's magical associations wouldn't be a part of that? If you have issues with spirits being too powerful, this is the kind of thing you can easily lean on without having to impose a bunch of extra restrictions onto summoners.

That just means that individual spirits from the differing traditions will go about killing their targets in different ways, that is all. A Spirit of Man will go about it differently than a Spirit of Air will. Both will, however, still try to kill the target, as instructed.

I am not sure about other people but the idea of playing genie wish word games to balance something does not appeal to me.

Oh and Elfenlied with the new power focus rules where it raises your effective magic a starting mage can summon up to a force 10 spirit without it going to physical drain. I wouldn't suggest going to physical drain in this edition but force 9 is a hell of a lot more powerful than force 7 thanks to how fast they scale and you can hit that without having to take exceptional attribute magic.

IF that's their instruction, yes. But it depends on the specific instruction.



That is NOT how a Power Focus works - the book is quite clear that raising your effective Magic rating means adding the rating of the focus to dice pools involving magic.

I can't say I'm overly concerned about F9 spirits. More than a third of the time the spirit's going to get 4+ hits on that test, which means 8P Drain or higher. For a starting magician with 11 Drain dice, it's slightly worse than getting shot by a heavy pistol. Hell of a way to start off a fight.

I was thinking of throwing in a house-rule for my game that spirits with a force greater than the summoner's charisma use edge.

Thoughts?

I'm of the opinion that the line at which spirits use edge should shift depending on how the summoner interacts with spirits, but if you want a static point that's about as good as anything else.

It is very clear that it raises the effective magic rating and lists some of the things that applies to. If it was just a dice pool mod it would not mention raising the effective magic rating and just say it adds its force to your dice pool for all tests tied to the magic attribute, just like every other focus(they could have just cut and pasted 4e). By stating it raises the effective magic attribute, it means it raises the effective magic attribute. If they want to errata it, that is fine, but as written the magic attribute is raised. And it is not even raised in a limited fashion because otherwise it would say it raises your magic attribute just for the purposes of x,y, and z. Reiterating some of the things a raised magic attribute does is not the same as limiting them to those specific things.

Epicedion, the issue is more that they hang around for 12ish hours so you can summon them heal from the drain and then go on the run.

FuelDrop, I'd go with a static number like 4 and not tie it to a stat, charisma already does more for mages than logic this would just be nailing the coffin on hermetics compared to shamans.

The term effective isn't used anywhere in the book to refer to directly augmenting an attribute - the terms used for directly increasing a rating are "adds its rating to" or "increases _________ by". Anything that adds a numerical bonus to an Attribute makes a direct and explicit reference to doing so, Power Focus makes no such reference because it does no such thing.

Sure, but Physical Drain is healed on the order of days rather than hours, and you can't heal Drain with magic, medkits, etc. So you can summon a F6 spirit at sundown and nap off any Drain for your run at midnight, but you can't do that with the F9 spirit until you've got 160+ Karma invested just in Magic and Initiation -- and more power to you for having it.

Soft limits are more interesting ways to balance spirit abuse.

Say the mage summons spirits for every fight but doesn't do anything for the spirit. Well, the more the spirit feels they're being used as a tool than a "living" thing then it sounds like it might be time for that mage to get the Spirit Bane quality, and maybe have those spirits actively hunting the mage. Spirits are not drones and should not be treated like them. This is where role playing becomes important, unless we're playing a game of pure numbers and you totally want to ignore role playing...but that sounds boring.

And I disagree with nerfing spirits. They're a very important tool for corporation security. The corp can't afford to have a mage at every site, but they can afford to have a few dedicated security mages astrally project to a facility with alarms going off. Those astral mages can't do much to stop the runners, but they can summon spirits to help out the facility's local security team. Unless you actually want to have a mage at every location.

Also, I don't think spirit's stats should be changed, because spirits make some of the best boss fights around. Guarding the MacGuffin the team needs, nothing like fighting a powerful spirit to get to it. They're a hard fight, but not unbeatable.

do you force people to roleplay using the toilet, or else risk suddenly uncontrollably wetting themselves in the middle of a social situation, as well?

the player is not equipped to properly act out (or describe) every part of their religion. but it's silly to think that a shaman doesn't ever spend downtime doing things to please the spirits, or that mages don't perform rituals that shield them from the spirit's hostility, or however else a tradition might justify their actions.

That needs to be shown as some kind of downside to spamming spirits. A nuyen cost in purchasing favors, time taken away from improving attributes/skills/whatever (not costing karma, but making so that you can't spend karma between runs), or what have you. Everything has a cost, am I right? They don't need to role play it out, though if it can be turned into a plot hook, it probably should be. If crapping on the can, can be turned into a plot hook, then yes...it probably should be role played out.

So say if you want to please the spirits, then you have to do a run for the spirit; pro bono. But of course, that's assuming you summon high force and abuse spirits all the time.

p301 "Bad Feelings with Bound Spirits"

Bound spirits that particularly dislike their summoner can impose a -1 penalty on all of the summoner's tests while the spirit is active.

Well, it's kind of a hard cap that increases when Magic increases. Halving Force and adding 1 to all spirit statistics basically means a chargen magician can summon a RAW Force 7 spirit (houseruled it takes a Force 12 Spirit to get the same stats).


Hermetic magicians have a tough time summoning stuff (probably spirits higher than Force 3 resist with Edge). A chargen Elf Shaman with 8 Charisma summons Force 8 spirits just fine.


Soft limits like that don't work so well. Either they're not enough and players would be more than happy to do what it takes to summon god spirits, or they're so costly that summoning sucks.

Nerfing spirits only affects summoned spirits. With my proposed nerf, adjust all NPC spirits by doubling their Force and subtracting 2 to preserve their stats.

On magical security summoning high Force spirits: doesn't this result in "Have banishing or summon better spirits or die" for the runners? I think you could probably overwhelm any runner team with a few summoners.

Two points. First, mages can adjust what Force they summon spirits at. When they're already hurt or when things aren't looking too bad, they can go for Force 6 spirits. When they're facing heavy opposition but haven't taken too much damage yet, they can go for higher Force spirits. Second, a Force 8 spirit has a 6.8% chance of getting 5 hits, a 1.7% chance of getting 6 hits, and a 0.3% chance of getting 7 or 8 hits. 10P drain before soak is definitely survivable, and even 12P drain before soak is survivable with Edge. The risk of outright dying from summoning Force 8 spirits is extremely low; probably about the same risk as the Street Sam has of dying in the fight. Force 8 spirits will easily match or exceed the Street Sam in combat. The Mage has no need for Exceptional Attribute to summon these spirits.

By the way, the mage you created can cast spells just fine. If it's a shaman, he probably makes a great Face with even a minimal investment in social skills. How versatile is the min-maxed Street Sam, especially since a lot of its attributes are boosted by cyberarms which don't apply to all skills?

The point is that the high end cost is suppose to be there to bring in bad behavior, not be used for a mage that only summons every once in awhile. So unless the mage spams spirits every fight, there isn't a reason you have to give your mage the spirit bane quality.

As for magical security. Banishing should be a useful skill. So I don't see a problem. Likewise a mage can project, and engage the secmage in astral combat, then the secmage has to pick between using up another task by getting the spirit to help with astral combat or get geeked. And if you find that there is a problem with using the PC's own tools against them...then...I can see why you think spirits are unbalanced.

I expect the player to make those comments, and take those actions, though. I expect them to have an investment in their Tradition of Magic. If it never comes up, then they are not adhering to their Tradition, as far as I am concerned, because their Tradition should inform almost every part of their lives. In SR, Tradition is not about Faith, after all, it is about Belief.

Ahh... I see another victim of the Bladder No Control Spell.


There should be some effects that can show up during RP that can serve as nods toward this side of things without necessarily dragging the game to a halt. How they address and handle the spirits is a good way to start.

But it's not just the player though, the GM can and should give a little personaility to the spirit as well. You don't need a full write up, but little quirks or attitude go a long way to making the conjurer-spirit relationship a bit more fun.

For the downtime, you could assign a Summoning Lifestyle to reflect the added costs accrued in doing stuff in the offtime for the spirits or maintaining good relations.

Elfenlied,

In the spirit of mathematical fairness, lets see how this plays out with the figures you called in.

First, on the defense:
Physical

Dodge
Spirit: 18
Sam: 12



Soak
Sam: 28 Soak = 9 DV soaked, prior to AP mods.
Spirit: 19 Soak (even beating HA doesn't make the armor disappear just allows damage, pg 398, ) = 6 DV + 7DV Autosoak = 13 DV Soaked prior to AP mods


So, we can see that for physical defense the spirit is harder to hit, and soaks better, than our optimized sam. And this is a glass cannon air spirit.


So far, winner = spirit who cost 2S.

Magical Direct
Spirit = 7
Sam = 5 (may have broken chargen to get this high, but meh)

Winner: Spirit that costs 2S

Elemental
We'll say the sammie was smart enough to kit out non-conductivity 6 here as pretty much everyone does. SnS you know.

Sam = 14 (1/2 armor) + 5 Bod + NC 6 = 25 = 8 DV for electric, 6 for everything else.
Spirit = 7 +5 = 12 DP = 4 DV + 7 Autosoak = 11 DV, or 13 DV plus hardened armor 14 against electric conventional - or a meager 2 DV against magical hits.


So, not surprising, our spirit can happily out soak elemental damage from normal sources. Granted, it is magically weak, but with a dodge pool of 18, direct magic attacks ar enot liekly to plug it anytime soon.

OVERALL DEFENSE

With one minor exception, the spirit who costs 2 stun out dodges and out soaks the sammie by a wide margin..even if that sammie goes full defense.

So, so far the spirit is better than the sammie defense wise.


Offense

Initiative

Spirit: 18 + 2D6 (avg = 7) = 25
Sam: 12 + 3D6 (avg 11) = 23

Looks like the spirit is faster...

To hit:
Spirit: 17 DP = 5, maybe 6 hits...but rating 3/4 NPCs will dodge 2, maybe three of them for 3 net hits...and the spirit will get a mere 1 net hit against professional 5 and 6 NPCs.
Sammie katana: 18 DP = 6 hits
Sammie assault rifle (got through security) = 20 DP...but we'll say he went ahead and tricked it out for 4 points of RC plus his own three = 7 RC, allowing him go DP 18 on full auto= 6 hits..but any professional 4 and below enemy gets no chance to dodge. Professional 5 and 6 enemies will on average take 2 hits away from the sammie.


So, it would appear that the sammie will typically generate 2-3 more net hits than the spirit.


Damage
We will do two sets of damage calculations, one for a rating 3 policeman R4 I3 B4 W3 Armor 12, and one for a red samurai, R7 I5 B6 W5 Armor 18

Vs the policeman
Sammie katana = 6 hits, enemy 2 hits, 4 net hits. = 16 P -3 vs 13 soak (4 hits) = policeman in overflow.
Sammie Alpha = 6 hits, no enemy defense, = 17 P -6 vs 10 soak = policeman pretty dead
Spirit either = 5 hits, 2 enemy hits, 3 net hits = 17P - 7 vs 9 soak = policeman still very dead

So, it looks like vs the average joe our spirit can wipe the house as well as the sammie.

Lets try notching it up.

vs Red Samurai

Sammie Katana = 6 hits, 4 enemy hits, 2 net hits..unless the enemy full defs, in which case its a wash = 14P -3, soak is 21 for 7 hits = 7P the red samurai is still standing, albeit at -2. He will take 1, amybe 2 more katana swipes to kill
Sammie Alpha = 6 hits, -9 enemy def for 1 def hit, 5 net hits = 16P -6 vs soak 18 for 6 hits = 10 P By virtue of his might body score, the red samurai is still up with a -3. The sammie should kill him next AP, though by the end his recoil will require a cooldown phase
Spirit = 17 DP, 5 hits, enemy 4 hits, 1 net hit = 15 P -7 vs 17 soak for 5 hits = 10P, the same as our Sammie with an assault rifle. You got it, one more swing to bring him down.


So, it appears that even versus the top notch enemies, the 2S drain spirit is just as good as the optimized sammie in damage output.

Range

Sammie: 50m for the short band, remainder as per AP
Spirit: run speed is 44m/turn + 40 meters of sprint (14 DP, 4 hits, 10 m per hit) = 84m/turn or for its 3 APs, 28m/AP...+7 for actual range = 35m immediate range per AP

Looks like in any closed environment, the sammie's rang advantage matters little in the face of the spirit's phenomenal speed.
Of course, the spirit can materialize close enough to the enemy to negate this by using 2 complex actions to dematerialize, astral move, and rematerialize.


Offensive conclusions
The spirit is easily as good as the sammie offensively unless the firefight happens well outside normal SR ranges. For preplanned attacks that those usually are the longer range ones, the spirit simply attacks of the astral, materializing a convenient bend or dumpster away form the enemy before the attack begins.

Allow me to be clear..the spirit, summonable for 2S, has the offensive power against even R6 NPCs equivalent to an optimized samurai.

Intangibles
Spirit: You can always get another one. Has many useful other powers. Can travel in astral. Can fight astral threats if needed. Can be asked to perform a variety of services which can emulate a runner, with DP in secondary skills well above most runners.
Sammie: To actually perform as optimized, needs to be pink mohawk as hell.

Paper Conclusions
The spirit is better than the sammie defensively, and his equal offensively. And both the spirit and the mage outshine the sammie in sheer utility. So, in short, yes, that 2S DID buy a pet the equal to or better than the Sam.

So, 2S buys you an optimized, resurrectable sammie. Yes, I think we can conclusively say there is no hard limit to spirits.

Field Test
Seeing as how katana sammie sucks, we will field test alpha sammie, and the spirit in a bad sort of situation. the combat will start at precisely 50m to give the optimized sammie the best conditions, with all parties in good cover, with each character vs 2x red Samurai as above. All fights are independent. No one is being particularly clever, raw dice on dice. The red sam will have APDS

Begin
Initiative!
Spirit: 18 + 2D6 (avg = 7) = 25
Sam: 12 + 3D6 (avg 11) = 23
Red Samurai: 12 + 3D6 (Avg 11) = 23
Sammie wins the tie with his foes on ERIC.


Spirit AP 1 (25)
Sprint! Covers 28m

RS1 and RS2
Full Auto!
18-3 recoil after RC, 15 DP, 5 hits vs 18 - 9 FA + 2 run = 11, 3 hits. 2 net hits For RS1 and RS2 (the -1 2nd attack is meaningless) so, 13P Vs 13 soak, 4 hits + 7 autoboxes = 2 DV each, for a total of 4 DV from the 2x RS attacks...

Spirit AP 2 (15)

Close the gap and elemental attack RS1 as per damage study = 10P to RS1, who is now on his ass, -5 init, -3 wound
RS 1: stand up and...guess what..recoil is still in effect...it'll have to be a short burst to have a chance...DP 9 vs DP 18...yeah..thats a no go, but its either that or no more actions this turn...a swing and a miss
RS 2: could 12 vs 18 it...save the shot for IP 3

Spirit AP 3
Spirit tears apart RS 1 with 17 offensive DP vs at best 13 defensive DP in full def...
RS 2 hoses him on full auto again, this time the spirit is not running, for 3 damage. Spirit is at 7 damage.

Spirit turn2, AP 1,
Same initiative
Spirit covers the gap with a rnage of 35 including its sprint, elemental attack as per damage study. 10P and RS2 is on his ass.
RS 2 stands up and finds himself 9 vs 18. Nothing.

AP2
RS2 diesto another elemental attack.

Result: Spirit is still semi alive and cna be happily used for whatever. he could probably do this trick again and get at least 1 of them.

Sammie AP 1
Short burst!
DP 20 vs DP 12 + 4 cover - 2 short = 2 net hits, 13P -6 Vs 22 (16) soak = 8P and on his ass (full auto would be 10p and on his ass, but the sammy needs his recoil..and its still 2x shots to kill)

RS 1 stands up and long bursts
18 - 2 wound-1 recoil = 15 vs 12 + 4 cov - 5 long = 11 = 1 net hit, 12 S - 6 vs 28 (22) = 4S...oooph.
RS 2 full autos!
15 DP after recoil is 12 + 4 cov - 9 FA -1 wound -1 2nd attack, 5 DP = 3 net hits. 14S vs 28 (22) = 6S...good thing we gave our sammie WP 5 huh? On his ass

RS2 and RS 1 now have the intiative! 13 and 11 vs sammie modified to 10

They cool down their recoil since the sammie is flat behind cover.

Sammie AP 2 (10)
Stand up, let her rip on a long burst with the last of his RC.

DP 20 -3 wound Vs DP 12 + 4 cover -2 wound -5 long, DP 9 = 3-4..call it 4..net hits. 15P -6 vs 22 (16) soak = 10P more and RS 1 dies.
RS2 re-full autos the wounded sammie...and down he goes, 6S more knocking him out.

RS2 walks over to the comatose sam and executes him or captures him.

Results: The optimized gun sammy might be a match for 1x R5 NPC, but 2 or more will clock him in a firefight.

Final results of the field test!
WINNER: The spirit that costs 2S to summon! 7 damage taken, 2 bad guys dead.
DEFINITE LOSER: Optimized sammie, lost after felling one RS.

So. now you know why I tend to think a bonus skill with minimal drain might need some hard limits.

One small correction, I believe that the direct combat spells like stunbolt no longer add the spell force to the damage, only the net hits. So the mage at least is not dishing out massive unsoakable damage anymore.

Thank you shinobi

Indirect a force+net, stun bolt is a direct spell and is only net hits.

I stand corrected.

On another Spirit topic... Has anyone else noticed that Watchers now require hours minutes to summon and must be summoned in a Magical Lodge?

Sure they are a little smarter now, but really... hours minutes to summon and a lodge?!?

*Edited for timing.

The drain on ritual casting is also horrible. The ritual to create a watcher will cause as much drain as *binding* a spirit of the same Force -- double the hits of a Fx2 roll.

My question is how you are only getting 2s drain for a Force 7 Spirit? That is the crux of the argument, and I must have missed it. I agree with you that a F7 Spirit is stupid powerful, and at our table, it would be rolling 2xF (reroll 6's) to resist that summons (which, believe me, is more than enough to keep that stupidity to a rare minimum).

Minus reagents spending to soak drain

Even with Edge, it's only rolling 1.5xF. Edge grows at F/2.

Having all Force 7 spirits using Edge to resist summoning is IMO a houserule.

Certainly allowed your opinion, but it is RAW. ANYTHING can spend Edge, if they have it, for whatever they want within the uses of Edge. So...
Using your method (No Edge Expenditure), you will have Mages sumoning up to F9's failry casually. Certainly your perrogative, but then you really cannot complain when they break the game. *shrug*

-- No, it's not RAW. Spirits have an entire subhead in the book (titled, oddly enough, Spirits and Edge, SR5, p. 304) that says they can't spend Edge. You have to invent an entire "time 0" step when the spirit exists (presumably as a free spirit) but isn't yet bound, so that it can probably spend Edge without breaking the actual RAW.

I think that that is the unintended consequences of removing Edge from the players semi-control for spirits. Otherwise, then you get the Consequence of having Mages summon stupidly high Force spirits (that do more than just break versimilitude) to take care of their problems. Why? Becasue they can, since there are no consequences for doing so (which has already been shown to be the case).

Besides, My comments originated from how we (at our table) run SR4A, and intend to run Spirit Summoning in SR5 (because to do otherwise breaks the world). Which I Stated as part of that argument. His counter argument was addressing that (how we currently treat the situation) and prompted my reply.

Sadly, he still refuses to answer why a Force 7 Spirit would only generate a peasly 2s Drain. It should be more... A LOT more for something as good as that.