Hi all,

So imagine I play and invoking shaman with charisma 6. MitS specifies that Great Form spirits do not count toward the limit of one spirit per domain. So I take it I can have both a Great Form Spirit of Man and a normal Spirit of Man in a given domain. My question is, can I actually have 5 Great Form Spirits of Man in this case?

This is my reading, and since I really intend to play a High Charisma character would be good for her. But I find it so overpowered that I want to check it's really real.

That is indeed correct. But remember: While Great Form nature spirits may cross domain boundaries to a certain extend their use of spirit powers is still limited to their natural domain ... strictly speaking that includes the ability of materializing as well.

So overall it's certainly not that more "over-powered" than a hermetic having 5 great form elementals at his disposal.

Indeed. Though the mage asking a service to said elementals is burning handfuls of nuyens every time… But ok, sounds good to me!

Sorry for reviving this post. But maybe someone wants to respond



I wondered where I can find this part in the rules? In the rules it just say "great forms" can leave their domain....?

Attack dice from elementals are only based upon Reaction correct? Meaning that Anything below F3 Earth-Elemental cannot move and attack in the meat world...

Attacks from elementals are done as mellee type correct?

Two of potentially more places:

1. page 184 SR3, Domains, first and second sentences of second paragraph:
   Nature spirits only have powers within their domains. They cannot leave their domain, nor extend their power from it.
2. page 262 SR3, Powers -> Range, last sentence of first paragraph:
   Note that the powers of nature spirits only have effect within the spirit's domain (see Domains, p. 184)

While the part in italics is explicitly voided by the description of "invoking" and "great forms the underlined parts are not.

=> nature spirit great forms in SR3 can indeed travel beyond the boundaries of their respective domain, but while doing so they still cannot make use of any of their powers and that technically still includes the materialization power, so physical tasks outside their domain are also a "no no".



It might appear that way, but there are some catches in there. First of all a critter's Combat Pool usage on Skill Tests is explicitly limited to the value of its Reaction attribute and critters by default do indeed use Reaction as a skill replacement. However, the wording of the paragraph on Actions and Skills on p. 265 SR3 and the repetition in the Critters book on page 5 provide the GM with enough leeway to use his judgement on whether or not a specific critter has or has not access to actual skills instead of the Reaction attribute. And while only Dragons can explicitly learn combat related skills this "judgement call" aspect applies to any critter. In addition to that all NPCs / critters may perform all actions like characters unless explicitly noted otherwise => Technically they can default to their attribute which in turn would incur +4 TN modifier and loss of Combat Pool on any such action but leave them still able to attack (or provide friends in melee modifiers where applicable). Therefore ...



... materialized F1 and F2 Earth Elementals might - depending on GM's discretion - attack with 5 or 6 dice at base TN+4 while defaulting to STR or use any number of skill dice he deems fit against base TN ... both without access to Combat Pool on those rolls.



Physical attacks indeed use melee combat resolution rules.

Great thanks this helps

I was mainly asking for my own summoned elementals.

I also got the idea (to save some nuyen), to order elementals to look for materials for me while iam gone / on a run

I wonder how many people use this interpretation. Every group I have played with took it to mean Great Form spirits ignored domain restrictions. If one were to play by your ruling, there is no reason to define their ability as crossing domain lines. They could only use their powers in their original domain or another physical location with the same type domain; it would make more sense to define them as being able to move to like domains and no need to confuse the issue with crossing domain lines.

Not much room for "interpretation" as far as RAW is concerned and I have seen more than enough regular groups and convention games using RAW on this matter.



Nothing is preventing any of these groups from using that as a house rule. Individual mileage on power ramifications for shamans may vary.



Unless you realize that they still can gang up for astral combat against astrally active opposition while being outside of their domain. Additionally any character capable of channeling spirits could still do that... and then debate will arise whether the channeling shaman can use the powers.



~erm~ That would exactly be the consequence of "my interpretation" a.k.a. RAW: A great form nature spirit can only use its powers while being in "its domain". "Its domain" is - by RAW - not limited to the physical location of the place where it was conjured. But while outside of its domain no use of powers.



Unless travelling from one location of domain type A to a second location of the same domain type via sending to and recalling from its native metaplane a great form nature spirit must travel through astral space along with his current master just as a hermetic's elemental would. This will cause the spirit to cross domain boundaries on various occasions so explicitly mentioning the ability of great form nature spirits being able to cross those boundaries is of importance regardless of the power usage question.

I think that RAW is would do a fair ruling here.

Elementals are really expensive and have only a few advantages over spirits and miss most of the nice powers.
Also e.g. a air spirit has a large air domain as long as your outside, it's just limiting when you change the scenery and you don't loose the spirit even.

actually, it always felt unfairly powerful when i was reading about it (never fully got much of a chance to play SR3).

knowing that there are actually some limits on the usefulness of great form nature spirits makes it seem a lot more fair than my initial reading of that metamagic technique led me to believe.

can't say i feel particularly sorry for the shaman with invoking either. it's still a great power. i mean, it isn't exactly super difficult to make some basic predictions on useful spirit types; city, hearth, wind, maybe sea spirits if you're in seattle, mountain if you're in denver, etc.

if it turned from being good to being absolutely awful useless trash, then yeah, i'd say the RAW is dumb. but seeing as how it is still an excellent metamagic that i could still see being recommended to anyone making a shaman and considering metamagics to choose (i mean, not before masking or anything silly like that, but i wouldn't push it super far down the list of metamagics to strongly consider either).