Mage sends a spirit to "Kill all the police in the van" which is fine, the question was, does he know when the service is complete?

Is there anything is SR3 or MiTS about this?

Thanks.

Mm, especially for those "go kill so-and-so" remote missions... Good question, I always assumed that if an elemental disappeared (having fulfilled its last service) the mage would know it, but even that then opens the question of did it jump or was it pushed?

Not unless the spirit lets him know, he orders the spirit to let him know, or he finds out the spirit left because it was out of services.

We always assumed that a mage will know if and when an elemental disappears from his/her service regardless of the reason, but the location and the method of disapperance is not known. Sometimes we allow an Intelligence test on the part of the mage. Because after a remote service, the elemental disappears, a mage would probably have to just write it off as either successful or the elemental was banished/destroyed. In cases of patrolling elementals or elementals on guard duty, we assume that unless the elemental physically reports back to the mage, the mage doesn't know what's going on with the elemental at the time (again, sometimes allowing Intelligence or some similar test on certain occasions).

One wrinkle that we typically run into is the case of Karmically bonded elementals at locations (or even just simple watchers). One thing our mages would do is simply cast an Astral Barrier on the patrolling spirits to contain them while the run is going on. Watchers are prevented from reporting back to their conjurer, while elementals aren't dumb enough to try to destroy themselves against the astral barrier, but can't "teleport" to a metaplane when they are bonded to a location. Bye bye, astral patrol.

I always thought a mage could tell if the elemental was geeked or if it just left because its services were up. Don't have any references to back that up, but I have that impression from somewhere... hmmm.

We always played it, that you have x number of services form the spiret depending on how many sucesses you made when sumoning. If it was your last service the spiret go's back to wherever it came form, if you had more sevices from it, the spiret would come back and let you know it was done. Not sure if this is an actual rule or a house one as I havent used many magical charaters!

torz x

I'd tend to say the mage doesn't know.

Remember, what's good for the gander... I like having an excuse for corp mages to 'fire and forget' when otherwise they'd fire and have to follow up with more fire.

I am fairly sure there is actually a rule about "remote services" in sr3. I think it was something like: the summoner can communicate with & is aware of summoned spirits within some multiple of thier magic rating meters. Beyond that they aren't aware. Unless the spirit really hates the summoner it is probably best to play it such that if there are services or time left on a spirit it, by default, reports back for further orders when an order is completed.

So basically there isn't a security mage someplace in seattle who summons a thousand watchers a day and sends them off to guard a thousand buildings (err, or intelligence watchers... heh, whatever), then immediately calls the police whenever one of them is killed. To detect watchers dying their summoner has to be in the building they are watching. Of course you have to kill the little guy quick before it gets away.

Aha! found it!

Yes, but does the mage know if the Remote Service was successfully completed or not was the original question.

The mage can probably distinguish between a spirit that has completed its service and is no longer bound and one that has been destroyed. I'd play it that if it was killed, the mage could probably assume it didn't win the battle. If the spirit died right after completing its remote service, the mage wouldn't know, as the completion of the remote service broke the bond it had with the mage.

Thanks for the replies all, looks like I need to do some more digging.

I suppose one way is to know if a task is complete is to attach some verbage to the end of the command like, "Kill all the police in that van and then notify me when you are done". I know players like to get all crazy with the compound directives, but I'd allow something like this.

But then you run the risk of having opposing spirits/astral mages/whatehaveyou following the spirit back to your location. So that's not always an option, either.