[Shade]

Actually, if there's no Limit, rerolls are only better if your Edge is less than 7/18 (about 2/5) of your non-Edge dicepool. For the spirit, Push the Limit is better, since their Edge is half their summoning-resist dicepool.

For a force 12 spirit:
12 + 6(push the limit) = 18 with exploding 6's, + 3 for the expoding 6's = 21 dice
12 for 4 hits + 8 on the reroll = 20 dice

You are correct, good sir. My mistake.

[MacAnu]

A force 12 spirit, spending edge to resist summoning to re-roll misses will get, on average, around 7 hits. That means the summoner needed 8 to summon it to begin with and is now resisting 14 physical drain. The extreme case magician...hell, let's give him 6 edge too. He'll get around 9-10 hits to resist drain. So he'll take 4-5 physical drain and would've needed 8 on the summoning test to even get the spirit to begin with.

The bigger concerns are the Force 8-9 spirits.  I think those might be too easy to summon for their strength in the extreme case.

Summoning a Force 12 spirit would require Edge on both the summoning test and the drain test along with a heavy investment into summoning (6 Summoning + 6 Magic + 2 Specialization gets 14 dice; the rest needs to come from foci, Mentor Spirit/Spirit Affinity, etc.).  It's doable but extremely risky and would only be used for dire emergencies where the magician had a worse than 50% chance of making it out alive.

[RHat]

The bigger concerns are the Force 8-9 spirits.  I think those might be too easy to summon for their strength in the extreme case.

By extreme case, you mean someone who's entirely based around summoning?

[MacAnu]

The bigger concerns are the Force 8-9 spirits.  I think those might be too easy to summon for their strength in the extreme case.

By extreme case, you mean someone who's entirely based around summoning?

Can you try rerunning the numbers with an extreme case?  Let's say an Elf shaman with 17 drain dice (8 Charisma, 5 Willpower, +4 Increase Willpower, Focused Concentration or Sustaining Focus 5) and 5 Body (after magic).  This requires a heavy investment, but it also makes the character good at other things.  It's very good at magic in general and makes for a good face with even a minimal investment in social skills.

[RHat]

That's true of most SR extreme cases - any time you build around one thing entirely, you CAN crossover into other stuff with a handful of low rank skills, but you HAVEN'T.  That summoner needs high Magic priority, a high enough Metatype priority to get good Edge, a high enough Resources priority to service their attribute needs (like Physical boxes), and a high enough Resources priority for their foci.  All in all, you're looking at about Skills E, with 6 Conjuring, 6 Binding, and only 6 more to spread amongst everything else you need to be able to do.

[Shade]

The bigger concerns are the Force 8-9 spirits.  I think those might be too easy to summon for their strength in the extreme case.

I don't really see that as a concern as a well-rounded Sam is a match for a force 8 or 9. 18 Hardened armor is perfectly manageable to a starting character. If he left his SMG or AR with APDS at home, that's on him.

[RHat]

For example: Crocket EBR (DV 12 AP-3) and APDS, Agility 6(, Longarms 6, Wireless Smartlink yields better than even odds to hit the spirit on a long or short burst, and will pierce the Hardened Armour.

[Michael Chandra]

Can you try rerunning the numbers with an extreme case?  Let's say an Elf shaman with 17 drain dice (8 Charisma, 5 Willpower, +4 Increase Willpower, Focused Concentration or Sustaining Focus 5) and 5 Body (after magic).

Just the two for now: Force 14 is ~25% K.O. odds and average 7P drain, didn't calculate odds to succesfully summon. ~15% odds for a Force 12, average drain slightly above 5P.

You'd want to take an APDS-loaded Enfield instead, since chances are you're not bringing a sniper rifle into the building. That's 13/-5 rather than 12/-7, which means 1 net hit still pierces a Force 9.

[RHat]

Can you try rerunning the numbers with an extreme case?  Let's say an Elf shaman with 17 drain dice (8 Charisma, 5 Willpower, +4 Increase Willpower, Focused Concentration or Sustaining Focus 5) and 5 Body (after magic).

Just the two for now: Force 14 is ~25% K.O. odds and average 7P drain, didn't calculate odds to succesfully summon. ~15% odds for a Force 12, average drain slightly above 5P.

You'd want to take an APDS-loaded Enfield instead, since chances are you're not bringing a sniper rifle into the building. That's 13/-5 rather than 12/-7, which means 1 net hit still pierces a Force 9.

The Crockett's a battle rifle, and there's no reason not to take it into any situation where you can get away with the Enfield (remember, no weapon handling rules).

[Michael Chandra]

It's a +6 vs a +10 Concealability. ^_^ Also, the Enfield is actually better if you manage to pierce, does 2/3 damage more on average. And a far cheaper piece of equipment to lose. It does have lower Accuracy, though, so I guess that's a reason to bring the EBR.

[RHat]

Yeah, for a skilled character it's superior - I've got one character stashed who loses hits on 45% of her rolls with the Enfield, or 26 percent if you go for a smartgun.  The EBR with a smartgun, by contrast, this drops to 5%.  Worse yet, a Force 8 spirit has a reasonable chance of matching the Enfield's accuracy - not so for the Crockett.

Really, though, Longarms overall has turned into a very nice main combatant skill now.

[Lynx]

Spirits are good, very good BUT like everything else, there are counters.

A Mage with Control Thoughts
A physad with a monowhip weapon focus

I have a pretty tight elf shaman in my group, and he uses force 8's a lot, against groups with no magic they win no big shock, but he has to hide and they try to focus on him first and if they have grenades they use them