[Top Dog]

I do have one question.  If a Aspected Conjurer summons a spirit with the Spellcasting ability, what spells (if any) does it have?

To get back to that question. I interpreted the Innate Spell power (which is the only way for a summoned spirit to have a spell at the moment, if I'm not mistaken) to have all spells available. The rules state that "Innate Spells are chosen from the list of spells cast by magicians". Note the plural; it's referring to the list of spells available to all magicians, not the spells only by the summoner in question. In the next line it again refers to "magicians" with the same language, and there it obviously refers to all magicians rather then the summoner, so the line should be read to mean that only normal magician spells are available (rather then, say, other critter powers).

Incidentally, that makes aspected summoners (well, ones that can summon spirits of man) much more powerful, as you suddenly have all those neat spells you might want to use to defend yourself with available via spirits. It's not quite as convenient as being able to cast them yourself, but it still means you have a big leg up over other aspected magicians.

Speaking of all that, I'd say that aspected conjurers don't really need free stuff to balance them against other aspected magicians, once they get free spells. It may not add up karma-wise, but ultimately what matters is if the different choices are balanced against each other, and conjurers don't need the formula to function, while the other AM's do.
Mind you, I'd probably still not pick an aspected conjurer (or any other for that matter) for my specialized magician, apart from perhaps D. What you give up is simply not worth the 1 (or 0) extra magic you get. But that's a problem with the AM as a whole, and unrelated to this discussion (if you'd get free spells as an aspected magician, I still wouldn't pick it for the same reason I don't pick aspected conjurer now).

[Dracomax]

You also get, effectively, another skill at a higher rank, since you get the whole skill group. It may not be a huge deal, but you can't neglect it when considering AM.

[acolyte99]

Top Dog, the spirit of man description states on page 304, SR5 (in SR4A it was just the same):

Innate Spell (any one spell known by the summoner; Force is limited to spirit’s Magic)

So from the description of Innate Spell alone you might interpret it like you did, but spirits explicitly have only Innate Spell with one of the summoner's spells (or more if you take Innate Spell several times, if your spirit if powerful enough).

[Top Dog]

Ah well I feel silly now. I knew Spirits of Man had Innate Spell (and I was pretty sure it was unqualified, although that's obviously not the case), so I went straight to the power to read it there, but there it is in the spirit description clear as day.

Guess it's for the best though, otherwise shaman summoner AM's would be quite bad versus mages.

[Jesentra]

It's fair to suggest that Conjurers are near feature complete at present (near, because they start off without bound spirits or spend karma on something you should literally never spend karma on) and Sorcerers/Enchanters aren't (whether this presents a balance issue is a different question).  The problem comes in what happens if you give the latter things to make them feature complete and add nothing to the former, which definitely creates an imbalanced environment; a sorcerer or enchanter with the right combination of skills and spell/preparations is a lot more powerful than a conjurer, who cannot make their disjointed sets of abilities work together.

I'm just not sure why you'd think this to be the case. I think the two groups are at least on par. If we're suggesting that an Alchemist is powerful when he is given enough time to prepare his preparations, then we'd have to allow that a conjurer would be given time to conjure and bind spirits equal to his or her Charisma. Spirits offer a lot more utility than just "go beat up bad guys", but even if we were just discussing raw, destructive prowess, the ability to summon up to 6 Spirits on the field in an instant is resoundingly powerful.

I guess I don't see Conjurerers as near feature complete; I see them as completely feature complete, whereas the other AM are woefully not.

[Shinobi Killfist]

A sorcerer or alchemist with synergistic skills and spells/preparations can be more powerful than a conjurer when spirit abilities are in play.

I disagree with that entirely.  A sorcerer with synergistic spells might be more powerful in the right situation than a conjurer but there will be just as many if not more situations where the conjurer will be more powerful .

[All4BigGuns]

Aspected Magicians are supposed to be "less powerful" than full Magicians, Adepts and Mystic Adepts. That is why they don't get free spells/preparations/rituals/whatever. There is no reason to add them. If a munchkin chooses full Magician over Aspected, that does not mean that Aspected is pointless (the same goes for pre-hot "fix" Mystic Adept, if a munchkin only goes for that because of the math, that does not mean it's "broken" it just means he needs to get the book used on him until he puts the calculator down, IMO).

[Top Dog]

I strongly disagree with that. An Aspected Magician versus a normal one with similar skills and magic rating, sure, the AM is less powerful. But the whole point of a chargen system is to make balanced characters. Ideally every character that's built sensibly should be equally powerful (even if that's never going to happen in it's entirity, it's still the goal). If you pick priority C as a magician, your three choices of magician type should all be of strength 'C' - and what's more, they should all be in line with other 'C' choices. They can be different in flavor and effect, and due to the complexity you'll never get them all exactly right (perhaps not even close) but it's still what you should plan to do.

Otherwise, what's the point of a chargen system at all? Just let the players pick abilities and skills as they want; after all, balance isn't important during chargen and only munchkins will take advantage of that.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Also even on the fluff side aspected are not supposed to be weaker in their aspect, they are actually usually stronger in their aspect.  They are weaker than the full mage in that they lose 2+ aspects of being a mage, not in that they suck in the aspect they specialize in. 

[All4BigGuns]

...Ideally every character that's built sensibly should be equally powerful...

And this is the idea that spawns crap games like D&D 4th.

Also even on the fluff side aspected are not supposed to be weaker in their aspect, they are actually usually stronger in their aspect.  They are weaker than the full mage in that they lose 2+ aspects of being a mage, not in that they suck in the aspect they specialize in. 

And they are better in their aspect simply because they don't have anything else to put focus into. You don't need Aspected to get a bunch of free shyte for that.

[Top Dog]

...Ideally every character that's built sensibly should be equally powerful...

And this is the idea that spawns crap games like D&D 4th.

Yes it is. Balance, if you pardon the pun, is a balancing act. If you go too far, you get a stale set of essentially equal choices. It's nice that there's actual differences in choices, even if that means they won't be perfectly balanced. And they won't be perfectly balanced if there's actual differences, and that's fine.

D&D 4 went to far to the balanced side. But you're going to far in the opposite direction. You can never fully balance MA's versus normal M's versus AM's, and that's fine because it's a direct result from them being different, but that shouldn't mean you don't try to get them as close to the balance point without loosing their differences.

[Dracomax]

...Ideally every character that's built sensibly should be equally powerful...

And this is the idea that spawns crap games like D&D 4th.

Yes it is. Balance, if you pardon the pun, is a balancing act. If you go too far, you get a stale set of essentially equal choices. It's nice that there's actual differences in choices, even if that means they won't be perfectly balanced. And they won't be perfectly balanced if there's actual differences, and that's fine.

D&D 4 went to far to the balanced side. But you're going to far in the opposite direction. You can never fully balance MA's versus normal M's versus AM's, and that's fine because it's a direct result from them being different, but that shouldn't mean you don't try to get them as close to the balance point without loosing their differences.

I don't think I would have phrased it that way, though. I think D&D4E(which is an enjoyable game, even if it means there are only 5 classes with minor variations) is explicitly a result of using that phrasing to balance. I don't think power should be what games are balanced on.

I think we should balance games so that every character is equally useful, or equally cool. A character who never throws a punch or shoots a bullet should get as much playtime based on their abilities as a player who focuses in these. Now, it is an extreme example of something like the face archetype, but I don't see people arguing that the face is useless, even though it's hard to necessarily say they are as powerful as a technomancer or a Magician. Power level is just one aspect of the charcter, and when balancing, focusing too much on that one aspect is what creates things like D&D 4E. focusing on the total character and the balance between power, general use, and ability to pull of cool, memorable moments is what creates a great game. incidentally, it's one of the reasons I'm digging on fate right now, although that system probably goes a bit too far in the other direction.

[Top Dog]

Dracomax, I don't think we actually disagree (or at least not a lot), and that it's mainly phrasing. I'd say that general use and coolness are an aspect of power in a game like Shadowrun, that should be balanced for. For example, in the case of faces, they're quite powerful in the game when used well; not because they roll a lot of dice when they blow stuff up, but because they make it so you don't have to.

It's hard to balance faces against mages, and coolness or general usefulness against raw power, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. You'll end up with at least some imbalance, especially if you want to conserve the proper feel of the different aspects of the game, and that's fine. But in cases like current AM's versus M's, there's a clear imbalance and there's no real reason for there to be one, so it's something that ought to be fixed.

[Dracomax]

That was actually my point. What I was saying is that the problem with balancing for "power" is that it can be defined entirely too narrowly. The use of that word brings to mind things that both change depending on what game you are playing, and depending on who you ask. some people only look at power in terms of how much damage you can do(cough, cough, D&D, cough) and others look at it in a much more broad spectrum. Note, I wasn't actually disagreeing, so much as saying that I thought your phrasing was limiting in and to some extent detracted from the point.

Honestly, I've found that point buy systems are either the most broken, or the most balanced games, simply because depending on the rules they use to limit high level abilities, (and the game itself) a character who is focused on one aspect(say, damage) is going to be just as useful in game(which really should be the metric) as a character who is much more broad based. However, if the limits are poor, poorly thought out, or the game rewards one aspect of the character more than others(which is, admittedly, often more in the hands of the GM than anything) then the become broken very quickly.

[FasterN8]

Top Dog,
That's a great point.  I don't think you need to bulldoze every tiny peak of efficiency out of a game, nor fill in every valley (nobody feels the need to buff Troll Faces).  But when an entire archetype is left in the dust it's worth throwing them a bone to help them out of the hole a bit.

A fair comparison of the Aspected Sorcerer to the Full Mage is probably the best way to achieve some parity between them. 

For the Mage, he's getting bonus skill points for 2 skills that he considers most valuable. On the other side of the fence, the AM gets a whole skill group which is nice, but that 3rd skill is at best 3rd string on his list of valuable skills and some AMs might not take it at all if they had a choice.  So there's some level of diminishing returns there.

The AM gets another point of Magic which is nothing to sneeze at, but neither is the loss of Astral Projection which is a point that seems to be lost on the other side of the argument.

Sure the Aspected Sorcerer could take 10 points of negative flaws and get the same 7 spells that the Mage had at chargen, but would the Mage do the same to get that third skill in the group and 20+ karma for another point of edge/magic?  Not likely.  The mage is going to spend his starting karma on other qualities like Focused Concentration and the like.  Why?  Because those things are better than what the Sorcerer got. 

So the Sorcerer is left behind in qualities, conjuring, enchanting and projection, while gaining a skill that the he didn't really need and an extra point of edge.  Woo.