A little late, I am sorry, but here some information from the mage side.
For good or bad, maybe it helps you.
After all was done, Johnson was happy and everypony got their karma and nyuen, one mage bled money for this stun and the other broke even.
Every point of Edge you use in the Downtime for summoning, binding and similar action comes from the upcoming run. (Housrule, like the one Top Dog suggested)
Both mages are initiates, were converted to SR5 and have 250+ Karma.
Shaman had Mag 8, and the shintoist had Mag 6, generalist with high initiate grade.
Both mages were going more or less prepared in this situation, used surprise for their initial mojo, and one used Edge to be first in the next initiative pass.
Both characters and players were annoyed with the situation, and the gm was not that happy about the adventure. Don’t know the name but it was the last of the “Dawn of the Artefacts” series were the runner chase an artifact that coincidentally got stolen, traded away and stuff before the runner can get it. The zeppelin stun was not the end of this spirit show. After the fight was over and we checked that the Artefact got stolen from the Zeppelin, by the guys who busted the party with heavy fire. We used spirits to track down their mates and toke down their military transport plane with the surviving AA commando team. The GM was so nice to not play it out.
I think there were some misunderstandings between players and gm, characters and npcs and some frustration about the plot, setting and overall situation. And yeah, after the captain of the zeppelin just told the team that she never had any intention to trade the artefact. She only invited the character on this little trip and wasted there time because she found other means impolite. And after she told them that for 1 million nuyen she would think about it, things got nasty … and bloody.
I don’t think anybody was happy with this situation, and had much fun in this moment. I had not. But not everything can be sunshine, unicorn and cake.
So …
For the following please keep in mind that I played the “Shintoist”. I am bias in this case.
If you don’t use Edge for the spirits, and roll beyond good and evil, the Drain will not KO these characters with standard drain rules. From my point of view, the worst were the 15+ Initiative passes for the mage characters (including spirits initiative passes spirit), while the rest only could take cover (assault rifle suppression fire 6+ hits- thanks you very much) or were busy running into melee range. We don’t use the SR5 “you can use all your movement in the first pass” rule.
We were using this F-1 as basic Drain for spirits, because once up one a time the majority of GMs were not happy about SR4 summoning drain rules. It has to do with some stuff that happened ingame and it comes down to:
1. The drain is to irregular and in the most cases a joke.
2. GM did not like it, that this stupid shintoist summoned a spirit, supported the team and was knocked out for the rest of the session. (simplified and exaggerated)
At last some other ideas we are playing with;
- The other players can control and play the spirits.
- Every active bound spirits gives you a penalty on your dice pool, like sustaining a spell.
