Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: Finstersang on <07-11-18/0907:02>
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There´s just a ton of obvious reasons:
- Spirits and Summoners are obviously OP right now. Spirits are vastly superior to Drones (and godforbidd, tamed Critters) when it comes to other types of Combat Buddies, they can be employed everywhere an the spot as long as they are not GM-hardcountered by background count, they deal and withstand a ton of damage, they can basically teleport inside buildings (or into other people´s minds)... Yeah, yeah, I know: Thou shall not compare Riggers and Mages. But in this case, the discrepancy is just way too big!
- Mages have so much spare money, they are already complaining about it.
- Reagents could uses more utility. It would also be a soft Buff to the Alchemy Skill
- You need to pay for Summoning in Shadowrun Returns. Of course, because these devs actually gave a damn about balancing :P
- Fuck Magicrun ;D
- Edit: What was the Subtitle for 5th Edition again? Oh, I remember: Everything has a price. 8)
I suggest something like [Force] x [Force] x 10 in Reagents. With prices rising exponentially, Summoning high level spirits becomes a painfull emergency option for the players, as it should be. Edge-Summoning a Force 10 Fire Spirit to solo through a SWAT team shouldn´t be a thing you just do because you can.
Also: Burrowing an idea from Shadowrun Returns, GMs should encourage Mages to seek out summoning "hotspots" that allow for free or discounted summoning of Spirits. The grave of the Family Dog may be used to summon an animal Spirit, a statue of a revered historical figure may host a Guidance Spirit or a Spirit of Man etc.
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Sure, Spirits can be pretty handy to Mages in Shadowrun.
But, if you don't mind my asking, how much experience have you in utilizing them, and how creative is your GM in playing with them?
Even with Initiatives in the 20s and 30s, it's not so easy to coordinate with Spirits. Command is a Simple action. That changes the Drain of your Spellcasting, if you choose to Cast in that same Action. And, I'm not suggesting that GMs should require exact wording in your Commands, as would a D&D GM with a Devil or Demon, but they should be pretty clear. Anytime a Mage Summons a Spirit with a higher Magic than he/she, there can be trouble.
So, yes, Spirits make Mages powerful. But, they are weak in so many ways as well. Perhaps your GM needs to look into this.
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Summoning is balanced by edge vs over summoning and by consequences. If those are missing it's unbalanced. If you can't handle that then sure make it expensive enough only minmaxers can afford to play one. 7200 nuyen for 1 F6 summon sounds excessive though. Or do you mean 360 nuyen so 18 reagents?
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Summoning is balanced enough as is. Yes, spirits are fairly powerful, but remember that they are not mindless automatons, and abuse of spirits can quickly lead a mage to having to deal with more rebellious spirits. The first term you want to read up on is 'malicious compliance'. Basically, when someone follows every instruction to the letter, but not to the spirit of the command, deliberately misinterpreting the commands. "Oh, you only said 'Attack them'. That's too bad, now you're on tape sending a Fire Spirit into a crowd of civilians." The second term you want to read up on is 'Italian Strike'. That's basically when you do the job, but you do it as slowly as possible, without doing anything you can actually call them out on.
Then you combine the two.
Mind you, that's for mages that treat spirits as disposable tools. In most cases, though, the risks of summoning during a run are enough that they balance the benefits, since Murphy is a stone cold bastard and oversummoning spirits might as well be called invoking Murphy as a Great Form. And as always, the weakest point for spirits is the summoner. This is where 'Geek the mage first' really comes into play.
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But, if you don't mind my asking, how much experience have you in utilizing them, and how creative is your GM in playing with them
I would actually ask that of the others who think that GM's are often going out of there way to dick people over who summon them.
Players aren't idiots, they will summon a powerful spirit with edge, resist drain with edge (points well spent when you sometime spend multiple edge just avoiding death in one combat turn) be nice to it then get it to mop the floor with the enemies. They wont act like a cartoon villain with his henchmen.
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Anyone that tells you spirits are balanced is, frankly, nuts. A mage can easily have 6-8 force 6 bound spirits very soon out of charged. With a summon that up to 9 spirits at force 6. That means a good mage (not even a dedicated summoner) can solo any mission almost straight out of charge if they do it carefully.
The only way to control for this is to limit the total force of spirits in use at any one time. Our tables houserule is (magic + initiate grade)x2.
Your proposed change will only delay the bound spirit problem until they have enough $$.
Limiting total force of spirits in use at any one time is the only way we’ve found to manage the problem.
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Yep spirits shouldn't cost more money...
Spirits should take a big nerf bat beating to make them less impactful.
Whether having to pay =Y= to summon a spirit is the correct way to nerf spirits... I dunno. My gut tells me two things would make spirits a lot more balanced: Making manifestation an optional power you have to pick, and taking away ItnW while they ARE manifested.
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lol, well it's a good thing I don't actually have to change your mind, your logic is pretty self-explanatory based upon your list.
With the advent of reagents casters have no shortage of things to drop cash on. The facts is most mages summon one spirit and use for a whole run. Adding a price tag to that, isn't going to change much, and just decreases the caster quality of life.
So Naa doesn't seem useful.
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I'm with Marcus on this one. I don't think spirits are terribly unbalanced (unless you let them be) and there are certainly ways of making it much harder on the mage. But based on the text of your post, you're not really looking to be convinced.
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I would actually ask that of the others who think that GM's are often going out of there way to dick people over who summon them.
Players aren't idiots, they will summon a powerful spirit with edge, resist drain with edge (points well spent when you sometime spend multiple edge just avoiding death in one combat turn) be nice to it then get it to mop the floor with the enemies. They wont act like a cartoon villain with his henchmen.
I'm a D&D player, first and foremost. I ALWAYS assume that any summoned entity with a will of its own is going to be pissy if you mistreat it, and act accordingly. I also never assume that someone won't be an idiot. You ALWAYS assume that there are idiots and they have access to alcohol or hallucinogens as easily as if they have air. Doing otherwise invokes Murphy.
Also, I most certainly HAVE seen players act like cartoon villains with their henchmen using spirits for suicide missions and other things.
Also, what kind of build are we talking about for this hypothetical summoner? How much Edge are we talking about him having? Given the way Priority works, any mage worth talking about is going to have an A on Magic, with B and C going to Attributes and Skills (either order), so absolute max without spending your starting Karma would be a human Mage with 5 Edge who put Resources as E. So you have 5 Edge to spend throughout a run, and you spend 1-2 of it on each spirit you summon during the run. That's cool if there's only one fight the whole run, but by the third or fourth run? How many services are they getting? Are there other mages out there who are trying to banish them?
You've got Resources on E, so that isn't much for weapons, armor, and other gear that a runner needs. You're probably not going to have more than an R1 Fake SIN, which isn't going to pass more than the briefest of scans, and your commlink might as well be an open book for all the good it will do against anyone trying to hack you. Worse yet, you're forgetting the key weakness of spirits: they go poof when you ice the summoner. That's right, you just took "Geek the Mage first" and dialed it up to 11. Those corpsec you set a F12 spirit on? They don't have to beat your spirit. They just have to get enough grenades in your area to make you chunky salsa.
Seriously, what is with you people? It is like the only way you know to fight a big hulking troll with milspec armor is to try and outslug him! You may as well try and punch out Lofwyr.
Anyone that tells you spirits are balanced is, frankly, nuts. A mage can easily have 6-8 force 6 bound spirits very soon out of charged. With a summon that up to 9 spirits at force 6. That means a good mage (not even a dedicated summoner) can solo any mission almost straight out of charge if they do it carefully.
You're forgetting that spirits hate hate HATE being bound. 6-8 Force 6 bound spirits? If your GM isn't actively fucking with the player to make them have each service be worded like a gorram lawyer wrote it, then they need to turn in their GM screen. Malicious Compliance is the order of the day for characters like this. This is what the whole 'Astral Reputation' and associated qualities (Spirit Pariah comes to mind) were written for!
Are you just looking at the summoning rules in a vacuum, and not looking at all the other stuff around it?
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[qoute]
You're forgetting that spirits hate hate HATE being bound. 6-8 Force 6 bound spirits?
[/quote]
Afaik your Incorrect on this one. Spirits hate being disrupted or ordered into long term tasks or sacrificing force or serving a summoner inferior to them (less magic than their force). As long as the summoner restricts themselves to spirits with force equal to their magic and don’t make them sustain spells forever or die in combat again and again they will be cool and not force a test of the leash or increase in spirit index. Afaik it’s tirvially easy for a careful summoner to just ignore spirit index entirely.
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Afaik your Incorrect on this one. Spirits hate being disrupted or ordered into long term tasks or sacrificing force or serving a summoner inferior to them (less magic than their force). As long as the summoner restricts themselves to spirits with force equal to their magic and don’t make them sustain spells forever or die in combat again and again they will be cool and not force a test of the leash or increase in spirit index. Afaik it’s tirvially easy for a careful summoner to just ignore spirit index entirely.
Depends on the GM. Some play spirits as beings of tremendous power who resent being bound in what is essentially slavery, where they resist everyone other than Shamans and the like who treat them more like equals. Some play them as indifferent to being summoned and bound, so long as they aren't thrown in the meat grinder. Either method is acceptable within the rules and both have been portrayed in the expanded fiction at various points. The former will lead to more balanced spirits, if that's what you're looking for.
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Spirits definitely don't like being bound, but it isn't clear if the absolutely "HATE" it. Repeatedly binding the same spirit accrues Spirit Index (re-binding is on the chart), so to avoid that you would have to either summon a new spirit each time you wanted to refresh the services on a bound spirit, or spend extra reagents to buy off the Spirit Index.
Never-the-less, binding spirits already costs money to do, so that doesn't really fall into the discussion of whether or not summoning should cost money. It is just an example of how people can take spirit use to an extreme and break the system...
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Excuse my poor word choice. To be clear when I say 'bound' in my post I mean 'Called into Service' either via summoning or binding. Binding is certainly much more reviled of the two as Kiirn notes.
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Actually the core book and sg say nothing about binding itself being a problem. So that seems to be in your head. As long as you don’t constantly rebound the same spirit, and don’t break the easily avoided rules I noted above you can ignore spirit index.
Raw and rai is pretty clear on this
My point is that per raw and rai spirits are cray cray op and so far no one has offered any raw or rai argument to contradict that.
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adzling, there is an entire sidebar in the Core Rulebook titled "Bad Feelings with Bound Spirits" (page 301), how is that not an indication that binding is potentially a problem?
It talks about how the process of binding forces spirits to do things that they might not otherwise do (one of the reasons bound spirits have more options for service types), and not all spirits appreciate that.
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I reread that before I posted kiir . If you do that carefully you’ll see my comments up thread still stand.
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In my understand spirit index was intended to keep mages from assembling a spirit strike team. The wording is vague enough to let GMs be more aggressive with it, if they want too. The Edge vs summoning being the sort of classic hinge example. So long as a caster does the expect run thing there shouldn't really be a problem, and should one develop the wording is also such that getting out from isn't actually hard, it just takes time and a some minimal effort.
On a side note I'm very surprised we have never seen a piece of shadowrun fiction that had single mage be a whole team via the use of spirits.
But that's not really important, spirits can be strong no question, and a smart player can get a lot out of one. However I still wouldn't call it game breaking issue. Really from GM perspective spirits are lot better for the NPC side then the player Side. Players who push to far, spirits are the perfect tool for checking that sort of issue. Their powers scales very easily and predictably, some of them really subtle and some are really not.
Just in closing to the OP, this really should be obvious, but clearly you missed that day in school, never suggest a magic or any other a rules change with a justification that includes "Fuck Subject of the Rules Change". No one will ever take you seriously, it utterly destroy any credibility your argument may have had.
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That’s not the point Marcus. The point is per raw spirits are cray cray op, especially the spirit army. This is their intended use and spirit index does nothing to reign that in. Yu need a houserule to do that. We use (magic+initiate grade)x2 for total force of spirits in use at any one time at our table.
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The literal last sentence of "Bad Feelings with Bound spirits" is (Emphasis mine)
This modifier should only be applied if the summoner is either cruel toward the spirits he controls or if he repeatedly puts them at risk (occasional combat is fine, but being routinely disrupted gets old). This magical power drain is the compelling reason why most magicians keep their bound spirits at rest. While the spirit is resting in astral space, the bond between magician and spirit has no effect on the magician. It should only be used when roleplaying calls for itor to keep a player from abusing spirits in gameplay
Making it both RAW and RAI. And the rest of that sidebar makes numerous (admittedly non-raw) indications that summoning and binding aren't looked on terribly favorably by spirits.
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I would actually ask that of the others who think that GM's are often going out of there way to dick people over who summon them.
Players aren't idiots, they will summon a powerful spirit with edge, resist drain with edge (points well spent when you sometime spend multiple edge just avoiding death in one combat turn) be nice to it then get it to mop the floor with the enemies. They wont act like a cartoon villain with his henchmen.
I'm a D&D player, first and foremost. I ALWAYS assume that any summoned entity with a will of its own is going to be pissy if you mistreat it, and act accordingly. I also never assume that someone won't be an idiot. You ALWAYS assume that there are idiots and they have access to alcohol or hallucinogens as easily as if they have air. Doing otherwise invokes Murphy.
Also, I most certainly HAVE seen players act like cartoon villains with their henchmen using spirits for suicide missions and other things.
Also, what kind of build are we talking about for this hypothetical summoner? How much Edge are we talking about him having? Given the way Priority works, any mage worth talking about is going to have an A on Magic, with B and C going to Attributes and Skills (either order), so absolute max without spending your starting Karma would be a human Mage with 5 Edge who put Resources as E. So you have 5 Edge to spend throughout a run, and you spend 1-2 of it on each spirit you summon during the run. That's cool if there's only one fight the whole run, but by the third or fourth run? How many services are they getting? Are there other mages out there who are trying to banish them?
You've got Resources on E, so that isn't much for weapons, armor, and other gear that a runner needs. You're probably not going to have more than an R1 Fake SIN, which isn't going to pass more than the briefest of scans, and your commlink might as well be an open book for all the good it will do against anyone trying to hack you. Worse yet, you're forgetting the key weakness of spirits: they go poof when you ice the summoner. That's right, you just took "Geek the Mage first" and dialed it up to 11. Those corpsec you set a F12 spirit on? They don't have to beat your spirit. They just have to get enough grenades in your area to make you chunky salsa.
Seriously, what is with you people? It is like the only way you know to fight a big hulking troll with milspec armor is to try and outslug him! You may as well try and punch out Lofwyr.
Anyone that tells you spirits are balanced is, frankly, nuts. A mage can easily have 6-8 force 6 bound spirits very soon out of charged. With a summon that up to 9 spirits at force 6. That means a good mage (not even a dedicated summoner) can solo any mission almost straight out of charge if they do it carefully.
You're forgetting that spirits hate hate HATE being bound. 6-8 Force 6 bound spirits? If your GM isn't actively fucking with the player to make them have each service be worded like a gorram lawyer wrote it, then they need to turn in their GM screen. Malicious Compliance is the order of the day for characters like this. This is what the whole 'Astral Reputation' and associated qualities (Spirit Pariah comes to mind) were written for!
Are you just looking at the summoning rules in a vacuum, and not looking at all the other stuff around it?
1. For villains treating spirits poorly. An ability is not balanced if it's dependent on people making bad decisions.
2. You say your from a D&D background then you should be aware that Shadowrun is not D&D where 4 encounters are set up and you go through, you realistically only have 1 fight and sometimes not even that.
3. Yes, 5 edge, a very strong solid amount and resources E stretching resources thin is something you only worry about for a few runs as a mage and you don't even need to spend it, that was just an example. 6 ranks, specialization, 6 magic, a quality and even if there's not another mage in the party there is likely to be a Face who is probably even better at assisting with leadership.
4. How many mages exist with the banishing skill? If they keep doing that just bind the spirit and you've also taken out a mage, if the GM ups the power of the mages, you've got bigger issues and it means the GM has needed to escalate things to tackle summoning.
5. The geek the mage defense as justification for their power, the idea that a character is strong so they need to be targeted first is somehow seen as a balance argument. In this case the opponents aren't magically aware of where the mage is as he is not directly casting spells at them.
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Please qoute the rest of the paragraph sentence so people don’t think your deceptively editing. Stuff
The literal last sentence of "Bad Feelings with Bound spirits" is (Emphasis mine)
It should only be used when roleplaying calls for it, or to keep a player from abusing spirits in gameplay
Making it both RAW and RAI. And the rest of that sidebar makes numerous (admittedly non-raw) indications that summoning and binding aren't looked on terribly favorably by spirits.
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Added it to the original post.
Although I suspect I see what you're getting at, in another example of bad editing, considering the paragraph contains two conflicting statements of absolutes. Edited, reread the paragraph. See below.
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Yeah my point still stands.
There are no effective controls on spirit power, only on insane abuse of spirit power.
You can follow those guidelines (and the ones in sg) and still have a hyper effective combat and utility force 6 spirit army of 6-8 spirits.
Another way to look at this is to ask the question: “what does having a spirit army at your beck and call (on top of all your other powerful mage powers) add to the game?”
Answer: nothing.
Therefore why not change the rules to reflect better gameplay?
Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons🤔. Would that be cool?
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Actually I'd say it doesn't stand (your point that is.) It's just poor phrasing. Cruelty/risk to the spirit is the indicated RP reason, with the "or" indicating it may also be used to reign in a player if necessary.
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That’s not the point Marcus. The point is per raw spirits are cray cray op, especially the spirit army. This is their intended use and spirit index does nothing to reign that in. Yu need a houserule to do that. We use (magic+initiate grade)x2 for total force of spirits in use at any one time at our table.
If you run into a problem situation with player, then sure by all means solve it. But I think that situation is fairly rare. Quickening is far and away the most commonly abused magic issue in my experiences.
I'm not arguing that determined crunch artist can't break the game with spirits, I'm sure they can. I just saying check the problem when the problem arises and try using tools provided first before going to house rule if you can. Spirit index and Background counts are the tool supplied to solve this. Use them, and I don't care how good the summoner build is, it's shut that sort of problem down.
A BCG of 8, on all his spirits, and that build will be shut down long term in hour, never mind immediate penalties.
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Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons🤔. Would that be cool?
Answer: no that’s stupid. The characters should the focus not a mini game of spirit armies fighting other spirit armies.
I don’t agree with your assessment of that sentence, it’s arbitrary and your interpretation. If the mage and bind 8 spirits then why not? That’s what the rules say you can do. Nothing says you can’t or shouldn’t.
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If spending a minimum of 18,000¥ to maintain an army of 6 Force 6 spirits every mission is a viable method for completing missions then power to you. But that's a mighty expensive "I win" button with a lot of ways for it to fail. As a GM, there are a lot of ways to level the playing field on spirits. Foremost in my experience is the fact that making all of those binding tests is no picnic.
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That’s incorrect kiir. You get more than one service per bound spirit, typically many more.
Compare that spirit army to the cost of a riggers drones; they are far more expensive, far more fragile, have no special powers, can’t be smuggled past any checkpoint. Take the drones away from the rigger and he terribly gimped. Take the spirits away from the mage and he’s still very powerful.
So agin, I’d respectfully ask, what does the spirit army add to the game?
Answer: nothing.
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Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons🤔. Would that be cool?
Answer: no that’s stupid. The characters should the focus not a mini game of spirit armies fighting other spirit armies.
I don’t agree with your assessment of that sentence, it’s arbitrary and your interpretation. If the mage and bind 8 spirits then why not? That’s what the rules say you can do. Nothing says you can’t or shouldn’t.
The statement is in the paragraph, poor phrasing or not. Its explicitly stated it can be used to reign in out of control players. Its true that the other sentence may conflict with it depending on your interpretation, but that doesn't give either sentence primacy, leaving up to the GM at worst. So saying it's not RAW is pretty disingenuous.
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It’s a contingent sentence to the first one. The first sentence clearly lays out the specific things that can trigger the -1 modifier.
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I've said my peace.
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That’s incorrect kiir. You get more than one service per bound spirit, typically many more.
I was taking that into account:
1. A single mission should take more than one service.
2. A typical binding does not have a guaranteed success rate.
2a. The spirit opposes the roll with a dice pool of 12 (Force x2)
2b. An optimized (min-maxed) spirit binder would have a dice pool around 15 (6 Mag, 6 skill + specialized + Spirit Affinity).
And that's putting a lot of eggs into one basket. Put that dedicated summoner into a situation where they can't answer with "spirits" and they're in a lot of trouble.
Like I said, not really a great way to approach things, In My Opinion.
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Yu can easily get to 14 dice without any sacrifices (minning).
Regardless: Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons🤔. Would that be cool?
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MercWidget would be great right up until the runners meet a CorpSec team with two or three of them. God forbid the do a run against Widget Inc where everyone in the office has that old model and the security team has the new, improved MercWidget 2.0 that summons even more pwerful mercs.
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Or worse yet, the Dragon summoning widget... :D
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MercWidget would be great right up until the runners meet a CorpSec team with two or three of them. God forbid the do a run against Widget Inc where everyone in the office has that old model and the security team has the new, improved MercWidget 2.0 that summons even more pwerful mercs.
and if the street Sam is too tough for Corpsec the Runners could meet a whole team of Corpsec just as tough as him, other party members aren't as combat focused? that'll be a massacre.
The solution of "just make the opponents stronger" is just another way of saying it is too strong because the world then needs to revolve around it rather than being an organic world it just being one solution among many.
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Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons. Would that be cool?
Answer: no that’s stupid. The characters should the focus not a mini game of spirit armies fighting other spirit armies.
I follow what you're saving, and if that sort of thing happened on the regular we would see a reaction to it. But it's not normal pattern of behavior, and Cha isn't currently the en vogue casting method at moment, so for most that extremity isn't possible. But I admit 4 or 5 is still very, very strong.
I should also note if I had player who did that, I wouldn't have any problem putting it down. Do you think most GMs would be stumped by it?
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Any balance that is entirely GM dependent is not balance at all. Read, Background Count.
Oh, I'm sure some of you will say "but BGC is defined in the books!"
And I can tell you that nine out of ten players I actually talk with that complain about MagicRun™, admit that the GM never really uses BGC in their game.
Likewise, those that think the Rigger Drone Swarm is totally uber clearly have a GM that goes easy on Noise.
I mean, look at the 3.5 D&D Cleric.
The writers pulled out all of the stops to make the class interesting again, so that it might see some gameplay.
In so doing, the made a beast that can be easily crafted to play any role in the game at least as well as the original source. Not at the same time mind you, but they could "swap up" daily to fill any role.
The only balancing was in Deity interactions in the game world. And guess what many GMs didn't do?
So, Clerics got the Mjolnir of Nerf Bat treatments.
If GM arbitration is the sole balancing act for Spirits? Guess what doesn't really count as balanced?
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I'm mostly with Kevin Sembida on this point (if you haven't read his essay on this subject I recommend it to everyone), game balance is never to going exist. The reality is there aren't dangerous characters only dangerous players.
Further if we look at the history of game balance across RPGs, largely we see it rejected by the community. The only edition of D&D that ever approached being balanced was 4th, and it hated by community cranky old guard.
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No one has answered my question: why do mages need to be able to bind up to cha in spirits in the first place?
It’s clearly hoorifically op and adds absolutely nothing to the game.
Furthermore the crappy Bandaids employed to attempt to limit their power don’t work but by existing acknowledge that it’s farking busted.
So why?
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adzling, if a mage has multiple spirits at their disposal on a run, then they are most certainly using Binding, and paying for that privilege, both in nuyen and the resources dropped on getting the skill. If they're dropping edge, they're spending that, too, and won't have it available when they are on the run. You can only have one summoned spirit at a time.
As for the 'spirit army' there ARE characters that do that in the lore, actually. Man-of-Many-Names, Elijah, and Serrin all qualify. However, they are very much loners, and this is a 'team' game, so that might be a problem for some groups, I understand.
What you do in that case is take the player aside, and have a friendly chat about not going overboard with things and ruining the fun for the rest of the group. If they ignore this, then you repeat the friendly chat after someone geeks the mage first, for reference on their new character. As with most of the things, there is only a problem if the GM is asleep at the switch.
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So your argument is that PCs should be gm killed / banned from doing this but it should stay in the rules?
I think you just proved my point.
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adzling, that argument is inherently fallacious. "Using 8 spirits in a single combat is inherently broken, therefore being able to bind up to your charisma # spirits is wrong" (Not sure if that's the Slippery Slope fallacy, the False Dilemma fallacy, or some other one)
You've taken the whole situation and balanced it on the head of a character build that is essentially made to break that situation.
It isn't that the situation should be gm killed / banned but it should still be in the rules. The rules themselves are what give the GM the power to reign in and control the sort of situation your are suggesting. The entire Shadowrun system isn't built on the idea that "if you just follow these rules precisely everything will be ok." Every subsystem can be broken, and there isn't really a specific system for controlling power-levels. Depending on the players, a character straight out of char-gen could be immensely more powerful than a character with 100+ karma.
A high Charisma magician being able to bind more spirits is analogous to a well situated Face knowing a lot of contacts. They set Charisma as the stat the governs the maximum number of bound spirits because it makes sense. It represents the force of personality of the magician and the number of mystic bonds they can support to bound spirits. Those spirits don't have to all be used simultaneously, so it can just as easily mean that a high Charisma mage is able to plan and prepare for more contingencies because of the extra spirits they can have bound and ready for emergencies.
In my experience, any character that is built with a mechanic based on an attribute that is going to go up to 6 or higher is going to break some core assumptions of the game mechanics in general. The system is built on a general rule of thumb that 6 is top-notch, so when you meet or exceed that number things start to go slant-ways. Move that attribute down to a more reasonable (but still high) 5, and it really stops being quite so bad.
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No one has answered my question: why do mages need to be able to bind up to cha in spirits in the first place?
It’s clearly hoorifically op and adds absolutely nothing to the game.
Furthermore the crappy Bandaids employed to attempt to limit their power don’t work but by existing acknowledge that it’s farking busted.
So why?
Hold over from second I think. 3rd still had the divide summoning types, so I think logic then, I'll have to see if find the 2nd core. BCG works fine, it's just very heavy handed.
Kiir's pretty well got you there Adzling. But the point remains, the common practice is working as intended. We don't need house rules to fix maybe problems, save house rules the actual problems.
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It´s not that much about balancing for me. SR is a cooperative game after all, so it´s not the end of the world when archetypes and playstyles are somewhat unbalanced - within a reasonable scope, which isn´t the case here!
But if that would be my main point of content, just putting a price tag on Summoning would not be enough, as some of you already pointed out.
It´s more about the whole vibe of it: Currently, summoning is done with only a Complex Action. No preparation, no Materials, no sacrifices, no context, no second thought. Boom, there´s your Spirit, ready to rumble. If it gets fragged (which is unlikely unless your opposition has good countermeasures in place), just smash that summoning button again until you pass out. Summoning a Spirit - especially with their current powerlevel - should feel like a little task on it´s own and not just something you do without having to think about it. When you need to blow the whole payment for the run on your oversummoned Spirit as a Deus Ex Machina, there´s at least some sacrifice involved ("welcome to my world", grunts the rigger :P)
Apart from BGC, there are no penalties or rewards for location, context and bad/good roleplaying here. F.i., there´s no penalty for summoning Water spirits in the dessert and no advantage of summoning them at a river or during rain. I´m a huge fan of linking Summoning more closely to certain conditions and locations, that´s why I also suggested that second part (which no one is diskussing right now) about discounts or free Summons in certain "hotspots". If I´m correct, that´s the way it was in Editions before 4th.
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Apart from BGC, there are no penalties or rewards for location, context and bad/good roleplaying here. F.i., there´s no penalty for summoning Water spirits in the dessert and no advantage of summoning them at a river or during rain. I´m a huge fan of linking Summoning more closely to certain conditions and locations, that´s why I also suggested that second part (which no one is diskussing right now) about discounts or free Summons in certain "hotspots". If I´m correct, that´s the way it was in Editions before 4th.
Spirits are not normally Summoned from Earth locales, so the Earth environment at the location of Summoning is irrelevant. And Astral speeds are mind boggling. A GM can always assign penalties or advantages after the fact, from macro or micro situations: F.i. Command the Spirit to Materialize inside a hostile or friendly environment?
Otherwise, GMs are in control of their game. Players are getting out-of-control? Too many free Nuyen around?
Mages aren't really helped by more Nuyen. However, everyone else can be: 1,000,000Y decks and rigs anyone?
GMs can control anything that gets out-of-line.
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I know, because I am the GM most of the time 8)
But: You need to realize these flaws before, and as much as I personally love to come up with little houserules and tweaks (as one might suspect from my post history), this is is a huge burden on most GMs.
Also, there´s missions, where the GM doesn´t have that kind of wiggling room. Here, it´s Banhammer or nothing, and it happened to a lot of misbalanced content so far - I´m surprised that Oversummoning isn´t already on the list.
Edit: Well, Possession Traditions already are, so there´s that ::)
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Finster, regarding the 'repeatedly summon until you pass out' bit? You do realize that unless you're going against total chumps that you wouldn't need a spirit to deal with, the enemies are going to turn to you, and see how many grenades it takes to turn you into salsa, right?
People always seem to forget that the greatest weakness of spirits is the Summoner, which is why Free Spirits are so powerful.
Also, any corpsec team worth talking about can focus fire and tear down a F6 spirit pretty easily. ITNW gives that F6 Rating 12 hardened armor for nonmagical attacks. An AK-97 with regular ammo does 10P, -2 AP. So R12 becomes R10. One net hit is all you need to hurt it. Sure, it gets 5 free successes on the damage resistance, but that's still 6P it has to resist against. On average (assuming 6 Body and modified 10 armor), a ganger with an AK-97 and regular bullets firing a single round for one net hit is doing ~1 box of damage per pass. You use APDS, and the ballgame changes completely. That puts the AK-97 at 10P, -6 AP. R12 becomes R6, and you only get 3 free hits. F6 is now taking 7 boxes of damage a hit, on average. You throw in Burst Fire to drop their defense test and help get more net hits, and this is becoming a Bad Day for a spirit. And that's with an AK-97. Up it to an Ares Alpha or a Crocket EBR, and things get nastier. That's just going with stuff in the core book.
So yeah, spirits are powerful, but they aren't all-powerful, unless you're going against mooks that you could easily beat without them. Anyone with an assault rifle can hurt an F6 spirit, and anyone with an assault rifle and APDS ammo at least has a chance against an F10. Professionals with better skills and better gear? Who usually will have magical backup? They aren't nearly as all-encompassing as they used to be.
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adzling, that argument is inherently fallacious. "Using 8 spirits in a single combat is inherently broken, therefore being able to bind up to your charisma # spirits is wrong" (Not sure if that's the Slippery Slope fallacy, the False Dilemma fallacy, or some other one)
Kiir I appreciate your dedication to logic!
My Logical Form statement would actually look like this:
If you have 4-8 undetectable, powerful allies that can do almost anything, that you can take anywhere, regardless of security, and summon without any way for someone to stop you (mage cuffs and other methods that stop casting or astral perception won't work) then you render the entire concept of a team, which is the core of srun play, irrelevant.
Shadowrun is a team game.
Therefore Binding limits are broken.
In support of this I offer the "shoe is on the other foot" evaluation of:
1). A street samurai with an undetectable, unstoppable, magical widget that let him summon 4-8 mercenaries who can fly, have mil-spec armor and can melt through walls would be just as problematic.
2). A Rigger, whose entire premise is built upon using allied drones to fight for him, cannot take them anywhere he likes, undetected and unstoppably make them appear wherever he likes. Moreover those drones are not as strong as a mage's spirits, cost far more and are far more fragile. Even worse take the drones away from a rigger and he's loses about 80%-90% of his effectiveness/ utility. Take the spirits away from a mage and he still has equal or more effectiveness than a rigger.
3). Do i need a 3? Ok imagine if an adept could instantly add 4-8 additional attacks per pass with a moments preparation.
In summation: having 4-8 force 6 spirits available to a REGULAR mage (no crazy builds required) adds nothing to the game and only risks rendering the rest of the team irrelevant OR forcing the game to devolve into mini-game of spirit armies fighting one another (as the corpse mage summons his own spirit army to counter). Therefore Binding is broken as written. Instead of a fixed number of spirits, tied to a common drain stat (cha), Binding limits should start small and ramp as power progresses.
A couple good ways to ramp this power could be:
1). tie the number of bound spirits to initiate grade, possibly requiring additional metamagics to use more than 1 or 2 simultaneously.
2). tie the total force of spirits in use at any one time to initiate grade, so it starts off within reason and ramps as the mage gains power.
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3). Do i need a 3? Ok imagine if an adept could instantly add 4-8 additional attacks per pass with a moments preparation.
the first two don't really bug me. For those to be meaningful we have to get into potential values in arch-types. But I agree this one is a real issue, in a game that intended to only have 1 attack per round, by hard system concept. This is very obviously hard to address issue. Even given that those rules have slipped some see alchemy and that new krime hammer. But I don't have good argument against point.
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you DONT care if you can make a mockery of any security setup by insta-porting a squad of elite mercenaries into any location?
you DONT care that any incarcerated mage can just summon his posse of spirits to save him without any way for security to stop him short of rendering him permanently unconscious?
OK....
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Well, wards stop spirits, unless they break through. Many businesses have a mage either on staff or as a contractor who puts a ward up, especially in important areas.
Spirits are not undetectable, since anyone able to see into the astral will spot them, including many paracritters which just happen to be used as guards.
There are plenty of ways to stop you from summoning a spirit (without you being dead). Start with keeping them unconscious until the unbound spirits go away, and then either drug them out of their minds, have a vampire snack on them, or give them some free implants. When you add in the possibility of just killing them, I find that "Geek the Mage first" goes a lot quicker when the mage has no backup. And when you have this mythical 4-8 spirits with you on top of your own casting, that's leaving some serious astral fingerprints all over the crime scene. Do that too often, and you're going to run into someone who has the magic to track you and drop ritual magic on your head, or just get a sniper into position to take care of the problem.
That's the problem with the 'spirit army' concept. It is flashy, in all the ways that are most dangerous for a mage. It draws tons of attention to them, which is why the only ones in the lore who try that and pull it off more than once or twice are the heavy hitters. You get too much heat on you, and since spirits are easier to deal with now that damage codes went up, you can find yourself alone and vulnerable in short order if the opposition has any teeth to it at all.
Or, the GM can do their job, and smack a player who ruins the game for everyone with a phonebook until the stupid stops.
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adzling, that argument is inherently fallacious. "Using 8 spirits in a single combat is inherently broken, therefore being able to bind up to your charisma # spirits is wrong" (Not sure if that's the Slippery Slope fallacy, the False Dilemma fallacy, or some other one)
Kiir I appreciate your dedication to logic!
My Logical Form statement would actually look like this:
If you have 4-8 undetectable, powerful allies that can do almost anything, that you can take anywhere, regardless of security, and summon without any way for someone to stop you (mage cuffs and other methods that stop casting or astral perception won't work) then you render the entire concept of a team, which is the core of srun play, irrelevant.
Shadowrun is a team game.
Therefore Binding limits are broken.
In support of this I offer the "shoe is on the other foot" evaluation of:
1). A street samurai with an undetectable, unstoppable, magical widget that let him summon 4-8 mercenaries who can fly, have mil-spec armor and can melt through walls would be just as problematic.
2). A Rigger, whose entire premise is built upon using allied drones to fight for him, cannot take them anywhere he likes, undetected and unstoppably make them appear wherever he likes. Moreover those drones are not as strong as a mage's spirits, cost far more and are far more fragile. Even worse take the drones away from a rigger and he's loses about 80%-90% of his effectiveness/ utility. Take the spirits away from a mage and he still has equal or more effectiveness than a rigger.
3). Do i need a 3? Ok imagine if an adept could instantly add 4-8 additional attacks per pass with a moments preparation.
He's not criticizing the structure of your statement, but the contents. Specifically he's noting the you're using an extreme example to cover the entire subject matter (an Appeal to Extremes) and that any use of binding will result in that scenario (Slippery Slope fallacy.) Your other examples (Merc Widget and Adept attacks) represent similar fallacies.
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you DONT care if you can make a mockery of any security setup by insta-porting a squad of elite mercenaries into any location?
you DONT care that any incarcerated mage can just summon his posse of spirits to save him without any way for security to stop him short of rendering him permanently unconscious?
OK....
I care. But as I said debating merits and flaws of archetype abilities potential isn't going take us anywhere useful. (What are we going to conclude that conversation? That magic is stronger then tech in the long run? We all already knew this) The meta concept of one attack per round is self prescribed by the system, and so I do have an issue with violating that.
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He's not criticizing the structure of your statement, but the contents. Specifically he's noting the you're using an extreme example to cover the entire subject matter (an Appeal to Extremes) and that any use of binding will result in that scenario (Slippery Slope fallacy.) Your other examples (Merc Widget and Adept attacks) represent similar fallacies.
ah good the meat!
I am not using an extreme example.
Here's my evidence of that:
Any mage can easily get to 14 dice for summoning out of chargen (no special wacky build required).
This chargen mage would still have all of his other strengths as he has not focussed everything on summoning/ binding.
It only takes 4 x force 5 spirits to make this cray-cray, my example of 8 x force 6 spirits was an outlier but also easily achievable by any elf cha-based mage out of chargen.
So therefore this is NOT an appeal to extremes but rather a natural outcome of being able to bind so many spirits so easily.
Furthermore the "shoe on the other foot" analysis re: merc army etc are almost exactly parallel to the "common mage with a charisma of 4 and binding pool of 12"
Also you conveniently ignore my points re: Riggers and Adepts.
If you have a rebuttal i'd like to see it.
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Well, wards stop spirits, unless they break through. Many businesses have a mage either on staff or as a contractor who puts a ward up, especially in important areas.
Spirits are not undetectable, since anyone able to see into the astral will spot them, including many paracritters which just happen to be used as guards.
There are plenty of ways to stop you from summoning a spirit (without you being dead). Start with keeping them unconscious ...
Ok this is a red herring my man.
I WAS NOT saying spirits themselves are undetectable or can go anywhere.
I WAS discussing that spirit army is undetectable until they materialize. So the mage can go anywhere he likes, then undetectably summon his army, then have them all materialize at once and murder / do whatever they please.
Furthermore you just agreed with me that there is no way to stop the mage from summoning his army short of killing or keeping him unconscious, which only works after you know he has a spirit army....
So another red herring there.
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I care. But as I said debating merits and flaws of archetype abilities potential isn't going take us anywhere useful. (What are we going to conclude that conversation? That magic is stronger then tech in the long run? We all already knew this) The meta concept of one attack per round is self prescribed by the system, and so I do have an issue with violating that.
My point is that being able to bind 4-8 spirits of force 5-6 out of chargen is inherently game destroying as it requires the table to start a minigame of spirit battles/ GM fiat rock falls kills mage stuff.
This is not how srun is meant to work.
You're meant to collectively solve problems with an emphasis on teamwork.
The spirit army in your back pocket (or merc army, or critter army, or drone army, or any farking army) that bypasses all security, is undetectable until after they appear AND cannot be stopped from appearing unless you have magical foreknowledge ADDS NOTHING to the game.
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It does seem extreme, as you could make a case for many games where if you see a behavior like this it may be a player problem and not a character or game problem.
I have never seen anyone bind 6 spirits and use them all at once(maybe 1 or 2 at once), its too much for most people and it isn't obvious to a good player as a reasonable strategy with a social game. Just because something is an a logical extreme does not mean it should be nerfed, it means that a GM can, and should bring a requisite response.
The worst enemies of a shadowrun game are its own players, not the rules.
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but all of this discussion misses the point.
sure a GM can do whatever he wants.
but why should it be necessary when it would be an easy Binding rules change to fix it?
the only reason NOT to fix it would be because the ability for a mage to have a spirit posse is important to srun.
So far NOT ONE person has offered a rational for why that is so.
Therefore my argument still stands: the best way to mitigate the spirit army problem is a simple rules change that ramps power rather than offering it all at once out of chargen.
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It does seem extreme, as you could make a case for many games where if you see a behavior like this it may be a player problem and not a character or game problem.
I have never seen anyone bind 6 spirits and use them all at once(maybe 1 or 2 at once), its too much for most people and it isn't obvious to a good player as a reasonable strategy with a social game. Just because something is an a logical extreme does not mean it should be nerfed, it means that a GM can, and should bring a requisite response.
The worst enemies of a shadowrun game are its own players, not the rules.
This is the point I and Kiin are trying to make. It's not that it's the difficulty of building a character that way that establishes it as an outlier, it's that in my experience most players don't play this way. You're saying the possibility for the abuse exists, and no one really disagrees with you there. Options for abusing the system will always exist, as extreme examples like the Peasant Railgun or the Bag of Rats trick prove. But most players of the game simply don't play in the manner you're presenting as a doomsday scenario. I have seen spirit armies in my game, but they're ordinarily only summoned when it works thematically, or the players are desperate. I've certainly had issues with elements of magic causing issues at my tables, but spirit swarms haven't ever been one of them.
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It does seem extreme, as you could make a case for many games where if you see a behavior like this it may be a player problem and not a character or game problem.
I have never seen anyone bind 6 spirits and use them all at once(maybe 1 or 2 at once), its too much for most people and it isn't obvious to a good player as a reasonable strategy with a social game. Just because something is an a logical extreme does not mean it should be nerfed, it means that a GM can, and should bring a requisite response.
The worst enemies of a shadowrun game are its own players, not the rules.
This is the point I and Kiin are trying to make. It's not that it's the difficulty of building a character that way that establishes it as an outlier, it's that in my experience most players don't play this way. You're saying the possibility for the abuse exists, and no one really disagrees with you there. Options for abusing the system will always exist, as extreme examples like the Peasant Railgun or the Bag of Rats trick prove. But most players of the game simply don't play in the manner you're presenting as a doomsday scenario. I have seen spirit armies in my game, but they're ordinarily only summoned when it works thematically, or the players are desperate. I've certainly had issues with elements of magic causing issues at my tables, but spirit swarms haven't ever been one of them.
When I first started designing a character for this game I liked the idea of a Rigger, a character that utilizes robots, a concept few other popular systems allow. Then when it came to looking at how that would play out, Shadowrun drones are like sending huge chunks of your limited money off to fight for you and there's an extremely high risk of it being lost forever. In and out of game, no one has any qualms about ending a drone.
I then looked into summoning and one of the problems that was brought in forums was the idea that a strong summons often invalidated players, so people have had problems with it. I didn't play a mage because summoning is far too easy, it would hard to see how it would not be a constant go to. From a purely tactical stand point being able to summon even a normal human with a gun is huge boon, let alone a creature that is far better.
Even if they don't play that way, then the player is dragonballing, holding back their power. They may not instantly squash the challenge the way the hypothetical constantly 6 spirit summoner would but you can see them putting in more or less effort when needed, there is little threat to them other than complete surprise but that can end anyone.
So the idea that one archetype should be extremely strong from the get go because you think the player won't instantly abuse is a flawed argument when the question is why does it even need to exist at that level in the first place?
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It does seem extreme, as you could make a case for many games where if you see a behavior like this it may be a player problem and not a character or game problem.
I have never seen anyone bind 6 spirits and use them all at once(maybe 1 or 2 at once), its too much for most people and it isn't obvious to a good player as a reasonable strategy with a social game. Just because something is an a logical extreme does not mean it should be nerfed, it means that a GM can, and should bring a requisite response.
The worst enemies of a shadowrun game are its own players, not the rules.
This is the point I and Kiin are trying to make. It's not that it's the difficulty of building a character that way that establishes it as an outlier, it's that in my experience most players don't play this way. You're saying the possibility for the abuse exists, and no one really disagrees with you there. Options for abusing the system will always exist, as extreme examples like the Peasant Railgun or the Bag of Rats trick prove. But most players of the game simply don't play in the manner you're presenting as a doomsday scenario. I have seen spirit armies in my game, but they're ordinarily only summoned when it works thematically, or the players are desperate. I've certainly had issues with elements of magic causing issues at my tables, but spirit swarms haven't ever been one of them.
Well it's clearly not a player problem as this is how the game is intended to be played, otherwise the rules would be different.
If this was not the intention of the binding rules then the spirit index rules would counter it, but as I have shown they do not (-1 to actions? hah!).
Also, as I have pointed out, you don't need an extreme or even purpose-built build to do this. A regular old generic mage out of chargen can easily achieve this while still covering all his other bases.
So if you're argument is this is bad player activity then why not adjust the rules to counter this abuse?
Just because you have not encountered it is not a valid argument.
That's an argument from ignorance fallacy.
I'm gonna go back to my counter-point:
What does a spirit army add to the Shadowrun game?
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So the idea that one archetype should be extremely strong from the get go because you think the player won't instantly abuse is a flawed argument when the question is why does it even need to exist at that level in the first place?
excellent point! well done Plastic.
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Well it's clearly not a player problem as this is how the game is intended to be played, otherwise the rules would be different.
If this was not the intention of the binding rules then the spirit index rules would counter it, but as I have shown they do not (-1 to actions? hah!).
Also, as I have pointed out, you don't need an extreme or even purpose-built build to do this. A regular old generic mage out of chargen can easily achieve this while still covering all his other bases.
So if you're argument is this is bad player activity then why not adjust the rules to counter this abuse?
Just because you have not encountered it is not a valid argument.
That's an argument from ignorance fallacy.
I'm gonna go back to my counter-point:
What does a spirit army add to the Shadowrun game?
It would actually be anecdotal fallacy, Just because the rules don't specifically disallow something doesn't mean that's how it's intended to be played. That's ridiculous. Yes, a regular old generic mage might be able to, the point is they don't.
I didn't (and won't) answer your counter-point because it's an intentionally loaded question. Any additions I might come with, you'll simply rip down or ignore as you've been doing with all the other counterpoints to your argument.
And honestly, If you Gentlemen have an issue with spirits, houserule it as you, Adzling, already have. If you dislike this because it feels like you're violating the sanctity of the rules, then request that the official rules be changed. The devs may agree with you and do so, or they may not. Past that, there's not much to be done. It's clear that myself and other players don't mind or enjoy the rules as they exist and feel no desire to alter or remove. The discussion here is clearly failing to accomplish anything meaningful, so I really don't see a reason to continue arguing in circles.
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It would actually be anecdotal fallacy, Just because the rules don't specifically disallow something doesn't mean that's how it's intended to be played. That's ridiculous. Yes, a regular old generic mage might be able to, the point is they don't.
I didn't (and won't) answer your counter-point because it's an intentionally loaded question.
I appreciate your clarity re: anecdotal vs ignorance!
They don't AT YOUR TABLE or IN YOUR EXPERIENCE.
Clearly the rules permit this and expect it (otherwise they would not have attempted to bandaid the problem with non-functional spirit index and core book sidebar).
My question re: "what does it add" is not a loaded question, it's reasonable given you are rejecting that it's a problem at all. Absent it being a problem, why is it even in the game if it adds nothing to gameplay, table fun or teamwork enhancement and (according to you) is not even used?
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They don't AT YOUR TABLE or IN YOUR EXPERIENCE.
Well, yeah. To my knowledge there are no scientific studies: RE Usage of Spirit Armies in the Shadowrun Tabletop Roleplaying game. Everyone who's weighed in here is doing it based on anecdotal evidence, yourself included.
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<sits back, eating popcorn>
You know, this debate comes up about every 18 months since forever. It has existed across every edition of SR, and is not going to end soon.
If you think this is a problem now, it was more of a problem (to some) back in earlier editions when Spirits were more powerful. (When ItnW actually made them immune!).
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My point is that being able to bind 4-8 spirits of force 5-6 out of chargen is inherently game destroying as it requires the table to start a minigame of spirit battles/ GM fiat rock falls kills mage stuff.
This is not how srun is meant to work.
You're meant to collectively solve problems with an emphasis on teamwork.
The spirit army in your back pocket (or merc army, or critter army, or drone army, or any farking army) that bypasses all security, is undetectable until after they appear AND cannot be stopped from appearing unless you have magical foreknowledge ADDS NOTHING to the game.
If it was inherently game destroying it destroy every game that had mage able to summon in it. So that obviously holds no water. Yes it's potentially unbalancing. So purpose workable solution, start with 1 unbound spirit, 1 bound, spirit "slot" and 1 additional slot per initiation? 1 Spirit per point of magic? Do that and you just makes the strong stronger and weak weaker.
So go the other direction? Buff everyone to be a strong as that?
But if your serous about the whole action economy question this still doesn't begin to address it. Summong as whole would need a total re-write to solve that issue.
<Pass the damn popcorn, if you're just gonna sit there Reaver>
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A regular old generic mage out of chargen can easily achieve this while still covering all his other bases.
What does a spirit army add to the Shadowrun game?
And a regular old generic non-mage out of chargen can fling multiple grenades every action. What does that add to the Shadowrun game?
But, because of the discussion here I have decided not to Summon and Bind 8 (or 12) Spirits in Missions Neo-Tokyo. Thanks for your advocacy.
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<sits back, eating popcorn>
Reaver...you know the rules. If you bring a snack, you have to share with everyone. ;D
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Adzling,
You make some valid points, but your overall crusade is simply lost on the fact that almost no one ever sees this issue come up in actual play. I too believe in game balance, but accept that it almost never happens.
As for actual play, I have found the sheer versatility of magic and overlapping explosions to be far more harmful. As we have seen though, your mileage may vary.
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Well, yeah. To my knowledge there are no scientific studies: RE Usage of Spirit Armies in the Shadowrun Tabletop Roleplaying game. Everyone who's weighed in here is doing it based on anecdotal evidence, yourself included.
haha fair point!
I would still prefer the rules to reflect how the game is played rather than expecting players to not use capabilities explicitly granted to them.
Which brings me back to the point I keep bringing up but no one has an answer for: why should we keep binding as is when it clearly adds nothing to the game and is to be discouraged from being used?
No one has, so far, provided a good answer for that.
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A couple things.
1 think might be a way to get some movement on this issue, the concern in sprite strike force, if you re-write the rules on sprite types to be more "role locked" you could restrict this. So only 1 spirit of each type and only combat spirits could be order into combat something along those lines. Could be a place to start.
2 At some point anecdotal evidence must become census or at-least expert testimony.
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I guess this is why the Shadowrun 5e rules are in such sad shape.
The writers put down their pencils (okay, stopped typing on their keyboards), and looked over what they have created.
"Hmmmm... As written, these rules require that all players 'do the right thing,' and that all GMs are experienced, and confident enough to smack down any player who doesn't..."
"They're flawless!! Ship them!"
It makes me ask "If the rules require that all players 'play nice,' and that all GMs make good judgement calls... what are customers paying for then?"
Most of the arguments here make the case that everyone would be better off using something like Starfinder (http://paizo.com/starfinder) (without the spaceships - or with if that is how you roll). Although, to be fair, there is no spirit summoning in Starfinder.
And not only all of that... But that we can't expect that anyone can be arsed to do anything about it because "balance can never happen."
So do explain to me, what exactly are customers paying for?
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Iron things can be done, however it would have to wait until next edition.
I am on the errata team and we can fix stuff that is clearly not working as intended but this is RAW and RAI it's just not good game design.
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I guess this is why the Shadowrun 5e rules are in such sad shape.
The writers put down their pencils (okay, stopped typing on their keyboards), and looked over what they have created.
"Hmmmm... As written, these rules require that all players 'do the right thing,' and that all GMs are experienced, and confident enough to smack down any player who doesn't..."
"They're flawless!! Ship them!"
It makes me ask "If the rules require that all players 'play nice,' and that all GMs make good judgement calls... what are customers paying for then?"
Most of the arguments here make the case that everyone would be better off using something like Starfinder (http://paizo.com/starfinder) (without the spaceships - or with if that is how you roll). Although, to be fair, there is no spirit summoning in Starfinder.
And not only all of that... But that we can't expect that anyone can be arsed to do anything about it because "balance can never happen."
So do explain to me, what exactly are customers paying for?
Well, first off you are being pandantic.
There will NEVER be a 'perfect' set of rules: Simply because the written word is interpretive.
Case in point: society has rules, we call them laws, and yet people break/ignore them every day.
We have building codes, rules for building shit, ywt people ignore them too.
Look on these forums, more then a few people try the argument "the book doesn't say I can't fly at will so obviously I can!" (Pandantic example yes, BUT that very point was argued for 6 pages on these forums).
Now, I am not saying the rules are perfect - Spirits know they could use some polish. But at the same time, take a little reponsibilty for your own enjoyment!
The books are NOT written like a code manual because 99% of people wouldn't want to read a rulebook like that! And IF you want to, I can provide you with a codebook to read...
The other consideration is price. Sure it would be nice if the rules covered everything, but you cam't bind a 4000 page book like some people insist the rule book should be, not to mention how expensive they would be!
I am going to assume you are not fammiliar with electricity nor the AEC/CEC:
The principles of electricity are well known and documented. The AEC/CEC get updated every 3 years. Requiring us in the profession to buy and learn the new code every time at a cost $200 each.
Why? Because after 60 fucking years, 40,000 adminitrators, uncounted millions of government and industry funding, they still can write a 'fool proof' code.
Fucking fools fucking shit up....
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There's been a lot of discussion in the last 12 or so hours, and I'm not going to even attempt to address every point, but I will try to touch on a few key topics that I think might be important.
First: The idea that a straight out of chargen mage can do massive binding with little to no effort.
Yes, a chargen mage can have 14 dice in binding, that's 6 ranks and a specialization. That isn't an insignificant devotion on a character archetype. I've seen players making magicians have trouble working out their skill points without putting any points into summoning at all. That also doesn't include the ranks in Summoning you're going to need to be able to get the spirits in the first place.
And to top it all off, 14 dice to bind a force 6 spirit only averages a single hit two-thirds of the time. There's no guarantee of success, and at drain equal to double the spirit's hits and 3,000¥ an attempt, it isn't a throw-away action.
The rules don't discourage this sort of action, therefore it is expected.
I won't repeat my notion that this sort of statement is fallacious (it's already been stated by others). Instead I will point out that the rules have actually already been shifting away from this sort of support. I haven't been playing Shadowrun as long as some, but I did play back in 4e and I've noticed some changes that have happened. In 4th edition, the action to call spirits from standby let the summoner call any number of bound spirits of the same type. Back then it really was *snap* I have an army of up to 8 Force 6 Fire Spirits and they are coming for you.
That addendum was notably removed from 5th edition, which means it is a separate simple action for each spirit you want to call in from standby. Now, if you want to send in a big army of spirits you need to either a) spend a series of Simple actions calling up each spirit, then a simple action to command them all at once, or b) Take two Simple actions to call and command each spirit, and the spirits move in at the rate of 1 per Pass that the summoner has. Either way, it gives plenty of chance for a) magical security to notice a big collection of spirits being called in or b) notice the spirits materializing and neutralize the threat (mage).
Considering the fact that most combats that I've seen last maybe 2-3 Passes (not Turns), most spirit armies wouldn't even have a chance to have acted, let alone do any serious damage...
I thought there was more that I wanted to discuss, but I'm not sure there was anything else significant.
Personally, between Background and Spirit Index, coupled with the resources necessary to be consistently good at Binding is enough to discourage trying to use the massive horde of spirits. There just isn't the action economy to set it up for most purposes. A lot of people over look the time it takes to call in the spirits from Standby, in which case you have to ask the question of how that magician isn't being called out for walking around with 6 spirits following him in Astral space...
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Well, first off you are being pandantic.
Not to be pedantic, but are you suggesting I am being pedantic (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedantic)? As in, "insisting that we follow the rules exactly?" If not, I don't get what your point it.
If so, I'm not sure what your point is. :P
Here is my point. At chargen, a character can not start with an Ares Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle. Why? It isn't because it is too expensive. It is pretty "well balanced" against the fact that isn't fragging concealable so everyone knows what the character is carrying. So why?
Maybe I'm giving the writers too much credit here, but I am assuming it is because it would bring too much power to the game right out of the gate. It is an attempt at "balance."
On the other hand, a Mage can come out of chargen with 5 Force 6 Spirits bound with 5 services each. This does assume a Charisma of 5, and a desire to spend 25 Karma on bound Spirits. Each of those spirits is quite capable of being more capable in mundane combat that any of the other characters. Not every character mind you, but a number. Those Spirits are the "little black dress" of combat power in that they are "appropriate" nearly every where thanks to there not being any technological way to detect them. Sure, there are ways. Allegedly those ways are exceedingly rare (less than 1% of the population).
On the other hand, what is the technological equivalent?
A device that a mundane can deploy that is capable of being more capable in mundane combat that can be hidden in the back pocket?
There is none.
So where is the attempt at balance there?
There is none. Not even a feeble attempt. All because "GMs should take care of it."
Bulldrek.
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There is one: The ArmTech MGL-12 Grenade Launcher is capable of fireing a short burst of 3 HE grenades, delivering 32P AP-4, which is incidentally my prefered way to counter hordes of materializing spirits.
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There is one: The ArmTech MGL-12 Grenade Launcher is capable of fireing a short burst of 3 HE grenades, delivering 32P AP-4, which is incidentally my prefered way to counter hordes of materializing spirits.
A weapon that if had instead been directed at the players would instantly turn them into spirits then it's not an answer to the balance problem.
An arms race is not a solution, it's a symptom of a problem.
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it's pretty clear that without GM fiat the rules for binding, as written, are broken/ open to abuse/ not balanced (take your pick).
so far no one has offered a rational for why you should be able to bind 4-8 force 5-6 spirits out of chargen.
therefore there is no reason to include this capability.
while this is something that would have to be revised in 6e (if Catalyst comes to their senses) we do have some very good ideas on house rules so far.
1). Our table uses: total force of spirits a summoner can use at any one time = (magic+initiate grade)x2.
2). Marcus had a nice idea about requiring each spirit type to be different and enforcing the restrictions on what each tradition uses as a combat spirit. This effectively permits the potential over-use of utility type powers (movement & concealment im looking at you) but would restrict combat uses of spirit armies.
3). anyone else got any other house rules/ ideas you want to add to this list for posterity?
cheers for the discussion, happy we have been able to keep it civil despite some strong feelings on all sides.
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3). anyone else got any other house rules/ ideas you want to add to this list for posterity?
Well, I don't know if it fits this topic specifically, but Finstersang (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?action=profile;u=134283) had an interesting house rule for fixing Riggers (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=27649.msg502153#msg502153) that I'd like to give a shot someday. I don't want to speak for Finstersang though.
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i was talking about spirits and binding Iron!
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i was talking about spirits and binding Iron!
Heh.
I get that. However, if Spirits are nerfed a bit, and at the same time drones are buffed, then the Binding rules as written might not matter so much.
I can't say, as I've yet to try the houserule.
As for my part, I've been thinking on it and the only thing I could come up with is that Binding spirits gets progressively more expensive. Say, 50% more for each spirit after the first.
So, every summoner can Bind one spirit just like it reads in the book.
The second bound Spirit (at the same time) costs 150% of the book cost.
The third, 200% and so on.
This would also apply to re-Binding. So, if a Summoner has 4 Spirits bound, and wants to re-bind one of them, it costs 250% of what it normally would.
Far from elegant, and might do nothing for the issue. Still, it is all I have on the topic.
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Why should it be possible to bind 4-8 spirits at chargen?
So that a magician focused on spirits can be prepared for many eventualities.
I've played a spirit-focused character before that kept his Charisma in spirits bound (granted he was only a Cha 4 [Logic-based tradition]). Each of the spirits was a different type, so that he had a variety of power options available at a moment's notice without needing to go through the trouble of summoning if he were in a pinch.
And it happened at least once that I can remember. I had summoned up one spirit to Conceal the team while attempting an infiltration/extraction (this was back in 4e, so it worked a bit differently, didn't go away when some people got spotted). When things started to go south, I called up my bound Air spirit to deal with some incoming drones, while also calling up a bound earth spirit to aid my team in their escape (Bind power on standby while rappelling down the side of a 20+ story building). And I think I might have called a third bound to aid sorcery on an emergency healing spell in the middle of combat too (been awhile).
In any case, I certainly didn't overwhelm or outclass the combatants (on either side), and I wouldn't call any of what I did particularly broken. And (the cherry) I could have done very little of that using standard sorcery. I was primarily utilizing spirit powers that created unique effects to help my team complete the mission safely.
I also still think you're overestimating a chargen mage's ability to bind a whole slew of spirits effectively, while not being considered "highly invested" in the process. Like I said, I played a spirit-focused character and bringing out 3 of my bound spirits on a single mission was a considerable investment on my part, and they were only Force 5's, if I had needed to rebind all of them I think I would have cut my earnings on that mission down to a quarter. And that one encounter wasn't even the whole mission, it was just scene 1.
If your answer to an encounter is calling in a half dozen high force fire spirits to rain fire down upon everything, that's sort of like walking up on a place in Heavy Milspec with an Auto-Assault 16 (or a fully kitted out Ares Alpha). The opposition might not be able to do anything about it the first time it happens, but you keep doing it and you'll get that Notorious reputation that will change the way security sets up for you.
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Thank you for Thoughtful post.
Lots of good stuff here
This is a good example of how I believe a spirit "army" could be used without dominating combat.
However it's worth noting that you did in fact dominate your table's extraction by being able to summon and use those spirits at once.
On your last point comparing spirits to milspec equipped runners that's kind of the point here: those milspec equipped runners cannot gain entry into any place surreptitiously. They would immediately be stopped/ noticed wherever they go.
Whereas the spirit army equipped mage can go anywhere, through any security, and even enter warded areas without anyone detecting he has a spirit army. Then he can summon them (even inside a warded area) and set them loose to create havoc/ do whatever. It's like an invisible, unstoppable, "i win" button that can be called in at any time.
This makes a mockery of any security setup you care to employ.
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Anyone that tells you spirits are balanced is, frankly, nuts. A mage can easily have 6-8 force 6 bound spirits very soon out of charged. With a summon that up to 9 spirits at force 6. That means a good mage (not even a dedicated summoner) can solo any mission almost straight out of charge if they do it carefully.
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Actually the core book and sg say nothing about binding itself being a problem. So that seems to be in your head.
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I reread that before I posted kiir . If you do that carefully you’ll see my comments up thread still stand.
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Please qoute the rest of the paragraph sentence so people don’t think your deceptively editing. Stuff
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Another way to look at this is to ask the question: “what does having a spirit army at your beck and call (on top of all your other powerful mage powers) add to the game?”
Answer: nothing.
Therefore why not change the rules to reflect better gameplay?
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Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons🤔. Would that be cool?
Answer: no that’s stupid.
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So agin, I’d respectfully ask, what does the spirit army add to the game?
Answer: nothing.
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No one has answered my question: why do mages need to be able to bind up to cha in spirits in the first place?
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you DONT care if you can make a mockery of any security setup by insta-porting a squad of elite mercenaries into any location?
you DONT care that any incarcerated mage can just summon his posse of spirits to save him without any way for security to stop him short of rendering him permanently unconscious?
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Also you conveniently ignore my points re: Riggers and Adepts.
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the only reason NOT to fix it would be because the ability for a mage to have a spirit posse is important to srun.
So far NOT ONE person has offered a rational for why that is so.
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Which brings me back to the point I keep bringing up but no one has an answer for: why should we keep binding as is when it clearly adds nothing to the game and is to be discouraged from being used?
No one has, so far, provided a good answer for that.
so far no one has offered a rational for why you should be able to bind 4-8 force 5-6 spirits out of chargen.
That’s in your head…
…You’re deceptively editing stuff…
…That’s stupid…
…you DON’T care…
…you conveniently ignore…
You probably don't see it, but you're coming off as pretty antagonistic. Are you willing to ease off the throttle, there? It's clear you feel passionate about this subject, but there's no need to be so aggressive. Folks can easily miss this kind of language, and not register what can do to a conversation that you may be legitimately trying to engage in (and not just come off as a jerk). If you want people's attention and consideration, start from a position of respect. Just a suggestion.
As to the 'No one has answered this question'...well, you answered it yourself - a couple of times - with 'nothing'. If you were really looking for an answer, I would recommend not lambasting anyone else's thoughts ahead of time.
If I were to take a stab at your theoretical scenario: "Imagine if street Sam had a widget that was invisible to all security and let them summon at will up to 8 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth, can fly and immune to normal weapons🤔. Would that be cool?"
...well, if I have a number of troll mercenary contacts in a helicopter/submarine that I've paid to just show up whenever, armed to the teeth, and are loaded for bear...would that be cool? I guess. If they could do that - which I believe they can.
"What does the spirit army add to the game?"
...well, they have stories of a mage having access to numerous spirits. So it puts things in line with the lore/world.
We could also ask, "Why do players have access to multiple grenades? Do you realize how much damage that can do? That is totally broken!" However, that is part of the game, and we have to roll with it.
<shrug>
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Hi!
This thread was a fun read!
I have an answer for your question about what it adds, adzling. It adds story and plot when used as intended.
In a Role Playing Game, many times 'story and plot' trump the rules. That's such a ubiquitous concept that nearly every single RPG core book dedicated a paragraph to "if something needs to be done for the sake of story, do its rules be damned!"
If SR was a minis skirmish game or something, then that reason doesn't exist and more emphasis needs to be put on balance.
THAT SAID... the idea really only works well when the group can really hone in on story, plot, and character development, ie an ongoing home campaign.
Missions, especially when played in a time limited setting, doesn't lend itself to that sort of cohesive, consistent story and character development. It actually encourages optimized play. If I am not going to be able to satiate my desire for great RP and the development that brings my character, I may mahzwell focus on the other part, which is tooling around with mechanics to build highly optimized, efficient, and effective builds.
In that situation, the balance issue rears its ugly head and can actually be detrimental to the enjoyment of players who either don't enjoy optimizing or aren't good at it.
In a nutshell, I don't have a problem with how binding works for a home game but agree that something should be done to temper it in Missions. And it is an issue that is being worked on.
What we don't anticipate doing in Missions, however, is grossly changing the rules so that they are different from Core.
Any fixes of that nature will need to come from the Errata Team.
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evilaustintom re tone: sometimes you gotta poke people in the ribs to stop spouting shit.
re your points about having mercs on call, you completely missed the point.
Those mercs cannot magically appear inside the security perimeter, without any chance of being detected or stopped.
Those mercs cannot be kept on call for every single second of every single day wherever you are in the world.
Therefore your example is poor.
Jayde I agree with your general point that balance is less important for home games than it is for missions or other game types (such as tactical mini-games).
It doesn't mean that these issues should not be addressed however.
I believe you can craft rules that still let summoners and dedicated summoners have access to spirits in such a way that they cannot create the spirit army problem.
to do this the rules would need to factor in such things as:
total force of spirits in use at any one time
how to restrict spirit summoning/ use by mages within specific secured areas
how to restrict spirit summoning/ use when captured and or imprisoned
However this type of thing is out of the purview of the errata team as it is not an errata but a change to RAW and RAI.
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I think we are of like minds, friend.
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I think binding spirits should cost money (reagents). As for summoning, I think that they do way too much for what you need to invest. With spells, you need to invest in the skill, learn the spell, and then resist drain every time you cast it. They can definitely have big effects and offer great utility - but often for one round. Spirits, on the other hand... You invest in the skill. That's it. Now you have access to five different spirits that you can give a custom power or two to fit whatever you need at the time. You resist drain one time, and now you, at a minimum, have a powerful ally that will assist you for the duration of an encounter. If you want to spend a service, you can employ targeted uses of their powers and often effectively replicate spell effects. My experience has been that services are very easy to manage, and though I guess this one depends on the GM, I have never thought it was challenging enough to mantain your spirit reputation to offset the power that summoning brings to the table.
Yes, you can quickly dismiss spirits with the banishing skill, but using this so regularly, I feel, quickly makes magic feel commonplace to the point that it becomes utterly mundane. In my games, I use the following two house rules to scale back the power of summoning a little and make it a little more balanced for what you need to invest in it. First, a mage has to learn to summon each type of spirit of their tradition just as they would learn a spell - I give every mage +2 spell slots to offset this cost a little, but it means that being a summoner requires a little more dedication - if you go whole hog and learn every spirit type, your library of spells won't be as diverse as someone who decided to focus on spellcasting.
Secondly, I ran with a suggest in Shadow Spells (I think. Maybe it was Street Grimoire?) that spirits will only perform tasks that are at least somewhat related to their associated spell category. I play this kind of loosely, basically having spirits going about performing a task in a way that maintains the spirit of this category, though they will flat out refuse a task that cannot be reasonably connected to their category at all. If you give a spirit and order to stop a fleeing vehicle, your tradition's combat spirit would simply attack the vehicle until it was disabled, while a manipulation spirit might do a more targeted sabotage to the engine or create barriers on the road. A detection spirit would refuse such an order (no service would be consumed), but it would be happy to follow and report on its final destination. I make an exception to this for bound spirits, who will perform any sort of task, but if you start binding regularly spirit reputation is going to take more work to mantain.
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it's pretty clear that without GM fiat the rules for binding, as written, are broken/ open to abuse/ not balanced (take your pick).
This depends on your definition of "broken/open to abuse/not balanced" means.
What is "broken"? That you can bind spirits in a ritual that takes hours to complete? That it costs $500/force of the spirit(s)? That it gets harder/more expensive the higher the force of the spirit you wish to bind?
What does "Open to Abuse" mean? Pretty much everything is open to abuse. A Rigger can get a fairly nice, big, sturdy truck right out of chargen. And then decide to drive that truck right down the sidewalk of the Seattle downtown district, and there is nothing but GM fiat to stop him too. A Sammy can buy as many grenades as his resources will allow right out of Chargen. And he can walk past a kindergarden school tossing said grenades at the kiddies all he likes, and only GM fiat can stop him.
What does "Balanced" mean?? Balanced to what? By what measure? By WHOSE measure? "Balance" is a nebulous term when dealing with concepts or ethereal objectives. You can't measure, weight, examine, hold or observe the ethereal; You can only judge it - which is flawed by human perception, opinion and bias.
You have a choice. You can have "balance" or you can have "options". You can't have both. If you want balance, Fine. This is how you do it:
1: remove Edge totally.
2: All stats can be no lower, and no higher after ALL options(enhancements/karma/magic/etc) than 3.
3: all Limits are set to 3 and can never be changed.
4: all damage, no matter the source is 3s or 3p. Modified as normal. (So a spell/gun/missile/punch/axe ALL have a damage code of 3.)
5: all armor is caped at no less than and no more then 3. No hardened armor.
There you go! Now everyone has the same dice pool, the same resistance pool, the same damage potential, the health potential. Everything is balanced!
OR
You can have some options. Your choice in what type of game you want to play.... But understand that by the simple act of allowing options, you are allowing imbalance into the game. And when you as many options as Shadowrun has, you will NEVER, EVER have balance. Ever. Mostly because like I said above, the very idea of "Balance" is nebulous..
Lets drop Magic from the equation for a moment, and just look at the mundanes and the Priority system as it stands in the CRB. Before 2 difference people crack open the book, they are totally "balanced". They each have a Priorities A, B, C, D, E to spend. They both build and complete their characters.
Character A is a Cyber troll Sammy.
Character B is a Human Face, with 0 combat skills, 0 cyber.
Are these characters Balanced in a Gun Fight? What about a Fist Fight? What about a running race? How about the bench press? What about is dealing damage? What about in taking damage?!?
Clearly, the end results are not balanced, the whole system must be flawed!
Or, my perception of "balance" might be flawed... And if you look really close at the list of things I picked to compare, I picked things that a Troll would dominate in, while totally ignoring the areas that the Face character was built for, namely info gathering, smooth talking, and social encounters.
They Both started with the same resources, they faced the same character design choices, and they both built their characters to their liking. They are by every measure of the rules, "Balanced" as they both expended they same resources to reach the final goal of completing a Character. But they will never perform the same in any task they attempt.
And THAT's the problem with options.
so far no one has offered a rational for why you should be able to bind 4-8 force 5-6 spirits out of chargen.
therefore there is no reason to include this capability.
It gives a mage Options. That is all.
You may not like the option, but it is there. Just like a Techno can have a swarm of agents (even if Techno are FUBAR ATM), or just like a Rigger can have a swarm of Drones, A Mage can have a Host of Spirits.
now lets look at that claim, while reviewing page 301 CRB.
Page 301 CRB
Binding is used to compel long-term services from a
spirit that you’ve already summoned. This takes one
hour per Force of the spirit and requires (Force x 25)
drams of reagents to be used up in the binding. The test
is an Opposed Binding + Magic [Force] v. spirit’s Force
x 2, and it inflicts Drain equal to twice the hits (not net
hits) on the spirit’s defense test, minimum 2. Additional
net hits beyond the first add to the number of services
the spirit owes.
Once the spirit is bound, then the spirit and its services
do not expire at the next sunrise or sunset. A spirit’s
service ends when it has no more services owed
to the magician. The bound spirit can be called or dismissed
with a Simple Action as they appear next to the
magician from the metaplane, awaiting further instructions
on the astral. A magician can bind up to his Charisma
attribute in spirits.
Lets be an ass and look at the high end of your claim at 8 force 6 spirits. The first part is that he can only summon a single spirit at a time, and only bind one spirit at a time. (Big deal, we know this, and this is not in dispute).
The BASIC cost per spirit just for the binding is $3000. That is a $24,000 investment for 8 spirits. At most he is only have 6 services per spirit. For a total of 48 services.
Which works out to $500 per service.
So he gets to pull this stun 48 times, at a cost of 500/service before he has to go about summoning and binding six more spirits.
That's also $24,000 worth of options he doesn't have. Options like armor, a commlink, a SIN, a lifestyle, or any one of a number of things that could potentially stop said mage and his Army of Spirits from every even getting to the lobby of a Corp!
Hypothetical Question for you:
If every time you answered the door, I hit you in the face with a shovel, how long would it be before you stopped answering the door when I knocked?
Spirits are Sapient, they think, feel, want, and desire for themselves. BUT, they also have a "hive mind" collective knowledge, so Johnny Spirit knows that you got Freddy Spirit disrupted those 6 times through the services Freddy owed you, So why in the heck would Johnny answer the "door" to your summons when you just got through hitting Freddy in the face with a shovel?!?! 6 times no less!
And YES, The Spirit index is a VERY good tool at stopping the very behavoir that this thread talks about as I have actually had to deal with a player and his "Spirit Army of Doom" (His Words, not mine). And after 36 times of asking "Are you SURE?" and "Do you think that is best?" clues from me and other players, he was really pissed and sore that not only would spirits not answer a Summons, Free Spirits were actively hostile to him!
You may not like Binding, and that is fine. You may not like how some players use it, and that is also fine.
But it does what it is supposed to do, which is to provide an option, its up to the players on what they do with that option, if they even wish to use it.
Can it be disrupting? Sure. But every option comes with a level of disruption to it.
OH And to your "Invisible Army of Death" wish comment.
Its the same as the technological army that a Techno can bring to bare. It is the same as the army a Rigger has access to once he jacks into the building.
Neither one needs to bring a magical hand grenade, or a drone with them. They may not burn people, or blow them over, but a bunch of Agents can activate halon systems and suffocate an entire floor, Disable elevators, sending them crashing to their doom. Lock all the doors and windows while creating a feedback short circuit starting a fire to burn the entire building down with everyone in it.
A Rigger can take control of the Spider nest, turning the entire building into a happy murder house of fun!
And, naturally a great Dragon could turn up and decide to to cause everyone in the city to all die at once too. Fun times!
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Money isn’t everything, and it’s not what spirits need. Whatever would they spend it on?
They need more personality. The spirit what wants to be paid in odd-numbered confederate war bonds. The spirit who’s afraid of children. The spirit who thinks he’s the Grinch. Make your wizard negotiate for those services and you’ll end up with a better story. Less OP too.
WDG
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Surprisingly, the "Spirit Army" never actually happened at my tables. Maybe the players have a conscience for how extremely OP this option may be, but I also suspect that they shy away from more bookkeeping and additional combatants.
It´s generaly weird how SR5 is pushing pet classes so hard: Besides Summoners and Drone Riggers, the only way to currently play a TM is by (ab)using Sprites. Now imagine a table with a Drone Rigger, a dedicated Summoner and a Spritenomancer! I´d go nuts as a GM! The abundance and (apart from Drones...) high power level of Pets/Minions is not just breaking game balance, it´s also making everything more confusing and propagates a playstyle that is, at least for the majority of players, less satisfying than doing things yourself ???
Anyway, my personal take on this issue:
- Summoning a Spirit costs [Force]x10 Reagents. Its mostly a symbolic price, but at least there´s some rationale to not just summon Spirits like a conveyor belt. Also, you can cripple a Summoner (PC or NPC) by stripping them from their reagents.
- Summoners can find and use Summoning "Hotspots" to lower the price or summon a Spirit for free. A revered Statue of political figure may be used to summon a Spirit of Man or Guidance, a piece of roadkill may give rise to an animal spirit, a decorative office geode may be used for a Spirit of Earth etc. Rewarding players for creativity is always a good idea!
- Controlling an unbound Spirit is treated as Sustaining a Spell of the same Level (-2 Modifier, compensatable by Drugs, Qualities etc.)
- Controlling a bound Spirit doesn´t incur a modifier - that´s why you bind them. However, a mage can control a number of 1+Initiation Grade Spirits at once, bound or unbound.
- "Spirit abusers" should be treated by their minions as malignant and unkind as possible: Only doing the bare minimum, deliberately interpreting orders in unfavorable ways etc.
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Anyway, my personal take on this issue:
- Summoning a Spirit costs [Force]x10 Reagents. Its mostly a symbolic price, but at least there´s some rationale to not just summon Spirits like a conveyor belt. Also, you can cripple a Summoner (PC or NPC) by stripping them from their reagents.
- Summoners can find and use Summoning "Hotspots" to lower the price or summon a Spirit for free. A revered Statue of political figure may be used to summon a Spirit of Man or Guidance, a piece of roadkill may give rise to an animal spirit, a decorative office geode may be used for a Spirit of Earth etc. Rewarding players for creativity is always a good idea!
- Controlling an unbound Spirit is treated as Sustaining a Spell of the same Level (-2 Modifier, compensatable by Drugs, Qualities etc.)
- Controlling a bound Spirit doesn´t incur a modifier - that´s why you bind them. However, a mage can control a number of 1+Initiation Grade Spirits at once, bound or unbound.
- "Spirit abusers" should be treated by their minions as malignant and unkind as possible: Only doing the bare minimum, deliberately interpreting orders in unfavorable ways etc.
That's not bad. I especially like the "summoning hotspot."
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it's pretty clear that without GM fiat the rules for binding, as written, are broken/ open to abuse/ not balanced (take your pick).
This depends on your definition of "broken/open to abuse/not balanced" means.
What is "broken"?
Well all your questions can be answer by applying a bit of common sense.
If you threw equally skilled players with different archetypes at various scenarios and have them take care of it as best they can and everyone notices that one of those archetypes invalidates others as well as breezing through the scenario's then a bit of common sense would tell you it's imbalanced.
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it's pretty clear that without GM fiat the rules for binding, as written, are broken/ open to abuse/ not balanced (take your pick).
This depends on your definition of "broken/open to abuse/not balanced" means.
What is "broken"?
Well all your questions can be answer by applying a bit of common sense.
If you threw equally skilled players with different archetypes at various scenarios and have them take care of it as best they can and everyone notices that one of those archetypes invalidates others as well as breezing through the scenario's then a bit of common sense would tell you it's imbalanced.
And yet, what you are implying just hasn't happened to any great degree from what we can see.... of all the people that have responded, what? Two people have had to deal with a "spirit army of doom" - and thst includes ME!
This is just not something that happens that often. Yes I agree it could happen. But an astroid could crash into tge planet today and kill us all too...
And, its not really that different from the hosts that Riggers and technos can employ as well. That their swarms don't cost $500 for every command you issue, nor do they expire after a set amount of commands.
But like I and others have said, all it does is give an 'option' to the players. Its up to them if they want to go that route. With all it entails.
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You know, I read this whole thread out of curiosity and ultimately had to laugh about it.
Because at the end of the day, one thing is true. If you abuse rules to cheese out nonsense and make the game not fun, the GM will fiat or BS a way to smash your character into the dirt. Hopefully with a skyscraper sized pair of golf cleats.
Can you bind an army of spirits to do all the grunt work for you? Sure. In a vacuum. And the second you screw up or you make it clear you're just breaking the game for a power trip, along comes an NPC doing the same thing. Or the spirits rebel, Or someone hits you with a tranq dart and dumps your spirit focused character in the middle of Denver in the wrong gang outfit.
I say this for one simple reason. This aversion to the GM doing his or her job is silly. The RAW are the start of things. The start, not the end The GM is, and should be, the final arbiter. If said GM is under the foolish and mistaken impression that the players are the enemy, then by all means leave the table If the player does not like their cheese getting stomped so that other people have fun too? Then by all means leave the table.
Yes, spirits are a bit more powerful in a vacuum. A creative GM can use the tools at hand easily to nerf that with situational shfits, but yes spirits can be very useful and very dangerous. But you're playing a game where corps employ people with the same summoning powers as you. A game where Thor strikes are a thing, and where dragons who can likely shrug off thor strikes are also a thing. Putting aside all of the other balance tools in play, part of being a Shadowrunner is that you have to be careful about making waves. I.E. anything that makes you too OP or that the GM feels is stealing the thunder of the other characters. Because when you make waves the major players out there are willing and able to take you down a peg, and much like the Lady of Pain some of them aren't statted!
There is just so much wrong here. The presumption that the book trumps the GM, the clear bias that something is 'unfair' while only looking at it in a vacuum, and the silly delusion that you can have real game balance in a Pen and Paper game. Yes, you need to get things more in line so that there isn't just one thing to do and everything else would be silly and pointless. But this isn't a rigid video game. This isn't some stupid multiplayer online shooter where the point is to prove your pointless validation. It's a co-operative story.
And frankly, as a GM? That summoning a whole host of spirits to do all the hard work thing would likely fly exactly once. Maybe. After that I'd just rule the next time it was used they inadvertently caught the eye of some ant spirit colony setting up. That the ants fragged the summoned spirits and now the summoners rep is absolute trash in the spirit community. Meaning the one trick of the one trick pony no longer works and a whole host of nasties are out for the players blood.
Why? Because the GM is the world. Seek to have fun and cooperate and play your character and you can have the world. Seek to be a dick, and watch your minmaxed number crunching fall to the world saying no.