[ZombieAcePilot]

So I'm confused about the bind spell from street grimore. Here is my hypothetical about how it would work:

Mage casts the spell at a tidy 14 dice and gets 4 hits. The security guard resists with body+strength for a total of 7 dice and gets 2 sucess. That means 2 net success for the Mage. We compare that to our guards agility and find out he has a 3. His agility gets reduced by 2, but he isn't bound yet since we haven't reduced him to 0. We are now staining our spell.

On his turn the guard can try to break out, pitting his bod+str against our spells force x2. All or nothing here it seems. On our next turn we would have to cast a second bind spell if we want to reduce him further and inflict the penalties associated with being bound (lack of movement, penalty to defenses, etc).

Is this correct? Is there a way to try and increase your hold without casting a second spell, similar to how subduing works with getting a better hold? Or should I add this spell on a list with a bunch of others for situationally okay, but mostly useless?

[Sphinx]

Bind (Street Grimoire p.113) starts with a Spellcasting + Magic vs. Body + Strength Opposed Test. The target's Agility is reduced by the caster's net hits. Even if you don't reduce the target's agility to zero, that's still essentially a dice penalty to all Agility-based tests, equivalent to Chaos (SR5 p.290). And if you succeed in reducing the target's Agility to zero, they're effectively neutralized except for purely mental actions.

Attempting to break free is a Strength + Body vs. Force x 2 Opposed Test. Those odds usually favor the spell.

I don't think you can accumulate net hits with repeat spellcasting, but you can recast it and try for a better result.

Petrify (Shadow Spells p.22) is probably a better choice for neutralizing a single target, but Bind leaves them able to answer questions without dropping the spell, and Net Bind gives you an area option. Bind needs fewer hits than stun combat spells to take down average mundane guards, if you can get enough on the first try.