[Fenix]

Hey guys, I'm somewhat newish to Shadowrun (or at least parts of it). My group played roughly a year-long campaign in 4A, and now that 5th is out I've taken up the role of GM. Last night was our second session, in which we continued the "Lost Islands Found" adventure out of Firing Line. For those unfamiliar, it begins with the runners picking up a professor from the university and then laying low for a while. One of my players pulled a contact and got a better safehouse than the one offered by Johnson. My mistake was making it a third floor apartment with only one way in (the fire marshal would have had my ass). When the gangers came about to get the professor for themselves (equipped with a mage and air spirit for concealment), they were spotted on the approach. Our mage pulled 3 fire spirits he had on standby and annihilated the spirit and mage (since the mage was a ghoul, this was all done astrally). This was all good and somewhat comical because it caused the rest of the gangers to freak and bolt towards the stairwell, hoping to find the mage responsible. By the time they made it to the top, the spirits had materialized and blocked off the stairwell, effectively blocking all access. The only options these poor souls had left was to spray AK-97 rounds frantically to no avail, since the spirits are immune.

My first lesson: give them more areas to cover, especially since I have a party of 7 players. The entire encounter should not have been resolved solely by spirits and the Troll battle-turtle that decided to hop out of the window.

My second lesson: find a way to deal with the spirits in a manner that is fair to the player, but doesn't allow him to just squash anyone that comes at him by spamming spirits.

The obvious answer to the second is just "throw awakened and/or other spirits at him," which I feel is a little cheap. One thing I have heard of doing is have the spirits he summons resist every now and then, maybe occasionally spend an edge to oppose being summoned/bound for a little extra drain if he tries to summon too often, or one with a force greater than his magic. This idea I liked, but I'm curious what some others might have done to compensate?

[ZeConster]

Spirits are not 100% immune to non-magical attacks, actually. Assuming the player's bound fire spirits were of Force 6, if a ganger gets a single net hit, that AK-97 will deal 11P/-2, enough to pierce the spirit's Hardened Armor: the Fire spirit will roll 7+(12-2) = 17 dice, and get (12-2)/2 = 5 free bonus hits, for an average of 0.94P damage if they hit the spirit with a single net hit. It's very little, but it's not 0. If you give the gangers APDS, it's suddenly 11P/-6, so 7+(12-6) = 13 dice and (12-6)/2 = 3 free hits, for an average of 3.68P damage if they hit the spirit with a single net hit. If the gangers have good dice pools and/or work together to reduce the spirit's dodge pool, they can combine burst fire (-5 on the dodge test) with a Vitals Called Shot (-4 on the attack roll, +2 DV).

Second, binding spirits is pretty expensive. If we assume a player with 12 summoning and binding dice and 3 Edge, spent on Second Chance for both tests, they'll get ~4.7 Services on average from the summoning test, and ~1.82 extra Services on average from the Binding ritual (with a 2.30% of the summoning failing, not counting KO chance, and a 17.99% chance of the binding failing, not counting KO chance). Added together, that's ~6.5 Services in exchange for 150 drams, or 3,000¥. At 450-500¥ per service, even if you use all the services on combats, that's significantly more expenses than the gun users will have.

[Critter]

*waves fist* Beat me to the punch. Yeah, spirits are not totally immune, you can take one out with enough firepower/hits on a roll. AKs could have pretty much put those spirits into the chipper with some okay rolls. A session I was in (I admit, I am a player who reads this forum, I like to help GMs), our meat shield took out a water elemental with a shotgun while my shaman had a beast spirit handling a fire elemental.

[Fenix]

Nice, I had thought all hope was lost for these guys! I see what I did now...I read the materialization rules (...gain Immunity to Normal Weapons while Materialized) and for some reason it didn't register that Immunity was a power of its own. I'm just now learning a lot of the critter and magic rules. My last character in 4th ed was a technomancer, so I only ever really learned Matrix rules and some basic combat (took a pot-shot every now and then). I'm still trying to catch up on some of the particulars like this

Thanks for the input, guys!

[Michael Chandra]

I can give you one important piece of advice: Oversummoning should ALWAYS be faced with Exploding Edge rolls from the spirits. It's the primary balancing factor in Oversummoning.


As for Lost Islands Found, the gangers were armed with explosive rounds, so that's 11/-3. If they hit that means they injure, with 1 net hit it's 12/-3 vs 16 soak dice and 5 autohits. That translates to an average 1.86 damage on a hit.

A good way to make that fight tougher on the spirits, by the way, is giving the gangers Ares Alphas instead of AK-97s and APDS rounds rather than Explosive Rounds. This puts them at 4.34 average on a single net-hit and they also have a grand total of 3 Recoil Compensation, meaning they can do a single Short Burst without penalties.


By the way, in Dragon's Song I fired a short burst into the cockpit at a Spirit engulfing Kane. I edged the roll and scored 8 hits, combined with the EBR's APDS 12/-7. If we assume the Spirit rolled average on its dodge (so 4) and average on its soak (so 2+2), it still took 12 damage. I know it took at least 10 because it got taken out instantly.

[Belker]

Also, as the GM, you could always throw a street mage or shaman in with  the gangers to give them some magical muscle, perhaps with a summoned or bound spirit of his/her own.

IMHO, the spirit rules need to be re-written a bit to make all the implications of Materialization and Immunity from Normal Weapons (and their armor in general) much more clear.

[Critter]

He did, and the mage sent the flood of fire elementals to wipe it out in the beginning.

[ZeConster]

So did the player pay Karma at chargen to start with several bound spirits owing them Services, or did they summon and bind the spirits during their downtime between the first and second session? The first will have cost them a significant chunk of Karma, the second a significant chunk of Nuyen.

[Fenix]

Also, as the GM, you could always throw a street mage or shaman in with  the gangers to give them some magical muscle, perhaps with a summoned or bound spirit of his/her own.

IMHO, the spirit rules need to be re-written a bit to make all the implications of Materialization and Immunity from Normal Weapons (and their armor in general) much more clear.

I feel like there are certain concepts that are less elaborated on in 5th ed. that were explained more fully in 4th and vice-versa. I've been flipping between the two a bit to compare what was done previously on some things. Hopefully the expansion books will be a little clearer, at least to this novice GM

So did the player pay Karma at chargen to start with several bound spirits owing them Services, or did they summon and bind the spirits during their downtime between the first and second session? The first will have cost them a significant chunk of Karma, the second a significant chunk of Nuyen.

He bought a Force 6 fire spirit at chargen and spent a huge chunk of his resources on magical goods. The other two spirits were Force 3 fire spirits (unbound) he had summoned roughly an hour before combat and had on standby in case anything went down, and took a few points of drain with it. The team's sniper spotted the concealed gangers, and our shaman stepped in to astrally sucker punch the spirit. He got a turn to retaliate, and the next turn the mage's spirits were in his face.

[ZeConster]

I believe you're not allowed to have more than 1 unbound spirit summoned at the same time, plus a Force 3 Spirit would only have Hardened Armor 6, meaning an AK-97 with APDS will cancel it out completely, resulting in the spirit rolling Body alone versus (10+net hits)P damage. Plus the spirits' elemental attacks would only be 3P/-3, which is easily soaked.

[All4BigGuns]

Yeah, far as I know, you can have up to your Charisma in bound spirits and 1 unbound. I never saw anything changing that in 4th or the new one, and that's what I remember from 3rd.

For the most part, as long as you remember that spirits are NPCs (and thus under your control) rather than "pets" under the player's control, there shouldn't be any problems.

[bull30548]

Also based on some of the stuff the runners have done they may have someone other then the gangers looking for him.  If you really want to throw them off come up with a 'Counter Team' a group of shadowrunners who are competing with the team or just cross paths with them on a different run.  Another option is to have a corporation or even local law enforcement have an interest in them.  I mean they been using lots of magical and violent means to deal with their assailants and someone is going to notice.  They will investigate and might even send a mage might not do it in person but astrally project and have his own spirits to watch his back.  Also all that magical usage is going to leave signature all over the place making them easy to find later.

[Fenix]

I believe you're not allowed to have more than 1 unbound spirit summoned at the same time, plus a Force 3 Spirit would only have Hardened Armor 6, meaning an AK-97 with APDS will cancel it out completely, resulting in the spirit rolling Body alone versus (10+net hits)P damage. Plus the spirits' elemental attacks would only be 3P/-3, which is easily soaked.

Ahhh gotcha. Definitely a detail I overlooked. I'll be sure to take note for the future. I'll have to re-read the magic chapter and make sure I get all the details down. I appreciate you pointing these rules out to me

Yeah, far as I know, you can have up to your Charisma in bound spirits and 1 unbound. I never saw anything changing that in 4th or the new one, and that's what I remember from 3rd.

For the most part, as long as you remember that spirits are NPCs (and thus under your control) rather than "pets" under the player's control, there shouldn't be any problems.

I'll have to start implementing that for sure. So far I've been pretty much giving him a pass as far as obedient spirits go and just letting him run them. I might have to shake things up and throw him a slightly less cooperative one next time, full of lip about not wanting to be there

Also based on some of the stuff the runners have done they may have someone other then the gangers looking for him.  If you really want to throw them off come up with a 'Counter Team' a group of shadowrunners who are competing with the team or just cross paths with them on a different run.  Another option is to have a corporation or even local law enforcement have an interest in them.  I mean they been using lots of magical and violent means to deal with their assailants and someone is going to notice.  They will investigate and might even send a mage might not do it in person but astrally project and have his own spirits to watch his back.  Also all that magical usage is going to leave signature all over the place making them easy to find later.

Hmm that sounds like a fun idea! I'll have to keep that in mind as we go into the next couple of sessions.


Thanks for all the input so far guys, you've all been a great help so far!

[Reaver]

yea, A real big balancing factor for spirits is that they are sapient.. and thus have their own personalities, desires and wants...and they do not take kindly to being abused or used constantly as "disposable meat shields".

If you feel the shaman is being abusive to his spirits, start playing up the fact that the spirits are getting pissy about his treatment of them... If he continues to abuse them, start paying close attention to his commands and looking for simple, easy ways of messing with his commands so that the spirits obey the letter, and not the intent of the command

also remember... spirits seem to know EVERYTHING about the treatment of past summoned spirits... which means if the party ever has to deal with a free spirit, the shaman may not like what the free spirit demands as payment <evil grin> ("Sure, I'll help you..... After you put two in the back of the head of that one there for his abuses to my kind...")

[Beaumis]

I believe you're not allowed to have more than 1 unbound spirit summoned at the same time

The rules are actually a little unclear on that:

You can summon spirits of your tradition (p. 279). Summoning a spirit is a Complex Action. You can only summon one spirit at a time, and it only hangs around for a limited time—a summoned spirit will return to wherever it was when you called it when it’s either through with all of the services it owes you or when the sun rises or sets (whichever comes first).

While it does say you can only summon on spirit at a time, it makes no mention of whether or not you can keep summoning spirits. You do have to face consecutive drain though.
That being said, this seems more like an oversight than RAI.

I can give you one important piece of advice: Oversummoning should ALWAYS be faced with Exploding Edge rolls from the spirits. It's the primary balancing factor in Oversummoning.

Spirits don't have edge anymore.

Summoned and bound spirits don’t have their own Edge pools (or if they do, they don’t use them). However, you can spend your own Edge pool on your summoned spirits’ tests if you like.

However, given that he used three fire spirits to block the single entrance/exit, shouldn't the house be on fire? They do have the energy aura power... .