[Finstersang]

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
• Fuck Magicrun
• Edit: What was the Subtitle for 5th Edition again? Oh, I remember: Everything has a price.

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.

[mbisber]

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.

[Michael Chandra]

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?

[Mirikon]

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.

[Plastic-Man]

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.

[adzling]

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.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

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.

[Marcus]

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.

[Nephilim]

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.

[Mirikon]

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?

[adzling]

[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.

[Nephilim]

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.

[Kiirnodel]

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...

[Nephilim]

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.

[adzling]

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.