[adzling]

It’s a contingent sentence to the first one. The first sentence clearly lays out the specific things that can trigger the -1 modifier.

[Nephilim]

 I've said my peace.

[Kiirnodel]

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.

[adzling]

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?

[Captain Corruption]

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.

[Nephilim]

Or worse yet, the Dragon summoning widget...

[Plastic-Man]

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.

[Marcus]

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?

[Iron Serpent Prince]

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?

[Marcus]

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.

[adzling]

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?

[Mirikon]

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.

[adzling]

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.

[Kiirnodel]

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.

[Marcus]

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.