[Senko]

Reading forbidden arcana and the note about ally spirits and wild spirit index caught my eye. Laying aside the question of whether a freed ally spirit could stick around and provide benefits to someone it liked this seems a bit contradictory. You get the spirits force in reputation when you create it and 3 times its force when you let it go. Is it just me or shouldn't it be one or the other? In addition isn't the potentially a way to spend some time karma for free rep. Make a force 1 ally spirit and then let it go for 4 reputation?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

If that's what you want to spend a minimum of 8 karma and 500¥ on, you go right ahead - but you aren't gaining actual Wild Reputation, you're gaining Wild Index that way.  25 WIndex = 1 WRep, just as 25 Astral Index = 1 Astral Reputation.  Wild Reputation is good; Astral Reputation is bad.  Really, ARep should have been presented as Astral Notoriety ...

But to get back to the point, in order to increase your Wild Reputation by 1, you'd have to conjure and release (25 / 4, round up because you have to hit 25) = 7 seperate ally spirits, for a total Karma cost of 56 - and 3500¥ to boot.  Is Wild Reputation really worth that much karma?

[Senko]

For me no but someone like you with characters who have spent thousands of karma already...

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Try not to be snarky; just because I believe a character is only ready to be hung up when either a) they die or b) their story is done doesn't mean your way is the One True.

In any case, the answer would be still no, not worth it.  Whether the total karma you've acquire is 5, 50, 500, or 5000, a chunk that big for a result that small - and a result which can be so easily destroyed in pursuit of your aims - is seriously not worth it.  When you're saving up for major expenses, you begrudge every last point of karma, even more than when you need to get a skill from 3 to 4.

What gets me is the problem that if you disrupt (not banish) a spirit via combat, your Astral Index goes up by one.  Which means that if you're a particularly good mage-hunter and better with Blades than you are at Banishing, spirits are going to not like you and thus not come when you call.  Which, to me, is bogus.  That kind of onus should go to the mage who summoned the spirit and sent them into a fight they didn't win.  But ... *shrugs*

[Senko]

I wasn't trying to be snarky sorry if it came off that way was meant to be more of a trailing off to let you give your view of the situation as I'd never had the opportunity to get a character anywhere near that high and wasn't sure how karma income vs expenses worked at that level. Should have remembered tone doesn't convey well in forums and it's best to explicit rather than implicit.

Fair point about astral reputatation although personally I'd view it more on a case by case basis. As I'm summoning a spirit and setting it on someone only to have it disrupted when they defend themselves would get you the penalty, a spirit disrupted while guarding somewhere wouldn't get any as it's sort of risk of the job for a guard and someone attacking a spirit and disrupting it for no reason would get them the penalty.