[Marcus]

It's going to vary based upon tradition, and lets keep in mind there is at least one tradition that use water spirits for everything.

Now keep in mind, most folks who can will at the beginning of a mod, summon a spirit, they don't know what they will  use it for. So in general use common sense, follow the rules concerning magic, but at the same time general activities shouldn't linked to a spell type. An earth spirit can look inside a building as well as a air spirit.

Getting super restrictive on spirit activities simply results in players summoning only their combat category or dismissing and re-summoning often during a run, neither option really is really useful.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

It's going to vary based upon tradition, and lets keep in mind there is at least one tradition that use water spirits for everything.

Now keep in mind, most folks who can will at the beginning of a mod, summon a spirit, they don't know what they will  use it for. So in general use common sense, follow the rules concerning magic, but at the same time general activities shouldn't linked to a spell type. An earth spirit can look inside a building as well as a air spirit.

Getting super restrictive on spirit activities simply results in players summoning only their combat category or dismissing and re-summoning often during a run, neither option really is really useful.

Right... but it's appearing to me that players only summon a spirit and then have it hang around "awaiting orders" because both they and GMs are largely unaware of the passage pointed out in SG.  To reiterate:

Assigning tasks outside
the general area of their tradition will not receive a response
from the spirit (for example, a Buddhist mage
telling an air spirit to heal him will get no response, as
air is a Combat spirit in that tradition, while the Health
spirit is earth).

Now the example is a bit wonky, as neither Spirits of Air nor Spirits of Earth possess any sort of healing powers.  The example must be talking about having a spirit default or assist on the First Aid skill.  The example has to be saying that if the Buddhist Mage asks his Air Spirit to "Apply pressure here so I don't bleed out!" he'll get the response of  "Sorry, I'm not an Earth Spirit."

So sure a Shaman can summon an Air spirit at the beginning of the run, but Water Spirits are for "Detection" purposes, so if the GM calls recon of a building "Detection", then the Shaman either has to find a Plan B to recon the building, or dismiss the spirit he never used to summon a Water spirit.

I'm kind of thinking that the "spirits can only do tradition-appropriate tasks" is a way to indirectly legislate against pre-summoning your spirits.  If the game "wants" you to not pre-summon spirits, this is the kind of rule you'd need to de-incentivize it because the drain rules certainly incentivize pre-summoning.

[Marcus]

It's a question of degrees. A spirit won't use a spell outside it's assigned domain (combat detection healing). But it should still preform activities outside that domain. IE Fetch that thing and carry it over there. See what's on the other side of this door. While it's possible to squint your eyes as a GM and assign those tasks to specific domains, it's not intended to work that way.

Buddest can't get his air spirit to cast heal because that tradition it's there to murder boat folks with relation to combat spells, but that air spirit isn't only limited murder boating folks. It can still do other things, like turn on a blender or enjoy the music of this wind chime with me.

Do you get what I'm say? In the end it's common sense call by the sitting GM.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

It's a question of degrees. A spirit won't use a spell outside it's assigned domain (combat detection healing). But it should still preform activities outside that domain. IE Fetch that thing and carry it over there. See what's on the other side of this door. While it's possible to squint your eyes as a GM and assign those tasks to specific domains, it's not intended to work that way.

Buddest can't get his air spirit to cast heal because that tradition it's there to murder boat folks with relation to combat spells, but that air spirit isn't only limited murder boating folks. It can still do other things, like turn on a blender or enjoy the music of this wind chime with me.

Do you get what I'm say? In the end it's common sense call by the sitting GM.

Well I'm not fully on the same page with you because what you're saying appears to be a non sequitur.

In the Buddhist mage example as given in SG, an Air Spirit can't cast any spell whatsoever.. Health or otherwise.  So limiting what spells spirits are allowed to cast is a non sequitur as they simply can't cast any spells.  (with the exception of Spirits of Man)

Now it makes sense that only bound Earth spirits may sustain a Buddhist Mage's Health spell, but that's not the limit of what the SG rules text and supporting example appear to be talking about.  They're talking about all tasks, not just spell-related ones.  If it's not saying that for a Buddhist Mage he can only ask an Earth spirit to perform a Health related task AND that he may not ask any other spirit to do a Health related task, then it's not saying anything at all.

[Marcus]

non se·qui·tur
noun
a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement


Spirit power, sustain spell, spells whatever you like to call them. Magical ability of spirits. The logical connection is there, calling it non-sequitur is just ether being willfully ignorant or sophistry. But what you like SSDR. I've already side what the logical out come will be. But as you seem to think what I said holds no relevance, by all means try it your way, and come back and let us all what happens.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Given that there's some subtle but important differences between Spirit Powers and Spells, yes I thought you were just referring to spells, hence my bringing up that to me it appeared your logic "did not follow".

So, expanding upon the example in SG.  The Buddhist Mage can not use an Air Spirit to perform "Health" tasks.  Given the list of powers that a Spirit of Air does or can possess, I'm not sure which of those could be implied to be "Health" related.  So either the restriction is meaningless, or the restriction applies to even mundane tasks.   I'd say that common sense would suggest usage of skills like First Aid, Bio/Cybertechnology, Medicine, and perhaps some others.  Since Spirits of Air don't get those skills anyway, and First Aid is the only one that even could be defaulted upon, the restriction in SG is appearing to only bar any Spirit commanded by a Buddhist Mage other than a Spirit of Earth to use or aid another on First Aid.

The implication must be is that it's not just Health as a category that's restricted.  Presumably wheras the Buddhist Mage can explicitly only use Spirits of Earth for "Health" tasks (whatever those may be), he can simultaneously only use Spirits of Air for "Combat" related tasks, Guidance Spirits for "Detection" related tasks, Spirits of Fire for "Illusion" related tasks, and Spirits of Water for "Manipulation" related tasks.  I mean, given the entry in SG it simply cannot be otherwise, can it? 

Obviously it should be fairly easy to discern as to what is a "Combat" task vs what is an "Illusion" task, whether they're mundane or magical in nature.  The Concealment power, for example, is fairly well within the bounds of common sense to say would be categorized as "Illusion" magic, so it seems fairly cut and dried that by implication from the example a Buddhist Mage's tradition doesn't allow for a Spirit of Air (Combat tasks only) to use the Concealment power (Illusion task, clearly?).  Of course there's room for the GM to decide that within the context of the specific incident, Concealment was for "Combat" purposes?

[SpellBinder]

SR5, page 302 outlines what you can have an unbound spirit do for you for a single service, one of which is to fight at your side in combat.  Any spirit can fight for you if so ordered.  As for bound spirits, they can be told to do whatever any unbound spirit can be told.  In fact, only one type of service of bound spirits even mentions a restriction to a category:  Aid Alchemy, Sorcery, and Study.  That's it, that's all where spirits are truly limited in what they can do (a shaman can't learn a detection spell from a beast spirit, or anything from a fire spirit).  Heck, a hermetic can order a bound water spirit to sustain a Detection spell.  Maybe it won't like it, but it'll do it.

The quoted section in Street Grimore, I say, is poorly written at best.  Besides an Aid Sorcery action, how does an earth spirit help a Buddhist in healing?  Default on a First Aid skill test (as Medicine & Biotechnology can't be defaulted on)?  "Paging Dr. Zoidberg!"  The Guard power that both air and earth spirits (and many more) have access to can help in health related instances, but apparently for the Buddhist it's only useful in a health related way (it isn't useful directly for healing); guess it's only useful for an air spirit in a fight somehow, which seems limited to preventing the use of Accident in a fight or negating glitches on your combat or defense tests.  On that same logic it's a really good thing that fire spirits have Search as an optional power, or they'd really suck at finding things for Aztech magicians, short of burning down everything around them (needle in a haystack?  no problem, burn down the haystack).  Especially considering that beast spirits have a battery of enhanced senses that'd help make them excellent trackers over fire spirits, especially if it came to finding something in a deep lake (it'll help you retrieve it, but it won't help you find it in the first place).  Oh, hermetics might as well not bother calling up a spirit of man with an Invisibility spell to use, since it's a Health spirit it won't ever use it since Illusion magic is "outside the general area of their tradition."  Might as well stick to Heal or Increased Reflexes instead since those spells are within its area of the tradition.

And if you really took that section in SG, page 41, literally it'd also make the Spirit Expansion metamagic (Forbidden Arcana, page 41; lets you summon a spirit from outside your tradition, legal & RAW) worthless as each additional spirit doesn't conform to any of the five categories, letting them tell you to frag off for being asked of anything you want one to do (a hermetic summons a new guidance spirit to track down a missing person; nope, not the summoner's Detection class spirit, not gonna do it).  As Rosa pointed out on the previous page, going very literally here would make spirit aid for Elder Gods magicians suck (Task are ill suited for combat).  Drakes of the Draconic tradition, on the other hand, would be OP as any spirit type will do anything asked (they can conjure all spirits that don't have Inhabitation or Possession for any category of magic); that summoned beast spirit will help track down a known criminal (Detection), help batter down that barricaded door he's hiding behind (Manipulation), as and then fend off any bodyguards he's hired for protection & muscle (Combat).

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

The quoted section in Street Grimore, I say, is poorly written at best.

You know, I think this is a very strong argument given the larger context of magic rules elsewhere.  Marcus: I do appreciate your willingness to have discussed this with me.  I primarily play SR in the context of SRM, which means I don't have the luxury of just ignoring rules I don't like.  SG says you can't use the "wrong" spirits for designated tasks, then I don't get to house rule it away.

That being said, the problem only exists because of that block of text in SG.  I wouldn't even be having the discussion if one were looking solely at the Core Rulebook, which didn't really give me the overall impression that only certain spirits are even allowed to use their powers to achieve certain aims.  In absence of the rule from SG, I wouldn't see any justification in the Core Rulebook to say you couldn't use the Concealment power on ANY spirit you happened to summon rather than only spirits of the Illusion "school" for your tradition.

And THAT in turn I think is relevant.  While SG may well be the primary magic expansion source, I'm not sure I agree that it should be changing the rules from the Core Rulebook.  Clarifying absolutely, but the difference between clarifying and changing is one I can work with.  I'm not allowed to make up my own house rules in SRM, but I can certainly take the position that the rule quoted in SG is "obviously technically incorrect" rather than a "clarification that wasn't clear from Core Rules" and thus still not be instituting a House Rule.

[Rosa]

I totally agree with Spellbinder.

If the restriction mentioned in SG was supposed to be a rule which I'm not at all convinced it's even meant as, it has more of the character of role-playing hint for players and GM's to use to flesh out their traditions spirits, but if it was meant as rule then it would belong in CRB in the section on spirit services that Spellbinder mentioned, not as a throwaway remark in the beginning of a chapter where you explain what the chapter is about.

Also the example given is utterly useless as no spirit has any healing powers, as has already been remarked. If they really wanted to make such a restriction, they would have to make many more powers and also assign spirit powers to roles rather than to specific types of spirits.

And I agree that it would totally invalidate the new metamagic from FA.

[ShadowcatX]

First, thank you for providing the source. Learn something new every day I guess.

Second, I think this issue is unclear enough that it should be looked at by the errata team.

[Lorebane24]

It'd be nice to get someone official weigh in here, but, again, I remain convinced that the summoning skill is radically more powerful than most other skills in the game (especially spellcasting) because of the enormous range of options that it offers simply at the cost of skill ranks - in most games I have had a distressing number of players whose approac to runs was "summon a high force spirit and then watch them win fights."  Yes, as GM I could give the bad guys more spirits or banishing, but I feel this makes magic feel common to the point of becoming mundand, and the game devolves into an arms race of spirits and countermeasures to a degree I have never had with other resources.

I would posit that tradition is really the only reason spirit summoning, and its power, hasnt changed too much over the editions.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

It'd be nice to get someone official weigh in here, but, again, I remain convinced that the summoning skill is radically more powerful than most other skills in the game (especially spellcasting) because of the enormous range of options that it offers simply at the cost of skill ranks - in most games I have had a distressing number of players whose approac to runs was "summon a high force spirit and then watch them win fights."  Yes, as GM I could give the bad guys more spirits or banishing, but I feel this makes magic feel common to the point of becoming mundand, and the game devolves into an arms race of spirits and countermeasures to a degree I have never had with other resources.

I would posit that tradition is really the only reason spirit summoning, and its power, hasnt changed too much over the editions.

I agree in that I can absolutely envision a "writers intent" that Spirits are only ever allowed to do tasks aligned with narrow niches as defined by tradition... it's just that if it's truly supposed to be that way, they did an admittedly horrible job of making that clear outside of the one mention in SG.

[ShadowcatX]

It'd be nice to get someone official weigh in here, but, again, I remain convinced that the summoning skill is radically more powerful than most other skills in the game (especially spellcasting) because of the enormous range of options that it offers simply at the cost of skill ranks - in most games I have had a distressing number of players whose approac to runs was "summon a high force spirit and then watch them win fights."  Yes, as GM I could give the bad guys more spirits or banishing, but I feel this makes magic feel common to the point of becoming mundand, and the game devolves into an arms race of spirits and countermeasures to a degree I have never had with other resources.

I would posit that tradition is really the only reason spirit summoning, and its power, hasnt changed too much over the editions.

Make no mistake, summoning has checks and balances without using the whole combat spirit, detection spirit, etc. to screw players over. Do you know how long it takes from the moment you make your summoning roll for a spirit to actually show up, manifest, receive instructions, and act because that stuff isn't all instantaneous?

[Lorebane24]

I looked over the rules for summoning again and I'm not finding that many limitations.  It is a complex action to summon, and it states the spirit shows up "nearby in astral space."  It doesnt get any more specific than that, so my reading is that you use your action, then the spirit uses its complex action to materialize and you're both ready to rock on the next pass.  Is it a restrictiin?  Sure.  But I think it simply balances out the fact that your are summonin a persistent ally instead of casting a spell that has a quuck effevt or that you have to sustain.  I cant find anythin that specifies givin orders to use up an action either.

I still think people are jumpin to a knee jerk reaction of "a nerf will make it suck" towards mechanics that have needed a nerf for five editions now.

[ShadowcatX]

You have to summon the spirit as a complex action. Then the spirit has to materialize which takes it's complex action. Then you have to spend an action to command the spirit which is a simple action.

The mage, at this point has taken up a complex action, a simple action, and dealt with drain. The spirit has had to use a complex action. And nothing has happened yet. In general, the mage will have used up at least half of his possible actions, and won't be likely to cast a spell with his other remaining simple action. Which is to say, that a mage is burning 2 sets of actions to summon a spirit who likely only gets 2 or 3 actions and had to use one already to manifest, so they're trading 2 actions for 2 actions this pass, not that great.

And it isn't "a nerf will make it suck" it is "that nerf isn't in the rules".