[j2klbs]

Brief Overview:  Spirits can be summoned on the fly by starting characters that can mop entire squads of well equipped prime runner street sams.  Higher level spirits (also summonable by starting characters) can be harder to kill than dragons due to unbeatable hardened armor values.  The current rule that Immunity (more specifically Immunity to Normal Weapons) grants Hardened Armor equal to twice essence does not scale well and introduces a significant imbalance in the game design.  This power has even been improved over 4th edition as it now also grants bonus damage resistance hits equal to half its rating (round up).

Recommendation:  Errata the Immunity power to only grant Hardened Armor equal to essense (not double essence).

Detailed Overview:  A starting magician can easily have 7 Magic, 11 Drain dice, and 15 dice on Conjuration tests.  Depending on how many wounds the magician is willing to take, he could summon up to a force 14 spirit.  The following numbers do not take into account any expenditure of Edge which the mage could use to reduce wounds or increase services.

Force     Expected Wounds
-------    --------------------
7           1 (stun)
9           2.3 (phys)
11         3.6 (phys)
13         5 (phys)
14         6 (phys)

To illustrate my point, suppose the magician conjures a force 13 Fire Spirit.  This spirit will destroy anything it attacks.  But, to make matters worse (and to make a game system not fun), there is nothing mundane opponents can do against this creature.  Per the rules, it has 26 Hardened Armor to bullets, melee weapons, etc.  Even the deadliest weapon in the game, an Anti-vehicle rocket (24P, -4AP) due to availability costing the mundane character roughly 5K nuyen per rocket will do just 1 point of damage (14 Body + 22 Armor = 12 hits + 11 auto hits = 23 damage reduction).  Any other weapon including firing fully automatic HMG's just bounce off this creature (remember that it is dodging shots with 30 dice!).

As a point of comparison, western dragons which are supposed to be the most powerful entities in the game only have 18 hardened armor and dodge of 16 dice (compared to a force 14 spirit's 28 hardened armor and 30 dodge dice).  Is it really the intent of the game design that a starting character can summon a creature that is twice as hard to kill as a western dragon?

The problem exists with lesser force spirits as well.  A force 7 spirit is mostly immune to damage.  A force 9 spirit cannot be touched by most street sam's.  And all of these spirits are summonable by a starting magician.

If the designers errata Immunity to only grant Hardened Armor equal to Essence (not double Essence), this change will at least make mundane characters able to do something!  Even with this suggested errata, if you crunch the numbers, a starting street sam will only be able to damage spirits a little.    For example, his best tactic will likely be to toss a frag grenade at it (this avoid having to go against spirit's high dodge dice).  Even with the proposed errata rule, the frag grenade (16P, -2AP) has the following expected values against a fire spirit:

Force   No Errata Dmg     Errata Dmg
-------  ------------------    ----------
7          3.3                      8.6
9          0                         6.3
11        0                         4.0
13        0                         0.6

As you can see, with the proposed errata, at least a mundane can do something while the spirit tears his comrades' limbs off.  But being completely ineffective against an unstoppable killing machine does not make for a fun game system.  Designers, please consider this simple change to restore some balance to the game system that I love.

~Jason

[MacAnu]

Here's my previous thread on spirits: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=11956.0

It's not Hardened Armor that causes the problem: it's the fact that spirits scale at Force x2.  Take away Hardened Armor and they still have their ridiculous defense pools.  My proposed solution would have their abilities and skills scaling at 1/2 Force, so their dice pools scale at Force x1.  This tones down the power of Spirits to something more reasonable.

[RHat]

Here's my previous thread on spirits: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=11956.0

It's not Hardened Armor that causes the problem: it's the fact that spirits scale at Force x2.  Take away Hardened Armor and they still have their ridiculous defense pools.  My proposed solution would have their abilities and skills scaling at 1/2 Force, so their dice pools scale at Force x1.  This tones down the power of Spirits to something more reasonable.

A Force 6 spirit only rolling 6 dice is not reasonable.

[MacAnu]

Here's my previous thread on spirits: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=11956.0

It's not Hardened Armor that causes the problem: it's the fact that spirits scale at Force x2.  Take away Hardened Armor and they still have their ridiculous defense pools.  My proposed solution would have their abilities and skills scaling at 1/2 Force, so their dice pools scale at Force x1.  This tones down the power of Spirits to something more reasonable.

A Force 6 spirit only rolling 6 dice is not reasonable.

You can add a flat bonus to all attributes and skills.  Giving it +1 to all attributes and skills means the Force 6 Spirit rolls 8 dice (also don't forget spirit-specific attribute boosts!).  If that's not enough, add +2 for 10 dice pools, or +1 attributes and +2 skills.  I wouldn't really recommended anything more than +1 since Force 7 and 8 spirits are still relatively easy to summon after lowering the drain to compensate for this change.

This means Force 6 spirits (or whatever your benchmark is) can still have decent dice pools while reducing spirit scaling to Force x1.

[RHat]

There are many benchmarks.  A Force 4 spirit only rolling 6 dice isn't really reasonable.  Part of the problem with your proposal is the impact on at what point you wouldn't ever bother with a spirit at that force.  A Force 3 spirit, for example, can have a point to it under the current rules.  And, for that matter, setting it so that all spirits have the same attributes would be a pretty terrible change.

[MacAnu]

And, for that matter, setting it so that all spirits have the same attributes would be a pretty terrible change.

Whoops, I mean add a +1 bonus on top of whatever the spirit base changes are.  Basically replace "Force" with "Force/2 + 1" on the spirit stat line; spirit-specific bonuses still apply.

There are many benchmarks.  A Force 4 spirit only rolling 6 dice isn't really reasonable.  Part of the problem with your proposal is the impact on at what point you wouldn't ever bother with a spirit at that force.  A Force 3 spirit, for example, can have a point to it under the current rules.

That's funny, because a Force 4 spirit under my proposed rule change is exactly the same as a Force 3 spirit under the current rules.  EDIT: Oh I see, maybe you're concerned about optional powers.  That can also be adjusted according to the rule such that a Force 4 Spirit gets 1 optional power, a Force 10 Spirit gets 2 optional powers, etc.

[RHat]

That's funny, because a Force 4 spirit under my proposed rule change is exactly the same as a Force 3 spirit under the current rules.

And?

[j2klbs]

MacAnu - I *love* your suggestion.  I think it is better than mine.  However, I think it is getting to complicated from an errata perspective when you start messing with skills, round mental up, physical down, etc.

I would propose just the following:

* all attributes including Essence use F/2 (instead of F)
* skills remain unchanged (i.e. equal to F)

This is a simple errata which would address my concern related to unbeatable Hardened Armor as well as the overly high dice pools.

(PS - I read the other forum thread and was discouraged by the people who obviously do not get game balance concepts - having a starting character be able to summon a creature that no weapon in the game can take out is absurd - nothing in an entire city's arsenal could deal with such a creature.)

~Jason

[MacAnu]

Your argument:

The RAW Force 3 spirit has a point.
The houseruled Force 4 spirit is something you wouldn't bother with.

However:
The RAW Force 3 spirit and the houseruled Force 4 spirit are identical.  They're the same entity.

So does that entity have a point or not?  It can't be both .

[MacAnu]

However, I think it is getting to complicated from an errata perspective when you start messing with skills, round mental up, physical down, etc.

I would propose just the following:

* all attributes including Essence use F/2 (instead of F)
* skills remain unchanged (i.e. equal to F)

That might work .  Force 6 Spirits have an average dice pool of 9 on skills and 6 on attribute pools.  Skills scale at Force x1.5 but attribute pools (i.e. most defenses) scale at Force x1.  It gives odd-Force spirits scaling as well without messing with rounding up vs. rounding down (odd Force spirits are still a bit weak).

In the perfect world having some things round up and some things round down would be optimal, but it's definitely a lot more bookkeeping!

[RHat]

That's not at all what I argued.  I said that your rules would shift the point at which you wouldn't bother with a spirit anymore.

In any case, OP: I find your idea of what is "easily accessible" to be...  Questionable.

[MacAnu]

That's not at all what I argued.  I said that your rules would shift the point at which you wouldn't bother with a spirit anymore.

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what you mean.  Can you clarify?

[j2klbs]

Rhat - I spent considerable effort to back my example up with numbers.  How can you say what a starting magician can access is "questionable".  You do not provide any numbers to backup that assertion.

With 15 summoning dice (7 magic + 6 skill + 2 specialization) a magician will get 5 hits on average.  A force 9 spirit will get 3 hits (yielding 2 services) and the magician has to drain 6 damage (taking roughly 3 physical damage or close to 0 with edge).  More optimal builds would increase drain dice so even less damage is taken.  There's the numbers supporting my "questionable" access.  Care to refute with numbers?

[Chrona]

I refute with GMs having control over Background counts and Magical opposition to keep those spirits busy, just like having a Decker trying to brick the Sams 'ware.

Spirits are powerful Sentient Beings, they are NPCs, not weapons. GMs should use them as such and not let the Party Summoner think or treat them as otherwise without Consequences^TM

[j2klbs]

Chrona - That's fine if that's how you GM, but per the RAW, spirits will fight in combats for the summoner for one service.  If the GM wants to follow the rules, they should not arbitrarily say the spirit will not fight for the summoner.  Also, even with background counts spirits are over powered.

This will be my last post on this subject as I'm not interested in trading posts with people who do not look at the numbers objectively.  I hope that he developers see the gross imbalance of spirits and implement the proposed errata.