[Finstersang]

It´s not that much about balancing for me. SR is a cooperative game after all, so it´s not the end of the world when archetypes and playstyles are somewhat unbalanced - within a reasonable scope, which isn´t the case here!

But if that would be my main point of content, just putting a price tag on Summoning would not be enough, as some of you already pointed out.

It´s more about the whole vibe of it: Currently, summoning is done with only a Complex Action. No preparation, no Materials, no sacrifices, no context, no second thought. Boom, there´s your Spirit, ready to rumble. If it gets fragged (which is unlikely unless your opposition has good countermeasures in place), just smash that summoning button again until you pass out. Summoning a Spirit - especially with their current powerlevel - should feel like a little task on it´s own and not just something you do without having to think about it. When you need to blow the whole payment for the run on your oversummoned Spirit as a Deus Ex Machina, there´s at least some sacrifice involved ("welcome to my world", grunts the rigger  )   

Apart from BGC, there are no penalties or rewards for location, context and bad/good roleplaying here. F.i., there´s no penalty for summoning Water spirits in the dessert and no advantage of summoning them at a river or during rain. I´m a huge fan of linking Summoning more closely to certain conditions and locations, that´s why I also suggested that second part (which no one is diskussing right now) about discounts or free Summons in certain "hotspots". If I´m correct, that´s the way it was in Editions before 4th.   

[mbisber]

Apart from BGC, there are no penalties or rewards for location, context and bad/good roleplaying here. F.i., there´s no penalty for summoning Water spirits in the dessert and no advantage of summoning them at a river or during rain. I´m a huge fan of linking Summoning more closely to certain conditions and locations, that´s why I also suggested that second part (which no one is diskussing right now) about discounts or free Summons in certain "hotspots". If I´m correct, that´s the way it was in Editions before 4th.

Spirits are not normally Summoned from Earth locales, so the Earth environment at the location of Summoning is irrelevant. And Astral speeds are mind boggling. A GM can always assign penalties or advantages after the fact, from macro or micro situations: F.i. Command the Spirit to Materialize inside a hostile or friendly environment?

Otherwise, GMs are in control of their game. Players are getting out-of-control? Too many free Nuyen around?

Mages aren't really helped by more Nuyen. However, everyone else can be: 1,000,000Y decks and rigs anyone?

GMs can control anything that gets out-of-line. 

[Finstersang]

I know, because I am the GM most of the time 

But: You need to realize these flaws before, and as much as I personally love to come up with little houserules and tweaks (as one might suspect from my post history), this is is a huge burden on most GMs.

Also, there´s missions, where the GM doesn´t have that kind of wiggling room. Here, it´s Banhammer or nothing, and it happened to a lot of misbalanced content so far - I´m surprised that Oversummoning isn´t already on the list.

Edit: Well, Possession Traditions already are, so there´s that 

[Mirikon]

Finster, regarding the 'repeatedly summon until you pass out' bit? You do realize that unless you're going against total chumps that you wouldn't need a spirit to deal with, the enemies are going to turn to you, and see how many grenades it takes to turn you into salsa, right?

People always seem to forget that the greatest weakness of spirits is the Summoner, which is why Free Spirits are so powerful.

Also, any corpsec team worth talking about can focus fire and tear down a F6 spirit pretty easily. ITNW gives that F6 Rating 12 hardened armor for nonmagical attacks. An AK-97 with regular ammo does 10P, -2 AP. So R12 becomes R10. One net hit is all you need to hurt it. Sure, it gets 5 free successes on the damage resistance, but that's still 6P it has to resist against. On average (assuming 6 Body and modified 10 armor), a ganger with an AK-97 and regular bullets firing a single round for one net hit is doing ~1 box of damage per pass. You use APDS, and the ballgame changes completely. That puts the AK-97 at 10P, -6 AP. R12 becomes R6, and you only get 3 free hits. F6 is now taking 7 boxes of damage a hit, on average. You throw in Burst Fire to drop their defense test and help get more net hits, and this is becoming a Bad Day for a spirit. And that's with an AK-97. Up it to an Ares Alpha or a Crocket EBR, and things get nastier. That's just going with stuff in the core book.

So yeah, spirits are powerful, but they aren't all-powerful, unless you're going against mooks that you could easily beat without them. Anyone with an assault rifle can hurt an F6 spirit, and anyone with an assault rifle and APDS ammo at least has a chance against an F10. Professionals with better skills and better gear? Who usually will have magical backup? They aren't nearly as all-encompassing as they used to be.

[adzling]

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)

Kiir I appreciate your dedication to logic!

My Logical Form statement would actually look like this:

If you have 4-8 undetectable, powerful allies that can do almost anything, that you can take anywhere, regardless of security, and summon without any way for someone to stop you (mage cuffs and other methods that stop casting or astral perception won't work) then you render the entire concept of a team, which is the core of srun play, irrelevant.

Shadowrun is a team game.

Therefore Binding limits are broken.

In support of this I offer the "shoe is on the other foot" evaluation of:

1). A street samurai with an undetectable, unstoppable, magical widget that let him summon 4-8 mercenaries who can fly, have mil-spec armor and can melt through walls would be just as problematic.

2). A Rigger, whose entire premise is built upon using allied drones to fight for him, cannot take them anywhere he likes, undetected and unstoppably make them appear wherever he likes. Moreover those drones are not as strong as a mage's spirits, cost far more and are far more fragile. Even worse take the drones away from a rigger and he's loses about 80%-90% of his effectiveness/ utility. Take the spirits away from a mage and he still has equal or more effectiveness than a rigger.

3). Do i need a 3? Ok imagine if an adept could instantly add 4-8 additional attacks per pass with a moments preparation.

In summation: having 4-8 force 6 spirits available to a REGULAR mage (no crazy builds required) adds nothing to the game and only risks rendering the rest of the team irrelevant OR forcing the game to devolve into mini-game of spirit armies fighting one another (as the corpse mage summons his own spirit army to counter). Therefore Binding is broken as written. Instead of a fixed number of spirits, tied to a common drain stat (cha), Binding limits should start small and ramp as power progresses.

A couple good ways to ramp this power could be:

1). tie the number of bound spirits to initiate grade, possibly requiring additional metamagics to use more than 1 or 2 simultaneously.

2). tie the total force of spirits in use at any one time to initiate grade, so it starts off within reason and ramps as the mage gains power.

[Marcus]

3). Do i need a 3? Ok imagine if an adept could instantly add 4-8 additional attacks per pass with a moments preparation.

the first two don't really bug me. For those to be meaningful we have to get into potential values in arch-types. But I agree this one is a real issue,  in a game that intended to only have 1 attack per round, by hard system concept. This is very obviously hard to address issue. Even given that those rules have slipped some see alchemy and that new krime hammer. But I don't have good argument against point.

[adzling]

you DONT care if you can make a mockery of any security setup by insta-porting a squad of elite mercenaries into any location?

you DONT care that any incarcerated mage can just summon his posse of spirits to save him without any way for security to stop him short of rendering him permanently unconscious?

OK....

[Mirikon]

Well, wards stop spirits, unless they break through. Many businesses have a mage either on staff or as a contractor who puts a ward up, especially in important areas.

Spirits are not undetectable, since anyone able to see into the astral will spot them, including many paracritters which just happen to be used as guards.

There are plenty of ways to stop you from summoning a spirit (without you being dead). Start with keeping them unconscious until the unbound spirits go away, and then either drug them out of their minds, have a vampire snack on them, or give them some free implants. When you add in the possibility of just killing them, I find that "Geek the Mage first" goes a lot quicker when the mage has no backup. And when you have this mythical 4-8 spirits with you on top of your own casting, that's leaving some serious astral fingerprints all over the crime scene. Do that too often, and you're going to run into someone who has the magic to track you and drop ritual magic on your head, or just get a sniper into position to take care of the problem.

That's the problem with the 'spirit army' concept. It is flashy, in all the ways that are most dangerous for a mage. It draws tons of attention to them, which is why the only ones in the lore who try that and pull it off more than once or twice are the heavy hitters. You get too much heat on you, and since spirits are easier to deal with now that damage codes went up, you can find yourself alone and vulnerable in short order if the opposition has any teeth to it at all.

Or, the GM can do their job, and smack a player who ruins the game for everyone with a phonebook until the stupid stops.

[Nephilim]

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)

Kiir I appreciate your dedication to logic!

My Logical Form statement would actually look like this:

If you have 4-8 undetectable, powerful allies that can do almost anything, that you can take anywhere, regardless of security, and summon without any way for someone to stop you (mage cuffs and other methods that stop casting or astral perception won't work) then you render the entire concept of a team, which is the core of srun play, irrelevant.

Shadowrun is a team game.

Therefore Binding limits are broken.

In support of this I offer the "shoe is on the other foot" evaluation of:

1). A street samurai with an undetectable, unstoppable, magical widget that let him summon 4-8 mercenaries who can fly, have mil-spec armor and can melt through walls would be just as problematic.

2). A Rigger, whose entire premise is built upon using allied drones to fight for him, cannot take them anywhere he likes, undetected and unstoppably make them appear wherever he likes. Moreover those drones are not as strong as a mage's spirits, cost far more and are far more fragile. Even worse take the drones away from a rigger and he's loses about 80%-90% of his effectiveness/ utility. Take the spirits away from a mage and he still has equal or more effectiveness than a rigger.

3). Do i need a 3? Ok imagine if an adept could instantly add 4-8 additional attacks per pass with a moments preparation.

He's not criticizing the structure of your statement, but the contents. Specifically he's noting the you're using an extreme example to cover the entire subject matter (an Appeal to Extremes) and that any use of binding will result in that scenario (Slippery Slope fallacy.) Your other examples (Merc Widget and Adept attacks) represent similar fallacies.

[Marcus]

you DONT care if you can make a mockery of any security setup by insta-porting a squad of elite mercenaries into any location?

you DONT care that any incarcerated mage can just summon his posse of spirits to save him without any way for security to stop him short of rendering him permanently unconscious?

OK....

I care. But as I said debating merits and flaws of archetype abilities potential isn't going take us anywhere useful. (What are we going to conclude that conversation? That magic is stronger then tech in the long run? We all already knew this) The meta concept of one attack per round is self prescribed by the system, and so I do have an issue with violating that.

[adzling]

He's not criticizing the structure of your statement, but the contents. Specifically he's noting the you're using an extreme example to cover the entire subject matter (an Appeal to Extremes) and that any use of binding will result in that scenario (Slippery Slope fallacy.) Your other examples (Merc Widget and Adept attacks) represent similar fallacies.

ah good the meat!

I am not using an extreme example.

Here's my evidence of that:
Any mage can easily get to 14 dice for summoning out of chargen (no special wacky build required).
This chargen mage would still have all of his other strengths as he has not focussed everything on summoning/ binding.
It only takes 4 x force 5 spirits to make this cray-cray, my example of 8 x force 6 spirits was an outlier but also easily achievable by any elf cha-based mage out of chargen.

So therefore this is NOT an appeal to extremes but rather a natural outcome of being able to bind so many spirits so easily.

Furthermore the "shoe on the other foot" analysis re: merc army etc are almost exactly parallel to the "common mage with a charisma of 4 and binding pool of 12"

Also you conveniently ignore my points re: Riggers and Adepts.

If you have a rebuttal i'd like to see it.

[adzling]

Well, wards stop spirits, unless they break through. Many businesses have a mage either on staff or as a contractor who puts a ward up, especially in important areas.

Spirits are not undetectable, since anyone able to see into the astral will spot them, including many paracritters which just happen to be used as guards.

There are plenty of ways to stop you from summoning a spirit (without you being dead). Start with keeping them unconscious ...

Ok this is a red herring my man.

I WAS NOT saying spirits themselves are undetectable or can go anywhere.

I WAS discussing that spirit army is undetectable until they materialize. So the mage can go anywhere he likes, then undetectably summon his army, then have them all materialize at once and murder / do whatever they please.

Furthermore you just agreed with me that there is no way to stop the mage from summoning his army short of killing or keeping him unconscious, which only works after you know he has a spirit army....

So another red herring there.

[adzling]

I care. But as I said debating merits and flaws of archetype abilities potential isn't going take us anywhere useful. (What are we going to conclude that conversation? That magic is stronger then tech in the long run? We all already knew this) The meta concept of one attack per round is self prescribed by the system, and so I do have an issue with violating that.

My point is that being able to bind 4-8 spirits of force 5-6 out of chargen is inherently game destroying as it requires the table to start a minigame of spirit battles/ GM fiat rock falls kills mage stuff.

This is not how srun is meant to work.

You're meant to collectively solve problems with an emphasis on teamwork.

The spirit army in your back pocket (or merc army, or critter army, or drone army, or any farking army) that bypasses all security, is undetectable until after they appear AND cannot be stopped from appearing unless you have magical foreknowledge ADDS NOTHING to the game.

[Ktonberry249]

It does seem extreme, as you could make a case for many games where if you see a behavior like this it may be a player problem and not a character or game problem.
I have never seen anyone bind 6 spirits and use them all at once(maybe 1 or 2 at once), its too much for most people and it isn't obvious to a good player as a reasonable strategy with a social game. Just because something is an a logical extreme does not mean it should be nerfed, it means that a GM can, and should bring a requisite response.
The worst enemies of a shadowrun game are its own players, not the rules.

[adzling]

but all of this discussion misses the point.

sure a GM can do whatever he wants.

but why should it be necessary when it would be an easy Binding rules change to fix it?

the only reason NOT to fix it would be because the ability for a mage to have a spirit posse is important to srun.

So far NOT ONE person has offered a rational for why that is so.

Therefore my argument still stands: the best way to mitigate the spirit army problem is a simple rules change that ramps power rather than offering it all at once out of chargen.