Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: dposluns on <06-21-16/2350:41>
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Core doesn't give any limit for how long a bound spirit can remain bound or perform an individual service, but SG lays out the process for long-term binding in order to get a spirit to perform one or more services for "a year and a day", so it implies there is some limit to how long a regular bound spirit will perform a service for.
So without using long-term binding, how long can a regular bound spirit perform a sustained service for? E.g. use its Concealment or Movement power on me, or cast and sustain a spell on me?
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A Bound spirit STAYS bound until all services have been used up, and you can rebind to add more services if you want to. Generally, a service can be maintained for about the duration of a Day (Dusk)/Night (Dawn) (so about 8-12 hours or so depending upon location and time of year), but that is likely a control that we have used since 1st Edition, so it may not be RAW.
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A Bound spirit STAYS bound until all services have been used up, and you can rebind to add more services if you want to. Generally, a service can be maintained for about the duration of a Day (Dusk)/Night (Dawn) (so about 8-12 hours or so depending upon location and time of year), but that is likely a control that we have used since 1st Edition, so it may not be RAW.
It's not in RAW as far as I can tell, but "about a day" was what I was figuring made the most sense.
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A Bound spirit STAYS bound until all services have been used up, and you can rebind to add more services if you want to. Generally, a service can be maintained for about the duration of a Day (Dusk)/Night (Dawn) (so about 8-12 hours or so depending upon location and time of year), but that is likely a control that we have used since 1st Edition, so it may not be RAW.
It's not in RAW as far as I can tell, but "about a day" was what I was figuring made the most sense.
Look at it this way... How long does an UNBOUND spirit sustain a power or perform a task. A bound spirit will not do so for longer unless using Long Term Binding in my opinion. You want unlimited services, get an Ally Spirit. :)
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A Bound spirit STAYS bound until all services have been used up, and you can rebind to add more services if you want to. Generally, a service can be maintained for about the duration of a Day (Dusk)/Night (Dawn) (so about 8-12 hours or so depending upon location and time of year), but that is likely a control that we have used since 1st Edition, so it may not be RAW.
It's not in RAW as far as I can tell, but "about a day" was what I was figuring made the most sense.
Look at it this way... How long does an UNBOUND spirit sustain a power or perform a task. A bound spirit will not do so for longer unless using Long Term Binding in my opinion. You want unlimited services, get an Ally Spirit. :)
Agreed. Until the next sunset or sunrise seems like a reasonable time for a service to last. I might go so far as to allow it to go until the next sunrise or sunset (whichever of the two is later) which would effectively double the time for a bound spirit rather than an unbound one. But more than a day seems outside the intended duration for a spirit to act without special circumstances.
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I think I read somewhere that a bound spirit would carry on performing a service until the next sunrise/ sunset and if you wanted to extend the service it would cost you another service for every 12 hour interval. I don't recall where I read it, if it was a house rule or clarification or what it was, but it sounds reasonable.
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I think I read somewhere that a bound spirit would carry on performing a service until the next sunrise/ sunset and if you wanted to extend the service it would cost you another service for every 12 hour interval. I don't recall where I read it, if it was a house rule or clarification or what it was, but it sounds reasonable.
Maybe another edition?
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I think I read somewhere that a bound spirit would carry on performing a service until the next sunrise/ sunset and if you wanted to extend the service it would cost you another service for every 12 hour interval. I don't recall where I read it, if it was a house rule or clarification or what it was, but it sounds reasonable.
Yea, That's not a rule I remember from SG or CRB. It may have been somewhere else, or a house rule. It's not unreasonable either way.
my personal take on it, it that the spirit will continue to do a service until it's complete (if it's got a clear completion goal). If a mage tries to get 'smart' and assign a spirit a task with an unclear completion goal... thing get dicey after a time. Spirits are not brain dead automatons, the levels that some mages here talk about summoning, there are well smarter then the Summoner!! Things that are generally much smarter then you can usually find a way to twist your orders against you.
For example, summoning a force 10 spirit, binding it, and then saying "Protect Me!!" could very well have drastic results...... Such as the spirit materializing, crushing a bug on you (and you!) and then disappearing with a "I saved you from that bug asshat!". OR, the spirit suddenly appearing, and manhandles the cop that was trying to give you a ticket..... (assaulting an officer of the Law. With intent!).
Be reasonable in your requests, get a reasonable result.
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Or my personal favorite, the spirit immediately uses its movement power and carry you 10 kilometres away from where you're supposed to be....."There you go boss, you're perfectly safe now" ( spirit vanishes with a puff and a cheeky grin on its face ).
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That works even better if the movement was.... staiggt up!
Silly Spirits and their 'lack' of knowledge of human movement :D
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For me this question has big impacts on corporate security. Consider the difference between:
- You can bind a spirit, then have a (carefully researched, worded and reviewed) command that would keep a spirit on guard duty duty until something happens. Perhaps you spent 3k on reagents and used up a day's time (plus possibly medical leave) for the summoner to get some number of services, but that spirit may well be staying on guard duty for the rest of the life of the summoner (assuming a few hits and it is guarding somewhere fairly quiet).
- That same spirit that took up most of a summoner's day to bind (and possibly more to recover from binding), is only good for maybe a couple of days (at half a day per service). You've drastically cut what else the summoner can do, and are spending ~50k in reagents per year per bound patrol spirit, to let the summoner have up two spirits instead of one, have one of them harder to banish,
In the former case, you can expect bound spirits in a fair number of warehouses, lower security office spaces, etc. (there are still limits based on how many spirits a summoner can have in place, so they will still be in places where security is non-trivial, but lower than otherwise). In the latter case, they will more commonly be kept in reserve, active patrolling would be done by simply summoned spirits or watchers in most cases, with patrol by bound spirit being saved for places that are important and remote, or really importantand in general the number of patrolling spirits you would encounter would be lower.
All IMO.
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For me this question has big impacts on corporate security. Consider the difference between:
- You can bind a spirit, then have a (carefully researched, worded and reviewed) command that would keep a spirit on guard duty duty until something happens. Perhaps you spent 3k on reagents and used up a day's time (plus possibly medical leave) for the summoner to get some number of services, but that spirit may well be staying on guard duty for the rest of the life of the summoner (assuming a few hits and it is guarding somewhere fairly quiet).
- That same spirit that took up most of a summoner's day to bind (and possibly more to recover from binding), is only good for maybe a couple of days (at half a day per service). You've drastically cut what else the summoner can do, and are spending ~50k in reagents per year per bound patrol spirit, to let the summoner have up two spirits instead of one, have one of them harder to banish,
In the former case, you can expect bound spirits in a fair number of warehouses, lower security office spaces, etc. (there are still limits based on how many spirits a summoner can have in place, so they will still be in places where security is non-trivial, but lower than otherwise). In the latter case, they will more commonly be kept in reserve, active patrolling would be done by simply summoned spirits or watchers in most cases, with patrol by bound spirit being saved for places that are important and remote, or really importantand in general the number of patrolling spirits you would encounter would be lower.
All IMO.
Long-term binding seems like a much more economical choice in general, at the cost of (Force) karma per spirit to let a summoner assign a spirit to the guard/patrol task for "a year and a day", and not count against the summoner's limit of bound spirits. If a wage-mage's karma is valued at 2k nuyen per karma then a Force 6 spirit costs only 12k nuyen per year.
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Long-term binding seems like a much more economical choice in general, at the cost of (Force) karma per spirit to let a summoner assign a spirit to the guard/patrol task for "a year and a day", and not count against the summoner's limit of bound spirits. If a wage-mage's karma is valued at 2k nuyen per karma then a Force 6 spirit costs only 12k nuyen per year.
I would generally say that player character runners are more likely to be involved in actions that improve their character and personal strength than their finances, while a wage-mage is far more likely to make money than to improve personally. Thus, while a character's Karma is generally considered to have one point be equivalent to 2000 Nuyen, it seems likely that a wage-mage who earns less Karma but more Nuyen in a year would have a much higher monetary cost per Karma point.
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Long-term binding seems like a much more economical choice in general, at the cost of (Force) karma per spirit to let a summoner assign a spirit to the guard/patrol task for "a year and a day", and not count against the summoner's limit of bound spirits. If a wage-mage's karma is valued at 2k nuyen per karma then a Force 6 spirit costs only 12k nuyen per year.
I would generally say that player character runners are more likely to be involved in actions that improve their character and personal strength than their finances, while a wage-mage is far more likely to make money than to improve personally. Thus, while a character's Karma is generally considered to have one point be equivalent to 2000 Nuyen, it seems likely that a wage-mage who earns less Karma but more Nuyen in a year would have a much higher monetary cost per Karma point.
Well, I'm not entirely up on all of the lore or fluff around what karma actually is, but I don't generally question the exchange rate. Presumably there are ways to accrue karma in normal lives without running the shadows. That force-1 spell focus you buy for 4k nuyen for cost the talismonger that created it 1 karma, after all, so if that karma was worth much more to them than 2k nuyen it wouldn't make much sense for them to artifice it and have it resold.
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Karma is a thing for pc's only, npc's generally have whatever karma they ( or the gm ) need to have.
In regards to corpsec, I think that long term bound spirits will generally be found at very important high security installations only. Other installations will have mostly passive astral security and lower force summoned spirits and watchers, if they have any spirits at all. There's a reason why magical security is very very expensive. Also don't forget that in many ways dual natured para critters perform many of the same needs that spirits does and are generally much cheaper in regards to upkeep.
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Doesn't it say a combat service only lasts until combat is completed? To me, that means if you tell a spirit to guard you. Then you enter combat. Once that combat is done the service is gone. The next combat is another service. So one service to "guard the team" would last until someone on the team finishes a fight. If your not getting into fights I guess they could stick around a bit but I am thinking most campaigns would have random gang attacks, bouncers, and intended combat enough to unbind spirits fairly quickly. If sprit is maintaining a spell for you it has its own timer built in already. Not sure were the problem lies with no listed duration unless GMs just want summunors to cast more.
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Personally I'm. Looking at it mostly in terms of reasonable npc usage. If you can pay a few thousand nuyen and have something guarded almost indefinitely it is very different than if you burn services by the day.
Even for established PC, if services are long enough I could see apartments guarded, for example.
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Personally I'm. Looking at it mostly in terms of reasonable npc usage. If you can pay a few thousand nuyen and have something guarded almost indefinitely it is very different than if you burn services by the day.
Even for established PC, if services are long enough I could see apartments guarded, for example.
Well several SR books have stated that magical security is extremely expensive, so that alone favors the burn a service pr. day interpretation.
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The 12-24 hour period doesn't make much sense for tasks such as Aid Alchemy, Sorcery, and Study; these tasks can take a significant amount of time, and generally have oddly worded rules implying you cannot do anything else while performing the test (such as taking the time to summon and bind or rebind spirits).
Couple that with the fact that the duration of the bound task Spell Sustaining is measured in (Force x number of services spent) Combat Turns, and you've got a pretty wide range of options for possible durations.
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Good point. The 12-24hr or till dusk/dawn duration limit is primarily meant for services that don't list a specific duration and that can be stated as open-ended tasks. Both of the examples you stated don't really qualify in that way. As you stated, using a spirit to sustain your spell for you has a much more limited duration pre-written. We aren't really concerned about that being abused. Likewise, aiding sorcery has a pretty set "duration" in that they add to one test per service used. Again, I don't worry about a character abusing a bound spirit's terms of use for that.
What is most concerning is open ended tasks like "guard this warehouse" or "use the concealment power on me." These are open ended tasks and sustained spirit powers don't have that duration limit built in.
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Ah, I see. Well, spirit power use is definitely covered by RAW on page 302 of SR5: "If the power is sustained, it counts as one service no matter how long it’s sustained." So at least in the "use the Concealment power on me" scenario, that'll last until the spirit is no longer bound as far as RAW is concerned.
The other scenario of "guard this warehouse" could theoretically count as a combat service which has a duration of one fight counting as one service; so if a Force 6 spirit that owes three services is guarding a warehouse it would continue to do so until 3 fights had occurred, or until the summoner bound the spirit again to (hopefully) accumulate more services. What exactly counts as a "fight" would depend on the wording used; a high force spirit that doesn't want to spend all eternity guarding a warehouse could, in my opinion, decide that protecting the warehouse meant taking out those nasty devil rats trying to make entry, and could be considered free of its obligation once (number of services owed) separate fights with said devil rats had occurred.
That being said, I don't think I've ever run into a player trying to abuse this kind of magic to an unreasonable degree, but I guess munchkins will be munchkins.
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Ah, I see. Well, spirit power use is definitely covered by RAW on page 302 of SR5: "If the power is sustained, it counts as one service no matter how long it’s sustained." So at least in the "use the Concealment power on me" scenario, that'll last until the spirit is no longer bound as far as RAW is concerned.
This, I think is inherently the issue tof worry about when it comes to bound services. Normally, that service, which is defined as an unbound service, has a finite duration in the form of dusk/dawn when the spirit goes *poof* and leaves. But take away that eventual removal and you have the potential for limitless powers. Take a spirit with only 1 service remaining, you tell it to use Movement on you. Now, you have your speed increased by x Force until the "spirit is no longer bound" which is never because sustaining a spirit power is unlimited...
Now expand that to "use innate spell to cast and sustain Increase Reflexes on me." It's a sustained power, so it lasts indefinitely, right? Can of worms there.
Plus, as was pointed out in the beginning, if these powers can last indefinitely, what's the point of long-term binding?
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Wouldn't this be in the realm of accruing spirit index, then? Honestly, long-term binding to my mind has little to no use under RAW, so unless you're house ruling a 12-24 hour duration to make long-term binding useful I don't even see the point of it.
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Ah, I see. Well, spirit power use is definitely covered by RAW on page 302 of SR5: "If the power is sustained, it counts as one service no matter how long it’s sustained." So at least in the "use the Concealment power on me" scenario, that'll last until the spirit is no longer bound as far as RAW is concerned.
This, I think is inherently the issue tof worry about when it comes to bound services. Normally, that service, which is defined as an unbound service, has a finite duration in the form of dusk/dawn when the spirit goes *poof* and leaves. But take away that eventual removal and you have the potential for limitless powers. Take a spirit with only 1 service remaining, you tell it to use Movement on you. Now, you have your speed increased by x Force until the "spirit is no longer bound" which is never because sustaining a spirit power is unlimited...
Now expand that to "use innate spell to cast and sustain Increase Reflexes on me." It's a sustained power, so it lasts indefinitely, right? Can of worms there.
Plus, as was pointed out in the beginning, if these powers can last indefinitely, what's the point of long-term binding?
If I wanted to be argumentative about it, the additional benefits of long-term binding are that the spirit comes back after about a month if disrupted, and no longer counts against your bound spirit limit.
That said, purely from a game mechanic perspective, you are pretty much ALWAYS forced to expend karma (or essence) for anything that gives you a substantially long-lasting benefit. That's the basis of long-term binding and fettering, but also things like binding an Ally Spirit and metamagics like Quickening, Fixation and Anchoring. Being able to indefinitely buff yourself with any spell you know (not to mention other sustained creature powers like Conceal and Movement) at a cost of, say, 3000 nuyen for a force-6 spirit is incredibly beyond broken, and hard to justify as RAI from RAW not explicitly stating how long a service is capable of lasting if the spirit is bound, and mostly originating from a loophole (hence my asking about this in the first place). After reading the responses here, if I were GMing I would say that a sustained open-ended service ends when an unbound spirit would normally depart, which is the next sunup/sundown.
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I'm looking in the most recent copies of CRB & SG & not seeing any clarification of this.
Anyone know of an answer in errata?
My thought is that any "Sustained Power" service is used up at the next Sunrise/Sunset or at the end of the next Combat since using it during combat then becomes part of the combat.
Either way, I agree, the idea of saying. Use Concealment/Reflexes etc etc on me forever is broken & not the intent with Binding.
Not to mention, the idea of a materialized spirit following you wherever you go to maintain LOS in the Physical Realm (both requirements IIRC) is not something I see fitting into the SR world w/o attracting a LOT of attention.
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As far as I know, there hasn't been any official clarification yet, no.
Critters do not need to maintain LOS to sustain powers. Page 394 of the Core Rulebook: "As with sustained spells, line of sight does not have to be maintained after the power takes hold of its target."
Whether they can maintain Physical powers from Astral space is debatable. The Type entry just says that physical powers cannot be used in astral space, it isn't mentioned in sustaining. I could see arguments either way.
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So I can see the need for a sun set sun rise ability for abuse of non-limited sustained abilities. I also tend to think that even if RAW doesn't limit it most players will admit that is kind of a cheep broken way to play and that a full day/24 sustainment is still REALLY good.
I do wander if it would be reasonable to extend the time to 2 days for a player summoning a spirit covered by Spirit Affinity. It seems like if the spirit didn't mind and was looking for a reason to spend more time with you that makes since. On the other hand that in no way implies that it wants to stand around your warehouse for 2 days. I guess the neither are RAW and the "Fix" for RAI makes more since than adding to a Quality that is already good in its own right. Just curious how others would consider this quality (if at all) if the rule of sun set/rise was added in errata to prevent abuse.
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I don't see any reason why Spirit Affinity should extend the time of bound services. It already gives bonuses that potentially allows the spirit to stick around longer (more services). It doesn't also expand or alter what you can get from those services.
I think having a sustained service last until the next sunrise/sunset, whichever is later would be a decent compromise. So if it starts during daylight it lasts the rest of the day until morning, and started at night would last the rest of the night until the next sunset. With that, it still uses the cyclic nature of sunrise/sunset, plus it means spirits don't really have to keep track of time.