[EtherealGyre]

In a game I am about to play in I was making a Mage. I was talking to everyone about the group we were putting together and mentioned the mage and spirits. Some people are worried that Spirits are too powerful since they don't really cost anything to acquire and can possibly outshine a starting PC.

What are people's thoughts on Spirits and their relative power level? Are people doing anything to balance them out or are they working just fine as they are?

[Ryo]

The balancing factor of spirits is that they are NPCs, not PCs, and they are controlled by the GM. Just like any other non-player character, you have to negotiate with them to do what they want, the only difference is, spirits are obligated to obey, even if they don't want to. So if you force spirits to do things that they disagree with, or abuse them as bullet shields and such, your mage develops a reputation in the spirit world, and that will come back to bite him in the ass.

Spirits can get ridiculously powerful, but the drain is brutal to summon one that outstrips a well built PC, and they are inherently temporary and generally won't like it if you make them fight while you run away. I personally don't see them as unbalancing since the GM has a multitude of ways of punishing a player that tries to abuse spirits, and in my experience, most players are reluctant to call up an NPC to do all the fun stuff for them, which is basically what summoning a spirit is.

[EtherealGyre]

I agree with you. Just some players in the game I am playing in only see numbers and don't think about the whole picture when it comes to these. With good GM involvement I think it works out just fine.

[All4BigGuns]

I agree with you. Just some players in the game I am playing in only see numbers and don't think about the whole picture when it comes to these. With good GM involvement I think it works out just fine.

Then smack them with the Phone Book until they see the rest of the picture.

[Reaver]

I agree with you. Just some players in the game I am playing in only see numbers and don't think about the whole picture when it comes to these. With good GM involvement I think it works out just fine.

Then smack them with the Phone Book until they see the rest of the picture.

TOTALLY ARGEE!!!

There is more going on is Shadowrun then a bunch of numbers. And the players that forget this are usually the first to try to abuse the system to start with (from my 20+ years playing RPGs)


As Ryo mentioned, there are some HUGE limitations to spirits that are in the fluff (that stat crunchers fail to read)... such as the Dawn/Dusk limitation, the range limitation, the use of Edge by the spirit if oversummoning, The negative rep the mage gets in the astral for abusing spirits.... the list is large.... and not as simple as baseline stat or drain hit.... the negatives for having a negative astral rep goes DEEP...

If the mage is a shaman or has the spirit ally quality, then the totem/ally can actually with hold their advantages until the mage makes restitution to the Astral world (and since Spirits don't want money..... you can just guess what this restitution may require!)

Usually the easiest way for a mage to initiate is to do an meta-planar quest. Now if that mage has pissed off a host of spirits...... and he is now in the meta-planes where these spirits "live"...... yea, it can go badly right quick (can we say gang beat down everyone??)




Now, there will be that time when things go South in a hurry and a Spirit is going to be the only way a mage can keep from getting ganked, or worse.... and that is fine... just don't look at spirits as desposable minions and meat shields.... they get pissy quick.

[Aria]

First SR5 game I'm GMing...player summons a force 9 (using edge) with no drain (edge again)...damn well wish I'd made the spirit roll edge to resist the summoning, talk about plot derailment 

[Slippery_Chicken]

I agree with you. Just some players in the game I am playing in only see numbers and don't think about the whole picture when it comes to these. With good GM involvement I think it works out just fine.

Then smack them with the Phone Book until they see the rest of the picture.

This. Actually use those consequences to mess with their lives. If someone wants to be a troll/ork, then they're going to face some serious stop-and-frisk action. If someone wants to go wear his full armored suit and modified heavy machine gun in public, he will get stopped, searched, questioned, and his SIN checked by police every time he turns a corner (they will come to recognize him, and use any excuse they can to bring him down to the police station, and it will make him late for important events and eventually burn out his fake SIN. Gods help him if they find Forbidden or unauthorized items or substances on his person). Not to mention that some lunatic kitted out like a SWAT officer is going to be bad business for almost any store. If someone routinely uses bound spirits for sustaining to kill them (or other gross violation of spirits' rights and dignity), then spirits will be uncooperative (with that -1 penalty), use Edge to resist summoning/binding, gank him when he travels to the planes, and perhaps (if he's exceptionally cruel) send hitmen at him while he's sleeping.

I mean, I can't see spirits being too peeved about ordinary combat though; I don't think it kills them forever. As long as the PC has some degree of respect (i.e. not just kind words, actually releasing spirits before their favors are up [and before they're all-but-dead], giving them the occasional present, trying to see things their way, etc), he should be at least tolerable to most spirits. If he's truly, exceptionally humane and saintlike in his dealings with spirits, they might not even use Edge when he oversummons. Of course, there will always be hardline abolitionist spirits, who see all summoners as cruel slavers, and can't tolerate summoning at all.

[Michael Chandra]

Yeah, Aria, it's definitely what I recommend for any GM: Oversummoning means the Spirit uses Edge. With a force 9 that's suddenly 14 exploding dice with an average of 6 hits.

[Mirikon]

Spirits have always been the major trump card. Used right, they can destroy the opposition. Used against the party, a single relatively high force spirit can wipe out a party if the mage goes down. However, when the summoning goes bad, it REALLY goes bad. I'll be honest, and say I've never been able to bring myself to oversummon spirits. That's because the dice gods are cruel and fickle fiends, and an experienced DM will make me pay for my hubris. I agree that having the spirit use edge when being oversummoned is a good idea.

As for players who do that regularly, phonebooking is a perfectly acceptable means of conduct correction. And while you knock some sense into the problem player, inform the rest of the group that when they face mages, anything they do regularly can and will be done against them.

[Slippery_Chicken]

Yeah, Aria, it's definitely what I recommend for any GM: Oversummoning means the Spirit uses Edge. With a force 9 that's suddenly 14 exploding dice with an average of 6 hits.

I always thought the main deterrent to oversummoning was that there's a chance of straight-up dying from it. In the short term, you get a better spirit, but in the long run, oversummoning is dangerous and will put you into (or even past!) overflow once your luck runs out. Not to mention you're going to get fewer services out of a stronger spirit, since you won't score as many net hits against it.


Also, if you blow 2 or more points of Edge on a single action (in this case summoning), it had better succeed. That's a significant expenditure of resources right there, taking out the safety net which normally protects him against glitches and poor luck.

[Crunch]

You can't actually blow two points of edge on a single action. Unless I'm vastly mistaken...

[zekim]

Some people are worried that Spirits are too powerful since they don't really cost anything to acquire and can possibly outshine a starting PC.

Spirits can not hack, can not negotiate,  do not have contacts, can not rig, etc...

Bound Spirits cost time and nuyen (force x 50 nuyen) to acquire.  A smart mage will horde their services until needed.

[All4BigGuns]

You can't actually blow two points of edge on a single action. Unless I'm vastly mistaken...

I do not believe there's anything stopping using Edge on the Summoning roll and then using another to resist the Drain.

[Crunch]

You can't actually blow two points of edge on a single action. Unless I'm vastly mistaken...

I do not believe there's anything stopping using Edge on the Summoning roll and then using another to resist the Drain.

I've always taken the prohibition on p 56 as preventing the use of edge on multiple rolls for the same action, since both the casting and the drain resistance result from the same action I don't think you can double dip.

No more than 1 point of Edge can be
spent on any specific test or action at one time.

[Mirikon]

Even if it is not specifically against the RAW, spending edge on both the summoning and drain resistance rolls deserves phonebooking.