Because my Shadowrun skill could fill a thimble halfway...

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:21 pm

So, I really don't know how to make a decent character in Shadowrun 4e, but every so often I get myself in the mood for at least trying. I can make a decent mage in the normal sense, with a good array of utility spells (Trid Phantasm, mind control, etc.), but what I am not so sure about is a different kind of magic-user I was wanting to play: the spirit summoner. I've heard here before that binding is a fool's errand, and summoning is much better, and that Spirits of Man are excellent. But overall, how would I go about making a decent/good Spirit focused mage in Shadowrun 4e, assuming just the corebook and maybe the Street Magic book?

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:06 am

I'm not sure why you feel that you have to choose between spellcasting and summoning. It's perfectly feasible to be good at both.

At chargen, you can have one skill at 6 and all other must not be higher than 4. Set spellcasting to 6. Set summoning to 4. You should also be able to afford binding at 4, depending on your build.

Summoning spirits is easy. You roll Magic + Summoning vs the spirit's force. Your magic is probably going to be a 5 or 6 further augmented by a force 4 power foci (requires the restricted gear quality - you might have to settle for a force 2 instead) + 4 summoning + 2 if you have a relevant specialization +2 if you have a relevant mentor spirit. The spirit just rolls it's force. So you 13-18 dice against its 6-12 dice (depending on force). You need at least one net hit. Not too hard, eh?

Binding was a complete waste of time when original SR-4 ruleset came out because of how spirits on remote services did not count against your limit of summoned spirits. This was changed in Street Magic, and also is explicitly changed in the 20th Aniversary edition ruleset (SR-4a).

Binding is now the only way to have multiple spirits (not counting watcher spirits). It's a totally decent skill to have, especially if your mage is of a charisma tradition.

Edit: some more info on spirits.

Probably the best array of spirits is what the Voodoo tradition gives you-

(1) Guardian spirits are very effective combatants when equiped with an automatic weapon and maybe some decent armor. They also provide superb amounts of counterspelling and have access to movement and concealment - which are excellent abilities.

(2) Guidance spirits are good for their diviniation power, which can be super useful. They are not really good at anything else. Their engulf is bad ass, but they lack the agility to really have a great chance of connecting with the enemy.

(3) Man: You are right - Innate spell makes them very badass. You just give 'em stunball as a spell and they go to town.

(4) Task: Holy crap these guys are awesome. My GM calls them "job replacement spirits" because they are so good at some many jobs that you can accidentally shit all over another players niche. They are fantastically useful outside of combat, just try to play responsibly. Also they are suck and fail at combat.

(5) Water: They control the weather. It's the only way to get this kind of ability. Controlling the weather is winning at life. It won't make or break you as a shadowrunner, but if you have the other four spirits listed above, you can afford to take a spirit that can do fun shit like this.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:44 am

Binding is in a weird spot. It's a good skill, but you could make a strong argument that Spellcasting and Summoning are the best skills in the game, so skimping on Binding in the name of keeping those two skills high without gimping your other attributes or Counterspelling is a totally respectable life choice. If you go with Binding, I'd consider picking up Invocation as one of your first metamagics since a lot of the other metamagics are nice but don't do that much for you until you've got a couple Initiate grades under your belt. You don't even need to bother attempting to get up to high force great form shenanigans to get some mileage out of it, either, since the extra drain from Invoking force 3s is quite manageable and sometimes you can net a great form for your trouble. Great Form Guidance spirits in particular can let you get up to some real mischief even at relatively low force.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 8:58 am

Spirit of Man is good if you know good spells, because he can cast them.
Voodoo is very nice if you want an possesion tradition.

I would advice to specialize for an spirit type and for binding or summoning.

Like
summoning 4 (+2 man spirits)
Binding 6 +2 mentor spirit (+2 man spirits)

Or vice versa if you want to focus on summoning.
Dont forget spellcasting, except if you can get Franks aspected conjurer.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 9:19 am

Both the magic groups have two awesome skills and one useless skill. For sorcery, spellcasting and counterspelling are amazing, and ritual spellcasting is useless. For conjuration, summoning and binding are amazing, and banishing is useless.

Task spirits are jaw droppingly awesome if you do inhabitation, are very good if you do possession, and are kind of OK if you do materialization spirits.

-Username17

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 9:52 am

Wait, why are Task spirits only okay for a materialization tradition, but better for possession/inhabitation? I was thinking it was the opposite because you don't need to use someone's body to get stuff done.

Oh I bet this has something to do with those weird ass rules on what a spirit can and cannot see - in particular electronic projections?

Hmmm. There is a detection spell from street magic called Borrow Sense can be used to obviate that restriction if you choose a materialization tradition, like I did.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:30 pm

Captain_Karzak wrote:Wait, why are Task spirits only okay for a materialization tradition, but better for possession/inhabitation? I was thinking it was the opposite because you don't need to use someone's body to get stuff done.

Oh I bet this has something to do with those weird ass rules on what a spirit can and cannot see - in particular electronic projections?

Hmmm. There is a detection spell from street magic called Borrow Sense can be used to obviate that restriction if you choose a materialization tradition, like I did.

Yeah, materialization spirits can't read a computer screen, making most technical skills rather pointless. Possession spirits can read a computer screen but can't operate a DNI, allowing them to use most technical skills, but not to their fullest effect. An inhabitation spirit can use a DNI and see a computer screen, making it have full utility out of technical skills.

Borrow Sense would work, but now you're talking about sustaining a spell just so that your spirit can perform surgery. Worth it, but not as good as the Voodoo/Insect options.

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:14 pm

We used to use banish in the earlier editions to "stunlock" a spirit, so the rest of the team could whack it with impunity, seeing as we interpreted the rules to mean a spirit could not do anything once in a banishing contest, so no counter attack or anything else - spirit pinata that way.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:46 pm

Fuchs wrote:We used to use banish in the earlier editions to "stunlock" a spirit, so the rest of the team could whack it with impunity, seeing as we interpreted the rules to mean a spirit could not do anything once in a banishing contest, so no counter attack or anything else - spirit pinata that way.

Oh hell yeah, that's how it worked. Once a banish fight happened, neither party could do fuck all until it was over. Even "losing" a banish fight just meant your magic attribute went down temporarily, but if it kept a big spirit from taking actions it was totally worth it.

In SR4 the only purpose of Banishing is that you get to Pokemon spirits who aren't your tradition. But most people think that is "cheesy", so they won't let you use it for anything useful at all.

-Username17

UmaroVI · Post by **UmaroVI** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 9:38 pm

Also, the drain from Banishing is ludicrously high and really dangerous. It's basically the ability to yell "I BANISH YOU, PIKACHU" and occasionally your face melts off. Also, you can "banish" spirits just fine with Stunbolt.

So, to answer your original question, being good at summoning/binding is about, in order:

Having a lot of Drain Resist. The damage you take from summoning spirits is very spiky and potentially very high. This means you probably want to either be a Logic mage with the damage-soaking ware (Cerebral Boosters, Dareadrenaline, Trauma Damper, Platelet Factories), or you want to be an Elf Charisma mage.

Being at least OK at the Summoning skill. If you go hardcore into summoning and get like 20 dice, which you in theory could (but would be stupid to), you can sure summon a force 12 spirit anytime you feel like. Unfortunately, it has very good odds of bitchslapping you for a huge amount of physical drain, so you don't really want to do this.

Picking a tradition with lots of good spirits. Brief summary:
Win: Man, Guardian
Slightly Less Win: Air
Just Good At Fighting: Fire
Useful utility, but not that great at fighting: Water, Plant, Guidance
Very useful utility, but sux at fighting: Task
Suck: Beast, Earth

If you want to monkey around with binding, you want:
High Charisma, or at least decent
Disposable income: it costs a lot.
Very good at binding: you lose money when you fail.
Also, more Summoning/Binding makes you more cost-efficient as a binder, so it probably is worth being good at it. Still take that 6 in spellcasting, but if you plan to be Binding-focused, 4 summoning, 4 binding, and specialties in each is not a bad move.

An important note: low-force Possession spirits are still the shit, because of how possessing things like cybered-up douchebags, dead cybered-up douchebags, and whatnot works. Low-force Materialization spirits are much less the shit. High-force Materialization spirits, on the other hand, are the shit, and High-force Possession spirits are slightly less the shit because of augmented attribute maxima. You can get around this problem by making sure your big possession spirits can possess something with no attribute maxima, like a dead guy, a Plasteel Homonculols (F+7P attacks before Energy Aura? WTF), or a truck.

Also, Invoking is the shit and is another reason to have high Binding.

LR · Post by LR » Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:24 am

UmaroVI wrote: High-force Materialization spirits, on the other hand, are the shit, and High-force Possession spirits are slightly less the shit because of augmented attribute maxima.

What makes you think that spirits are actually capped by augmented maximums?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 2:20 am

It's not a matter of spirits having augment maximums, but rather the vessel-- the infamous FAQ says that living vessels are still subject to an augmented attribute cap but that inanimate vessels are not.

LR · Post by LR » Mon Apr 02, 2012 7:43 am

Whipstitch wrote:It's not a matter of spirits having augment maximums, but rather the vessel-- the infamous FAQ says that living vessels are still subject to an augmented attribute cap but that inanimate vessels are not.

But that doesn't override other FAQ responses saying that the spirit's Force gets added to that cap.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 10:33 am

LR wrote:
Whipstitch wrote:It's not a matter of spirits having augment maximums, but rather the vessel-- the infamous FAQ says that living vessels are still subject to an augmented attribute cap but that inanimate vessels are not.
But that doesn't override other FAQ responses saying that the spirit's Force gets added to that cap.

Yeah, the Spirit's Force adds to physical stats and also adds to the cap, meaning that it is essentially uncapped. What it means is that you factor buffs on the host as if there wasn't a spirit there and the cap was applied normally, then you add the force and that boost is uncapped (even though all the other boosts still are).

So a possession spirit doesn't change how much the host can gain from Increase Agility, but it doesn't itself get limited by the racial maximums of the host.

As for Summoning and Binding: remember that you keep the services during the summoning test if you complete the binding test. That means two things:

If you have enough binding dice to succeed at all, having more dice on the Summoning is just as good as having more dice on the Binding test.
You can, and therefore should, summon and dismiss spirits over and over again until you get a fuck tonne of services on the summoning test and only then start the binding ritual.

-Username17

UmaroVI · Post by **UmaroVI** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 3:01 pm

LR wrote:
Whipstitch wrote:It's not a matter of spirits having augment maximums, but rather the vessel-- the infamous FAQ says that living vessels are still subject to an augmented attribute cap but that inanimate vessels are not.
But that doesn't override other FAQ responses saying that the spirit's Force gets added to that cap.

What other FAQ responses? I can't find anything other than the one saying that it's capped by the vessel's maximum augmented attribute.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 8:35 pm

Being possessed by a spirit was never really categorized as being an augmentation in the first place. Street Magic is pretty consistent about referring to the result of a possession as a new hybrid entity as opposed to just some dude getting to add X Force to their attributes, so there really is quite a bit of merit to the notion that the FAQ ruling is just confirming that there's a limit on how much Nitro you want to dose your troll buddy with before sticking a Guardian spirit in them. On the other hand, Catalyst is stupid enough that I was never quite sure what the intent was given that there was a rumor floating around that they had wanted to spot nerf high Force possession through the FAQ.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:50 pm

From Shadowrun, Fourth Edition FAQ Version 2.0
Last Updated: 17 February 2012

When a spirit uses Possession or Inhabitation on a character, are the dual entity’s attributes limited by the character’s maximum augmented attribute values?

Yes. The dual entity’s Physical attribute + Force of the spirit cannot be greater than the vessel’s maximum augmented attribute. Inanimate vessels have no maximum limits.

....

I play a mage (my first and only SR-4 character), and I'm still up in the air if this is good or bad ruling for balance.

I remember seeing an old dumpshock thread where Frank tried to talk Peter down from implementing this ruling on the basis that it made possession traditions rubbish for high-powered mages compared to materialization.