Lago wrote:What changes with this setup if you're willing to burn and refresh (lots of) Edge between adventures to perma-sustain with bonded spirits on the condition that your GM won't allow this remote service tomfoolery?
Relatively little actually. A Force 4 Spirit of Man has access to Guard and one power (Innate Spell: Improved Reflexes, thank you much). You can just retry conjuring it every morning until you get a few services, and then you can have it Guard you (and itself, and two party members), and then cast Improved Reflexes on you. Then it suffers big penalties (drain and sustaining a spell), but you don't care, because it doesn't do anything else. If you need an ass-kicker spirit, you dismiss that one and get a Force 7 Fire Spirit and go a whuppin and a whompin on everybody that way.
Remember that any Spirit you Bind is first going to be Summoned. So unless you
re-bind (more on that in a moment), there's no benefit in having a die in Binding when you could have a die in Summoning instead. Each net hit on either test gives you a service, so a die of Summoning is just as good as a die of Binding.
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On Rebinding: The big drawback to binding, in addition to the whole thing where there is a substantial chance that you just fvcking
explode because Conjuring Drain is so incredibly random, is that if you pass out from drain your spirit becomes uncontrolled and hostile right next to you and does knee drops on your face until you die. But if you are bindign a spirit that is already bound, you can get extra services and you don't run that risk (also you can be protected by Guard so it is impossible for you to glitch on this test, as you can have a summoned spirit in addition to the spirit you are binding). The drawback is that it costs extra yens every time and you don't get an initial summoning test worth of services this time around.
Nevertheless, it is clear that if you want to play around with titanic bound spirits on a regular basis, that you should just have one or two of them and then rebind over and over again (periodically going into the fvcking hospital because the drain will be so damn high). But there's really not a lot of reason to bother right now,
Street Magic isn't out, so there aren't any "Great Form" tricks you can do with Bound Spirits that you can't essentially do just as well with Unbound Spirits. Aid Sorcery is impressive, but it's not worth the cost.
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One of my buds swears by Ritual Spellcasting but it seems to me that anyone worthy of being targetted by a remote-kill would have a mana barrier that you'd have to blow through and it takes too long to mount a second attack without suffering heavy retribution.
Ritual Spellcasting is completely useless for attacking distant foes. You need to be able to get a spotter on the scene (which can be a bound spirit). If you can get one of your spirits to hover next to some asshole in astral space, you can send an astral gank pack to kill their ass. No exceptions.
What Ritual Spellcasting is good for is casting really huge spells on willing targets. Each character can ad to the success test, so with four characters churning out dice you can actually get the 12 hits required to warrant casting a spell at Force 12. That's one hell of a Combat Senses, I tell you. The problem of course, is that you don't really give a damn.
No character in a Shadowrunner team is going to get their hands on 4 characters who all have at least a 4 in Ritual Spellcasting and are all the same tradition, and all know a Buff spell that benefits from getting double digits from the success test. It just isn't ever going to happen. Ever.
Ritual Spellcasting is there to allow NPCs to have spell effects that would otherwise be impossible without the intervention of NPC magicians who could personally curbstomp the entire team simultaneously. It's not for PCs, and PCs shouldn't bother having it.
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Lago wrote:Frank, in your opinion, which skills (down to the crummy knowledge skills) are worth buying both generically and by character archetype?
That's a long list. But here goes:
Gymnastics. It adds to your defense roll when you take the Full Defense Action. It is so good that Street Samurai are well advised to invest in Synthacardiums just to increase this skill's dicepool.
First Aid. An untrained character rolls their Medkit's rating when treating injuries. If you have even a point in First Aid, you roll your Logic + Skill + Medkit Rating. This can even treat Stun, and can be used to lower Drain.
Exotic Ranged/Melee Weapon. Depending upon how your GM reads the skill (the skill description on page 113 is at odds with the description of its use in the Critters and Equipment Sections), this skill is either completely useless (because it requires that you select one fvcking weapon like a D&D EWP) or is wicked awesome (because it lets you use whatever crazy crap you happen to MacGuyver together). Although the Monowhip is so much the best weapon
evar that EMW: Monowhip is worth taking even if your GM uses the nerftastic ruling.
Influence. That's right, the whole skill group. You don't give a rat's about Leadership most of the time, but you actually need to not be taking defaulting penalties on Ettiquette, Negotiate, and Con. You really need to not be taking defaulting penalties on those skills.
Perception. I don't care who you are or what you do, you need this skill. This is a game about detectives, spies, and guerilla warriors, the "notice things" skill is made out of pure gold. Or joy. Whichever one is better.
Infiltration. It's the skill where you don't get seen. See Perception.
Various Archetypes consider a number of other skills. I wouldn't make a magician without Summoning, Counterspelling, and Spellcasting. I wouldn't make a Rigger without Electronic Warfare, Gunnery, and Pilot: GroundVehicle. A Street Sam should have at least two weapon skills, one of which should be Longarms.
Depending upon the game you will either want Shadowing and Palming or not. If you do, you should take the whole Stealth group.
Someone in your group should have Medicine. If it isn't your Hacker it should be your Hermetic Mage. Someone should have demolitions, same thing.
-Username17