The fact that 3rd edition Wu Jen spirits have Magic Guard and other spirits generally don't is something that makes Wu Jen different and flavorful. Is it enough of a killer app to justify the tradition? No. But it's close. It means that Wu Jen have the effect that their entire team has a significant pile of extra spell defense, and that's not nothing.OgreBattle wrote:So why bother with specific spirit power sets for specific traditions? Does Shadowrun lose out on anything if everyone can pick from any?
In SR4, that trick is included in the fact that Plant Spirits have Magic Guard, and that would have been fine if I'd been allowed to keep Magic Guard a Plant exclusive, but of course people insisted on renaming the Warrior Spirits into Guardian Spirits because people wouldn't let me merge the Bugs into the Voodoo rules and then people insisted on putting all the powers with the word "Guard" in the title into the Guardian Spirit repertoire even if that made them very very powerful.
Anyway, I believed then and still believe that traditions should have short lists of bonus powers that they can swap in on their spirits to make a Water Elemental feel different from a Sea Spirit.
-Username17