Feedback (for ED4) on Spirits and Summoning

[Etorian]

I'll preface this with my experience is with ED 1ed so this may have changed. Here's my 2 cents.

Summoning a spirit and striking the bargain "protect my companions and I through this kaer exploration" or something similar removes the turn delays. Rough with an entity with multiple attacks/spell actions. Do that more than once and the offending character grinds things to a halt.

They or allies can heal the damage with fire heals recovery etc. Add in the nethermancer spell that negates the need for sleep and the time restrictions shrink. What's worse is then binding a spirit in a piece of orichalcum. Now I use the spirit powers whenever with no real drawbacks.

I love the idea of summoning but toning down the spirits to make it fair takes away from the magnitude of those astral entities. Like horrors they should stay mysterious diverse and powerful.

I'd rather limit control over such a powerful being... justify it as being taxing on the name giver to rein in such an otherworldly being. Binding a spirit is awesome and needs to be in the setting but also needs some balancing.

[Gkeckley]

I agree with what you are saying. It has been a while since I have played 1st edition, but from what I remember they are a lot more powerful in that edition. A force 1 spirit would start with 1-2 physical attacks and 2 spell attacks and every 2 point increase in rating would get you 1 addional attack and 1 additional spell. Karma step starts at 4 and goes up 1 every level. Their defenses did tend be a little lower in first edition . Also in first edition summoning was something elementalists and nethermancers got with their half magic. Meaning it was sort of bonus power. In third edition you have to buy the talent and if you go strictly by the rules you have to beat its spell defense twice. Once with summon and once with elemental tongues or spirit talk. But I do remember the spirits being killing machines and could quickly bog the game down. They are still powerfull but not quite as bad. I typically would be leary of allowing someone to bind a spirit iinto orichalcum. I would also be leary of allowing multiple spirits at once. It does bog down the game and tends to unbalance things in favor of the summoner if they can summon up 4 or 5 spirits. I would not ban it I would just make the spirits harder and harder to control as you are having to divert your attention to multiple spirits to control them. Spirits are inhuman mysterious and powerful like you said and predicting their behaviour should never be a science. They have goals and motivations seperate of the summoner. In all even in 3 rd edition summoning adds a lot to the game in my opinion but if not monitored closely by the GM it can quickly get out of control.

[Mountainshadow]

In my games we used summoning regularly throughout all editions of the game. Spirits in 1st were rather too powerful and once a summoner got it into his head to use his abilities and bolster his group with some spirits all bets were off and as the GM you had a hard struggle on your hands concerning the creation of challenging encounters without swamping them with spirits of your own.
In later editions Spirits got toned down and much more manageable; restricting the number of spirits the summoner could control to his Rank in Summoning was a good decision as well, but still summoners who use their power a lot are rather powerful. I'd like to see a more complex/time-consuming (in game) summoning process/ritual with some cost beyond strain for the summoner (like materials) not the shorthand summoning of the actual rules. Only spirits bound by a previous ritual should be summonable on the fly. I never liked the possibility of a summoner to just use a few actions during an encounter to call forth a new Spirit - so I limited this by increasing the time neccessary for the process.
All in all summoning is an integral part of the Nethermancer/Elementalist/Shaman Disciplines and should remain so in the upcomming Edition.

[kosmit]

Maybe if a lot of people think summoning is too powerful you should set a rule that you can summon spirits with combined spirit strength rating not greater than Summon Rank?

[Stormcrow]

I have lots of issues with the summoning rules and could probably write pages and pages of things that don't work as intended and things that are just plain broken. I'm going to limit myslef to a few key points that particularly bother me. Having said that, outside of combat, the rules work quite well and the actual spirit creation rules are a great system for creating extremely varied challenging opponents fairly quickly.

A couple of things that bother me in particular.
Increasing rank of spirit when re summoning. I know it's an attempt at balance but it makes no sense, especially considering there are no rules for increasing the rank of spirit familiars. At one point the nethermancer was tempted to banish and resummon his familiar until he got higher ranks.

Rank number of powers. Too powerful and the examples given don't follow that rule anyway.

One round to summon. I know that there are other things you need to do after this but I agree with Mountainshadow, summoning should not take a single round. There are spells less powerful (including summoning ones) that take a lot longer to cast. It doesn't make sense to me that this is the case as the summoning system allows for more powerful, more varied, less perscriptive and longer duration effects than individual spells. I know it is potentially more dangerous but I don't think that is enough. Personally I don't think it should be possible in most combat encounters.

Bargain with Summoned Spirits. I honestly don't see why this is a separate Talent. If you make it take longer to summon spirits it would be unnecessary.

[Stormcrow]

[Etorian]

I thought about this over night and have a thought or two. I like limiting the number of spirits you can control by a number. Which is apparently now summoning rank, that helps but still leaves the same issues. How about a mechanic along these lines.

You may summon and make pacts with rank spirits. (or rank spirit rating worth of spirits if that is too much) During a combat turn you may call a spirit to perform a task you have previously bargained for it to do. (protect me when I'm in danger, watch my back in Astral Space, whatever)

The first spirit will heed the call no problem because you can focus your concentration on maintaining the connection your pact makes with it. Beyond the 1st spirit the GM has the option to engage you in a contest of wills to break free as you loose focus with a difficulty mod based on how many spirits you are maintaining.

This way if it is story beneficial the GM can let multiple spirits slide for dramatic/bail out the group moments but has a repercussion for spirit abuse. This flows conceptually because as the character looses concentration the spirits gain more control over themselves however if they judge the scenario worthy of their help in their alien astral entity thought process they can still lend aid and if not... it's a bad day for the summoner.

Thoughts?

[kosmit]

Summoning Spirit should be some ritual. Like some one said some spells takę longer to cast and summon. Maybe 1 round / strength? Or bargaining with summoned spirit should take more ranks.

[Etorian]

I do want to also mention that summoning outside of combat can be a major tool for story development and a great (though underused by some) source of alternative solutions to problems that arise for the group. I would hate to get too wrapped up in mechanics and take that aspect away.

A good GM can work around the issues we're are presenting but I think it really helps the players feel like they are not getting railroaded when you have a rule structure in place to fall back on that is well thought out. It's a delicate balance that I hope we all take into consideration as we propose ideas here.

[Gkeckley]

Limiting the number of spirits by your summon rank is still too many spirits. Getting summon up to 8 is not to difficult and having 8 spirits at rank 8 on tap is alot. I would think it would be better to limit it so the sum of the spirit ranks could not exceed your summon rank. If they have a spirit familiar i would not include this in that total. So at a summon of 8 you could have 1 rank 8 spirit or 2 rank 4 spirits or any other combination. Maybe set it up so they can go above this limit but to do so requires a contest of wills like suggested above. Place penalties on these contests for every point over the limit you go. So if your summoning is rank 5 then you could summon 1 rank 5 or 1 rank 2 and 1 rank 3 or 5 rank 1 spirits. But if you summon say a rank 7 spirit you have to make a contest of wills at a -2 penalty as you have gone over your limit. If you already have a rank 5 spirit then try to summon a rank 4 spirit that second spirit would require a contest of wills at -4.