[Sphinx]

This situation came up in our last session: If a magician attempts to banish a spirit (summoned, not bound), and the spirit is on the other side of a mana barrier, how does the rating of the mana barrier affect the test? Ordinarily, the magician makes a Banishing + Magic [Astral] vs. Force Opposed Test. If the magician wins, subtract net hits from number of services owed by the spirit. If the spirit's services are reduced to zero, it departs on its next action. Win or lose, the magician resists drain equal to twice the spirit's hits (SR5, p.301). There are rules for casting spells through a barrier (p.315), but Banishing isn't mentioned.

Questions:

• Does the mana barrier affect the test? (I ruled yes.)
• Does it matter who made the barrier, banisher or summoner? (I ruled no.)
• Does the spirit add the rating of the mana barrier to its defense test? (I ruled yes.)
• Do hits generated by the mana barrier count toward the Drain value? (I ruled no.)

What do you think?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

My knee-jerk take is that the mana barrier simply blocks line of effect, and therefore the spirit is an invalid target for banishment while the mana barrier is in the way.

[Reaver]

this is a hard one.

I'm not sure a Mana Barrier would do anything in this particular case.
While I agree that mana barriers stop mana - and thus spells, Banishing is a skill, and not a spell after all...

Yet, the act of banishing can result in Drain, which is usually caused by the effort of manipulating mana...

Personally?
I wouldn't let a Mana Barrier affect a Banishing attempt, but this is just me, and I have no RAW/RAI to support that. And while I like magic and the magic system in SR (I usually play mages myself -and use Spirits), I also admit that spirits can/are a bit over powered, especially for some groups, so any player willing to try to Banish one as opposed to just trying to mana blast it, I'm not going to throw up any arbitrary additional modifiers. Especially at Fx2 hits (not net hits).

[Xenon]

If magician is using physical perception and spirit is materialized on the other side of a mana barrier, then I would add the rating of the mana barrier to the defense dice pool of the spirit.