[Senko]

I was looking at the blood spirit and how it gets added to the NPC's normal spirit summoning list (or maybe replaces it, I'm about to head to bed and am still looking into how it works). Anyway it got me thinking if that gets added in could other spirits be added in. So I'm considering trying to put together a metamagic that adds a spirit type to the mages selection (either one per initiation or one tradition per initiation then 5 karma per spirit type on that traditions list you normally can't summon). Anyway would this horribly unbalance things or would allowing say a hermetic mage to summon a beast spirit in addition to their elemental ones not make much difference?

[PiXeL01]

As I see it blood spirit are as toxic as they come so unless we are already dealing with a blood mage then it would be a definite no.
As for adding more spirit to a mage's roster it would certainly break his tradition and therefore something he cannot comprehend. I do see it as something much like summoning a great form spirit, a ritual which would always cost reagents as the mage would be playing which force he cannot normally control.

[Senko]

Blood and toxic spirits as well as insect and shadow (amongst others) would be called out as not summonable with these techniques/technique just the base ones you get with the PC traditions. I'm not so convinced it would break with tradition look at Shintoism they can summon plant, animal, air, water and man spirits. However there are plenty of sacred sites which would work well with an earth spirit of that site, fire less so but there are some spirits that would work for that sacred flames, fire rituals and the like. As for the other ones in street grimoire guardian, guidance and task spirits really could be of any form e.g. you summon a man spirit as a "guardian" so its a guardian spirit not a man one or you summon the spirit of a sacred mountain and you get a guidance spirit that is essentially an overlayed earth spirit if you see what I mean. Its still a guardian, mentor or task spirit but it fits in fine with pretty much any tradition. Your guidance spirit is an angel, mine is a kami of the village shrine, his is a loa, hers is wolf and so on.

[Lucean]

The choice of tradition is also meant as a restriction for the player. If you open a way to summon all kinds of spirits your tradition would only matter for drain, making LOG-traditions even weaker in comparison.
So no, I don't think it's worth pursuing.

[prionic6]

You can call any type of spirit with the ritual on p. 126 in the Street Grimoire (even a mundane can do so). You'll need to carefully bargain with them for anything you want, though...

[living]

I would agree that adding such a metamagic would break the whole tradition systems. I personally like advantages and disadvantes together. You have to make a compromise. You can not get your favorit drain attribute, your favorit fluff, and your favorits spirits together (expect they match a given tradition).

As GM i would not even allow a player to use a "heal spirit" to assisst combat spells or to fight for the caster.

Btw: i really like the concept of blood magic. Maybe it's a bit too much power for pc's. But you can play a really nice blood mage. Who does good, and believes he is cleaning souls with his use of the blood. Of course most people would disagree, and you got a high bounty on your head, but every shadworunner is a outlow and the concept of "good" and "evil" is just a point of view.

[Senko]

Please explain to me how as I'm not seeing why opening up the potential to summon other spirit types makes logic based traditions weaker?

[Reaver]

Blood, toxic and insect magics are pretty clearly spelled out as "twisted paths". It doesn't matter what your justifications or rationale, if you follow one of these paths, by SR you're a corrupted mage. (And thus, generally considered an NPC as the twisted paths are generally not for PC use)

[8-bit]

Please explain to me how as I'm not seeing why opening up the potential to summon other spirit types makes logic based traditions weaker?

Because Logic is really not useful for a whole lot of skills. Most technical skills are better handled by Deckers or Riggers. Charisma based traditions are vastly superior, outside of spirits, because they are good at all social skills. That makes them excellent faces, on the side. Intuition based traditions at least get bonuses to Initiative, Perception, and Assensing.

In the end, Logic based traditions don't really make use of their Logic all that well.

[Senko]

Which I understand but i don't see how my initaiting and paying 13 karma so instead of air, water, plant, animal and man spirits I can now summon earth, air, water, plant, animal and man spirits makes them weaker. Aside from the fact they can do the same thing I'm not taking options like centering or masking so I can do this.

[8-bit]

Which I understand but i don't see how my initaiting and paying 13 karma so instead of air, water, plant, animal and man spirits I can now summon earth, air, water, plant, animal and man spirits makes them weaker. Aside from the fact they can do the same thing I'm not taking options like centering or masking so I can do this.

*shrug*

Opening up options to other normal spirits for an Initiation sounds fine to me. Traditions are mostly fluff, IMO, anyway. Just was explaining why others were saying it.

[jim1701]

IMO traditions have already gotten way too generic compared to the old days.  I liked how elementals and spirits were different critters entirely.  I'd hate to see traditions watered down even further but at your own table, knock yourself out. 

[living]

Which I understand but i don't see how my initaiting and paying 13 karma so instead of air, water, plant, animal and man spirits I can now summon earth, air, water, plant, animal and man spirits makes them weaker. Aside from the fact they can do the same thing I'm not taking options like centering or masking so I can do this.

In addition to the reasons mentioned, it's pretty easy to play an elf with +2 charisma and get a bigger drain pool. That is a big advantage. I don't know if it is intend or not, but as compensation some logic traditions have really strong spirits. if i'm not mistaken, the only tradition with spirit of man as combat spirit is Zoroastrian, a logic tradition. Imho logic tradition got this advantage to make up for the weak drain stat (charisma can easy be 7-8 and you can play a good face, inuition gives initiative, defense pool, perception and some other nice stuff).

If you give every tradition every spirit (and 13 karma or myb 25 aren't that big of a deal), there is little reason left to choose a logic tradition (the only thing left is fluff and playing a kind of magic-decker hybrid).

[Senko]

Except that's a problem with Logic in general not just spirit summoning. You can play a hermetic or Zoroastrian aspected sorcerer and not be able to summon any spirits at all. Besides this is just adding types not roles, most traditions have spirits of man anyway in which case they couldn't take the option to summon spirit of man healing or spirit of man combat just add spirit of fire.

Besides if your that concerned with the mechanics I imagine you'd play a charisma or intuition tradition anyway, or make your own (pastifarian) and pick your own spirits.

Here you paying 13+ karma to summon an extra spirit type (or maybe just open up all the other normal types for an extra 5 karma each).

[living]

Imho is summoning spirits a really strong ability. But the kind of spirit does really matter. Spirit of man, who can materialise in every banshee/closed room/what ever and cast a manaball/fireball is pretty strong. And given that mages are the strongest class in sr5, i really like to set some boundarys for them. I really like the restriction, that spirit does only tasks in his assigned field. But that's a ruling for every GM on his own.

I think the restrictions for traditions balance them kinda ok.