[adzling]

*shudder*

[Senko]

On the other hand you have people who throw those out entirely because it leaves you with things like an air spirit with the healing role and no healing abilities.

[PiXeL01]

Not sure if I mentioned it but I could see this sort of metapower being available to pure summoners who can do nothing else. Although they are handicapped I am sure that the scientists are looking into breaking the barriers to helped the "disabled" so should you be a conjuring adept then go ahead. Should you know sorcery then no.
...
Personally I would love a return to the divisions and personalities of spirits way back when. Hermetics had elementals only (took hours to summon but did not have a timer), shamans had all the nature/environmental spirits (could summon on a whim, was restricted to a domain and timer).

[Senko]

Hmmm I can see that on a form.

Do have any mental, physical or metaphysical situations that would interfere with your spellcasting.

I think I'll go ahead with making this even if it joins my artifact creation rules as not for PCs or npcs it appears to me

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

While I'm not certain about blood spirits, I know the capacity to summon toxic or insect spirits is essentially a change of the mage's tradition.  Considering the essential (and rising) cost of initiation, I think I might allow the creation of a metamagic that enabled a mage to conjure an additional type of spirit; that is, after all, part of what the Sacrifice metamagic does.  One might consider thinking up other uses for the metamagic as well, based off the spirit type ... which might slowly begin to make the blood spirit (and the Sacrifice metamagic) 'just another type of metamagic'.  I would, however, probably only allow one such - that though another initiation might enable you to learn the next sort, it wipes out any prior version.

[Reaver]

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the new "Paths" element to magic in 5e, of which Blood magic now is. (Still a twisted form of magic, not recommended for players)

My biggest issue here, is like many others have said, Spirits are already powerful, and magic is already powerful. And this, no matter how you want to phrase it, or "karma it away", still upsets a balance that is built into the magic system . (the limitation of Spirits per tradition). Unlike deckers, you ultimately get capped on what they can do by their gear (or Riggers for that matter), Or Street Sams by their Essence, there is no such cap for magic.

In theory, a player could invest every single point of Karma over his career into just two things, raising his magic attribute and initiation. If that career spans 3000+ karma (as is the case in my mage) that means you are running around with a mage with a magic rating of 30+ and initiated 24+ times. However, a Cyber or Bioware character, no matter how much money he has, is still limited to his 6 essence.   

[All4BigGuns]

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

A Hermetic Mage makes a great medic with his high Logic. Not to mention that with a good Perception, he has a better chance at spotting those sneaky ninja types due to his higher Mental Limit.

[8-bit]

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

A Hermetic Mage makes a great medic with his high Logic. Not to mention that with a good Perception, he has a better chance at spotting those sneaky ninja types due to his higher Mental Limit.

I agree, they make excellent use of the First Aid and Medicine skills. That's about it though. They aren't using any of the mechanic skills, any hacking skills, any hardware skills, and it's unlikely they are going to use a whole lot of forgery/armory skills (although they certainly can). The higher Mental Limit is kind of null; an Intuition or Charisma based tradition with Intuition 5/6, Willpower 5, and Logic 3 will have a limit of 6. Plus, that limit is really easy to raise with wireless Vision Enhancement.

I'm saying that comparing a Hermetic Mage using their Logic to a Charisma Based Mage using their Charisma is really no comparison. Social skills are extensively used. Even an Intuition Based Mage uses their Intuition more; in Initiative, Dodging, Perception, and Assensing, just to name a few.

[Senko]

Thing is Reaver I get a lot of this will disrupt the balance and break things but the only actual example is the logic mage one and really I don't buy that because either you care about the mechanics and don't play them or don't care about the mechanics and do.

Otherwise I can't see how being able to summon more spirit types disrupts any balance. You can't summon more spirits per casting, you can't summon more spirits than your normal limits, you can't even summon a healing spirit of man if you already have a combat spirit of man in your tradition. All you can do is summon more different types of spirits and even there only the normal ones no blood, toxic, shadow, insect or other special ones. As it is there's examples like the one I posted earlier where the spirit restrictions actually prevent you using a spirit for its assigned role because it has no abilities that are suited to that role.

You want to convince me this isn't a valid approach I need solid concrete examples of how say a hermetic mage being able to summon a beast spirit, a shinto mage being able to summon an earth spirit or something else is going to break the balance of things.

[Lucean]

It's not about other skills on LOG vs. CHA. Look at the uses for Charisma just with Magic.
It determines the number of bound spirits, your damage in astral combat, allows you to bring spells and foci through wards.
And what does Logic have? They don't even use Logic for attacking in Astral Combat despite being the corresponding attribute to Agility!
You don't need Logic as a Charisma-mage, but you need Charisma as a Logic-mage or you set yourself limits for magical capabilities.

[Senko]

I'm not arguing that Logic based mages need a boost, I just don't see how opening up additional spirit types actually has any impact on balance at all.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

In theory, a player could invest every single point of Karma over his career into just two things, raising his magic attribute and initiation. If that career spans 3000+ karma (as is the case in my mage) that means you are running around with a mage with a magic rating of 30+ and initiated 24+ times. However, a Cyber or Bioware character, no matter how much money he has, is still limited to his 6 essence.

Which means you now have a mage with a 30+ magic, who has initiated 24+ times, and who still has the crap stats, skills, and spells they started the game with.  Meanwhile, the mage who initiates, oh, say, only 15 times has a few skills in the 9-12 range, and a bunch of spells - and the street sam / decker / rigger have oodles of attributes and skills maxed out, and are kicking ass left and right - while your aforementioned 'magic and initiation' mage can't even fragging touch them, because of what they've enabled themselves to be.

While Essence has a hard limit, boosting Magic has a practical one - and while you're spending precious karma boosting magic and getting initiated, you AREN'T spending it increasing your skills, or buying new ones, or spending time developing contacts.

'Magic has no upper end' is at its heart a false complaint.

[Lucean]

I'm not arguing that Logic based mages need a boost, I just don't see how opening up additional spirit types actually has any impact on balance at all.

The most serious aspect of balance (although in another direction) would be access to spirits with Magical Guard and therefore extra dice for counterspelling. But that is an entirely different issue which also can be resolved differently.

[living]

Thing is Reaver I get a lot of this will disrupt the balance and break things but the only actual example is the logic mage one and really I don't buy that because either you care about the mechanics and don't play them or don't care about the mechanics and do.

Otherwise I can't see how being able to summon more spirit types disrupts any balance.

Your logic here is flawed. If you give a class / a char more options, no matter what they are, you make them stronger. More options = more power. Even if you give them the option to take a meta magic which inflicts 7 unresisted physical dmg on them self and 1 physical dmg on the target. It would be a crappy meta magic, but by letting them choose to take it the class gets a little little bit more powerful.

If a mage can choose for a little karma his spirits he is much more powerfull.

Right now logik caster have by comparison the advantage of good spirits. If everyone can get them, this is not much of an advantage (it's 13 karma or whatever you would like a new spirit to coast worth, and the disadvantage they have is much bigger then 13 karma). You have to compare the diffrent caster typs. They all have advantages and disadvantages. If you take the disadvantage (beeing limited to some spirits) away, you make one class in comparison more stronger. If one class gets stronger, in comparison the other class gets weaker.

[Senko]

I repeat give me hard examples of this if you want to convince me. I'm willing to reasses my position but if all I get is "You disrupt balance" I don't buy it I need examples of how exactly it does that if I can't see them or I don't see any reason to accept that there really is a problem.