The Saddening

[The Undying]

Not really a good place to put this otherwise, but figured this would be a worthwhile note in the "for what it's worth" category.

Moved Shadow of the Demon Lord into the spot I was going to run Earthdawn in for my Japanese gaming group, so I've been putting my effort into ramping up on that system and campaign. My other gaming group, after a six month hiatus on the system, swung back around to our multi-year Earthdawn campaign. Moving towards a pivotal moment on the campaign, my Elementalist attempts to use Summoning (and well within the realm of "good" odds on the test) - boom, failure, Astral Backlash, one wound plus half my Unconsciousness Rating. Yay, okay, go below deck and lick my wounds. Next morning, pivotal moment arrives, my Elementalist can make a huge and interesting impact with Summoning, GM basically allows me to get the 30 minutes in before things kick off (again, test is well within the realm of "good" odds) - boom, failure, Astral Backlash, one wound plus more than half my Unconsciousness Rating. Thanks to the lost time of the wasted Summoning, I spend the first half of the combat casting all the prep spells I'd otherwise have had Chain Cast. Thanks to the lost health, I effectively hide for the rest.

I saw the writing on the wall with Summoning from a numbers stand-point for a while (and have made some posts on it). To actually see it come to fruition, though, was honestly a little heart-breaking (given my love of the system). All I can really say is that it is truly saddening that what should be an iconic and central thing of a Discipline, something that takes a huge chunk of time to do with the ED4 changes, is just as likely to effectively remove the character from play for the remainder of the in-game day as it is to MAYBE achieve the goals (three chances to fail with Summoning). I don't really see that anywhere else in the system.

Really, I'm just sad and disappointed...

[Dyrmagnos]

Failures are crucial part of system mechanic. Waving a thread to warden or legendary 6-7-th thread and fail can burn LP that you were earning for few sessions. Fail during casting spell from grimoire or scroll can burn this spell or critical failure maybe entire book.

Only solving solution can be a knack that can reduce a little bit threat from failing test during contact with raw astral energy. Maybe for 2-3-4-5 strain you can reduce astral corruption by 1 level?

[The Undying]

I think you may need to reread the rule book. Failure to weave the next rank of a thread item does not result in lost LP, you just have to wait a day and try again. Also, I have never heard of grimoire being damaged upon failed castings - can you provide a citation on that? You may be talking about something other than ED4? To be fair, I didn't mentioned that I was talking ED4, but for clarity, I am.

[Mataxes]

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble. I have a couple of questions for you, if you can provide answers, since details are scant in your post.

What was the magician's Summon step? What was the strength (and other relevant stats) of the spirit they were trying to summon?

What was it you were trying to accomplish, looking at it from not only the perspective of the current edition, but prior editions as well (since this sounds like something that's been tried or done in the past)?

[The Undying]

SR 5, no additional powers (so no added difficulty), resulting in difficulty 13. Summoning Step 13 with karma (so, effectively 17). Objectives were just to smooth out passage of an airship the first time and then to help deflect (as in slightly redirect fire from) air cannons aimed at something we were trying to protect (so, really, no powers brought to bear in either case, just GM interpretation).

Difficulty (roughly), and backlash, would've been the same in both ED4 and early editions. Lost time would not have been. The lost time is what was really the kick in the teeth - no opportunity to try again, and all my defensive spells were down because of the ritual length

[Mataxes]

So... there is an element of bad luck involved here. Step 13 with Karma has a 74% chance of success against a DN of 13. (At least according to AnyDice.) That you failed three times is... unlikely (and no doubt annoying, but not outside the realm of possibility.

That aside...

I can understand the frustration. It's seldom fun to feel like you aren't contributing. Especially when that contribution is what you feel to be your niche. What I'm about to go into here is not meant as a specific response, or fix to your recent issue, but just some musings on the general subject of summoning.

If summoning is too easy, especially if summoners can end up with multiple spirits on call, it can start to overshadow other characters. This can get especially abusive depending on the powers involved. If summoning is too easy, and too readily available, then it becomes a very broad, single-issue fix that an Elementalist or Nethermancer can apply to a wide array of problems, without needing the assistance of other player characters. Raise Summon, call upon even more powerful spirits to solve problems. One talent (more or less), a whole lot of applications and uses.

(This issue crops up with other attempts to balance magicians, where a small selection of talents provides a significant amount of utility. Raise Spellcasting, and your tools for solving multiple problems become more effective.)

The other consideration is beyond the affect on an individual game, but what it means for the broader setting. Journeyman Elementalists and Nethermancers aren't uncommon -- how would the ease or difficulty of the summoning process be reflected in Barsaive? If the summoning is easy, would spirits be more commonly used in places like the Kingdom of Throal or other large population centers (where summoners are likely to be in civic employ)? If so, why hasn't that been addressed in the past?

(These kinds of effects pop up in other places as well -- the original "permanent" Forge Blade effectively meant that common Throalic soldiers had fully forged weapons, which changes the face of warfare, and thread weapons start to come up short in comparison. We're looking at the costs of intentionally creating thread items for the ED4 Companion chapter on Enchanting, and these kinds of considerations come into play as well.)

So... I don't know. I'm willing to discuss and revisit summoning, BUT... what do people want from it? How do we make it useful and fun without it overshadowing other areas, and reducing the fun of your fellow players? Are there mechanics we can develop that support that? Or will we have to shrug and leave it for the GM to handle?

[Slimcreeper]

It's never been a large part of my games, but I always think of it like a ritual - so aspects that play up the ritual would work for me. You could burn through a certain monetary value in thematic materials to increase the chance of success, or bring in other characters to share the cost of failure.

[The Undying]

Yeah, I definitely had bad luck. -BUT- it served a purpose.

I'm going to briefly talk about what I see as the problem before getting at the more interesting and productive stuff, which were your last questions.

Right now, I think the core problem is the ritual duration (and summoning duration to a lesser extent). The entire adventuring party basically has to stop what they're doing for half an hour for a summoning - this heavy limits when it can be brought to bear. It also last for an hour, maybe two, so you can only be so proactive about it. This leaves you with a talent that has poor re-activity and limited pro-activity ... basically, while not being limited to the space, it's mostly useful when time isn't a factor. Other than that, I think it's just personal feelings - for thirty minutes, either the dangerous aspect of failure should be eliminated (e.g., backlash or unbound only on Rule of One) or success should be almost assured (but not guaranteed).

After that, there's just nothing fun about failing in the current system, especially given the time investment. Success definitely is, but right now, failure is not. It's 30 minutes gone for the party, followed likely by either another 30 minutes for attempt #2 or an hour's rest for a recovery. Failure elsewhere in the system is far more transitory (usually one Standard action) and less punishing (either no damage or both lower in raw numbers and in proportion to the Discipline).

Now, onto the interesting or productive stuff:

So... I don't know. I'm willing to discuss and revisit summoning, BUT... what do people want from it? How do we make it useful and fun without it overshadowing other areas, and reducing the fun of your fellow players? Are there mechanics we can develop that support that? Or will we have to shrug and leave it for the GM to handle?

I can, of course, only speak for myself, but there are the points I see:

Make failure interesting and reduce the chance of true failure. Plenty of ways to tackle this. Even if the summoning "fails," perhaps non-Catastrophic failure produces the desired spirit but with neutral attitude (non-hostile) and with zero guaranteed services. We've now got a soft failure that is interesting. Maybe it's as simple as inserting an additional Elemental Tongues / Spirit Talk test to convince the spirit to grant the service, or maybe the summoner has to make a meaningful offer to get that service. Here, we still have a path forward with 30 minutes lost, it's just a bit harder - but it's also interesting. Another thought I've been throwing around is progressively harder re-tries - if you roll under SR + (2x number of retries), you get backlash/unbound, but if not, you can retry with an additional difficulty of (2x number of retires). Again, this is an interesting soft failure - how important is it get that summon, how much are you willing to press your luck, and going against the odds for a third retry and pulling it off is memorable.

Focus spirit powers on interesting enhancements of the party. If the fear is a spirit out-performing other player characters, then help spirits fit more of a supporting niche that enables the players to shine directly. Buffs and debuffs, especially of varieties that players usually don't have access to at all (hard to "overshadow" something that doesn't exist).

Accept that, sometimes, spirits are better tools/performers than PCs. There will always be a risk that spirits will overshadow a player. Even if spirit powers never duplicate Discipline powers, there will be situations where a spirit power is a better fit for a situation than anything the player's bring to bear. This should be okay rather than feared, although safeguards should be placed against it. Right now, the current ritual duration and summoning duration make it, I feel, pretty hard to overshadow players just because of the time investment and access to the powers. Is the time - and the risk - worth having access to a better solution for the limited time you have it available? Combat-impact-wise, it's pretty easy for the GM to control the pacing enough that this doesn't work out.

Balance risk & reward. IMHO, a 30 minute ritual is a fair way to balance some of the resulting power, but the risk of failure is too high given the time investment. I'm not sure how much appetite there is to make the process more complex, but it could be made into a system fairly similar to the extra threads with spells, using 5 min per thread and one base thread (using "thread" here, but it's still Summoning Talent, and more optional threads than available via Spellcasting). Other things could be involved in order to alter the summoning to reduce risk, increase rewards, or something. Side note that part of this should also be ditching some of the "three chances to fail" stuff that made its way into ED4 (Summoning Test to summon, Negotiation Test to activate powers, Power Test to do the thing). Also, with regard to all the concern about a spirit over-performing, keep in mind that there is a native element of up-front risk to balance that reward: unless the underlying risk changes, this is one of the extremely few things in the system that can hurt you on failure, and it can hurt you far worse than any other thing that hurts you on failure ... that deserves something in return.

It's okay for summoning to be able to do something strong. This used to be the realm of Aid Summoner, which was too strong. Aid/Enhance Summoner are both pretty weak now. It should be okay for a summoner to be able to trade time and effort for a meaningful bump. There can (and should) be lots of interesting ways for a summon to empower a summoner that isn't overly strong.

[The Undying]

I realized that, as I often do, I went too mechanical. Here's what I think Summoning should be (heavy elemental summoning slant):

1. I want to do interesting things. From an elements perspective, spirits can do a lot of great stuff that has zero impact on combat.
   Personally, this interests me than summoning another damage dealer or tank.
2. I want to do unique things. The more that spirits feel like "an extra player controlled by the PC," the less interesting it is. Spirits should really be unique in their powers, copy-cat only where necessary.
3. I want an interesting process. If a process is necessary, I want it to be interesting. The focus should really be on convincing an otherworldly being on how to interpret my goals and deciding how that lines up with the interests of that spirit and the element it represents.
4. I want others to want me to summon. If time or effort is involved, there should be some way to do it so that everything doesn't stop until it's finished. I want my comrades to benefit in interesting ways, rather than just having another spirit tanking or throwing spells.
5. I want a hail mary. When things are really dire, I want to be able to summon and have quick-turn results. When the chips are down, I want to have something that can turn the tide.
6. I want to be flexible. If there is backlash risk, I'd like optional ways to minimize risk. Similarly, if I'm in a true pinch, I want to be fast, even at the cost of greater backlash risk.

What does that all mean?

1. I'd be perfectly happy if using spirits for combat and spellcasting were more difficult if it meant that the other (and more interesting) things were less difficult. Lots of ways to do this, some that even fit in the current system.
2. I'd prefer to ditch a rigid negotiation (especially the 'one power per success' thing). This helps bring the service and spirit to the front. It also helps emphasize the difference of the elements: spirits of one element could - and should - be more and less inclined to do different types of tasks.
3. I'd prefer more uniqueness to spirit powers. Yeah, I understand that's more work. The best way to minimize the perception of a spirit overshadowing a player is to minimize the ability to directly compare the two.
4. I'd prefer that the elemental type be more impactful. Right now, other than some stats and spell availability, they're mostly interchangeable. This can also be used as a checks-and-balances thing against power. For example, Aid/Enhance Summoner, or something like it, could either be restricted to use for spells/Talents of that element or could be more powerful when used in that way.
5. I'd like the process to be faster and/or easier, especially if something is just for interest's sake. Doing a good favor for a town, like expediting crop growth, and then failing and crippling yourself isn't fun.

I think there's lots of ways to address many, if not all, of these with a mostly streamlined system.

[The Undying]

One last point: I think it's worthwhile to consider how the ED4 changes impact the fun level as they are being designed.

Based on your earlier statement, it sounds like one reason for making summoning "harder" (my word) was to increase scarcity. So, in order to reduce its availability to the NPC universe, it was made harder for the player (and, IMHO, less fun). That's a problem in itself, but it's worthwhile to note that the changes for summoning doesn't really accomplish this goal. I noted earlier that summoning now is mostly fit for non-time-sensitive use; adventuring is almost always time sensitive, while civil use is almost always non-time-sensitive. All the change has done is reduce availability for adventuring while increase time of use civilly (but not really affecting scarcity civilly).

It looks like you're considering making Enchanting more scarce, too. Again, it's worthwhile to note that increasing time or cost really won't affect things in the NPC universe, but it has a huge affect on play (taking a month downtime can be stomached, but taking half a year or something can't be).

You point out the change to Forging, and I'd say this is a better example on how to fix areas of concern. If all that had happened was to make forging take three months instead of a week, it would basically mean it would never be available to players BUT the universe would still steadily fill with permanently forged weapons. Adding the renewal requirement while not changing the forging duration actually fixed the problem.

To affect the civil side negatively while not negatively affecting adventurers (which includes players), I see two prominent methods: increase per-use danger, or add a renewal element that is dangerous. Civil use tends to abhor danger in the middle of a city, and civil personnel usually cannot afford the time to perform a distant renewal exercise nor do they tend to be the type to want to risk their health for it. Per-use danger makes something too unpredictable, so it would not be my first choice; however, even making a very low odds of something truly horribly happening (e.g., opening a portal to the plane of that element) is likely enough to scare away any civil use, even if it's very rare. Separately, requiring summoners to do "dangerous thing" periodically, preferably that require non-trivial travel, is fun in itself AND hugely increases NPC universe scarcity.