>- very few practices have spirits as strong as 5W2! Which is not to
>say you couldn't find and bind a neutral or hostile spirit that
>strong, but of course that is harder to bind, and to release.
As Roderick points out, they exist. Oakfed Spirits can get up to 3W10 (5W10 for very special occasions). And I'm not saying that the narrator should make these easy to get. But if a player goes off on a quest to find one, he'll probably get one in the end. I'd think that this would be precisely what powerful animists are all about later in their careers. In any case, the mathematical advantage works out at any level of spirit. You don't need to have a 10W3 spirit to have a mechanical advantage over characters of the same level. All I'm saying with the larger spirits is that, as the power level grows for the group, so too can the spirit's power levels.
To a point, of course. If you have characters that become demigods, then, yes, at that point, I imagine that the animists get left behind as they can only bind up to 10W3 or so (10W4 by some estimates). OTOH, perhaps demigod animists can bind majestic spirits???
>- to be able to release the spirit reliably you need to buy up your
>relationship with it (or be willing to blow an HP on the roll, which
>may actually be a more effective plan, possibly combined with a small
>investment in the relationship, depending on how often you expect to
>release it). But if you have a variety of spirits this to gets
>expensive. And of course, if you've bought up your relationship with
>one, then get a more powerful version of the same model, you have to
>start over again.
Depends on situation. Yes, the animist has to consider the spirit's feelings in terms of the contest. But I think that makes them rather more interesting than less. That is, if I don't invest a ton of points in the relationships, I can still get spirits to come out and do things that they'd be inclined to do anyhow. From what I've seen, this is the most common circumstance when players do decide to release their spirits.
>- As far as active magic goes, you will usually be using the spirit
>at its rating, since you will seldom have your own "fly", "breathe
>fire", or "put to sleep" ability (exception granted on that last one
>for the rare animast who studied under LM sages for a while!). So
>your active magic will usually top off in the single mastery area, as
>spirits bigger than that are hard to find. Well, you might capture a
>more powerful hostile spirit that you can make use the ability for
>you once, but I think you can use hostile spirits only once?
I disagree. If you look at most animist abilities, they are ones that make sense as charms - passive. So you don't see a lot of "fly" or "breathe fire" you see lots of stuff that allows better fighting, better running, better of things that the animist is likely to be able to do. That is, the player will stack. He'll say, "Hmm, this practice here has spirits that will add to my abilities," and take those spirits.
Mike
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