This is true... I don't recall the details of the rules well enough to worry about how common this failure may be. It might be less fallible than the Shaman's as he not only has to pass from one world to the other, but also re-integrate with his body (Not necessarily true, but it will do as an ad-hoc justification).
> > I think, per the rules that you need a complete defeat to add a
> > spirit to your tradition anyway.
>
> Agreed.
>
> >Presumably this is talking about either disembodied spirits in the
> >mortal world of spirits which have possessed someone that the
> >Shaman is trying to exorcise. In these circumstances I think
> >that you probably do need a complete success,
>
> Well, there can be embodied spirits in the mortal world not
> posessing a 'victim' (disease spirits in rotting corpses,
Don't they count as "posessing" the corpse in some way? (I think, in fact they are in both camps at once (a bit like troll Animist/theists) - They attack (to infect their victims) in a similar way to disembodied spirits, and "posess" their "victim" in terms of needing to be exorcised to get rid of them
> various spell spirits
> in fetishes may count, etc).
I don't think I would generally count these (possibly when active?) - I think it should be very difficult to attack dormant spirits within a fetish.
>But, given that, you would allow the
> 'one command or add to Tradition'?
>
On a complete Victory, yes - in any other circumstance the other consequences of victory (dislodging or banishing the spirit) will have to be reward enough
> > due to the Spirits ability to escape back to the Spirit plane
> > under normal circumstances. A normal success will drive the
> > spirit off, but won't give you anything else from it, unless you
> > are prepared to follow it onto it's home territory and capture it
> >there
>
> That's another point - if you perform the combat within a Shamanic
> Circle (like ost exorcisms would be), I presume that would count as
> being in the Spirit World, so then the spirit COULD be captured?
>
You certainly could argue that way (especially when playing a Shaman) - Alternatively you could insist (in the case of exorcisms) that you need to perform 2 seperate contests even then, the first to dislodge the spirit from its victim, and then a second to capture the now-free spirit (otherwise you could capture and integrate the spirits of ordinary people in this way, which I don't think is the case). Obviously in this case you could claim some sort of carry over bonus for victory in the first contest....
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