>From: "Silburn, Luke" <luke.silburn_at_...>
>>One thing I have done is consider what there ability for binding spirits
>>is.
>I agree that this is a useful guideline although, per the rules, the
>binding resistance for friendly spirits is only 14.
I think that the level of your binding stat is still a good guideline. Certainly from a metagame perspective. But if you want an in-game rationale, perhaps practitioners are encouraged to only summon low power spirits in case the spirit happens to be having a bad day. That is, the book indicates that certain sorts of spirits are just friendly to the practice, etc, but I tend to think of it more as personality. That is, they're sorta "politically" amennable to your cult, but like any other personality may simply not like you, or the circumstances of the binding, or might just be in a bad mood or something.
The more powerful the spirit, the more variable this becomes, it seems. That is, tradition spirits are very simple, and will probably react automatically. But by the time we're talking a 10W5 Wildfire spirit, you'd better be pretty sure that you're really on it's good side, or you're going to come out crispy. I think by playing it this way, with more powerful spirits less reliably friendly, that you can sormewhat enforce the "only realistic levels" rule for spirits.
Once play starts, however, all bets are off. That is, if the player wants to try binding that 10W5 wildfire spirit, I say let him. But, again, I won't just ever assume that it's friendly automatically. It's disposition might be determined by another contest, for instance (or a whole adventure's worth of contests).
Mike
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