[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

I'm not contradicting your experience, but mine is completely different. With similar money, time and POW spent, a shaman is as efficient as a team member for buffing the whole team. I have never checked for a priest.

Actually, spirit magic is the _least_ efficient in some ways (in some ways its good because spirit magic tends to have the least overhead and everyone has it); it takes too long to do and lasts too short a time. Sorcery has long duration potential, and divine magic, if you have enough of it, is _very_ quick to put up, since casting time doesn't care about how many points of it you're putting up (I think, though I could be misremembering, they can also cast them on multiple targets at once if they're all within range). In addition, to have spirit magic success chance the same as the Priest's with his divine magic you have to have a 19 power, which is hard to keep if you're regularly reinforcing a fetch or making any enchantments of your own.

By the way, you need 2 POW per INT spirit, and it will store only 1D6 spell points (IIRC), so you need several. And if it is working that way, I presume

I mistyped on the points in my post, and even one Int spirit is enough to hold 3-4 spells, which is sufficient for this to start being a problem.

your GM never took control of your bound spirits (that's why I am putting conditions on my enchantments), taking away the spells stored in it if it is Intelligence spirits.

Keep in mind that the spirit magic control spells are useless in combat, so only the divine or sorcerous ones could even try this, and frankly, there's better things to do with a round that grab at one Power or Int spirit (especially since the latter, which is the more effective one to grab, is going to have its full magic points since its user can't use them). So no, this was not a particularly common tactic (since it required someone to know it was there to grab it in the first place, then get the spell off, then have it work, then have it _matter_. This was particularly unlikely to be useful with Power spirits since once combat started, a sorcerer was extremely unlikely to go through all of the available ones anyway, and you couldn't be sure if you were grabbing an already empty one or a full one).

And I usually _was_ the GM. It was just a waste of time compared to, say, trying to simply take out the sorcerer himself magically, which was about as likely to work and far more effective.

I am not contradicting the fact that a sorceror can be a great improver for the whole team. I am objecting that:
- he is not the only one, because the shaman can also do it.

Not close to as well or consistently, simply because his spells are of too short a duration, and (again, barring lunar magic) because he has to have the full value of any spell he cares to cast.

- this is not early in the campaign, and when he can do it, the other character have also access to it.

That's in part because you're assuming vastly more Power investment than I saw necessary to start creating the problem. You're also being far more conservative (from what I can tell) about the needed skill values.

Let me ask a question: does the RQ campaigns you were in have any significant downtime? If not, I can see some of the reasons why you might think some of the above, as this cripples the ability to study skills and to get much use out of Ceremony for ritual skills.

Last point I am objecting is that armoring and strengthening enchantments are for us much in use, especially because it allows lighter armor, and thus lower ENC, for the same protection. And more HP are always good.

I can only note I never saw it attractive for anyone locally.