I didn't see this around, but I could be mistaken. I just had a session where the magic cop used Banish on a demon and it states the target number is the demon's willpower. Since, the most typical attribute, is less than 10, and since his Sorcery AV is 15, unless he rolls a sever negative dice, he will always be successful? That seems a bit hardcore, since most other AVs target defensive AV?
Thanks for any answers. I was just curious if this is true?
As stated, that's how it works. I have some other suggestions on my website, but the simplest solution is to look at the Sorcery modifiers chart in the main rule book and use the line that syas 'derails plot- automatic failure'. So, any time the creature is important to the plot enough that just hosing it is unwelcome, the GM has carte blanche to stop summoning from working.
Supernatural Creatures that don't take Damage Immunity: Sorcery are just in for a world of hurt. The ability to summon/bind/command/dominate demons is a weakness built into the template. There are some pretty broken things you can do with supernatural creatures, and using sorcery against them is a bit like a "check & balance".
Magic Cop may get around this, since his Unique Schtick may not explicitly count as part of the Sorcery Schtick... that's a cool trademark-type ability for the Magic Cop, so you want to be careful about nerfing that... if you're a supernatural creature and you don't want to revert to your natural form, then you'd best stay far away from Magic Cops.
That being said... under the current rules, any ability that rolls a combat-related AV against an unmodified base attribute is a bit "broken", since most AVs are in the 13-15 range and the average base attribute is around 5. So, essentially, you have to keep an eye out for this kind of abuse (either for or against the players) and maybe add a houserule to make sure these abilities don't completely throw game balance out the window.
I've seen two houserules suggested before to fix this problem:
And yeah, as Queex mentioned, Plot Necessity is your trump card.
[color=darkblue]The discrepency between Skill ratings and Attribute ratings has always been one of the Big Things mentioned when discussing a theoretical rewrite of the Feng Shui rules.
I personally use the Creature Power rating as the base Difficulty for Banishment and the like. This seems more reasonable to me, as nastier monsters generally have a higher CP skill rating.
For example, the hopping vampire has a Will of 0. (No Mind score at all.) They should be able to be Banished by a loud sneeze, per the rules. However, their description specifically says that they're single-minded, persistent, and that they "never give up." That should count for something, so I use their above-average Creature Powers score of 10. A beginning sorceror, magic cop, or Taoist wizard can still Banish or otherwise affect them with a good roll, but it's not a sure thing for an inexperienced magic-user, and I don't think it should be (in my games, of course.)
Most monsters have a Powers score around 6-8, so most mook monsters aren't even going to be as much of a challenge as the vampires, so the whole thing works out really well for me.
Another possibility is when someone's been using Summoning to bring the creatures in the first place- then it makes sense that the difficulty for banishment or whatever if the action result that brought it there or commanded it in the first place.
If the bad guy had lackeys with Sorcery or some ritual elements, using summoning to hose it may be bear impossible.
On the subject of skill vs attribute, I've sometimes wondered if a kinder method of attribute-based rolls (such as running, perception checks and the like) would be to use the same method as for initiative.
I gave one GMC Sorcerer a unique Sorcery F/X that let him burn a permanent Magic Point to "lock" a willing supernatural creature under his control. Once done, the recipient of the Dark Pact was resistant (but not immune) to any attempts to dominate or banish it by other Sorcerers--essentially, it used the summoning Sorcerer's AV as its resistance value. This made things fairly balanced--I only had the Sorcerer use the Dark Pact on creatures I really, really wanted the PCs to have to face.