No, but you can't spont Rituals. It's a significant spell that you have to have spent time learning.
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Since a typical summoning spell is level 40 (due to the need for R:AC) very few if any can cast that spontaneously either.
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This is how I'd prefer it. Fairly easy if the spirit is in front of you. Harder id you summon it using an AC. A Ritual if it's in another realm.
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I would concur here though I would think a distinction should be made between spirits summoned from a Realm and spirits that are Daimons (of whatever type/Realm). I think the idea of Formulaic for inside the normal world and Ritual for outside of it is pretty simple and apt. It seems like it would work well as a general principle applied to all spirit summoning guidelines.
This is also potentially distinct from summoning a spirit from a Realm, and not unlike say "Awakening" a spirit from or related to a thing. That could be a deceased person, or it could be the faerie or spirit of a house or farm for instance. Or of the bonfire in front of you. And gives essentially zero guidance as to how powerful that spirit should be.
This also raises questions regarding the spirit landscape of Mythic Europe and how common or difficult it is to find and interact with spirits. My impression is that at the low end (such as Titanoi spirits of a person's anger for example) that this is almost trivial if you have the right spells. Conversely high end spirits we really are left to our own discretion as to where/how we would find them.
Perhaps in addition to a baseline conversion of summoning from Formulaic to Ritual it would be beneficial to have a distinct Ritual Only guideline with a formula for raising/awakening a spirit of x might at x magnitude would be more useful in play for adjudicating such "created" spirits. Though it would also beg the question of how long their creation lasts?
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I strongly think summoning should be a ritual and require a spell to be learned. Thematically summoning in fantasy isn't easy, and often dangerous. Rituals simulate that better. Also consider the narrative impact - fast summoning means the Big Bad Evil Guy doesn't have a long ritual for the PC's to disrupt. If PC's want easy summoning then they need to learn the Summon virtue or Sihr.
Ritualistic summoning still exists within the ruleset as it stands. It just isn't necessary for "all" summoning. There is still plenty of plot potential for disrupting a big summoning ritual. Just that such a big summoning ritual would likely be your BBEG summoning a high end Daimon that actually could do some big (ritual magic grade) things that the PCs really don't want done.
So the story potential here isn't really impacted I think in any meaningful way.
I concur with this view. It is already such high end magic that generally it takes a specialist summoner build to perform with any real proficiency as a Hermetic. That doesn't seem highly imbalanced to me. Add on pursuing spirit magic mysteries and you have a deep and demanding specialty that does very specific but interesting and potentially powerful things.
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So, how about this as a general explanation?
Summoning Spirits
Hermetic magic is capable of summoning spirits. Such magic brings the spirit instantly to the caster, but does not grant any control — other magic may be used for those purposes, and a spirit may be summoned directly into a ward cast by the summoner. (Wards cast by anyone else affect the spirit as normal, and may keep the spirit out if it is not powerful enough to cross the ward.) Summoning spells are normally cast at Arcane Connection range, making them quite high level.
If the target spirit is in Mythic Europe, a Formulaic (or Spontaneous) spell is sufficient. If the spirit is in another realm, such as a different level of a regio, or the Magic Realm itself, then a Ritual spell is necessary.
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Let me be blunt. I do not like it.
First of all, it breaks Invocation Magic (TMRE p.79), as both Invoke the Spirit of (spell) and Invoke the Spirit of (Form) become Rituals, and thus virtually useless.
Second, it still leaves muddled what happens to "unmanifested" ghosts. When raising a ghost are you calling it from another Realm, or...? The same muddling now starts to seed doubts about what will happen with teleportation to/from regiones; which if I recall correctly must be formulaic or it breaks access to some canon covenant located in an otherwise inaccessible reio (do you really want magi to freely teleport into it, but have to leave their Spirit Familiar behind?).
Third, it similarly makes unclear what happens with spirits invoked via e.g. Summoning the Spirit of Anger. Where are they usually? It's not obvious .
Fourth, it does not solve what I call the "Daimon Cost Problem". Summoning Daimons should always cost vis to any Summoner (for a number of reasons; because they can often replicate Rituals and leave vis behind in any case, because that vis explicitly allows the Daimon to strengthen itself etc.). The "it's a Ritual if it's trans-realm" solution neither helps with non-Hermetic Summoners, who can still Summon Daimons for free, nor does it help with Hermetic Theurgists who somehow find access to the Magic Realm and can then suddenly arbitrarily boost their favourite Daimons for free.
Fifth, on a related note, it makes demon summoning very easy for non-Hermetic summoners, but rather hard for Hermetic ones. Shouldn't the road to Hell be wide and easy?
I think that a much simpler, cleaner solution is to leave Spirit Summoning non-Ritual, separate vis sacrifice and "ceremony" from actual summoning when dealing with Daimons, and possibly choose/clarifiy whether Incantation of the Summoning Dead can simply teleport ghosts (certainly non-Ritual) or raise them (perhaps, but not necessarily, Ritual; I guess that if non-Ritual Rego can induce a dead cow to spontaneously generate bees, it can induce a dead man to spontaneously generate a ghost?)
Why would they suddenly become Rituals? I can't see anything that suggests such spirits normally inhabit some other realm.
Well, where do they come from then, and most of all where do they go after casting exhausting their magic?
Plus, let's assume that they usually just hang around Mythic Europe... do you really need need a Ritual to use them in any Regio?
I don't think it is clearly stated where spell spirits normally are. The fact that they are treated as unique and summonable with standard spells means they are much more accessible than Daimons which are more explicitly understood to be spirits found in the Realms.
The way Spell Spirits are described and function my personal take on them has always been that they are part of the way the basic reality of Mythic Europe functions. The spiritual underpinnings of natural law, literally making things work "normally" for Mythic reasons instead of normal reasons. My interpretation of this has always been that they are therefore part of the spiritual substrate layer of reality which makes up Mythic Europe itself and not creatures of the Realms. Spirits of the Realms that we might meaningfully interact with I tend to see as (greater) Daimon figures/spirits.
That said I'm not a huge fan of Spell Spirits being permanently killable, so I tend to treat them as minor daimons akin to genus loci. To me this also makes sense in the context of them being integral parts of the world and its functioning. No ... the earth isn't going to somehow stop functioning normally because you summon a big Terram spirit and it is no longer doing its job in the natural order. Why? Because you summoned an aspect. It keeps it tidy and closes the loop on why we don't need to worry about second order effects of such summoning.
I do think Regiones should be excepted from the Ritual requirement. Unless they are Regiones that would preclude the normal functioning of ACs perhaps. Yet in general Regiones could still be teleported in or out of for example. And if that effect would still function, then why wouldn't summoning via AC? The Realm boundaries negate ACs and this is a substantive and consistent reason for the elevation to a ritual in order to achieve the summoning effect.
Yep. Regios are not part of the Magic, Divine, Faerie or Infernal Realms.
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Same place as Airy Spirits (which they may or may not be a subset of). Those are all native to the material world, so they hang around - mostly in magical places, but sometimes elsewhere too.
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For all we know, a Spell Spirit doesn't actually exist until a theurge creates the formulaic spell to invoke it.
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I find that summoning is a great opportunuity to differentiate tradititions. Basic hermetic magic should be a great catch all but less efficient then other options. Here are a few ideas
• non-ritual summoning: Airy spirits, Ghosts. Spirit will obey for the duration of the effect
• non-ritual summoning with virtue: Airy spirits, Ghosts you have an AC to or within a container such as a castle. Momentary duration. Spitits typically are willing to barter with the summoner. Some traditions even have deals with spirits so that there is no requirement to penetrate the might in order for the spirit to appear
• Ritual summoning: same as non-ritual but can target spirits that do not have the means to manifest, are hostile or are protected by a greater spirit (Includes regios)
• Ritual summoning w virtue: same as non-ritual with virtue. Can also do all of basic Ritual summoning but spirits are generally disposed to make a deal.
This is really a quick recap of how I see the current rules. I also agree that the infernal should be quite responsive to summons... to the point that they answer if the original target fails to.
W
I think it is a much more simple solution to leave the summoning as-is, far as the Ritual and Formulaic distinction go.
If the spirit resides beyond Mythic Europe in some capacity (Daimons, Demons, non-haunting Ghosts) then you need a ritual. If it is a spirit that actively exists in the mortal world (Airy Spirits [I'd consider Spell Spirits a category of such], Haunting Ghosts, etc.) then a formulaic summon will suffice.
Imo, any differences in the difficulty of summons could be explained either by the difference of the original source of such magic, or the time and effort that was put into developing this branch of Hermetic Magic further. For example we know Pralix, Tytalus and Tremere were apprenticed to Goetic Sorceress and that their magic contributed to the Hermetic understanding of Summoning, but between conjuring ghosts and demons, the former was far more likely to have been refined in the following centuries.
There is, as far as I understand, no clear lore that says spirits of (spell) and (form) are in the Magic Realm. In fact, the text seems to suggest the later: "There are many minor spirits in Mythic Europe, and the laboratory work to invent the spell is enough to discover the name of a spirit that suits the
magus’s need."
Which is muddy enough as regiones are known to sometimes be accessible to teleport and sometimes not accessible to teleport. As this ruling touches on summoning spirits from a realm, there isn't anything that fundamentally breaks summoning spirits in a regio.
In the angry person. It's really not that different from the qareen and shadim, actually. The Spirit of anger is with you at all times you're angry, it's just not really manifest and not necessarily able to spend might. It's really not that different from theurgy, especially when you consider the explanation denied by theurgists that says these spirits are born from the spell research...
Hermetic limits don't necessarily apply to non-hermetics. Those non-hermetic typically have a reason to summon daimon (e.g. spirit votary) that may be motivation enough for the daimon to show in person for free.
Hedge case. If you've learned something as a ritual, it's still a ritual because you learned the magic that way. Yes, you can probably learn a formulaic that only works in the magic realm, but the GM is free to rule that Daimon Points are only obtained from the ritual version, and that the Daimon now needs bargaining with for services, or just withdraws the aspect.
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I am not sure to which "ruling" you are referring, but:
Also, keep in mind that the issue comes up not only if the spirit is in a regio and the wizard is not, but viceversa too. Even if you assume that spell spirits normally reside in "main" Mythic Europe, this would make Invocation Magic effectively inaccessible whenever the wizard is in a regio, including many covenants. This would be a big departure from the current setting.
But if that's the case, there's no need to summon them. Just command them where they are. Sure, you may need to perceive them first, but if you have no magical means to do that, you can just command them with T:Circle or T:Room.
I didn't realise David had included regios there, so thanks for quoting the text! You do have a point, for your spirit familiar case, I suppose. I guess there are workarounds to the problem, probably, like binding your spirit familiar temporarily prior to teleporting.
Just a reminder that Invocation Magic, while part of the school of hermetic theurgy, is not the actual mystery that allows the Invoke spells. The mysterry is hermetic theurgy.
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This looks like a clash between your house rules and the proposed erratum, which can be fixed with house rules.
Summoning is not teleportation, and this is the sort of edge case that is always going to need troupe rulings. (We have an covenant in an unusual regio, and a magus using a Virtue from a supplement.)
Daimons are a separate issue.
The simplest solution is indeed to make spirit summoning non-Ritual in general, and errata Incantation of Summoning the Dead. I'm still open to that possibility.