In a fight a hostile shaman summoned a Wind Dancer spirit, but then instead of coming after my team (which had left the room to get in a better strategic position) the spirit attacked members of its own faction and the opponents started to fight it, too. Not quite sure if the spirit acted like that right from the beginning or only after I had killed the shaman who controlled it. The latter would make more sense, but I suspect it was the former.* Is this normal behavior for spirits that they can turn on their own faction or is this a bug?

* On repeating the battle, I noticed the spirit usually vanishes when its mistress dies, so it must have been freed from her control in the first case, since it was still around after her death. So is there a chance that shamans fail to control the spirits they conjure by design, with the consequence that the spirits will become hostile towards all?





*SPOILER FOR DEAD MAN'S SWITCH*
The scene in which it happened was the one where you're after Gino and you get an optional quest of not hurting any of the chipheads in the room. The spirit attacked and killed a chiphead while I wasn't in the room and couldn't even see what it was doing, and therefor the quest failed ...

I guess it makes sense and I think it works like that in some D&D games, too, but since I didn't play a shaman myself this turn of events was quite unexpected and unfortunate in this case. Luckily I was able to repeat the combat and take out the shaman before her spirit could break free. Anyway, thanks for the detailed reply!

New question about spirits that came up:
If a spirit dies, is the shaman punished for it, e.g. do they receive damage for it?

In Shadowrun Dragonfall there was one mission with the objective that the whole party must survive. A shaman in my party summoned a spirit in a fight, and when the spirit was killed, the game considered the mission failed and I got a Game Over screen, even though to my knowledge no real member of the team died, only the summoned spirit.

In case a shaman can receive significant damage for losing their spirit, there's a possibility that this damage killed my shaman and that's what caused the immediate failure of the mission to fail, but if there's no such penalty, then this seems to be a bug worth reporting.

Sounds like a bug to me. Shamans don't receive damage when their summon dies.

Which mission? I assume it was the first?

If so I've never had this bug, and I tend to use Dietrich to summon spirits during that mission (that inevitably get killed, break free or I banish).

Did your shaman (or another of your party) get hit by something that does recurring damage? Or did perhaps the nasty orc shoot his minigun through your spirit and hit one of your guys with a stray shot?

One of those two things can do it if the party member in question has low enough health.

It wasn't the first mission, it might have been the one where you *SPOILER* have to disarm the bombs in the sewer system after the attack on the Kreuzbasar. *SPOILER END* So no orc with minigun, and I'm not aware of Dietrich taking recurring damage. The mission failed right after the spirit vanished, so I'm inclined to believe konpeki is right. I'll try to contact the developers, I've also found another bug concerning Simmy which is pretty depressing in its current state (*SPOILER* once her story is finished, it just starts over, meaning she goes from hopeful perspective right back to full addict again *SPOILER END*). :D

Oh yeah right - forgot there are other missions where survival is paramount apart from the first and the last lot.

I'm pretty sure I had a spirit vanish on me in that mission though and that didn't happen, so it could be a hard to reproduce bug.

As for Simmy, I think I may have encountered that. I've also had some issues with the chick from the coffee shop not saying dialogue she should, as well as Aljernon's "assistant" not "predicting" things for me. I think DC is a bit wonky with respect to Kreuzbasar dialogue for some reason.