How many shifts to conjure a Spectre? And other Necromancy questions

[Magicpockets]

Hi all,
looking over OW pg 57, I've noticed the Spectre, and interesting necromantic minion. Now, as far as I recall, they don't require a drummer to operate, which gives them some advantages compared to regular Zombies. What I couldn't find, however, was the required amount of Shifts necessary to create/bind one.

Also, is there a cap to the number of minions one can have? I recall Binder having an army of those.

[Deadmanwalking]

Nope! No explicit cap. And no explicit difficulty to summon anything. Summoning doesn't work like that.

Summoning is basically a really good magical Contacts roll...so the caps have to do with what you want of them, how hard they are to find the contact info on in the first place,and similar issues. Think of it the same way you'd think of hiring a mundane army/posse if you had high Contacts and Resources. there are numerous potential logistical issues, but no hard difficulty per se.

Now, binding is a slightly different matter, that's effectively a Thaumaturgy spell to take someone or something out or inflict consequences on it and works accordingly. That'll work based on your and their Conviction.

So...do you want to just summon up some spectres and bargain with them, or do you want to bind them to service? The latter is a much longer and harder process...but does get you your muscle free of charge.

[Magicpockets]

The latter. Just some grunts with the stats from the book for some additional muscle.

[Deadmanwalking]

The latter. Just some grunts with the stats from the book for some additional muscle.

Well, summoning and binding has three steps:

#1: Create Warding Circle (Complexity 8-10 or so to really ensure the Spectre can't escape...this part, and only this part, probably only needs to be done once. Definitely only once if you add in some duration.)
#2: Summon Spectre (Complexity 6 or so)
#3: Bind Spectre (Complexity sufficient to take them out...call it 12 shifts if they can't take Moderate or worse Consequences)

You could potentially do Step 3 en masse as a Zone Wide spell for 2 more shifts (so 14 or so)...but that involves summoning up a whole bunch of Spectres and not having them bound for at least a bit.

[Sanctaphrax]

I strongly suggest you ignore the canonical summoning rules if you actually want to summon minions. Use these rules or just make something up for yourself.

Incidentally, I don't think you can make the binding "attack" zone-wide if you do for some crazy reason decide to go by the book.