I will grant that people can call cosmic unnatural, but elemental not so much. The Communes weren't bothered by exploring the elemental planes back in the day, they've never really caused us trouble other than the plant-killing melds, which the pre-taint earth demesne wouldn't necessarily do, and they don't have any fae-eating monsters on them, just some weird rock dudes the mages worship for some reason. They also have a bunch of nice power which is collected by fairly harmless wildlife and secreted as essence, and which has not yet proven harmful.

Water demesnes mess with herb growth, too.

Elementalism is the opposite of druidry. Rather than subtly invoke the power of nature, it relies on big, blocky, brute uses of force. And the mages were the beginning of the cities...well, raping everything.

Elementalism is greed.

Water demesnes mess with herb growths, yes, but that's obvious - it floods them with water. There's no guarantee that an air or pre-taint earth demesne would do so.

Elementalism isn't really the opposite of druidry, it's kind of a very narrow, specialised subset of planar magic manipulation (this is subject to your beliefs on the relationships between the planes, but if you don't believe they're connected, remember that event where the earth lords went nuts and Faethorn got all twisted as a result.) And no, the mages weren't the beginning of that - the Communes didn't mind it, remember. The cosmic-people were the beginning of that, since we thought we'd be fine with just up to elemental and they disagreed.

The communes were all "make with what we have now - be resourceful."

The cities, well - "More resources = more power = better future."

Uuh yeah, mages started off as just druids who healed the seas soo... um hmm

Just a thought regarding the objections people have about curing the spirits.

Why not have Focus Spirit remove the spirit, as some have suggested. To stop the high speed of Focus Spirit ruining the skills for the Wildarrane, though, make Focus Spirit become something of a channeled action when the one focusing is still in the same room as the Wildarrane.

The Wildarrane's near presence enforces the spirit, and any attempt to purge the spirit from your aura pits your will directly against the Wildarrane's, requiring a short struggle to succeed during which you cannot attempt other actions.

Make it so that the speed of Focus Spirit while in the same room is just slightly faster than the Wildarrane's ability to attach the spirits to your aura, so that you can indeed cure completely without running, but at the expense of your offensive ability.

Just a thought, as I said. I don't know very much about combat at all, but that seems fair.

Or make it so that you lose a spirit every time you move. (I'm trying to figure out why a spirit can cling better to an enemy than to the bard itself)

Two ideas:

1. Make them focus-spiritable, but only when the bard isn't in the room. Or...

2. Make them fade every 30 seconds when the bard is in the room, every 10 seconds when the bard isn't in the room. Numbers are adjustable, of course.

I told Xiel that the Spirit should be like an entourage to be lost. Bards can hinder really well, especially with stacking and losing spirits takes balance and you have to be on balance. So it really doesn't stop them from stacking spirits.

Because they follow the spiritsinger around, whereas they attach themselves to the enemies aura

Why doesn't the Spiritsinger attach them to his/her aura, then?

Because when they're attached to your aura, they can't do helpful things like jump in front of attacks for you, because they're stuck.

Really? They seem to be able to jump out and carry you around just fine when asked... if they can move that much, they could easily move out in front of you during an attack.

Water demesnes mess with herb growth in the water.

I think you misread what you quoted...I know that. That's what I said.

@Synl: Maybe making them writhable, not focus spiritable, when the bard isn't in the room. I don't see it as likely that they're going to do anything then spam reattach them when you come back in though. Oh well.

No, like, Aquamancer demesnes kill herbs in the Inner Sea. It happens regardless of the plants being flooded.

Ahh. Ok, consider that point retracted, but the rest of them (particularly the Communes not minding the elemental planes and the mages, only being dubious about the cosmics) still apply.

EDIT: Someone should find out if geo demesne kills wormwood.

I know you're just being argumentative for its own sake and all, but really, being "stuck" to you precludes them dragging you around? That's a reach even by the standards of this whole conversation.

It removes the argument that they are "unable to move around somewhat when attached to the aura" (otherwise, how would they be able to drag you in any specific direction?) As such, if they are able to move that much, they should be more than capable of moving in between you and an attack, even if attached to the aura. From a purely non-mechanical aspect, there doesn't seem any reason for them not to be attached to the SpiritSinger's aura (excepting that they probably wouldn't be able to do the passive damage attack). Anything else should still work just fine, without the "lose 'em as you walk" aspect.