Question:

How does a group of non-awakend characters deal with spirits attacking them? Since the spirits are immune to normal weapons it should be quite difficult.

Is there something like magically enhanced bullets for normal weapons? What would they cost?

Option one: being good at dealing damage, i.e. having lot's of net hits.
Option two: Spirit Killer ammo, formally known as APDS.

There's Attack of Will, and certain magical preparations that can make a mundane character's life easier, and when all else fails there are unconventional weapons. Magic bullets, not so much.

Of course Attack of Will is pointless agains spirits that you can't shoot with a regular gun.

WIL vs. Force x2 is not promising much success. Somewhere along gamedesign something weird happend to spirits. They can be easily shot, but if you try an Attack of Will, you better be a Master of Banishing.

Don't forget Option Three: RUN YOU STUPID FRAGGER!

I could have sworn I recall some anti-magic armaments from Arsenal, though. I'll check into it.

Edit: with a casual browse I found Wyrd Mantis Essence, which is like insect spirit repellent. Unless they happen to be Mantis spirits, then all bets are off. Other than that, the Espirit Grenade hinders Astral sight. Other than that, nothing that I see.

Spirits are one of the reasons that Melee weapons have made a major comeback in vogue. I mean, hell, the Swiss Army ordered "Swiss Army Swords"! (See Arsenal for details! I know one of the characters in my story wants one bad!).

I suggest something fireproof and doesn't conduct heat if you're going to be putting a beating on a Fire Elemental, however. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Thx Malicant, could have come up with APDS myself, sometimes things are quite easy...

I actually was thinking about a scenario where the characters have only hold-out type pistols, so yeah, they would need a lot of net hits...

And running is no option (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Anyway, i liked the idea of magic bullets, delivering lets say a small manabolt on impact. Though they should be limited and extremely expensive....

Tai Chi. You must learn how to focus your Chi, grasshopper.

Moderate force spirits are awkward but not impossible. A force 4 spirit can go down before good shots from an Ares Predator (2 points of called shot.) From a Streetline special, you better be a very good shot, and called shot for +4 / -4. But then, even taking down a troll with a Streetline is hard.

If the Force gets much higher though, it really gets much harder for mundanes to overcome the hardened armor. (A high strength Troll boix will still make the Spirit very unhappy. An Adept PowerThrow Troll, or even PowerThrow Orc can probably get enough to matter. But remember that the Spirits defense has gone up as well when the force went up. And its soak.) Personally, for Force 6 spirits, I think you want called shots to overcome hardened armor, and compensated long bursts from a good gun to get enough damage to matter.
Advanced characters can probably come up with other choices. But magic (either Weapon's Focus and good melee, or actuall spell casting) is your friend when forces get higher.

Yours,
JoelHalpern

Big guns/grenades and a big dice pool (or a wide long burst) to make sure the spirit won't dodge.
For some spirits, you can exploit their weakness to bypass its armor.

SnS and Tazer's AP doesn't work according to Rob, and I'm still not sure about APDS and called shots.
Attack of Will is mostly useless, so is FAB.
Running away won't work since the spirits will be much faster than you (they can travel in the astral plane if needed). Your best bet is to use petite brume grenades to hide you and your aura while you run but even then the spirit will just have to get out of the smoke and search for you (which can be quick, especially in the astral plane).

Magic bullets are possible, just absurdly expensive. If you can stand the idea of paying more for a bullet than you paid for the gun, probably several times more, then it can be done. All you need is a magician with the Anchoring metamagic and an offensive spell who is willing to make them for you.

Somewhat off topic: y'know, that'd be an interesting concept for a character; a mage that makes specialized, anchored bullets - perhaps kind of like Gene Starwind and his Caster Shells from Outlaw Star in their rarity and seriousness of expenditure. Hmm.... Thank you for that idea, hyz. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Thx hyzmarca!

Hadn`t gone through street magic myself, yet.

Of course, it`s horrible expensive, but the effects!!!

Shooting someone with a sniper rifle and simultaneously hitting him with a manabolt would make assassination jobs where you only have one shot quite easy, though the pay has to be great to afford the bullets...

Or, alternatively, a Match-Grade Bullet with an Area Effect spell anchored upon it to get everyone with a single shot.

Hell, get a Streetline Special round made with that, and suddenly you have some scary holdouts!

What would be the pay the creating mage asks for?

If you take tho Karma for Cash "rules" into consideration it would be at least 5000 Nuyen for the point of karma used up + that what the mage charges for himself...

Probably 7500 + ?

Can someone point me to the rules or reasoning behind why APDS ammo affects spirits?

Thanks.

With a sweep of his...

Hat

:shrug: Well it's magic...
Why would spirits get more damage from a heavy pistols than from a light pistol in the first place?

I believe all spirits capable of engaging in combat have a natural weakness of some sort. So if you stumble on a fire spirit... hit him with a water hose! Woooosh!

APDS work because they are better and penetrating matter than a regular bullet. Materialized spirits (the only kind you can shoot) are made out of some kind of physical matter. Thus, the APDS goes deeper, and is more effective against the spirit.

No page references here, but...

Immunity to normal weapons gives hardened armor equal to Fx2 to a materialized spirit. If your base DV + net hits equals or exceeds the spirits Fx2 - AP, then you can do damage to them. Otherwise, the spirit ignores your attack.

Therefore, a Ruger Super Warhawk loaded with APDS (6P -6AP) is one of the best, concealable anti-spirit guns you can carry. With a single net success, you defeat a Force 6 spirit's immunity to normal weapons. The spirit still gets to resist the damage, but you still beat its immunity. And at Force 3, a spirit doesn't even get its immunity against that attack.

Okay, so the bit about the Ruger being the best, concealable anti-spirit gun is my own 2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . Short-Barrel Shotguns work well too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif) Still, the image of a wild west gunslinger filling an approaching spirit with lead from his ass big hand cannon is just too cool. IMO, of course.

-paws

That would make sense if it was an earth or plant spirit and a character was shooting chunks off of it. But fire spirits are made of... fire which is, in turn, made up of a chemical reaction of oxygen and some sort of superheated (and I assume "magical") fuel source. Shoot a burning log with a sniper rifle and the log isn't going to extinguish. But toss a big enough explosion at it and it will suck the oxygen away, extinguishing the fire. Ditto air spirits.

My interpretation of the hardened armor ruling on spirits is that it applies to weapons that would affect the equivalent mundane matter.

I hope Catalyst gives some sort of ruling on this in their Running Wild book because this stuff drives me nuts.

Fire spirits could just as easily be made of lava, or plasma, both of which have physical components which could have chunks shot off of them. Air spirits could be damaged by the air being seperated from their form, and thus reverting back to normal air, instead of being a part of the spirit, effectively shooting a "chunk" of air off it.

Spirits have hardened armor because they don't have organs, or anything like that, and as such, aren't as vulnerable to being shot/sliced/etc as creatures with organs/blood/etc.

Well, no not exactly. As I recall, a fire spirit doesn't actually burn anything unless it uses it Fire Aura power. Otherwise, its a construct of heat-less flame that doesn't consume oxygen or fuel or anything else.

I hate to say it, because it seems like a cop-out, but... its magic.

-paws

They don't. They don't have natural immunities, either. Fire burns the fire spirit just as easily as any other spirit of its force but a high pressure hose won't hurt him any more than it would hurt a water spirit of the same force.


If you want to anchor an area effect spell to a bullet either it must be a an indirect spell or it must be accompanied by a detection spell. Indirect is cheaper.

Actually, I had an idea for an absurdly expensive grenade in which each fragment contains an anchored area elemental spell. Thus every target in the blast radius becomes the epicenter of one or more elemental spells.

Edit: Fire spirits aren't made out of fire and air spirits aren't made out of air. It's where they live, not what they are.

Well, there goes that idea out the window. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It's just... does anyone else find it a bit... inelegant to treat a spirit like a drive-by victim? Probably just me. Oh well, I'll let this go.