Which is the point.
This is not optomised and can stand up to forse 1-4 spirits reasonably reliably and has a decent shot against force 5-7. A force 5+ spirit is NOT a street ganger you can turn into sashimi on your way to get groceries because he gave you lip, it is a being of another world bound by either a powerful (magic5+) mage at some light risk or by a "decent" mage (magic 3-4) at risk of signifigant physical harm or death. A starting 400 point mage can summon these fairly regularly, sure. And a starting 400 point sami can take on a small gang solo. A 400 drone rigger... etc etc etc.

As the opposition I agree with several others here - anything over force 6 is serious Mojo - at 7 it is smarter and more willful then nearly all meta-humans. In and around force 10 even the heavily augmented cannot keep up with their mental facilties. Mages should FEAR summoning such things and never do such lightly (ok so some will go out of their way to summon such all day every day, but few of these will pass the Corp or Militaries Psych profiling)

Figure out the weakness of said spirit, and take advantage of it.

I figure Guidance Spirits would never be able to figure out the lyrics to "They Might Be Giants".

Or better yet...ask yourself "why am I punching at this thing, especially since it can have a damaging aura?" and use a gun.

It's not like Shadowrun penalizes you for bringing an assault rifle to a fistfight.

Marine Corps Way To Win A Knife Fight: "Bring a Firearm."

Doesn't it penalize you if you are involved in melee combat with a firearm greater in size than a pistol?

Here are a few nasty tricks I've come up with for my summoner.

Seek and Destroy
- if a summoner has seen someone, they can send the spirit to track them down (Search p. 297)
- the summoner can wait until a target is in a vehicle/alone/asleep/going to the bathroom ... then have the spirit Materialize (P. 296) at point blank range and attack

Gather Information
- a summoner can send a spirit of Man with the Innate Spell of Mind Probe (because summoner knows the spell; ability on p. 207) after a target
- 3 net successes and the Spirit, and therefore the summoner due to the constant mental link, knows the target's biggest secret
- it would be easy to do this several times in one night, virtually guaranteeing success (if target kills 1st spirit, second spirit is summoned in 3 seconds and the spirit travels to the target extremely fast astrally so there is no time for the target to get to a safe place)

Mobile Instant Shield
- a summoner can have a spirit follow him astrally until he speaks a key word
- when spoken, the spirit materializes and serves as a shield for the summoner
- the summoner can be 100% behind the spirit and then cast aoe spells centered approximately above where the spirit tells the caster the target is located (or summoner can just turn invisible and leave while target think's he's still behind the spirit; if this occurs, see previous two nasty tricks for the next steps)

All page numbers are in 4th ed 20th anniversary rulebook.

The most success I've had in this regard is stick and shock ammo and or huge dice pools for damage. I had a rigger blow away a beast spirit throwing like 20+ dice with edge. I rolled well though.

WHY would you get into/stay in MELEE combat with a Gun... use the biggest gun you can find, stand off and blast the spirit with it... why get close at all?

• If the spirit is following the guy, any time the guy walks through a ward the spirit will have to either combat the ward or give up pursuit. Depending on the cooperativeness of the spirit he might come back for additional instructions (and charge another service for the combat) or even worse, he might just bull his way through and alert the maker of the ward of his presence.
• Just because the first spirit knew where the target was would not mean that any subsequent spirits would know. And spirits don't read street maps. Any follow on spirits might have to go through another search all over again to find the dude.
• If the spirit materializes in front of you, he's blocking your line of sight as well as the enemy's. Your indirect AOE spell will be penalized for blind fire. You might as well just take cover behind anything else in the environment and send your spirit out to take care of business while you hide.

I can't find any other reference to this or what page its suppose to be on. Can you list me a page number please?

Sign--

Wacky

Street Magic... Page 94, right column.

Of course SnS rounds work against spirits, as well as stun batons and shock gloves. And yes, fire elementals are affected by flamethrowers and other fire damage, as they have no Immunity (Fire); the same goes for hellhounds. Water spirits would not drown, as they don't have to breathe in the first place though.



Ahem. Don't forget the Slab/Narcoject capsule rounds. Spirits do not have Immunity (Toxins), and those two toxins only require a Contact vector, IIRC.





I agree to both of these statements. In fact, Shadowrun seems to penalize close-quarters-combat character archetypes.

EDIT: Also, look at my signature for ideas about allowing mundanes to use dual-natured intelligent weapons.

Uh-huh.

Ah, Neraph. I've missed your input. Reading your posts, I'm almost able to believe that things are so simple to everyone. If only this were the case.

Personally I would approach this another way. If you're a mundane, you're fighting a manifested spirit and you're pretty much hooped.... unless you happen to have a weapon focus handy. Mundane or not, it's still not a normal weapon, so it'll do all the goodness it needs to. Bonding it just gives you those nice shiny extra dice.

Excellent point, DigitalHeroin! I checked the wording of Immunity, and it doesn't require a bonded magical weapon, just that it possess the characteristic of being magical. Honestly, in 20 years of playing, this particular aspect of weapon foci never struck me.

Duh.

I think a person is spilting hairs though since for all intents and purposes, an unbonded weapon focus is just a normal mundane piece of steel...

It's a remote service. He's not coming back.

This is likely related to why no effective military force has issued swords, axes or spears to their combat troops for the last 50 years or so.

There are a number of other ways to get a very similar effect:

1) Have the group's posession-based caster get a spirit to posess your weapon.
2) Have a free spirit contact posess your weapon.
3) Have a free spirit inhabit your weapon. This can either be set up like #2, or you can force a spirit to inhabit a weapon by summoning it.

All three of these options (off the top of my head) cause a weapon to be dual-natured, which ends up bypassing Immunity (Normal Weapons).

EDIT:


Note that these are just two of the best options for toxins, not the only options. You could also K-10 a spirit and see what happens; Pepper Punch is a good, cost-efficient option; or make your DM see what effect laes would have with an order just given, for example.

Ahem, doesn't every military unit get knives and bajonettes and the such issued still?
And todays Military does not have access to such Power-Horses like Orks, Trolls and Centaurs.

Knives aren't swords, and bayonets are basically knives affixed to the weapon. The last military that I can recall issuing larger than knife sized melee weapons to its soldiers was the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II where officers frequently had katanas. Pistols have since replaced larger than knife sized melee weapons as backup weapons. The knife is still very useful in numerous utilities beyond combat, so that's why they're still issued. Plus they're stealthy.

Didn't APDS-rounds used to be the spirit-killer ammunition back in sr3?

In SR3, a troll can get spirits bare-handed thanks to the different damage system.

In SR3, Trolls CAN actually cleave Tanks in half with Katanas. It was more Punk back when ^^