It's 10 damage after damage resistance roll. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Acutally you could negate this at spell creation. E-damage is acc. to the description also stun damage but the spell deals physical damage. So this shouldn´t be a problem.

No, mundane electrical damage from tazers and stun batons is stun. The magical electrical attack is much more powerful and therefore get bumped up to Physical. Mundane sonic attacks (shouting, loud noises) don't do any damage at all, but the magical variety are much more intense and therefore get bumped up to stun.

Magical electric damage is specifically listed as physical, just as magical sonic damage is specifically listed as stun for balance reasons. Any home-made spells would require GM approval and if you tried to pass off a sound elemental spell that bypassed armor and did physical damage it would be perfectly canon to say 'No'.

I think the Lightning Bolt spell is physical, because mundane lightning damage would also be physical. You could probably make a Taser Bolt spell though, that did stun damage. Probably for a friendlier drain, too.

I certainly agree that you should be able to make a tazer bolt spell for less drain. And you should be able to make a physical sound spell too - I'd just assign much higher drain for it. It's hard for me to imagine how intense a noise (not blast wave but just pure sound waves) would need to be to kill a guy, or to punch through a barrier.

On some level stun and physical in the real world is just a matter of semantics. A lightning bolt is just a taser bolt with the power so high that the stun damage overflows into the physical track.

Volts Jolt, Amps Vamp.

Tazers use high voltage, very low amperage electric shocks, a lightning bolt (real, mundane, from the sky) OTOH is extremely high amperage (and voltage). The spell moves to mimic the later rather than the former.

References:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...18063917AAeTZxb
http://www.slate.com/id/2154253/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...02021746AApnvbr
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_volts_o...tning_bolt_have

Sorry, but 100% disagree. Acc. to the specification (SR4, page 154) electrical damage is stun. Elemental effects rely on this specifications but nevertheless the corresponding spells do physical damage. So also the sound-attack could be chosen to do physical damage. That magical attacks differ from the description is just an assumption from you, not an verified declaration. On page 136 of Street magic, the drain modifier table gives you an explicit choice between stun and physical damage. So every combat-spell with elemental effect can definitely do physical damage (actually it says that the elemental effect has to deal physical damage, too)

Besides that, also mundane noise can do physical damage and affect inanimated objects. Street magic (page 156) says and we all know that vibrations are definitely capable of damaging inanimate structures (e.g. bridges that shouldn´t be passed in lock-step by bigger military units, collapse of buildings through vibrations caused by earthquakes etc. Also people have died because intense vibrations caused heartfailures through influencing the hearbeats)

I think that one is only "plausible" rather than "proven."

In 1850, 730 french soldiers passed the hanging-bridge in Angers and caused a collapse due to the resonances caused by their lock-step. At least this happening is approved. Check (the german) wikipedia with the key-word "resonance catastophe". Unfortunately i didn´t find an english version at the go.

The fact that the lightning elemental attack IS different from the description is a validation of the distinction between the two.

Also, if you're going to use harmonic resonance as the justification for sound doing physical damage, you would have to have separate spells targetted to each target. The resonant frequency of sounds that will shatter glass is not the same as what would effect steel, etc.

Not really, it is just a verification of the drain-modifier table that lets you choose which kind of damage you want to do.

This is where magic comes in. You choose the target and everything elso is done. But it leaves a good way to create limited-target-versions of the spell like the limited versions of acid stream are "corrode/melt/sludge (object)".

They mentioned that when they did the episode of Mythbusteres, the bridge may have collapsed due to surpassing its weight limit. You'd kinda notice the "resonance cascade" as it builds, it gets really really hard to keep walking when the bridge is swaying that much.

Yeah, but we are talking about possibility, not likelihoods.

Well, a clear note of correct frequency and volume can shatter glass, so physical sonic damage has a basis in reality.

And it can also destroy your eardrums or cause neuronal damage, which both look VERY MUCH like physical damage to me.

Lots of things that qualify as stun damage in the SR rules can shatter glass. A slap can break glass. That doesn't mean that a slap should do physical damage in SR.

There's no reason that you can't make a magical spell that does sound damage, and even in extreme situations does physical damage. But the GM doesn't have to agree that it should only be one point of drain higher than the stun version.

Right now the sound elem spell already breaks the generic rules by bypassing armor, which makes it pretty uber compared to the other elem spells. The only thing that balances this out is that it's stun only. Normally mages don't use elem spells on live critters because direct damage spells are more efficient and also ignore armor. So having this elem spell ignore armor (but only on living things that can be stunned) is no big deal. Making an elemental spell that did physical damage (and therefore could effect vehicles, drones, etc.) and didn't require direct line of sight (as an indirect spell), and ignored armor...would be a big deal and should have suitably atrocious drain.

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here, but if you're disagreeing with Patrick's statement, you're wrong. The spell's Force is added to the damage inflicted, so to reach the threshold of 10 (to knock down any target) the spell needs to deal 0 or more damage.

10 Boxes != 10 DV

Force of the spell => DV

Edit:

Oh, I see what you're saying. DV + Force = Knockdown test.

I would say that sound element effects could do physical damage with a custom spell, just based on the fact that it's magic. I mean, when you're hit with a magic fireball, it isn't real fire, it's mana that's being manipulated by the magician to look and act like real fire, but after the spell ends the fire dissapears. It's the magician's will that takes the fire and causes it to produce heat and deal physical damage. It's the same thing as with sound spells. The spell doesn't create real sound, it manipulates mana to sound and act like sound waves, but when the spell ends the sound dissapears. Therefore, if the magician wills the spell to deal physical damage and act like sound, the actual physics don't matter. It's magic, it doesn't have to conform to the mundane world's rules. However, this is all my highly subjective opinion, so take it for what you will.

1) Smoke elemental effect also bypasses armor. The only difference to sound is, that there ARE ways to get protected, while against sound there are no common ways to do so.

2) The RAW already cover the fact that physical damage should have higher drain, so no extra-drain-modifier from the GM.