are spirits effected by electrical damage? Options

[ixombie]

I think stick-n-shok would be unable to hurt passengers inside a vehicle because it does stun damage. It's not made very clearn in the RAW, but some common sense applies. Does it make sense that damage which the vehicle is totally immune to could penetrate it and hit those inside?

That's why gawd gave us juicy brains, so we could think for ourselves when RAW present us with odd conundrums such as this. If he wanted us to use every obvious oversight exactly as written, we'd be zombies.

[Garrowolf]

Okay, where did you get the idea that it was supposed to be easy to hurt spirits?

[Garrowolf]

I think that the only way stick n shock could effect the passengers is if the window was down and they had a clean hit. It would be a hard shot though.

[Ranneko]

Spirits are like anything else, if you are using them in a large combat as opponents then the GM may decide to use a single damage track for ease of bookkeeping.
Even if they lack seperate tracks, that does not prevent them taking both stun and physical, it just means that they die faster.

And unless there is a specific ruling otherwise, spirits are vulnerable to all of the effects of Stick'n'Shock, tasers and other forms of electrical damage, provided it penetrates their immunity to normal weapons as are other elemental attacks due to the halving armour effect.

The old elemental damage is good against spirits in SR4 is due to the way all elemental effects halve armour.

Oh, and if a spirit has an allergy to a substance, they don't get immunity to normal weapons against attacks of that type, which means not only do they take extra damage from the attack due to the allergy, they also have no armour against them.

[Garrowolf]

Wow Ranneko! Have you read the rules at all? None of what you just said is true!

Yes you can treat them as Grunt NPCs.

No there is no elemental effects rule like that in Shadowrun. You are confusing spell elemental effects with weakness Allergy that fire and water spirits have. NO spirit has weakness Allergy Electricity! And Actually read the Allergy rules. It does not provide AP or ignore armor.

Electricity is a natural non magical occurance. It does not apply as a magical effect so the immunity to normal weapons applies! There is NO bassis for the idea that it does!

There is NO elemental effects versus Armor rules either. It has a generalization that says that certain things that bullet proof vests are not designed to stop will only apply half impact armor. This has NOTHING to do with elemental energies. Keep in mind that bullets are the element of metal.

Elemental effects are that are magical ALSO gain that damage type's additional effect. IT DOES NOT GO THE OTHER WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERYTHING CAN BE LISTED AS MADE OF ELEMENTS! THAT IS THE POINT OF ELEMENTAL MAGICAL THEORY. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT EVERYTHING MADE OF AN ELEMENT ALSO HAS A MAGICAL EFFECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for raising my caps but I am getting a little frustrated I guess.

[Ranneko]

Yes, I have read the rules Garrowolf, the allergy mention was regarding water and fire spirits.

Allergy to an effect however, does cancel immunity to normal weapons for the attack, that is mentioned in the rules for immunity to normal weapons.

I was not talking about that for electrical attacks, I was just mentioning that the reason why attacks with elemental damage are generally considered good moves against spirits.

And mechanically the armour spirits have due to immunity to normal weapons is exactly the same as the armour given by well, normal armour other than the hardening effect.

Thus it is still halved by things that state they halve armour.

There is no basis in the rules for spirits not having the secondary effects of any elemental effects applied to them, nor for them not having the primary effects applied to them, regardless of whether the attack was magical or mundane.

[Kesslan]

I think the point some people are trying to make though is that just because something burns, or does eletrical damage or what ever, doesnt mean it counts as an 'elemental' effect.

I think part of this is because in some ways SR isnt very clear at times on what is and isnt considered an 'element'. And if you just start ruling that fire, water, air etc are 'elements'. Well then so is wood and metal. Bullets are generally made of metal. But they dont affect a spirit dispite being an 'element' thus why should the electrical portion of a stick n' shock?

I mean you dont use a wood stake against a spirit afterall, and it's an 'element' too.

Personaly I've allways taken that 'elemental effect' part to really be magically powered elments such as an adept using 'elemental strike'. I'm in no way however saying this is actually the way its supposed to be. It's simply my current interpretation of it.

[Ranneko]

An attack gets elemental effects if it is mentioned as part of the attack, so currently the only mundane ones I can think of off of the top of my head would be Stick'n'Shock and tasers. Telling if something has an electrical damage effect is very easy in SR4, it has an (e) next to the damage in the summary.

Of course, you could have improvised ones, such as power cables and (natural) lightning strikes. Similarly, you could have other elemental effects caused by improvised/house ruled mundane weapons.

On reading through the new elemental effects available, I have to retract my previous statemetn that all elemental attacks were resisted by half impact, Metal is resisted by impact, smoke and sound are not resisted by armour at all.

[Kesslan]

Yeah but thats the other thing, I mean you get into 'elemental' effects... thats ALOT of things. Does smoke actually affect a spirit in any way shape or form? I've allways been under the impression that at least materialized spirits werent bothered at all by such things. Techncially neither would posessing spirits (Though if their possessing a person that person very well would be I'm sure). And then yeah there's soundwaves. Do those affect a spirit at all either?

My guess would be no. Which is part of the reason personally I think that SR really needs to very clearly define what the heck they mean by an 'elemental' effect.

[knasser]

Is this thread still going on? By RAW, spirits are not immune to stick and shock or the stun componend of mundane electrical attacks. Although any spirit of reasonable size is likely to shrug off the latter. There is a strong flavour reason why they should be immune however. They are explicity stated by RAW not to have a nervous system or internal organs (and by implication blood stream, for that matter). So we have a very strong case for a GM to use common sense here.

By RAW, they're not immune to poison either, but if you have a raging city spirit made of steel girders and electric lights, do you think spraying it with choloroform is going to make it lay down and sleep like a baby? Can you picture that? As a matter of fact, by RAW the spirit has no immunity to some of these as even though they probably count as normal weapons, they don't allow normal armour use in the victims resistance rolls. This is even better than stick and shock!

By RAW, water elementals aren't immune to drowning. So if I'm diving around a wreck and a shark shaman summons one, I just have to hold out for a few turns until it's forced to go up for air.

By RAW, Fire elementals aren't immune to fire so a rather stupid one could easily set fire to its environment and burn and choke itself to death.

I'm sure there's a near endless supply of examples where a GM needs to use common sense to interpret whether something can be affected by a type of damage. I think what people are arguing here is that overloading the nervous system of a creature that doesn't have one, is such a case.

-K.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

The problem is when "common sense" ends up re-creating the old D&D "a kitten wipes out a town of commoners" effect.

A single force 6 spirit should not be capable of wiping out a non-awakened swat team of any size (not this long after the awakening, anyway), but that's what making them invulnerable to everything short of rocket launchers does. "Common sense" says you don't give that kind of power to one of the players. (In a high powered game, all of the players might, though.)


;) By the way, the only poisons the RAW would possibly support affecting spirits are maybe contact poisons (they don't breathe, they don't eat, and they don't have a circulatory system - inhalation, ingestion, and injection vectors respectively). Same with water spirits drowning - no breathing. Burning fire elementals is a problem though, sure.

[knasser]

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

Because it's the only way a mundane gets to affect a spirit's stun track at all? Even Attack of Will does physical damage.

Makes coordination with a mage who is using stunbolt rather tricky.

[Lord Ben]

Electricity affects all manner of unliving things. It's not a huge stretch to say that applying a decent dose of electricity to a spirit is going to affect it.

[Blade]

You can't use common sense for spirits : if a spirit of air was just made of air, or if a fire spirit was just some flame that moves and acts, you wouldn't be able to damage it with bullets or with a katana.

But the rules says that you can destroy a spirit with bullets and katana. They even state that a bigger gun will deal more damage to a spirit than a smaller one. When you shoot at the aformentioned materialized air or fire spirit, the bullets won't go through it as they should (well maybe they will) but deal damage to the spirit. It doesn't make any more sense that a dragon being able to fly with such small wings. It's magic.

I don't say that AP modifiers (and especially electrical AP modifiers) should apply to the spirit "immunity armor", I don't exactly know how I'll handle that if I ever face this problem but I won't use "rational common sense" to judge it.

[knasser]

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

I've never argued in favor of the secondary effects...only that they are, in fact, damaged by electricity per the half-armor + stun damage stipulated by the RAW.

[Crusader]

Well if you play strictly by RAW and let SnS half spirit armor, but are uncomfortable with spirits dying too fast, why not hand your freshly summoned guardian spirit a ballistic shield with nonconductivity 6 upgrade ? ;)

[ixombie]

[RunnerPaul]

[Cold-Dragon]

Technically lightning not cast from a spellslinger is a non-magical attack too, but I think that's a little silly in some respects. Why should natural lightning, which doesn't use the medium of magic to come into being, be at a disadvantage to magically induced lightning, which, from what I recall reading indirect spells, is the magic bringing forth the effect of lightning (You could say the magic was pulling all those positive and negative bits around in an unnatural way).

Of course, you could also say the magic carries with the lightning, and somehow gives it an excuse to work better against spirits compared to jamming a lightning rod into a spirit pretending to be a giant gorilla on top of a skyscraper durin a storm.

A stick and shock cartridge is certainly a weapon, but it doesn't directly attack the spirit, the electrical charge made by the stick n shock is what attacks.

Bah...spirits are a headache. >.< lol...

And I'd rather not be yelled at through caps please. Obviously several of us disagree and agree on certain things, you don't need to remind me.

[ixombie]

[knasser]

[Garrowolf]

Ok I am willing to admit when I made a mistake. I missed that sentence about the allergies ignoring the immunity.

Now if you would look at the spirit's description you will see that only the fire and water spirits have a weakness and it is only to certain things.

I think that SR3 had more elemental effect rules but SR4 doesn't. There is no elemental effect of electricity. There is however secondary effects. That doesn't make it an element in the magical sense of the word.

The thing that people are missing is that lightning and a lightning bolt spell are not the same thing. Just like a spirit is not made up of an element - it just mimics an element, a spell is casting magical force that is mimicing an elemental effect. Keep in mind that a pure element of water or fire will not get up and move. It is a spectral creature that surrounds itself in an elemental effect.

[Vaevictis]