My group tried the "hardened armor at 1x Force" house rule last night, but the Force 6 spirit they were fighting went down too fast. After a chat today we found something we thought might work:

Force x2 hardened armor vs ranged (per the book)
Force x1 hardened armor vs melee

This gives a nice SR3-ish feel where melee was the way to go against spirits (but still not easy). Here is an example:

**Force 6 Spirit vs ranged: 12 armor, 12 hardened (net DV 13+ to effect)
Force 6 Spirit vs melee: 12 armor, 6 hardened (net DV 7+ to effect)
**Force 6 Spirit vs adept killing hands: 0 Armor, 0 hardened

** These are book rules. So the only need for a house rule would be #2.

What do you think?

milspec

against a spirits armor how are you supposed to use ranged, spirits can only be affected by melee attacks and spells

I like that better NightRain.

I guess we wanted to "step" it down first. The book says 2 x Force vs melee (and ranged). We think that is too much, so we step it down to 1 x Force vs melee. And see how it goes.

You would need a solid hit, or a well placed hit, to hurt a spirit. A weak or glancing blow will not effect it.

I will certainly bring your suggestion up with the group. Any specific reason for no hardened armor vs 1 X Force hardened armor?

milspec

I never really liked how you could defeat spirits comparetively easy in melee. It was supposed to be your force of will that defeated them, but that´s not the way it felt. I think big figgin guns should be the way to go. So I´m going to keep the full hardened armor for all normal weapons. Still, there needs to be a way for mundanes to at least escape spirits.

That´s were I think an opposed test using willpower+charisma against forcex2 could come in handy. To make the test you need to spend a complex action. The action itself can represent anything from staring the spirit down to waving a stick at it SR3 style. It can even mean shooting at it, though you are concidered to fail harming it no matter what flavour discription you use. The net hits from the test represents a number of actions in which the spirit may not attack you. I haven´t tried it yet, but I think I might go with this solution. Remember that it can still attack anyone else, it´s not a stun. The idea is that you are truely effecting the spirit with your personality and courage, only you do not kill it, you do it unaware and it doesn´t matter what your actual physical action against it is. All that matters is that you take a stand.