Here's something that came up in our game this evening: the following points about manifest spirits:

• Beast spirits have, as an optional power, Natural Weapon, which grants the spirit a DV of (Force)P. Not every spirit has this. This suggests that the damage a materialized spirit does is (Str/2)S, just like everything else.
• The list of magical attacks under Immunity (to Normal Weapons) includes critter powers, but not spirit attacks. This suggests that in a fight between a Spirit of Beasts and a Spirit of Man (which is what happened), when both are materialized, the Spirit of Beasts had Natural Weapon, and so could ignore the other spirit's Immunity to Normal Weapons, and the Spirit of Man was only causing (Str/2)S damage.
• In any case, the Spirit of Man had the option of attacking in astral combat, since materialized spirits are dual-natured.

[edit] manifest -> materialized. Duh.

Replace 'Manifest' by 'Materialized' in your post, and yes, you have it all corectly.

Manifesting merely means the creature is on the Astral, and create a ghostly image of itself in the physical plane. A Manifested entity is still firmly in the Astral realm and can't do much in the Physical.

A Materialized spirit has a real dual nature.

So for spirits, their materialized forms count as magical weapons?

No, only their powers count as magical weapons. Since Natural Weapon is a power tiw ould count, but Hit With Fist is not a pwoer so it wouldn't count.

Surely the spirit itself doesn't count as a normal weapon.
My argument for this is: What is the materialized made out of?
My guess is somthing magical, hence not a normal weapon.

I would also suggest that a dual natured being, such as a materialized spirit, could opt to engage the other materialized spirit in Astral Combat instead of Material Plane Combat (or whatever you want to call it); and because the combat is astral, immunity doesn't apply as immunity is a physical power only, and as such, doesn't extend to the astral.

(I get the notion that it could choose to engage astrally from sr4.184, where it says, "Astrally perceiving and dual natured characters use their Physical attributes and skills to fight opponents with a physical body..." Since that's under the astral combat section, it suggests that dual natured beings can fight astrally even if the opponent has a physical body; of course, one could also argue that it is just clarifying that you continue to use physical attributes on non-astral entities. The first makes more sense to me, though, as I think that such a clarification would be redundant.)

well i know you can beat a spirit to death with a ghoul (a dual nature being). So maybe a stone dwarf or fish isnt so far fetched.

ps. nighthunter ate my brains... grrrrr... *drool*

It does make sense in the rules that a spell exists on the astral. Therefore a petrify spell could make a cheap and nasty weapon focus, in essence.

Of course, soaking all, or even most, of the damage could cause the petrifyed thing to start to crumble.

Based on the fact that you could simply have a mage quicken a level 1 spell on a pipe and turn it into a bitchin weapon focus under the interpretation you guys are considering, I'm going to stick with bespelled items not being able to get by Immunity to Normal Weapons, thanks...

You might want to consider what I've done. Dissatisfied with how armor was performing, I basically said that rather than rolling your armor, you just consider half of the dice you would have gotten to be hits on the armor+body roll (an armored jacket, ballistic 8, provides 4 hits on the armor+body roll, rather than 8 unrolled dice). This, of course, makes higher-end spirits ridiculously powerful... so I said that they have armor equal to Force, rather than 2xForce.

Had my group's caster whip up a force 10 spirit a bit back. That was friggin ridiculous.

What I meant to say when I said that spells have no astral form is that spells have no astral form. They can't be used to do anything to astral forms, because they don't have one. It would be like trying to win a boxing match using soft romantic music; it doesn't work. Casting a spell on a stick and then swinging it doesn't make it tangible to an astral form.

Spirits are always on the astral; they're dual-natured. They should be able to hurt other spirits.

But that doesn't mean their fist counts as a magical weapon unless they use astral combat. A dual mage in a boxing contest with a dual mage could choose to use unarmed or astral combat against his opponent. I suppose we could argue that they are intersecting astral forms and automagically subject to those rules - but then dual beings would take damage from attacking dual beings... right? Just have them use astral combat.