It seems to me that if you have Spellcasting and Mana Bolt, Astral Combat skill is a waste of skill points. Yes, there is the danger of drain with a spell, but the bolt will usually get better damage than an Astral Combat skill attack, and you use Spellcasting for it, which, unlike Astral Combat skill, has a lot of applications on the material plane as well.

Right?

To defend yourself when the spirits attack you? I just think they need the all drain in astral is physical thing that sr3 had

you can also get a good specialisation for the astral combat skill that you wouldn't necessarily want to put on spellcasting.

and, truth be told, screw mana bolt... just stun bolt is plenty for disrupting, and the drain is even lower.

The book describes astral combat as behaving just like physical combat but on the astral plane.

Attacker rolls : willpower + Astral Combat
Defender rolls : intuition + Astral Combat to try to avoid the hit
If the attacker has more successes he adds the net hits to his base damage.
Defender tries to lessen the damage using Willpower.

So even if your using spells rather than astral combat, astral combat still plays a significant role in trying to avoid another's astral combat attack. Given that a lot of spirits don't have the manabolt or stunbolt option, you're likely to be attacked using astral combat when fighting one.

Although the statement by the OP is a little over-dramatic, the fact remains that yes, Stunbolt is a much better way to get rid of Astral Opponents than Astral Combat could ever hope to be. Or Banishing, for that matter.

In fact, unil Street Magic came out, there really wasn't any reason to even have the Banishing skill. The one unique thing it did - allow you to have spirits that weren't on your tradition's list - really wasn't that exciting. With Strret Magic there are four new spirit types that your hermetic can't get any other way, and 2 new uses for the Banishing skill (Attacks of Will and kicking a Possession spirit out of a vessel).

Similarly, right out of the basic book, Astral Combat is pretty mysterious. But check it out in Street Magic: you apply visibility modifiers to Astral Combat tests! That means that if you're in a sterile room in a level 4 mana ebb with a Spirit, you get an extra 6 dice when beating the crap out of spirit with your astral combat skill, and you suffer a -4 die penalty when casting a spell on that same spirit. And before you say "But wouldn't the spirit get the same bonus right back at you?" the answer is no. The Spirit loses Force in a Mana Ebb, which cuts into its Astral Combat Skill and its Astral Agility, so it loses net dice every time the mana level drops, while a human magician gains net dice when the mana level drops.

Astral Combat, then, is totally the "beating the crap out of spirits in low mana areas" skill. Didn't expect that, did you?

-Frank

I have learned more about Astral Combat in this thread than I ever thought possible.

Still, the cost of the skill puts me off, when Spellcasting is quite formidable in astral confrontations.

Now, with the lowered magic attribute in the mana ebb, that also lowers the projecting mage's stay time in the astral, correct?

Not that this is really a factor in Astral Melee Combat vs. sniping with spells, since if you're taking hours to complete either, you're just doing it wrong.