If it is easy to hurt spirits in your game then it is you who are changing things.

The only elemental weakness for spirits is that Fire spirits have a weakness against water and Water spirits have a weakness against Fire. This doesn't lower their armor ratings AT ALL. It causes more damage as per the allergy rules. There is NO other elemental weakness in the game for spirits. Look it up. There is NO elemental extra damage stuff. You are confusing elements listed in spell creation for objects in the world.

I am not sure that I actually have a problem with spirits taking stun damage but it would have to be magical sun damage from something like a stun bolt. Since it refers to the spirit's Condition monitor track as opposed to their Physical or Stun damage track I am inclined to think that they only have one track and anything that effects them goes on that track.

I have been providing a logical arguement to why spirits would be immune to electrical attacks. You just haven't paid attention.

I agree that bullets shouldn't be able to effect spirits but the core rules say that a large enough impact would. Go back to the first quote as why.

That's my point. Nowhere in the SR4 BBB does it state that spirits are immune to injected poisons due to lack of bloodstream, or drowning due to lack of breathing, or any of the other things I mentioned. And yet you have outrageously dared to use your common sense despite the lack of RAW supporting this, basing it only on descriptions that don't refer to specific game mechanics at all! (knasser runs around in circles with horror at the very thought! ).

So where is the problem with saying that a fire elemental is immune to burning or a creature without a nervous system (or indeed any internal organs), isn't going to be stunned by an electrical attack?

Electricity does affect spirits. The question is whether it will lie there twitching in shock as per the secondary effects and whether you want stick and shock to be an exploit that lets you damage spirits when they can shrug off rocket launchers.

But you can agree or disagree as you like, just so long as you understand what I'm saying. I'll leave you all to get back to drowning water elementals and ghosts of your ancestors running out of CS gas clouds choking and crying.

Au revoir,

-K.

Just one problem with this quote... It is NOT a rule. The rule is: spirits have hardened armor equal to 2x their force vs. normal weapons. The rule is: stik-n-shok rounds do 6S damage with an AP of -half impact.

You can change it however you want. The arguments for and against have been done to death already, so we shouldn't rehash them. But don't try to tell us that letting spirits be hurt by electricity is outside the rules. The rules are unambiguous; the quote you gave is not only not a rule, it's totally ambiguous. What does it mean? How do you decide if someone is courageous, driven, or mad enough to affect a spirit? What is the definition of "very difficult?"

Don't confuse fluff with rules. It's bad for your brain

Normally, I'm loath to post more than a line or two, but since apparently only the whole section will do:

In particular the reference to "formidable resilience to non-magical attack" would tend to support the camp that belive that stick-n-shock should not be effective.

The two rules you posted are rules. Not gonna argue there.

The sentence that I refferred to is not a rule. It's just fluff that indirectly refers to rules.

There are tons of examples where the book says things that, according to the rules, are wrong. Like how accessing the matrix in full VR is much much faster than AR; it's not. Does that mean that the rule, which they specifically clarified in the FAQ, that you access AR at your meat init is illegal? No. It means that the rule violates the fluff, which is inconsistent but not problematic since the fluff is not rules.

The fluff says spirits are almost impossible to hurt with normal weapons. But the rules say that this isn't the case. Especially when you're talking about low force spirits, or watcher spirits. You can kill them with a brick, "formidable resilience" my ass.

You might want spirits to be invulnerable in your games. I don't care if you do. The fluff might support that house rule, but under the real rules, they are anything but.

Under the RAW, they are pretty darn invulnerable. Even a Force 4 spirit has 8 points of hardened armour against almost everything. Or rather it has the effective equivalent of that. Get past force 6 and you see these things headbutting anti-tank weapons out of the air. So the question is not whether you want spirits to be invulnerable or not, but whether you want them to have an inconsistent weakness to one particular type of ammo which by the descriptions in the rule books doesn't make any sense that it would harm them.

I don't think anyone is arguing that spirits are immune to electrical attacks in total. Just the secondary effects. And this is because it makes sense. The arguments that they are effected are based on a strict adherence to the mechanics of the game. That same adherance would lead to water elementals drowning, earth elementals keeling over when injected with cyanide and ghosts choking and crying when targetted with CS gas grenades. Now if any one of those bothers you enough to house rule otherwise then you've already broken with strict RAW for the sake of common-sense. What many of us think is that the common sense extends to creatures without nervous systems (which is explicitly stated) not being affected by attacks that target nervous systems (electrical stun).

Having the players break out the stick and shock every time they meet a powerful spirit contradicts the fluff and presumably the intent of the rules. Spirits are intended to have powerful resistance to mundane attacks which Stick and Shock is implicity included in by the definitions in the Powers section. But because of the way stick and shock does damage, this doesn't apply by strict RAW.

There is a very strong case for spirits being immune to stick and shock and the secondary effects of electrical damage. For the sake of game consistency, flavour and atmosphere, I choose to play that way. No one else needs to, but it makes sense.

Okay, so we've established that the game mechanic for Immunity is an armor rating.

What kind of armor protects against electrical attacks, and what kind of modifers -- if any -- apply?

Okay, so Stick n' Shock is electrical damage (as denoted by that little (e) by the damage code). Where does it specifically note that Immunity applies to electrical attacks at full value? (Remember, if you have to interpret at all, then it almost certainly doesn't say it specifically.)

(Also see p154 for electricity damage -- half impact armor unless otherwise specifically noted.)

As far as the stun effect is concerned, it defies logic that something without a nervous system would fall to the ground twitching because of a physiological response to electricity. RAW or no, I would disallow it for most spirits.

And as far as the lack of grounding is concerned, the Stick n' Shock itself is going to provide the grounding. And if the voltage is high enough -- as in the case with a lightning bolt -- well, let's just say that free space and/or atmosphere is a conductor at sufficiently high voltages, and so you'd be grounded, levitation or not.

Oh, I'm not saying anything to the contrary. Ohm's law pretty much says it:

V=IR <-> I=V/R

When you're grounded, R goes down. So if you're grounded, the current is going to increase -- you get a much nastier experience.

But all I'm saying is that for absurdly high voltages -- as is the case with a lightning bolt -- even air is a conductor, and what was previously an infinite resistance becomes non-infinite. In such cases, you're not going to be immune just because you're not grounded.

Well, by RAW, it's magical resistance that is implemented using the ballistic/impact armor mechanic. And that means electrical attacks halve it unless specifically noted otherwise. AFAIK, nowhere is it specifically noted otherwise.

As such, by RAW, electrical effects halve immunity.

And it kind of makes sense to me -- electrical/fire/cold/acid attacks are powerful primordial energies. It just makes sense to me that spirits would be more vulnerable. (I'm not calling you out if you disagree, just stating an opinion.)

Also, this is precedented from previous editions. Ask yourself: If the previous edition precedent is this way, and if the RAW as written are this way, does it not make sense to believe that it was intended to be this way?

Pfft, I would do that anyway.

Even without it being highly effective against spirits, it's still extremely effective against any biological target. Where else can you get 6 boxes of damage, AP equal to half of the target's armor, plus the ability to make your enemy have a seizure, all in a hold-out/light pistol package?

Plus, it's stun damage. That's invaluable if you want to take someone alive... and if you don't, it's usually pretty easy to cut their throat once they're down. Kinda hard to go from dead to disabled though.

Heh, just look at it this way: What Fanpro really means when they say "Immunity to Normal Weapons" is "Resistance to Kinetic Energy with Lesser But Still Powerful Resistance to Other Energy Forms."

Yeah I suppose. I havent really played with spirits in SR4. So personally as a GM I probably wouldnt allow it I dont think, and if I did.. well then expect that to be the standard mundane swat team tactic to dealing with hostile spirits. "OK Men Lock and load yoru stick n' shocks we got a spirit to kill!"

You're 100% right. Spirits have immunity to normal weapons. Electricity, when not the result of a spell, is a normal weapon. Ergo, spirits are "immune" to electricity.

Immunity to normal weapons confers 2x force in hardened armor on the spirit. It confers no other benefits whatsoever.

Hardened armor means that the modified DV of an attack, factoring in AP, must exceed the hardened armor rating to do any damage at all.

Electrical damage from tasers and stik-n-shok has an AP of -half. So, while spirits have the same immunity to normal weapons against electricity, it effectively halves the effectiveness of said immunity.

If you've been trying to argue that spirits get their immunity bonus against electricity, I'm pretty sure nobody has been arguing against you. But if you're trying to argue that they are invulnerable to electricity, i.e. it can't damage them, you're wrong according to the RAW. You're making rules up at that point, which is fine, but it's definitely beyond the RAW.

As for the secondary effects, I'm not sure... The RAW seems to say that they work (since it doesn't say they don't), but it's sorta silly for something without a nervous system to get knocked out by a taser. I'm undecided on that issue, so I'd be inclined to go with the RAW unless playtesting makes it clear that it unbalances the game.

Yep. The exact same stuff that can be hard as stone, fluid as water, conductive, non-conductive, flammable, heat-resistant, behave like a cloud of super-heated carbon particles and melt.

If you want to go by the fluff, then it took them until 2070 to realise that spirits are all composed of the same "stuff." How many decades of study to realise that? And it took that long because the stuff they were composed of does not always have the same properties. Despite the weird metaphysics given in Street Magic, spirits effectively are composed of different types of matter and or energy.

Want RAW backup on that? Fire elementals have an allergy to water. But other types of spirits do not. Suggests to me that the current "form" of this spirit matter does indeed affect its vulnerabilities. And therefore logically its invulnerabilities, too.

Quite honestly, if a fire elemental is radiating 500 degrees then I'm calling it immune to fire. If it's composed of water to all but the most advanced tests (it took till 2070, remember), then it's immune to drowing. And if it has no nervous system, I'm not having it affected by the secondary component of electricity damage, cardboard tube samurai or not.

Sort of splitting hairs here, but just you think something is your nature doesn't mean it is. And just because you don't think it is doesn't mean it isn't.

The spirit's mental state is informed by its nature; the reverse is not necessarily true. IMO.

Go for it! Just make sure they associate it with the RPG and NOT that game!

So there you go. This is the word from the top.