Wow, I go away for a bit, and miss a whole lotta thread.

Somebody at some point said that a possessed bullet is imparted a DV. I can't agree with this. The bullet is imparted a degree of kinetic energy, and that energy is transferred upon impact, which is in turn described by the rules in terms of DV.

Kinetic energy does not exist astrally.

Back to our possessed bullet. It's dual-natured, yes? As is its theoretical target, the materialized spirit. When a dual-natured being encounters something, the aspect of the environment (physical or astral) that has the most restrictive conditions apply, right? A dual-natured being can't wander through a ward placed over field, for example. In the astral, two beings can't really push one another or wrestle or the like (e.g. FAB II cannot stop an astral being unless encased in some physical object), they can just hurt one another, so the most restrictive environment is the physical plane, bringing us back to using the gun's DV and the spirit's Armor.

So....isn't this just a simple case of "do whatever you want with your home campaign"?

Ok, time for a little good idea post, bad idea post.

Good post:

There is a lot of wiggle room in the RAW, but there is a huge difference between the RAW and what was intended, because the rules were written by people who are not omniscient.

It has always been intended that Astral Bullets are impossible. That's just the way the game was intended from the very start and that intent has remained throughout all the editions, that is one of the few things that has remained consistent throughout the editions. Even when they actually printed rules that explicitly allowed astral bullets back in SR3's Target: Awakened Lands they included a disclaimer that basically said that they should never actually be used in a game and if they are they should be absurdly rare.

Magical bullets have been possible since anchoring was invented, but they are absurdly expensive due to the associated karma cost.

The problem with having a possessed bullet act as a magic bullet is that this solution is far easier and far cheaper than every other solution out their, as well as far more common.

But, its your game. Do what you will with it.

Just a thought to those saying that a character must be "wielding" it for it to count as a magical weapon. How about a possessed arrow, thrown by an adept with missile mastery. Would that work? I suppose it fits the same as if adept had a sword weapon focus, and decided to throw it instead of swing it.

How would you rule that? Say its a weapon focus, sword. Adept has missile mastery. Would adept roll only throwing + agi? Throwing + agi + weapon focus dice? Astral combat + will? Astral combat + will + weapon focus dice?

The part that makes me think this is plausible is under the vessel rules where it says that a weapon does its normal damage or force/2 and can affect astral. There is the argument that a bullet is ammunition but how would it work for a throwing knife? It's not hard to stretch from a knife to a baseball to a bullet. All three are doing damage because of the speed they are traveling at.

I personally see no problem against this as the rules DO allow it and is rather clearly spelled out. There are several balancing factors since the following is needed:

Skills
Money
Time

Just summoning something and infusing it into a piece of metal (bullet, arrowtip) is no easy process. It takes multiple tests and there are several chances of failure.

And it is not a magic bullet, it would be an awakened bullet. Also a thing to remember is that it takes TIME for each bullet.

Just making a revolver load of 6 bullets would take at least a week:

Preparing an inanimate vessel:Enchanting+Magic (Object Resistance x 3, 1 day)

So, a bullet would be a manufactured hi-tech objects, so would a bought arrow in 2070. So we are talking about Object Resistance treshold 9.

For each bullet it would probably take at least 2 days to prepare.

One can make many cool concepts for character through this and personally i don't think it is broken as long as the player/character takes the time to build the darn things.

BUT...there are problems, some can be explained through the concept - even the WHY would a spirit want to be confined to a weapon, it all depends on the caster and his/her belief (and he can be a mofo that doesn't care).

The most important thing is astral signature, and lost ammunition.

Imagine lonestar/corpsec/grumpy dragon goeing over the last job the team made...

...And finding a Force 4 spirit trapped in a bullet that has lodged into a wall during the brief firefight with one of the guardian spirits...

Now, how hard would it be for the magically active in question to find out more about the summoner of said spirit, and the prepared vessel (bullet).

I find the concept of a shaman that crafts crossbow bolts of immolation with a fire spirit inside it both fun and imaginative but it will have its drawbacks. I'm also sure that the shaman can give the spirit standing orders that whatever it lodges in when the arrow is hit shall be engulfed by the spirit once and then go back to its home plane.

That still leaves the vessel for someone to find - unless the shaman has made it to burn up by the engulfing...

I would also say that possession of bullets and such would be the WHOLE bullet including the shell. Detonating the shell would most surely damage the spirit.

Throwing daggers, arrows and other muscle powered items would be rather more "safe" for the spirit.

Vessel preparation talks about a "vessel" a singular item, breaking it up into smaller parts (Fragmenting ammunition, firing the bullet) would most likely destroy the vessel, and thus the spirit.

I'd say that any possessed item being used as a ranged weapon would at most do Force/2 in damage to an astral form - that the projectile is astrally active shouldn't by default mean that it will bypass immunity with normal damage, because otherwise a sustaining foci 1 with an active spell in it would bypass immunity.

I would never allow an adept to benefit from his Weapon Focus with a thrown attack, due to the focus becoming inactive.

You're not really hitting your target with a bullet, magical or no.

You're hitting it with a spirit.

So it's not really any different than telling a regular spirit to "go fly through that astrally active target".

The idea that a bullet's speed would be imparting anything significant to the affair is laughable. Spirits can already travel faster than any bullet could hope to move.

Adepts are a bit different. They get to add their muscle power to the damage due to the magical nature of their being.

A gunpowder explosion has no magic to it.


-karma

Since most of the other points are now being covered by others, I'll just hit this one:

Why not just avoid the argument entirely and have your gun possessed by a spirit of man that knows how to cast manabolt?

or you could just use stick and shock as its half-impact armor rule cuts immunity to normal weapons down to normal armor, and since spirits dont have a seperate stun track....

Just to make sure I'm understanding what you want HappyDaze: You want someone to be able to use a bullet/arrow/lead shot possessed by a spirit, using an optional rule in Street Magic, to bypass and hurt something that has Immunity to Normal Weapons? And you are saying that the fact of the possession makes the bullet/arrow/lead shot a magic weapon for the purpose of bypassing said Immunity to Normal Weapons on the physical plane? (Since Astral Ammo is against the spirit of the rules since the inception of Shadowrun back in 19XX and therefore no ranged astral weapons exist)

To me this just sounds like you have something in your head that you need to have the rules verify so you don't sound like you are making up a house rule. I just don't think you are interpreting the rules right, but everyone does it differently.

APDS doesn't make sense against spirits but Stick-N-Shock and Tasers do. Against a materialized spirit only, not a manifest spirit. Why? Because the elemental effect of electricity exciting electrons in said manifested spirit's corporal body.

Course, as a house rule, you could make the ammo kinda like Caster bullets from Outlaw Star. Super rare but terrifying when used. I don't think you should have a PC make his/her own bullets unless they become a NPC or devote most of their time to the production of said bullets.

On a side note: A lot of the "I think this is broken, please don't mention it again." talk is an antidote to the spread of cancer to Shadowrun. SR can become pretty munchy just using the standard RAW without introducing weird magical or technological nightmares. D20 games have a severe problem with oneupmanshipness (don't think that's a word) and each supplement has to be bigger and better until everyone is so outrageous that you might as well just sit there as GM and say "You Win. I'm going home. Please don't ever call me again."

I brought this whole subject up about 3-5 months ago, but didn't get nearly this man responses.
WHat I would say regarding this question is that if the astral being (spirit, astrally projecting mage etc.) is hit by a bullet possessed by a spirit (either watcher or regula spirit,) the astral being takes damage normal to that type of weapon, not adjusted for ammunition type, but boosted by net hits and burst/full auto. But when creatures are astral, they aren't getting any immunity to normal weapons because said weapons are astral not normal.
The same holds pretty much true for dual natured beings with immunity to normal. weapons, but not to non dual natured creatures with immunity to normal weapons.
The cool image from the previous discussion that someone brought up is if you have a whole bunch of bullets done up as vessels, and say 7 spirits and 7 watchers, you can have them keep occupying the vessel/bullets and act as astral full lead hose. the person described this as a spirit slip and slide.

What damage would a watcher take from being fired out of a gun?
All in all, even if you could make this work it would be in all ways inferior to just telling the spirit to go attack something.

Personally, shooting for one material spirit with another I'd use the forcing through barriers rules instead of the standard damage rules.

Just a quick thought I had. If we take Mr. Lucky. And give him a gun. Have him make a called show to avoid armor on the materialized spirit (And, the dicepool penalty for avoiding "Immune to Normal Weapons" is what?) Assume he makes it as a longshot test, and bam, dead spirit, and a not so dead Mr. Lucky.

Would it actually fly in any game? I doubt it. Is it legal by RAW? I'm not so sure, but I'd like to find out.