I've recently been rather bummed out that spirits seemed to have been castrated in sr4 in regards to their Immunity to Normal Weapons.... So sitting down I started trying to figure out where I went wrong. That's when I noticed a key phrase:

I had never actually flipped to page 146 and realized that was still melee combat (as in previous editions) and does not include ranged combat (which was back on page 140). I played in a game or two where the GM had misunderstood and I had just got the original ruling stuck in my head.

Now, I'm happily back to where bullets either harmlessly bounce off of or pass through materialized spirits.

Spirit Combat section is little fuzzy if read whole thing. "Physical spirits have the power of Immunity to Normal Weapons. (pg 288) Giving them armor equal to twice there force against ALL attacks." "This makes POWERFUL spirits virtually immune to most physical attacks." (caps are mine)

Looked in SM under Attack of Will pg 94. "Sometimes its better to try and hit a spirit with a gun then trying to shoot it." Leads me to believe they are effected by bullets.

Also looking back in BBB under Spirit Forms section mentions spirits not liking to materialize due to fact makes them vulnerable to physical attacks. It's one of those fuzzy spots were intention could be cleared up with some cannon exampes.

One thing in the spirits' favor is the fact that DV bonuses from burst fire do not apply when comparing DV to armor value (page 143 in your hymnal).

The DV vs Armor is another of those fuzzy spots that take little reading to catch, along same lines as firing long burst against several targets.....roll multiple times or once to determine final DV per target.

The lazy among us catch the exlusion of automatic fire in the table on pg. 141 (german edition).

Firearms are clearly able to harm spirits. The amount of successes needed to accomplish that is quite high, but the hardened armor rules ensure that once the spirit is harmed, it is usually also squished.

The houserule of hardened armor = half rating dice rolled, half rating counting as autosuccesses fixes things pretty well, but spirits stay vulnerable.

Here is the key that I missed... I sincerely need to spend a little more time reading SM... Though I also like

I've always seen where people assign all hardened armor as automatic hits, but this seems a little more balanced.

Thanks for the replies

I have to say it took me a while to find that all spirits actually do get I2NW, SR4 is relatively sorted for coordinating and collating related rules (or tagging entries with relevant page numbers).

Spirits are still pretty good at all things and although some of the cheese is still there, overall they are definitely put out in their best light for normal use.