but this works the same as for regular life beings targets, right? I mean is not cummulative

just a bump to the post cause now I really want to clean this doubt.

Apreciate if anyone can answer

Yeah. Autofire never counts towards whether or not an attack beats the armor rating of its target. Against people, it can just mean that you're doing a hell of a lot of stun.

As Jackstand said, autofire doesn't figure into the actual DV/Armor Rating comparisons for calculating whether a metahuman target takes Physical or Stun damage.

Does this mean a vehicle with 8 armor is immune to LMG fire?

Not necessarily. 'Hits' on the Attacker's test still increase the damage output of the weapon, which adds to the base DV (and is also factored in when comparing DV to Armor), and any AP attributed to either weapon or ammunition would also apply.

forgive my ignorance towards the subject, but I just wanna ask if AP from weapons and ammo is cumulative. The whole autofire thing just confused me more xD

Again sorry

Yes, it is.

Edit - With some exceptions; Stick-N-Shock, for example.

Yes, the AP from weapons and ammo is cummulative.
(except maybe stick-n-shock. Then the -1/2 may replace the weapons normal modifier. Or maybe not?)

So, for purposes of determining if you penetrate armor, you reduce the armor by the weapon and armor AP. Then you compare the weapon base damage, plus any called shot, plus net hits to that armor. If that damage is more than the armor, you penetrated the armor. Now add the damage from auto-fire, if any.

Yours,
Joel Halpern

AP from weapons and ammo is indeed cumulative.

Thx, appreciated

It's just to bad there aren't any dual natured metals out there. Wouldn't that then qualify for bypassing the immunity to normal weapons?

(And I'm glad someone brought up Caster Rounds from Outlaw Star. Hideously expensive they would be to make, but way cool.)

Also on the called shots for extra damage topic, alot of philosophies consider that anything sentient has a center for that sentience. So depending on the GM, it would be a "shoot for the eyes/head" situation, or whatever looks important.

I wonder if you could make a substance that hurts spirits. Like the magical... compounds I think their called, in Street Magic?

Speaking of though, that's what my mundanes do sometimes if they have to deal with spirits. Find a magical compound that grants an offensive attack mode.

Yeah, sorry about that. In trying to avoid causing any miunderstandings, I unintentionally caused confusion in the process by using the wrong term.

...a PJSS with EXEX is pretty good for up to force 5 (10P -2AP). Another good choice would be an Ares Desert Strike with EXEX 9P -4AP). Both available at Chargen.

Would wooden bullets work against spirits any better than metal?
Aka Wooden Bullets from Van Helsing...

Ooo, wood can be dual natured.

But doesn't something have to be alive to be dual natured? Otherwise the upkeep for awakened plant life wouldn't be so bad. (Just pack the dead moss in with the wall insulation.)

Wouldn't the PJSS with EXEX be 11P -3 AP or 12P -3AP if both barrels are fired?

...but both barrels would count as burst fire which like Autofire would not give any advantage. Besides if it didn't go poof on the first shot you still have another.

EXEX is only +1 DV, -1 AP. See the Errata.

FAB is dual natured and small enough to fit inside a bullet. But I don't know what happens if a spirit is hit with a small high velocity dual natured projectile.

I don't think that it should make a difference, really. Astral perception doesn't let an adept bypass the immunity to normal weapons without killing hands, right?

Per canon, I believe that the only way to make a 'magic bullet' would be using anchoring and a bunch of karma. And that won't really make the bullet itself damaging, it'll just be the vehicle that delivers the f9 'Slay Spirit' spell with linked 'Detect Spirit' trigger. So in order to make that work, you'd have to:

1. Learn Slay Spirit and Detect Spirit
2. Learn the Anchoring metamagic
3. Invest a bunch of karma on a dual spell anchored into the bullet.
4. Be willing to give the anchored spells (which provide a material link to the original mage) to your mundane friend.
5. Suffer drain (even if you're miles away) at the moment that the spell actually goes off.
6. Being astrally active, the anchored spell will still set off alarm wards whenever you cross them, and could potentially be forcibly deactivated if passing through a strong enough ward.
7. Also, the anchor won't discriminate between friendly, enemy, and neutral spirits. So when the watcher approaches you to pass on a message from your mage friend, or to investigate why a mundane is carrying an anchoring focus, he'll go *poof* and the spell will be used up.
8. What's worse, the mundane won't even know that the spell suffered premature detonation (snicker), and will be surprised when it doesn't work and he needs it to.

I liked the Possession idea. Prepare a slug as a vessel, have a Houngan (or equivalent) summon a Force 1 spirit to Possess the slug and pay a single point of Karma to bind it for a Year and a Day. Voila, Dual-Natured metal!

I'm actually a bit concerned about that idea because I don't see any reason that it wouldn't work and Shadowrun requires that it shouldn't.

(Yeah, yeah, wards, yadda, yadda, yadda... Whatever...)


Hmmm, you could even do several and have them speak with ridiculous Mexican accents....

Thanks im glad someone saw my post it seems to answer the problem about how too deal with spirits.

I don't believe that [by canon, at least] this really addresses your issue. I've never read that there's anything like inertia or transfer of kinetic energy on the astral, or even any indication that astral spirits have mass. I've never read that running into/through a ward at fast movement speeds does anything more than forcing through the ward at walking speed. At best, the bullets would (momentarily) get your projectile spirits close enough to melee with the target spirit, which doesn't really do anything useful if they're only force 1.

Edit: There have been a multitude of other threads discussing people wanting to make magical ranged weapons which should be easy to find with a quick search. I believe all these ideas have been discussed and shot down before.

Edit#2: Two previous threads that popped up when I searched on "astral bullet". Both appear to be pertinent to your question.
Improvised Astral Weapons
guns from astral space

hmm . . what about orcichalcum? or however one spells that stuff <.< . .
granted, it is frigging expansive . . but would that work? O.o

Nah. I don't think that Orichalcum is dual natured. It's just very receptive to enchantment.

what about a capsule bullet filled with a FAB strain?

So I didn't mention this earlier because it's not Canon, but in my campaign I have a partial solution to this problem.

The campaign I run is based around mundanes having to deal with Awakened Threats (hey, you can't always call a wizard in, and alot of the time the people who are willing to stand up to Demons aren't the ones who happen to be Awakened. Who you gonna call? Not the Awakened Ghost Busters. ).

So one solution I created to make their lives a little easier was to add more Alergies to the spirits they fight. If the Free Spirit is supposed to be a Fey, then it has Alergy: Cold Iron, for example. That makes their lives easier, once they figure out what they are up against.

Also there is a precedent for non awakened picking up certain select magical skills. As a GM I would be completely willing to allow a mundane to pick up the Banishing skill, if he had a good enough back story (Excorcists for example). Which adds to the Attack of Will, I believe.

(Another solution would be to "buy" a service from a spirit. You talk to the summoner, and he commands the spirit to perform any 1 service for the character.)

(Or heck, if your hardcore, take Spirit Pact at Character Creation. Then take the free spirit as a high loyalty contact, and call in favors when you really need it.)

But doesn't the FAB have to be alive to be effective? A bullet doesn't seem like a very good enviroment to stay alive... BUT how about a mace canister, so you can spray it out? (I haven't read those rules lately though, and I think FAB might not be lethal enough for this use.)

So what about the Possessed bullet? If you had a possessed baseball bat or sword, and you hit a spirit with it, wouldn't it count as a spirit vs. spirit attack, and thus bypass immunity to normal weapons? Same reasoning for the bullet.

hmm, good point about the fragility of FAB. injection bolt from an xbow? Ares Super Squirt?

i've wondered about the possessed bullet myself.

i remember a while ago here on the boards i mentioned the idea of creating a dual-natured laser using a high-powered Lucifer Lamp (Frank Trollman added that such a weapon would require something like Naga Emeralds, which are apparently also dual-natured). we've house-ruled that Attacks of Will can use Banishing or any melee combat skill.

fab-spray-guns . . i am thinking ghostbusters 2, psycho-slime somehow o.O

O-O Wow... while it wouldn't be even remotely practical, you know some Corp out there has built a death ray (laser) for killing super spirits on a rampage... While it might only piss off Cthulhu, anything less powerful... *evil grin*

(Oh, and I like the Ares Super Squirt idea.)

"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon powered death ray, and take over the world!"
"If life gives you a crowbar, use it to beat the hell out of the guy with the lemon powered death ray, and use it to take over the world!"

While interesting, both those threads are SR3. Good points are raised but nothing that really applies to the SR4 'crunch' which governs possessed inanimate objects.

In theory I can see why I might have a possessed bullet simply engage in Astral Combat with any Astral Form it struck, I might also point out that the 'strength' of such a bullets Astral Form is governed not by the physical material it is made from but by the Force/Essence/Magic of whatever makes it dual natured. Bullets made from tissue paper are rarely effective.

However these points are moot. There are explicit SR4 rules governing how such dual-natured objects interact with Astral Forms.

As Spirits Bound to inanimate objects they are incapable of self-locomotion and thus presumably cannot engage in Astral Combat. The rules in Street Magic say nothing about performing mini Astral Combats when one strikes an Astral Form with a possessed object. The rules in Street Magic are silent on Astral Momentum, what happens when one Astral Form is forced through another, etc, etc.

The rules in Street Magic say that a Possessed inanimate Weapon does it's full normal damage to Astral Forms due to its dual-nature.

Not that I think that this is a good thing. I just can't see anything in the SR4 rules-set that says otherwise.

i'm certainly not an expert on magic, but i thought there was some kind of reaction when an dual-natured object/creature tried to pass through an astral barrier at high speeds. maybe it wasn't damaging, nescisarily, but i thought getting forced through a solid wall of force would be disruptive. wouldn't a dual-natured bullet (be it by possession or construction) passing through a manifested spirit have the same effect?

...ahhh, just get a naval gun or drop an FAE on it (as long as it isn't a fire elemental).

There's dual natured marble in some of the Alcherae. So if you dug some of that out and carved it into bullet-shape you ought to be able to make dual bullets. Horribly expensive, but doable.

-Frank

What I'm trying to figure out here is at what point "dual-natured" automatically equalled "beats immunity to normal weapons". Foci are dual-natured, but don't hurt spirits. Weapon Foci only work whilst bound, and it's clearly indicated that they have to actually be held by the mage to do anything. Throwing a weapon-foci knife at a spirit does nothing. So it obviously takes more than just being dual-natured.

Am I missing something really obvious here, or what?

Please, don't go there.

Technically there's nothing in the description of Immunity to Normal Weapons to indicate that it doesn't apply to dual-natured creatures, spirits or Projecting Magicians using 'unarmed' Astral Combat.

[Slicing 'really' thin]

I suppose 'technically' Dual-Natured is a Critter Power and therefore beats ItNW. In which case everything that is 'Dual-Natured' does the trick.

As to Foci, I'm not sure active Foci are ever described as Dual-Natured, as having Astral Forms yes, as Dual-Natured, AFAIK, no.

Astrally Perceiving Magicians have an Astral Form, that can be engaged in Astral Combat, they are not, however, Dual-Natured.

Immunity to Normal Weapons is a physical power and only applies to the physical world. Anything which extends into the astral plane is therefore bypassing it. Same reason why the Concealment Power doesn't affect astral perception.

-Frank

So an Astrally Perceiving Magician can use Astral Combat to melee Materialized Spirits?

Cool...

So the troll can throw an astrally perceiving magician (or a dual natured critter) at a spirit?

Sure. And do Charisma/2 damage with him. Woot!

Yes, Metahuman body is listed as a weapon on page 149 of the basic book. It's pretty underwhelming.

-Frank

I don't know... One of the contacts my PCs are taking is "Krunch" and "Klub", a Troll/Dwarf team that is designed to use Metahuman Bodies as weapons.

Well, one Metahuman body. "Klub" lives up to his name, let's leave it at that.

Damn, now I need to go find a cloth to clean off this monitor.

Again.

I think that this wouldn't work. The physical body is still contacting the physical, manifest spirit, even if it is also in contact on the astral plane. For the same reason that physical attributes are used by a perceiving astral combatant, the physical 'body' of the bullet would limit it from enjoying the full benefits of its astral presence. If you had an entirely astral bullet, then I might be on board, but this is a weapon, which is magical, but not a magical weapon.

But then it is no longer a normal weapon

It's still a normal weapon, as far as its capacity as a weapon is concerned. It's not a non-magical thing, but it is a non-magical weapon.

I'm not sure if that doesn't contradict how Weapon Focus or Killing Hands seems to work.

It doesn't. Those are magical weapons. They're not effective because they're magical, but because of the specific sort of magic that they are. The magic involved in killing hands or a weapon focus specifically enhances the capacity of those objects insofar as they are weapons. It isn't a matter of being a weapon which is magical, but of being a magical weapon.