I'm still sorting out some of the combat and magic rules.

Does combat with spirits function the same as normal combat except for the spirits having hardened armor?

I want to make sure I'm not mistakenly using some old rule from SR3

Yes. Combat with spirits is just normal combat of that type, including Astral combat. Make sure to remember that spirits can't use Physical powers while Astral, and that they have 3 IP in Astral and 2 IP in physical.

Soooo...

Astral or Mundane Combat?
Spirit versus spirit?
Materialized , possesses or Inhabited Spirit versus an astral spirit?
Awakened PC versus Astral Spirit?
Astral Sight PC versus Astral Spirit?
Astral Projecting PC verus Astral Spirit?
Astral Projecting PC versus Materialized Spirit?
Astral Projecting verus

Yes, you must be getting it right.

We need details, specifics. otherwise we don't know how much you know.

Materialized/Possessing/Inhabiting spirits get Immunity to Normal Weapons, which acts as Hardened Armor.

Hardened armor against nonmagical attacks, which basically means if two manifested spirits get it on, the one with a natural weapon (Guardian and Beasts, IIRC) is going to wipe the floor with the other one.

I take it then you consider the list of magical things in

"Th is immunity applies
to all weapons that are not magical (weapon foci, spells, adept
or critter powers)."

to be a complete list, and thus, as Spirits themselves aren't listed, they are considered normal non magical attacks when fighting in melee with unarmed attacks?

Personally I treat the list as a partial list, and assume there may be things other then the items listed that are not normal weapons and will work against Immunity To Normal weapons. I suspect a complete list would have been rather large to include, and prone to being outdated.

Oh, I take it as a partial list as well, but I don't think of regular attacks of magical beings as being inherently magical.
If a spirit's regular attack bypasses the immunity, the fist of a magician should do as well.
Now, the adept power killing hands explicitly does bypass the immunity, but if regular attacks of magical entities (like adepts) would do so as well, why bother specifying?

I don't know if there's an official stance on this, but that's the way I handle it.

The part I don't entirely get is how Elemental attacks factor in. Indirect Elemental spells are supposed to be normal, mundane fire (or electricity, or blast, or whatever) once the effect manifests. But somehow it still bypasses ItNW. The shock from a tazer is also mundane, but it doesn't bypass. Doesn't seem consistent to me.

A smart spirit without a Natural Weapon attack - that is any with a Force greater than 3 - would go astral to fight another spirit. It's the spirits most natural method of combat and it negates the disadvantage in one easy step.

IF - You are a street sami fighting a materialised spirit - yes. Use the regular combat rules - spirit has Hardned armor against most "mundane" things *edited some stuff I was not sure of out*
IF - You are astrally projected fighting a currently "astral only" spirit - Use the Astral combat rules.
IF - You or the spirit are dual natured and are fighting a purely astral form - Get mildly annoyed at the rules. I did.

It's not a big gripe but why Willpower instead of Charisma or Strength? Why only when a dual natured being is figthing an astral one is Will used on the attack? Why do very few of the Dual critters as written have Astral combat?

*sigh*
I house ruled that anything naturally dual-natured can use unarmed in astral combat, it felt like a small justice in their favour and saves me the bother of re-stating stuff.

Ok, that all follows.

I handle it the other way myself. One of the pieces of thinking is that the Spirit starts out as Magical, and whether or not it materializes it is Magical in nature. A physad or magician is a type of Mundane who has gained the ability to work with Magic. Another approach is to consider that not all metahumans are magical, some are, and those that are can do some magic, thus they need a special power or effect to get around the ITNW (Of which one way would be to astrally project, leaving their "mundane" body in order to be magical). A spirit can't decide not to be Dual Natured for example, so I treat the Spirit as Magical for unarmed attacks.

Just to play a bit of a devil's advocate: Would a punching ghoul adept without killing hands still bypass ItnW in your games? All ghouls are kinda magical (and dual-natured, even).

But I understand your reasoning. It mostly depends on the definition of "magical", which, being a made-up condition and all, is mostly subjective.


And we use the "dual-natured use regular unarmed combat and no astral combat or willpower" house-rule as well. I even seem to remember that being the official way to do it, once upon a time. SR3? SR2? I dunno, maybe we've just houseruled it for so long, I started mixing that up.

You could look at it this way. Indirect combat spells are to normal fire and lightning what a weapon focus is to a normal sword.

That's a good one. I would go Mundane to start. Ghouls, and various Infected start as Mundane things that become magical. A spirit starts as Magical. I guess my dividing line would be the origin of the entity. Spirits come from the Metaplane, whereas the Ghouls, while magical and Dual Natured, originate on the Physical world.