What I dislike about ItNW is two things:

1) It isn't what the name says. It's not immunity.

2) The interacting with AP. I think almost everyone, when they first discovered that AP works on ItNW, went "that's gotta be a mistake, it can't really be like that, right?" Most of us are resigned to it because of game balance reasons, but it remains very ugly that a sniper rifles and taser bullets are the best weapons to hurt a spirit. I mean, a flamethrower I can understand, but SnS is stupid.

It certainly doesn't make sense, but... just regarding S&S as "elemental" damage, as stupid as that may be in a modern setting, doesn't remove immersion for me. I have more problems with armour piercing bullets, but then you probably have to actually see ItNW as a real armour effect - i.e. bullets bounce off, rather than just going through without damage, as it used to be in older editions.

I think the real problem with ItNW is that it's completely useless at low force, which is why the suggestion of automatic successes does actually make sense.

I think spirits are better served by a mechanic that really works as flavor, instead of trying to shoehorn it into the Hardened Armor template. It doesn't work at all at low force, and the method of bypassing is awkward.

I wonder if it's really a bad thing if spirits are truly immune to normal weapons? For an air elemental, it'd suit the flavor if bullets just don't do a thing, just passing through harmlessly. Same with a fire elemental.

It'd be a problem for Sams and drones of course. There should always be several different ways to fight spirits for mundanes.

"Repairing" the Banishing and Attack of Will mechanics would be one way. Maybe even unify them into one type of action? Make it so mundanes can train to be good at it, and that it's competitive vs. Stunbolt for mages.

I personally like Vulnerabilites (Allergies) for spirits. It's flavorful and a way to differentiate the spirit types. These vulnerabilities are probably best tied to spirit type (Fire, Insect, Plant), rather than differing per tradition, just to keep sane and not skew the balance between traditions further. It's a bit of a chore for a Sam to carry allergens for all spirit types, but if you know what kind of tradition mages the enemy employs, it's something you can prepare for.

Another way is to introduce manatech anti-spirit weaponry. Lightly-radioactive bullets perhaps, since it's often been hinted at that radioactivity and magic behave oddly together.



An entirely different approach is to not give all spirits ItNW. Earth and Plant spirit for example are pretty solid, so they could just have a decent Body but otherwise be vulnerable. Air spirits on the other hand would be pretty insubstantial and get ItNW, but aren't as strong offensively. Maybe they're more vulnerable to Banishing/Attacks of Will.



I think it's a good thing if fighting spirits is very different from fighting drones or people. No "one ammo drops all" - spirits are very different beings, and it's okay if you need to do different things to hurt them.

Two different mechanics that function the same.

It's like a diesel engine versus a gasoline engine.

Both take petrol input and both move the vehicle. But they do it in different ways.



So you don't like the Heal spell then? The only spell that has a different mechanic from every other spell ever.

1) If you don't like vehicle armor working differently, then change it too. We already discussed needing to modify vehicles, while doing that changing the armor and having it follow the same mechanic as hardened armor wouldn't be impossible. Or even really hard.

2) As for the current mechanic working, I personally dislike the "I beat your threshold now you're dead, hah!" method of the current working. Of course I've mentioned before preferring a little granularity in the game, and disliking a lot of the one hit you're dead mechanics. I personally think most characters/NPCs should be able to take 2-4 hits (depending on their sturdiness) before dying. I understand some people prefer being able to kill or be killed with a single shot, but I doubt I'll be able to agree with those people. It really comes down to a fundamental difference in preferences, I guess.

3) Different spirits having different weaknesses... I wouldn't mind it to a small degree, but not to the degree being discussed. A Wind Spirit and an Earth Spirit being different defensively? Sure, I can see that. Having each spirit with a specific weakness that needs to be targeted is just gimmicky, and makes people say "Just let the mage handle it Im gonna take a nap".

4) I am however not totally opposed to the idea of banishing being open for non-mages. But I think I preferred banishing becoming the critter power counter-spelling equivalent. Mundanes should always have some way to attack spirits... what if non-awakened could bond weapon foci? I seem to remember Dunzelkhan's Will promising a reward to the first person who could make one, maybe by this point mundane usable foci have been developed and can be used?

If I remember correctly, there is an example of a Unique Enchantment, in Digital Grimoire, that anyone can use. Even a Mundane. I would think that this qualifies.
Yep... it is on Page 9.

Just looked it up, and the entirety of the rules is "It's just like a normal focus, but make it harder and more expensive. No we're not going to tell you how much harder or more expensive, just do it, and make it a whole adventure!". And then has an example of someone going through the process and it ends with human sacrifice to replace the binding. That seems pretty rough, even for a shadowrunner.

edit: Looking some more, the actual text doesn't even define what the hell a unique enchantment is. It only talks about how hard it should be to make. The only place where you see that the unique enchantment could be used by a mundane is in the example weapon focus. It seems almost like Unique Enchantments are supposed to be able to do almost anything, and then the GM assigns some arbitrary values and tells you to get to it. *facepalm*

But the example does indicate that both Mundane and Awakened can use it.
The reason it does not go into specific detail is because it is UNIQUE. No two will be alike, ever.
Yes, the values are likely very arbitrary indeed... That is the price of Uniqueness...

But it's the exact reason why it doesn't work as a game mechanic. It can be a plot hook, but as an answer to "Mundanes can't hurt spirits" it sucks horribly.

Unless you were referencing that in response to someone claiming the reward from Dunzy's Will, in which case yeah, the first person to make one of these unique enchantments with the intent to be usable by a mundane probably got it.

More in reference to the reward from Dunkie's Will, Yes. Sorry for the confusion.

I don't want there to be only one specific way to beat a particular spirit. You could do it in broad strokes though;

* The "solid" spirits (Beast, Earth, Plant, perhaps Guardian, Task and Man) don't get InNW, but tend to have solid Body to make up for it. Guardian, Task and Man spirits might even be persuaded to wear armor.

* The "soft" spirits (Air, Water, Fire, perhaps Guidance) get ItNW, each have a specific allergy, and are more vulnerable to attacks of will. The harder a spirit is to injure, the lower the spirit's offensive capabilities will be.

This basically slices spirits into categories you can deal with, even as a "dumb" Sam; Hard spirits are solid enough to affect with weapons, while the Soft spirits are harder to damage, but they have vulnerabilities you can exploit.

It's also an opportunity for a weapons specialist, to be better prepared for such varied opponents than a face who just carries one type of bullets and one type of gun.

Maybe break it a bit more than hard and soft, but make it so there's only like 2-3 allergies you need to worry about.

Say we go with what you're saying and ITNW is a true immunity. In this case, we'll have a Hardened Armor power that is separate that most creatures who currently have ITNW would end up with, and the true immunity would only go to a few.

So the "solid" spirits get Hardened Armor, plus an above average body, some regular armor (mostly to soak up AP, but also for that little extra resistance), and probably some banishing resistance and spell resistance. The more resistant they are, the weaker their offense is. So say Earth is the toughest, having high resist across the board, but it doesn't do much damage and lacks a lot of offensive powers. Beast would be less resistant, but still tougher than your typical soft spirit, with a stronger offense.

On the other hand, these 'soft' spirits don't all have a completely different allergy, you pick 2 or 3 uncommon (but not rare or impossible to get. ie silver allergy good, orichalcum allergy bad) materials, and distribute those among the spirits evenly. Like how D&D has 3 material based DRs, Silver, Cold Iron, and Adamantine, and most creatures with DR get bypassed by one of those. Alternatively, magic based attacks bypass automatically. So you can be reasonably prepared for anything you come up against, rather than needing to get new bullets every time you run into a new type of mage, which is honestly a really boring adventure hook. It literally boils down to "We gotta wait a day to get that special shipment of bullets in before we can do the ru" Honestly even having the few different allergy types seems pretty meh, and I'm not sure I entirely see the problem with just giving all spirits hardened armor.

You'll also want allergies like "water" or "fire." Completely mundane, not generally weaponized, substances. Like extinguishing a fire elemental with a garden hose (ok, if it's a big spirit you're going to need a fire hose).

Or insect spirits and RAID.

I always did want a use for my vehicle mounted water cannon... you have no idea how upset I was when I found out I couldn't use it to knock vehicles off the road .

Darn!

That's also the direction I was leaning in... (this is for Materialization spirits of course)

Fire: ItNW, allergy to water and other stuff that extinguishes fires. Fast and does a lot of damage.
Air: ItNW, extremely fast but doesn't do much damage.
Water: ItNW, fire allergy, on the fast side, does some damage (cold).
Guidance: ItNW, average speed, doesn't do damage.
Task: no ItNW, average Body, average speed, average strength, can be convinced to wear armor.
Man: no ItNW, average Body, average speed, average strength, can be convinced to wear armor.
Guardian: no ItNW, fairly good Body, normal speed, strong, can be convinced to wear armor.
Beast: no ItNW, fairly good Body, fairly fast, on the strong side.
Plant: no ItNW, high Strength and Body, but somewhat slow.
Earth: no ItNW. A juggernaut with really really high Strength and Body, but not very fast; can be outrun or dodged.

Insect spirits actually merge with host bodies, and can be destroyed by destroying the host body; the host body doesn't get ItNW, but tends to be tough.

Shedim possess a host body, and the body can be destroyed, denying them a way to affect the physical world. But normal damage to the host doesn't affect the spirit. Maybe an allergy to ceremonially blessed objects/substances, to let mundanes injure the spirit/force it out of a body?

I have one question, because I'm not well versed in older shadowrun lore:

Are the spirit types set in stone? I mean, are they ingrained into the lore, or does the array of spirits just represent an arbitrary chosing of types from the writers of 4e? Have these spirit types always been the same across all editions or have we seen additions and subtractions in the past? How much difference has there been in the past between different spirit types?

What about Heart?

It's an overly complext system that frags people over for not having the right doohicky in 99.9% of cases, as I feel spirits are way more power for costs then they should be in the current incarnation needless to say I'm against it.

ANd here we are on the thread again, where people say things like this and then try and pass it off as the consensus:



The problem with spirits remains to be for one skill investment and soem drain you get an independently acting combat capable creature with awesome stats and skills that you need to have people be the extreme cases in their particular skill set to be better than. Throw in things like powers and you have a hot mess that most of us have just become resigned to because this is magic run and there's a high investment of how to control it.

I'm hard pressed to think of a game system that gives a similar ability to every mage right out of the gate. It made a certain amount of sense in previous editions when you had to deal with domain limitations or cost and time barriers on summoning up spirits, but when those were taken away for simplification it really did somethign wonky to the power level of spirits and contributed to the overall feel of Magicrun that i'd like to see go the heck away.

ITNW could simply be an Optional Power (maybe for all spirits, maybe not). People who want tanks give up another power for it, and they'd have to be at least Force 3 (right?). I think it's an issue that tasers work on spirits, though; I'd go as far as saying they have no effect. Sniper rifles make sense, but I think the real solution is just to make spirits more 'fleshy' and let people wear them down with bullets.

I don't think it needs to be optional. Just needs to be more effective at the low end and less effective at the high end.


But I do think just making them more 'fleshy' fluffwise would help. A fire spirit that materializes isn't just a walking thing of fire, it's probably something closer to magma, with a physical body but a flaming aura. A wind spirit that materializes might be able to fly, and have the movement power to move quickly, but isn't literally a cyclone of wind with no physical body.

It depends on what you're going for. If you want ITNW to be the basic spirit defense, then yes, probably make it a little more even. I assume this was the original intent, because spirits don't wear armor (don't tell me about your stupid Guardian ).

But I think that misses the opportunity for (hard-bought) customization through an Optional Power. Spirits are used for all kinds of things, and only some of them sometimes need ITNW. It's not a question of 'needs to', but just a option. Hell, just give them Armor=X+Force without all the craziness, and let the Hardened part be the Optional. Even a Force 12 wouldn't be vastly beyond a runner (X=3 to 6?).

Fluffwise, all spirits are made of the same thing: 'magicky mana Play-Doh'. I'm just saying let them use their Body and Condition Monitor.

Well I'm still in favor of the hardened armor = auto damage resist. But I can see where you're coming from.

Maybe force+X ballistic/impact armor (X varying by spirit type. Earth might be something high like 6 while Wind might be 0, as a quick example), and an optional hardened armor power that gives additional hardened armor = to force (or maybe even half force). The hardened armor may

So a Force 6 spirit with moderate armor and the hardened armor property would have 6 body, 9 armor, and 6 auto successes. That makes it pretty darn durable, but can be gotten past. If that's too hard, then the half force for hardened armor would fix it.







Anyway, am I the only one still in favor of the separation of hermetic and shaman then? I was thinking the ally spirit vs instant use spirit powers was a pretty cool divide, but it seems like I'm pretty much alone in that.

I do think it's interesting, but probably too radical. The trend of SR seems to be toward 'all magic is the same', and then you can get Allies and things with advanced growth.

The big problem with "all magic the same" as I see it, is with all mages having access to everything makes the mages too strong. A problem that at least Lurker agrees with:



That's why I think the separation is beneficial. Yes, it's radical, but it also addresses two problems: 1) The lack of diversity between character types 2) Reduces the power of being able to spam strong spirits, because that's simply no longer an option. Either you have a couple of valuable strong spirits, or you're spamming weak spirits.




Okay I spoilered the above because I started rambling again on how it might work, and realized that's probably mostly irrelevant and covering already treaded ground, but didn't want to just delete it.

I agree with his points. Your proposal might well address it, but it's probably not the only way to do that. Yours is a big shift, and that's certainly why there's not much instant enthusiasm, that's all. Personally, I thought for the longest time that people *were* paying binding costs for summoning; it's a misconception that probably works better than the reality. You're getting magic drones, you should pay money for them.

Honestly, I'd have to see the hermetic proposal. I've never seen an ally-type spirit that wasn't broken, and I'm not sure if it's possible. Strong spirits are themselves the problem, AFAIK, not *multiple* strong spirits.

1) Yeah I get that a major change is less likely to garner enthusiasm. I haven't seen any other solutions that really stick out though. Keeping it as is contributes to keeping Magicrun, and is bland to boot.

2) Well.. if you had to pay a lot for the binding materials, it would be more reasonable. That combined with toning down some of the powers and possibly granting fewer of them to the ally spirit can make it work I think. If a Force 9 spirit has 12 armor + 5 hardened rather than 18 hardened armor, that makes a huge difference. If that spirit is only giving you a +9 move speed increase rather than a x9 multiplier, it's much more in line. etc. Also, if said Force 9 Spirit costs you 50,000 nuyen rather than 4,500, it's a much bigger blow if you lose it. The big thing would be to find a way to balance the hermetic's spirit vs a heavily optimized combat drone, if the two are comparable in both cost and effectiveness, then I would call it a fair balance. The big advantage that the ally spirit model would have is the ability to grab spells and skills. On the other hand, drones can have autosofts, which makes up for the skills at least, and it can change those more easily. Drones also have some neat little utility things that are a bit easier with tech than magic, and probably more firepower (a LMG with no recoil is a lot of firepower, and things like repeater drones help hackers get their persona to where they're not intended).

The big benefit of hermetic would ideally be having long term allies available at a moments notice without drain, while shamans big advantage would be sheer versatility.

That all sounds fine. Honestly, a spirit should be a little weaker than a combat drone, because it's a spirit. It can travel the astral, walk through walls, and who knows what else.

I wonder if spirits with *spells* was ever such a great idea. :/

Yeah, if the hermetic spirits were significantly *specialized*, that'd help.

Spirits gaining spells in addition to powers is a bad idea. A spirit picking up a spell instead of a power, and that spirit is a long term companion so you can't switch it out constantly? I don't see the problem with it personally.

You keep making it sound as if I'm intentionally trying to ruin the game. I'm not. I'm trying to work on some problems, like that the ItNW spirits have works really oddly, to the point that nearly every month there's a thread with incredulous newbies trying to understand why SnS would work on spirits. The only good reason it works is because of game balance, but it's a very ugly fix. I'd rather fix the real problem of spirit overpoweredness than rely on these bizarre counterbalances.

I like the idea of traditions having meaningful differences, but I'm not wild about the way you're hardcoding it as Shamanic vs. Hermetic. There's lots more traditions, and SR4 does give us an easy-to-use system for creating custom traditions; that's something I'd like to keep.

Maybe you could organize it as a series of choices;
1) Pick Drain stat
2) Pick spirit types
3) Associate spirits to spell schools
4) Pick possession/materialization
5) Pick many small/few powerful or summoning/binding
etc.

The idea is to have a system flexible enough that you can generate more traditions than just hermetic and shamanic with it.

I agreed with you, remember?


Ew... don't get me started .


This is quite workable but also FULL of standard fantasy fare. Can't we get rid of at least some of that? Why does ALL fantasy stuff have to be the same? I actually like the fact that spirits are quite tough vs bullets, but if you pack a big enough bullet, you can still kill them.

I think spirits should be more vulnerable in melee, though. Perhaps let people attack a spirit with Agi+Cha(or WP) + skill? Yes, I know, another special case... duh.



Yes, I am, too, with a reworking of vehicle armour (and generally ALL vehicle rules).



Hmm, I think giving it Force auto-successes is enough. That's already a ton of armour right there (equivalent to 3xForce in regular armour), and they can still roll edge dice to soak more.




Indeed while this brings back time-honoured SR traditions, I actually like the simplicity of the new system. Plus you are now stuck with only two fundamental traditions.

May I suggest as somebody who only played two sessions of this game to cut off all the bullshit metaplot it accumulated over the years. There is presently so much bullshit history in Shadowrun it made my head ache. If none of my pplayers knew anything about it, it wouln't be much of a probllem, but sadly that wasn!t the case. Another important priblem I have with it is that it doesn't give GM much freedom to tailor the world for the needs of his players. 5th editionn should restart the setting just to make it less bloated. Sure, grognards won't like it, but grognards are neophobic bastards who probably still play 2dn edition anyway, so who cares about them.

Another thing that seriously needs some major fixing is hacking. It's a mess that slows the game down with it's unnecessary complexity. Tell me, who needs twenty or something programs? And I am fully aware of the problems it had in previous editions, so 4th edition hacking was indeed massive improvement, but in the end it still sucks. And can anybody explain to me what do technomancers add to the game? Sure it¨s extra opton, the problem is that it sucks not only in execution (clearly when you just look at their rules) but in concept. From what I got Shadowrun has this technology vs. magic theme a bit because you can't be cyborg wizard because that would be too awesome for typical Joe RPG gamer to handle, advanced technology is magic resistant and wizard's summoms have difficulties with using internet so what was the point of adding internet wizards who do informatics sorcery? 5th edition shoud move them to some sourcebook.

And perhaps it's just me but effects of essence draining body mods shouldn't be easy to replicate with clothing accesories. Very few players would willingly pay essence for implanted comlink simrig vission enhancers ad other things when they can get in external essence free version. And to add insult to the injury the implants are actually much more costly moneywise than exteral variants. As a result my payers only took the few ones that didn't exist in non-implant version.


That's all for now. I try to remember any other glaring problems I saw in Shadowrun.

I dunno if we're talking about setting at all. I think all RPGs give the GM freedom to do whatever, regardless, and the SR setting *is* SR.

Technomancers are an important part of the setting and game, even if they've been poorly implemented. We definitely want to mess with their mechanics. They appear to have been designed as a sort of mirror-mirror version of magic, in SR4; we can keep that, or change it.

We certain want to keep working on the Matrix rules (like everyone before us), and we've already talking about revitalizing cyberware (although, external versions *should* always cost less; the issue is that implanted version should be worth the cost).

Don't feed the trolls Yerameyahu he didn't even try that hard.

And I didn't reply that hard.

I have to disagree. For most people I know Shadowrun is "that cyberpunk game where you can play cyborg trolls and wizards" in the same way as D&D is "the default fantasy game". The problem with having detailed setting that has yers of development behinf it is that it makes it pretty hard to get into it. As I wrote before not as much of a problem when your players haven't read every single book and know more about fluff than you, but if they did you are screwed. Having big setting makes it harder for new people to get into the game.



The problem with them, at least as I see it, is that they break the magic vs. technology theme. It's sort of like if the game had cyberware that gave your character flat dicepool bonuses to magic.

Folks ignorance is not the games problem. *shrug* It is quite literally all right there in the manual.

LurkerOutThere: Perhaps I am just strange, but I want to pay the game not to learn a whole textbook like Runner's Haven. Now add that there are plenty of only semi-obsolete "Shadows of <some place>" sourcebooks for 3rd edition. Setting of any game should be easy to access, easy to adapt and most importantly it should provide GM and players with ideas they can build upon, not with restriction they have to bow to and according to my personal experience, Shadowrun fails at it.

I'm not really opposed to that. I've been saying Shamanic and Hermetic for simplification. However, for the 'many spirits' traditions, I don't think you should have to pick spirit types, either that or you should make sure there's enough overlap in powers that any selection of 5 spirits can potentially have any spirit power. Because that is after all the point of the many weak spirits, sheer versatility in being able to have any power in the game.



Well, someone else was saying they want hardened armor to be optional, so the result was regular armor, with hardened as an optional spirit power. But I do think the hardened just being half of force would still be a worthwhile power. Of course if hardened armor is your only defense then yes, full force auto successes is probably enough armorwise.

I think one nice thing about having regular armor as well though is that regular armor would soak up any AP first. So if you have 6 armor and 3 auto successes, and the enemy has AP -5, you still have 1 armor and 3 auto successes. If you instead had just 6 auto successes, you'd be down to 1 auto success, and be pretty squishy.



That's really personal preference, and remember fluff is ALWAYS what the GM makes it. As long as you are running a campaign at the same technology level (ie cyberware is available, the matrix or its equivalent exists and people have hyper powerful computers in their cellphones), you can really refluff the world about any way you like for your own home games. There is no reason for Shadowrun to change its default setting because you don't want to read about the metaplot. For many, that default setting is what gives the game its charm, and it's not just grognards.

Nah, not every spirit power. You should always have less "slots" than desirable things to fill them with. Nobody gets to have them all.

But I do think the spirit powers need to be distributed/assigned in such a way to make all the spirit types very distinct from each other. You should never be going "Should I summon Fire or Earth? Who cares, they do practically the same thing anyway." The core 4 elemental spirit types are way too similar to each other, while Guardian, Task, Guidance and Man are basically defined by an optional power (Combat Skill, Technical Skill, Divination, Innate Spell).




@Trollock: I'm not sure if you're trolling, but on the off chance you're not;
All you really need to know about the metaplot is in SR4* Core. Everything in the other books is just extra. Stuff in the old editions is nice for nostalgia value, but it's not necessary.

And of course if you want to junk the metaplot and just use the game system for an alternate setting, there's nothing stopping you. The game system doesn't require you to use the setting, and the Metaplot Police won't come to drag you to the gulag at night.

You have a point... however, I'd go as far as just ignore AP for ItNW. YES, that would create inconsistency with vehicles, but... we were already at the point where this was the case.

Vehicles don't have hardened armor, so...?

Yes, but we're talking about a new edition, where I would have hoped to unify those rules.

Actually, though, vehicles aren't a special case, so... maybe if there were other forms of hardened armour. Milspec armour, maybe, I forget whether that has it now or not.

So, let's put this into prospective rules:

Hardened Armour:
Hardenend Armour deducts its rating in full from incoming physical and stun damage before the normal damage resistance test. After that, the resulting damage is compared with other normal armour, and potentially converted to Stun, and normal damage resistance may be rolled. AP is deducted from normal armour first, and then from hardened armour only if no normal armour is left. Elemental effects that halve the armour value don't work on hardened armour, in effect "AP half" is ignored.
Example
Don Draker is a Drake (duh). He has the usual 4/4 hardened armour, and is wearing a specially modded, and super cheesy (but he needs this for the example) full-body armour suit in addition. He gets shot with a full-wide burst of heavy machinegun fire, and takes 15P/-3AP. He immediately deducts 4P damage, and then compares the resulting hurt to his normal armour rating of 12B/I, modified by the -3AP. The resulting 11P is more than his 9P regular ballistic armour, hence he still takes physical damage. He rolls his body + 9 ballistic armour (+ possible mods) to reduce the damage further.



Immunity to Normal Weapons, standard spirit, optional critter power
Critters with this quality posess Hardened Armour equal to their Force while materialized. Critters without a Force rating posess 4 points of Hardened Armour.

Armour, optional spirit power
Spirits with this power posess armour equal to their force while materialized.

Armour Hardening, armour modification, avail 25F, 1/4 cap of the piece (rounded UP), 10000
This special treatment converts one quarter (rounded down) of the armour rating of the treated piece of armour into hardened armour. Deduct this rating from its regular B/I armour value for the resulting normal armour.

Chobham armour, military vehicle add-on; avail 30R, modification cap [2]/rating, 10000 / rating
This armour is added to a vehicle's regular armour and provides one point of hardened armour per point of rating. Each point costs 2 capacity.

Depleted Uranium Penetrator (DUP) rounds
This special ammunition is a special case of APDS rounds. It is specifically designed to overcome hardened armour, and offers a -4AP only against hardened armour, which is deducted from the Hardened Armour rating before all other steps of the damage resistance test.


Common sense disclaimer
Realistically, drake armour should apply AFTER regular armour, because it's the bottom layer. Realistically, DUP rounds are just everyday military APFSDS rounds made of Uranium or tungsten carbide. But let's not let common sense or realism get in the way of our gaming .

I thought drake hardened armor only applied when in drake (not human) form?

And doesn't this make spirits a bit too squishy?

Take a F6 spirit. It's got a Body of 6-7 or so, maybe even 8-9. Toss in HA 6, subtract AP reducing that HA by 3 (SnS, Ruger SW or Ares Alpha with Ex-Ex) and you've got very little defense left on that spirit.

You probably thought correctly, I blundered. Now quite frankly I think you can still wear specially modified armour on top of that, right? So let's leave the example, I'll just edit to reflect that.



S&S doesn't work, because I said so. (The AP half effect is ignored completely.)
Ruger Warhawk with ExEx is, what, 7P/-3?
AR with ExEx is 7P/-2
AR with APDS is 6P/-5, this is a killer, I admit (but it SHOULD be!)

Now it's got 6-9 body and remaining 3 HA. It deducts 3P (for, let's say, resulting 4P), and then rolls 6-9 dice. That's not really squishy, especially when you start using Edge, too. Plus, it could have the optional Armour power, too. This costs you one of your two optional powers at F6, but still, we're trying to tone spirits down a bit.

Just FYI, "Hardened armor is auto-hits on the damage resistance test" while also contributing its rating towards the stun/physical check is exactly the same as doing weird reach-around subtraction.

My off-the-cuff suggestion was to make Armor power a standard default for all spirits (so they have *something*), and have Hardening/ITNW be the optional add-on. Let it not even be armor at all (not rolled for Damage Resistance, not affected by AP), but simply a nice off-the-top soak power; any incoming attack (except magic, allergies, etc.) simply loses X DV in step one (is this roughly how Smart Armor works/should work in SR4?). I never liked the ITNW 'hard then normal' approach, too messy.

Yeah, smart armor needs to be rewritten too. The SR4 rules are confusing, and even when correctly interpreted (by which we mean liberal use of assuming that "reduce" means "add" and the like) you end up with a system that is less than beneficial.

Give some spirits armor - the ones that should have armor/be tough, like Earth, Plant and Guardian. This armor can be Hardened if you like. If it's not Hardened, then it should be more than if it's hardened.

Make ItNW something entirely different - and so you get rid of the weirdness of AP having interaction with ItNW. The whole point of ItNW is that they're not normal material things, and therefore hard to affect with rude kinetic attacks.

I definitely don't want any "apply AP to this armor, then if there's still some AP left, apply it to that other armor instead." That's annoyingly fussy.