That's what I said! The fact that that's impossible means that ramming is impossible. (Until that book comes out.) And there are dual-natured critters easily the size of vehicles.

Both. 194: "in some cases a focus, spirit, or even a character may be unintentionally forced into a situation where either they or the barrier must give."

It has less to do with the magic of wards, as being forced into what is, essentially, an astral wall.

You could, in fact, throw, push, pull, ram, or drop someone into the ward hard enough to trigger it.

That sounds more like a slow push or a fast one do the same thing, and the effects are the result of the magical properties of the barrier. It has nothing to do with the 'physics' of the situation.

1) because its cooler that way.

2) Lets explore this thought for a moment. Doesn't this mean that an astrally projecting mage could do drive-by killings in the meat-space at mach 4.89, if he found a dual natured object which he could move around on the meatspace, while astral himself?
I don't think there are any rules for it, but, still.....

Oh, jesus. That's a lot of Mach. Luckily, you can't carry around an object while astral, right?

Thats why I said 'dual natured object'. Iunno. Can ghouls be punched around by astral spirits? I think they can.

See! That's why no physics: you can't pick up a ghoul. You can 'attack' them, which is a mystical process (insert mumbo jumbo), but it's not the same as kicking them so they fall across the room.

Can you actaully back that up within the rules? I'm tired of being the only one around here who sources their material.

I mean, i'm rather curious, but I don't want to go digging around in the RC for quotes to see if a ghoul burns in realspace when a fire spirit uses an elemental attack on them from the astral.

that being said, if it did work like that, it'd be a fairly decent plothook for your players to try to figure out what just happened.

The ghoul might receive burns, but wouldn't burn. Because you can't ground powers from astral to physical, right? That'd be a loophole.

could you explain what you mean by that? Grounding? What loophole?

I think i know what you're talking about, but I'd like to make sure we're on the same page first. A little more detail would be great.

I could have the wrong word, but you used to be able to cast through from the astral into the physical via 'grounding', right? My take is that the astral is insulated from the physical in SR4: astral forms can't lift things (or ghouls), an astral fire on that ghoul can't burn a physical bystander, etc.

Spirits cannot use Physical Powers from the Astral... so no Energy Aura or elemental attacks (Those are physical)... you can only use Mana Based Attacks on the Astral Plane... Physical Attacks (Unarmed or melee attacks) use Mana Analogs when in the Astral, so are not really physical either...

Keep the Faith

And what about when they're against a dual natured target, who is active on both planes simultaneously, permanently, and can't turn it off?

What matters is where the attacks come from *and* where they're going. All limits apply.

They cannot use Physical Powers from the Astral, regardless of whether their target is an Astral Form or Dual Natured...

Just like they cannot use Physical Powers FROM the physical (Spirits are Dual Natured when Materialized after all) to the Astral for a Purely Astral Form target... It does not work that way...

Keep the Faith

Neat trick since that's a Physical power.

Yeah. You can manabolt ghouls from the astral plane all day (well, if you have a good Drain pool), but you can't fireball them from the astral plane.

Now, spirits are a bit trickier. Because the entry describing how Physical powers work says that they can't be used in astral space or affect astral forms. However, the Search power can be used in astral space, despite being a Physical power. I take that as a specific instance overriding the general rule, though. In other words, unless a power says it is an exception to how Physical powers work, I assume it works in the standard way.