The bullets are hitting with the same force, there are simply more of them.

Don't forget shotguns. They're at 7P -1 for normal slugs (8P -2 for ExEx slugs, 7P -5 for APDS) or 9P(f) with a logical AP of +4 but the book states +5. Not too bad either.

The problem is that tasers work by having little darts the stick so they can carry the electrical charge. The little darts don't stick to something that is essentially the side of an armored car. So logically they shouldn't work. ...

We never used the SnS or Tasers, we shot the crap out of them with alphas with APDS and HE grenades, with AT rockets occasionally. But generally we just had to delay them until the mage stunbolted them away.

That +5 applies though, to my knowledge, and may be more of a hinderance, I did forget shotguns though, you are correct.

Amusingly a Troll with a Combat Axe, has a much better shot
He's doing 10DV + net hits. Sadly of course, he has to hit. But

Mechanics wise that's probably a good fit, but honestly I think the big thematic/aesthetic appeal of the Attacks of Will as a concept, at least for me, is that it's fundamentally not about physical force or combat skill, but deeply connects with what the characters are feeling at that point. I kind of like the idea of, say, after the hostile spirit mows down the chromed bodyguard, the little corpgirl protecting her baby brother puts all of her will into protecting him and disbands it with a punch. I mean, fortunately SR already has a mechanic to manage that sort of extra effort when it really counts, Edge. Anyways, it'd make it harder to have scenes or plots involving that sort of thing with an AoW dependent on mundane combat abilities.

ItNW is not armor it only works similarly to armor in the game mechanics. So I'm not sure if your statement applies to spirits, especially given the great variety of looks spirits can have.
The +2 DV more than compensate it. You have a higher chance of forcing the spirit to roll damage resistance and the Net damage should also be 1/3 higher on average.

Yes. I eventually resorted to folding Firearms back into a single skill again just to get people to quit using Arsenal to just pick one weapon and tweak it so it's good for every situation again. Typically that weapon was an Automatic of some sort.

Anyway, the hyperbole of a starting mage dropping a spirit that could take out a tank column made me smirk a bit given the shenanigans a legit rigger can do with a solid weapons array.

Or rather, it would, except your DV must ~exceed~ their armor value. AP counts. In fact, your chances are worse.

Example, same F6 spirit.

Shotgun w/normal slug is 7P -1. You need 4 hits.

Shotgun w/Flechette is 9P +4(logically). You now need 7 hits. As the +4 pushes their armor to 16. In most cases the +2/+5 is a fair tradeoff, until you get to the ass backwardness of SR4 ItNW.

Not if he has 15 KE on Dodge Scoots in pursuit

Just saying, a Citymaster with a water cannon will be harming any Force 8 Spirit it can hit by default and it's treated as a fully automatic weapon, so you can use wide bursts to try netting a whole mess of net hits and thus have a good shot at harming even higher force spirits or you can go narrow and really hose weaker spirits down.

Incidentally, I thought S&S used adhesive. I think this same 'issue' has been raise in each of the million S&S threads.

Again, you're assuming optimum conditions for the runners, which happens approximately...never. Most of your spirit combat will be on corp property. Which is where most of the comparisons start breaking. Although I'm surprised no one mentioned using the murder cycle yet.

Actually, I'd assume the Citymaster/Water Cannon setup is a suggestion for corps to use *against* runners' spirits.

What he said. The only thing I've assumed here is that starting runner level spirits will have a hard time with a tank column in the vast majority of games. There's outlier possession builds with buff subjects that can get up to some shenanigans but as a general rule Spirits aren't trouncing on vehicles to the extent that was implied earlier since both types benefit from what essentially amounts to hardened armor. Spirits are generally just a symptom of how poorly damage and armor scales in this game beyond a certain point really-- The system plays fast and feels pretty alright at the lower end but frays a bit around the edges the farther you have to stretch it to incorporate bigger and badder subjects. Spirits just happen to exacerbate the situation since it's easier to fit one in an office building than a Citymaster.

OP here. I run with F * 1.5 (rounded up) auto-hits which also counts as regular armor. I intensely dislike the hardened armor concept applying to spirits. I also allow burst fire to work normally, for reasons which should be obvious. So considering those rules, maybe removing SnS won't unbalance things. I still want to fix attacks of will, though; Will + relevant Close Combat skill works for me. Also, any suggestions for fixing Banishing? As written it's SO much better to just Stunbolt, unless you really really want to Pokéball the sucker.

Banishing works rather in a reverse fashion. A higher force spirit will in some ways be easier to simply banish by virtue of it likely having a relatively small number of services. While stunbolting is attractive still, if the mage is within LOS of the spirit remember that it will get its own (potentially) absurd WIL + counterspell, while banishing is your MAG + Banish vs F (or + MAG of caster if bound... hope not) where your hits decrease services (and at 0 the spirit goes poof)

In my game all spirits have listed Allergies, but they also have another Allergy quality that is particular to the tradition that summoned them.

For instance, Hermetic spirits are allergic to silver and Shamanistic spirits are Allergic to bone.

The materials should be something that isn't exactly commonplace but not that hard to get a hold of. The whole idea is to make doing some research and legwork really pay off when it comes to spirits.

Probably. But anyhow, how do you glue a SnS round to something that is living fire? And really hot fire, based on the energy aura damage.

Make up your mind: "The little darts don't stick to something that is essentially the side of an armored car."

Fire spirits are not made of fire they are made of mana that possibly looks like fire and have the Fire Aura. That aura does not damage projectiles by RAW. Also there is no mention that SnS need to stay attached to continue to work. Even if the projectile needed to resist the damage of passing through the aura, it is a question of is the aura able to destroy the projectile before it reaches its target. Another point is that if the energy aura worked that way all creatures having it would be a lot more resilient as any attacking device, be it bullet or melee weapon, would possibly be destroyed before even reaching the spirit and checking for ItNW.

It's a flat mistake to try and use 'realism' or 'logic' in adjudicating these rules.

I agree that applying realism to a gameworld that includes magic is a fool's errand, but you can't leave out logic.

Not logic, 'logic'. With scare-quotes. As in, 'S&S clearly can't work, because he's made of fire, duh!' Logic says that they work, because the book doesn't say they don't.

OK

There is a lot of truth to that, but if the rules actually had been playtested, and didn't leave huge areas that required interpretation of what the writer was trying to say it would be a lot easier to do.

What force are your starting mages summoning, that can go face to face with even a single tank.
Firelance vehicle laser frys anythink up to force 12(max uniniated mage can summon)
Light gaus cannon kills spirits up to force 22.

I agree, kzt. What I'm saying is that we can justify nearly anything if we allow ourselves to make up the reasons. I certainly agree that balance is the ideal, and that vague or patchy rules are a huge frustration.

*cough cough* I can have a starting character summon a F28 spirit... some of the time.

Since spirit's aren't immune to toxins, how about some Narcoject? That 10 stun is a quick way to disrupt spirits. As is Slab. Or what about using Pixie Dust so that the spirits forget what tasks they're on?

Ofcource you can, but i doupt his players can.
And most of the time you die if you try that, avarage 18P drain hurt a lot and thats with out the spirit using edge(and at that force it really should)
with edge to reroll failures, the avarage drain rises to 30P. with really bad luck the drain can be 56P
Also could you tell me how you get your summoning pool to 30+ dice, so you have a chance to actually get a servise out of that spirit.

RAW aside since they dont have a biological body or a working cardivascular system or nervous system they would just ignore said drug.

Not to mention getting a dartguns damage code through their immunity to normal weapons...

Sure, that's just a practical application of the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
A naked character with just two soaking dice (one body and one edge) also can fully absorb the damage of a long narrow burst from a heavy gauss...some of the time. The chance of rolling a gazillion 6s one after another is greater than 0

Either way, they don't stick

Explosions maybe but I don't care what RAW says, so long as I have my druthers in ANY game where somebody casts a fire spell on a fire elemental it doesn't goddamn work.

I would allow the damage of a fiery explosion but the Elemental Effect of Fire would be ignored and be classified as a mundane weapon.

After all, the explosive Blast can still damage it but not the actual firestorm.

End result, it would still have immunity to it.

Spirits have DV boxes. Stuff does DV damage. Spirits get hurt by stuff.

QFT

Fire spirits are not immune to fire. Even if they were (as per rules), a big enough fire would still burn them. They are even doubly vulnerable to fire spells, since this is magical damage. There is no rule that elemental spells cease to be spells versus ItNW.

As a houserule you can do whatever is fun for your group.

Ooh! You could go all Final Fantasy: fire heals them, water and ice do double, something I forget does zero… Don't forget that Atma ignores all armor.

Most of the time there was no water element in FF games. It was Fire(Fira,Firaga, Firaja) heals, Blizzard(Blizzara, Blizzaga, Blizzaja) does double damage and Thunder (Thundara, Thundaga, Thundaja) deal normal damage. Water spells were usually listed under Blue magic in games that had it... I play too many damn games.

1) You saying "RAW aside" invalidated your post from a RAW perspective, and when you ask for help with the rules of a game, you should be expecting people to argue from RAW. As a houserule, you're right though.

2) I said nothing about dartguns. There's also capsule rounds and the Super Squirt, both of which only require you to hit the target, not actually do damage.

As always, it's Narcoject + DMSO, of course. The contradictory dart guns are an issue for the Broken Rules thread.

Halleluja....AMEN brother, AMEN...

But why, exactly?
A fire elemental is made of the exact same material as an earth elemental, or an air elemental, or a water elemental, or a spirit of man, or a plant spirit, ad nauseum.

Unless that fire elemental has some innate defense against fire, which, by RAW, they don't.
(Now, whether they should is a different question altogether...but giving just them fire immunity probably makes them too good. Which rapidly turns into Dumpshock's favorite debate topic: "Magic is too powerful because I don't use the rules, therefore it should be weakened across the board!")

Eh, it'd probably be okay to give elemental spirits their relevant elemental immunity. God knows they're not Beast or Guardian spirits, poor things. It would help fire spirits more than earth spirits, of course. *shrug* As with all house rules, do what works for your group.

Unless you consider metal to be included in "Earth" as an element, in which case it can get petty nasty with bullets.

Haha, oh god. Obviously, that's not the case, but that is indeed a scary thought. I think we're talking about elemental magic, though.

Well only options for elemental magic type immunities for an earth elemental are metal or acid

Right; like I said, they get screwed compared to fire spirits under this hypothetical house rule. Metal's not an element in SR4, and acid should be 'super-effective!' against earth spirits, if anything.

I been thinking about the Attacks of Will thing some more. How does a base of Willpower + Edge sound? Is that too strong, especially with Banishing in the mix?

I was under the impression drugs don't work on spirits. Because they can not receive first aid. But if drugs do work then they should be able to take combat drugs and use slap patches. Both work on everything else under the sun except drones.

Spirits can eat food and excrete waste, but they get no sustenance from it.

I think a poison spell should work but normal poison should not, or be subjected to ITNW. But if not then beneficial drugs should work.

If they did not have ITNW for poisons then the sure fire way to kill any spirit is nerve gas or just knock out gas to disrupt them. Kind of lame.