Well, after some experimentation of my own, I've decided that this information finally be let out into the 'trix. I'm also posting this on a few other major nodes such as Jackpoint and ShadowSea.

While it's true that people are still incapable of forming complex items permanently from pure mana alone there has been considerable progress in using magic to form weapons - an interesting variant of the spell form known colloquially as Elemental Aura has been known to look remarkably like any number of melee weapons, most notably blades, similar to those of the classic comic character Psylocke and the Matrix game character the Protoss Zealot from the popular Spacecraft Z-10: Zerg Rising VRMMO. Interestingly, regardless of form, the spell seems to only function well in the "hands" of a martial artist - no formal weapons skills seem to work with the spell (at least to my personal experience - although I've heard rumors that others have had limited success with this).


In addition, there have been reports that I can verify that there exist certain free spirits with the ability to materialize into perfectly functional melee weapons of all different types. The weapons can take on sometimes peculiar forms or be completely indestinguishable from others of their type - it seems to be up to the personality of the particular spirit.

There have been rumors of some particularly powerful free spirits banishing some of their subjects from their metaplanes and binding them into the forms of weapons, and indeed I am in the possession of a few of these weapons. It seems the spirits spend this time in a sort of metatative contimplation over the event(s) that lead them to this particular exile. I'm currently unsure whether or not this exile is limited to a certain amount of time or until they've reached a higher level of enlightenment, but the spirits that I've met have been resistant to the idea of being released.

I've also heard a rumor of at least one mage in particular who apparently is incapable of summoning normal spirits. Instead, all the spirits he summons appear as different weapons and, most remarkably, armor. I've been searching myself for this individual but he seems to not want to be found. If any of you chummers have any leads, please drop me a line.

So… That's not making weapons. It's an aura spell or a spirit. Neraph, you so crazy.

Strangely enough he does end up with a magic weapon, so regardless of semantics the end result is the same.

No, that's my point: the rule says, '*sorcery* can't'.

Those crazy mages, always coming up with new ways to look cool. Still as for effectiveness... well, we know what happens to those zealots when facing a zerg swarm.

Countdown to lightsaber spirits with Light Aura in three, two..

You know, a mage could do this with an Ally Spirit fairly cheaply. All ally spirits come with Realistic Form, and may be given alternate forms for 2 karma each - such as a sword.

A mage doing such a trick could, indeed, mix up the energy types by giving the spirit the Element Aura power multiple times, for different elements they have access too.

A basic force 1 Ally Sword will do the trick just fine, though, for when you need to hammerspace a flaming mallet from the middle of nowhere. All for about the same cost as Quickening a spell. Not bad at all.

I think it's still up in the air whether a spirit in sword form using Element Aura gets the bonus, because *it* isn't attacking.

Can you hold it and order it to swing it's self?

Dunno. Not very 'Realistic Form' for a sword, but who knows?

If it has the flight skill, yes.

Its only possession spirits that are limited to their hosts forms, and ally spirits can't be possession.

A low-force, ah, flying sword, however.... won't be very good at it.


On the other hand, now i have a mental image of giving such an ally spirit Psychokinesis, and letting it fly a bunch of other, plainer weapons around.
... and now i've got a mental image of a mage with such a spirit, who happens to be an avid golfer. Trouble happens? Well, hey...always armed.

When you come into contact with a entity with Elemental Aura you take its force in damage and are subject to the elemental effect secondary attack (electrocution, catch on fire etc)
So if it is a force 6 spirit with 4 elemental powers, in the form of a Mono sword you will deal X+24(+Effects), where X is the damage you get from swinging the sword. On the plus side it is a Dual Natured entity and as such can easily damage creatures with Immunity to Normal Weapons.

Just checking...you mean X+4(+effects) I think...if its +24 sign me up now!

I think this is correct, I have been searching the rule books to confirm this, but I haven't found much either way yet.

No, ragewind means 24 because ragewind is using the fact that it has access to 4 elements to mean that it has 4 elemental auras up and so they would all activate. Thus each of the 4 auras does 6 damage, giving you 24 damage and 4 elemental effects.

you'd probable resist 6DV 4 times

This reminds me of a case where a player wanted a claw hand with 4 daggers on it, and wanted all the daggers to count. "Each dagger does str/2. so 4 daggers must do 2*str". I think you get +4 damage and all the elemental effects: this makes it like the firewater spell, and is compatible with the rules on spell casting.

Note also that the energy aura does not add force to damage...its adds 4

Ragewind, I think you'll find that's wrong. The text actually says that it applies to melee attacks by the subject, and to anyone making a melee attack against it. This is the case for Energy Aura (critter power) and [Element] Aura spell (there's no 'Element[al] Aura' power).

I have a rigger that can cast summon weapon.
Well actually its a cell phone set up as a spotting transmitter, and remote firing key for a missile that i leave hot in the van.
Hit redial, drop phone, run like hell.

I have a rigger that can cast summon weapon.
She sends out a command on her cellphone and her dozen armed drones show up to protect her.
Take that mages

The errata for Street Magic, page 103 allow for Inhabitation, Materialization or Possession type.

Okay, question.

There's no way to create a complex object like a gun entirely out of mana. Is there a way to "summon" an already existing gun from a sort of "hammerspace" instead?

~Umidori

For a Great Dragon, sure.

No, one of the rules of sorcery is also that you can't teleport stuff.

Probably the best way to have a gun appear is to have a gun shrunken, or concealed by a spell. Both will be obvious to astral sight, but to mundanes will appear like "a summoned weapon"

Can we get a "Return From Goo" spell? Walk around with a lot of snot in your pocket and then the snot is a gun?

I think you can maintain the "turn to goo" spell, and cancel it when you want the gun

Sufficiently advanced magic looks like self-replicating nanotech.

Tell me you don't like the idea of a guy walking into a meeting with 90 jars of silly putty and suddenly his team is around him and armed.

"90 jars of Runners on the wall,
90 jars of Runners,
If one of those jars,
Should happen to fall,
There'd be 89 jars of Runners on the wall."

AFAIK, Turn to Goo only affects living animals?

I dunno why anyone really wants to summon weapons anyway. If there's a place that won't let you bring guns in, sucks to be them.

Well ok, then you sneak a couple mages and phys-ads into a meeting. Be kinda like when Penguin snuck some goons into the Batcave.

That's true. Given the effectiveness of spells like stunbolt, I don't see why a mage would want to even waste time summoning a weapon.

It's kind of like giving a tank the ability to have someone open a hatch and use a pistol.

"We put the GOO back in GOONS!"

http://www.monkeyboobies.com/gallery/d/221...th+my+sword.png

Well said



I find it interesting you would make a distinction to a action that forces the spirit and a person to come into contact. The power is worded in such a way to caution contact against two specific entities and to say any other form of contact doesn't apply is...unusual.

I have a Nightstick that radiates Fire. Enough to say burn things or warm a room, in this case you grab my Nightstick by the business end and you are perfectly fine, however, God help you if you flick your finger on it as you will suffer the consequences.
Page 294 of the SR4A advises..."A Critter with a Energy aura continuously radiates a aura of damaging or negative energy"... It goes on further to point out .."Any successful attack...". This does two things, firstly and most importantly you can shoot a Spirit with this power and still get hurt (even implying a magic spell will trigger the aura as a Spellcast would be considered a "successful attack") but the rulebook further defines a "Successful Attack" as a attack that connects with a target.

I.E. You simply need to touch or be touched by something with a Energy Aura in order to get hurt.

PS: If the above hurts too much, simply have the Spirit ready a melee attack for when your sword comes into contact with a target.


Correct

Nope: Street magic already covers this. If you have multiple elemental effects you take the base damage, modified by all the elemental effects. There is already a spell showing 2 element effects called fire water.

Yes.

The relevance of "turn to goo" to this conversation is that turning complex (really really complex) things into goo, then turning them back again is within the limits of sorcery.

I can see a couple of reasons:

• Style
• A panther assault cannon with customized ammunition is also extremely effective, and doesn't leave your astral signature signed saying "it was me...I done it" for a few hours.

I dunno, Seth. It seems like gooing things isn't a one-way, reversible-sometime-later process. It's sustained. And the fact that it works on living things is no argument that non-livining things should be easier. Magic is magic.

Ragewind, strange but true. It says what it says: attack, or be attacked.

That quotation only applies to Spells, in this case we are referring to a Critter Power and as such the rules for the combination do not apply. Strangely enough it would apply to the actual Energy Aura Spell, but only if you had a single spell with multiple effects (see rules for designing spells in Street Magic). Lets call it a Prismatic Barrier .
If you were to simply cast 4 different energy aura spells a offender would suffer 4 separate attacks so in either case you get the same effect.

It is the job of the GM to adjudicate such issues. Shadowrun already has two methods for dealing with multiple attacks: bursts from firearms, and multiple elemental effects. Rather than invent a third one (which causes massive escalation of damage out of all proportion to any other attack type) the GM should try hard to match the suggestion to existing rules. I feel quite strongly that the closest match to multiple elemental effects for critter powers is that case of multiple elemental effects from spells. You feel that the closest match is to have 4 totally separate strike, each resisted separately. I repeat that no other shadowrun mechanisms work that way.

At the end of the day it is always a call for the GM, and if your GM is happy for the players to have a massive power boost, or the baddies to have a massive power boost thats OK.

Well said Seth but I feel I must point out that the multiple effects on one attack only works if you have created or already have a spell laying around like that. It has to be specifically crafted to follow those rules, its not something that just happens when you get more than one thing together.

Right, but that's multiple elemental effects from the exact same spell. If you cast two different spells then the effects are followed separately, and if something has Elemental Aura (Fire) and Elemental Aura (Cold) then they work separately also. The combined effect would only happen with a power like Elemental Aura (Coldfire), similar to how Firewater only functions as it does because it is a specific spell. Multicasting a Firebolt and a Waterbolt would cause two instances of damage following each elemental effect - they wouldn't automatically combine into Firewater Bolt.