I don't think the RAW says anything about it, explicitly, either way. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

That said, there's a couple of arguments I can think of in the for category:
1. The persons very belief that a called shot will help will make it so.
2. on a possession spirit, hitting a more critical part of the thing they're possessing may be valid.
3. RAW never says you can't.

A couple of arguments against:
1. For a persons belief to effect this, they'd probably have to be awakened.
2. Spirits do not have anyplace on them that is more or less armored.
3. spirits do not have anyplace on them that is more or less damaging for them to be hit at.
4. RAW never says you can.

Thoughts?

A Called Shot against Armor is a called shot against Armor. Immunity to Normal Weapons isn't armor, it's like armor. So there's no binding reason why it'd work.

This whole "it works because of belief" is blown way out of proportion, too. This is Shadowrun, not Mage: the Ascension.

Well the called shot to avoid armor might not work as there's no armor to avoid, but called shot to increase damage should work by RAW.
The fact that it works making sense or not isn't covered by game rules.

I parallel Mäx, a called shot to bypass armor doesn't make sense, but a called shot to increase DV does.

Is the rule actually called targeting in vulnerable spot? Do spirits like people have vulnerable spots on their anatomy that hurt more than others? Like the head of a human being. I get shooting a guy in the head for extra damage but a giant living wall of flame? where do you shoot it. I agree that you shuld be able to shoot a possessed metahuman for extra damage.

Sounds like a good time to test Arcana or Knowledge: Spirits

Hmmm. Good point.

I guess I perceive a Called Shot as a parallel to the Take Aim action. Take Aim affects the dice pool of the attacker, at the expense of an Action. Called Shot affects the DV of the attack, at the expense of the dice pool. "Vulnerable spot" may be interpreted as "place where the aura is weakest" for this purpose.

And how do you suggest a (non-assensing) character to be able to determine how strong a spirit's aura is in any given location? Provided of course that such a location exists in the first place, which is entirely up for grabs.

Now, one thing that I can envision is that going for center of 'mass' might work well on a spirit because the bullet will pass through more of their energy, thus, presumably, causing more damage. I think that this is covered simply by an attack roll and don't know that a called shot could really improve that any. I mean a called shot for the center of mass is fairly counter-intuitive because the basic objective is generally to aim for the center of mass in the first place.

My bad for use of the word "aura".

"Place where the flames are momentarily parted"

"Where the crystals come to a crevice so the bullet won't deflect"

"That gloppy thing in the middle... it's gotta be important"

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"Called shots" is a generic rule, therfore needs to be over-ridden by a specific rule in order to be different. RAW never says you can't (lack of specific rule) therefor you can.

Except there is nothing that says that place is actually more important. A spirit's 'physical form' doesn't really dictate how any part of it will react to a bullet. Remember, a spirit wielding a sword (that is part of its form) won't set off a metal detector because it isn't actually metal. A spirit that has a 'joint' somewhere doesn't necessarily have that joint any weaker than any other part of its being.

Like I said above, I think it is much more likely that how much damage you deal has more to do with hitting a larger cross-section of the spirit, thus having the bullet contact more of the spirit, thus increasing the amount of energy drained. If that is the case, your first two examples are actually going to end up causing less damage as opposed to more. And I think the fact that there is a discussion about it at all means a called shot for increased damage should be disallowed, since you have no idea at all where you actually want to shoot it to cause more damage.

We have to assume they work as normal. You are free to make a house rule that gives them 'Critical Hit Immunity' a là D&D.

If you're following RAW to the letter yeah, you have to assume that you somehow have knowledge of their weak points regardless of anything.

I figure some kind of spirit based knowledge skill might allow for called shots on spirits, but it seems ridiculous to assume that everyone knows a spirit's weak points.

By that token, they probably don't know the weak points of most drones and vehicles, and maybe some exotic metas/infected/critters/etc. It's a dangerous game to just make things up.

That's why we have a Factotum in the party for knowledge checks. ;D

Metas/infected/critters/etc are all vulnerable to having their head shot, fairly easy there. Vehicles/drones I might agree with, but you can still at least try and figure joints on the drones. Vehicles it's a fairly safe bet that the general engine area is a good place to aim (Though this might cause some poor hits on rear engine vehicles).

Spirits on the other hand... are the joints weaker? Does that mean shooting at them is a good thing or a bad thing? Do you want center of mass like I think? Or do you want to go through as little of the spirit as is possible? Is there any correlation at all to what you see and what is actually a weak point? Is there even such a thing as a weak point on a spirit?

What if they're wearing a helmet or something? Lots of things are less vulnerable there. Why would shooting the engine (in SR4 mechanics) constitute a weak spot, assuming there is one engine and that you can guess where it is?

Like I said, either rule that spirits don't *have* weak spots, or let things work as normal. You can't start legislating what characters know, unless you're going to dramatically revamp the Knowledge skill rules, and ignore the ubiquity of KnowSofts and the Google.

Engines would constitute a weak spot to make actually describing your action possible in terms other than "I make a called shot for extra DV at the car, with a penalty of 3."

Also, always take Google (I'm Feeling Lucky) as a knowledge skill. Crank it up to 7 at least.

Is it meaningful, though, or is it just pretending to describe the bonus? What if there's no central engine, or if the engine is the strongest part of the vehicle? Should you still get the Called Shot? That's my point: none of the Called Shot rules really make sense, and if you start preferentially pulling at the loose threads, you'll only ruin the sweater.

Remember that your GM has to agree that a called shot is possible in the first place.




-k

What I find interesting is that with all the called shot types if you were to bold the first sentence of each they would read as type of action, then the proceeding lines as how to achieve that mechanically and not requiring that first line as a part of the mechanic.

But without, it looks as though the first line may be a required part of the mechanic.

Who is to say for sure, I don't know.

Ok so here is how I would say it works "mystically".

Lets say we have a generally humanoid shaped spirit. Why is that spirit humanoid in the first place? Probably because the guy who summoned/bound it influenced it in some way. Either way the humanoid form is important to the spirit as it is the equivalent of it's body. Perhaps the summoner also influenced its beliefs about it's body. As in Maybe the spirits head is vulnerable because it thinks that his head is vulnerable because the summoner generally places more of a protective instinct on his brain meats?

Makes sense.

I'd go that route too.

There's even the one tradition that thinks of spirits as materialized forms of the summoner's imagination (which gets hilarious when he can summon spirits smarter than he is).

You could stretch that line of reasoning and say that a sufficiently Forceful spiritual instantiation of the summoner's consciousness is no longer limited by his meat.

I would tend to agree that it should be possible, even though it doesn't necessarily make sense. It's dice pools vs dice pools in this case.

What you have: A materialised spirit takes on a certain form. Now that form obviously has a purpose. And for whatever reason, that form makes it vulnerable to physical effects - even though it still has a high resistance. The resistance has to be real hardness, not just "bullets go through without effect", or else the whole armour piercing stuff wouldn't work - or even a bigger gun. So... that already doesn't make sense on a water elemental, or even worse, an air spirit.

You're firing for effect on the physical form. Effect is maximised if you hit those places with the largest purpose. You just have to see them and shoot for them, and let the game take care of the rest.

One thing is clear: Disallowing called shots will make spirits that much stronger. Allowing them will make them weaker, and hence force you to up the force on hostile spirits, while at the same time the balance in the other direction is only marginally affected. I would assume that most opposing shooters don't have a large enough dice pool to even make called shots reliably against a dodging spirit. Although even there: Called shots are pretty definitely a WIN/WIN situation. You get the partial equivalent of four hits for four dice, not 12 or even 16 dice. Basically called shots automatically win as soon as you get one net hit. So for a statistical advantage you could probably still win even if your dice pool ended up smaller than the defender's.

If you didn't allow called shots, how would your regular successes on the test increase your damage?
Isn't it that the successes increase your damage because you hit a more vulnerable spot at your target?
And called shot is then focusing even more on hitting those spots instead of the thing in general?

Good points.

This is pretty much it. If you went around and applied less logic, but stayed strictly with the concept of a contest of skills, then net hits and a called shot are really the same thing. The difference is only that called shots give "cheaper" net successes for damage, but don't actually count for hitting. Once could argue that they are, in fact, too cheap, but... that's another problem entirely.

Regardless of the semantics or the fluff, to answer the OP's question in a concise manner

Yes, by the rules,Called shots work on Spirits

Does this make sense? Probably not but there is no specific exclusion to allow for it not working. The rule was presented in a way to apply to everything that it can apply too. The only thing that can stop the rules from functioning as written would be a GM call so speak with your GM.