Spirits are not living subjects at all.

Would spirits have "Immunity" to vacuum? That's not radioactive, a chemical, a drug or a toxin. It won't damage cars (though the air-pressure in pneumatic components might damage the cars) but it will have adverse effects on living beings such as (meta)humans and (para)critters (except moss piglets). But would it have any effect on Spirits (which are not alive)?

I am referring explicitly to vacuum - nothing to do with space, different gravity, radiation, etc etc etc. Vacuum - that's all. Otherwise we'd be talking about drugs made of radioactive isotopes.

It makes even less sense than a plant spirit being hurt by herbicides (do they even exist in the game?).

There are many drugs made out of radioactive isotopes.

I'd be possibly amenable to houseruling that Plant Spirits have the Weakness: Allergy (universal herbicides), in the same way Fire and Water spirits have opposite Allergies. Plant spirits don't have that in the rules, though. I think it's probably a mistake to say that plant spirits 'are plants' (in whichever respect), though.

Air spirits are air, right? Water spirits are water, and Fire spirits are fire. By that logic, plant spirits are plants, and insect spirits are insects.

Air spirits are air, right? Water spirits are water, and Fire spirits are fire. By that logic, plant spirits are plants, and insect spirits are insects. :P

No. By that logic, Spirits of Man are men. The burden of proof lies with the one making the outlandish claims.

As Seth already pointed out, materialisation Spirits are not made of elements, plants, beasts, men, storms, skies, salamanders, guardians, guidance, tasks, hearths, cities, etc etc etc. They all are "composed of some kind of common arcane material regardless of apparent structure".

It's fine if your house rules incorporate ideas from another game but that's not the way the SR rulebooks describe them.

I actually have never played an enjoyable game of D&D 3.5, so that's just a strawman.

What is true is that the laws of Sympathy exist in Shadowrun magic. SO, rather it's air or an airlike substance, it's magical enough to share many of the same properties.

On the Forms of Spirits
Spirits appear on initial inspection to incorporate a great
diversity of materials into their corporeal forms, from water to
bone, fire to plasteel. After decades of study, it appears that the
materialized forms of spirits are not actually composed of pre-
viously recognized substances. Indeed, the studies of Halthmer
et al. demonstrate basic property equivalencies in the constitu-
ent structures present in earth elementals and the spirit of Mt.
Rainier. The most commonly accepted interpretation of their
data is that spirits are largely composed of some kind of common
arcane material regardless of apparent structure—a recombinant
protoplasm that replicates function, mass, texture and properties
near enough as to provide no physical difference.

> In English, that means that a spirit is just as dangerous if it
looks like a little girl with a lollipop as it is if it looks like a sword-
wielding oni. A spirit can cut you in half just as well with a card-
board tube as with a katana.
> Sticks
> Unless that happens to be a katana that the spirit, y’know,
picked up. Not all weapons wielded by spirits are part of the
spirit’s form.
> Haze

Substantial evidence exists that arcane properties and ar-
chetypical elemental oppositions also translate as properties
of corporeal materialized forms. Spirits associated with water,
such as water elementals, sylphs, and river spirits, exhibit hostile
reactions to fire, and spirits tied to fire react similarly to water.

Another intriguing aspect of a spirit’s corporeal form is
its senses. Despite having no nervous systems, spirits react
negatively to damage to their physical and astral forms—simi-
lar to how a physical creature displays pain. Spirits frequently
object to being sent into positions where disruption is likely,
and when directly questioned about the phenomenon, spir-
its have tended to describe disruption as an agonizing event
more often than as simple dissipation. Likewise a spirit’s sen-
sory perception is very different from our own. Even when a
spirit materializes into our world, it still exists primarily as an
astral creature. When observing an object, a spirit sees the au-
ras and shadows first and the physical characteristics second.
Physical details metahumans characterize as obvious are fre-
quently overlooked entirely by spirits. Interaction with tech-
nological display devices and simsense such as commlinks and
simrigs is even more tenuous. The location of a spirit’s visual
ability is at the very least variable; and as there is no nervous
system to connect to, the technical difficulties of making such
an AR setup are far from trivial.

So, you can put out a fire elemental with a fire extinguisher, despite the fact that most modern fire extinguishers aren't water or have rules in Shadowrun. Acid hurts spirits, even though they're made of an arcane material. Hell, bullets shouldn't affect a spirit, by that logic. If you go too far down the handwaving and chanting "Its' MAAAAGIC" path, you'll end up concluding that spirits cannot be hurt by mundane means at all, which is just insane.

Either you accept that players can KO spirits with tasers and needles with drugs or you accept that nothing aside from magic can even hurt a spirit.

Either you accept that players can KO spirits with tasers and needles with drugs or you accept that nothing aside from magic can even hurt a spirit.

A decent street sam makes mince meat of most spirits unless they are of a power level that the spirit can wipe out an army.

It's topics like this that have me adopting something Ascalaphus said as a sig

This is the crux of the issue: biological damage is not the same as physical damage. Spirits are not biological, and cannot be affected, positively or negatively, by biological means. They can be torn apart, burned by acid, shot, sliced.... whatever physical thing you want to do to them.

By the same token, metahumans, not being made of spiritual energy, cannot be affected by attacks of will.

i generally go with "could it hurt a rock?"

If you spray a substance on a rock and it damages the rock, it can probably damage a spirit.



-k

So the rules on spirits are fairly clear. Spirits are quite hard: and I think thats a good thing. If you find a "spirit-o-cide" that kills all known spirits dead, you loose the fact the spirits are hard.

So do you want spirits to be hard or not?

• If you want them to be hard the current rules are OK.
• If you want them not to be hard introduce spirit repelling spray, spirit killing chemicals, and generally turn them into poodles. Go do it.

In RAW spirits are pretty hard, and there is no "spirit-o-cide".

The fluff is OK. It isn't perfect: for example if insectocide gets insect spirits then herbicides should get plant spirits. There are not many discrepancies however.

So just pick what you want. RAW is pretty clear though

Except that Spirits are not really all that Hard...

I guess that depends on your power-level. I find force 5 spirits pretty damm hard, and force 7 spirits can wipe out a small squad.

If you're using SnS ammo as written even Force 7+ spirits aren't that big of a threat. Almost any hit with SnS will penetrate a Force 7 spirit's ItNW, and you only need one more hit for every added Force on the spirit. So a Force 10 spirit can be hurt by SnS + 5 net hits, which is definitely doable by a maxed out starting level street sam, especially if he spends Edge. It's even easier with a wide burst, which you might as well use unless your dice pool is pretty small, since the full burst won't help you penetrate.

Again, burst fire (of any type) do not count towards defeating ITNW...

What is your point? I didn't say that it did. I said to use a wide burst (i.e. - DV). Getting more net hits because they had fewer dodge dice will most definitely help.

I have never used stick and shock as I think it's totally broken (not so much for the killing spirits as for the taking out of people) I think its been poorly thought about because if it was that good no troops would use anything else. I don't mind tasers because while they are very powerful, they are typically single shot.

I think the statement that "with SnS even force 7 spirits aren't that big of a threat" is synonymous with "SnS is broken". It takes down humans even easier than spirits (the whole body+willpower(3) check and the minus 2 even if you make it).

Yeah, but how many can soak the tons of stun? Besides, a -2 is a huge penalty for a *successful* resistance, given that a wound is only -1.

This is just another SnS vs. Spirits thread with a small twist. Can we be done with these threads all together for like a day?

This is just another SnS vs. Spirits thread with a small twist. Can we be done with these threads all together for like a day?