Um, no. You'd need at least 4 net successes to have any chance of hurting it at all. Given that it has 18 dice to dodge and an Edge of 9, getting those 4 successes is going to be very, very difficult.

This discussion reminds me of the people who say the matrix works fine in SR4. Yeah, the matrix can work, but only when you don't actually follow the rules. In most cases they don't even realize they are not following the rules. Often because the rules are sufficiently crazy that people mentally assume "no they couldn't really mean that, I'll just read it to mean ...."

I would bet that very few of the people beat this scenario really fought a critter who fought intelligently, had all 18 points of hardened armor, and also rolled 18 dice to dodge, much less 9 dice of edge.

According to the book it's a minigun.

A minigun is practically useless against a lot of hardened armor. Since full-auto doesn't increase the power for penetration, all you can do is fire a wide burst to decrease their dodge. Which might help a little, but you still need a lot of successes to beat serious Hardened armor.

Right, but "Minigun" basically is no specific term that says "light machine gun-vindicator-style". It can also be a heavy machine gun and usually the runners carry nothing with more power that this. After the runners realized that even a weapon-platform-minigun doesn´t harm this thing, they didn´t even tried to hurt this monster with MP´s or Assault Rifles. IMHO a quite logical decision.

Looking at my copy of Ghost Cartels (page 123), it looks like they nerfed his stats. I have him with 3 edge, 1 IP, 14/14 armor from ItNW, and Init 3. Was this changed, a subtle formatting error, or something odd with my copy?

Assuming my copy is in error and he follows normal force 9 spirit statistics, fighting him is basically a gear check. Do you have something that can easily hurt a force 9 spirit with magical guard? If so, he'll go down after getting 1-2 parting shots. If not, you have a good chance to lose as he fear kites you or just takes you down with 9P -1/2AP blasts. SnS does make the job significantly easier. If you don't have SnS or your GM rules that they don't work on spirits, then things get harder.

I can see it getting really nasty if the PCs run and have other enemies at their backs. Taking down the Yama King does require concentrated fire and the Smoke Circle guys can take advantage of that opening. You'll have to put enough firepower on the Yama King to make him abort to full defense while you clean up the other enemies. Then again, if you're able to deal with the Yama King, then the Smoke Circle Fodder and gangers aren't likely to be too dangerous.

Why do people keep talking about a force 9 spirit?

You're not fighting a force 9 spirit, you're fighting Yama King Chen You.

It has 14/14 hardened armor, only 3 edge, an initiative of freaking 3 and just 1 measly IP.
An actual force 9 spirit would wipe the floor with his chump ass.

Stick and shock. Call shots for damage. What the hell ever.

It goes last, and it goes once. Calling it a force 9 spirit is ridiculous. It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

I have to check his stats. According to our GM it was simply a force 9 spirit and he played him like one....which means a lot of hurt.^^

It' has 14/14 Hardened armor *and* Materialization. Which means it also has ItNW at 18/18 on top of that hardened armor.

Also, SnS doesn't work. Check out the SR4.5 entry on ItNW. Only magical effects bypass it now.

Yes, Of course ITNW Applies, but SnS Halves Armor, which is not affected by ITNW (Nobody said that the ITNW is BYPASSED by SnS. It works, it just has to deal with the ITNW). Unfortunately, the Armor Level of the Spirit is so high (as you pointed out 14/14 Hardened + 18 ITNW - NOT sure if that is right, honestly, but go with it), that SNS is likely not an issue anyways (16 Armor, effectively all hardened, after the Elemental Effect of the 1/2 Armor is applied) Takes an Insane level of hits with SnS to even be noticed (Need a minimum of 11 Net Hits). *Shrug*

The * after the armor and before Normal Weapons is to suppose to tie it to Immunity to Normal Weapons so that is suppose to be the "armor" provided by ItNW's. They use the same * notation for Vilamoura Possessed and Shedim Force 4 on the same page. The Master Shedim uses the same notation on the next page. They use a very slightly different notation for Yaje (the * is after Immunity to Normal Weapons not before). The Huapa Protector Spirits of Beasts (GC 158) don't have the *, but they don't have ItNW listed as a power either. The Hostile Spirit of Plants (GC 159) uses the same notation, but has ItNW listed separated from the power list. Hostile Spirit of Water (GC 159) doesn't have the * after the armor value but otherwise is listed the same as the Hostile Spirit of Plants. If the *s aren't suppose to show the source of the armor then all of these spirits would have force * 4 armor (from listed armor and then again from ItNW). While this might be the case for a weird special spirit like the Yama King or Yaje, I doubt that's suppose to be the case for random force 4 shedim or summoned spirits like the Huapa Spirit of Beasts.

Now why the Yama King's armor is 14/14 and not 18/18 I don't know. It's likely the same reason why he only has 1 IP, edge 3, and init 3. Either it's all mistakes or he has special snowflake nerfings.

Spirits generally *don't* have Immunity to Normal Weapons as a power. They have Materialization, which grants the equivalent of ItNW, which is the equivalent of Hardened Armor equal to double Force. So the Yama King, when Materialized, has 14/14 armor and 18 ItNW. Those may not stack, but it does mean that if you somehow bypass it's ItNW, it still has an extra 14 dice to soak with.

So the minimum soak pool is 34 dice? After 18 dice of dodge?

Indeed... The book is an odd meshing of crunch. I have yet to actually read it, as we are currently playing in it.

What I'm saying is that the written stats assume the spirit is already materialized and the armor value represents the armor granted by ItNW given by materialization. That's why every spirit in the book expect one doesn't have forcex4 armor when otherwise they would. Why else is do they constantly put * after the armor values of spirits and * either before or after spirits? It's a notation that the power has already been accounted for.

No. My read is that if someone hits it with something magical, like a weapon focus, it still has 14 dice of armor.

Then either they got it wrong, and it has 18 ItNW, or they got it right and it has 14/14 armor on top of 18 ItNW. The critters section of the SR4.5 BBB and Street Magic don't list armor separately, they don't have to.

SR has extremely poor standardized notation and terminology across their products. That's why I went though the rest of Ghost Cartels to show that all of the other spirits also have armor listed. In those cases except one, it's always force x 2 armor with * after the value and a * for ItNW. That's why in Ghost Cartels, they did decide to show armor from ItNW. The other option is that nearly every other spirit in Ghost Cartels has force x 4 armor. This notation is most blatant for the Hostile Spirit of Plants and Water (GC 159).

The Yama King also already has really odd stats. He's got 3 not 9 edge, 3 not 18 Init, and 1 not 2 IPs. In this case, it might have been a deliberate nerfing much like the other changes.

In that case, why make it a Force 9 spirit at all? They should have made it a buff Force 3, so the party could be menaced by Tinkerbell.

No, it was a typo. You can't have an Init of 3 with those stats; it's a derived stat. Same's true with Edge. ItNW isn't a listed stat anyways; the spirits wouldn't get Force x 4 if they typoed it, but rather Force x 2 that doesn't stack with the additional armor the poorly-edited section gave them.

Or perhaps they meant to have a nonstandard spirit.

Free spirits are by definition nonstandard, but an Init of 3 with those other stats? That's not nonstandard, that's a typo.

Disclosure: I haven't read Ghost Cartels

Given that they have apparently statted all other spirits in it with explicit mention of their INtW armor in the statblocks, I assume intention when one spirit has armor different from what would normally be given from force. Given my assumption of one very nonstandard feature, I am willing to accept other major departures from the standard rules (edge, initiative and passes, to be precise). I don't believe we will agree on this point, so barring any official errata (or even just a word from the author(s)), there's not much point in continuing this bit of discussion.

It's a unique spirit, the stats are wacky but intentionally so. I nerfed the Yama King stats so player characters could reasonably kill it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.

And there you have it... Straight from the Mouth of Uncle Ancient.

Hey, you back now?

Nope.

We can dream, though. We can dream.

Cocaine Dreams for you.