Unless you make vehicle armor and spirit Immunity to Normal Weapons "hardened." There are logical reasons for allowing autofire bonuses to figure into the modified DV for personal armor, but not spirit immunities or vehicle armor. If one of my players were really concerned about this rule, this is probably the house rule I'd suggest [if I were running SR4, that is].

What is so hard to understand that on pg 160 of SR4A it states if the modified DV of the attack does exceed the armor rating it causes stun damage. It also states on page 153 in regards to narrow bursts, that the DV bonus does not apply when comparing the DV to the armor rating.

His position is that's only talking about short narrow bursts.

Sengir already did.

Sold!

Ha! Personally, I wouldn't want to make spirits and vehicles even better. We did have a pretty big discussion about the armor issue in (I think) the '5th Ed Rules' thread.

Hey if my players want to make my job easier....

Including auto fire for beating armor would be a good house rule to make beating vehicles and spirits easier. But I do think it is a house rule. If you include modified DV powerful spirits become easy to take down by mundanes which is something many want their game for balance reasons. Disregarding the logic error the game might be considered more balanced if the rule was durst fire is added to DV for beating armor. But I think it is fine the way it is.

Why not just replace the light generating apparatus in a laser with an orichalcum filament to make it a dual natured laser?

More like an orichalcum crystal/resonator, or else all you would have constructed is a really expensive lightbulb

Lasers aren't my bailiwick so I'll go along. Anyway dual natured light can be generated (arsenal p66 Lucifer Lamp) so if you have a reasonable GM they might go for it.

What is this mythical beast of which you speak, this 'reasonable GM'?

You don't need "dual natured light", the laser already bypasses ItNW.

Ah but now you can shoot stuff on the astral.

I don't think it does. It is resisted with 1/2 armour, but that's it, just like S&S, right?

Shortstraw, lasers don't usually start with filaments, though. You'd need coherent Dual Natured light, if that exists.

I don't think an orichalcum resonator would be enough to have a laser that can shoot creatures in the Astral Plane. Otherwise, you could create orichalcum bullets and shoot them but we know this doesn't work.
To hit things in the Astral Plane you either must be capable of casting spells there or projecting and go into melee against the astral creature. Using your natural weapons might suffice or you can use an weapon with orichalcum too.

Also, y'know, rules of physics, not working on astral, etc.

A spell damaging someone on the Astral does so because something built into the spell's makeup says "I Am A Damaging Spell", not because it's made of dual-natured light or whatever, even if the spell LOOKS like a laser.

It's all auras interacting with each other anyhow.



-k

Yes, It is Half Armor, which, in effect, allows anyone with a laser to eliminate Spirits of up to Force 5/7/9 (Dependant upon Laser) with little effort.
Lasers for the Win. Even better than SnS.

This is the best description of magic I've ever seen.

Elemental damage bypasses ItNW, while it's obvious for example that a flamethrower does fire damage I admit other cases are more contentious. Do tasers actually do electric damage, since their goal is to cause convulsions and not actually deal damage (in the way that say, an arc welder or Lightning Bolt spell would deal physical damage). Does the sonic beam gun, with it's crazy nausea effect, affect spirits? Or that water cannon?

However, IMHO in the case of a laser it's pretty obviously "light" elemental type damage, you don't need special "magic" light. In general I'd argue that if it does physical damage then it should count (so the flamethrowers and lasers only) and the rest of the stun damage crowd control nonsense (including tasers, stick and shock and toxins) don't work on spirits. But I know people go crazy when you say anything about their precious stick and shock, so probably shouldn't go there, lol.

This is a pretty old and recurrent question, so it's not likely to have anything new. :/ It's safest to use the listed AP (-half), instead of randomly postulating about magic theory and 'elements'. It's not like -half isn't strong enough, until we can get a really clear system of what 'counts' with ITNW and what doesn't.

Huh? The definition was pretty clear, IIRC. Elemental damage does not bypass it as long as it's not magical elemental damage. I used to think that, too, but then someone pointed it out to me, and I looked it up, that's why I'm pretty certain about this.

Except that it does not have to, because it still halves the armor protection, reducing the ITNW to just Force, rather than Force x2.

That's the point, Brainpiercing: not everyone believes that. Rather than deal with butting heads, just ignore it because it barely matters.

Umm, NOPE.

If it is magical it does...

Read "gullible"

/me solders dual natured LEDs to the tips of his bullets

That bypasses ITNW, right?

Meh, when did trying to be right on the internets become wrong? (Duh... when was it invented?)

No, not gullible, if you are willing to shell out 50k+ for the orichalcum and then installation then you deserve to be able to shoot astral forms.

If you can produce a laser from a light bulb, you can make a dual-natured laser from a lucifer. (So, you can't.)

You run into problems with the world structure, though, because if that were possible, every mega-corp would have them, at least to outfit their heavy strike teams.

Then you have to start asking questions like "why would it be so hard to clear out places like Chicago? Send in the guys with astral mini-guns!"

One thing snowballs into another thing and another. So introducing magic bullets into the system isn't so simple.


-k

Any HRT worth the name has a mage and are they going to spend twice the money to outfit their team so they can all join the fun? Especially since most people can't even see into the astral.

Maybe not 'any', but certainly some, from every corp.

Which would certainly do a lot to balance out spirits in general...

Only if you think that they are unbalanced to start with...