I have 2 questions about fighting spirits that came up in my last game, sorry if they have been asked before, but the search function here sucks:

1) Does the AP from weapons/ammo reduce the spirits Immunity to Normal Weapons armor for purposes of determining whether or not the spirit takes damage?

I ruled 'no' on this during the game, after looking up the critter power, but was still not quite sure. Here is the relevant quote from SR4A p295 on Immunity:
(emphasis mine)

And the quote from the same page on Hardened Armor:


My reasoning comes from the portion of the Immunity quote that I bolded, had the devs intended that the armor should be reduced before comparing, I think they would have spelled it out here, as they did for Hardened Armor. As a result, I would not apply the AP until the damage resistance test is taken.

2) How do weapons such as Tasers, and SnS ammo effect spirits when it comes to extra successes on the attack roll?

I know that for a normal character, you take the straight unmodified stun damage, and then the character would be incapacitated for 1 turn for every 2 net successes on the attack roll. Nothing is said about spirits, though, can they be incapacitated? For me, it did not make sense that a spirit could be incapacitated, it would rather be disrupted, but that would quickly send it back to the metaplane from whence it came if it worked like disruption from banishing (net hits v. Edge). I opted to add 1 stun damage to be resisted for every 2 net successes on the attack roll. I doubt this was correct, but I wanted to keep the game moving, and the PCs certainly did not complain when a taser took down a Force 9 Free Spirit when nothing else could (possibly as a result of my interpretation of question 1).

Before hell breaks loose, I'd like to state that there's no official ruling (no errata/official FAQ answer) I'm aware of.
I don't think there is any clear answer in the rules either, though some people might feel there is one.

I'd advise you to choose your own interpretation with respect to game balance, credibility and how powerful you want the spirits to be, especially against Mundanes.

I would like to disagree with Blade. The rules are very much clear on how these things work.

1) Spirits have Immunity (Normal Weapons). This gives them Hardened Armor equal to twice their magic (this is the important part).

2) AP from weapons reduces armor. This will reduce the Hardened Armor a like amount, but not their effective magic rating that's doubled for armor. IE: -1 AP at a F4 spirit will result in a new modified armor rating of 7 (4 x2 = 8, 8 - 1 = 7).

3) SnS ammo and tasers are -1/2 AP, so they are extremely effective at combating spirits (as are flamethrowers - Fire Spirits are not Immune to Fire). The above example of a F4 spirit would only get 4 Hardened Armor from the attack, since his Hardened Armor is halved.

4) Profit.

There are many people who believe that since ItNW is a magical effect, it can safely ignore all mundane things. This is in direct conflict with the rules, although at their table they can do whatever they want.

I've got to agree with Neraph. There isn't any reason ItNW should not be affected like AP. It doesn't specify that this armor value is special in regards to AP, so I see no reason that it shouldn't follow the same rule as all other types of armor in the game in regards to AP.

This is why most people keep at least one clip of SnS ammo around. Can wound anything F6 or less without effort.

Fichetti Security 600 with a full clip of SnS and an external, barrel mounted Smartlink system. Extremely cheap and supremely effective.

EDIT: Well, maybe not the 30 rounds of SnS...

That was the interpretation my player preferred, which I felt was incorrect. The problem I have with it is, despite the appeal ItNW makes to the Hardened Armor power, it still spells out exactly what happens when it says "if the Damage Value does not exceed the Armor, then the attack automatically does no damage". Nothing there about reducing the armor by the AP, which Hardened Armor explicitly states should happen. I can see no other reason why the above wording is included in the ItNW power and the part about AP omitted, other than AP not reducing the armor. We are probably at an impasse here unless one of the catalyst peeps weighs in.

Moving on, I am aware of how the SnS and Taser (e) attacks work when it comes to halving the armor, which makes them great weapons to use vs spirits. The portion I am still stuck on is what to do with the net hits on the attack. Anyone have any ideas on this part?

Net hits do the same thing as with any other weapon. They increase the DV.

If you don't use AP of weapons or other ammunitions on spirits, why do you rule that SNS halves the hardened armor? You either modify it for all reasons or for none.


There you have it. ItNW is Hardened Armor that only works against non-magical damage. So it is modified. There is no need to mention this again.

@Neraph: Go Ares Crusader. 10 more bullets and Burst Fire FTW. The size sucks though. Maybe mod the Fichetti for BF and extend the magazine.

Net hits with (e) weapons do not increase the DV, rather, the target "immediately falls and is incapacitated for a number of Combat Turns equal
to 2 + net hits scored on the attack test." (SR4A p164) Now this quote is in reference to characters, vehicles and drones have different rules against (e) attacks, but spirits are not mentioned.



Because an (e) attack is an elemental attack, not a normal weapon attack, therefore ItNW does not apply.



Despite your assurance, it seems that it is not quite so cut and dry...

Yes, they do. Want to argue? Provide a rules quote stating otherwise, then we can talk.

Electricity secondary effects does not override this.

And yes, Rules as Written, Armor Penetration applies normally vs. Immunities, including determining if the attack deals damage or not. This is very clear, and anything else is a House Rule.

This page does not say the (e) weapons don't increase damage with net hits. It states what happens additionally.

Being an elemental attack, does not circumvent ItNW. Only magical damage removes the protection, as noted in the description. A spirit or any other creature with ItNW gets half his armor against a Shiawase Blazer (flame thrower weapon, completely mundane) and no protection against the flamethrower spell, since this is magical damage.

I don't get your confusion over what to do with the net hits on the attack,
If you score four net hits with SnS you deal 10(e) damage(6+4 net hits) and that is what you check against their modified armor value.

As for being incapacitated, just let it affect spirits and save yourself an argument, a force four spirit would be rolling 12 dice to resist being incapacitated,
(4 body, 4 willpower, 4 for half armor). 12 dice is enough to buy the 3 hits. And chances are they'd roll the success anyway with that many dice.


*When do the catalyst peeps ever weigh in on this forum? as it ever happened?*
I can get someone saying that weapon immunity is not affected by AP, being it functions like armor but is not actually armor. Words like "hardened" and "armor rating" are in quotes which would indicate me its not exactly like armor, and it says its treated as "This Immunity Armor is treated as “hardened” protection". The paragraph goes out of its way to say its LIKE hardened armor but not exactly like armor.

This is incorrect. The stun you mention is a secondary effect of Electricity damage. You still handle the attack normally and deal stun damage equal to the base DV plus extra successes. You then roll the test for the secondary effect. It's part of what makes electricity damage so effective.



Also incorrect. Note that on page 295 of SR4A they list the types of magical attack under the entry for Immunity to Normal Weapons. It does not mention elelmental attacks; only weapon foci, spells, adapt powers or critter powers. By your reasoning a flame thrower would also bypass ItNW.
While you are free to decide what is and isn't normal at your table, please note that this is Rules As Written. If you want to offer an alternative interpretation please note it.

Spirits are characters, so there isn't any reason that they shouldn't suffer the electricity secondary affect just like any other character.



Immunity Armor is treated as Hardened protection, referencing Hardened Armor for the rules on how to handle it. Hardened Armor specifically states that AP is factored into the equation.

The part you keep looking at as the definitive is the fact that it goes on to say "Meaning that if the DV does not exceed the Armor (Which I should mention there is no Armor stat in the game, but there is an armor rating, or so I recall) then the attack automatically does no damage. The thing is you can't just read that last part without keeping the first part in mind (The reason for forming sentences). What that part is trying to do is give a quick overview of what it does in case you are for some reason too lazy to look about 5 lines up and read the full hardened armor rules.

Notice that it makes no mention of following those rules except for this special circumstance or anything similar, it is simply giving a brief explanation so you don't have to go read another set of rules just to get a basic idea of what it does. It also doesn't explicitly state to ignore AP, and so you are pulling that out of nowhere, because the rule is "If an exception isn't made, use the normal rules" So, no exception is made, so it follows the normal rules of AP working.

Also keep in mind that, as others have said, if AP doesn't affect ItNW, then SnS is going to be useless against it as well, because that modifier to armor is an AP affect.

I was being thrown off by page 163 SR4A, where it says "These weapons rely on a contact discharge of electricity rather than kinetic energy." After a careful rereading of the relevant rules, and a glance at the damage codes for these weapons, I see that you are correct. Thanks to all who chimed in on this.

OTH, I think I will still rule that Spirits cannot be incapacitated at my table, it just does not seem right.



Nope, looks like this answers the question, not sure why I did not pick up on this before. Once again, thanks to all who chimed in to point this out.

Understandable, it does seem slightly odd, but I was just pointing out the RAW makes no special distinction between spirit and metahuman as far as being incapacitated goes.

I can see not allowing spirits to be incapacitated. It just doesn't make sense biologically, mostly because they don't have any. You could keep the same mechanical effect, just explain it away with some fluff. Helps to keep things mechanically balanced.

Yeah, instead of incapacitated in the normal sense, they could simply be temporarily disrupted (They are made of energy after all, so having a big jolt of energy pumped into them could still be disorientating)

I'd say they are immediately disrupted, period. Or they are shifted into the astral for the duration of the incapacitation.

Immediate disruption would make electricity damage too powerful (I was talking about the secondary effect of electricity, not having their stun track filled), and the second would make it very annoying for getting multiple shots in on a spirit.

Immediate disruption would make electricity damage too powerful (I was talking about the secondary effect of electricity, not having their stun track filled), and the second would make it very annoying for getting multiple shots in on a spirit.

Doubly true. I'd probably end up shifting them to Astral for the duration then.

I'm not sure about electricity having a special effect on spirits.

The rules first describe the effect on "targets", and then on drones and vehicles, as if drones and vehicles are never "targets". We should assume "target" means metahuman or critter, then.

Does it include spirits? Before people rush to say it does simply because it doesn't exclude them: spirits weren't available as PCs when SR4 was written. (I don't have SR4A; if that's more explicit, do tell me.)

What does fluff tell us? Street Magic p. 92 is informative;
- Spirits are made of protoplasm that mimics physical properties well enough to make little difference from reality
- A spirit with a lollipop is just as deadly as one with a katana (contradicts the above...)
- Archetypal elemental properties apply; water spirits don't like fire
- Spirits have no nervous system, but react adversely to damage anyway
- The senses of a spirit are unknown; they definitely differ from metahuman ones

I think this would tend me to think they don't get stunned like "living" things would. If it does anything to them - certainly possible. The same as biocritters? Unlikely. Use your imagination

Ah, I hadn't looked it up, I thought it said "character" which spirits always were (NPCs usually, but still Cs)

There's rather a lot of imprecise writing in the rules. People get too hung up on strict interpretation instead of trying to figure out the intended meaning of the text. Particularly "X wasn't explicitly excluded, therefore it must be included" reasoning.

Hey, got a question that's somewhat on topic.

When a spirit is summoned, does it start on the astral plane since they prefer it there, the physical plane, the plane the summoner is currently on, or can the summoner choose? I feel like this could be a big deal if done in the middle of combat since the spirit might have to spend actions to change.

There was a post by a former developer (Synner) on this a year or 2 ago (or was it 3 years ago?). IIRC, his reply could be taken that the secondary effect did not affect spirits.

SR4 says they appear on the astral plane and manifested on the physical plane, awaiting instructions. This could be inconvenient actually, because the moment they're summoned they're visible. Meaning no surprises (summoning is a complex action, and instructing a simple -> you don't get to order the spirit until your next IP)

You are right, but this is only a problem if you summon the spirit in the presence of the opposition. Summoning the spirit before the run is a good idea, maybe even giving it a conditional first order.

I remember an answer from Rob Boyle (probably more than 2 years ago) that said that he wouldn't apply electric damage to spirits and he'd neither halve its armor. But it hasn't made its way into the F.A.Q so it's not canon.

Some folk cold argue that a spirit is nothing but a cloud of Ectoplasmic gas, and as such a spirit's armor basically represents it's internal cohesion rather than some sort of physical barrier. Under this interpretation, since AP does nothing to increase a weapon's disruption while passing through the spirit, it is a null prospect. That's still a house rule though, created entirely out of a personal interpretation and not RAW.

On the other hand, different folk could argue that since the books don't list an Immunity to Toxins under spirit qualities, you could just down the suckers with pepper spray. That's also (a creative interpretation of) RAW (reliant on how you choose to flex the definition of "skin" for the purposes of contact vectors.)

Kerrang, the important thing to remember here is that spirits need weaknesses.
Otherwise, you're going to end up with a player team full of summoners getting all wack-a-doo with the ghosties.

This spirit was meant to be tough, a Force 9 free spirit that absolutely had to be dealt with, but it was the first big bad spirit they had to face in a year long campaign. They ran into a Force 10 spirit the run before, but had the option of letting it go without combat, which they did. The mage in the group had already reduced the spirit to 1 Edge with Banishing, and would probably have Banished the spirit on his next IP (and likely knocked himself out with drain) if the Taser had not worked out the way it did. As it was, the group got away from this baddy almost without a scratch, when I was fully expecting it to cause some major pain.

The one player who took issue with his AP not effecting the spirit also later complained that the spirit was not enough of a challenge...

Looks like this thread is leaning the other way now, so I don't feel bad about denying the AP, and am now considering making this the house rule (extended to denying the armor halving of elemental effects as well).

Such an interpretation might mean that shotfuns / flechettes do increased "armor piercing" against spirits, as there are more bits of shrapnel passing through.