First off, is it possible to conduct such a operation?
I think it would be... you'd need a way to forcibly restrain a spirit, or keep it manifested possibly. The major issue is what tool or spell would you use, and what could you find out? How about a nice gruesome metamagic called Dissection?

It is impossible to dissect a spirit since they will disipate when they hit deadly damage of either variety. Vivisection would be another possibility, but man is that nasty. Doing whatever it is that you do to pith a spirit would basically be D stun, so you're going to have to do it to something that is still feeling pain.

:: nods :: I know. I think a dissection metamagic would be interesting. What would it grant?

Dual Natured, on the other hand, should pose no real problems unless the subject has regeneration.

heheheh, that's true, and quite terrible. Can you imagine being dissected from the astral?

IMO you don't learn anything from dissection. There are no physical insides to examine. No heart, no lungs, no scull and no wishbone.

Aura Reading tells you something, and you don't need a knife for that.

Who said the reason to do it related to learning something?

Wow. My goldfish memory kicked in again. It's even showing signs of improvement.

It would be a fine thing to have happening at some magical research establishment, or maybe to have some special contact do to some wierd thing you found.

But it seems best to me not to add another type of aura reading for players.

I probably wouldn't make it player-legal, because they'd almost never get to use it anyway... I'm thinking that it might be a more mystical process than simply chopping up their astral form, which would most certainly tell you nothing.... more likely it'd be a rare metamagic that would run off the aura reading skill and allow a researcher to analyze the paranatomy of a astral beastie...

It will have all the relevance to a SR game of theoretical physics and medical research. That is it happens in the background. Or the party is hired to attack, defend, extract from, insert into a facility that dose it but the specifics of what each individual experiment means is over the heads of the PCs.

Edward