So there i was reading my SR3 and i came across a passage that says this.

Yeah, spirit bolt is a bit sucky. Spirit blast on the other hand is very useful, since it doesn't hit your team.

the Cha 8 won't be useful. as a dual being, you use your physical attributes for astral combat.

What is a rating 4 telescoping staff?

You would be much better off using the force of will against spirits as your charisma would come into play and you get the reach bonus of the staff. See SR3 Pg. 188 for details.

Its is very unlikely that you could hurt a spirit in physical combat unless you are using a weapon focus as you would be using your strength otherwise.

The rules do apply to both but adepts can't project so...... Also, sorcery used this way counts as spent until it refreshes in your next pass so no spell defense.

I suppose it splits up by specialization: you can use it for astral combat, but if you do you can't use it for anything *but* astral combat until it refreshes.

Nope. Like spell defense, when the sorcery dice are used they are gone until your next pass. Its the penalty for not having a real combat skil.

Sorcery is not worth it for most adepts. If they have astral perception or are dual-natured from SURGE, they are better off simply using their normal armed or unarmed combat skills against astral beings. I can see a sorcerer or mage using it, since they could conceivably lack other melee skills, but most adepts will already have one or more high-rated melee skills, making sorcery redundant.

EDIT:
For a sorcerer, like your guy, he would need to be astrally perceiving to get the benefits of sorcery as a melee skill. In normal physical combat, he would be stuck defaulting to Strength or using an opposed Willpower test like mundanes, neither of which are optimal tactics for a sorcerer. Note that Charisma becomes astral Strength only when you are actually projecting - for merely perceiving (all that a sorcerer can do), you use your meat-body's Strength.

On a side note, having Sorcery as the astral combat skill never really made sense to me. I mean, I guess you can use it to manipulate mana, but conjuring - the skill needed to deal directly with spirits - always seemed to make more sense. I mean, the astral is the spirits' home turf, right? So why isn't prowess at dealing with spirits an indicator of badassitude? Just a thought.

i can't find it in the second edition books i've glanced through, but i used to use an optional rule for my home campaign that allowed people to use Conjuring to combat spirits...the rationale being that people have certain cultural faiths, religions, or other beliefs that allow them to have rituals for banishing, etc that are also effective in fighting spirits, now that magic has returned. For instance, a devout Christian could use a cross, holy water, and other devices to effectively combat a spirit using the Conjuring skill to represent the power of their faith and the understanding of various summoning and banishing rituals (prayers, etc).

maybe it was in Awakenings, but i can't remember...

anyways, it allowed adepts and mundanes to combat spirits if they had the Conjuring skill - still no pools though...

The only thing I can remember that resembles this are house rules that I think were from NAGEE, but I don't have Awakenings or the original Grimoire sitting around anywhere near...

I been down this road a few times before. Its all about how you interpret the damage tables on the next page. Dual beings have their own listing for damage, STR (M). If sorcery is being used as a substitute for armed combat, why is there difference? Why the double listing? As an adept can only be armed or unarmed, there shouldn't be anything else on the table but those two choices and spirits.

Allow it or not, its still a crappy substitute. All the spirit you are fighting has to do is materialize and then you are defaulting to strength. Also, when it attacks back you only have the focus dice because your sorcery wont refresh until next turn because it got "used up".

Contradicting rules, who would have thunk it.

It says so in the book. When you use sorcery for spell defense or casting its the same. If you use it up doing one thing, it can't be used for anything else until your next turn. So, no defense allowed unless you don't use it on your turn.

I've always hated that table.

Really really bad table. Unarmed is always STR(M), when on the astral, you CHR IS your STR.

Regardless, depending on sorcery is a very bad idea. Besides, when have you ever seen someone with a weapon focus that didn't have armed combat?

Ninja Edit.