Have been on a few runs lately and playing a non magical character i have suffered somewhat with astral assault.

What can you do if you are being attacked in the astral by spirit etc?

The one thing our team lacks at the moment is a magic / shaman type,

Is there anything you can get to help detect astral activity without being awakened?
I have had a flick through SR3 and Awakenings, but I have lent my Mits to a mate.


torz x

If you are a mundane, astral combat is not one of your concerns.

Nothing from the astral plane can affect you, and vice-versa. Any spirit that wishes to harm you must materialize. Any spell that can affect you must be cast from the physical plane.

Assuming you knew this, in order to detect the presence of astral entities (mostly spying on you one would imagine), you have very limited options. One is to carry a small dual natured pet, such as Nimue's Salamander, trained to burp or something when it spots an astral presence. Otherwise, you can hire a mage to sell you a watcher spirit that'll do the same thing.

Or perhaps carry an aerosol can that sprays FAB around. You see glowing, you know there's something astral.

There's also a new camera in SOTA64 that supposedly can take pictures of the Astral, but I don't have that book yet so I can't tell you much about it.

If the astral spy goes right through you, you get a perception test to detect it.

Thank you, I like the idea of a spray! whats the availability?

torz

As for dealing with a spirit without a mage (or adept with killing hands), that immunity to normal weapons can be a real downer. You could try using improved grenades (15S damage) which would work on spirits force 7 and lower (barely) and try to flood them with successes, but I'd view that as a chancy tactic at best.

Another tactic is using high reach weapons (whips, extendable batons) and battle it using willpower--the reach still applies. Now, the problem is you only get to roll willpower while it can roll reaction and combatpool. So, I'd recommend having several people delaying and engaging it at the same time for a friends in melee bonus. The problems with this tactic is you're doing a base (Cha)M Stun damage and you may need to tie up several PCs to deal with a lone spirit.

If you're rich, and can find someone to cooperate, an anchoring focus with detect spirit / spiritbolt could nail one pretty well. Of course, it might just nail some poor old lady's seeing eye watcher spirit and then you'd be out a decent chunk of nuyen.

The FAB spray seems pretty cool. If your GM allows it, it'd probably work--just remember bacteria are living organisms. Left to their own devices, their populations grow and grow, then level off, then it crashes. So take good care of the bugs or you won't have any left to play with

And lasers work on any of them short of force,12 I think. That being th hand held lasers. Bigger lasers do more damage.

Don't ask me, it was backgammon's idea.

But the basic idea, afaik, is getting your own little FAB farm, putting some of the suspension (complete with FABs) in an aersol spraying device, and spraying them around an area--use normal FAB rules at that point.

The damaging kind of fab takes days or weeks to take effect, not a good option.

Hmmm... There was that nasty bacteria (in Threats 1, if memory serves) that attacked and devoured astrally active magical things. But again, it's probably too slow-acting.

FAB III. 3rd ed rules are in MitS. it only makes one check per hour to eat a rating point, as i recall.

Yeah, I was mentioning FAB as an astral detection measure--strain 3 is far to slow to do much good.

Flamethrowers, stun batons, water cannons, or any other weapon that delivers an Elemental effect will work against Spirits.

Better than nothing. You'd be better off still with the AZ-150, since it has a Reach of 1.