Casting spells at vehicles rules.
Where are they

Again I am up against the wall of questionable book layout, after trying several pleases in the cor book ant mits I cant find the rules for targeting a vehicle with a spell, could somebody point me in the right direction.

Thanking you in advance

Edward

I'm pretty sure it's in the "vehicles" section of the BBB. It may have some updated/newer version in Rigger 3, though. It doesn't come up real often, I'm not sure. Check the BBB first -- in there with all the other stuff about targeting people inside a vehicle, etc.

Also, check the wreck and ram spells, MitS and BBB, respectively.

Armored vehicles are real tough vs. spells., the whole (Body+Armor)/2+OR to be affected can keep the vehicles safe from naught but the highest power spells.

Steel Lynx fx has B2 and 9 Armor, thats +5 to its OR, meaning that you will need a P13+ spell to affect it.

Your question is very easy if your question is "Do I want to cast a damaging spell on a vehicle?" See pages 150, 182, and 183 SR3. Your question requires a trip to the Mountains of Madness to answer if it's anything else, such as "Hey, I want to sneak by that multi-million dollar tank. Can I just cast Force 1 Improved Invisibility and totally fool all of its sensors?"

Sorry no index (stupid binding)

For the purpose of current consideration I am only considering combat spells, the debate over improved invisibility can be left for another time.

Edward

Well, then in a nutshell you need a really high force and an insane TN vs anything armored.

As a rule, the most effective vehicle-killing magics are those which do not directly harm the vehicle. Things like ice sheet, physical barrier, fire elemental manifesting inside the vehicle cabin, etc. tend to give more bang for the buck since they do not need to overcome OR.

I would like to see a clueless shaman with the spell Slay (Pinto) sometime, though.

I thought it was half the OR in force or better to affect an object.

And a force 7 spell to hit it

Nikoli got it, but I'm just going to clear up how it goes.

"The Force of the spell must be equal to or greater than half the Object Resistance, rounded down, for it to affect an object. Vehicles add Body and half armor to object resistance before dividing in half."
So a Steel Lynx: 8+2(body)+4.5, rounded down to 4 = 14. Divide THAT by 2 to get Force 7 to hit it with a spell.

Then there's the Rigger Pages(150), which say the TN to affect a vehicle is 8+Body rating+half armor(rounded down) or, in the case of the Lynx, 14.

In other words, see RangerJoe as long as your GM is sane.

actually, ANY elemental manipulation spell will work wonders...

So, what is the OR of a Street Sam nearing CZ status?

The elemental secondary effect.

Would this not have chance of frying some circuts in a drone or car, even though the initial lightningbolt does no damage?

as pr. p. 51 MitS: 2d6 vs. OR for Deadly damage level
(+ 2 for S, +4 for M, Light has no secondary effect)

... in witch case a force 1 Deadly lightning bolt wouldn't be too useless.


EDIT: or one might think up a "sand spray" or "rock spray" Elemental manipulation spell, to mess with a roto-drone or jet-drone.

The lightning bolt would have to be cast at a force high enough to beat OR+Armor/body mod.

So F7 in the above example ( my own was inaccurate). Secondly, you have to cast the spell at minimum Moderate for it to have a secondary effect.

Thirdly, is spell damage levels staged one level down vs. vehicles? - Everything else is, sorta.

Against an unarmored vehicle, you could prolly fry it pretty easy with a F6 Lightning Bolt, cast at Moderate.

Accident is always useful. However, if you're in a high-speed chase, a box full of drywall nails and a "Magic Fingers" spell is about as useful as it gets against cars. (Tanks, on the other hand, are best dispatched with a magnet attached to a grenade placed on the underside.

While I agree that's what the main rules say, if you look at the Secondary Effects rules for some of the elemental types, especially one like Water, they indicate that they affect vehicles even though they have no chance of doing so (since they can only do Stun damage to begin with, and Stun damage can't affect vehicles at all for some strange reason).

Me, I just like grenades for this sort of thing. Or a single AV round from just about any firearm.

I can't remember the wording, but in MitS on the page I was refering to....

Under Elemental Manipuletion:
...targets left standing or unaffected .. may suffer secondary effects...

I might remember wrong.

Anyway... Allowing this damaging roll against OR wouldn't be too powerfull, I think. The secondary effect could be anything the GM decides.
and even a force 1 lightingbolt (D) has a hefty drain: 5D

A required force has been listed hear of (OR + bod + armor)/2) my BBB page 150 only requires the force be greater than armour (presumably without removing the requirement that it must be greater than OR/2). Has there been an errata I am not aware of.

Edward.

I dunno. Check Shadowrunrpg.com. Has there been an errata you are not aware of?

My copy of SR3 states the following two rules:

"Spells cast against vehicles have a target number based on their Object Resistance (see p. 182) of 8 plus their Body Rating plus half their Armor Rating (round down). (Note that elemental manipulation spells are treated as a Ranged Attack and have their usual base Target Number 4.)"

"Element-based manipulation spells are therefore treated as normal weapons against vehicles. Stage down the Damage Level by one, and reduce Force (or Power) by of the spell by half, and also by the vehicle's Armor Rating. If the reduced Force of the spell does not exceed the vehicle's Armor Rating, the spell is ineffective against that vehicle."

There is no errata correcting either of these entries. The reference to page 182 (and from the errata), however, cites the following additional rule:

"The Force of the spell must be equal to or greater than half the Object Resistance, rounded down, for it to affect an object. Vehicles add Body and half armor to object resistance before dividing in half.

That's what you probably missed, Edward. Casting spells against vehicles is entirely too difficult under the current rules (mostly because Armor and Body get to apply twice, once to drastically increase difficulty and the other to ignore the spell entirely), but dem's the rules nonetheless.

Interesting, they errata it there but did not change page 150, spells against vehicles just before the example where it said “if the armour rating of the vehicle is greater or equal to the force of the combat spell, the spell has no effect.”

As I said before, the layout of SR3 was annoying at best hopefully they will do better in SR4.

Edward

Magic, it appears, is an illusion in the head of the magician. Only by making the world believe in his powers, can he affect it.

Unnatural items, with high OR, are near impervious to magic. Which is odd, because heat can probably melt the material, but a fireball can't harm it. - Thus my above statement, magic is something that happens in the mind of the mage and is forcibly drawn down on the rest of reality.

There is no real fireball, no real heat, the high OR item believes only in truth and science, its structured so rigidly. The mage has to "convince" his target that the fireball is real, and he can only do this if he's in tune with the target, ie. the target must be natural, low OR.

Hmm.. that pretty much means that magic can be killed off. Destroy the teachers, pave the planet, structure and pervert everything. Create utopia by technology and magic will die.