Should be somewhere page 189 SR3. It's in the last paragraph on Spirit combat right before Controlling and Banishing ... Karma Pool is Successes of Conjurer on Conjuring Test plus one and there's a quite hefty debate on whether or not this pool increases every time a hermetic prolongs an elemental's services for which he has to do a new Conjuring Test ...

That's about the dumbest rule I ever - nevermind. Defiantly not in my game (maybe something like one point per service sacrificed).

p. 177:

Physical spirits have the power of Immunity to
Normal Weapons (see p. 288), giving them Armor equal to twice
their Force against all attacks.

That needs errata in one of those two places then. Because that is a Power, and none of the spirits has that Power ther list.

As Serbitar said, Immunity (normal weapons) linked to Materialization. All spirits do have that power. What actually misses is something that links the Dual Nature Power with Spirits, because p . 176 says:

Spirits in physical form are in fact dual natured,
interacting with the physical and astral planes simultaneously.
Spirits dislike taking physical form because it makes them vulnerable
to physical attacks.

But the Materialization (and any other power) lacks a reference to the Dual Nature Power (which happens to lack a reference that says that dual natured entities do not suffer a modifier on mundane actions, but I already put the latter in the Errata Thread) ...

Well, yes they are. And no they don't. But that isn't what i was talking about.

I meant the ones that the freed spirit ripped to shreds like so many dead PC character sheets.

This is false.

Magic Attribute 6
Summoning 6
Specialization in Spirits of Man: 2
Dog Mentor Spirit: 2
Summoning Focus: 3

That's 19 dice. You summon a Force 12 pirit successfully almost all the time. In fact, the average number of services is 2.333 per summonng attempt. Meanwhile, you're averaging 5 physical wound levels in drain, which can be healed straight off by your own force 4 bound spirits of man (who roll 12 dice and get the rule of six when casting heal on you, averaging 4.67 wound levels healed).

A starting character can easily summon force 12 spirits and beat people with them. Not that it matters of course, because even a force 7 spirit is immune to Panther assault Cannons, because the power level of all weapons was dropped going in to SR4 and the power level of immunity to normal weapons was not. While you can crush people with your force 12 spirits as a starting character, there's no particular need for you to do that. A force 9 spirit is more than enough to crush absolutley any opposition other than another force 9+ spirit or a banishment specialist.

-Frank

Starting characters are not going to be throwing around Force 12 Spirits. There is a good chance they can die. We have a drain resistance test ranging from 2 (minimum) to 24 (maximum).

(And for those wondering how Frank got to 2.333 services.)
19 dice times 1/3 = 6.333
12 dice times 1/3 = 4
Average Net= 2.333

And here is the detail behind the "average" 12 dice the spirit will be rolling:

And the mage rolls...lets say 12 dice to resist the DV value? Maybe less if they aren't a "tricked out" conjuring mage. This doesn't look "easy" to me when it comes to resisting drain and not dieing or becoming incapacitated (in either case no matter how many successes you get for services, the spirit leaves.)

Legend:
Hits: The number of successes
%: The probability of getting the stated number of successes
DV: Drain Value mage will have to resist based on the number of successes earned by the summoning mage.

P = the probability that the desired outcome will occur
N = the number of opportunities for the event to occur
k = the number of times that the event occurs
p = the probability that the event will occur on any particular occasion
q = the probability that the event will not occur on any particular occasion

So, for the above, P is what we are attempting to solve for, N is the number of times 1 die 6 is being rolled or 12 (the dice pool of the Force 12 Spirit), k is the number of times a "hit" will occur, p is the probability that a "hit" will occur on 1 die 6 (.3333), and q is the probability that no "hit" will occur on 1 die 6 (.6667).

I didn't really attempt to do the calculations myself. I ran it through a statistics program.

I do internal consulting for my firm, so I am part finacial analyst/part accountant/part statistician/mediator/probability analyst, so I use an Excel add-on tool (Business Statistics in Practice 2nd Edition by McGraw-Hill Irwin) for my more cumbersome work. There probably is a more recent version but I purchased the program myself and wrote it off on my taxes back in 2001.

There are also probably several web pages that have calculators you can use (most universities have one or two statisticians working on their PHd and using these on-line models as part of their thesis.)

I almost convinced myself to take my hand at gaming design (MMORPG's,Turn Based and Paper) but since I have several friends in those areas, I know the pay to hours isn't that great and I have yet to hear of any "old" designers. You should see the probability models that they have to use and the comparitive models to understand the dynamic impact to other events.

That looks reasonable enough.

Gotcha, here's I think where the error comes in. A die hits 1/3 of the time, not .3333 of the time. That's pretty insignificant most of the time, but it does cause round-off errors to become statistically significant when you are talking about vanishingly unlikely scenarios (like the Spirit rolling enough successes on 12 dice to kill you with drain).

No. A twinked out conjurer can summon something that will beat everything in the game and usually hospitalize themselves doing it. They can also summon up something capable of smiting almost everything in the game and not really care about the drain.

The chances of actually dying are extremely low - less than 1% of the time are they going to run a serious risk of death when the drain comes up. Their chances of having to spend edge are actually pretty high - almost 1.5%. But spending an Edge or two to kill anything in the game is still pretty severe for a starting character.

-Frank

It´s still worse than shooting yourself in the chest, aint it? People who do stuff like that eccept once in their career for dramatical effect as a last resort, have to be dealt with by the GM anyway.

Immunity to Normal Weapons is Hardened Armor (p288), thus if an attack doesn't exceed this power in DV, then it does nothing. Spirits have a stun track.

Using default combat rules against a Spirit is practically moot unless you catch them unaware or fight them in Astral combat, as their Reaction attribute is through the roof.

Unless you are facing folks with non-conductive armor (not that it completely negates the effect). Although I will admit, Stick N Shock is the main reason my SR4 ork character is currently investing in non-conductive armor.

It's also being developed in Real Life ™:
http://www.jaycor.com/web-content/eme_ltl_sticky.html

Good catch (I will have to update my Character Generator to catch that.) So it frees up an additional 50 BP and reduces two stats to 5. The point was to show that you could make that character, he would just be a one trick pony.

Good luck with that if the Spirit has a force of 6 or more.

The Stick-n-shock has a DV of 6, halves the spirit's 12 hardened armor... and bounces off with no effect whatsoever. The grenade launcher has a quite meaty DV of 10, but it has no AP, so the whole 12 points of hardened armor applies... and you still bounce off with no effect.

If you have a force 6 spirit in your sights, nothing short of a heavy weapon is going to make it blink. A force 7 spirit laughs at most of those even, as an Ultimax HMG with ExEx ammo bounces off (9 DV, 5 AP, just barely inadiquate to scratch the paint on the 14 hardened armor on a force 7 spirit). The only thing that can hurt a force 7 spirit is an AWP with APDS or a Panther Assault Canon (either 8DV -7AP or 10DV -5AP will penetrate), but neither of those will do jack to a force 8 spirit.

And the answer to the question "Can a dedicated summoner loft a force 8 spirit every day?" is yes. You won't even get hospitalized if you tweak yourself out for drain resistance. And since you're overcasting anyway, you don't even need a magic of 6 to pull this off. You can do just fine with a Magic, Logic, and Willpower of 5.

-Frank

They sure could. And that doesn't matter in the slightest, because immunity to normal weapons no longer makes the distinction in SR4.

So regardless of whether you can convince your GM that there is an "Elemental Handgrenade Metaplane", you still can't do jack against a Force 6 Spirit with one.

-Frank

You've got to be kidding. Elemental spell effects are resisted with half armor, and the critter power "elemental attack" is resisted with half armor. Of course, magical effects of any kind can't be resisted with immunity to normal weapons at all.

The only part of the rulesbook that says that elemental effects halve armor is on page 196:

Unless and until a handgrenade becomes a "spell", it has to deal with its own listed AP value of -2.

-Frank

No, I am not kidding.

or

So, we have cold, fire, acid and electricity as defined elemental effects. Their source can be magical (indirekt combat spell) or technological (taser or flamethrower).

Now, can we define normal grenades as an additional elemental effect (like in SR3)? If yes, a normal Grenade would do something around 10 elemental damage and reducing the hard armor of a force 6 spirit to 6 (with some funny sideeffects for vehicle combat).
If an attack with a grenade is not an elemental attack (because it causes no fire damage or because the description of the proper elemental effect (I think in SR3 it was "Blast", could that be?)) is missing, then you are right and we have to wait for the Arsenal-Book to include special grenades (acid splash, phosphor, napalm etc) or better taser-rounds.

SYL

Wrong.

SR4 treats all electricity attacks in the same way; all fire attacks in the same way; all cold attacks in the same way; and all acid attacks in the same way. The "Special Types of Damage" rules on page 154 are in the Combat chapter, not the Magic chapter, and apply to all appropriate damage sources regardless of whether they are technological or magical in origin. If you read the rules presented there, you will notice that *all* these damage types are resisted by half Impact Armor.

StickNShok rounds would halve the spirit's Armor. So would a stun baton, or a flamethrower, or even a dunking in liquid nitrogen.

However, hand grenades don't do Fire damage. So you're correct about the hand grenade having to rely on its inadequate AP of 2.