[Leith]

That's it really. Just need someone to explain why the immune to normal weapons thing actually making spirits immune to normal weapons upsets people so much.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

"I win" buttons upset some people.  Not all people, but some people.

Someone's got it in their sig, but if you haven't seen the video, watch this.  If you're BMX bandit, yeah you're sore about Spirits being invincible.  Maybe not so much if you're Angel Summoner.

[Michael Chandra]

That's it really. Just need someone to explain why the immune to normal weapons thing actually making spirits immune to normal weapons upsets people so much.

To be fair, as mortal you're supposed to still have at least a chance, because otherwise the game balance is a big problem. A Street Sam and an Adept can take each other on, but if a Spirit can only be taken out by magic, unless you score at least 4 net hits, well there goes the neighbourhood. Given how damage codes are significant down, Immunity granting Force in autohits is incredibly overpowered in comparison. Of course, going 'Rating/2 instead' in advance while expecting errata to rule the same, isn't a big step to take. There's more to it, I think, since people are still insisting Spirits are OP despite that, but I don't know exactly why.

[Arkas]

Well, characters without access to paranormal weapons do not want to be absolutely at the mercy of spirits. It would seem, that with the changes the system went through becoming SR6, "hardened armor" (which is how the immunity protects spirits against normal weapons) did not transition well. Weapons damage ratings and the common damage resistance are lower now, while spirits hardened armor vs normal weapons is not - in fact it has even gotten an upgrade. A level 5 or 6 spirit will be hard to come by that way, while being able to do a lot of damage in a lot of different ways.

This being said, spirits are essentially summoned pets / sidekicks and it stands to question if their power is justified.

[wraith]

That's it really. Just need someone to explain why the immune to normal weapons thing actually making spirits immune to normal weapons upsets people so much.

Because casters being able to summon pets that are better at combat than dedicated combat characters, then still also sling spells that target the combat characters weaknesses is really bad design.

A well played summoning-focused mage effectively eliminates the need for anyone else on the team except maybe a decker, because anything combat related others can do spirits can do better while being both more durable -and- disposable, and they can likely just refuse any run that would need decking.

[Leith]

Eh. People used to say this kind of thing about the fighter in 5e D&D vs paladin. To which my reaction was,  "Do you enjoy playing the fighter? Do you get to interact with the narrative in a meaningful way?" I mean, we're talking about an RPG not a wargame.

I dunno, angel summoner might out shine bmx bandit when fighting the baddies but he's not gonna be super useful while infiltrating the x-games. Nor when he has to fight demon summoner.

I guess the reason I'm not seeing the problem with spirits is that the magic system in general is unfair and OP, and has been for multiple editions. Spirits are a small part of that but it is ultimately incumbent upon the GM to make sure angel summoner has a challenge and bmx bandit is useful.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well largely, what makes Magic OP is Spirits.  Flamethrower vs Assault Rifle blast? they're fairly comparable. Fireball vs Rocket Launcher? Still fairly comparable, yet of course balance is strongly tipped to Fireball since that's infinitely more concealable than a Rocket Launcher...

Spirit vs Drone? Not at all.  Speaking of Riggers, why do you need one at all when you have Spirits? Movement power beats any driver ever, assuming you don't want to just send the spirit inside the other car to just invincibly kill the opposing driver even before there is any chase.

Why bother with a Covert Ops character, when you have spirits? Concealment is free.  Investing in Sneaking is expensive.

Etc.  Spirits render basically everything else obsolete.  It's well beyond Immunity to Normal Weapons.

[Leith]

Yeah, none of that is new. And it doesn't explain why the immunity is such a sore point. Spellcasting and spirit powers go hand in hand for trixie bs. Concealment is free, and being able to cast invisibility and control thoughts and mind probe at 20 dice is just as easy as summoning with 20 dice.

Nevertheless SR is a game with a referee curating the experience. Which is to say there is a player at the table whose job it is to make sure the other players are challenged and have interesting things to do. The mage is going to have a rough time making himself invisible and infiltrating places when there's another mage all up in his business. One could argue that the job of the mage on the SR team is to deal with the security mage, and vice versa.

My point is that while I think spirits, and magic in general, are OP and unbalancing, I'm would not describe that as a problem. If anything the problem is that it is too easy to be a mage.

[wraith]

Eh. People used to say this kind of thing about the fighter in 5e D&D vs paladin. To which my reaction was,  "Do you enjoy playing the fighter? Do you get to interact with the narrative in a meaningful way?" I mean, we're talking about an RPG not a wargame.

I dunno, angel summoner might out shine bmx bandit when fighting the baddies but he's not gonna be super useful while infiltrating the x-games. Nor when he has to fight demon summoner.

I guess the reason I'm not seeing the problem with spirits is that the magic system in general is unfair and OP, and has been for multiple editions. Spirits are a small part of that but it is ultimately incumbent upon the GM to make sure angel summoner has a challenge and bmx bandit is useful.

Are you very new to RPGs?

To break it down in mechanical terms for SR, spirits are better at the things you want a combat character to do (damage, movement, stealth, damage ablation).

That is broken, but not game breaking until you add the next part.  Spirits have their own initiative tracks.  They don't act on the caster's turn, they are intelligent and will act on their own (generally mechanically under the player's control to ease GM complexity).  They are better than the combat character an, get more actions per round, come in multiples, and are utterly disposable.  A caster can have up to their Charisma in bound spirits at a given time in SR5, with a number of services from each equal to net hits on the summoning test.  In SR6 that increases to any number of spirits with a total Force of less than 3x Magic.

'Fight this combat for me' costs a single service.  Assuming they use relatively low-power (Force 3) spirits, a starting mage can have 6 of them, each with its own turn, out of creation in SR6.

Immunity to Normal Weapons means that unless the opposition has their own magical support, those 6 spirits can shrug off vastly more firepower than six professional rating 3 goons.

[Michael Chandra]

Movement against vehicles is tough, Movement on people still doesn't beat the speed of a car due to movement rates nerfed, you can't run through town or over highways, you're less squishy in a car, you draw less attention to yourself in a car.

Spirits cannot sneak, so they make sounds even when Concealed (aka Improved Invisibility). They are clearly visible in the Astral, whereas Drones are not. No sneaking means no decent pool to hide from astral perception, whereas a Covert Ops character can try. A spirit observing a building draws attention from security spirits. A drone covertly observing a building, is far less noticable. A metahuman being subtle, idem.

Magic-detection security exists, so good luck sneaking a spirit into a building that's GloMoss-wired. At least the Covert Ops can try to bypass mundane security.

Spirits are NPCs, and with limited knowledge of this world. They may be very intelligent, but not when it comes to many areas that count. Speaking of: Spirits cannot interact with technology. You want a matrix screen read, or buttons pushed? Yeah, good luck doing that through magic means.

I'm not saying there's no balance problems, especially not when it comes to their combat Powers, but Spirits are no replacement of actual PCs. They're just a tool. And some of their problematic powers in SR5 are well-adjusted in SR6, which already helps. Plus the new Summoning rules means no more 'I call upon my 8 Bound Spirits and 1 Summoned Spirit to butcher all my enemies'. So yes, there's room for improvement, but I do not believe the 'Spirits break the entire game and make entire archetypes obsolete'


My only problem with Immunity is simply that it's imbalanced due to not being adjusted to the new damage codes. A Force 6 Spirit can soak damage better than a Roadmaster. Spirits should not ACTUALLY be immune, but they need to be more solid. F/2 autohits suffices at that.

If we compare: SR5, vs AP -5, Force 6 Spirit has say 5 Body, 12-5 = 7 Hardened Armor = 12 soak dice + 4 autohits = 8 soak. So an Ares Predator with APDS would on average soak rolls basically apply its net-hits as damage. Regular rounds would face 11.7 soak, so at 4 net hits you would do only 0.5 damage or so on average.

In SR6, Force 6 Spirit has say 5 Body, 6 autohits = 7.7 soak. The Ares Predator is down to 3P, let's add Explosive rounds. So that means at 4 net hits, you do like 0.5 damage average or something. (Not going to math that out now.) In other words, the specialised ammo in SR6 is comparable to using weak ammo in SR5. The specialised ammo in SR5 actually made a difference and a fair fight.

If we're looking at the higher-end weapons, they used to be up to 15P, so you actually could gain significant damage on that same spirit. Now, the increase is just +2. That means specialised ammo in SR6 on a tough weapon, has the same result as a Predator with APDS in SR5.

That's not scaled well. If, however, Hardened Armor is properly scaled down to Rating/2 autohits, you still do like 0.5 damage less than in SR5, but at least it's only 0.5, not 3.5. That's far more balanced.

[Leith]

F6 has B5, takes ares pred w/SA and explosives 5p + net hits. Assume 2 net hits. 7p-6, avg 1 hit resist 0 dmg.
F6 has B5, takes ares pred w 3rnd burst and explosives 9p -2 ap + net hits. Assume 2 net hits. 11p-5, avg 5 hits resist 1 dmg.
F10 has B9, takes ares alpha w/ BF and explosives 7p + net hits. Assume 6 net hits. 13p-10, avg 3 hits 0 dmg.
F10 has B9, takes ares alpha w/ long burst and explosives 12p -3ap + net hits. Assume 6 net hits. 18p-9, avg 8 hits 1 dmg.

Well, I guess they broke spirits. I shall ban them any future games.
Seriously though, I don't think I care about this specific issue with spirits.

[CigarSmoker]

@Leith

The Spirits get a Reaction+Intuition Defense test like everybody else. 6 net hits vs a Force 10 spirit seems a bit much ^^

---
adding to the topic:

I think spirits can - obviously - be broken in the current state of the game. A force 8 Beast Spirit - you can still beat that down together with a Physical Adept using "Killing Hands". Other Spirits with "Energy Aura" are so tough you need a real mage ... and when you somehow cheese out a Force 18 spirit thats almost a god ^^18 base DV on Ranged around 36 Attack Dice ... Energy Aura with 18P Melee Retaliation. Depending on Spirit around 30 DV with Melee Attacks ...

I wont change anything but they are the strongest NPC in the book ^^

[DigitalZombie]

Higher force spirits doesnt scale in the same way as higher "force" fireballs

You want your fireball to give more dmg? Amp it up 2 drain for 1 dmg. That puts a natural limit on how much dmg you are willing to deal.

Want your spirit to be tougher? 1 force only* cost you on average 0,67 more drain.

* not completely fair though, as a higher force spirit will be tougher to summon, and often end up with fewer services. + the drain is somewhat swingy compared to the fireball.

Drainwise a force 9 spirit causes on average 6 drain, the same as a non-amped fireball
Most starting characters will have great problems succeeding on summoning that though.
 

Spirits got another buff compared to 5th though. Now you can use any spirit for anything. They are no longer limited to combat, healing, or whatever roles.

Spirits are nice force multipliers though. While as MC said they might not be good at infiltrating stuff themselves, BUT they could use concealment on other characters etc.

I agree that F/2 would be more fitting for  their hardened armour.
Although I dont get why they didnt get rid of their force completely, like spells. Say they start as if they had a powerlevel comparable to force 3, then let the summoners amp up their spirits with 2 drain for +1 on everything

[Leith]

@ cigarsmoker
Its a byproduct of the gun i chose. It can't penetrate 20 points of hardened armor w/o 6+ net hits. Then i just added more to the 6e math to make things seem balanced. They're not. That's kinda the point of the topic.

The intersting thing about spirits, and magic in general, is that the designers clearly knew it was unbalanced. And didn't fix it. Deliberately.
I wonder why? Serious speculation only.

[DigitalZombie]

Sorry, Im a bit confused.
Leith do you think they are too strong, or do you think they work as intended?

My speculations regarding spirit power in 6 th. : I think its mostly due to miscommunications between the line developer and the various freelancers.
Like maybe the freelancer had to write the spirits section without knowing how immunity to normal weapons would look like- because another freelancer had that job
Or it got changed in the last minute.

There are some oddities with spirits/sprites compared to the other sections of magic/matrix in general

1. They still use force/ratings
2. Sprites use the same drain logic as spells (except its cha+willpower always), while spirit summoning uses a different logic ( number of hits of spirit is higher than your magic rating BEFORE resisting? Then its physical)
3. Sprites uses the old logic of 1 unregistered sprite and then several registered (resonance rating this time)