[Chalkarts]

IF I wanted to summon an elemental that was about equivelent strength in a fight as your standard NPC Lone STar type, what force would I cast at for a decent match for your standard foe?

I know this is probably a very subjective question but I hoped some GMs might weigh in so I can figure out what my Magic needs to be for my summoner.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Spirits are very powerful in 5E.  Their dice pools are very generally twice their force, and their offensive abilities tend to have a DV of twice force as well. And unless the NPC has DMSO+blight capsule rounds, the spirit has hardened armor equal to twice force as well.

If you use the Professional Rating 3 Lone Star NPC on pg 383 as being representative of your typical beat cop, he has the following dice pools:

9 dice for shooting.
7 dice for dodging attacks.
16 dice, before AP, for soaking damage.

A Force 6 spirit can be summoned for negligible drain by even a non-optimized character, and will totally outclass the NPC.  You'd have to go down into a force range of 3 or 4 for the NPC to stand a chance.

Unless of course you decide that Blight toxin should be standard issue for security guards.  Honestly, some Spirit-B-GON probably should be standard equipment now that it's on the market...

[Ghost Rigger]

Unless of course you decide that Blight toxin should be standard issue for security guards.  Honestly, some Spirit-B-GON probably should be standard equipment now that it's on the market...

Remember when everyone's solution to enemy spirits was APDS?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Unless of course you decide that Blight toxin should be standard issue for security guards.  Honestly, some Spirit-B-GON probably should be standard equipment now that it's on the market...

Remember when everyone's solution to enemy spirits was APDS?

All hail the Grey Brothers and their contribution to Shadowrun moving away somewhat from Magicrun

[Chalkarts]

I'm not even really looking for something that can defeat the foe, just distract, annoy, and maybe hurt a bit.  The spirit will be used as a Door Guard or a "Beat up that guy while I do this other thing and run away."

[Tarislar]

Force-4 is going to be plenty of distraction for a single opponent unless that opponent also has magic.

8 Dice for actions w/ a Dodge pool possibly larger & resistance to normal weapons fire will keep the cops busy.

Force-3 might even be a good "distraction" as long as your not planning on the spirit living through it.

[Chalkarts]

Force-4 is going to be plenty of distraction for a single opponent unless that opponent also has magic.

8 Dice for actions w/ a Dodge pool possibly larger & resistance to normal weapons fire will keep the cops busy.

Force-3 might even be a good "distraction" as long as your not planning on the spirit living through it.

The Character has kind of a meh attitude toward the spirits.  If they die, he's over it pretty quick.

[SunRunner]

Stick N Shock rounds have been my go to for taking down spirits, you dont need blight rounds. Heavy Pistols and even a decently wielded light pistol can take down a force 6 spirit with the -5AP from SnS rounds. Heavy Pistols are Base 8 down to 6 for SnS, + 1 net hit means DV 7 with -5AP reducing the force 6 spirits hardened armor of 12 down to 7 which means your at least forcing a roll. Granted 7 DV vs 3 auto hits from hardened and an average of 13 soak dice (6 body +7 Arm) means on average the spirit will get his 7 hits and soak it all, but your at least forcing dice to be rolled as opposed to the normal scenario where the spirit would not even have to pick up dice. That is also a one Net hit case, as soon as you get 2+ net hits the force 6 spirit will start taking damage on average.

Now that being said the average beat cop will either not survive the F6 spirits retaliatory attack or be mission killed by would penalties. That will come down to if its one of the more offensive spirits with an elemental attack / aura or not. So I will concur that if your using the beat cop from the core book, they will probably over come an F3 pretty quickly, 3 or 4 rounds of combat. An F4 will be a toss up as to which wins it could go either way but I would say probably about 65% in the spirits favor. This is all based on 1 v 1 cage matches, the F4 will lose about 65% of the time vs 2 beat cops.

[Beta]

One of the challenges that a beat cop may have is simply hitting a spirit.  Some of the more popular spirits have boosted reactions or intuition, so even a force 4 may be a coin toss versus a semi-automatic burst.

Stun rods are handy against spirits through force ~7.  9 damage, -5AP, and it is a touch attack so +2 and ties go to attacker.  And it is a GM call, but in my games I rule that you can trigger them while being engulfed and get an automatic hit, so that helps too.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Full Auto bursts give mundanes a shot at hitting spirits by penalizing those dice pools.  But as mentioned, doing anything once you score a hit is problematic.  Well... WAS problematic before blight.  Now: all you need to do is hit. Unless the spirit can soak 12 drain, it's just gone.  Granted, really high force spirits might pull it off if the mage spends some edge...

With DMSO+blight capsule rounds and an appropriate weapon and ammo supply, you can even just lay down suppressive fire. Spirits almost assuredly won't bother ducking for cover, knowing their immunity to normal weapons will let them shrug off single plinks.  But in this case, one hit=one spirit kill.

Of course, the Paul Blart NPCs will likely have neither full auto nor blight toxin rounds, but it'd be malpractice for fast response/high threat response NPCs to show up without them.

[Michael Chandra]

[...]  hardened armor of 12 down to 7 which means your at least forcing a roll. Granted 7 DV vs 3 auto hits from hardened and an average of 13 soak dice (6 body +7 Arm) means on average the spirit will get his 7 hits and soak it all, [...]

4 autohits. Round up unless specifically stated otherwise. Remaining armor is 7, so 4 autohits.

I suspect Blight will be a bit hard for a lot of security to have, and gangers I doubt they'll have much of it around. If you just want to wreck havoc, a Force 4 already is plenty. If you are facing competent enemies, a Force 6 Guardian Spirit with an Assault Rifle is probably your best choice.

[SunRunner]

Just pointing out that while Blight Rounds are better, they are A) Rare, B) More expensive, C) A very specialized round, D) Questionable legality where SnS are common, Cheaper, and Not specialized and dont have the Liability issues. Liability issues are if you miss the round go some where and SnS is way less likely to cause bystander casualties then normal rounds. Honestly when I run my Cops and Corp Sec forces default to SnS. They are effective against a broad range of targets including awakened threats with hardened armor and such. It is non lethal so bystanders and equipment tend to not get damaged by stray rounds, and you get your suspect to question/parade trail. They really are worth the cost in terms of property damage avoided and lawsuit cost avoided from bystanders. And for the HRT teams they have APDS, which is even more effective vs hardened armor then SnS.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

In rebuttal:

A) With an availability of 8F, they're quantitatively less rare than many of the guns you'd use to fire the DMSO+blight rounds with.
B) Granted. You have to mix with DMSO, and then put into a capsule round. All told it's 605 nuyen for 10 capsule rounds with DMSO+blight vs 80 nuyen for 10 Stick-n-Shock rounds.
C) Also granted, but it's specialized to only work on things that have/use magic. That's still an awful lot of things in the 6th world, and many of them are the things you'd try to geek first.
D) Legality doesn't apply to security NPCs.  They get to do things shadowrunners never can, like have legit licenses for F rated gear.

[Marcus]

The blight question is largely a SOTA issue. There is no doubt that blight makes spirites much less of a threat. So the question is how quick is the contractor on the up take. How quickly can the stuff be made and how well can it be distributed and how quickly can guards be trained on it.  Further some companies are going to hesitate in deploying something that can be used against them as well. I would expect most will embrace this tech, until someone on the magic side counters it. As a point I’m not actually sure dmso works on elementals. If you don’t have skin or are immune to poison this question maybe largely irrelavent.

[Cabral]

D) Legality doesn't apply to security NPCs.  They get to do things shadowrunners never can, like have legit licenses for F rated gear.

Yes and no. What is restricted and forbidden inside an Ares complex may vary compared to the UCAS in general, affecting what KE will kit security forces with, but in Seattle, F is a illegal for everyone. Security forces may use it hoping they won't get caught by someone with the authority to hold them accountable for it.

F is essentially two types of equipment: military only or flat out illegal (for example, weapons banned by Geneva accords and the like). No one ever has legit licenses for F rated gear. At most, they have legit licenses for the gear in a jurisdiction where it is R.