[imthedci]

Our group (spirit shaman, technomancer, street sammy, and weapon specialist), is fighting a bunch of dragon cultists and an air spirit this week. Long(ish) story...

Is there anything in the CRB that can make normal attacks (like my troll sammy's fists or our TM's gun) get around a spirit's Hardened Armor? I didn't notice anything that stood out, but I might have missed something.

I'm guessing that we're probably gonna be stuck rooting for the poor spirit shaman while he deals with the spirit, but I'm still doing my due diligence to see if there's anyway to help out other than my usual "if hitting it doesn't work, then just hit it harder"...

[Michael Chandra]

Either you do enough damage, or people throw out magic. If it's a Force 6, you need at least like 9 damage (aka lots of nethits) to hurt it a tiny bit... =<

But I do recommend that your GM halves Hardened's autosoak. Autosoak is still the same as in SR5, even though all damage numbers are down, so that's a good argument to show it got missed in the soak-nerf and needs a reduction. That would make it easier for you bunch to pile up the damage bit by bit.

[Lormyr]

Short answer: No. Spirits are broken, and there is no conventional weapon option that works well on them other than foci.

Long answer: Explosives. They are even more broken, and will automatically kill just just about any non-ludicrous force, non-dragon entity if your dice pool allows reliable placement. The question is just how many do you need. If after looking up why I say this you have any confusion let me know and I will walk you through it.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

In the realm of house rules, you can say that every spirit has a Vulnerability (see pg 229).  For the life of me I don't know why they didn't come that way in the CRB, as they had them in prior editions.  But anyway, it's easy enough to say that the Spirit of Fire is roflstomped by a fire extinguisher, the Spirit of Air loses power when confined in a sealed room, or etc.

[imthedci]

Oh well. Looks like I'll be turning those cultists into pom-poms to cheer on the shaman.

[Leith]

Called shots increase damage. -4 dice on Ares pred VI SA = 6p. 7p if BF and 8p for 5 edge with no penalty to hit.
Grapples don't worry about HA, maybe not a good idea tho since engluf is a thing. I'm unclear on whether knockout blow counts the damage before or after resistance test. Basically anything to give the shaman an edge or protect him.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

If you don't mind porting some 5e stuff into 6we, there's the Blight Toxin (from Better than Bad).  Or as I like to call it, Spirit-B-GON.  Load up some capsule rounds with DMSO + Blight and you'll never worry about spirits again.

[Michael Chandra]

I consider Blight crazy overkill, but 'a special toxin coating for melee weapons that makes them bypass immunity and lasts X uses' would be more balanced.

[Lormyr]

Blight is a blight on game balance. I get it, spirits and magic are overkill too, but a cream to remove one's archetype is the absolute height of having completely lost control of game balance.

It's not too late to fix spirits. My hope is they choose that avenue instead.

[Bishophawk]

Can someone point out to me where it says spirits have the harden armor power, I've read all thru the spirits section  and they the critter power section and cant seen to find it anywhere.  Thanks

[Xenon]

Spirits are normally wholly astral entities which mean you cannot interact with them at all from the physical plane. You need to use astral perception or projection.

However, spirits have the Materialization power which let them temporary gain a physical body. While using this power they gain the Immunity to Normal Weapons (stupid name, it should be Resistance to Normal Weapons but this is a legacy from older editions I guess).

Under the Immunity power you can read about the general rules that applies to the power (such as that critter has Hardened Armor against that particular kind of damage). The power also give us specifics that only applies to Immunity to Normal Weapons (for example which attacks that ignore the hardened armor)

The Hardened Armor power give us the specifics on just how much the damage is reduced.

[Bishophawk]

Thank you, guess I didnt read the immunity power because it wasn't list as a power in the spirits list.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Thank you, guess I didnt read the immunity power because it wasn't list as a power in the spirits list.

Yeah. They gain Immunity to Normal Weapons indirectly, as a side effect of Materialization.

[CanRay]

Short answer: No. Spirits are broken, and there is no conventional weapon option that works well on them other than foci.

Long answer: Explosives. They are even more broken, and will automatically kill just just about any non-ludicrous force, non-dragon entity if your dice pool allows reliable placement. The question is just how many do you need. If after looking up why I say this you have any confusion let me know and I will walk you through it.

Spirits are why "Geek The Mage First" is the first rule of combat in Shadowrun.  Yeah, you got such epic power at your fingertips, you're also target number one for the Ork Merc with the LMG or the Troll Gunbunny with the Assault Cannon.

Explosives are broken IRL.  Physics is nasty business, and Sir Isaac Newton is still the deadliest son of a slitch in space.

[Lormyr]

Explosives are broken IRL.  Physics is nasty business, and Sir Isaac Newton is still the deadliest son of a slitch in space.

Points for Mass Effect reference.

No argument there. My argument is that this is a game, played for fun, where more game balance is better. We divert from RL physics in other areas, adding explosives to the list is only helpful.

However if you are happy to play in a game where you can die from 1-2 attacks where the roll to defend yourself (damage resistance) is irrelevant due to volume of incoming damage, then knock yourself out homie.