[yrtalien]

In our 3 person group..we have an adept with killing hands and a Mage with spells.

What's the best way for a character without either of those, for instance a Technomancer, to affect a Materialized spirit?

It seems like a guy like that is hosed against spirits.  Am I wrong?

Thanks

[Xenon]

A Shadowrun team is typically a group of specialists that are really good at the thing they do. If the team already have an Adept and a Magician then perhaps you should let them shine whenever the team stumbles upon a materialized spirit. Dealing with spirits is one of their high points. Let them do it.

Having said that, a more correct name for "Immunity to Normal Weapons" is probably "Resistance to Normal Weapons". As long as the spirit is not super powerful and as long as you bring a powerful enough weapon you can typically still put a serious dent in it. Weapons such as a monowhip, a 50" cal sniper rifle, an assault cannon, a high cal assault rifles (or battle rifle) loaded with explosive ammo, a vehicle mounted heavy machine gun, etc. And if everything else fails, bring out the really heavy artillery. Such as grenades and vehicle rockets.


The technomancer instead typically shine when it comes to things like;
- Matrix related legwork during the "lay of the land"-phase (matrix search, double checking intel, getting blueprints, patrol schedules etc).
- Matrix overwatch during the "social and/or physical infiltration"-phase (opening maglocks, controlling elevators, controlling sensors and turning off alarms, tracking enemy drones, snooping cameras, edit out team from live camera feeds).
- Matrix overwatch during the "exfile"-phase (opening doors, controlling elevators, delaying HTR, turning on sprinklers, turning off lights, creating diversions by activating unrelated alarms, messing with opponents vehicles during the car chase scene).

[Michael Chandra]

Two things:

1: There's a martial arts, or you can exploit the Spirit's allergies. Note that in the third errata for CRB SR6, all six basetypes received allergies to target.

2: Immunity is overpowered compared to SR5, so I strongly suggest a houserule that halves the autosoak of it.

[MercilessMing]

yes non-magician, non-combat people are hosed against spirits.
Combat specialists can usually get by if they have hard hitting weapons, like Xenon mentioned.
Perhaps the technomancer has a drone nearby with some of those hard hitting weapons?

[Xenon]

or perhaps the TM can trigger the sprinkler system to cool down that fire spirit ;-)

[Finstersang]

2: Immunity is overpowered compared to SR5, so I strongly suggest a houserule that halves the autosoak of it.

And bear in mind that it was already pretty damn strong in 5th Edition 

Halfing the Autosoak should help a lot, or alternatively houserule it into additional Damage Resistance Dice instead of Autohits. It´s worth noting that the new Drake rules further amplify this massive balancing problem.

[Shinobi Killfist]

2: Immunity is overpowered compared to SR5, so I strongly suggest a houserule that halves the autosoak of it.

And bear in mind that it was already pretty damn strong in 5th Edition 

Halfing the Autosoak should help a lot, or alternatively houserule it into additional Damage Resistance Dice instead of Autohits. It´s worth noting that the new Drake rules further amplify this massive balancing problem.

I still think the focus should be weakening their output rather than their defense. Being tanks vs mundane is pretty tied to the setting. Let them have that but they should be like gangers in damage they do like PR 0-3 in combat range. Far too often a mage is summoning up a spirit that looks as good in the fight as the street sam and is both disposable and a tank, keep the tank, get rid of showing up the other PCs.

[Michael Chandra]

They already were tanks vs mundanes in SR5. They have MORE autosoak than in SR5, due to no longer being reduced by AP. A Force 6 Earth spirit would on average soak 13.3 in SR5, 9.3 vs an Alpha with APDS (11/-6). So it'd take maybe a few points of damage. In SR6, it would soak on average 9.3, while the best you can do with an Alpha with explosive ammo is 7P base, and that's with focused fire. Spirit soak: Same. Heavy damage against them: 4 points less. So the Spirit is 4 points heavier in SR6 than it was in SR5.

And if you bring in the really nasty heavy damage weapons in SR5, you'd get way more bonus damage compared to SR6, so they're way harder to kill now. If the autosoak were properly halved, like all damage and armour have been reduced, the Spirit would lose 3 soak and still be a tank vs mundane.

[tarbaand]

I will say that a F6 spirit is way harder to summon in 6e than 5, since they roll F*2 to resist, not just F.  Also, although it's not in CRB, in Missions (which seems like reasonable guidance as the "official" house rules):
"Any spirit where the force is higher than the summoner’s Magic - 2, is considered a high force spirit. They will spend half their force as Edge to re-roll the summoner’s successes."
So, getting more than 1 service out of a F6 spirit is going to be tough unless your dice pool is insane.  Which means that a good mage should be able to Banish it with a decent roll and/or a couple edge.

In response to OP, the TM is going to do not much in that encounter, unless it's an Earth spirit and he has a taser/stun baton, or an Air Spirit and he has a can of tear gas, a Kin spirit and he has steel, a water spirit and he has a flare, and he has a fire extinguisher, etc

[Michael Chandra]

I will say that a F6 spirit is way harder to summon in 6e than 5, since they roll F*2 to resist, not just F.

Drain's still the same, though, and drain is a more limiting factor. And the SRM rule wouldn't have been necessary if autosoak had been properly halved, imo. But it's a good balancing factor.

[MercilessMing]

Where are these missions houserules originating?  This seems to be the only group in SR concerned with game balance.