[Blue_Lion]

Straight from Electricity Damage that Lightning Bolt/Ball references.

Electrical damage is treated as Stun damage and resisted with half Impact armor (rounded up)—metallic armor, however, offers no protection. The nonconductive armor upgrade (p. 327) adds its full rating to the armor value.
-SNIP-
Electronic equipment, vehicles, and drones can also be affected by Electricity damage. They never suffer Stun damage, but they do roll Body + Armor (drones and vehicles) or Armor x 2 (other objects) to resist secondary effects.

Electrical damage is always treated as stun damage. A spell can either do physical damage or it can do electrical damage, but it can't do both. Doing electrical damage automatically changes it to being treated as stun damage. So the chain of events goes to spell starts physical, triggers electrical element, and immediately gets converted to stun.

I think it was ment to do phyiscal damage the formila does not have a reduction in damage for doing stun.  Most weapons that do electrical damage are ment to stun, the spell is ment to do physical damage. The refernce for it doing stun is for tasers and what not. And spells can do two types of damage at once. such as fire water spell does both fire and water damage.

[All4BigGuns]

I thought of something. It could be possible that it was listed as doing physical expressly for the purpose of harming vehicles. That said, if someone wanted to rule that it did stun to metahumans, I wouldn't complain too much. In fact, that would be a very good compromise.

[Crash_00]

The issue is that even if it does physical, being electricity damage means it is treated as stun damage. Vehicles don't take stun. Electrical damage specifically states that. When looking at whether the vehicle is damaged, you look at the damage type. Even though it has a P in the listing, the S is what is going to stick out because Electrical damage is always treated as stun.

You can say that this is because of all the non-lethal electrical damage out there, but the passage makes no distinction. Taser, High Voltage fence, stick and shock, natural lightning, a dangling electrical line, they are all treated as stun damage. Lighting Bolt is no different.

[JustADude]

The issue is that even if it does physical, being electricity damage means it is treated as stun damage. Vehicles don't take stun. Electrical damage specifically states that. When looking at whether the vehicle is damaged, you look at the damage type. Even though it has a P in the listing, the S is what is going to stick out because Electrical damage is always treated as stun.

However, there is a bit of quivocality in that to my mind.

Yes, it's "treated as" stun damage but that, to me, means more along the lines of things like whether it affects barriers, how Trauma Damper alters the total damage, and other such things. If the damage code is "P(e)" then, at the end of the day, it would still fill boxes on the Physical track after all the resistance calculations are done.

Now, normally that would still mean that it splashes against Drones, since Drones don't take stun, but there's a special exception in SR4A (p164) that says "Electronic equipment, vehicles, and drones can also be affected by Electricity damage." That exception would allow the few cases of "P(e)" damage to still blow up hings that would realistically be perma-fried with electricity without letting you use Lightning Bolt to take down a plascrete wall.

[Crash_00]

If you keep reading that same section you quoted from though, the very next part is that they are not affected by stun damage. Electrical damage is treated as stun damage. It then goes on to show exactly how they are affected by electrical damage (which does not include damage, but shorting out).

[UmaroVI]

I think that the specific overrides the general. Electrical damage is treated as stun, but Lighting Bolt/ball explicitly say they do Physical. So they are special snowflake electrical powers that inflict P instead of S. Why else would the statblock for Lighting Bolt/ball say P?

[Chrona]

I think that the specific overrides the general. Electrical damage is treated as stun, but Lighting Bolt/ball explicitly say they do Physical. So they are special snowflake electrical powers that inflict P instead of S. Why else would the statblock for Lighting Bolt/ball say P?

Also all Elemental Spells are Physical Spells.
If a machine with no defences for it gets hit with a lightning spell in my game it's sure as hell rolling to resist damage next, P, M and S be damned

[Crash_00]

I think that the specific overrides the general. Electrical damage is treated as stun, but Lighting Bolt/ball explicitly say they do Physical. So they are special snowflake electrical powers that inflict P instead of S. Why else would the statblock for Lighting Bolt/ball say P?

Because elemental combat spells are templated. They use the exact same stats for the original spell that are then manipulated by the elemental effect. So yes, all elemental single target spells start out doing Physical damage, but if their elemental effect only does stun, that manipulates the damage of the spell. Lightning Bolt isn't the only one, Screech and Steam both get converted to stun as well.

Straight from Street Magic (pg. 168):

Most Combat spells with elemental effects have the same game characteristics; the only difference is the elemental effect (Acid Stream, Flamethrower, and Lightning Bolt, for example, are all the same). To create a spell with a different elemental effect such as Ice or Sand (see pp. 164–165) is very easy—simply use the same spell statistics, apply the rules for the new elemental effect, and rename it.

This shows blatantly that elemental effects are supposed to modify the spell's characteristics.

Of course, that isn't to say a GM wouldn't let one hell of a Lightning Bolt fry a vehicle (I've done it before), but it doesn't by standard RAW, and if the vehicle had any sort of protection at all (such as non-conductive insulation or something similar) it probably shouldn't be doing damage unless the damage just ridiculously exceeds what it's Body+Armor would be.

[UmaroVI]

So your argument is that Lightning bolt/ball has a typo caused by copypasta?

[Crash_00]

It's not a typo really, just the way the spells work. It has a P in it's damage, but if you read how elemental spells work, the elemental affect applied to the spell's stat block. In other words, elemental effect overrides spell block rather than spell block overriding elemental effect as you've suggested. To simplify, what I'm saying is:

Elemental Effect (A)
Spell Block (B)

When using an elemental spell, you take (B) and apply (A) to it. In the case of Lighting Bolt, this changes (B)'s damage listing of P to an S because Lighting Bolt's (A) only does stun damage and it's (A) is applied to the (B).

Another way to look at it is similar to the FAQ. If the FAQ contradicts the rules, the rules win. If the spell block contradicts the elemental effect, the elemental effect wins.

I say this, because it says to apply the rules for the elemental attack. It makes no mention of damage being exempt from this.

[Mason]

*Doo, do do do dooo, I am just going to copy this spell format right here, and change the name from flamethrower to Lightning bolt, do do do doo. Now copy it again, make it AOE....man it has been a long day, I am so tired. What do i have left? I yeah, I still have to do telekinetic punches, wouldn't they have less drain since they lack an element? Yep, OK, let's drop the Drain. Yawn. Man, I think it is time to hit the hay. Bye guys!*

[Crash_00]

Most likely what happened to be honest.

[All4BigGuns]

I think that the specific overrides the general.

This.  This is the case in just about every game I've seen.

[Crash_00]

Why does Lightning Bolt get special treatment over, say, a real Lightning Bolt straight from that be, or grabbing hold of a dangling electrical line? Both of which are easily considered more lethal than a taser.

More importantly, how is letting it remain physical, applying the elemental effect? After the fluff, the first line in the Electrical Damage section is "Electrical damage is treated as stun damage ..." If it's an important enough part of the effect to be the very first thing said about it mechanically, it should be a no brainer that applying the effect will include that line. It doesn't say "apply only the beneficial parts of the elemental effect".

[All4BigGuns]

Why does Lightning Bolt get special treatment over, say, a real Lightning Bolt straight from that be, or grabbing hold of a dangling electrical line? Both of which are easily considered more lethal than a taser.

More importantly, how is letting it remain physical, applying the elemental effect? After the fluff, the first line in the Electrical Damage section is "Electrical damage is treated as stun damage ..." If it's an important enough part of the effect to be the very first thing said about it mechanically, it should be a no brainer that applying the effect will include that line. It doesn't say "apply only the beneficial parts of the elemental effect".

You don't think getting struck by lightning would be physical damage? The people who survive that drek are very VERY lucky individuals, and even then they're likely to be in the hospital a couple days at minimum for the damage done to their bodies. Sounds like physical damage to me using game terms.