Don't forget to apply the spirit's edge to its summoning resist roll if you think its pretty strong.

Mage sight goggles are an affront to shadowrun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Mages are plenty powerful enough without having these crazy fiberoptic goggles of win.

Cram is 10:nuyen:, Jazz is 75:nuyen:, and even Kamikaze is only 100:nuyen:. A single dose of any of those is probably more than enough to last a typical security guard 6+ months.



Or use the karma generation system in Runner's Companion. You start with the same basic resources as a 400BP character but maxing things out is much more costly.

Isn't it body * 2, and evey 2 points over that is a cumulative -1 penalty? In other words, shouldn't he only be able to go up to 11 without penalties?

form fitting full body armor is 6/2, but counts as 3/1 for purposes of encumbrance when stacking it with other armor.

SO: 5 body = FFFBA: 6/2 + Steam punk OverCoat(3/3)+ SteamPunk Vest(2/2) + Steampunk Pants(1/1) + Steampunk shirt(1/1)=13/9 with 0 encumbrance.

Also, don't forget that if you need some examples of more balanced foes, the free Missions on the CGL site has tons of examples.
I've found when new GMs tackle Shadowrun they forget how dangerous more, weaker characters can be compared to a equal amount of more dangerous characters.
Don't forget to impose visual penalties to the spellcaster and don't forget that your NPCs shoot twice per IP.
When in doubt, take a look at some published runs and draw from there.

Ehhh... They are Niche. Rarely have I seen a Mage that uses them. The penalties (-3 for Mage Sight Goggles, and -1 for Spellcasting from Cover... so minimum of -4, not counting visibility modifiers) are severe enough that they are only used in the direst of circumstances in my experience. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Remember that as GM you have infinite numbers on your side. It doesn't matter what the PCs have, you can have more. For instance, take a troll with 10 reaction and 30 soak dice. He can avoid any harm, right? Yeah, but not for long. 10 gangers with BF weapons can pretty easily take him down even though they'll have 2 dice on a long burst. The first 9 fire wide bursts and hope they hit. They should, but they're unlikely to get the 4 successes they need to stage the damage up past where he can soak it. But then the last guy fires a short narrow burst. The troll no longer has any defense dice, so he's soaking 8P/-1 plus successes. He'll probably take a point or two and it'll probably be stun. The next simple action is a long narrow burst, which he again can't dodge. Now he's soaking 11P/-1 plus successes. If that ganger spends one of their Edge on each shot you could easily drop the troll since his stun track can't be as big as his physical one and he's set himself up to almost always take stun damage.

Likewise, Control Thoughts is scary. But a typical runner is controlling the thoughts of a security guard while a typical security mage is controlling the thoughts of the aforementioned troll. Which one is nastier?

You mentioned healing drain making overcasting a joke. Drain can't be healed by magic and physical damage takes a long time to heal normally (at least a full day of rest).

What does the social adept do that ruins things? The only thing I can think of is compelling voice, but that only controls the target if you allow it. a lot of the time it just means that the adept spent one action to steal one action from an enemy.

Also, what are their weak spots? If the combat beast with a 1 charisma and no social skills only ever has to look up from the novel he's reading when a fight starts, he's going to seem a lot more powerful than he really is.

Never underestimate the power of suppression fire being fired by multiple people.

Quite possibly. But then you have to worry about your guards becomming addicted to the substance, have a recovery program, etc. In this day and age when Quality Security has tens of thousands spent in their training and outfitting, I do not see it as a stretch, in the 2070's) to provide a small bit of 'ware. And you have to admit, Wired reflexes are a hell of an equalizer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)



Karma Generation has its own issues, though. However, It is a viable alternative. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Armor encumbrance doesn't round down. Every 2 points (or fraction thereof) that your armor rating exceeds your Body x 2 costs you a point of agility. With 5 body you could have Armor Vest (6/4) + FFBA (6/2) + Securetech Forearm Guards (0/1) + Shin Guards (0/1) + Vitals Protector (1/1) + Helmet (0/2) = 13/11, but 10/10 for encumbrance. Toss softweave into the mix and it can go even higher. Concealability isn't really a factor since none of it's illegal.

Every beat copper carries 2 doses of jazz. Something tells me that, given how rare they'd have to use it, addiction isn't really a problem. Likewise, the addiciton rules themselves mean that if you're only an occasional user you're fine.

Besides, when Security Guard #17462917-B shows up saying he "lost his jazz inhaler" you don't rush him off to rehab. You fire his druggie ass and hire one of the thousands of out of work Lone Star cops to take his place. Knight Errant's takeover of Seattle's contract was a boon for corporate security divisions everywhere. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

He is watching the target through an electronic device. Electronics and Magic don't like each other

That's EXACTLY the same amount of armor I listed! except with a slightly different armor package. And softweave is from War! Huh! What is it good for, absolutely NOTHING. The worse SR book /ever/.

So what we've said is with Body 5, you can get 13 points of ballistic/11 points Impact.
More importantly with Body 2, you can get 7/5 which is pretty sweet. But even 13 points of armor only slows down an AK-97, it doesn't make you immune to it.

Where it breaks down is the body 9 trolls (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) who can put together dicepools in the HIGH 30's.

I don't know. I've read A Scanner Darkly.

Shadowrun is not Arena combat. Arena combat can be part of Shadowrun, but it is small subset.

Forget Mechanics. Don't look for attack and defense numbers for NPC to beat PCs.

Strategy > Tactics > PC Attack/Defense numbers.

Tactics tactics tactics! Use them.

That smart corp sec team is going to use every single possible advantage to move things into their favor, and they will have the resources of a Megacorp to train them and point them in the right direction. They'll know what to look for and use cover, mutual supporting fire, and combined tactics to create a situation where every possible modifier is a bonus for themselves and a minus for the shadowrunner team. Guards with a base offensive dice pool of 4 with 6 or more extra dice from modifiers going against a typical Runners defensive pools suddenly start having a good chance of putting the runner team down.

Poorly paid mall cops will just get shot in the face and rolled over by the runners... but the bracelet biomonitors will signal for the heavy weapons response team and packs of tracking spirits and astral entities to show up instantly and act as spotters. Spotters who won't engage, act totally defensively, and do their best to stay concealed while drawing in the group of people who will have nothing else on their mind except "GEEK THE MAGE!".

Yep, you have Magic, you're powerful, scary, capable of great things no one else can do. Welcome to the top of everyone's targeting list. Enjoy. With great power comes a bullseye on your back, front, sides, top and bottom.

Don't, just don't. With 300 BP the characters can't even have average attributes (average costs 160 BP which is illegal at that point value). I doubt it will be fun for your players to play such cripples.
Varied obstactles especially those that can't be shot is a good idea.

and +1 to DireRadiant's post.

Throw a granade.

If you want to restrict your PC's power after chargen, there are better solutions than restricting BPs: restricting max money/magic/skill rating/availability and banning some gear/powers can be much more useful, especially when you've got munchkins.

Flare Comp does not have to be electronic. It can be optical as well...
As for if they are electronic, he is not using them to TARGET a spell... he is using it as a defensive measure against brighht light. Big difference. Sheesh... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And Electronics and Magic get along quite famously in Shadowrun. It is not the Dresden Files, after all... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Sure you do... Right... The Corporations just write off the expenditure of training and outfitting someone, and then spend it again to do so for another. Methinks that you really need a lesson in economics 101 there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Corps are about the bottom line. They do not fire someone they have spent thousands of nuyen on for training and equipment just because they might need help to kick a habit that has developed because of their primary duties to the corporation. Remember, Corporate Citizens are an investment. Corporations do not throw away their investments casually.

Second this. Especially in tight corridors where it rebounds and hits people multiple times.

First action when reacting to an ambush? Throw grenades and get out of the kill zone.


Also, don't be afraid to exploit their negative qualities. They exist for a GM to use to get one up on the players. If a negative quality never comes into play, then it's just free BP.

I have a much simpler option than the above: numbers

I find a gang of (say) 15 people with 1 or 2 options armed, and about 8 die on their attack with heavy pistols, or worse smgs, can take down almost any PC, as long as they are not stupid.

Stupid is standing in a clump where they can be grenaded or stun balls. The important thing to this strategy is make it hard for the players to kill the gangs in one attack, the other important thing is for all the gangers to shoot at once.

If they are behind cover (lots of visibility modifiers - which apply to spells too), which gives them a bit of armour as well, then they cannot be taken out with a single attack.

As there are 15 of them, and they are shooting twice, that's 30 attacks (I recommend invisible castle to roll when its that many). Every time your super hard characters dodge, they are -1 on the next attack. So if they all shoot at the elf with (say) 15 die in defence, the last 15 he has no defence, and he probably glitched or critically glitched a roll. So now he has been hit 15 times for around 8 damage AP -2.... let me say that another way...he is dead. If he has enough armour to with stand that...you bring in the smgs, and use narrow burst.

This means that the players are losing 1 character at least every time the gang attacks.

By the way the gangs might have a grenade or too themselves... grenades cause players problems

You don't have to use a 15 group gang...even a 10 member gang is good. A 5 member gang however will probably all die before they get a go.

No it's not. You said 13/9 and had to break the rules to do it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)



I won't argue opinions, but I specifically did not use Softweave in my numbers, just said that they could go higher if you use it.



Nah, even that's not a break down. See my earlier post for gangers taking down a 30 soak troll (without resorting to elemental damage or stick-n-shock). If his soak is 35+ the same example works but you give the gangers bigger guns. Soak is the worst possible defense you could have, since it takes 3 soak dice for 1 DV, but only one dodge hit to negate 1 DV. If you're soaking shots you're already in trouble (unless the GM put you up against dudes with SA pistols).

What rules did I break? I'm really confused as to where I broke any rules?
13/9, 13/11 are both very cose, and I could make it 13/11 if I used the PPP system items that give 0/1 as well (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) so that's not really much difference.

5 body = 10 points of uncompensated armor

The Steam Punk outfit has 7. The FFFBA has 6 div2=3 3+7=10

Yes, but Trolls can have both High Dodge and High Soak totals.