This is an opinion poll, but not the kind that needs to use the poll options feature.

Yes, I KNOW this question is incredibly situational, both considering in-game situational factors (a melee character who is 'very powerful' in his element is not so over 100 meters; a mage in a background count, a hacker in a deadzone, a sniper engaged in room clearing, and so on) and metagame social factors (everyone has different ideas of what the power level of a starting character should be), but as a very very very rough balance benchmark, what do you consider to be 'adequately powerful'.

To use one extremely narrow and specific example as an attempt to get a generally agreed upon benchmark...

Can the majority of us agree that an attack made at up to 50 meters at 17 dice with a base DV of 12P and a base AP of -2 (Ballistic) is "sufficiently powerful" to be considered "powerful", i.e. "A Powerful Attack"? By powerful, I mean enough of a threat to be potentially fatal to any starting character, spectacularly fatal to some, and powerful enough to almost certainly deal non-trivial damage even to a character with 50-100 Karma under their belt. (We can leave obvious outliers like 'binky' out of it for now, I think.)

If we can find a starting point, we can extrapolate and expand and broaden from there. But yes, I am starting very, very, very small here.

You've clearly never played a summoning aspected mystic adept focused on melee with an ally spirit that he channels and uses a force 10 increase movement power to run hundreds of meters per turn.

Clearly.

I go by the fluff of a situation, where the runners stand in the hierarchy of the universe. If runners consider a gang nothing to be afraid of, thats good. If they could care less about angering the yakuza, and consider a SWAT team to be managable, they're pretty tough but still managable. When they laugh in the faces of Red Samurai and Tir Paladins, and consider them no challenge whatsoever, they're powerful.

And if they aren't afraid of Lofwyr, you as the GM aren't doing your job.

The British Dragon you were dealing with loses his stiff upper lip, goes, "Slot this for a game of soldiers.", and flies off real fast.

Whatever is behind you, is powerful.

As far as I am concerned, anything with a total dice pool greater than 6 is above the fluff average and powerful. I am of the opinion runners should be able to have a run so successful once in a while no one even knows they were there (for a sufficient length of time as to be untraceable) other than their employer, which may have been them. And that if a runner ever fights a fair fight, they screwed up somehow.

There was a scale that did up fluff ratings based on total dice pool that IIRC Snow_Fox put together that I really liked that would be a good basis for deciding what is "powerful".

So with that in mind, I would be a pretty lenient GM until an NPC(s) who plays on the same ruthless level comes along, then its on the NPC(s) to screw up the ambush or leave traces but those types of NPCs should be as rare to possibly be never encountered directly just like the shadowrunners. This isn't D&D and I like that.

Honestly, I dont think there really is a "powerful" in this game.

Yes you can munchkin your way into insanely high dice pools, but even a starting character with the right equipment and smarts can still kill you easily. For every move there is a counter move and for every game-breaking secret, there is something that can stop that dead in it's tracks. Even the most honed and refined trick can be countered. To be good, you need to have LOTS of tricks and keep changing them before the environment can adapt to you.

*Clutches my head* Never, ever drinking with a Russian Troll again. That "Vodka" he had was mighty powerful!

Thats were mostly the possession mage is mentioned.
Even a invoked force 5 spirit may do the trick.
Well, the only thing cutting it down would have been the restriction of the physical attributes in the FAQ, but since FAQ is not RAW...


Depends. Of course you may thorshot it. But by countering I understand have something less powerfull to beat it.
So lets but it like that:Possession is very hard to counter...

There is a counter for everything in the game and if you've got a little bit of fox in you, a starting character can take down an extremely powerful built-up character.



Even without thorshotting something there are myriad ways to take someone down. It all comes down to how clever can you be, that's part of why this is my absolute favorite game.

Load the trunk of a car with bullets and put a stick of dynamite in it. Set a building on fire. Hit someone with a truck. Blast the supports of a parking garage and drop the structure on them. Brew together as many drugs and poisons as you can get and put it in a sticky grenade. Plant contraband on them or in their place of residence and inform the police. Hack an aerial drone and crash it on top of them. Set up as many shotguns as you can get and stick them together on the same trigger, point it all down a hallway with the trigger rigged to the door and wait for them to come in. Find a nasty paracritter and sic it on them. Get the attention of a hacker or HuPoly group focused on them. Frame them for an attack on a local crime syndicate. Get them on a plane and crash the plane or depressurize the plane in-flight. Get them on a boat and sink it in the middle of the ocean or sail it into pirate waters. Hack or otherwise sabotage their ride such that the next sharp turn they make, something critical fails. Plant a bomb under their car. Put together a truck bomb and set it off when they walk past. Stir up the local infected and set them on your target. Slip a waitress some extra cash to add an extra additive to their drink. If they use a grenade launcher, hack or otherwise jam the barrel such that the grenade will detonate when fired.

That's off the top of my head. Give me more time and specific circumstances and I can show you some real fun. All it takes is a little ingenuity.

Give me a character concept, any character concept, and a set of circumstances and I guarantee you I can kill that character without a Thor shot and a couple simple steps that almost any starting character could do.

I disagree with that.

For a human, Attribute 3-4 + Skill 2-3 is normal for a young professional. Add metatype (+1 or so) and specialization (+2), and some sort of equipment-based bonus like smartlink or a basic implant, for +2 to +4. Often you'll have a Shop or Kit, which is another +2 to +4.

Dice pools are built from a lot of things, and Attribute+Skill is roughly half of it, so saying "6 is normal" is only true for the Attribute+Skill part.

Or, at least, you have to have access to lots of tricks. Which is why shadowrunners tend to work in teams, after all. So no one person has to try and cover all the bases.

@Socinus

Sorry, but there is always the bigger stick. Thats not a counter. What you describe is the bigger stick.
Thats like going: A mage possessed by a force 5 spirit is countered by a mage possessed by a force 7 spirit.


All is very situational. It has nothing to do with counter.

So some example for countering stuff:
The elven dodge ninja stripper:
A guy with a gun shooting a lot of bullets in a wide burst with a lot of recoil compensition.
If it is getting too ugly, you have to use granades.
The guy with armor? Sniper rifle or sporting rifle. Laserweapons are also a possibility.

And all of this would not work an the mage I brought up.
The bullets would have a base DV of 1 or maybe 2. Hardended Armor takes care of that. A burning building? What a DV has a such "fire"? 4 ? The Hardend Armor takes care of that.
Shotguns? I guess the reaction test takes care of that.


But all right lets put it to a test:
You get the avarage human mage 2 in all physical, 5 in drain and 3-4 in the rest of the attributes mage possessed with a force 7 spirit(guardian). Having a counterspelling of 6 (+2 Mentor spirit, +2 spec Combat spells +shielding) with 4 Initiations (shielding, Auramasking advanced, channeling), lets give him magic 6
Thats easy to build with 750 Karma.

Possession is not nearly as good as you think it is, and it's by no means the magic bullet in and of itself aside from some very particular hilarious abuses (which this guy isn't doing).

The first and biggest drawback this guy has is that being Possessed is entirely visible and obvious. He's running around with his eyes glowing and a blatant aura of power or something like that, and his eggs are 100% in the channeler basket. Auramasking lets you hide this on the astral plane, but not on the physical plane. This guy is super unsubtle and will draw attention to himself - or he'll have to start a lot of fights by blowing his first action getting possessed and that also hurts.

Aside from that, offense is just a lot better than defense. He's quite capable of one-rounding a good street samurai if he goes first, and a good street samurai is quite capable of one rounding him. A Materialization mage who is willing to be equally unsubtle can ram a Force 7 Spirit of Air down his throat. If you want to go full munchkin, anyone with Astral Hazing can kick his ass.

You mean the only guy who is more obvious on the Astral than this mage is?


Again: It is not about getting the "I fuck everything character". It is about to enhance a character big way with little investment.


It is like the pixie mage with concealment and the cameleon armor. Yes, you may counter her somehow, but thats quite hard to do.
If I need 100 Karma and a bit of cash to set something up, it is not a counter if you can defeat it with millions of nuyen and hundrets of karma.


Thats not what he is about. The only thing he needed was channeling. Thats maybe 30 Karma.

Astral Hazing is obvious on the Astral. This guy is blatantly obvious on the physical plane and that's a harsh drawback.

It's less what you are getting and more what you aren't. 2 in all physical stats leaves you super vulnerable when you aren't possessed, so you lean quite heavily on the possession to fight. But you cannot run around in Super Saiyan mode 24-7 because it is massively unsubtle, so when you get into a fight you weren't expecting, you have problems.

In my Shadowrun 4 group, 8 dice were a lot and the biggest dicepool had 12 dice.

@UmaroVI
Yes, he would be better with 6 in all stats and 20 initiations and magic attribute of 20 and of course a bunch of Deltaware.


So if I go first, I need a simple action to call on one of the spirits I have bound. Those just might be force 4 or 5. Still, my chances to survive this battle go up by several thousand percent.

And thats all for the cost on ONE metamagic talent... That is a good deal. (Yeah, I could fokus a hole build around it. But if you focus a hole build around something it is bound to be good...

A battle strategy that costs you your first action every combat is a hefty drawback. Also, your initiative while not possessed is like 7. And you have 2 body and 2 reaction, so people who go first have a very good chance of blowing you away while you are charging up Super Saiyan Mode.

Sat down and played with the math. Fatal in 2 shots to the generalist if is no edge and no full dodge is used.
If the attacker does not use edge and the defender uses either edge, full dodge, or is wearing more than everyday armor*, then there tends to be some stun damage.
With edge and full dodge by the defender, the attacker is not likely to hit the generalist unless he also uses edge.

*6/4 (pick one)+ 4/1 (ffba half)+ 0/2 (ppp) & 4 body to carry it

@UmaroVI
Most battles don't go "roll iniative and go".
Mostly you know, that someone is comming. (Well, if you GM is not a fan of teleporting enemies. Which I dislike very much)

So this loosing your first action is kind of a leap...

Some battles you know are coming. Some you don't. A character who is really, really bad in the second type is not, IMO, a good game plan.

I'm slightly surprised by that. Agility and reaction are incredibly cheap BP wise to cyber up. (Muscle Toner 4 is under 11BP as is Wired Reflexes 2 & Reaction Enhancers 2. 21BP buys the whole bundle.) It should not be hard to have an agility of 9, a skill of 4 and a smartlink and get 15 dice. For someone who takes the skill at 6 and specializes, that's 19 dice.

Charisma 5, Influence 4, and then either Pheromones or Kinesics, should give a human face 12 dice. An elf face should be pushing 14 and that's soft-capping. (Yes, my elf face would have both Kinesics AND Pheromones, but that's not the point...)

These examples aren't min-maxing or power gaming. They aren't corner cases. They're old standby staples.

A pool of 19 dice after chargen isn't min/maxing or powergaming?
In one of the books (forgot which one) it is suggested to cap pools at 20.

It's not even trying. There is still room for genetic enhancements, reflex recorders, adept improved ability,... A human sammy can get 19 dice on his main firemarm using the core book only (use Reflex Recorders instead of Muscle Toner 4).

No, it is not.

Suoq's gunbunny example has AGI 9 and skill 6, so this optional rule would let him go up to 30 dice. There is a good reason this is only an optional rule: it was never tested before printing, or they would have seen that its completely fails at its intended goal.