Or just... don't combat hack.


Something SR has never been good about, but other games these days get right, is having clearly defined separation between the parts of the game, and an emphasis on building characters that have things to do in each of them.

Deep dive decking is for legwork, preparation, and infiltration. A decker coming on site is there to access systems that are airgapped, and needs to have some minimal training to survive a fight and likely double as an electronics/security tech to pop doors and alarms that aren't connected to the Matrix.

In the same theme, your party combat monster needs to know how to sneak just a little to get in without a frontal assault, and have contacts he can lean on to help with legwork (or be willing to go get the pizza irl and just show up for the part of the game he's interested in).

This is a poor comparison because failure by the combat monster to sneak means they get to do their thing and screw the rest of the party. (Sorry, but I've seen this too much.)

Yeah, but that (like combat being a thing) is a conversation you have to have with your players about sharing the spotlight.

A failure in stealth goes to combat. A failure in combat goes to exfiltrtration. Either way that part of the run is likely blown.