Its all about the medkit and the six free dice of victory. First Aid 4 (+2 specialization), Logic 4 plus rating 6 medkit and three assistants gives 19 dice. Take away the usual 4 (Indoor, magician/cyberware. perhaps street) and you have 15 dice, for an average of 5 successes. That's three boxes of damage zapped. With my players those three boxes represent one tac nuke spell per magician.

I blame myself. A new player was joining and asked what the party didn't have and I said a field medic. He made the most badhooped medic I've ever seen. So much so I even copied him for myself. The six edge is handy too. And yes, I have used it on healing rolls....

I think he's got it right. This is also how I run things and how I expect things to go in a medium-security corp-like context. Of course, it's also fun to add all sorts of twists once in a while.

Most runners are combat monsters and even if all team members aren't, a team of Shadowrunners is a high threat. They should be able to easily defeat most enemies. Actually, most people will avoid confrontation with them and will surrender/fake death. Their only action would be, if possible, to try to raise an alarm.

Once the opposition starts to get serious, it's another matter. Just remember to use tactics, cover (very important: the first action of any sane man in combat would be to rush for cover, except if he can end the combat quickly) and surprise. Oh and drones. There's no need to send men to get killed when you can send drones that are harder to destroy, better equipped, better at shooting things, better at resisting spells and cost less... Just make sure to script them and turn wireless off if they've got a hacker.

From Unwired p. 16 "VR games are even more popular, with many gaming corps producing almost-BTL level experiences even through cold-sim connections."

The line between entertainment and the real world is getting pretty blurry. Sure that Desert Wars simsense is entertainment but the user is still experiencing what it is like to be under fire.

Even if you ignore entertainment entirely your average joe on the street will have survived at least one major crisis. Imagine growing up in a working class neighborhood in Everett during the 2nd crash. There were riots and chaos around the world, thousands and thousands of people lost their SIN's, bank accounts were wiped out, and the C class neighborhoods in Everett more closely resemble Soviet apartment blocks to begin with than a modern suburb. Like I said, a competent stuffer shack clerk would have figured out how to handle himself in a crisis during that, imagine being a Lone Star officer or security guard in a facility that go hit by a mob.

Taking it a bit further, depending on how powerful you assume the go-gangs are, running gunbattles on the freeways are almost routine meaning that even some deskjocky wageslave probably survived being caught in the middle of a gangfight between the 504 Hellhounds and the Blood Mountain Boys during his morning commute at some point. Hell the Halloweeners are a big gang downtown, and they'll kill people just to watch them die. People in the 6th world do experience violence, perhaps not regularly but certainly more often than we do. This would end up weeding out the really dumb ones just through attrition.

How do you know it's a spell slinger? Because he glared at you and you blew up?

SR Magic doesn't involve a lot of D&D arm waving and spell components... all it requires is that you are in his field of vision (or the point in space where he wants to throw an indirect physical area of effect spell is in his vision).

Not to get into a big long argument about tell tail signs that someone is a mage, but there big ones are:
1. Very little equipment visible (why would they need it, they have magic)
2. Unusual items on their possession (especially if they are using a foci to cast a spell)
3. Some spells like powerbolt/ball or elemental spells will manifest for mundanes to see

And so forth. There are certain types of people that are easy to pick out at a first glance. They cybered guy is the St Sam, the guy with the comlink waving his hands is the hacker, the guy with the voodoo doll is most likely the mage. Geek him first!

1. Combat Camo. Our current Hermetic carries a PJSS and dresses in dark urban camo. He doesnt even have firearms.
2. I totally wish. I would love to have more dangly bits on mages, the color would rock but alas its totally optional.
3. At this point, its too late. You have been nuked.

Honestly, I totally wish that SR magic involved more of the cool handwaving , rods staves and whatnot. Just for color.

BlueMax
which reminds me of some research I need to do

Noticing spellcasting is one area where fluff and crunch don't agree. The threshold to identify spellcasting is 6-Force (don't have my books handy so somebody please let me know if I'm mis-quoting). I'd bet that most decent sec guards have at least Int-2, Perception-1, so on average they'll get the one success needed to tell when your mage is slinging spells of force 5 or higher. Depending on interpretation, you might say that force 6 spells (detection threshold = 0) are automatically identified.

It's a perception test... they get 3 dice to notice it when they're standing on top of a hill in broad daylight with no distractions.

Most of the time there's some level of limited visibility (-2) distraction (-2) loud noises (-2) and they get to throw -3 dice.

they can't make a threshold of 0 when they throw -3 dice. And if the mage is looking for carrier effects (lightning ball for instance)... they can toss at force 4 and make it impossible for the guards to notice.

Yep, by the rules mages throwing high level mojo are easy to spot if they are in your LOS.

Give one of the grunts Astral Sight. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

...and you took said copy into my game where you went from 9 boxes of damage to 0 in one fell swoop of Magic Heal followed by your own First Aid Heal. It was yucky but I lol'ed inside (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

On the topic of how easy enemies are, I agree with the general feeling which is that people will fight in a way that encourages self-preservation and in a way that reflects their professional rating. Your average twinkie-eating security mooks aren't likely to employ bounding overwatch and suppressive fire (hell they are probably armed with light pistols anyway). However, even a lesser-trained threat-response team with lower skill levels than the Red Samurai would understand and utilize basic tactics to try to lock down the PCs until they can get into a more advantageous position.

For the average crap-level security guards, yeah I expect them to go down fast and I don't really have a problem with this. The PCs are well-trained badasses in a sea of mediocrity so I don't have a problem with them one-shotting lesser opposition.

I also strive not to power creep my campaigns. A low-level security facility is going to be guarded by crap security, that's it. My house rules (always 3 phases in combat, everyone gets 3 IP, I did away with all cyber/adept powers/magic/bio that give IP) cause enough difficulties for my PCs that I don't really need to power creep. In our last meeting, the PCs fought a semi-well-trained and well-equipped group of corporate enforcers + 1 street sam in a combat that was very very fun without needing to power them up very much. When everyone has 3 IP, gunfire becomes very very lethal and ugly and tactics become extremely important to survival. Well, that and Edge (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Gease. Talisman (the staff), Gesture (the hand waving), Linguistic (the vocals).

Drop those on NPCs too. Each one is a 10 BP flaw (or good for making initiation cheaper).

You use first aid with a rating 6 kit to heal the 2-3 points of physical damage. Poof!

For the target yes but what about his buddies (as a GM you can always throw in more NPCs).

Enter 'Troll Tank' with Armor cast on him and a big flashing ARO sign saying "I'm the Mage!", with the actual little dwarf mage walking along behind him using him as cover.

I got a glimps of the election and Arthur Virgil with his running mate.

I see a really good rendition of "Who Rule Bartertown?" in the making.

MASTABLASTA!

Have a ganger on kamikaze and wearing an explosive vest connected to a biomonitor. TPK.

Mr Johnson has a platinum Doc Wagon card.

My GM loves to put biomonitors in corporate personnel. The annoying kind that monitor vitals. So it sends an immediate alert if the person goes dead and even (when he's feeling particularly evil) an alert if they fall asleep "on the job." Dang, I hate it when those corporate job-performance metrix are in place. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Not that there aren't ways around it, of course. But even low level corporate security guards can have biomonitors and cyber eyes. So (in one memorable situation), we've got dead guards blaring alarms to some place ("Uh, guys, we've got a problem") and the decision, do we stick around to finish the job, not to mention popping out the dead guys' cybereyes ("What if they recorded footage of us?" "What? You've got to be kidding. I'm not being paid enough to touch eyeballs."), or do we run before the guys with the big guns show up (even worse, they send a mage to check something out, and the mage brings along a pack of spirits. Gah, that makes us humble).

While my team tends to slice through most opposition our GM throws at us, we seriously pause when we know they have biomonitors.

Actually, going unarmed can be a great disguise. People won't know if they are:

-A non-combatant face or hacker, who won't be taken as a threat

OR

-An adept who will eat your face in about three seconds.

Thing is, do you risk it? The non-combatant face/hacker IS, indeed, much less of a threat than the sam with a gun pointed at you or the on-the-spot rigger with three armed drones whizzing around his head. But if you guess wrong, the unarmed guy might well be sneaking around you to knock your head off.

I have a partially-blind adept(legally blind; he sees nothing but black/white/gray, as if he looks through frosted glass-so basically moving...shapes/shadows) who sometimes plays this up as part of a disguise; stumbling around, etc(not movie guy faking a handicap melodramatic, but just enough so it looks real). No weapons visible. Hey, he's not even LYING about playing the blind guy. He just lies about being able to kick someone's head in with one blow and the fact he has every blind-fighting technique there is, adept powers sharpening his smell and hearing, and extra combat speed. What others might see though is just some...long-haired guy that's half staggering around.

Which brings me to actually being a big fan of the decoy. I recall one time, in another game we were playing(mecha), our unit was on the field, and were under attack by a few light units. Well, in the distance we see this one mecha pop up...a BIIIG one. One of the biggest, and deadliest. As in, we don't take it out now-we go boom. So we UNLOAD on it. Pewpewpew. We manage to blow it up...and of course...it was empty. No ammo in it(guns on it though.) No pilot. But we just saw this mecha of pwnage and just...nuked.

Meanwhile, the ''little guys'' were swarming us and we had one hell of a palms-sweating battle. Had we taken some...smart precautions, that battle could have gone MUCH easier. You could do this in SR; drones, sentry guns, things, people, etc, that simply LOOK a lot more dangerous than they actually are, to get them to turn their attention away from matters at hand; meanwhile, the team of redshirts are actually starting to get their act together and reposition, etc.

Yes, he probably survived being caught in the middle of a gangfight. But how did he do it? By being smart and actively seeking cover? By dropping to the ground and curling up in a fetal position (and incidentally making himself a smaller target)? Sitting tight (and pissing his pants) inside his vehicle (when he was in the vehicle in the first place)?

I think you missed my point about the entertainment. People seek entertainment, people know that when they subscribe to a Desert War feed, they are going to get violence. People should know on an intellectual level(at least) that when they go out, there's a chance of being victim of random violence, but they do not know or expect it will happen to them today.


I am glad someone is enjoying using this tactic.


Powerball. Problem solved.

Mix up the weapons and damage types for sure. electricity is awesome, but when their prepared for that, some punks cobble together a flame thrower and toss molitov cocktails. I had some gangers with a mix of combat axes and Wildhunter rifles knock out our street sam (don't get drawn into the open to show off your hand to hand prowess).

Now you know why my armor jacket has Fire Retardant 3, Non-conductivity 3, Insulation 3, and Chemical Protection 3.
I won't allow my GM to catch me off guard with elemental damage ever again.
(Also one reason we played one campaign with just the BBB: I wanted non-conductivity mods to my drones, which didn't show up until arsenal: GM threw a lightning ball on ALL FOUR OF THEM, spent the entire campaign trying to keep 2 of them in good repair).

I agree. Also, the other thing to remember is that in the middle of a gang fight doesn't make him a target. It's not like the gangers of either side of the fighting wanted to kill him, so his survival was probably based on being lucky enough to not have caught a stray bullet. If the gangers wanted to kill him, they probably would have.

Living in a violent society doesn't necessarily make the people living in it more skilled at making violence. Gangers tend to target there own (not fellow members, but other gangers) and the average wage slave tends to be overlooked. Occasionally they might get mugged, have a friend who was killed in a carjacking or maybe had there house broken into. VR games likely tweak the players abilities in ways to make using those skills in 'real life' not applicable. Although your typical corp wageslave lives in the same city as the low rent and SINless, it might as well be an entirely different world. If you've live in a major city in real life and take a good look around the contrast between the experiences of the typical cubicle jockey, short order cook, dopeman and street urchin will vary wildly despite sharing the same environment.