So one of the characters in the game I'm running has a Reaction of 10, and is pretty much rolling 14-16 dice to react whenever anyone attacks him. I think I've hit him once with a bullet in the 3 sessions we've played, and that was with a wide long burst with an SMG.

I don't have a problem with his character whatsoever. He's the street sam, and he should be hard to hit. While I applaud his mastery of character generation, I really want to make things at least slightly difficult for him in a combat situation, preferably without turning the other characters into ground beef...

Thoughts? Ideas?

Thanks!

Since no-one lives on a run...
...Just take 'em out, later.

Rocket to their apartment is completely appropriate...
...See one of the William Gibson Sprawl novels [took out the floor of a building] or Hardwired [rockets to the room].

Regardless what characters want to believe, or what they tell you, almost all of them have to sleep and eat and have downtime - all times a good opponent uses against them.

Ok...perhaps my intent with this post was a little misunderstood.

I don't want to kill the character (unless he does something monumentally stupid) I just want to make things a bit more challenging for him. As it stands, I need to roll godlike just to have a chance to hit him...and I think he knows it. I just want to be able to make him keep his head down, and give my corp sec/KE/Lone Star a chance to survive more than 2 IPs.

Magic or try and place the street samurai in melee combat.

Area effect weapons are your friend, if he's that elite in his abilities he should be sent on runs with an elite opfor, grenade launchers, scatter guns and that sort of thing are NOT mr. uber-reaction-sammy's friends.

Wide burst fire
Spells
Defender unaware of the attack = no dodging

Totally.

It's why snipers are so dangerous.

If the character is so fast, he must be one of the best of the best...
...And an obvious target, to reduce the capability of whatever team he's on.

and Ingram White Knight on wide burst and 10 dices , maybe put ex-ex as ammo, then just hurt him abit to show him he is not immortal (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Petrify spell could also be a fun thing to hit him with

Totally.

If he's that good, he should have a reputation, which means he'll be recognised and people will have plans to disable him..

Wouldn't having 4 gangers all take their shots at him also cause him to think? By the last shot, he is at -7 to defense.

Yours,
Joel

direct combat spells would put a pretty bad dent in his day.

so would firing multiple times per round at him.

You could also have a sniper with a capsule round either full of Zen or Red Mescaline pop the sam.

Zen: -2 Reaction, +1 Willpower, -1 to all physical actions. Mild hallucinations. 10 x 1d6 minutes duration.
Red Mesc: +1 Charisma, -1 Reaction, +2 Perception, +1 Willpower, disorientation. (18-body) HOURS for duration.

Zen would be the more common way to do this - it drops his reaction and his physical dice pool, taking an effective 3 dice off his ability to react. Red Mescaline is the unusual way to do this - while it does drop reaction, it also increases perception. The key thing to remember is that it also causes "disorientation" which in this context I interpret as "HOLY SHIT, I'M TRIPPING." So the character might be more perceptive, but as for what he's seeing - that is up for debate. Or Willpower tests.

I had a game with a sniper who took Red Mescaline occasionally. He failed his Willpower test before the run (a slash and burn) started so he dosed up, and got into position. He killed five people before the rest of the team breached the perimeter. The sixth person he aimed at was a mirror image of himself, standing in a guard tower. He freaked for a second and pulled the trigger anyways, killing "himself" and suffered complete ego-death (combat paralysis for the next couple rounds).

Area of effect is your friend on this one. Sleep gas with a DMSO component flooding an area is a common (in my games) part of security. Capture foam sprayers, grenades in narrow confines, flamethrowers if you want to get nasty.

With reaction jacked up that high I assume that they have to have some sort of MbW or something like that. You can always tag the cyber with EMP and if they are an adept you can have background count slow them down.

Sounds like you are just trying to slow him down enough to let things have the ability to hurt him, not just off him. Keep in mind that corp sec has to deal with guys like him every month, and there should be a procedure on how to take him out.

As has been said before, wide bursts are your friend; in fact, it should be SOP for any corp sec. With the advantage of time (after all, they just need to pin the opposition down until the HTR arrives), your day-to-day security's first job is to keep the opposition pinned down. Take cover, fire wide bursts, bust out with grenades, send out the trained hellhounds, etc.

Here are some tactics to reduce his defense pool: Area attack weapons provide for a flat -2 dp penalty for the defender. For every attack he's defended against that pass past the 1st, he get's a -1 dp penalty. For fun, try doing wide bursts with gel rounds; unless your guy has a super high body, 1 net hit from an assault rifle or SMG should knock him down. Then send in the hell hounds/dogs/whatever: -2 dp penalty for prone, +3 to attacker for opponent prone, +2 to attacker for charging.

Alternatively, a mage will FUBAR your sammy up, but you don't want to be pulling full mages against your team regularly; it's just not realistic.

Also, is he regularly dodging? 14-16 is pretty high for ranged attacks.

Neurostun has a contact vector by RAW.

10 reaction + the Reakt protien thing from RC. So, "only" 12 dice when he's not actively dodging. My bad. Just feels like more when he's telling me "7 hits to dodge" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

*shrug* he still needs to be aware of the attack.....

I saw a number of good replies, but they were mostly mechanical replies. What I suggest is that you rethink the issue. The problem is not how many dice he gets for this skill or that skill, but in the gaming outlook. Shadowrun is basically Rock-Paper-Scissors. If a player is balanced heavily in a particular direction, he will tend to be weak in another, a well balanced character is not particularly strong in any area, but suffers no glaring weaknesses either. No one is all powerful (not without thousands of Karma). Regardless of how good the character gets, there is always someone or something that is tougher. It may be periodically necessary to have your group meet an ares firewatch team, or a coven of mages, or a group of drakes (possible containing magic use), or any of a dozen other high threat items. It is important to remember why the group is playing, and stay non-adversarial. I liked your statement that you applaud his character gen-fu. Next you need to challenge the roleplaying skill. Sometimes the dice are a crutch. Gently remind the characters why they stay in the shadows (the dragon sitting on them is a nice gentle reminder), and then go entirely diceless for part of the session.

Hope that helps.

Try a boobie trap of some kind. Reaction should mean diddly if this guy falls in a pit trap.

My first question is you are remembering the cumulative penalty for dodging multiple attacks in a round right? I both play this build and run for some that do and numbers and wide burst are what keeps my ass behind cover with the rest of the mundanes.

As others have said, snipers, spell casters, and just things that don't allow a reaction roll to avoid are good picks.

People have stated snipers... here's my question...

How many shots does the sniper get before sammy will be considered "aware" of the sniper? Just the single IP for the ambush, or will it continue until until the sammy locates where the sniper is shooting from?

Let's face it, any sammy is going to have a decent armor + body score. So even using the Barrett it's questionable whether the sniper can put him down. Injure, sure, but put him down, no. The sammy will probably walk away with a -3 damage penalty though....

I like Orcus Blackweather's response. To amplify that, a series of sessions should allow for different characters to shine. In the process of providing a situation that highlights another character, this character may find that he needs to take a back seat, as his skills, including Neo-level Bullet Dodge, are secondary.

Just just some reasonable GM adjustment in cases where the huge number of dice would lead to unrealistic results. For example in a confined corridor that muzzle-loaded shotgun from Arsenal or a SMG in spray 'n pray mode WILL hit something, and no ammount of reaction dice will convince me otherwise.

Be careful not to overdo this kind of intervention, however. Just remind him of his mortality sometimes...

Meh - you can always throw a grenade at the guy next to him. No dodge test there.

If you use Security Animals, Barghests with a Paralyzing Howl or any critter/spirit with Paralyzing Touch can reduce Reaction. It won't kill him, but could slow him down quite a bit.