Awakened vs the Mundane, aka Storytelling vs. the D6 Options

[FiveVenoms]

A matter of curiosity.

In my various and myriad campaigns throughout the last decade or so, I have notably taken a stance towards showmanship over hard rules when it came down to the major showdowns, events, and characters of my games. However, I was pondering the following when it occurred to me, how would you deal (assuming you didn't go straight to the rulebook) with a powerful, willful, influential (in the terms of your campaign) non-awakened NPC (or for that matter, PC, as I've been known to give them advantages at key moments) who was standing toe-to-toe with someone who WAS a super-magic NPC?

Obviously, if you adhered to canon, that character would in all likelihood be mown down by a powerful magical character, but more often than not I find myself wanting either a conflict of characters or types (ie: CyberNPC vs MagicNPC: although this is even MORE problematic in SR4). So it begs the question-how can, or would, you determine a cyber/mundane character to stand up to some magical type of any particular significance? I realize this works directly with your personal feelings as a GM towards your storyline, so those who feel that SR as a GAME would immediately invalidate such a storyline vs. those who see it as more of a exercise in dramatic storytelling (within a setting), but given the relatively huge disparity between powerful Magic vs. powerful Mundane, I was hoping some of the more imaginative players and GMs here who have an equally well internalized knowledge of the rules of SR might chime in with their two...., *ahem*.....2 :nuyen: