[X] My Assistant

[James McMurray]

Swat team snipers surrounding them with medium to high (4+) force spirits to harass them and weaken them. High armor drones along with the spirits, but spirits are cheaper to replace when damaged. A lot of it would depend on where the runners were when they were found. If they're smart they headed left the city, preferably for a place the the Star (or Kinght Errant if that's who they killed) doesn't have any legal powers.

If the offended agency doesn't have legal powers they may end up with just a runner and/or elite cop team on them.

It's possible to get out of the situation, but it'd require a lot of smarts, roleplaying, and firepower used in the right ways. Sometimes hammers miss the nail or just hit it enough to bend it without actually driving it home.

[Wounded Ronin]

How would you handle t3h advanced riflemen? Just have the PC start resisting shots? Have the PCs roll perception and if they fail they get hit? Tell the PCs there are riflemen and have the PCs get shot at when they poke their heads up from behind cover, but in so doing let them use pool and crap to avoid dying?

[James McMurray]

I'd probably just have the first one miss or roll poorly, because dying from a sniper shot with little to no chance of living is no fun for anyone. Maybe they'd be looking to capture and so use gel or stick shock rounds.

[Wounded Ronin]

[James McMurray]

Standard police procedure probably should be gel rounds. Accidental killings are bad for business. :)

[Wounded Ronin]

[James McMurray]

Yep, and a live PC is usually funner than a dead one.

[eidolon]

[James McMurray]

Yeah, some groups don't mind that sort of thing, but we like to at least think we have a chance of avoiding instant death. ;)

Why didn't they have a chance to notice the sniper before he fired? Even if he was invisible and hidden there would still be resistance rolls + perception rolls. Although, if you've let them start a combat with an undetected sniper shot then they're just getting a bit of the "turn about is fair play" treatment for not having you roll perception for their victims in the past. :)

[eidolon]

[SL James]

I fail to see how under those circumstances, a sniper with enough time to get off a shot in an area full of cover will be that much harder to spot given that in SR runners often have cyberware which would make them more capable to perceive their sniper than your average joe today. What else are they going to be doing as they walk through, anyway, if not look for danger? Stare at their shoelaces?

[James McMurray]

That's what the stealth skill is for: being stealthy. Oddly enough, the perception skill is for being perceptive. Generally the two work against one another. A boost to the TN or more dice should be available from having so much time and help, but nothing's completely undetectable. What if the helper botched his perception roll or just rolled poorly? Did you roll it out with opposed stealth and perception?

Yeah, instant death can happen at any time. Given the power the GM wields, anything and everything can cause instant death. We just don't care for that sort of game. It's not as "realistic" but we're happy to drop realism in favor of fun. Obviously YMMV, and that's cool. :)

[nezumi]

James is right in that this depends *completely* on your group. If your group doesn't mind instant death at any turn, go for it. And if your group has just pissed off too many high-level people, it's probably kinder than a cow from space (althouhg less amusing than a pair of Apaches shooting in every window and demolishing the entire building).

[eidolon]

[Kanada Ten]

Well, the thing about letting them have the Perception test is more about the tingle on the back of your neck that tells you something's wrong. If they scored a success against the sniper's Stealth TN + Cover + Darkness (that's a TN of 16, if the sniper rolled a 2) on the test, they get a tingle the moment before the sniper shot - and at best that means they can knock off the +2 ambush modifier from the Surprise test. If they got two successes it means they saw something odd, a flash of movement, a reflection of light off the scope, etc.

Sure, you can forgo it, but would you forgo it for the NPCs? I know I wouldn't.

[Wounded Ronin]

Hmm, this discussion actually gives me an idea. If the PCs set up a sniping their initial targets get no chance to do anything but resist the damage without pool

[nick012000]

This is why my street sam lives in an underground bunker.

[emo samurai]

Does it have only one entrance? If so, they could just set up a drone sniper there and have it kill him.

[eidolon]

[Kanada Ten]

[eidolon]

Now you're getting away from "specific situation" and into the "what if this, what if that" stage. Discussion from here on out will be pointless, as all it will do is show that we have different ways of using the skills in the game.

That said, if the snipers had crawled up on the building while the PCs were standing there, I would have rolled stealth for them and perception for the PCs. They didn't, however. By the time the PCs got there, all they had to do was lay there and shoot at them. Therefore, no perception test until the first shot.

Given the distance, conditions, and situation, I did not have the PCs roll perception in this particular situation. Why do you seem as though I've mortally offended you by insulting your ancestors? Want your PCs to have the chance to notice something like this in your game? That's fine, have them roll. I don't use perception when I don't think it's possible to perceive the target.

[James McMurray]

If you can see someone, they have a chance to see you unless you're watching them remotely. That chance is probably astronomically low (represented by a really high TN and/or dice pool penalties). It's still there. Obviously your group differs, since it works that way from both sides of the GM screen. As long as the rules function the same in all directions and people are enjoying themselves it's all good.

When I said to not roll it if it was impossible to detect I wasn't referring to stealth tests vs. perception. If something requires a stealth test, it should (IMO) allow a perception test. My post was more about things that can't physically be detected no matter what: visual stuff behind walls, etc.

[Kanada Ten]

[nezumi]

Keep in mind, the big question here isn't so much whether the PCs should have a reasonable chance to dodge/spot/whatever, but whether your PCs are heroes, or just another group of people on the street.

If they're heroes, the rules are a bit different. They are somehow special, and they don't die from silly things like hidden snipers. If this is your game, you should roll perception against a reasonable number and, in fact, the GM should consider spending the PCs' karma pool secretly on their behalf to reroll failed perception modifiers (this completely depends on your group. I bring this up because I run online games where no one wants to see the mechanics, so it's valid. Table top groups may not like that idea so much.) The GM should also consider fudging, letting the PCs roll their dodge anyway, so on and so forth, because the idea is heroes don't fall into such silly traps.

If they're just 'another group of people on the street', they follow the same rules as everyone else. That means they're more likely to die in the gutter, alone and ignoble. Sucks to be them. They may get a perception check against some astronomical number, but no rerolls, no dodge. They can use karma pool on their damage resistance and perhaps HoG, but that's it. More than likely they're dead (or short a HoG). A simple trap like a well placed C4 mine or a group of snipers will kill the entire party quickly and cleanly, and there really isn't a whole lot they can do about it once they're in place.

So argue about perception tests all you want, both sides are 'right'. The important detail is what advantages do the PCs have over the rest of the world.

[Wounded Ronin]

Hmm. I'm a bit concerned about even letting people roll perception vs really high numbers, since you'll end up rolling a lot of dice if you roll for each party member and furthermore people might karma reroll the perception test if they're nervous. My gut feeling is that even if you give them a TN like 25 or something they will hit it every now and then. :/