Minimum team size? Options

[MITJA3000+]

So, because it's finally reasonable to play hackers, what do you think are the minimum group sizes? First of all, in the wireless world, you need a hacker. Second of all, in the awakened world, you need a magician. Third of all, you need a gunbunny? So what do you think, is three enough? Maybe a face would be nice, but then again, you could go two in one, a face/sammie for example. The problem I'm having though, is that I only got two players. I've been thinking how to solve this, since I don't really like having a NPC in the team, they end up being faceless shooters without any personality.

[stevebugge]

A Cybered Hacker can make a pretty decent gun bunny too, though any dual-use character won't be quite as effective at either function as a specialized character. But when you only have two players you need more generalist characters. That probably puts face duties on the mage. Also if the charcaters have only adequate, but not exceptional combat skills it will force them to be a bit more careful and creative in their planning. Of course they will have to start with a bit lower end jobs, or you can give them extra build points for skills to round them out a bit.

[James McMurray]

Spread the love between archetypes. An elf makes a pretty good Shaman / Face. you can make a decent Street Samurai / Decker or Mage / Decker since cyberware is no longer needed for decking.

Or you can do what I've done in the past: have an NPC decker. You make all his rolls ahead of time so you don't have to stop the game for it. Leave him at home so you never have to roll combat dice for him. Our group almost always uses an NPCdecker because even with the new martix rules it's easy to get into a situation where the "decker effect" kicks in and the group is standing around waiting for their computer guy to sleaze his way into the place's security.

The same thing happens with astral mages scouting alone but it isn't as pronounced because there's nowhere near as many die rolls to slow things down.

edit: I originally typed that elves make good shaman / mage instead of shaman / face.

[Glayvin34]

Everyone in my team is a gunbunny, axebunny or combatspellbunny. So I'm stuck as the Hacker/Infiltrator/Face, which I don't really mind. I got him a dice pool of around 13 on his gun coupled with Wired Reflexes 2 he's hardly defenseless. I gave him pretty high Agility but low Strength. And with a Logic of 7 and programs at 6 he gets around 13 dice and 3 IPs in AR, also good.
I picked up the "First Impression" Quality, so with a Charisma of 4 (no enhancements), Influence group at 3, he gets 7-9 dice to convince, depending on the situation, which is not that bad. And I plan on getting tailored pheremones later, for up to a +4 bonus.
I'd say you NEED a Mage and Hacker, either of those can be combined with a lower-than-average Face, and you don't need a gunbunny, just make sure the Hacker has some guns and the Mage has combat spells.

[James McMurray]

I agree that you don't need a gunbunny. If everyone in the group is combat capable a gunbunny can actually mess things up because the GM has to decide whether to put in someone that can challenge the gunman at the risk of offing another character because of the power differential.

[fool]

I know it's not really kosher, but when our group only has three people, the two players usually get to play two characters. I tend to think that four is about the perfect size for a group. Not only does it improve the survivability of the group and improve the chances of a succesful run, but people get to advance their characters more quickly. The draw back of course is that it is difficult to switch roles between the characters. A good role player, like a good actor con get themselves around more than one role at a time- things like switching personalities. The downside is that most players don't do that. Personally when I'm running tow at once, I try but don't always succeed. it largely depends on how well I've got hte character fleshed out.

[stevebugge]

[James McMurray]

We've also used that method. In our groups it tends to usually end up with one of the characters having a personality attached and another character who is just some numbers to be called on when needed.

I've played in games with 6 players that used two characters each. In a way it was actually a plus because the GM could afford to not pull as many punches and if you got dropped in combat you weren't relegated to wandering off and watching TV until the fight was over. It also meant fights took a bit longer, but not by much when everyone knewt he game (it was rolemaster, so fights were fairly quick a lot of the time).

[fool]

Yeah we only do it, generaly if there are three of us (one gm and two pcs)
Like I said it can be difficult to pull off with the characters becoming little more than flat cardboard cutouts. the other danger is if a slow player controls two characters. We haven't had any players trying to carry on a conversation with himself (as tow characters) but we;d just tell him to shut the frag up.

[Butterblume]

You could easily drop the mage ;).

Your fixer gets you only jobs, where there's no magical security, or the magical security is designed for (against :D) magic intruders ...

[James McMurray]

You cold also drop the hacker and have no electronic defenses, but neither option lends itself to suspension of disbelief. :)

[Butterblume]

Mages and magic are supposed to be rare, so that would be way easier then dropping electronic security ;).

[Kanada Ten]

I think two is the minimum for a runner team (not necessarily a hacker or a magician). Dropping Hacking and Magic is not really a problem, since it just changes the location setting. A pair that never leaves the Barrens, for example, or on an ocean based game, would not have a huge need of either. There is plenty of atypical settings to run. A game might have far more use for a magician than a hacker based in the wilds of Abathbascan Council, while one set fully inside a Shiawase arcology would be the opposite.

[Grinder]

I think a team of a sammy/adept (for the combat) and either a mage or a hacker are the minimum. The role of the face must be filled by one of them in this case, but that shouldn't be a problem.

A good runner team otoh would have at least three people: as above, plus a hacker.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Shrike30]

Gunbunny, as was said above, is really the disposable class. Hackers and Mages essentially let you interact with two planes of existence that other characters can't really handle nearly as well (or at all). Faces are useful because sometimes, you have to/want to interact with people. Gunbunnies aren't really necessary... it's not hard to give someone a fairly effective weapon skill (specialization and smartlink, stacked, is a +4 dice alone) and let them defend themselves when necessary. Gunbunnies are mostly good for turning combat into a non-challenge for the group. If the crew works hard at avoiding combat or initiating it only when they've got a solid advantage, having someone massively specced out towards killing people isn't truly necessary.

[BnF95]

My group tends to use a character pool. Each PC has (on average) 3 characters (of different designs) which can be called by the fixer (or sometimes by other characters) depending on what the run needs.

Since there are about 8 full-time players, about 6-7 part-time players, and 3 of us rotate as GMs/players we sometimes end up with very large groups.

On the other hand, sometimes we divide the full time players into 3 different groups so that we GMs don't have such a hard time.

[Loestal]

[Big D]

I can see solo teams. But fixers have to hire them for jobs that a solo can do, which usually means deep niche work--really repetitive, too (kill this guy, now kill this guy, or hack this server, now hack this server). Just about any class could run solo, but doing so profitably might be another issue, as mainstream jobs would be impossible for them.

A 2-man team is feasible, but that's really pushing it. Elf Face Adept Mage (probably not a true Face Monster until later on) plus hacker or TM with "leet haxor" and drone skills who can also shoot at least one weapon straight. Still pretty limited, probably not much infiltration, but can build an army (spirits, drones, and sprites) to bulk up and can talk their way past some problems. Still, it can give you a Butch and Sundance feel, especially at higher levels (until the Bolivian Army spoils the fun).

A 3-man team gives you the first chance to put a dedicated sam or gunbunny into the mix.

A 4-6 team is probably the norm, and gives you room to specialize.

[Kanada Ten]

Solo running can also mean infiltration in a deeper sense (get a job with LowTech Security and learn their procedures - for now), or detective work (basically, fulltime legwork - really great with a two person team).

[Big D]

Heh... a Remington Steele team? :P

[Kanada Ten]

There you go. Only working for the mob, fixers, and so on, rather than - You know, I watched that show all the time, along with Moonlighting, and I can't think of a single plot! Scarecrow and Miss King (?), too.

This post has been edited by Kanada Ten: May 20 2006, 03:56 AM

[Kyoto Kid]

[BnF95]

[MITJA3000+]

Thanks for the response mates.

Good pointers there. Players playing multiple characters is out of question in my group, since the biggest issue is roleplaying, not playing with numbers or hunting karma. The idea of dumping mages/shamen is pretty good considering the rarity of them, but then again I really enjoy the mojo and without magic, well, we might as well be playing CP2020 ;)

Characters with a bit broader base of skill will have to be the answer, even if it means the characters can't be very specialized, at least in the beginning. The good thing though is that I just got On the Run, and to me it seems a very low-level adventure, so it wouldn't harm the game that much if the characters were a bit weak.