[X] My Assistant

[Trucido]

Seriously! It's like there's no escape! Accursed rulebook.

[Demon_Bob]

Improved Invis + stealth + monofilament whip.

Airborne drone with sniper rifle.

My favorite. Comlink Eyeball drone doorman, "Excuse me sir weapons are off limits at this facility. Please, leave your weapons in your vehicles or I will be forced to notify Security as well as Lone Star."

[Glyph]

Trucido, there has been a thread about streamlining combat without house rules. I think your perceptions may have been skewed by the other GM, the rules lawyer. Yes, it's not fun when it takes forever to run a simple combat. But the solution is to wing it when you are unclear on a specific rule, debate rules interpretations after the game, and use a few of the techniques from the above thread to speed things up a bit.

Your approach, which seems to be ignoring the rules and making stuff up as you go along, is not fair to the players. They made their characters by the rules, and should be able to use the abilities they paid for, without being screwed up by what is essentially GM fiat. There are plenty of nice, legal ways to beef up grunts that won't anger the players by being unfair. And keep in mind that shadowrunners generally should be able to take out most "grunts" fairly easily.



On the specific problem of the players organlegging the opposition (which I think there was also a thread on, in the Shadowrun forum) - keep in mind that without surgery skill, plenty of time, and then a freezer to put the parts in, it's not very feasible. And if they invest in that, they should still find that their notoriety goes up, some of their better contacts drop them in disgust, and the ones replacing those contacts will tend to be more unsavory and less reliable. They will also get dirtier but less high-paying jobs, and have to worry more about law enforcement and vindictive enemies (dead guards are part of business, but if someone cuts off their body parts afterwards, the corporation will expend more effort in punishing the offenders). Logical, in-game consequences are the best way to deal with these kind of things.

[Trucido]

Well, your belief in my ignoring the rules is my fault for approaching this thread with a facetious and sarcastic tone. I do not, nor have I ever discarded the rules. And my goal is not actually to streamline combat so much as it is to come up with interesting or fun mechanics to enhance it.

Furthermore, i do not feel that most shadow runners should be able to take most grunts. I feel like every shadow runner should be afraid of every man with a gun. Because guns kill. A bullet from Rambo and a bullet from PeeWee Herman kill the same. I feel that mechanics that are "unfair" to the gamer because they cannot acquire them add suspense to the game. And makes Joe Everycorpse someone they may think about confronting in a way other than "Wave your favorite killing mechanism in his general direction".

But regardless, I do feel that combat can become too bogged down with rules, as I've previously stated, but that is because I've seen the horror of looking up modifiers for wind velocity. But, once again though, my goal is not to be rid of the old rules and replace them with new rules. Perhaps I am too lazy to manipulate a 1D6 mechanic into a XD6 mechanic using SR4s governing rule sets, that I am guilty of. But if it's not broken. Why fix it? I kind of feel like this thread has strayed far from what I'd initially intended.

I appreciate the advice and the contributions. But things have somewhat fallen away from my origional intent, my fault, once again for lacking a certain degree of professionalism in my tone, but I was looking for opinions on additions, and perhaps some new flavors of said additions. Not replacements.

[Tarantula]

[Edward]

A medieval style tower shield, half an inch (maybe an inch) of timber is not going to stop a super sonic bullet, or survive a burst from a any automatic weapon.

A bullet from PeeWee Herman isn’t nearly as dangerous as Rambo. Rambo shoots you in the chest. PeeWee Herman shoots you in the leg, if he hits at all.

A runner skilled in combat should be able to kill mooks easily. Mooks beat shadowruners with numbers and loose many in the proses. Elite NPCS are a different matter, SWAT, jaguars, HTR. These have state of the art armor, weapons and cyber, as well as exceptional training and often magic, as well as significant numbers, all of this will likely exed the runners abilities and the runners should run but they could win.

There are some truths in the world. Such as a full tight burst from a fully compensated HMG wielded buy a skilled character will put any soft target out of the fight. This is part of guns actually being deadly. So when you have a character that goes to the effort of bringing an HMG with gyroharnes and gas vent to a fight, and sees somebody wielding a big shield that will slow down his dodge and blasts into him he will be understandably annoyed when that target has a 50% chance of taking no damage.

The armored defense specialist player is also going to be unhappy when the enemy heavy weapon man shoots him with a long burst from a HMG and he didn’t have the option of using the 50% shield block.

Edward

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Ophis]

Just a little tangent here. Your wanting to make the game more intresting right? You find that combats turn into repetative slug(pun intended)fests right?

Hows about trying interesting non combat problems? MCT use very little meat security, maybe some para animals on the perimeter, most of their facilities use automated defences, gas and robot warriors. Thats a different set of challenges to the normal stuff. Mix it up a bit there more ways to challenge than combat and you don't need to create player POing rules to do it.

[Trucido]

Thanks for the suggestions Ophis. Perhaps I will, I've never really integrated drones, so that's a good way to go. Para critters are indeed a part of the run I have scheduled. And it's absolutely logical edward, that a bullet would pierce a midieval form of defense like a hot knife through butter. But is it not also absolutely logical in Shadow Run that an adept with enough great leap can jump onto the roof of a home two or three stories? Is it not also logical that my adepts punch does about as much as stuffing a high explosive grenade in his opponents mouth?

Yes, unaided the shield would be useless. But with magic behind it, wood suddenly becomes able to deflect rifle rounds. I think that if one can shoot acid from his pointer with the aid of magic, it is not unfair to believe that an adept can be trained in a skill that's a psuedo combination of Mystic Armor and Missile Parry in the form of a shield specialization.

And when I said Peewee Herman and Rambo's bullets kill just the same. You misunderstood. I did not mean they both had the same prowess as a marksmen or mercenary. I meant if Peewee's bullet pierces your lung, you're just as unhappy as if Rambo's does.

On the mooks part I agree somewhat, in the sense that in Shadow Run the characters are EXCEPTIONAL people. They are better than your average Jim Bob shotgun hillbillie. Or Tom the mall security guard. Of course. But that doesn't mean that I don't want them to be afraid of getting hit. But at the same time. I don't want combat to be point and click.

Should one shadow runner be able to take five mooks? Sure, with the appropriate tactics they may even be dead before they knew he was there. Should he be thinking "Hmm... Five mooks, that's an easy five on my kill count, lemme take my armor off...I won't be needing it anyway". No, Of course not! But I find that in most cases mooks are just lead magnets who pose no threat even if they do fire back.

And I don't believe that any function I could come up with (ridiculopity aside) would piss on the rules of SR4 so much as simply not break it down into a formula pre-described in the book. For instance, I could give my shieldies 12 dice for dodgeing ontop of their reaction when they're fired at. Or as was stated about the bullies, I could just double their body boxes, that would do it just fine, no? I instead find that 1d6 is less dice and simply quicker and more daunting. And I also find that half damage is scarier than 24 health. It's more of a "How do we hurt these guys" rather than "Oh, we just have to hurt them lots."

[Edward]

I don’t think they are that unthreatening.

The corporate security unit is the definition mookdom. He still has 7 dice when he fires his first burst (skill 3, agility 3, smart gun 2,uncompensated recoil -1) if your playing him smart that will be a wide burst reducing the dodge pool buy 2

Very few characters have a reaction stat that will evade that without taking an action (they can be built but at the determent of other necessary abilities). The base damage code is 5P assuming only one net success to hit. there is a high probability that the runner will have moor than 5 points of armor. But then it would be more than reasonable to have such a guard using gel rounds. So 7S AP+2 against impact. Or they could load stick and shock. 6S against half impact, -2 all dice pools even if you resist Very few characters can afford to ignore this, again they can be build but at determent of other abilities.

Naturally you will find that runners are normally quite skilled at getting the first shot, thus preventing such mooks from shooting them

Finally the things you where suggesting didn’t sound very mookish. Magic should never be for mooks, nether should SOTA cyber and bio. Both of your proposals used one or both of those.

Edward

[Teulisch]

not all people are equaly vunerable to gunfire. An ork with a high body, bone desity bioware, and an armor jacket and helmet... its not hard to get around 20 dice. with 7+ reaction, theres a good chance the mooks miss in the first place. If i have any chance to get behind cover, that makes me harder to hit. suddenly your mook is shooting 3 dice against 5 reaction with that wide burst. if i drop a smoke gernade, he may go to zero dice. and my ultrasound, thermal, and other upgrades let my smartlinked weapons fire do horrible thing to that mook, even if hes behind cover.

the use of modifiers is a big part of combat. If i can drop the enemys dicepool below my modified reaction, then theres a good chance i wont be hit at all. And i dont need to throw to use smoke gernades, but it does depend a lot on who has what vision modifiers.

all that said... mooks are no match for the sam or adept who focuses on combat. but the mook can do a lot of very bad things to the non-combat members of the team, like the mage (who you need for counterspelling and banishing) and the technomancer (who is keeping you safe from enemy hackers, using the security teams relay from offsite). If those guys drop, then things get ugly fast.

Your average combat-focused runner will be able to drop 3 to 6 mooks per round, repending on conditions and range. the average mook will fire once and miss, or fail to damage. we can expect the runner to get off two shots, get shot at by the rest, then get off 4 more shots. 5:1 odds favor the runners against low-end mooks.

back to the original topic... if you change the mooks, the runners may well die quickly. they grow to expect a certain level of resistance from certain enemies, which they can do legwork to confirm in many cases. having a new bit of gear change the playing feild changes when the runner feels he should escape, vs when he feels its a cakewalk. and if you expect a cakewalk, you may take to long to adapt to the rasberry frosting-coated monowire chainsaw.

if you make em tough, then their not really mooks anymore. If you want to 'challenge' the PCs, dont use mooks, use prime runners.

of course, if i ever run into your sheild guys? if i know its possible for em to do that, then i will bring HE gernades to throw BEHIND the sheilds.

[ornot]

I have to agree with Edward on this.

[Trucido]

Well, perhaps I think of mooks as something other than everyone else. I kind of think as mooks as the cannon fodder that's in every level of every video game before you get to the triceratops headed rocket launcher weilding boss. But I prefer my mooks to be the mooks from level 8, not the mooks from level 1 who bring a knife to a gun fight. I don't expect my mooks to survive, nor do I want them to. I want them to die. I just want the players to have fun killing them, rather than killing every guy the same way. That's all.

[Moon-Hawk]

And that's good. But I think people are suggesting that you do this by having the mooks use different gear, different tactics, and different situations, rather than different rules.

[X-Kalibur]

If they are combat oriented characters, maybe the answer isn't changing combat, but rather, changing run mechanics. Runners should be shying away from combat anyway, because like you said, all bullets are potentially lethal.

Also, instead of using fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants rules (deflection chance? wtf is this, modified D&D concealment? bleh!) or even overpowered your mooks' equipment, make them more tactically sound. You can maybe throw in a low level mage, but once runners know he is a mage he's going to suffer lead poisoning. Otherwise leave magic for high profile runs. Same thing goes for hackers. A not terribly skilled hacker might be able to muck up characters' smartgun systems, mess up their map overlays, etc.

There are always ways around using unfair (in favor of the GM) rules.

[Tarantula]

[Edward]

If your players are bothering to take cover and use smoke grenades then they are considering the enemy a real threat. Not worthy of your comment “taking of there armor because there not a threat” even knowing it as an exaduration.

I was under the impression the shield wasn’t magic, the wielder charged it with magic.

Of cause magician scientists are common in SR and the ability to do something like that would quickly be translated into a impenetrable armor spell. (drain being f+5 but its still good) or an adept power making there armor impenetrable (and they wear full body armor with helmet)

Edward

[-X-]

In other words once something happens in a game, you can't pretend it can't happen again under laboratory conditions unless you show just how unique the situation was after all.

Can a cyberzombie ever cast spells? NEVER! Well, there was this one time one got inhabited by a massive ghost/spirit and eventually learned to crudely channel some raw mana.

You could also attribute the magic to some kind of magical Threat to get away with things.

These adepts in question could be doing massive blood rituals where each person they kill during the ritual adds 5/5 to their armor rating. (10/10 for dragons, vampires or shapeshifters, 20/20 for a great dragon or IE)

But if one person does it, there has to be some reason there aren't labs somewhere reverse engineering the effect.

Hell, as high level magic as it seems to be, with as many people who've seen Harlequin do his obnoxious teleport routine, there's probably a lab or two noses to the thaumaturgical grindstone working out how he did it. Maybe even a magical initiatory lodge of some sort.

[Vasili]

Well, we did the run last night, and Trucido didn't mention the mechanic out loud, and thus it was just fun.

The shield guys took it in the mouth, tbh. And to answer the question about taking the sheild? I did. And killed 4 people with it.

The bullet sponge blokes were alot of fun in combat. Trucido's little tweaks made the combat intresting and challenging. It was just like having enemies with alot more HP than usual. Anyroad, we had fun and that's what counts.

[Moon-Hawk]

NOOO! u r diong it wrong!!!1 taht is not how ur suposed to have fun!!!1 RULZORZ!!!!1

Seriously, though, glad it works for you group. Any other combat suggestions would also be appreciated, accepted, and thoroughly mocked. :-)

[mdynna]

Hey, if you're players enjoy the "FPS video game" style SR then go ahead. Personally, I enjoy a more realistic SR with bad guys that counter with tactics, numbers, and such rather than creating "blue guys with shields" and "red guys that take more damage." But, that's me, and you're you so whatever.

[eidolon]

I'm responding to things as I come across them from the top down, so apologies if I rehash some things.

[Trucido]

Well. I appreciate you reading and looking into this MUCH farther than I have myself it seems. And your responses are much appreciated. So I'll do the responding in kind.

I must apologize once again for giving the impression that I've hit myself in the head with the source book and felt that that was enough to absorb the rules inside.

I am quite aware of the rules. And I would like to think that I am relatively well versed in them. My initial approach and attitude to this post was for relatability. I found that in an unprofessional post I would attempt a more human "village idiot" approach rather than the... rules lawyer(Is that what you call them on this forum?) approach.

--If everything can be solved in this manner, you need to find a more creative GM.--

Perhaps that is true. Every GM has their weakness. I personally falter in being not too adept in social situations. I can do them if they're scripted out before the run with a character analysis and so forth, but flat footed I find that I often fall short on improvisionals. But perhaps.

I have already touched on the too lazy to read the rules thing just above the last reference, so I'll move on.

--This suffers from much "squarepeginaroundholeitis".--

I would agree. It definetly does. But I feel like the suggestion about taking away weapons and sticking Bruce Lee in a bar is the same thing just turned inside out. Instead of being faced with foes who are resistant to bullets, you are instead in a situation where you lack the bullets for them to be resistant too. Both situations end in the same resolve, save for the fact that with resistances to bullets, gun bunnies don't feel as alienated.

--Actual Problem: NPCs are not fighting with the same level of intelligence and tactics that the PCs tend to use. GM frustrated that when he stands up "Cardboard Johnny" in an alley, CJ just gets knocked down by a hail of gunfire. (Alternatively, GM is not gearing the NPCs to the PCs level of ability. "Random ganger X" with a 4 in pistols is obviously no match for PC_SAM with wizzer cyber and a LMG.)--

The actual problem is not that combat is not challenging enough. In fact there was no problem at all. Many people have replied to my thread with the assumption that I have created these mechanics as a crutch, because my or my gm's combat situations are kinda gimpy.

Nay my friend. In fact, I shall say it again. Nay! I won't go back and quote myself, not directly, but in a nutshell, I recently approached this issue stating my true intentions. My goals are not to streamline or amp up the difficulty slide bar. My goal was to enhance combat. Create new problems for the characters to solve in new ways not using their standard intuition but combat instincts.

And in response to the emboldened statement, I see no problem with restricting qualities. I wouldn't suggest letting the combat mage take simsense vertigo. Or the hacker take incompetence bow and arrows. Sure it happens from time to time. In fact I know a case of the latter, would you say that's fair? Furthermore, I find that conquering those with greater abilities than oneself offers up more satisfaction than your equal or lesser.

[eidolon]

I did warn you about taking this one top down. ;)

[Butterblume]

\o/

I totally agree with eidolon on his last posts.

Well done.