Medium level third edition campaign, I can't let my players keep getting uber. That includes me. Options

[Kyleigh Wester]

Well, our campaign is about to wrap up and i'm getting toward sthe end of my story. Our other two GMs(We alternate) seem to be building up to a finale as well. Three of us have already gotten together and talked about a medium level campaign next since we realized just how much you can tweak out a character. Anyway, we have a few ideas and caps and I wanted to know what the Dumpshock community thought about these concepts.

Skills cap at ten.
Spell forces cap at about ten.
Stats obviously cap at the modified racial limit, regardless of ware.
Karma pay out can be no more than nine.
Increase difficulty in enemies.

These are the ideas we have so fourth to keep our characters in check but with the innovation available by magic (Magic in the shadows is such an unbalancing book) and the powers of delta ware pimped characters, I was wondering what else I could do to secure our place in the middle?

[Adarael]

I'm not sure I buy into the idea of using mechanics to absorb what's fundamentally a karma and resources problem. These are good ideas, but let me pose some alternate theories before you jump headfirst into them.

-Skill Cap At 10: What you are saying here is that you do not wish for players to raise their characters' skills to legendary levels. That's fine, and I think is the most logical of all your ideas. It takes years, if not decades, to achieve this level of skill. But to keep the game more open and less closed, I would suggest forcing players to seek out instructors for higher level skills. You might also look into including training times for new purchases - force a player to work at getting their pistols to 9, rather than make it simply a case of dropping the karma on it.

-Spell Force Caps At 10: This will wind up hurting you more than them. It may force them to min-max their spellcasting, as a matter of fact. I've never cast a spell at above force 8 in SR3, because with the proper die pools, you don't really need to. You crank the damage up to D and stack your drain resistance rolls. But for you, that means critters and enemy spellcasters will never have access to force 11+ spells, even if you need them. So I think a decent alternative would be to increase the spell defense enemies have. Most (serious) enemy groups will have at least one spellcaster, so give 'em a counterspelling focus. Give them a specialization. Have them keep spirits on hand to aid with sorcery, since they're witholding so many dice for defense. And above all, give them Shielding. I held off getting shielding for years, but when I finally did, I realized that it was like night and day for spell defense.

-Stats Obviously Cap at Racial Limit: Again, this is a case where it will hurt you more than help you. What you are telling player is this: "Do not spend points on 'ware, spend points on magic, because magic is not capped by your racial limit." Or if it IS similarly capped, you're telling players, "cyberware isn't what it used to be, so blow more money on deltagrade gear and have a piece of 'ware for every occasion." This is my least favorite suggestion because it renders many pieces of 'ware nigh useless for the price you'll pay. Furthermore, what do you do when you need the cyborg killers? Break the rule because they're NPCs? I would suggest doing one of the following:
-Only cyber or bio adds to one stat. They do not stack.
-Magic and cyber do not stack.
-Raising stats over the racial limit with cyber/bio puts that part into light stress because it's so heavily tuned and must be constantly maintained.

-Karma pay out can be no more than nine: I have no idea how or when you award karma, but it sounds totally logical to me. Unless you only hand out karma every 3 runs or something.

-Increase difficulty in enemies: Again, this is too subjective for me to comment on.

IN GENERAL, what I would advise you to encourage your players to play differently. If they are breaking games by being super-specialized and throwing dumb amounts of dice, force them to generalize. Engineer challenges that require multiple character to rely on skills they didn't know they'd need. Force them to spend money to make money. Limit availability or tweak availability levels in-game to reflect equipment shortages. Have the enemy be significantly smarter than them and plan several steps ahead, so that they have to be very, very careful and not rely on raw numbers alone.

[Telion]

Your thoughts on capping things is fine, however I agree with adarael, the trick for these campaigns isn't to control the players growth, its to control the circumstances at where things happen. A body guarding duty in a AAA security area, what gear are they going to carry? they won't be stacking 8-12 armor or carrying a panther cannon like they do in the barrens.

the spells at level 10+ isn't as big of an issue as you make it out to be. most players don't wipe the astral presence of every spell they cast, if they are casting a single level 10 spell in any area that is investigated by anyone astrally perceiving, that person can now track the players down with a force strong enough to take out a force 10 casting player. This goes for anything else that they cast, if the fight has more than a few of these fights, the next metamagic they pick is likely to be switching their signature. Keep in mind alot of spells require LOS, those can modify TN's and prevent targets from getting hit given they have cover.

If your worried about quickened/sustained spells, making them walk through powerful wards will force them to either drop and recast or break the barrier alerting everyone, consider reading the rules on this.

tactics and situations can be more of a challenge than a large/powerful group. if players skimp on melee, a single combat could be deadly for them (encouraging them to put points here instead of getting that 10 skill), a scenario I've run is having a group going into a confined space and then being swarmed by, ghouls, devil rats, hell hounds, or even just generic fighters. Sometimes I'll use people with stun weaponry to increase the other damage meter, gas grenades and stun weapons work great for this since they can bypass a bit of armor and modify TN's.

Stat capping really doesn't do much, other than willpower for spell resistance reasons. a troll with 20 body and 12+ armor has fallen in many campaigns because they thought they could take anything. and skill capping doesn't do much as it costs karma to specialize and then your missing out on other important skills. Unless a character in the group has skill wires limit the help of hiring other characters for that skill, or make it expensive.

[Zen Shooter01]

You don't need new rules. Just cut back on karma and nuyen awards.

[WhiteWolf]

I would suggest getting creative. Have a hacker empty out their bank accounts, create a succubus to drain magic (permentaly), capture one of the players (after the bank accounts have been emptied) and remove some of their cyber limbs, etc. I am sure the runners have enemies that pop-up ever so often since you are running a campain, so have one of them appear and start nibbling all the fine materials the runners have collected. Remember life is a series of ups and downs. One minute you are rich and the next you are lucky to be alive. Hope this helps and good luck. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[ElFenrir]

*snip*

Agreed here. Putting harsh limits on things, I find, does encourage even more minmaxing, it takes away things that you can use(and if you can use it but the players can't....that's unfair, IMO), and adds unecessary things to the game.

A good example; say you cap skills at 10. Ok, sounds good on the surface. But it does take some serious karma to get a skill that high-and past that. If someone wants their Pistols at 14 or whatever, they are paying an assload of karma to do that.

Cap it at 10, and that large pile of Karma they would have used to make the skill 14 or 15? Well, that's going to raise OTHER skills to 10. So instead of having someone with one uber skill and a bunch more rounded ones? You end up with people with a lot of STILL uber skills. Same with stats(ok, the way I always played it? Via cyber or bioware, I allow people to juice their stats beyond the limits. Natural stats are limited, of course, and can be upped with Edges/Qualities, but as far as I'm concerned there's no reason a human can't get an uber tweaked cyberarm if they want it. It may cost more, but i'll accomodate them. They paid the nuyen and essence, after all.)

But say you limit the stats severely. Again-instead of someone with one super-uber stat and a bunch of rounded ones? You get a pile of just slightly less uber ones.

These things, I agree fully, should be handled through discussion and planning. I've always been a strong believer in having a rather generous hand when it comes to people making their characters how they want them, willing to bend to accomodate them, and relying on the ''Gentleman's Rule''.

Which basically translates to ''Make what you want, what you see in your head. But don't be a douche.'' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

And our games seem more fun because of it.

[Fuchs]

We chose another way: We made characters as we wanted them, but stopped karma and nuyen rewards. (Charaters are just getting "your payment", not exact sums, and most expenses and minor pruchases are assumed to be covered, new gear/toys are acquired through runs). Advancement comes by group/GM consensus, and we take care to pay attention to character balance. It cuts down on minmaxing - since no one cares how you reached that skill level, all people care is how high it is, relative to the rest - and also keeps the "just one more karma/nuyen and I can get X" drive away.

All in all works well for our group.

[Cantankerous]

You don't need new rules. Just cut back on karma and nuyen awards.

Amen.

We had a group go for one hundred and three sessions and by the end the few originals were uber, but only the originals and god knows they deserved it. Keep karma and nuyen reasonable and make spending karma in game attractive and the problem never develops.


Isshia

[Fuchs]

In some cases even the smallest rewards are too much. 103 sessions is like a bit less than 2 years for us, and our campaign started in 2001.

[ElFenrir]

I actually do find that letting people come ''out of the gates'' a little bit better than normal-but keeping rewards down, like was said, a very fun way to play.

If they're scaled back and limited too much at the start, I notice people worrying a bit more about getting the karma heaped on; and since a GM wants to keep the table fun and everyone interested, they can end up heaping on the karma and nuyen so folks are satisfied. As a result, they end up MORE powerful than if they come out of the box with a slighly higher amount of power, but then improve slowly.

I tend to see alot more satisfaction that way. Now, there are some players that actually prefer to start with a switchblade and end up taking over a corp in a couple of years of play; that's totally cool too, whatever works; but on average, Method B seems to please most folks. I know I tend to prefer it(usually. I have my days of enjoying to play a ganger with a knife and a crackpipe. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

[Blade]

Please note that in SR3, past a limit adding more dice doesn't have much impact on difficult actions. Lowering the threshold does.

IMO, you have to be very careful about the Karma Pool. According to my experience with very-high level character, it's not as much the fact that they roll a truckload of dice that's problematic, it's the fact that they've got everything that lowers the threshold ("45F Naval blast ? Ok that's a 2 TN") and they can reroll and buy successes at whim. ("The shedim-insect-cyberzombie still has 1 damage box left after my first shot? That sucks. I use karma to reroll")

[Kagetenshi]

Lowering TN and buying successes both permanently burn karma pool, and a single HoG wipes it all out. KP is powerful, but it will run out quickly when used as you describe.

~J

[Cantankerous]

In some cases even the smallest rewards are too much. 103 sessions is like a bit less than 2 years for us, and our campaign started in 2001.

It was a year and a half for us. Only two of the original six Runners lasted the whole campaign and one of those was "in retirement" for twenty plus sessions until about ten sessions before the finale. One Player had gone though fifteen characters and only those two of the six originals went through less than four characters.

The finale featured fifteen Runers, eleven players and the destruction of roughly half of the Plastic Jungle, and most of the Rats Nest and then spilled over into Hollywood and Kingsgate before a combination of three dozen Lone Star Elite Response teams, fully supported by Lone Star Air and a couple of platoons of the Metroplex Guard put an end to it. The Yakuza in Redmond was gutted, two Soeulpa Rings were completely demolished and more than four hundred civilian casualties made it the bloodiest Shadow War that the Sixth World had ever seen. And yet the Seattle MetroPlex and UCAS Federal Governments with connivance and assistance of Ares and Renraku both, slapped a lid on the whole affair and while no one was pleased with any part of the outcome, all four major factors were satisfied enough with it that none of the three surviving Runners or the implicated Redmond Mafia people were Indicted while the surviving Runners all "disappeared" with the rumored assistance of Ares.

Needless to say this thing got almost epic at the end, yet we had few people who were really all that and a bag of chips involved. Over all in the whole of the campaign we had 68 different Runners (and fifteen different Players) as parts of it, and among those only eight were alive at the end with five of those not having been part of the finale. Shadow Running is a dangerous trade after all.

Cause for balance sake that IS another part of Shadowrun. It isn't as bad as CoC, but I do warn my new Players not to get too attached to their characters, because bullets have no conscience but even they have more than most Corp sec forces.

Isshia

[Blade]

Lowering TN and buying successes both permanently burn karma pool, and a single HoG wipes it all out. KP is powerful, but it will run out quickly when used as you describe.

~J

Actually I was thinking about using gear/spells/powers to reduce threshold, then use KP to reroll failures or buy dice (which, when the treshold is down to 2 are likely to get successes).
Buying a success will only be done in case of emergency.

[Kagetenshi]

Do you mean TN? There's very little gear that will lower thresholds.

~J

[ATMA/XERO]

Those players shouldn't have to suffer those rediculous caps because you can't GM properly.

[Blade]

Do you mean TN? There's very little gear that will lower thresholds.

~J

Yes, sorry about that, I meant TN.
That's something most GM don't really understand until it's "too late": having a low TN is more effective than having a high dice pool.

[Kagetenshi]

I, um, I'm not really sure I'd say "most" GMs don't really understand it—I've noticed some not understanding how quickly successes drop off at high TNs, but it's pretty intuitive how many successes you expect at low TNs.

There are only a few places where you can really drop TNs, though, and fewer that don't involve serious commitment in character-building (usually at chargen). There's what, the Social God edge pack, the VCR, the standard shotgun spread rules, and the ungodly mess that is the surgery rules; where else can you get big TN bonuses in a consistent fashion?

~J

[Zak]

Watcher hunting packs + reach 2 weapon foci ? Ah, the good old times (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Kyleigh Wester]

Those players shouldn't have to suffer those rediculous caps because you can't GM properly.

At first I thought this was some random Dumpshocker throwing insults but, in actuality, it's my good friend Xero. From what i've seen the force cap isn't such a good idea but i'm fairly sure keeping the skills cap is a good way to keep the players in a middle level campaign without too much of an issue. The stat cap i'm not to sure about but it makes since to me and it might be kind of difficult to keep things at a lower level when people have stats at 10 right off the bat.

So, skill cap stays but what's a good way to moderate magic other than capping force?

[Zak]

A skill of 10 is by far not medium skill level anymore. If you consider a skill cap of 10 to keep the game moderate powerlevel you should really consider the advise given by some of the posters above.

[Pendaric]

Firstly run the game as you wish.
I my experence limiting the pay outs has the benifit of slowing progression but increases min maxing at the start. Explain and sell your concept of your take on a medium level game to your players. That way everyone is on the same page and wont be trying for massive power TM.
Also most massive skill levels come from either one trick pony character creation or to much karma. I have a game thats coming into its fifth year and only one character has a specialization at nine. Said character is dedicated to that skill solely as its philosophy defines the character's world view. This is because my players understand the level we are playing too, we're all on the same page so to speak. Harder to achieve but more effective than caps.

[Kyleigh Wester]

A skill of 10 is by far not medium skill level anymore. If you consider a skill cap of 10 to keep the game moderate powerlevel you should really consider the advise given by some of the posters above.

What skill cap would you suggest than?

[Zak]

I don't advocate any cap on skills. I have yet to actually see a character with a skill of 10 or more and I am GM'ing alot on cons(yea, still many players only wanting to go with SR3).

Apart from this I think it is pretty interesting to put such a harsh restriction on stats and such a ignorable one on skills. Cybered chars will suffer more from this than mages.

[Kyleigh Wester]

I don't advocate any cap on skills. I have yet to actually see a character with a skill of 10 or more and I am GM'ing alot on cons(yea, still many players only wanting to go with SR3).

Apart from this I think it is pretty interesting to put such a harsh restriction on stats and such a ignorable one on skills. Cybered chars will suffer more from this than mages.

Almost everyone in our current campaign has at least one skill at 18, and one of our mages managed to get a quickened spell at force 17. In nearly every campaign i've been everyones at at least one skill to 12. I wouldn't call it ignorable, but I can drop the cap more. I just don't think it's necessary. As for the stat cap, I don't really see an issue with it. A cybered human can still get his stats to 9, which is actually pretty damned good. That's only one less than my current characters Charisma.