My players are too tough Options

[kzt]

I agree with overwhelming numbers but a police force utilizing explosives greater than a flashbang would not see too many people renewing their contract. However, gas grenades such as neurostun and nasuea would be accepted. Collateral damage = bad.

"Heavily armed terrorists holed up in fortified site. Had to hit them with a JDAM. Here's a form to file with your insurance company."

SR is a very violent world. Remember Knight Errant and the Cermak hive? Don't make KE really want to kill you....

[Muspellsheimr]

Grunts are supposed to possess a "Group Edge" pool based on the number of grunts in the group. Use it sparingly, & never burn it. Any grunt can use Edge from the pool, but reduces the pool for every grunt.

Prime Runners (NPC's on par or better than PC's) possess Edge as normal PC's. The only difference is that for them, burning Edge to survive takes up all their Edge, opposed to PC's 1.

[Fortune]

As has been said ... Mooks, Modifiers and Tactics make all the difference.

[krayola red]

You gotta remember to be selective with modifiers though. Dice penalties in SR4 affect characters with low dice pools a lot more than characters with high pools, and the guys with lots of dice to throw around tend to be the PCs. That means that dropping a smoke grenade is a tactic that will almost always backfire on the grunt, resulting in a demise that is even more untimely than usual.

[DocTaotsu]

Some other things:
Area jammers + wi-fi inhibiting paint. Or as I like to call them "Rigger Bane". There are ways to get around these tactics but it requires a little prior planning and occasionally sacrificing some mobility.

On the other hand. Drones DRONE DRONE DRONES. They're cheap, they can be made fairly smart fairly quickly and if you'd be surprised what a difference 4 AR/LMG wielding doberman can make in a fight.

Suppressing fire is your friend and your NPC's probably have access to more bullets than your PC's do. Throw down a few fixed gun emplacements (at least places where corps sec can throw down a few sandbags and set up a tripod LMG/MMG with a couple boxes of ammo). Suppressing fire is an excellent way to:
A.) Pick away at your players dodge pools, health, armor, etc.
B.) Pin them long enough for a few guys with grenades to get close enough to be a few guys without grenades.
C.) Remind players that there are probably more of the enemy then they have bullets.

Suppressing fire isn't going to kill your average hardcore runner but it's going to make him rethink his "I stand up and headshot everyone" plan. It's also gives one IP mooks something more constructive to do than die in the 3rd and 4th intiative pass when they'd normally be drooling.

Remember that mooks are people too. They're PC's in their own lives really. They realize that there are all these horrible people out there who want to kill them for the stuff that they're guarding. They probably don't want to die all that badly. Mooks are going to take precautions, even if it goes against company regs. Most of my mooks have a hitter or two of some flavor of combat drug that gives them an extra IP or two. Furthermore they're going to invest a little of their own money in their equipment. Maybe not all of them but someone is going to drop the 100 nuyen or whatever for a custom grip or heavy barrel or whatever. Maybe her husband bought her some FFBA for Christmas... whatever. In every group of mooks there's probably an extra DP or two rolling around you aren't accounting for.

Also, don't forget to have your mooks run the fuck away and regroup or just panic and flee into different areas. With the surprise rules a single terrified guard in a broom closet can be a nasty surprise.

[hyzmarca]

Three words for ya: Fully Destructible Environments.

Yeah, your Wendigo ain't much of a match for a large group of well-armed individuals. But Wendigo XP is smarter than Wendigo 98, he knows that Powerbolt can be used against inanimate objects, so instead of standing and fighting he just blasts the floor out from under the PCs. They don't fall far, but they fall hard, and they're hit even harder when he follows this up by tossing a grenade down the hole and then levitates a severely wounded PC back up the hole that was once a floor, summoning up one of his spirit buddies to conceal both of them while he escapes with his snack.


Consider two great FPS games, Red Faction and Jedi Outcast. In the former, blasting holes in the environment is one of the best ways to get around. In the latter, Force Push is more powerful than a rocket launcher due to the plethora of unshielded bottomless pits that are a staple of Imperial architecture. Attacking directly is rarely the most wise option.

[DocTaotsu]

Go watch Aliens and Predator and then run that encounter again (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Rasumichin]

Drones DRONE DRONE DRONES.

Or, in the case of the wendigo, spirits.

And don't forget that enemies might know their home turf much better than the PCs.

How i'd handle the wendigo encounter if i'd be in the mood for some GM sadism :

Let him set up a cadre of watchers (not to patroll or anything, watchers are too dumb for that- but as a set of magical survailance cameras- remember that a summoner is mentally connected to all of his spirits) as first line of defense.
Then let him send in a summoned and a couple of bound spirits to soften up the PCs.
Make use of the wendigo's ressources, that guy's most likely a full-blown mage.
The spirits will be using hit and run tactics, of course.
Materialize in a safe place, sneak up on the group using Concealment, hitting them with their nastiest powers (for starters, splitting the group with Fear), vanishing into astral space and retreating to regroup and do it all over again.
The summoned spirit, most likely having the highest Force, will make use of the powers most crucial to your NPC's plan, the bound ones will serve as a nasty distraction.
Avoid direct confrontation, as directly confronting half a dozen of well-armed professionals equals getting yourself killed.

As soon as one of the group's members has to be stabilized because a hostile spirit almost choked him to death and another one is isolated, confused and stumbling through the wendigo's lair while constantly falling over his own feet (ah, the wonders of the Accident power), it's time for the wendigo to walk up to him and start using mind control.
Influence and Compulsion are just lovely powers, aren't they?
Especiallly when combined with Physical Mask to pass as one of your teammates...
Ta-daa, your hunt for the monster of the week has just turned into "save your abducted friend from being turned into a cannibal servant/wendigo chow".

By that point, the thread's title might change from "My players are too tough" to "Help, our GM is murdering us", though.

But the expression on a player's face who has just realized that, for the first time, he's not able to one-hit that enemy is just priceles.
And as long as you play fair, they'll love it (once the initial shock has worn off).

[Kurious]

This thread is so full of win.

Don't limit yourself to just tech solutions... like in the OP, wendigo's have natural vision magnification, meaning they can hide a long ways away and cast like crazy on and around the party. Slap a camo spell and higher ground, the poor PC's may never find him, even though they are getting harassed every step of the way.

[Muspellsheimr]

SQUIRRELS!

Seriously, squirrels are the source of all evil.

[masterofm]

They shoot their teeth you know.

[Cardul]

Just one thing:
BOOM, baby, boom!

Seriously: Have the runners go into a trap where the bad guy has set up lots of fancy explosives. Bring the house down on them.

If youare needing security that will not do that, gotta ask this: Do the PCs have protection against Neurostun Gas? Are tehy all running around in insulated armour? You want to give some corp sec some lasers? It is not about power..it is about playing seriously. You goal is not to kill the PCs, of course......it is MUCH more fun to capture them!

[kzt]

In many ways I think it's better for the players to lose a fight to a gang armed with mediocre weapons than to get hit with something that pushes the "I Win" button.

A bunch of gang bangers on kamikaze (at least 3x the number of PCs) armed with pistols, some AKs and maybe a scoped sporting rifle or two (from a good distance) can clean the clock of most any group of PCs who are careless and/or overconfident. Particularly on the gang's turf, where they know the ways to maneuver behind or to the flanks of the PCs out of sight of the PCs. A concrete wall to your front isn't cover when your being shot from the rear.

Having the PCs get a bloody nose and retreat in confusion works just as well or better than killing some of them.

I had shootouts with gangs end with everyone agreeing to take their wounded and just back off when both the PCs and gangers decided their friends were all likely to get severely dead in a few seconds if they didn't back down.

[Rasumichin]

Of course, there are players who would never consider retreat to be an option.

[Sceptic]

Of course, there are players who would never consider retreat to be an option.

That's what invoked high force spirits with the Fear power are for. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[ornot]

If a player is too dumb to retreat when he's being pwned then he deserves to have his character killed.

[Ravor]

Agreed ornot, death is the only cure for the stupid.


Although something to remember is that in higher dicepool games modifiers really lose allot of their teeth and in my opinion this detracts from tactical thought, both sides should not only be trying to raise thier dicepool mods as muich as possible they should also be doing everything in their power to lower the other sides as well.

[MaxMahem]

I think one thing that is important to remember (at least its important for me to rember as GM) as that the PCs are supposed to win most of the time. You job as GM isn't to defeat them, it's to challenge them. This is an important distinction to be made.

A second thing to remember is that you don't have to play fair. At all. Often times I fall into the trap of designing a set of opposition that would be a 'fair' match for the PCs. There is no reason you should do this. Design your opposition to be over-matches. If an equal number of security goons isn't proving challenging enough, then double it. Triple it even. If one wendigo is not proving enough of a challenge, then you run can have a twist! The runners thought they were hunting one wendigo. Opps! Turns out its a pack of them!

Or you can design a single opponent who is an over-match. It could be a very powerful magician, with associated spirits. A well armored cyber-zombie. A killer rigger and his drones. A dastardly technomancer or AI. Or an insect spirt, free spirit, blood spirit, or even lesser dragon.

Don't play fair. After all your players probably aren't either. They may complain a bit at first (it's a force WHAT spirit?, it's rolling HOW many dice to resist? don't these gangers ever end!), but in the end they will usually find that their triumphs against the odds are much more satisfing then when they steam-roll the opposition.

[DocTaotsu]

This is certainly true. Your job as a GM is to give them interesting choices to make, not to just throw the table over and scream "The world blows up! I WIN I WIN!"

Don't be afraid to cheat... but be sure to cheat for both sides.

Pulling an extra wendigo out of your ass is a perfectly reasonable way to make combat interesting rather than "We roll dice at it until it dies". If that second wendigo starts spanking the crap out of the party and you're hazarding a wipe... consider some alternative solutions for the players to pursue (read: RUN AWAY RUN AWAY!).

Don't be afraid to introduce complications in the heat of battle as they become available. In my experiences players are more than willing to suck up some bizarre complication (the crane in the loading dock is going CRAZY!) than simply walk all over the opposition.

Make it interesting by god. Combat shouldn't be fucking dull.

[hyzmarca]

No, you don't pull out another Wendigo to up the challenge. What you do is pull out the Wendigo's uninfected kid, who runs out swinging his plastic Neil the Ork Barbarian sword to save mommy from the bad men.

Any GM can pull out extra opposition to prevent an overwhelming PC victory. It takes someone special to let them have their easy victory and yet make them feel like total assholes for it.

The real trick is to time it so that the PCs still have a precious few seconds to perform first aid on the dying Wendigo, without stretching the rules, so that they have a chance to avoid a depressing ending without being coddled.

[DocTaotsu]

What hyz said. That's so much cooler than an extra wendingo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[kzt]

As a player, if I carefully figure out how to crush the opposition using excellent recon, appropriate weapons and effective tactics I really DO want to effectively walk all over the opposition. It's the "your character wakes up in his pajamas and there are 8 SWAT guys aiming automatic weapons at him. The statement of intent for your character is?" scenario, but in reverse.

[DocTaotsu]

Yeah, you definitely want to avoid voiding all your players hard work and planning...

Unless of course that's the point.

There was a great Blackjack SR column back in the day:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020214172248/...page=bovine.htm

Weird shit happens, the best laid plan of mice and men... all that... strange unaccountable shit happens and the likelihood of your players figuring out every contingency for fighting a wendigo is pretty low.

[Hagga]

Someone on /tg/ pointed out a while back that the ultimate "screw you" to your players was to have a sequence with Yakety Saxplaying while Lofwyr chases them through downtown seattle. Just to break from the normal grimdark of the Shadowrun world. Perhaps you'd like to try it? Sure, it makes no sense, but it gives you an excuse to toss enormous enemies at them afterwards.

[Ravor]

I have to disagree, I think it is bad DMing to sculpt the world around the character's abilities, unless Corp A has a really fragging good reason to staff Lab X with world class special forces as opposed to standard sec guards then the characters are going to face standard sec guards and their 6-8 Dicepools before equipment mods. Still, I really liked hyz's idea as ussual.