[X] My Assistant

[hobgoblin]

In theory, sure.

In practise however, given how cheap basic, shitty Wired Reflexes are, it makes no sense for the military not to kit out even basic groundpounders with a minimum level of cyber. Unfortunately, using standard chargen rules, to create your typical SpecOps/Green Beret kind of guy, it simply isn't possible to give them justice.

- J.

maybe thats because the sr4 rules lean more towards street then elite out of the box? want more experienced characters from the go, up build points...

[Inncubi]

Alright, I have enough good arguments and am convinced. Yes there is still a role for the Samurai/muscle character in a party and can't be replaced with such ease as I initially proposed (Not that it can't, but then again I have seen good arguments towards replacing almost any other role).

Now, to spur a little more discussion. I have seen lots of argument towards versatility builds, but on the
build-a-character threads I see consistent excess of specialization. So I'd like to see, not down to building points unlesss you want to, the creation of your dream team. This means, take the freedom to design that team of runners that you'd love to commit crimes with.

Some basics:

*They work as a team and know each other. Hell, they are friends. Yes, it can happen in the shadows.
*Five people group.
*Roles they fit in and essential skills.
*"Realistic" characters. Try not to gimp a stat as they should be able to work as independent human beings (e.g. No Logic 1 hackers, who'd suffer from "Down's Syndrome", for example and thus heavily impaired on learning hacking skills).

This is not about making the most individual bad-ass Samurai/Hacker/Mage, but rather the best overall team possible where you see combined tactics and supplemental skills, where even after game, specially after starts, they can share programs, copy important software, and give goodies to their pals in order to limit weaknesses.

I'd say go for classic SR4, but if someone /has/ to go for SR4A, SR3, SR2 or even SR1, sure make yourself happy and do it.

My take would be:

They all have infiltration at 1, at least, combat hacker and Mystic adept higher, maybe even the whole stealth group.
Any and all mages have the Heal spell.

Rigger, maybe technomancer of the dronomancer stream, with decent hacking skills (Some Electronics, Electronic warfare, mechanic, and maybe cracking, these skills at 3 or 2 should suffice). Skillwires, if mundane, even without skillsofts at start can be a plus for enhanced learning experience and usually demands part of the pay in skillsofts. If technomancer he works his ass out into submersion to get the skillwire echo thing. If technomancer he's an elf to get that extra charisma and have more sprites. If possible get a paragon: Flow.

Elven Technomancer with some face abilities, probably a technoshaman with 01 as paragon or Idoru. Charisma is high for extra sprites. He later learns some vehicle skills to support the rigger's army of drones. He also cracks programs, downloads patches and gather intel. His sprites help usage of drones, driving and matrix security.

Elf shaman face with totem that enhances a social skill or perception skills: Dragonslayer, Moon Maiden, Owl, etc. Leans towards manipulation spells, detection spells and one, at most two combat spells. Analyze device to aid the hacker(s) in their matrix actions (cast it targeting their commlinks). His support comes from being mostly astral and having spirits.

Combat Hacker, probably ork or dwarf, serves as backup matrix baddie but main ability is to enter security facilities for on-site muscle and computer support. Also has some drones in his network (Rotodrones with silenced Hunting rifles can serve nicely as snipers in a pinch for very low prices). Agents for some eyes on the teams network and for making "Zerg swarm" attacks on networks. Also has skillwires, and works like the Rigger on this.

Mystic adept or full combat mage, any tradition that allows for spirits of man, going for combat support and muscle along the hacker, I'd lean towards ork, troll or dwarf on this guy, a decent charisma (3 or 4) for summoning a couple spirits and have them cast sustained spells like increase reflexes and increase attributes. His spells concentrate on a single direct damage spell but more going for utility combat spells (Physical barrier, increase reflexes, combat sense, etc). He is loaded with sensors down the hoop, has a few drones that work on autopilot. If he wants a totem I'd say Gryphon to aid in binding /any/ spirit he can summon. If mystic adept he relies a lot on spirits of man to do the casting of his spells, he need have sorcery only high enough to be able to start with the spells he needs; hell, make him an aspected towards conjuration to save some points. If full combat mage he still relies on the psirits but not as much.

Again, this not necessarily the BEST configuration, but my choice of team composition. The team can easily share the software they bought upon creation after the first adventure by cracking it, mages can assign spirits to other teammates to sustain spells, etc.

Eager to hear from you people.

[BullZeye]

5 man team of optimal job performance, eh?
1. "Street Sammy" - cybered up, full combat destruction machine (or a physAd, but I'd go for cyber). Can kill anything between 0-1000m without too much hassle. Can sneak somewhat and isn't a total ass in social situations, (This is actually my current char, though he's effective only to 500m as he has to temp as a face quite often. I'm proud of him (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ) [Combat and stealth/social]
2. "The Mage" - Spellslinger and spirit summoner. Both utility and maybe stunbolt/ball as combat spell. Some secondary abilities a bonus: social or stealth, I'd go for the cliche elf face on this one (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) [Magic stuff and social/stealth/combat]
3. "The Hacker" - Codebreaker and pure hacking awesomeness, maybe even a TM. Some combat abilities if need to go on site on the job. Data miner and does a lot of the legwork over matrix. [Hacking and combat/stealth/social/tech]

With these 3, one can already cope, but the remaining two roles can be extremely useful on some occasions.

4. "The Rigger" - The guy/girl behind the wheels/wings/whatever. Remotely or behind the wheel, this one can pilot em all. Some basic data searching skills. and maybe one of the legworkers of the group. Maybe also a sniper to add versatility. [Piloting and combat/social/hacking/tech]
5. "The Stealth Specialist" - a.k.a. Ninja. This one can't be seen until it's too late. An adept or cybered up mundane. Lethal up to 50ish meters but whatever this one is doing, you can't see nor hear anything. Excels in B&E and stealth, good at fighting, rest of the skills by flavor. [Stealth and combat/hacking(B&E)/tech]

I didn't go too closely on the builds as there are so many ways to do them. These are just the rough outlines. On races, I'd say play what one wants but make sure the bonus attributes of the races aren't wasted. Like making a troll hacker (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The problem what I see on the "multiclassing" is that if you have the hyped up combat hacker, do you really want to risk him/her for "simple" stuff? We encountered this couple of times during the game and instead of sending the combat hacker, we agreed it's best that the street sammy goes outside to "negotiate" with the local gangers who just surrounded our van. Yes, a combat hacker and a combat mage can be really powerful, but when you add points to two separate skillsets, they both will suffer somewhat when comparing to a fully specialized character. What I mean with separate skillsets is to add skills that rely heavily on more than one attribute. There are ways to compensate but a character with high logic and charisma isn't going to cut it in combat, while they would be excellent in social and technical situations.

One or more characters in the team has to take the role of a face, one way or the other. This can be combined to almost any so it's more of "who wants to play the face?". Yes, this will alter the characters main abilities but I'd say every character in the group ought to be able to do two kinds of things, one with excellent proficiency and secondary at good or better. How and which ones to combine depends on the characters. I gave the examples of these pairings in [ ... ]'s on the character builds. Another "good to have" is also a medic. That can be made from almost any, but high logic is a bonus... or the mage with that type of healing. Both is the best option.

[Larme]

I exclude the stealth specialist. Hackers can do their job in most cases, they edit the cameras and turn off the alarms, and that's that.

My team would center around a rigger/hacker, who rigs an armored van with a turret for which serves as the mobile base and getaway vehicle. She has some inexpensive spy drones, and runs Matrix overwatch. I don't believe in drones being part of the team on a regular basis as far as combat goes, because they're so unsubtle, and quite inaccurate when acting on their own. In order to infiltrate, when a facility needs to be penetrated to access the network, the rigger/hacker could pilot an up-armored Horseman with rigger cocoon and/or personal armor for safety. Combat hackers are viable, but I think it's more efficient to combine the rigger and the hacker because they already have similar skillsets.

Next team member is the samurai. He's not just a retard who's good with guns though, he's also the scout. High agility makes Infiltration easy for him, high Intuition along with ultrawideband radar, attention coprocessor, and cybersenses lets him scout, and spot the enemies, sensors, etc.

Next is the mage, of course. No team worth its salt would go without magical support in SR4, it's practically suicidal. It doesn't really matter how you do the mage, with one caveat -- no Possession. The reason being that possessed mages can't use their own counterspelling and banishing. They could order a spirit to spell defend the other team members, but until they learned channeling, banishing would be right out. The mage's main job is to counter enemy magic, and possession is really all about killing, not magical defense. But in terms of spell and spirit sets it's no big deal how you cut it, as long as you've got 12+ drain dice and 12+ casting dice in your favorite school. If I had to pick, it would be Manipulation, since the sammy can already kill with guns, and Manipulation offers a new capability.

The next slot is the combat medic. High Logic lets him dual spec in first aid and B&E. He's really important to patch up the mage's drain, and anyone else who gets hurt. And of course he's a sammy in his own right, boosting the team's combat effectiveness.

And last of all is the face. Most of my faces would also be sammies, just with social pools of 12 or higher. You don't want a pure social person on the team -- even if they use Commanding Voice, that doesn't work on everything. It's better to be dual spec'd with guns, because those do work on everything, but you can't have a successful team with out at least one social person.

[Blade]

I've once played with an all-streetsamurai team and let me tell you we kicked some serious ass.

Start of the fight: me on a boat with 5 enemies and a gun pressed against my back, a turret in the boat is aimed at another boat where the rest of the team is. Some other enemy boats are closing in from behind.
Two combat turns later: we're unharmed, they're all dead.

I've never seen such an offense power in any regular team, except maybe with a heavy use of spirits.

[Inncubi]

The problem what I see on the "multiclassing" is that if you have the hyped up combat hacker, do you really want to risk him/her for "simple" stuff? We encountered this couple of times during the game and instead of sending the combat hacker, we agreed it's best that the street sammy goes outside to "negotiate" with the local gangers who just surrounded our van. Yes, a combat hacker and a combat mage can be really powerful, but when you add points to two separate skillsets, they both will suffer somewhat when comparing to a fully specialized character. What I mean with separate skillsets is to add skills that rely heavily on more than one attribute. There are ways to compensate but a character with high logic and charisma isn't going to cut it in combat, while they would be excellent in social and technical situations.

Well the hyped up hacker ought to do that, and its not so bad since you have the rigger as secondary hacker and the technomancer running on the node... So I don't see why this is a bad thing. And, about the combat mage, I'd say the same goes here: He's made so he can be in front lines -or near them, albeit behind cover-. Or better, have these guys stay in the van send the face/shaman out but with spirits as overwatch and the team looking after him. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) .

[BullZeye]

Well the hyped up hacker ought to do that, and its not so bad since you have the rigger as secondary hacker and the technomancer running on the node... So I don't see why this is a bad thing. And, about the combat mage, I'd say the same goes here: He's made so he can be in front lines -or near them, albeit behind cover-. Or better, have these guys stay in the van send the face/shaman out but with spirits as overwatch and the team looking after him. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) .

Yep, they are suppose to be near the front lines, but when a more risky situation comes, I wouldn't send either the hacker or mage to deal with a possibly easy looking situation which could then turn out to be a full blown battle. When the run is on, then those two semi-combatants have to earn their cred, but for example on the way to the mission you bump into some gangers, you don't want to put your only wildcard to the line (by wildcard, I mean the person who can turn the tables during the run) while the sammy could handle the situation with much less risk.

Sending the face/shaman is also risky, as one of the gangers could get a brainfart and blow the shaman's head off with a sawed off shotgun. That's why I like my sammy/face so much. He can go out and try to negotiate, intimidate or blow the opposition to pieces, all in one compact package. And it poses much less risk for the rest of the team (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

So "multiclassing" is really good, but one has to consider what combination works the best in every situation. That combathacker is likely not able to hack the gangers street sweeper (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) And making a big scene with a mage just before the run can draw unwanted attention to the group.

@Larme
Yep, combat.face is probably one of the best options with combining social abilities. It gives the chance to go from negotiation to full bang in a heartbeat (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Inncubi]

To be honest, after this thread, I think I play a very different form of Shadowrun than other dumpshockers. To the combat hyped character is secondary, while utility experts/socialites/stealthers/techies are the norm. My playing group relies heavily on technology: drone uses, layered matrix defenses, sprites and agents, nodes, repeaters, tacsofts, malware, software from Arsenal and Unwired to boot... Each has about two commlinks (sometimes even three) and at least have one Nexi (usually the drone kind) to handle all the subscriptions they have. Hell it looks like Daedalus Labyrinth, the party's node.

Anyway, back on my point: my games focus much more on how to /avoid/ combat using other skills, yes if it happens it pays to be prepared. But my players prefer to have combat as secondary specialties so they can simply avoid it most of the time, and so that when it happens they control the battlefield and not the enemy. Socially heavy, double dealings and grey areas its their expertise, and they cultivate contacts /everywhere/. So far each character has about 10 to 15, and none has connections higher than 4, but they ask favours, do favours, etc.

I may not be conveying adequately my idea, but let's just say that combat as I intuitively think many here play it is not how my table uses it. Like I said somewhere else: a single assault rifle implies about twenty carloads of reinforcements, a SWAT team or two and chopper reinforcements. So they try to keep their stars as low as possible.

[DWC]

I'm a big fan of keeping things low key. Sneak first, lie second, fight third. It just happens that I'm firmly in the camp that because Plan C is so all or nothing, you should be really good at it.

[Larme]

To be honest, after this thread, I think I play a very different form of Shadowrun than other dumpshockers. To the combat hyped character is secondary, while utility experts/socialites/stealthers/techies are the norm. My playing group relies heavily on technology: drone uses, layered matrix defenses, sprites and agents, nodes, repeaters, tacsofts, malware, software from Arsenal and Unwired to boot... Each has about two commlinks (sometimes even three) and at least have one Nexi (usually the drone kind) to handle all the subscriptions they have. Hell it looks like Daedalus Labyrinth, the party's node.

Anyway, back on my point: my games focus much more on how to /avoid/ combat using other skills, yes if it happens it pays to be prepared. But my players prefer to have combat as secondary specialties so they can simply avoid it most of the time, and so that when it happens they control the battlefield and not the enemy. Socially heavy, double dealings and grey areas its their expertise, and they cultivate contacts /everywhere/. So far each character has about 10 to 15, and none has connections higher than 4, but they ask favours, do favours, etc.

I may not be conveying adequately my idea, but let's just say that combat as I intuitively think many here play it is not how my table uses it. Like I said somewhere else: a single assault rifle implies about twenty carloads of reinforcements, a SWAT team or two and chopper reinforcements. So they try to keep their stars as low as possible.

The fact is, Shadowrun makes sneakiness hard and combat easy. Souped up samurai can kill ridiculously fast -- 3 passes per round, 4 with edge, can be up to 8 dead guys every 3 seconds. If you're that chromed up, you could cap 100 people in a minute or less, and that's just with a pistol. Let's not even talk about automatics are grenade launchers. Provided that you don't have a long way to travel, sometimes the best option is to break down the door, sticknshock all the guards, grab the macguffin, and go. You'll be gone with several minutes to spare before the cop sirens start to sound. But how do you sneak into a regular building? You need to do a lot of legwork, getting uniforms and ID badges, altering the schedule so it looks like you're supposed to be there, coming up with a non-suspicious way to give yourself the right clearance... Not that it can't be done, or it's a bad idea, but streetsams are so badass that a few of them can often blitz a facility and solve the run with a fraction of the time and nuyen expended on legwork.

[Mäx]

My "dream team" would probably be:

1. Street samurai, the guy who can take and dis out a metric ton of damage. Heavily cybered and armed to the teeth. Preferably a Fomori, but normal Troll or even an Ork works okey.
He's the one who keeps the team alive when extrament hits the rotatory oscillator. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

2. Face, probably a cybered Dryad adept of the speakers way. The one who usually handless all negotions.

3. Techno shaman, with some social skills to act as a face if needed. Vanilla Elf or a Dryad. Has Idoru as a paragon.

4. Shaman or an other charisma traditions mage, with some social skills to act as a face if needed. Vanilla Elf or a Dryad. Can be combat mage if the team needs more fire power.

5. Combat face, a street sam/face hybrid, preferably a cybered up dryad with ware to support both functions. Teams main back-up face

The face can take some other support function or be replaced, if the team needs a trigger, medic or some other character type.
If the face is replaced by some other character type, the combat face becomes the teams main face.

[HappyDaze]

The ideal SR team...

4 x PCs of whatever mix interests the players and 1 x NPC hacker.

What can I say? In my experiences, the SR4 idea of integrating the hacker with the team has been a failure. There's just not too much interest in them overall in either my last group or my current group (although, in the case of the latter, it likely stems ffrom the fact that I made it rather clear from the beginning that a 110% hacker was not going to be a desireable character for hte game).

[hobgoblin]

The fact is, Shadowrun makes sneakiness hard and combat easy. Souped up samurai can kill ridiculously fast -- 3 passes per round, 4 with edge, can be up to 8 dead guys every 3 seconds. If you're that chromed up, you could cap 100 people in a minute or less, and that's just with a pistol. Let's not even talk about automatics are grenade launchers. Provided that you don't have a long way to travel, sometimes the best option is to break down the door, sticknshock all the guards, grab the macguffin, and go. You'll be gone with several minutes to spare before the cop sirens start to sound. But how do you sneak into a regular building? You need to do a lot of legwork, getting uniforms and ID badges, altering the schedule so it looks like you're supposed to be there, coming up with a non-suspicious way to give yourself the right clearance... Not that it can't be done, or it's a bad idea, but streetsams are so badass that a few of them can often blitz a facility and solve the run with a fraction of the time and nuyen expended on legwork.

do that enough and at best the johnsons will stop doing biz, corp ninjas may start raining down on the runners location, and lone star have orders to shoot on sight...

[BlueMax]

do that enough and at best the johnsons will stop doing biz, corp ninjas may start raining down on the runners location, and lone star have orders to shoot on sight...

You realize that a certain segment of players would look forward to this result, yes?

BlueMax
/to each
//his own

[The Jake]

My "dream team" would probably be:

1. Street samurai, the guy who can take and dis out a metric ton of damage. Heavily cybered and armed to the teeth. Preferably a Fomori, but normal Troll or even an Ork works okey.
He's the one who keeps the team alive when extrament hits the rotatory oscillator. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

2. Face, probably a cybered Dryad adept of the speakers way. The one who usually handless all negotions.

3. Techno shaman, with some social skills to act as a face if needed. Vanilla Elf or a Dryad. Has Idoru as a paragon.

4. Shaman or an other charisma traditions mage, with some social skills to act as a face if needed. Vanilla Elf or a Dryad. Can be combat mage if the team needs more fire power.

5. Combat face, a street sam/face hybrid, preferably a cybered up dryad with ware to support both functions. Teams main back-up face

The face can take some other support function or be replaced, if the team needs a trigger, medic or some other character type.
If the face is replaced by some other character type, the combat face becomes the teams main face.

Obsess over Dryads and Faces much?

- J.

[The Jake]

The fact is, Shadowrun makes sneakiness hard and combat easy. Souped up samurai can kill ridiculously fast -- 3 passes per round, 4 with edge, can be up to 8 dead guys every 3 seconds. If you're that chromed up, you could cap 100 people in a minute or less, and that's just with a pistol. Let's not even talk about automatics are grenade launchers. Provided that you don't have a long way to travel, sometimes the best option is to break down the door, sticknshock all the guards, grab the macguffin, and go. You'll be gone with several minutes to spare before the cop sirens start to sound. But how do you sneak into a regular building? You need to do a lot of legwork, getting uniforms and ID badges, altering the schedule so it looks like you're supposed to be there, coming up with a non-suspicious way to give yourself the right clearance... Not that it can't be done, or it's a bad idea, but streetsams are so badass that a few of them can often blitz a facility and solve the run with a fraction of the time and nuyen expended on legwork.

In principle yes. In practise you still have to not leave a shred of evidence or face retaliation. That is often much harder.

E.g. did the sammy bleed at all in that gunfight? use his bare hands to put the ammo in the clips? surveillance footage?

I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, but it is still very tricky.

- J.

[Larme]

In principle yes. In practise you still have to not leave a shred of evidence or face retaliation. That is often much harder.

E.g. did the sammy bleed at all in that gunfight? use his bare hands to put the ammo in the clips? surveillance footage?

I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, but it is still very tricky.

- J.

I don't like the "no shred of evidence" playstyle. I don't think it's that realistic. Corporations gain nothing by tracking down runners that hit them just to retaliate. It costs a LOT of money to sortie corporate forces to attack the Barrens, not to mention the whole thing where doing it openly would be an act of war on UCAS, so it would have to be the blackest of black ops. No, that's not going to happen -- what they're going to do is focus on tightening security so it doesn't happen again. They'll only seek revenge if you did something REALLY bad. But chances are if you're on a job that's dire enough to provoke direct retaliation, you've probably got an org of your own offering protection. That's not so say retaliation never happens on a normal basis, it's just not the Red Samurai kicking in your door or anything. It's more like a bounty on your head, or the cops asking questions. Both can be dealt with. Games were you're fucked because you left behind one hair and not fun, and not realistic IMO.

[The Jake]

I don't like the "no shred of evidence" playstyle. I don't think it's that realistic. Corporations gain nothing by tracking down runners that hit them just to retaliate. It costs a LOT of money to sortie corporate forces to attack the Barrens, not to mention the whole thing where doing it openly would be an act of war on UCAS, so it would have to be the blackest of black ops. No, that's not going to happen -- what they're going to do is focus on tightening security so it doesn't happen again. They'll only seek revenge if you did something REALLY bad. But chances are if you're on a job that's dire enough to provoke direct retaliation, you've probably got an org of your own offering protection. That's not so say retaliation never happens on a normal basis, it's just not the Red Samurai kicking in your door or anything. It's more like a bounty on your head, or the cops asking questions. Both can be dealt with. Games were you're fucked because you left behind one hair and not fun, and not realistic IMO.

Fair call.

I am not a fan of the "corporations would never retaliate" mentality. I'm of the view yes they could (and may well do so - for too many reasons I won't go into). If, for no other reason, to act as a strong deterrent to other runners or at least the wider world, creating the perception that "nothing escapes THIS company". Certainly not in all cases but there are many cases I can say yes they would.

As for the no evidence, it depends. I weigh it up based on the multiple factors - the type of run, the opposition and their resourcing, reasons for reprisal (and are they strong enough to warrant a response), the level of response, etc.

A bunch of mobsters won't have a the forensics skills necessary to track down runners for blowing up a gambling den based on a hair sample (maaaybe if they have magicians on hand). NeoNet OTOH will have teams of these guys pouring through their lab that has been ransacked of the latest prototype and corrupted the data, setting back the company 2 years and millions of dollars in wasted research.

- J.

[Larme]

Fair call.

I am not a fan of the "corporations would never retaliate" mentality. I'm of the view yes they could (and may well do so - for too many reasons I won't go into). If, for no other reason, to act as a strong deterrent to other runners or at least the wider world, creating the perception that "nothing escapes THIS company". Certainly not in all cases but there are many cases I can say yes they would.

As for the no evidence, it depends. I weigh it up based on the multiple factors - the type of run, the opposition and their resourcing, reasons for reprisal (and are they strong enough to warrant a response), the level of response, etc.

A bunch of mobsters won't have a the forensics skills necessary to track down runners for blowing up a gambling den based on a hair sample (maaaybe if they have magicians on hand). NeoNet OTOH will have teams of these guys pouring through their lab that has been ransacked of the latest prototype and corrupted the data, setting back the company 2 years and millions of dollars in wasted research.

- J.

I don't get it. Corporations are about the bottom line. How is the bottom line helped by retaliation? For sure, if they think you still have the macguffin, they will try their hardest to get it back. If they know you no longer have it though, what do they gain? They just lost a bunch of money, and now they're going to spend more money just to feel better about it? No, that's bad business. That actually deepens the red on their sheet, and that's the one thing they'll never tolerate. You staunch the bleeding, you don't open the wound wider just because of wounded pride. What a corp wants to know when they get hit is, a) what vulnerability let them in, and b) who hired them. The way to get their money back is not to send assassins after shadowrunner scum, but to send their own team to recover the macguffin from the enemy corporation. Or at least, to send a team that will set back the competition as far as they've been set back. That's the key word, I think -- competition. That's who these guys care about. Runners no more compete with a corp than an ant competes with a person at his picnic. The ant steals crumbs, while the person takes single bites that are the size of 1000 ants, without even thinking about it. When an ant takes your food, you might try to squash him, but if he gets away, who cares? He's just an ant. When you find out that a person brought the ants specifically to spoil your picnic, you get mad at the person, not the ants. You don't seek revenge on those little creatures that are beneath your notice, as long as they scurry away and don't bother you overmuch.

Now, there are a few corps that have a revenge policy, like Aztech. They want to make sure that nobody hits them by extracting brutal vengeance on everyone who does. The fluff is pretty clear that most corps don't follow that model, though. Aztech probably spends an assload enforcing this policy, and it's given them a fearsome reputation, but in the end, it's all supply and demand. Aztech drives down the supply of runners who want to hit them, demand goes up, pay goes up, and now instead of having noobs come after you, so you can swat them down, the only people who hit you are the elite of the elite, and your elaborate security measures and fierce reputation aren't even worth a fart. At least if noobs came at you, they'd have a better chance of failing, maybe getting caught and spilling the beans about their op.

In the end, the fluff states that Shadowrunning is the coin of the realm. If Shadowrunners were the target of corporate execution squads just because their face was seen or they left an eyelash, that wouldn't be the case. The fluff cannot support truly venegeful corporations. There is obviously some measure of retaliation, but it is not a given, it is situational.

[Mäx]

Obsess over Dryads and Faces much?

- J.

I think that at least most members of the team should have enough social skills to act as a face in a pinch and those shamans allready need a hight charisma, so its just about giving them few points in social skills and theyr good enought. And being a Dryad gives them nice +3 to those social skills, but i don't think all of those that are listed as either Elf or Dryad sohuld be Dryads as a team consisting of a Fomori and four Dryads might be a litlle to memoraple and easy to regonize.

[Mirilion]

a team consisting of a Fomori and four Dryads might be a litlle to memoraple and easy to regonize.

This... has potential. Business potential. My agent will call your agent.

[Fuchs]

I think that at least most members of the team should have enough social skills to act as a face in a pinch and those shamans allready need a hight charisma, so its just about giving them few points in social skills and theyr good enought. And being a Dryad gives them nice +3 to those social skills, but i don't think all of those that are listed as either Elf or Dryad sohuld be Dryads as a team consisting of a Fomori and four Dryads might be a litlle to memoraple and easy to regonize.

I'd rate even one dryad as a bit too memorable to have a place in a "perfect" team.

[BullZeye]

I'd rate even one dryad as a bit too memorable to have a place in a "perfect" team.

I totally agree. A "Perfect" team ought to not have anything that can lead to them on a normal run or outside the runs. So no magic if need not be, no bows, no exotic weapons, no exotic metas, no exotic vehicles. I don't mean that everyone in the team should have blandness quality, but not have anything that really sticks out. Even if it means to not have the +3 to social skills, but I rate secrecy much higher than a small bonus with such a drawback (distinct style). Each of the members should have a kind of normal life, nothing to lead the enemy to their gates. Multiple fake identities so if one gets compromised, the next one is ready to rock. It might even be necessary for the entire team to change to next ID if one ID is compromised. Paranoid? Hell yeah, but it's the prize of being elite (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Of course the other option is that the whole group works from a hideout at all times and is just for the running without any resemblance of normal life. But at least I prefer to have some kind of normal life on my characters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Kliko]

The question isn't if you're paranoid. The question is if you're paranoid enough...

[Critias]

Things like "four Dryads and a Fomori" being thrown together as someone's professional urban criminal dream team are why the metaracial subtypes make me shudder. For most players, they've got nothing to do with role playing opportunities, exploring new regions of the background material, or appreciating and enjoying the background material as presented enough to worry about the stated and repeated rarity of those subtypes -- they're all about scraping together that extra +1 die here and there. Ungh.