how do i keep shadowrunners alive? Options

[ethandrul]

I'm about to start my 1st shadowrun campaign. I am an experienced dm- but i'm used to levels. Is there an easy way i can tell if an encounter in too easy or more importantly too hard?
obviously sending a party of 5 against 20 wendigo armed with assault cannons and the element of surprise is right out- but what is a good rule of thumb?

[Orcus Blackweath...]

one advantage of shadowrun, is comparison of dice pools.

If you need to find out if a task is too easy or tough, compare the player's dice pool for that task with the opposing dice pool.

Player agility 4 firearms 4 smartlink (+2) dicepool of 10 if you are encountering this player with elite security with a dice pool of 10, it will be very close. You can adjust the difficulty by giving the enemies a karma pool. So if it looks like the players are walking all over your guards, give them some rerolls. Equipment is another comparison if the players are carrying tasers and heavy pistols, and the security have assault rifles, things might get out of hand in a hurry.

Combat is not the only factor of course. If the players are trying to sneak in rather than fighting you can compare int + perc of the guards vs agility+ infiltration of the players. Again if they are close, the players will have a hard time. If the guards are using radar and hordes of drones, and the players are in street clothes, this will also give a big advantage to the NPCs.

[rob]

I recommend going light on the first couple encounters. When I get a tabletop group together, I normally run some variation of the food fight scenario, usually with a different pretext and slightly different gangsters. I use this a s a simple way of assessing the players and their characters. If the players are getting handled, the gangers can just leave with the money; if the players are overwhelming, well, there's always another car that can arrive.

I also recommend pointing out the following to the players:
1. Trauma patches can be activated by wireless signal from your biomonitor.
2. It's fine to run away.
3. You are almost always in a city, so the environment in which you're fighting provides a lot of options (up to and including calling the cops).

[Paul]

but what is a good rule of thumb?

Obviously you're mileage will vary but I say look to television shows and movies for pacing options, and generally speaking your opposition can fall into a few broad categories:

• Way Underpowered-5 on one still won't help these guys. (Pedestrians, cripples, blind dogs.)
• Under powered-two or three on one odds is what they need to face the PC's. (Average gangbanger, teenage security guard, drunken or otherwise drugged up professionals.
• Equals or just about-one on one is all they need. (Security Guards, Police Officers, your average military grunt with out fire support.)
• Better than average: One of these guys is a serious problem for a few members of the team, but with the right planning they can be brought down a peg or two. (Mega Corporate Security, SWAT, FBI, etc...)
• Cream of the Crop: Anyone of these guys is a challenge for the whole team. (Elite security team members, Delta Force, Navy SEAL's, Prime Runners)

Obviously you can add more steps in between and obviously some people will argue-but find what works for you, tweak it and use it.

[Zen Shooter01]

As has been mentioned, comparing dice pools is a useful gauge.

Another is initiative passes. If the PCs have 10 passes among them, and the opposition has 15, the opposition has the advantage.

Third, trial and error. Aim low for the opposition's power the first few encounters.

Magic is a major issue. The side that has it will dominate the side that doesn't, all other things being equal.

Lastly, if the PCs are getting ground up, fudge things in their favor. Say the opposition had 1 net hit when they had 3 - that kind of thing.

[kzt]

You can't directly compare dice pools. The fact that you have a pool of 15 and they have a pool of 8 doesn't mean that can take two of them. You can probably take at least 4 of them, if you are clever. But numbers always count. Enough enemies will eventually kill anyone, as they will eventually get a good enough roll no matter what they are armed with.

Acting first is critical. The guy with the pool of 15 dice can probably drop two guys per action, as long as he's shooting first at them. If all 4 of the opponents are lying in wait and shoot first he'll likely get shot to pieces. If he runs into the open and shoots two of them, the other two get to shoot back, and with 8 dice they have a pretty good chance of hitting him. If he manipulates the fight so he engages them one or two at a time he can rack up a heck of a toll without taking much if any damage.

[Whipstitch]

I recommend going light on the first couple encounters.

Keeping the initial opposition fairly light on most runs is probably a pretty accurate depiction of how the shadowrun world works anyway. Most milk runs are probably pretty uneventful... unless the team does something silly. Rent-A-Cops are nothing compared to a good Street Samurai and aren't really well-equipped to deal with magical threats, but that doesn't mean you want to loiter around a facility looting everything that isn't nailed down. After all, the local corporate heavy response team probably won't be in a very understanding mood if they have to miss the Urban Brawl match and drive halfway across the 'plex just to put a stop to the team's li'l adventure.

[Kagetenshi]

Another good idea for keeping characters alive while you build up a sense of how the game works is, in combination with the other ideas here, also setting up situations where opposition is unlikely to pursue if the team retreats; if the characters can break off to lick their wounds, moderate errors in threat estimation can be made up for.

This means, incidentally, not setting up an expected policy of "the Johnson will have you all killed if the run fails".

~J

[Whipstitch]

3. You are almost always in a city, so the environment in which you're fighting provides a lot of options (up to and including calling the cops).

This and the point Kagetenshi just made about being able to retreat are both very good ones. Things like getting out of corp territory and keeping a DocWagon contract can be a real life saver. Hell, one time I purposely clipped my CrashCart wristband while fleeing the facility so that they'd come rolling in heavy the second we got out despite the fact that none of us were actually hurt yet. A few bribes smoothed that one over easily enough, and it was really only a tiny fib anyway. Another minute or two and we would have gone from healthy to needing resuscitation services. Now, granted, this kind of idea depends on the players being smart and doesn't really help you avoid making things too harsh to begin with. But that's why you should consider giving the runners an unofficial "Common Sense" Quality when first starting out. Your PCs will likely have some neat knowledge skills like Corporate Security Procedures and stuff like that, so you should feel free to go ahead and give them an idea now and again if the character would reasonably know something that the player doesn't seem to be considering.

[Traul]

Start low, and if you feel your players are getting bored, bring in reinforcements. That's the way it should work anyway. The random Lone star or security patrol that busts them should not pose much of a threat, but they can call their friends if they are given the time.

[ethandrul]

I appriciate the tips! thanks! now, how do i do matrix runs without everyone eelse taking a nap...

[cndblank]

Make it sound worse than it is and escalate slowly.

This lets you fine tune it and gives the players the chance to run for it if needed.



The runners have ran in to some security guards and the alarm has gone off.

They can hear other guards headed this way.

Start with 2 or 3 guards and then add more if needed.

Maybe an extra guard was taking a leak or had stopped for a smoke.

If they are plowing through then he can show up the next turn or so.

If they are having problems then the extra guard ran off or was never there.


Are the reinforcements 2 combat turns (6 seconds) away or 10 (30 seconds)?

Do they arrive all together or in groups of two and three?

[Iduno]

In a game where you can easily be killed with one or two shots, getting into fights is probably not a great Plan A. Infiltration, using the local security system to track security, or fast-talking can avoid fights.

When a fight does start (and it will), lowering your enemies' dicepools is helpful. Vision modifiers, cover, or shooting first are good methods. High armor, body, and reflexes can help in normal combat. High willpower and a mage with counterspelling can help against magic threats.

[Kagetenshi]

I appriciate the tips! thanks! now, how do i do matrix runs without everyone eelse taking a nap...

Learn how to work in parallel. This works best if you can get the decker to be mostly self-guided; if they know the rolls they need to make, they can just check in with you whenever your input is absolutely needed, like the decker rolling Search until they get five gross successes and only then breaking in to have the GM roll the system response to see how many net successes they end up with. Sometimes you need to rewind time a little (in the previous example, IC could get triggered making the rest of the rolls never have happened), but it increases the size of the blocks of time you can devote to managing what the other players are doing.

My descriptions are all SR3, but the details aren't important; translate as necessary.

Edit: though a post below claims the rules to simply be a morass; the same was said about SR3 where it wasn't true (not an unmanageable one, at least), but if it is true for SR4 this might not be able to help.

~J

[kzt]

I appriciate the tips! thanks! now, how do i do matrix runs without everyone eelse taking a nap...

Fake it, the rules are a morass. Use an NPC hacker for serious stuff, for light stuff just assume that on a good roll with skills they do it, on a bad roll they don't.

[cndblank]

Fake it, the rules are a morass. Use an NPC hacker for serious stuff, for light stuff just assume that on a good roll with skills they do it, on a bad roll they don't.

I'll second that.

Works good if you have a Combat Hacker/Rigger to go in to off line sites and you let the NPC Hacker handle the regular stuff.

[ShadowPavement]

For matrix stuff AR is your friend. I find that I don't need to use many of the hacking rules in SR4. I have a crib sheet for the one that you really need that I found on the boards here somewhere. It keeps things smooth and on par with the sammies and mages.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2ymnmf2zymt/SR4_matrix basics.pdf://http://www.mediafire.com/file/2ymnm...trix basics.pdf

[Red-ROM]

I like to under power the opposition, but then arm them with some surprises. gangers with hold out pistols and bolt action rifles, but they also have some homemade nausea grenades, or their leader has a knack for throwing lightning bolts. It's usually not too life threatening, but the "Oh sh!T" Factor freaks the team out.

[Blade]

I don't scale the oppositions. I try to scale the runs (I won't send them inside a zero zone or inside the insects metaplane) because most of the time the Johnson will scale the team to the run, but I don't scale the opposition. The PC get what they would "realistically" get and if they are are killed they just die (or burn Edge/use HoG).

It's harsh, but I've warned my players about it. Because of this, the difficult combat situations are far more tense since the players know I won't try to save them. They also don't say "If the GM put them, we can beat them!"

[Apathy]

Thought #1: Security in Corp buildings would tend to start with non-lethal weapons and weapons that minimize collateral damage. They don't want to accidentally shoot the researcher who's working late and took a wrong turn on the way to the snack room. They don't want bullets which are aimed at runners to go through walls and destroy the prototype in the next room, or destroy the genius researcher who designed said prototype. Lastly, they can't interrogate dead runners. So the default weapon for guards would be nightstick, gel rounds, or stick-n-shock. They'll only escalate to something harder in desperate situations. This means in many cases even if the runners get wiped out they're just captured, take a hit to their rep, and are now forced to work for the corp that caught them for a while.

Thought #2: SR is not an elite world, but it's relentlessly hostile and it will eventually grind you down. Almost no one the runners encounter will be anywhere near their skill. But over the course of a run if they encounter enough accidents, ambushes and skirmishes (none of which individually score more than a box or two of damage) they'll eventually start taking minor damage which adds up to significant dice pool modifiers and makes the grande finale harder than it otherwise would be.

[Saint Sithney]

I don't scale the oppositions. I try to scale the runs (I won't send them inside a zero zone or inside the insects metaplane) because most of the time the Johnson will scale the team to the run, but I don't scale the opposition. The PC get what they would "realistically" get and if they are are killed they just die (or burn Edge/use HoG).

It's harsh, but I've warned my players about it. Because of this, the difficult combat situations are far more tense since the players know I won't try to save them. They also don't say "If the GM put them, we can beat them!"

Good advice for GMs, but not the most pertinent to a 1st timer.

But, yeah, nothing quite beats a run that takes near a full session of legwork just to prep up and dissect the competition.

[Ascalaphus]

It isn't hard to justify making runs doable. Corporations pay attention to security return on "investment". They multiply the costs of a succesful burglary/thing against the odds of it happening; spending much more than that on it would cause the company to "lose money" on security by driving up operational costs too much.

Exceptional threats, such as extraction of a top researcher, deserve more security. But a corporation can't afford to protect everything valuable, and shadowrunners are more powerful than "ordinary" criminals. So there will be easy opportunities for runners, as well as "SOTA attacks" against hard targets.

Corporate (and government) security tends to work along three lines of defense:

Deterrence
Putting up a fence, posting guards etcetera will not only stop some criminals who try to break in, as well as persuade far more criminals not to try. Shadowrunners tend to be good at dealing with this, as it's generally the most expensive security type to perfect (so many things to secure), and usually ha vulnerabilities.

Response
On-call security that responds to alarms to back up local security. Most elite corporate units fit here, but so does Lone Star when it responds to a distress call. Runners can be in trouble if they take too long on a run, because when these guys arrive they might be better than the runners. On a perfect run, the PCs don't meet them.
Since you don't need elite teams everywhere all the time, just a couple on standby, this is relatively affordable. It'll work against criminals who just got lucky, and might work against PCs.

Follow-up & Recovery
Forensics to figure out what happened, what was taken, by whom. Corporations will only take "revenge" if it serves their purposes, such as getting stolen goods back, making sure no competitor profits from them, or discouraging people from doing this again. This takes longer, but leaving traces can hurt runners in the long run.
This kind of security can be very affordable; RFID tags and suchlike make tracking theft easier. Lots of cameras, biometrics and data mining (gait analysis from the facility compared to market research in shopping malls). There's a big chance the corp will figure out who nailed them.
However, taking revenge isn't always worth it; the runners might be protected, in a different jurisdiction etc. Extradition is an option though, or grabbing them the next time they step on Corp soil.
Another thing the attacked corp might do is track to runners to find out who the Johnson was. If the PCs lead them there, it'll be bad for their reputation as "deniable" assets...



Well, there you have some ways of challenging people without neccessarily threating to kill them.

[Traul]

Follow-up & Recovery
Forensics to figure out what happened, what was taken, by whom. Corporations will only take "revenge" if it serves their purposes, such as getting stolen goods back, making sure no competitor profits from them, or discouraging people from doing this again. This takes longer, but leaving traces can hurt runners in the long run.
This kind of security can be very affordable; RFID tags and suchlike make tracking theft easier. Lots of cameras, biometrics and data mining (gait analysis from the facility compared to market research in shopping malls). There's a big chance the corp will figure out who nailed them.
However, taking revenge isn't always worth it; the runners might be protected, in a different jurisdiction etc. Extradition is an option though, or grabbing them the next time they step on Corp soil.
Another thing the attacked corp might do is track to runners to find out who the Johnson was. If the PCs lead them there, it'll be bad for their reputation as "deniable" assets...

This is also subject to cost analysis. The corp has to pit the investigation cost against the benefit of getting the runners, and those are generally low.

Recovering the loot? Unless the investigators are really fast, they will come too late.

Getting the Johnson? A good Johnson will have led the runners on a false trail so the vengeful corp can get nothing useful from them. This is a prisonner's dilemma for the runners: their individual interest is to know as much as possible on the Johnson to prevent being crossed, but their collective interest as a profession is to know as little as possible to deter investigations.

Making an example? That's the big one. Releasing the hounds on one runner team might deter others to attack the corp. It depends on the circumstances: sometimes the corp does not want to brag about being attacked in their safest bunker or to risk an information leak about that top-secret or highly illegal project that got stolen. It also depends on the corp psychology: how much do they believe in this dissuasion? I think there is something about that in Corporate Download, with Renraku and Aztechnology being noted as the most unforgiving bastards.

[Kagetenshi]

Some excellent advice that I dug up for another thread: run a test fight.

Tactics and decision-making are sufficiently important that this still won't give you a perfect idea of how combat will go down (in particular, making slightly better or worse use of cover or moderately better or worse use of combat pool can create big changes in the outcome), but it should suffice to give you a feel for combat.

~J

[nezumi]

In my experience, if you think the opposition is too easy, the PCs will stumble and it'll become too hard. If the opposition is too hard, the PCs will come at it in a completely unexpected direction and completely overcome it.

Otherwise, just follow all of Kage's advice (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)