Giving the massive kill-machine a job Options

[wind_in_the_ston...]

If a company just suffered a high casaulty act of terrorism, they'd want to show the rest of their employees that they're doing something about it, to bolster morale and seem competent.

This. It's all about image. At this point, the Shadowrunners are probably easier targets than the ones who hired them. "We're going after the ones who shot up your comrades!" Take out a few runners, and "whew, I'm glad they caught those guys! I can get back to work now."

Besides, while we prefer that corps go after the real perps, sometimes, they go after the pawns. The OP needs a reason to justify it, so there's one. Are there others? Hmm, to torture them for info on who sent them? That could make a good story in itself.

[Whipstitch]

I don't really buy into that explanation much. For one thing, why should the corps have to go kill the runners for employee morale? They're really going to go hunt someone down and produce the bodies so Joe Security and Mr. Middle Management can sleep better at night? They'd be better off you know, actually improving security, or at least providing the illusion that they have done so. If you have pissed off someone powerful enough that they want to make it their pet project to kill your team because that's just the sort of person they are, I can buy into that for the sake of a campaign, I guess. But the whole reason corporations hire shadow runners in the first place is because running around shooting people in the face to get your way doesn't really look good in the public eye. People generally want normality, not street justice. That's why Mitsuhama's Zero Zone policy is the exception and not the rule. Such measures are really only worth taking if you want to be feared-- it's more about deterrence and making sure that you don't lose people in the first place than anything.

[Eratosthenes]

I don't really buy into that explanation much. For one thing, why should the corps have to go kill the runners for employee morale? They're really going to go hunt someone down and produce the bodies so Joe Security and Mr. Middle Management can sleep better at night?

Do you honestly think that if a group of armed men shot up a local mall, or factory, in your neighborhood, that the general populace would be fine if the police just said, "You know what, we're not going to try to find out who did it. We're going to just beef up security at the mall."

How long before people were storming town hall in protest? How would you feel about your feckless police force?

Change mall for laboratory, and police for corp-sec. People want to know that those who are responsible for their safety are being proactive in ensuring said safety. Now, minor incidents can be swept under the rug, but a high body count act of terrorism, not so much.

[CeeJay]

Do you honestly think that if a group of armed men shot up a local mall, or factory, in your neighborhood, that the general populace would be fine if the police just said, "You know what, we're not going to try to find out who did it. We're going to just beef up security at the mall."

"Oh, of course, here at CorpSec we will try to identify and capture the terrorists. This is our highest priority right now. Investigation are already under way and we have some promising leads already. In the meantime, let us introduce you to our new security concept, so that such a desaster won't happen ever again"
...
Two months later...
"No, we are still at it. Right now, we are waiting for legal cooperation with the local police forces.."
...
Half a year later
"Unfortunately, to our best knowledge the terrorists were sponsored by our competitor EVIL Corp and have gone into hiding. Right now our legal department is examining the chances for filing a lawsuit against EVIL Corp. We will keep you informed about it."

-CJ

[Smokeskin]

There is no universal solution here.

On the downside, revenge operations have a cost.

On the upside, revenge operations are an effective deterrence. You have to balance the cost of a revenge operation with the future savings in terms of less shadowruns against you in the future. If you never retaliate, you risk shadowrunners considering runs against you risk free as long as they get away, and therefore they'll be willing to do it very cheaply (not just because of they won't demand risk premiums, but also because operations are much simpler if you don't have to worry about leaving behind evidence or having your identity revealed).

The game theory logic is somewhat similar to states negotiating with terrorist hostage takers. Sure, you might think that meeting the hostages are easily worth their demands - but if you give in, then you have changed the incentive structure - even rational players will now attempt it against you, while previously it was only the deluded.

[Kagetenshi]

But the important thing is that the value of revenge ops doesn't hinge on the body count the original incident created. The PR thing is a smokescreen; producing bodies is easy if you don't need them to be the right bodies, and with corp loyalty being the way it's described in canon you may not even need to actually produce bodies, just claim that they've been produced.

~J

[Triggvi]

When you have one dimensional character, challenge him not with combat but with other choices. He is great at kicking in doors and killing everything in sight, but what does he do when the pick pockets that stole is comlink are a group of street kids around 12 yrs old? He is forced to deal with them in a not combat way or really have a bad rep. Shadowrun is about the grey between the light and darker grey.

I have a combat monster that has no social skills. part of the background. He stumbles into having the sister of the mark take a liking to him. she is all of like 16. Now he is in position of have to learn seduction(con) on the fly. Kind of a cerino moment with other people helping him. That is quite a challenge for me and not just the character. Now he has bought tutor-soft and is going to be paying karma to get Con(specialty:seduction). (he is an adept so no skillwires)

My point is that challenge is not always combat. It is making them think outside the box.

[Mongoose]

I don't see why combat capable characters so often get labled problems. A good combat-focused character can, if managed well, be like a good hacker. Nobody else in the group needs to put much effort into being good at combat (or even knowing the combat rules) because the combat specialist handles it for them.

[Eratosthenes]

I don't see why combat capable characters so often get labled problems. A good combat-focused character can, if managed well, be like a good hacker. Nobody else in the group needs to put much effort into being good at combat (or even knowing the combat rules) because the combat specialist handles it for them.

I don't see any problem with combat-focused characters, for the very reasons you listed. I think the problem really lies in one-dimensional characters, in general. One trick ponies, regardless of what their trick is, are really the problem. That hacker-adept who's really good at hacking, but can't do anything else...is going to be bored on runs that don't involve hacking.

I think the special problem with combat-monsters is that there are fewer types of runs where combat is needed and/or useful, while hacking can be useful for many types of runs (at least as legwork, if nothing else).

[Kagetenshi]

I'm not familiar with how SR4 Initiative makes things work, but with SR3, leaving the combat to the combat tank doesn't work so well. One person only gets one action, during which they can only kill two clusters of enemies (and that only if they're willing to be tossing AoE, which is usually either loud (grenades) or painful (fooball)), in which to prevent the opposition from acting.

~J

[Ascalaphus]

I'm not familiar with how SR4 Initiative makes things work, but with SR3, leaving the combat to the combat tank doesn't work so well. One person only gets one action, during which they can only kill two clusters of enemies (and that only if they're willing to be tossing AoE, which is usually either loud (grenades) or painful (fooball)), in which to prevent the opposition from acting.

~J

Roughly the same. It's generally not a good idea to leave all the fighting to one guy.

[Whipstitch]

Do you honestly think that if a group of armed men shot up a local mall, or factory, in your neighborhood, that the general populace would be fine if the police just said, "You know what, we're not going to try to find out who did it. We're going to just beef up security at the mall."

You're misrepresenting the situation by leaving out an obvious fact: The corps are not the police (although, admittedly, some police are corps). They are the law on their own territory, but extraterritoriality does not imply that they can go send out their security teams to bust down doors willy nilly in search of shadowrunners and then tell their employees about it without massive piles of red tape. The corps guard their own asses but investigations and punitive actions are both logically and by fluff implied to typically be the job of the police and government contracted national security services like the Star. And often times the corps don't want anyone to know why they were hit by runners, so how quick they are to volunteer with evidence once the runner team is gone is debatable. So the situation goes like this: The corp gets hit, some security people die, and then the community blames the cops when nobody gets caught while the corp clucks about the tragedy of it all. Dodging responsibility for these kinds of things is pretty much what corps do in Shadowrun. That whole song and dance is why it's worth it to hire deniable assets in the first place.

So while the Star may not like getting blamed, the setting more or less requires them to take it on the chin and not look too hard at their client's mess sometimes-- which is fine because they're well-compensated for it. The security agencies in Shadowrun got where they are today by being in bed with everyone. So, yeah, Knight Errant may look into killing sprees harder, but not necessarily as hard as you might think, particularly if the trail might say, lead to a Johnson who turns out to have been working for Ares, at which point the extraterritoriality, blind eyes and bullshit comes out in full force again anyway. A few dead wageslaves is no good reason to rock the boat.

[Smokeskin]

I don't see why combat capable characters so often get labled problems.

From what I hear people say, it seems to often be a GM problem. If the GM isn't willing to escalate the confrontation, combat characters can overpower pretty much everything.

[Whipstitch]

Sometimes being too quick to escalate is an issue as well. An awful lot of the time I get the impression that the combat monster only gunned down that helicopter and hogged the scene because the GM felt it was necessary to introduce a chopper in the first place. Heavy response is fine if the gun bunny really is running around killing everyone in sight, but I've been surprised at times by how quickly GMs break out the big guns just because the Adept Bruce Lee'd someone's ass as part of the team's plan. There's worse things in the world than a fight being somewhat anti-climactic if everything else about the run went smooth and people are working fast. I tend to build my combat characters pretty powerful myself, but that's mostly intended as insurance against the disfavor of the dice gods rather than a burning desire to bypass a Citymaster's armor in play.

[Mongoose]

From what I hear people say, it seems to often be a GM problem. If the GM isn't willing to escalate the confrontation, combat characters can overpower pretty much everything.

Not the things that can't (or shouldn't) be resolved via non-combat methods.
Does the GM have to escalate the difficulty of social situations because the group takes in a social adept face who tosses 30 dice at negotiation / con tests?

Often times, escalation is what PRODUCES combat monsters. A player introduces a character that can handle the games threats so the party can get through adventures... the GM escalates... somebody introduces an even MORE badass character...

(Yeah, I know a combat monster can't win solo, but they can go a long way towards getting everybody through a fight if they protect folks by using held actions to intervene when somebody else is about to get shot, if they take point, etc.)

[Mongoose]

damn easy to double post here...

[Wandering One]

Part of the issue, offhand, is most characters, in one way or another, expect to be part of combat. Just about every archtype is theoretically involved in combat, somehow, even the hackers. Noone expects to be helping the hacker in the 'trix, the mage on his astral recon, or the pornomancer conning the doorman. But everyone expects to be in the combat, at least somewhat. It's the 'exciting' part!

Success or fail on the mission because the doorman kicked you out on your ass? Oh well, sigh, what's the next run?
Matrix boy's in the net and... comes back bleeding from his ears and the cameras are working. Aw shucks. Mage invis us, troll, carry the bleeding gimp, please.

Oh crap we're caught and fighting our way out?! Cue geek adrenal gland. Oh... nevermind, combat-superboy is here. My character goes to the corner and naps. We'll be out shortly. (That's without escalation)

It's a tension point for all players, one that's generally accepted to be multi-participant, not multi-PC-target. This is why the combat-monster is usually dreaded, because either everyone else in the group has to keep up to be participatory, or overly specialize and niche themselves into a hole.

I've still always found the best way for this character's participation is instead of making the group dread him, get them to be happy he was there when THEY went wrong/fouled up and they ran for cover behind him, but that requires your combat monster to be willing to not feel the need to randomly stir up trouble for no good reason and to lean back with his hands behind his head against the outside of the van for the entire run, LMG stuffed under a blanket nearby in the open door, smokin' a nikstick and watchin' the ladies stroll past.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

I don't see why combat capable characters so often get labeled problems. A good combat-focused character can, if managed well, be like a good hacker. Nobody else in the group needs to put much effort into being good at combat (or even knowing the combat rules) because the combat specialist handles it for them.

Not in my world. Unlike the matrix, the rest of the team can't just stay out of combat. And when you escalate the threat to try to take down the combat monsters, the rest of the team dies first.

[Kagetenshi]

Again, though, the question that raises is why are you escalating the threat to try to take down the combat monster?

~J

[tagz]

This is precisely why I suggest that you don't escalate for an individual, you escalate for the capabilities of the team as a whole.

If there is only one hacker in the group, then matrix escalation is simple, base it off that one hacker. If combat includes everyone except the hacker, then you should be basing the threat level off the average of all the players involved. Yeah, that one combat monster might skew it a bit, but it shouldn't become too difficult for the others involved.

[Mongoose]

Part of the issue, offhand, is most characters, in one way or another, expect to be part of combat. Just about every archtype is theoretically involved in combat, somehow, even the hackers. Noone expects to be helping the hacker in the 'trix, the mage on his astral recon, or the pornomancer conning the doorman. But everyone expects to be in the combat, at least somewhat. It's the 'exciting' part!

<snip>

I've still always found the best way for this character's participation is instead of making the group dread him, get them to be happy he was there when THEY went wrong/fouled up and they ran for cover behind him, but that requires your combat monster to be willing to not feel the need to randomly stir up trouble for no good reason and to lean back with his hands behind his head against the outside of the van for the entire run, LMG stuffed under a blanket nearby in the open door, smokin' a nikstick and watchin' the ladies stroll past.

Fair enough, and that's pretty much what I meant by "properly played". A good combat monkey doesn't start trouble, he finishes it. Just like a good face doesn't go making himself (and the group) memorable by conning money from the guards, and a good hacker doesn't crash every ARow he sees while sneaking through a target's building.

Honestly, the funnest times I had playing a combat character was wen I was (relatively) safe doing overwatch on other folks, but was close enough to move in if needed. The epic fights are fun and all, but just being able to help things keep running smoothly despite fecal ventilation interactions is more rewarding (for me). Planning things is the funner part of the game, and seeing plans go pear shaped solely due to lack of firepower sucks. (And no, "firepower" is not itself a plan.)

[Triggvi]

the problem with one dimensional characters is that they are usually min/maxed to the hilt. In there tinny little box they are gods, outside of the box they are pretty anemic. You get them out of there box and keep them there. Before you know it the character is un-min/maxed because he has spent his karma to better himself in non combat ways.

[Whipstitch]

Part of the issue, offhand, is most characters, in one way or another, expect to be part of combat.

Yeah, you have to consider that being accurate about perceived threats is often a lot less important than avoiding bad consequences at all costs when it comes to life and death stakes. Take prey animals like deer or rabbits as an example. If you want to judge a rabbit's decision making by holding false positives against them, then the only conclusion you can come to is that such animals are wrong more often than they are right about whether things around them are threats. But for such animals fleeing at little provocation is still a better strategy than trying to avoid more false positives-- being too bold can very well get them killed immediately. And combat, obviously, is a situation where it's often a matter of life and death, so a lot of player paranoia about sheeting can come into play. A Face might be able to back down at the bargaining table if he can't get everyone to see things his way, but when it comes to drawing guns you're usually either good enough to win or you're dead, and players may chargen accordingly.

[toturi]

the problem with one dimensional characters is that they are usually min/maxed to the hilt. In there tinny little box they are gods, outside of the box they are pretty anemic. You get them out of there box and keep them there. Before you know it the character is un-min/maxed because he has spent his karma to better himself in non combat ways.

One dimensional characters are maxed to the hilt, the mins are glaring. A properly min-maxed character is god in a box and puts up a good fight outside of it.

[Smokeskin]

Often times, escalation is what PRODUCES combat monsters. A player introduces a character that can handle the games threats so the party can get through adventures... the GM escalates... somebody introduces an even MORE badass character...

That wasn't what I meant. What I meant was that when the streets resound with automatic fire and people die, security and police responses are fast and violent. When the first responders also bites the dust, you're looking at the dispatcher screaming "GET EVERYONE" over the radio. I don't care how good the combat monster, he can't avoid, escape or fight his way out of several SWAT teams hunting him, a few dozen patrol cars, helicopters, drones, spirits, mages. At that point, your chances of getting away are almost zero.

Bottom line is, open all-and-out combat doesn't unless you're out in the middle of nowhere where a response is hours away, or unless you dissappear ASAP. So if the combat monster starts playing Rambo, the mission is hosed. If the team was already compromised and this is to get away, or it is even the exfil plan, that's perfect. But during the majority of the mission, it is going to be about social, matrix, technical and stealth skills - and your occasional covert kill usually happens under circumstances where any moderately combat-capable character can pull it off.

I totally agree with those above who said that the main problem with combat monsters are that they're one-dimensional - that doesn't lead them to dominating the campaign, rather the opposite.