Is SR4(A) more lethal at the beginning than SR3, or am i doing something wrong? Options

[Dhuul]

Hi Everyone!

I have enjoyed reading this Forum for a long time and now decided to take part actively as my group of SR3 veterans now started playing SR4A and some questions start to come up in the process of learning the game. The name of this post is also the first question i wish do ask. The situations when this question came up occurred in our first two sessions:

1) two PCs (two physads) fought three gangers (the templates from the corebook) and had quiet some trouble at first but managed to come out having taken only a few boxes of stun damage.

2) I put four PCs (a Hacker, a Street-Sam, a mage and a Face/Physad) up against four devil rats. The outcome of this was that the PCs took some boxes of stun damage in a fight that lastet 3 or 4 combat turns.

3) shortly after 2) the same group encountered a lightly altered corporate security grunt from the templates and force 6 fire spirit ordered to protect the grunt. If i had not shown mercy (or rather seen my own stupidity of throwing the spirit at the players) all the PCs would have died because the mage was knocked out cold by the spirit from the astral when he was sustaining a spell while perceiving normally (even though he knew a mage should be around as they encountered a magical barrier before). After that, i used the spirits forces to protect the other NPC (leaving the NPC-mage i had also planned for that encounter at home) and i would have killed all the PCs if i hadn't played the spirit in a way that the players were able to kill him easily then.

The thing is, that with starting characters from SR3 all those encounters would have turned out clearly in favor of the PCs, but apparently not in SR4.
The starting characters seem much weaker, not even able to defeat some devil rats. I am re-re-re-reading the rules to see if we did something wrong, but i can't find any grave mistake done concerning rolls. I realise now that a force 6 fire spirit seems to strong an opposition for starting characters, even though the PC-mage was able to conjure those quiet easily.

Even though i understand now, that starting characters should now be pitted against to heavy an opposition, yet a few devil rats should not pose a threat, should they? Are there any more traps i can fall into, beeing used to SR3? I don't want to kill my PCs because of my ignorance of some changes in game mechanics.
Is this increased lethality maintained throughout the game or does it "wear off" as the players gain karma and are able to improve on the characters?

thanks ahead for your answers,
Dhuul

PS: I am sure that this is a repost of a topic discussed often, yet i couldn't find anything related in this forum (mostly because the search told me, that my searched words were to short). I am sorry if i start my appearance in this forum by repeated an "age-old" question, but i would like to see your opinion on this topic.

PPS: I am sorry, if this post is somewhat chaotic an badly articulated. English is not my native language (i am from Germany) and i haven't written anything in English for a long time and i am only just warming up again.

[Badmoodguy88]

maybe the PC's are not very optimized

[Angelone]

First, welcome to Dumpshock. Watch out for Drop Bears and elven ninjas. Your english is very good I had no trouble following what you were saying.

Now on to the topic, yes, 4A is very deadly. The game seems to have shifted to glass cannon characters. Alot of damage output, but not so good at soaking damage. Another thing to note is that characters start off more low powered than in 3rd ed. In 3rd ed the characters started out "elite" , in 4th ed the characters are just starting out, basically, they are tougher than the average person but a far cry from a starting 3rd ed character.

[Summerstorm]

Hm... can't really say if you did something wrong (or better: your PLAYERS *g*), but i myself found that SR4 is WAY nicer to the characters in general and is toned down in the "you lost initiative? BAM, you are dead"-department. The constant possibility of active dodge, very generous edge-rules, no difficulty spikes (TN-based) and of course the sweet "Hand of God"-rule making only a total party wipe a problem.

Also: Your mage perceived in astral? And then he got taken down by a spirit? Is he that bad? Just one spirit? No Stunball? No high banishing? No Astral combat for when it is too close?

Two physical adepts against three unaugmented gangers... got hit at all?

Sounds suspicious. Do you have some rolls, value, examples?

EDIT: Ah forgot something: The only thing which got more dangerous is magic and spirits, i guess. But your team had one mage too...

[Nifft]

the mage was knocked out cold by the spirit from the astral when he was sustaining a spell while perceiving normally (even though he knew a mage should be around as they encountered a magical barrier before).

If a mage isn't using Astral Perception, he cannot be targeted from the Astral plane.

Even though i understand now, that starting characters should now be pitted against to heavy an opposition, yet a few devil rats should not pose a threat, should they? Are there any more traps i can fall into, beeing used to SR3? I don't want to kill my PCs because of my ignorance of some changes in game mechanics.
Is this increased lethality maintained throughout the game or does it "wear off" as the players gain karma and are able to improve on the characters?

Could you post some of the PCs? In particular, their dice pools for combat related stuff, and what spells the mage took.

PS: Welcome to the forums!

[Saint Sithney]

Allow autofire to count towards breaking a spirits InTW. Problem solved.

[Ascalaphus]

1) two PCs (two physads) fought three gangers (the templates from the corebook) and had quite some trouble at first but managed to come out having taken only a few boxes of stun damage.

Normally, an adept should be able to handle this alone; adepts should have some form of IP enhancement, to-hit enhancement and damage enhancement, that together should kill 1+ enemy per IP.

2) I put four PCs (a Hacker, a Street-Sam, a mage and a Face/Physad) up against four devil rats. The outcome of this was that the PCs took some boxes of stun damage in a fight that lastet 3 or 4 combat turns.

Did the PCs cooperate effectively? Did they turn the many possible situational modifiers to their advantage by good tactics? Did they have multiple IPs?

3) shortly after 2) the same group encountered a lightly altered corporate security grunt from the templates and force 6 fire spirit ordered to protect the grunt. If i had not shown mercy (or rather seen my own stupidity of throwing the spirit at the players) all the PCs would have died because the mage was knocked out cold by the spirit from the astral when he was sustaining a spell while perceiving normally (even though he knew a mage should be around as they encountered a magical barrier before).

Unlike previous editions, if you're not perceiving the astral, you can't be affected from the astral. There is no "grounding" through foci or sustained spells anymore.

After that, i used the spirits forces to protect the other NPC (leaving the NPC-mage i had also planned for that encounter at home) and i would have killed all the PCs if i hadn't played the spirit in a way that the players were able to kill him easily then.

Spirits are seriously dangerous; Immunity to Normal Weapons is a very powerful ability. It does have a weakness against weapons that effectively penetrate armor however, so Stick-n-Shock ammo is quite effective (-50% AP).

PCs should prepare to face spirits and bring some sort of weapon in case the mage can't do it. Although in this case the mage should've been awake still.

The thing is, that with starting characters from SR3 all those encounters would have turned out clearly in favor of the PCs, but apparently not in SR4.
The starting characters seem much weaker, not even able to defeat some devil rats. I am re-re-re-reading the rules to see if we did something wrong, but i can't find any grave mistake done concerning rolls. I realise now that a force 6 fire spirit seems to strong an opposition for starting characters, even though the PC-mage was able to conjure those quiet easily.

Offense is more powerful in defense; spirits are an extreme example. Also, the sample characters from the core book are quite poorly built; many lack IP-boosting augmentations. You can't really afford to miss out on those.

Even though i understand now, that starting characters should now be pitted against to heavy an opposition, yet a few devil rats should not pose a threat, should they? Are there any more traps i can fall into, being used to SR3? I don't want to kill my PCs because of my ignorance of some changes in game mechanics.
Is this increased lethality maintained throughout the game or does it "wear off" as the players gain karma and are able to improve on the characters?

The increased lethality, known as the "glass cannon" effect, is persistent. It's not totally a bad thing; it makes tactics important. You can't just wade into the fray and see who has the most hit points; you need to use cover, set up ambushes and crossfires, deal with traps, scout scout scout and so forth.

Your players need to study the rules and gear too; in a while they should get a better grip on the mechanics, and combats will either be cat and mouse games of cover, or over quite quickly.

[Neurosis]

Now on to the topic, yes, 4A is very deadly. The game seems to have shifted to glass cannon characters. Alot of damage output, but not so good at soaking damage.

I personally did not view this as a change. Everyone in SR is a glass cannon, forever, except 1E (rubber orks with feather dusters).

Anyway, I would say that SR4 might be harder than SR3, but it definitely is LESS lethal...the reason for this is that DV (Power) has to exceed modified Armor in this in order to inflict Physical damage, which is fairly rare at least in my campaign.

That said, Devil Rats not in the 100s should be...totally ineffectual, forever. So I don't know what's going on withthat.

[CanRay]

My two cents: Guns kill. They maim. They hurt. A lot.

That's why they use them in combat. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

That said, Devil Rats not in the 100s should be...totally ineffectual, forever. So I don't know what's going on withthat.

I don't know, I can think of an idea where one would be useful.

It requires a mask made of a metal cage and a cigarette lighter, but still...

[Dhuul]

Thanks a lot for the quick answers everyone!

I'm afraid i don't have any of the characters here at the moment, but i will ask my players to email them to me so you can have a look at them if you wish.
They were comparable to the templates from the book, though and seemed reasonalby balanced and not totally uncapable to do their jobs.

But you're right, Ascalaphus, most of them said "Oh, extra IPs are waaaay important" and then seemed to have forgotten about this the next moment. I think the number of IPs were like this: Street-Sam: 3, Face/Physad: 2, Hacker and Mage: 1 (normal initiative, they had more on their respective planes).

Your already found the most important mistake we made: I didn't realise you were not allowed to attack someone from the astral plane if they are not at least perceiving on the astral. We thought it was still possible to attack a mage by grounding through his spell/foci as in SR3. This is an important thing to remember. If we had gotten this right, the third encounter would not have been that hard for the PCs.

I still can't get the rat-encouter out of my head, but i think this one was the players fault (primarily the hacker not telling the rest of the group that he had heard movement, leaving most of the group surprised during the first combat turn)

As i said i hope i can post some of the characters or parts of them here, so you can have a look, but this might take a while.

[Sengir]

I still can't get the rat-encouter out of my head, but i think this one was the players fault (primarily the hacker not telling the rest of the group that he had heard movement, leaving most of the group surprised during the first combat turn)

Surprise only affects the first IP, not the whole turn (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Mäx]

Waiting with intrest too see the charartecs stats, especially the samurai.
It shouldn't take more then 2 combat turns for him alone to take out 4 devil rats, with the rest of the team 1 compat turn should be enought.
Even if suprised and losing the first IP, the samurai still has 5IP.s in those 2 combat turns meaning he can shoot 10 times and 2 shots with almost any weapon should kill those rats.
Also i cant really understand how the rats managed to cause damage with their attack that has base damage of 1P -0AP, unless the characters where naked.

[Dhuul]

And another thing learned: "surprise only couts during first IP, not for whole combat turn", good to know that for the future!

This also basically took the samurais first three IPs, making him unable to partake in combat.

As the rats used concealement and the combat took place in an old bunker with little to no light, most of the characters had trouble even seeing them, thus beeing unable to attack them at first.

Combat went like this:
- the mage of the group was effectively the only one one-hitting the rats with his manabolts, but failing to summon a force 4 spirit, taking drain instead
- the street-sam rolling horribly and missing most of the time,
- the hacker not hitting anything
- and the face/physad whining and pissing his pants as he glitched on his composure roll (he had to take it because of his combat paralysis, when one of the rats attacked him from behind and the hacker missed him only by inches)

I was able to hurt the PCs because i tend to roll lousy when i am a player myself, but going "oh, all 5s and 6s" in this fight as a gm. This let me dodge most attacks, but let me do some damage instead.

I now realise i wont be able to post the two physads from the first encounter mentioned, as the players both lost or trashed them (this was some months ago, when we were only trying to get to grip with the new rules in a group of three)
But i will post the new group, as soon as the players email the characters to me.

Dhuul

[Paul Kauphart]

Well, I would expext a street sam to have some vision enhancement to negate visibility modifiers in those kind of situation, low light, thermographic or ultrasound.

[Mäx]

Pretty much all characters should have some way to see in the dark, Thermal vision is the most common i think,Dwarfs and Trolls have this naturally.(only -3 in even full darkness)
My personal favorite for this is combination of Eye light system and Low-light vision in cyber eyes, that combination has 0 penalty even in full darkness(up to 25m) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

[Doc Chase]

I don't know, I can think of an idea where one would be useful.

It requires a mask made of a metal cage and a cigarette lighter, but still...

Do it to Julia!