Trolls, how do you balance their abilities out? Options

[The_Dood]

The troll race, with a racial body increase of +5 eclipses a human's natural body. With players choosing the troll for their combat types because of it's naturally how body, how do you balance the troll so that the other players aren't dying in combat when the troll is staging deadly wounds to light?

[Shockwave_IIc]

mana bolt.

[Adarael]

Dikoted weapons.
Spells.
Extra Explosive rounds sprayed out at full auto.
Being hit by very large vehicles (at LEAST car sized).
Adepts with killing hands S or D, and improved unarmed combat out the yang.
Snipers.
Poison.
And, at least once, a greataxe in the hands of a nordic berzerker adept.


Trolls have stats. Trolls are animate objects. Ergo, I can think of a reason and a means to kill any troll PC I've yet seen. They're a lot harder, sure, but that's why god gave us the word 'devious.'

[Siege]

Trolls are nasty pieces of work on the battlefield.

They tend to get screwed everywhere else.

Which, as you've pointed out, tends to be a power-balance problem. We could, of course, arbitrarily raise the damage of weapons against trolls (sorry, 3rd edition initative dig) but the simple fact remains that anything fatal to combat troll is going to annihilation to anything else. You can start giving gangers EX ammo and Ares Alpha combat guns, but the power escalation just gets obscene fast.

That being the case, trolls and augmented samurai just tend to run amok over the battlefield. The smart players hide behind the tanks until the shooting stops.

-Siege

[mfb]

yeah. i mean, that's sorta like complaining that "i've got a player who plays a dekcer, and he's just walking all over these computer systems i made!" trolls eat damage for breakfast. that's their place in life. they way you 'balance' that is, everybody shoots the mage first--and the troll second.

[blakkie]

I've found in the past that player overconfidence and stupidity nicely balance out Trolls. Besides, somebody has to soak up all those fireworks or you would be left with two options:
1) take away the opponents' weapons
OR
2) spend every second session starting up new characters

Even the weeniest of gangers can kill mere humans/drawfs/elfs with a couple good rolls going their way (say they get surprise for some odd reason), and there is only so much karma to burn.

[The_Dood]

Employing the necessary force to wound a troll causes two things to happen
1. Every one hides behind the troll, waiting for combat to resolve it's self. If someone gets caught outside the trolls area of protection, they get geeked by excessive force.

2. The troll becomes even more one-dimensional. Only devoted to combat, the player requires combat to take place in order to see his character being effectual.


Now, number 1 isn't so bad but after a while I can see it getting real old and in turn creating a world where everyone carries heavy ordinance just in case a troll jumps them.

Number 2 exposes the other PCs to risk, especially the other non-troll combat types who deserve the spotlight. I just don't see how it is possible to balance a party combat-wise if they include a single troll.

[mfb]

-put trolls in the opposition; if the meatshield is slugging it out with another meatshield, the rest of the team will have the chance to do their thing

-use drones; same reasoning

-field more bad guys, with the 'extras' ganging up on the troll

-use illusion spells on the troll; take advantage of his low Int

-use spirits on the troll; powers like Confusion can take him out of the fight

[WolfJack]

Weeelll.....

The smartass in me wants to say....
That's why your job, as the GM, is so hard. It's up to you to balance everything out and make the game fun for everyone.

The nice part of me wants to say....
Stunbolt at D.
Really easy to stage up into Physical and it just rocks.

You can take you pick of the answer that suits you best.

-Wolf

[blakkie]

What kind of Combat Pool do Trolls have, in your experience? I find that to be a bit of an evening out factor. Sure Combat Pool only gets you so far since it runs out over the Turn, but it is only there to buy your non-Combat time for that one sprint to cover that saves them.

Once again, personally i find it is the Troll/Orcs that end up in the hospital or morgue.

P.S. Trolls are low on the list of reasons to carry heavy ordinance, well behind Cyberzombies, Red Sammis, armoured vehicles, and blast doors.

[Shadow]

Balance? The trolls already balanced if you play him outside of combat. Sure hes a monster in battle, and can do 21S with his dikoted cyber spurs. But can he fast talk the guard? Can he manipulate the simplest computer system? Fit inside a phone boot? Can he walk down the street without the man hassling him? Hell no.

A troll isn't just another metahuman, he is a presence, Have you ever stood next to someone who is 8 feet tall (a small troll). There frigging huge. Treat a troll like the giant he is and the game will more than balance out.

[ShadowGhost]

EX ammo ....100¥

Smartlink-2.... -2 to TNs

BF capable shotgun

called shot to the head, bypassing armor...

Priceless.

Even with a body of 18 or so, a troll is going to have a hard time rolling off 4-6 successes on an average shotgun using EX ammo and burst fire (13D) with only a helmet to reduce damage.

Hand-to-hand combat? Outnumber him by 4-1 to increase his target numbers by +4, and use weapons with reach to negate his.

While he's busy defending himself, anyone with a rifle can pop called shots at him and quickly chop him down to size.

IPE Grenades can really ruin a trolls day, (16M stun or 15S Physical).

Shoulder launched LAW (avail 6) will put a nice dent in a troll.

Trolls aren't that indestructible.

[gknoy]

[TheScamp]

As Shadow said, the real balancer for trolls isn't a game stat, or escalation of game lethality with funky ammo or supermegahyper corp ninjas. It's the simple day to day difficulties that come with being 10 feet tall in a world made for people half that height. It's the general public who is, at best, uncomfortable being around the monstrosity who has fists bigger than their head. It's the landlords who won't rent out to you, the shop whose door you can't even fit through, the clothes you can't find to fit.

[RedmondLarry]

This is a great question. It isn't just for Trolls, its also for when some characters have much higher karma pool than others. Or when you have two Combat-Oriented samurai on the team but everyone else dies easily in combat. What is challenging for one character may be instantly lethal for the other.

Part of the answer is that the Troll initially attracts fire from all sides, and thus runs out of combat pool earlier in the Combat Turn than others do. Opponents also use their Karma Pool in attacks against the Troll that they might not do against a mere human.

Opponents concentrate fire on the character that appears most threatening.

Opponents use more Combat Pool and more Karma Pool on the most threatening character.

With these intelligent actions on the part of the opponents, weaker characters have more time to take cover. Yes, a weaker character will still get plastered occasionally, but he did choose to make or run that character.

If the first burst bounces off the Troll, opponents switch to autofire and do 6, 7, or 8 round autofire bursts. They can switch back to burst fire when they are done with the troll.

And finally, a point others might disagree with, opponents should use GM knowledge to make combat have the right level of challenge.

[Nikoli]

Heh, I faced this problem the last time I ran a game. One of my players (also room-mate) played a combat troll named tank, and he was. dermal sheathing and max body, with decent armor. I pretty much could not hurt him with guns.

Then it hit me, and I had my inspiration.
I made an orc phys ad, legally specced out the stats one or two below his (the npc group was a bunch of retired runners, so around 200 karma)
He one-punched the troll when he made a stupid move.

Silly bugger forgot that to do deal damage in melee, you gotta get more successes than your opponent. Imagine his surprise when he dives at someone in close quarters and gets punched in the nose. In the air, he got no chance for a dodge test (this ain't Sega after all) and did not do well on his initial unarmed check. The orc however with around an 8 or 9 unarmed combat and an equally heinous combat pool, knowing it's take this guy out or suffer it's wrath drops all karma and all skill into the test. Stagged the damage to well above deadly (we weren't using the rule for increasing power when going over deadly) the troll barely managed to stage the serious physical (from a single stun based punch) to a deadly stun wound. (called shot to bypass armor can suck mightally) The otehr troll, who was a combat mage immidiately surrendered seeing Tank one punched out cold and was very co-operative to them.

Thing is, the player bitched at the NPC, so I showed him the stats and walked him through the logic, he grokked fine.

[BitBasher]

[Shadow]

I am resisting the urge to get pissed (angry, not drunk).

Trolls are good at combat, it is what they do. It is what players live for if they are a troll. Why do you want to take that away form them?

Do you have plans to reduce the deckers effectiveness? Do you stay up at night working on ways to undermined the dwarf rigger? Do you slap your hands in glee at how you can screw with the elven mage? No, why?

This is like a MMORPG. Where everyones complains cause thae warrior is better in combat than all the other classes. Well of course he is, it's all he does.

Instead of trying to one-punch the troll (which I admit was cool) every time you go into combat, why not let the player have fun? Some of us enjoy Shadowrun for the combat *gasp*. So we make combat oriented characters. The balance comes when there isn't combat we have to make ourselves useful. That should be the true goal: find a way to work with your player so that when the bullets arn't flying, he can have a use.

Otherwise, when the drek hits the fan, let him hit back.

[Glyph]

Yeah, there's a fine line between finding ways to challenge a character, and singling a character out for abuse. Trolls and spellslingers aren't really unbalancing. They are more effective in melee, but also attract more of the enemy's attention. The decker cowering behind a car and occasionally plinking with his light pistol may be less effective, but he won't be targetted as much, either. It balances itself.

Now, on the flip side, a good GM should be thinking of ways that he can mess up the decker, the dwarven rigger, and the elf mage. :vegm:

...but his motivation should be to make the game challenging enough to be fun, NOT to spitefully punish characters just because they are effective at their roles.

[Zazen]

I balance trolls by forcing them to take Priority C for race. Harsh, I know, but that's just the kind of game I run.

[Diesel]

Ooh, not as bad as me. I subtract shit from their INT and QUI while I'm at it.

And sometimes people are racist at them. :D

Seriously though, the gangs had that missile for a while, and Trolly McTrollerson looks like a prime target, unless someone comes rolling up in an Abrams at the same time. Then your game sucks.

[CardboardArmor]

Every troll or, in some cases, orks need to have an anti-vehicle missile weapon shot at them at least once in their lives. I mean, it's like a rite of passage, almost.

And a good test to see if that 18 modified Body of yours really is worth the nuyen you paid.

[Abrojus]

[El_Machinae]

I find the priority system tougher on Trolls than the point system, but I also learned that in lower point games (100), the points spent on "troll-up" could really be used elsewhere. However, in higher point games, it doesn't really matter.

[theartthief]

nit: I assume that you are talking about SR2 with the requirement to take priority "C" as race for trolls 'cause troll / elf is priority "C" in SR3.

- theartthief