The seventh session.., A lot of work for nothing. Options

[Yerameyahu]

Metagaming NPCs… who help the PCs through existential apathy? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[AppliedCheese]

Out of question, just how much money is being paid to our unopposed slaughtering friends? Because, you know, if Kaz/Dae could afford them for a bit of flashy blackmail work, I'm thinking that Kaz can afford quite a bit more to have them killed by the very best.

And, right now, good old Goldman has full visual and AR logs of the entire crew. And, quite likely, now that he has been dragged to a warehouse, only not to go in, presented with a weird I'm lone star and I'm here to help situation, and then goes home...he has probably called somebody. Anybody really. Cops, Yak, whoever.

Assuming the Rings, like any good organization, have sources, and assuming Kaz will actually use those sources...indeed, may even incentivize them with large payments due...Goldman's logs are now Kaz's logs, second hand. In fairness, if the players have a fixer who will still touch them (loyalty 4/5+?) they should get a little warning that Goldman talked or questions were being asked, lots of them, and he heard the cops were on to something.

But it doesn't change the fact that Kaz is going to put 2 and 2 together here. His crew shows up to do what was paid for. Great. Then they clearly try to rip off Dae (because hey, Goldman knows he didn't go in, and 100k just came out), then she ends up dead. A quick favor at docwagon shows she died, well, just about the time the runners were there.

And you can bet Kaz has probably paid for whatever footage of the area there is too.

While mile away sniper to the face is considered in poor taste, having their next meet include "low armor, low weapons" clause, and then bushwhacking them with an escapable ambush by a very good team would be acceptable. It should be the sort of thing where maybe a player or two dies, and others are running out with large chunks o boxes blacked out.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Except the world shouldn't care wether you use karmagen, BPgen, pure handwavium, or anywhere in between to make up an NPC. It's wether or not that NPC does what you want it to that counts. They're a story aids, actors, not math problems.

Suspension of disbelief breaks down when NPCs break the rules. It's a consistent game world or none at all. That's my opinion at least. I just don't care if NPCs just level with me like in a computer game.

Out of question, just how much money is being paid to our unopposed slaughtering friends? Because, you know, if Kaz/Dae could afford them for a bit of flashy blackmail work, I'm thinking that Kaz can afford quite a bit more to have them killed by the very best.

And, right now, good old Goldman has full visual and AR logs of the entire crew. And, quite likely, now that he has been dragged to a warehouse, only not to go in, presented with a weird I'm lone star and I'm here to help situation, and then goes home...he has probably called somebody. Anybody really. Cops, Yak, whoever.

Assuming the Rings, like any good organization, have sources, and assuming Kaz will actually use those sources...indeed, may even incentivize them with large payments due...Goldman's logs are now Kaz's logs, second hand. In fairness, if the players have a fixer who will still touch them (loyalty 4/5+?) they should get a little warning that Goldman talked or questions were being asked, lots of them, and he heard the cops were on to something.

But it doesn't change the fact that Kaz is going to put 2 and 2 together here. His crew shows up to do what was paid for. Great. Then they clearly try to rip off Dae (because hey, Goldman knows he didn't go in, and 100k just came out), then she ends up dead. A quick favor at docwagon shows she died, well, just about the time the runners were there.

And you can bet Kaz has probably paid for whatever footage of the area there is too.

While mile away sniper to the face is considered in poor taste, having their next meet include "low armor, low weapons" clause, and then bushwhacking them with an escapable ambush by a very good team would be acceptable. It should be the sort of thing where maybe a player or two dies, and others are running out with large chunks o boxes blacked out.

Good suggestions, but how much FUN are they? No consequences is stupid. Bad consequences is stupider still.

The entire point is to teach the PLAYERS a lesson, which means give them slim odds, not unbeatable odds. The players are having fun, or at least seem to, but they lack a challenge.

And let's face it, whenever a J requests "low armour/low weapons" in any non super-secure environment, you absolutely don't show up with low armour/weapons. You bring out the cavalry and do broad sweeps of the area to nail the bastards lying in waiting before the meet. If it's an AA/AAA environment you just decrease heavy weapons and put on the stealthy armour, and do the dirty of calling the star once trouble starts.

[Dr.Rockso]

I was thinking something along the lines of making punishment unavoidable(i.e kidnap Zod, cut off a limb or two and then make the team go rescue him. Have Zod attempt to escape so he doesnt get bored)

Don't want to do that? Remember, Kaz is a major player in a fairly powerful gang. The OP doesn't necessarily have to hurt the players themselves. They have houses that can burn down. Family members that can be kidnapped. Kaz may decide an eye for an eye and start knocking off people close to the team.

I'm not suggesting the characters are murdered out right, but they have certainly gotten away with far too much with far too little consequences. This time they have gone too far and the consequences should be swift and severe. OP, I'm curious: What does their fixer think now that they've knocked off someone HE put them in contact with.

[Mardrax]

Suspension of disbelief breaks down when NPCs break the rules. It's a consistent game world or none at all. That's my opinion at least. I just don't care if NPCs just level with me like in a computer game.

It's not about levelling with you though. A ganger will be a ganger. If you stat him out to have reasonable ganger-stats (like those the Grunts chapter in SR4A provides), provide him with gear that is in sync with the (monetary) means his gang has, and roleplay him like a ganger should be, he'll be a believable ganger, and able to fulfill any narrative function this ganger might have in your mind as a GM. And no sane player will ever ask you about how much karma he spent to get to where he is.
The same goes for Mr Johnson. If he's done high-stakes negotiation meetings for the past decade, and you give him attributes representative of that, and the gear he'd have been able to afford with all this dealmongering, he'll be a believable Johnson. The same applies to a Ghost or Red Samurai.

Keeping a consistent game world means NPCs should look, act, feel like they are who they're supposed to be. Players interact with these impressions, so judge them by them. If an arbitrary character generation system tells you you can't make them look like something when you should, players will far sooner lose that suspension when they don't find what they expect, than when you tell them you skimped on Availability limits, or gave the NPC far more karma than you'd expect.

[Neraph]

From an NPC point of view, they are useless: if the NPC ever loses his device, it's because a PC loots it from his body, so why should he still care? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

You can still have a biometric lock or an anti-theft area bomb, if for nothing else then for vindictiveness.

[Mardrax]

You can still have a biometric lock or an anti-theft area bomb, if for nothing else then for vindictiveness.

Not to mention minimising loot value, and discourage looting in general.

[Yerameyahu]

And the NPCs aren't the ones deciding if their gear has RFIDs and taggants in it, etc. That'd be the corps. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[hyphz]

Just pointing out that if something is not specifically stated in a printed adventure does not mean you should just ignore a potentially glaring error.

Oh sure. It just meant I was having to think on my feet, and I'm not quite used to the setting yet.

Which means that Zod gets to have his cake and eat it too. Unfair to the other players, and reinforces all the negative issues you are having. He is being rewarded for making a one trick pony.

That's a kind of tricky one. The thing is, we have an occasional fifth player who only shows up from time to time and always wants someone else to minmax his character for him, so what Zod's player actually do was to remake that character on the grounds that the original character - Mr. Happy Punch - wasn't proving to be very good.

Entirely up to the GM, but when the setting is described as a dystopic future I guess my experiences in 3rd world countries color my vision. It ain't paranoia it is just having a healthy dose of self preservation. The fluff does support this.

Well, this is another kind of contradictory matter with the setting. Yes, the setting is dystopic and the fluff supports paranoia, but on the other hand the place si packed with bars and clubs. So the same people who are scared to pass by strangers in the street are happy to go hang out with them in a public place. Indeed, the fact that a place like the Cathode Glow can exist without everyone there getting mugged on the way home every night suggests that the social scene in Shadowrun Seattle is actually _better_ than that IRL.

He may have aced it, but I have a question about whether or not you made use of the Social Modifiers table. Once again I have to ask if the Social Modifiers table was used, and well using it on him might have steeled him against going with the Face. Essentially the player in this instance does not choose when to roll you do.

I didn't use the table explicitly, but I just went and checked it. The problem with most of the tables is that the modifiers are so piddling compared to the difference between the relatively low pool sizes of NPCs and the massive idiot savant pools that specialized PCs can have. What this _does_ confirm is that there's no penalty for Faceman not having a badge or any evidence - the table does state that having evidence gives a bonus, rather than not having it giving a penalty.

Seeing in AR requires an Image Link, which just about everyone has in one form or another.

Yes, but hardly anyone has a Sim Module which is required to generate the images. In some cases they are obviously meant to. I mean, this is something that winds me up: the obviously broken stats sheets for all the characters. I mean, let's take a look at the cast of the first Ghost Cartels arc, in terms of AR and errors:

Kaz: Broken AR rig (no sim module).
Dae: Commlink only, no AR.
Chikao: Broken AR rig (no sim module). Carries Shotgun with no ability to use it. Description states he may use "a submachine gun", but no skill.
Chulsoon: Functional AR/VR rig.
Caine: No Commlink. Carries SMG with no ability to use it.
Alec Littletree: Commlink improperly specified. Broken AR rig (no sim module). IP 2 for no apparent reason.
Xa Firebird: Broken AR rig (no sim module). Police infiltrator with no Con skill. (Guess he just hopes no-one ever asks if he's a cop.)
Ragers Gang: No commlinks at all. Carry Shotguns with no ability to use them.
Hand Banger: Commlink only, image link but no gloves.
Stand Over Men: Commlink only, no AR.
Ju Kon: Commlink only, no AR.
Yakuza soldiers: Commlink and gloves, no sim module or vision link. Carry Assault Rifles and SMG with no ability to use them. Useless Long Arms skill.
Morukai Shinomi: Broken AR rig (no sim module).
FBI ERT members: Commlinks improperly specified. No AR capacity or DNI, so presumably to talk to each other on an op they have to ring each other old-style.
FBI ERT sniper: As above. Has nonexistant skill "Sniper".
DocWagon Site Personnel: Commlink only. Vision link but no gloves. Have option to have Automatics skill but cannot carry any automatic weapon.
DocWagon Chief: Commlnk only. Vision link but no gloves.
DocWagon Spider: Functional AR/VR rig. Carries pistol with no ability to use it.
DocWagon Shaman: No commlink at all. Pistols skill lists no rating.

I mean, does anyone edit this stuff? But, even allowing for all the broken rigs and assuming they're supposed to be working, the majority of "normal" people (ie, not feature characters) do not have AR.

[Traul]

It's not about levelling with you though. A ganger will be a ganger. If you stat him out to have reasonable ganger-stats (like those the Grunts chapter in SR4A provides), provide him with gear that is in sync with the (monetary) means his gang has, and roleplay him like a ganger should be, he'll be a believable ganger, and able to fulfill any narrative function this ganger might have in your mind as a GM. And no sane player will ever ask you about how much karma he spent to get to where he is.

With a bemol on gear: even gangers get lucky sometimes, and nothing says "stay sharp even against punks" like a dumpster-mounted machine gun.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Yes, but hardly anyone has a Sim Module which is required to generate the images. In some cases they are obviously meant to. I mean, this is something that winds me up: the obviously broken stats sheets for all the characters. I mean, let's take a look at the cast of the first Ghost Cartels arc, in terms of AR and errors:

Kaz: Broken AR rig (no sim module).
Dae: Commlink only, no AR.
Chikao: Broken AR rig (no sim module). Carries Shotgun with no ability to use it. Description states he may use "a submachine gun", but no skill.
Chulsoon: Functional AR/VR rig.
Caine: No Commlink. Carries SMG with no ability to use it.
Alec Littletree: Commlink improperly specified. Broken AR rig (no sim module). IP 2 for no apparent reason.
Xa Firebird: Broken AR rig (no sim module). Police infiltrator with no Con skill. (Guess he just hopes no-one ever asks if he's a cop.)
Ragers Gang: No commlinks at all. Carry Shotguns with no ability to use them.
Hand Banger: Commlink only, image link but no gloves.
Stand Over Men: Commlink only, no AR.
Ju Kon: Commlink only, no AR.
Yakuza soldiers: Commlink and gloves, no sim module or vision link. Carry Assault Rifles and SMG with no ability to use them. Useless Long Arms skill.
Morukai Shinomi: Broken AR rig (no sim module).
FBI ERT members: Commlinks improperly specified. No AR capacity or DNI, so presumably to talk to each other on an op they have to ring each other old-style.
FBI ERT sniper: As above. Has nonexistant skill "Sniper".
DocWagon Site Personnel: Commlink only. Vision link but no gloves. Have option to have Automatics skill but cannot carry any automatic weapon.
DocWagon Chief: Commlnk only. Vision link but no gloves.
DocWagon Spider: Functional AR/VR rig. Carries pistol with no ability to use it.
DocWagon Shaman: No commlink at all. Pistols skill lists no rating.

I mean, does anyone edit this stuff? But, even allowing for all the broken rigs and assuming they're supposed to be working, the majority of "normal" people (ie, not feature characters) do not have AR.

This is hilarious. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rollin.gif)

(As an aside, you don't NEED AR gloves. They are just a gimmick, and a fairly useless one at that.)

[Neraph]

Yes, but hardly anyone has a Sim Module which is required to generate the images.

Wait, what? Sim modules are for experiencing VR - only a commlink and image link are required to see it. The AR gloves are only needed to interact with it.

[Yerameyahu]

Well, not 'VR' exactly, but 'simsense', which can include AR. (AR can be simsense, and it can *not*.) Sim module is simply assumed, all commlinks should have one built in (the book is 'confused', yes). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) The things you're citing are typos; treat them accordingly. Gloves are indeed unimportant.

*Everyone* has AR. "Commlinks are the universal Matrix access device, used by everyone to be online all-the time, control all of their electronics, access their ID and accounts, and enhance their experiences with augmented and virtual reality."

[Mardrax]

I didn't use the table explicitly, but I just went and checked it. The problem with most of the tables is that the modifiers are so piddling compared to the difference between the relatively low pool sizes of NPCs and the massive idiot savant pools that specialized PCs can have. What this _does_ confirm is that there's no penalty for Faceman not having a badge or any evidence - the table does state that having evidence gives a bonus, rather than not having it giving a penalty.

Ahum. How does being prejudiced for a -2 sound as a penalty for a lack of evidence? A Star officer without a badge? That can't be right.
Or even another +2 for the defender on top, because he just knows an officer can't do anything from his office without showing off an ID first? Possibly for having the real Star on speed dial?

AR is any form of sensation overlaying/interacting with reality. Looking at the McAzzie's sign, you might get:
1) A friendly female voice inviting you to visit the establishment. And offering to give directions
2) The offers and specials of the day, overlayed in crisp visual in the air beside the pole
3) The smell of freshly baked soyburger-with-flavorants filling up your nostrils as the sweet taste of soft drinks floods your tastebuds for the shortest while.
4) The warmth of a warm, dry restaurant heating your skin
5) The feel of each separate burger as you select them from the menu
And all of this is AR.
The methods for perceiving this AR tend to be different for all of them though. For sight and sound you'll need glasses and headphones with Image/Soundlink. For smell you'll need the cyber-nose, for touch, you'll need the feedback-clothing. However, a sim module and a way to access it through DNI will grant you all of this and more though. It's the modern way, but not the only one. And a lot of people will stick to the old ways of interfacing through fear of DNI, or simple monetary constraints.

[Yerameyahu]

This is the RAW: "The gamemaster should evaluate each situation and apply modifiers as he feels appropriate. The Social Modifiers Table (p. 131) provides some examples."

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

It's not about levelling with you though. A ganger will be a ganger. If you stat him out to have reasonable ganger-stats (like those the Grunts chapter in SR4A provides), provide him with gear that is in sync with the (monetary) means his gang has, and roleplay him like a ganger should be, he'll be a believable ganger, and able to fulfill any narrative function this ganger might have in your mind as a GM. And no sane player will ever ask you about how much karma he spent to get to where he is.
The same goes for Mr Johnson. If he's done high-stakes negotiation meetings for the past decade, and you give him attributes representative of that, and the gear he'd have been able to afford with all this dealmongering, he'll be a believable Johnson. The same applies to a Ghost or Red Samurai.

Keeping a consistent game world means NPCs should look, act, feel like they are who they're supposed to be. Players interact with these impressions, so judge them by them. If an arbitrary character generation system tells you you can't make them look like something when you should, players will far sooner lose that suspension when they don't find what they expect, than when you tell them you skimped on Availability limits, or gave the NPC far more karma than you'd expect.

The trouble with this is clearly that in order to be elite in places the PCs often come drastically short in others, even well below average. And that's when suspension of disbelief breaks down, because you can't make a runner "believable" with BP-gen, unless you are satisfied with mediocrity. And by that I mean rolling 12 or less dice in KEY areas. I don't think runners NEED 25 dice to shoot, but they should roll 16-18 when grunts are rolling 8-12. At least mine do, maybe I'm already playing an inflated game. AVERAGE Joe 3+3 with a smartgun rolls 8, so that is the absolute baseline. Corpsec or cartel grunts get 4 + 3-4 + spec + smart in my games. And they still want reasonable other skills, even though they are never rolled at all. Unarmed, Perception, Stealth, etiquette, etc. What they don't get is tons of cash, because that's just really improbable, so they NEED those points from BPs alone. Of course these guys are not PR 1-2 idiots, they are PR 3-4, above average and with training.
In comparison, you can't make a character with mostly 3s, a few 4s and some mediocre gear/cyber, because once you factor in a few believable skills, you're over the cap! So you end up with one 6, a few 1s, and the skills you want, and then add on hyper-min-maxed cyber/gear to stay competitive or broaden out. Or maybe I just suck really badly at BPgen.

Seriously, try to build a "believable" ganger with BP-gen, and see that you'll end up with well over 400BP. To me it seems this edition the designers wanted PCs to play the zero-sum game, but then this is SR, where runners HAVE to be good, if not better, at some things, and still not suck at everything else.

However, with karmagen, these gangers/corpsec suddenly end up with using 300 karma or less. (On OLD attribute costs, just like the PCs in my group.)

[Stalag]

These are all good points that are perhaps easy to make with enough time on a message board, but I know a lot of people who won't be able to invent all that on the fly at the table, especially with no idea that this sort of thing might come up. As I said, I don't know the module at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by "enough time on a message board." I almost never use modules and when I do it's just for ideas and pre-gen'd thugs. The majority of my runs have very minimal planning and the run itself and NPC interactions are always ad-libbed. I don't consider myself any sort of "super GM" but I figure if I can makes stuff up on the fly and, with a little thought, figure out how a given NPC would react to the players then most anyone who should call themselves a GM should be able to also. GMing SR isn't for everyone and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone who has never GM'd before. Perhaps since he places so much emphasis on going by exactly what's in the book and allowing die rolls to solve everything he should start with something a bit more basic.

Scrap the caps, post char-gen, solves everything...

but it doesn't say that in the book! j/k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

No, reroll all the chars with Karma-gen, instant balance!

Not in the slightest - that makes it even easier to make that super elite specialist with not much (RAW based) room for advancement... it just leaves him a few points left over to maybe not be totally useless everywhere else.

If NPCs are by default better in your game and don't follow the rules, then remind me never to join one of your games. That attitude is utter crap.

That's not what I said at all. I said FastJack was a prime runner and, as such, can benefit from certain rule bending or breaking to help move the story along. If you want to let your players kill or out-hack your prime runner then that's fine, if you want to have him always be one step ahead of the players then run him that way. When it comes down to a final showdown, he'd of course be played straight but challenging. It's about the story, not the strict mechanics of it all. Your regular NPC's will all generally follow the rules since they are more like props and generally don't need the benefit of special treatment to keep the story alive.

I do, however, see a little contradiction in your statements that characters should be able to ignore caps post char-gen but NPC's have to "follow the rules"

Karmagen, Karmagen... how often do I have to repeat myself? I could chant this all day. BP-buy practically forces you to do this, the only redeeming point is free knowledge skills.

Well given that this is still the same response to the first time you said it just once would have been enough to make your feelings clear on it. I don't disagree that Karmagen is preferable that's what I use.. though I think the free metatype far outweighs the "no free knowledge skill" penalty.

Look, I've recently tried to roll up some LOW-powered opposition for my runners in my own campaign, and even an idiot corporate grunt who is no more than fodder came out with like 450-500BP! Because the NUMBERS are SO EXPENSIVE you can only build valid characters if you min-max like crazy.

So don't point build them. If you're familiar with the SR world and you know how powerful your characters are, just make them suitable to wherever they're supposed to be and enough of a challenge to make the mission fun.

Actually, the campaign doesn't seem so fucked to me. It's just the BOOK-campaign that is fucked, which means it's about time the GM realizes that he should throw out the book!

That's what I've been saying but your other statements in this post seem pretty contrary to that argument

And yet people are VERY EASILY cheated! All the time. Because we can't multitask and diverting our attention usually works, even against suspicious people. That's what good con-artists do: avert all self-defence mechanisms of anyone not trained to avoid these tactics. So basically a good con roll stands. Of course he should have used modifiers.

Being gullible enough to send a Nigerian Prince $500 to get a part of some lump money transfer is one thing. Not letting some random stranger in your house, much less believing this blatantly BS reason to be there, is totally different. If you want to let the dice decide this one you'd skip having the player come up with some weak story (since he'd never be as clever as the Face) and just roll - however, I'd also break this down into several rolls (once to get in, once to convince the husband it's okay, and another to convince the husband to come along for a ride) each with modifiers depending on appropriate conditions (the primary of which would be how the runner is dressed and what part of town the victims live in).

[Yerameyahu]

On the other hand, a runner doesn't particularly need to be shooting much better than your corpsec (12). A runner is a package of skills, contacts, and flexible morals, not a one man army or anything. Being a 'very good' shot is perfectly fine for most roles; being an *incredible* shot is a very specific character.

[Mardrax]

And even the sam can get away with sub-15 dicepools, as long as he's carrying the armament to make up for it. Long wide burst tends to say "I hit".

[Stalag]

Let me just repeat here: lowering starting BP will more often increase the problem of hyperspecialising, than decrease it. A 300 BP build will not even be able to buy all Attributes up to 3, as this takes 160 BP, passing the 150 BP Attribute limit. It'll generally result in characters that are as specialised in one thing as they can afford, while being complete retards at everything else.

Which I grant is ridiculous, I believe characters should really start at their metatypes "average" and work from there. Having to spend your first chunk of points simply not being an invalid is simply a waste of the players time and really encourages the "I'm a mage so I'll leave my strength at 1 so I can squeeze a few extra BP/Karma out of it." type of stat-monkey's who aren't usually "characters" at all.

If you want balanced characters, with some more depth to them than Mr Shoots-Ants-A-Mile-Away, use karmagen. And possibly provide free knowledge skills and/or contacts as desired.

And when reviewing the character inform the player that he's too specialized and will probably be spending a lot of time with nothing to do


Social skills are not mind control.
Also, as has been said, make sure you apply the modifiers from the Social Modifiers table. (SR4A pg 131) They tend to stack up things in the defender's favour quite rapidly.

A failed surprise roll and a short burst or two go a long way toward making Zod bullet fodder himself for the lowliest of gangers. This is a game of glass cannons. It's not about how much damage you can deal. It's about how much you can deal before going down yourself, and wether or not that's enough to clear the opposition. And in the case of a lone gunman, that's not a whole lot. Since I doubt his Perception is high enough to match his dakka-dealing capability, he's likely to be surprised. And surprise is lethal.

Totally agree - if your characters are over-specialized find their weakness and press it to show them why over-specializing wasn't necessarily the best kind of character to bring

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

The trouble with this is clearly that in order to be elite in places the PCs often come drastically short in others, even well below average. And that's when suspension of disbelief breaks down, because you can't make a runner "believable" with BP-gen, unless you are satisfied with mediocrity. And by that I mean rolling 12 or less dice in KEY areas. I don't think runners NEED 25 dice to shoot, but they should roll 16-18 when grunts are rolling 8-12. At least mine do, maybe I'm already playing an inflated game. AVERAGE Joe 3+3 with a smartgun rolls 8, so that is the absolute baseline. Corpsec or cartel grunts get 4 + 3-4 + spec + smart in my games. And they still want reasonable other skills, even though they are never rolled at all. Unarmed, Perception, Stealth, etiquette, etc. What they don't get is tons of cash, because that's just really improbable, so they NEED those points from BPs alone. Of course these guys are not PR 1-2 idiots, they are PR 3-4, above average and with training.
In comparison, you can't make a character with mostly 3s, a few 4s and some mediocre gear/cyber, because once you factor in a few believable skills, you're over the cap! So you end up with one 6, a few 1s, and the skills you want, and then add on hyper-min-maxed cyber/gear to stay competitive or broaden out. Or maybe I just suck really badly at BPgen.

Seriously, try to build a "believable" ganger with BP-gen, and see that you'll end up with well over 400BP. To me it seems this edition the designers wanted PCs to play the zero-sum game, but then this is SR, where runners HAVE to be good, if not better, at some things, and still not suck at everything else.

However, with karmagen, these gangers/corpsec suddenly end up with using 300 karma or less. (On OLD attribute costs, just like the PCs in my group.)

Wow... Really?
12 Dice is NOT Mediocrity. Where do you get that impression from?
Average Joe is 3/3 in your game? He has a Professional Rating with Firearms? Really? Wow. That is your problem right there. Average Joe is likely 3/0 or 3/1 at most. Average Joe does not have professional levels in combat skills. Corp Sec, with 4/4+ Spec and Smartlink is Vetreran Corpsec, who have been around the block a few times. They likely have all the skills you listed, but not at 6. Likely not even above a 3.

I built a believable Ganger with 300 BP, and he is quite good at what he does, with no need for rampant min-maxing. He has 19 Skills and 3 Languages. He has a total of 36 Karma Earned. Two Skills at 4, and One At 5. He is quite believable (His Skill 4 is in Artisan: Customizing Bikes, A Pistols Skill at 4 (Raised with KArma), and a Pilot Skill he finally managed to raise to a 5), and he has several skills in Auto Mechanics (Active and Knowledge) to support that). 300 BP, not "Well over" 400, as you claim. You have to be happy with the Dice pools. His Driving Dice Pool is pretty good (Above 14 with bonuses from the vehicle). Everything else is 11 DP or Lower (Specialties abound). He had a real shot at going big (and legit) in the Combat Biker Leagues, before he was arrested and thrown in Prison.

I will say it again. The game world assumes a certain level. If you choose to play above that level, you will have issues. Elite does not require that you have 20 Dice...

[Critias]

Just a quick aside (as it may not have been the policy all along, or the policy for the adventures in question, or whatever), but current Missions writers are told not to list a commlink if it's not central to the character. To save page space and word count, cut down on equipment list clutter, that sort of thing, we only list the commlink if it's pretty central to the character; a hacker, a corp executive that's in the adventure 'cause they have some MacGuffin files, stuff like that.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

That's not what I said at all. I said FastJack was a prime runner and, as such, can benefit from certain rule bending or breaking to help move the story along. If you want to let your players kill or out-hack your prime runner then that's fine, if you want to have him always be one step ahead of the players then run him that way. When it comes down to a final showdown, he'd of course be played straight but challenging. It's about the story, not the strict mechanics of it all. Your regular NPC's will all generally follow the rules since they are more like props and generally don't need the benefit of special treatment to keep the story alive.

If YOU are writing the story for the players, then you've already lost that fight. Well...

My opinion remains: I at least want to be able to generate opposition based on the same rules. That means that either EVERYONE breaks the limit of 6 on skills, or NOONE does. Face it, 50% of Fastjack's powers should be contacts, not ridiculous DPs. Software+skill+whatever bonuses you can muster is simply the limit to that, and every available bonus to a prime runner should be in generally available books, too, with the exception of maybe 1-2 dice worth of extra special custom gear. Really not more than that.

I will say it again. The game world assumes a certain level. If you choose to play above that level, you will have issues. Elite does not require that you have 20 Dice...

But I would say about three dice above the rest.

I was talking about 3 attribute/3 skill professionals as being average for their line of work. And smartlinks SHOULD be so common by now I give them to everyone.

[Mardrax]

And the same goes for everything, really. If it makes sense for the character to have something, add it in. Ubiquitous gear shouldn't be listed, or Catalyst can start printing books on bible paper.

[Mardrax]

If YOU are writing the story for the players, then you've already lost that fight. Well...

My opinion remains: I at least want to be able to generate opposition based on the same rules. That means that either EVERYONE breaks the limit of 6 on skills, or NOONE does. Face it, 50% of Fastjack's powers should be contacts, not ridiculous DPs. Software+skill+whatever bonuses you can muster is simply the limit to that, and every available bonus to a prime runner should be in generally available books, too, with the exception of maybe 1-2 dice worth of extra special custom gear. Really not more than that.

Of course. But if you find yourself having to break those limitations to make for a character that can stay ahead of the PCs game, either you are doing something wrong, or you're suffering from a game that's hyper-inflated.
Like TJ just said, a dice pool of 12-14 does not mean you're avearge. It means you're the best you can possibly be without augmentation.