I entirely agree; even a 400 BP character has value in a team of (400 BP) + (X karma) + (Y nuyen) characters.

The more experienced PCs will typically have more useful options available at any given time, but the newbie is not automatically useless to the veterans, as in some other games.

Actually, the problem is that you can't. If you want to challenge very experienced characters, you generally need to throw someone "bigger" than them into the mix-- someone with higher stats, higher skills, more magic, and so on. Under the caps, you can't raise stats or skills; and raising magic costs so much as to stretch believeability (how much does it cost to have a Magic 10/Initiate 4 mage again? I lost track.)

Wrong. Sometimes a GM has to say: "This is what I orignally envisioned, but how do you think *we* should make it work?" You never have to hand down GM fiat if you've got "mature" players.

and you, in turn, are extrapolating the ease of killing characters as a general issue about how easy it is to challenge them all. killing characters is easy, for a GM--just make the opposition outclass them. i'm talking about making players sweat when their characters have to make a tough shot, or hack a good maglock in the middle of a firefight. note, i said i want them to sweat--not that i said i want it to be impossible. in SR4, the line between easy and impossible is pretty thin.

i have to disagree that SR4 does it 'better', having seen a 30-karma character and a thousand-plus-karma character participating in the same combat. maybe SR4 can do it as well, i dunno. but better? no.

Feel free to dispute my experience, but don't do so on a non-experience, wrong premise basis.

SR4, featuring Edge and hard Caps facilitates situations when playing characters from different experience levels.

The conclusion is a common misconception that lead to the absurd kind of NPC ratings given by Shadowrun Companion.

Challenge is about quantity and strategy.

Which, in turn, means you have to throw someone at them who has access to 7000 disposeable soldiers. Hmm, 7000 rating 1/1 contacts comes to a 14,000 point character, minimum, correct?

Wrong again! A mature GM might say: "This is the kind of game I'd like to run, and this is the kind of game I'd like to avoid, where can we meet in the middle?" Negotiation and discussion are key to mutual enjoyment. Also, a GM who isn't willing to stretch himself has got some issues-- if he only wants to run a single type of campaign, never deviating from formula, then he's got problems.

So far, you seem to think that a good GM can hammer away at will, toss "Love it or leave it" ultimatums at players, ignore their input, and need never try and improve his skills by attempting to run a game that goes slightly beyond what he's comfortable with. Is that what you're trying to say?

Sorry, I was responding to the first part of the sentence, not the second. I was saying that the caps make it difficult to challenge very experienced players.

Someone's got to be *behind* the quantity, and making up that strategy. That means that someone has got to be bigger than the characters in both resources and brainpower, as well as ability in at least one area. Behind an army of Joe Averages, you're not going to find another Joe Average-- you'll find a general with excellent strategic skills. But what happens if the players have equal strategic skills? They end up in a stalemate, unless you start favoring the NPC-- giving him higher stats, more and better gear, and so on.

Challenge has nothing to do with quantity. I've thrown thirty-plus opponents at teams, and had them mowed down. Strategy helps a lot, but the players can use strategy too, and then it just becomes an arms race to see who can come up with the best strategic trickery. Raw power, however, is always a good way to up the challenge.

Yep. Or a, um, I don't, know, corporation?

Not even close.

Easy != Good

Very experienced players with very experienced characters are always hard to challenge, as there are fewer and fewer equals remaining.
BTW, you did realize that caps only apply to mortals?

As you pointed out, teamwork test means that more brains equal more brainpower - quantity wins.

It certainly has, as being outnumbered is the biggest problem.

Not in my experience - the ones that went down fastest or failed to succeed in anything were 'bosses'.

Pretty much - the accidental ease. When they fail lethally, that usually means it was too much of a challenge.

Which will happen if the characters are neither living legends nor losers.
It is true that the thrill of gambling is reduced - if it is not enough for you, sad but not applicable to anyone.

You may disagree, but Caps and Edge make it more balanced.
Whether that qualifies as 'better' is a question of preference, indeed.

Really? Then why did you say: "sometimes a GM has to say "ok, this is the game I want to run. If we're playing a different game, that's cool, but I don't want to run it."" You're saying, in so many words, that if the players want something different, there's no obligation on a GM to try and find a middle ground-- it's "the game I want to run" or I won't run it at all. No deviations, no accomodations... it's "cool", but it's still a my-way-or-the-highway mentality.

Or what about: "yep, sometimes a GM has to say "this is how things work." That's true whether you have a group of gamers who are as mature as my grandma or as immature as my daughter." Why do you ever *have* to say it? Instead, you can easily say: "This is how I think things should work, but could you give me a believeable and balanced explaination that'll add fun to the game? Because if you do, I'll allow it, so we all can have fun."

Yeah, but if I constantly have to throw armies of immortal elves and great dragons at a team to challenge them, there's something seriously wrong. The same thing applies if I have to throw massive armies at them. A single clever bad guy, however, makes for an excellent foil for an entire team, and can be the basis for years and years of campaigns. The trick is, he has to have greater abilities than the players do-- the ability to attract more followers, greater magic, superior skill, and so on.

I've also discovered that the most exciting "bosses" are the ones who are just above the team in skill, but can go down to clever teamwork. In order for this to work, however, the opponent needs to be *better* than the individuals in the team. After a certain point, it's impossible to make them better without either handing out special NPC treatment or throwing the aforemetioned immortal elves at them.

History is loaded with examples of smaller forces routing much larger ones. In Iraq right now, the total estimate of the insurgent forces is well below the US coalition numbers-- in fact, some numbers place them at about 20,000 or so, versus over 130,000 US troops and the entire Iraqi military and police forces. And right now, the insurgents are doing a damn good job of hurting us.

I don't know about "balanced". More compressed, yes, which may be a YMMV thing. But it becomes much harder to create challenging opposition when your options are restricted to massive armies and/or immortal powers. Allowing for more powerful PC's means allowing for more powerful NPC's as well; that gives you a wider array of options for presenting a challenge. It won't turn into an Immortal-elf-of-the-week game.

I disagree. Saying that implies that some game designers somewhere have somehow magically created a perfect game. Since it's easy as pie to see that every game system ever made has exploitable loopholes, simple errors, miscalculations, or things that were just never thought about during the design process, you should be able to see that sometimes the only fix for a game-breaking situation is for the GM to say "no".

That, in essence, is half of the reason to even have a GM for a game. If the system were perfect, the GM would be there only for the story. But that's not the case with SR, nor with any system I've ever run or played. There are going to be rules questions that need answers, loopholes that need closing, and issues that need addressed that the writers never even thought of. Without the GM stepping in and ruling on something, it has no conclusion.

That's not to say that the players would have no say, as I'm sure would be the first whine reply were I to neglect to mention it. The solution to a problem should have some player input in most cases.

However, the GM is there to run the game. Part of running the game is shutting down things that will destroy said game before they can. Sometimes, players aren't going to be 100% happy with what you say, but that's life. It's with disbelief that I see people saying "GM fiat" as if it were inherently a bad thing. Certainly, it can be. But if the GM rules on something, and it improves the overall game experience, how can that be a bad thing?

I guess if I had to sum up my views on this it would be:

Games have a GM for a reason, and that reason is not just regurgitating the rules no matter how patently silly or mistaken they may be.

I used to think that; but then someone suggested a different approach. So, instead of saying: "No, you can't do that", I said: "I'd prefer it if you didn't, but if you can give me a good reason that's believeable and adds to the fun of the game, maybe we can work something out." Guess what? He did just that. Granted, this won't *always* happen, but at least you get an honest dialoge going with your players. And a lot of the time, you can hammer out something that leaves your player satisfied, without breaking your game.

Because GM's aren't perfect, either. Your ruling from on high might end up detracting from everyone's fun. I can say that ever since I started trying, I've always been able to find a middle ground with my players. They may not be 100% happy, but they're satisfied enough, and sometimes they even add something to the game I never considered.

Here's an example: For a long time, I flat-out banned the Day Job flaw, simply because I couldn't control it. I couldn't figure out it it was meant as a flaw, or an edge, since it gave you money. However, after I had been given a well-needed lesson in basic GMing, [translation: been spanked hard-core ] I tried something different-- I explained to the players why I didn't like the flaw, and said I'd work with them to find an alternative. One player, it turned out, only wanted it so he could buy Ninjutsu. No big deal; I turned it into a low-grade enemy instead. It fit the spirit of the rules, and didn't hurt anything.

The other guy wanted it to represent the fact that he worked for DocWagon. Since we rotated GM's in this campaign, he thought that it'd be a great way of taking his character out of the action when he was in the chair. Any way you slice it, that's an excellent reason-- he didn't want to deal with the GMPC issue. So, we found something else that worked: we developed a "dependants" flaw, which represented his duties to his trauma team. In order for him to gain the benefits of a DocWagon employee, we had him buy a Connected variant. Between those two, we came up with something that was not game-breaking, but did everything that the player wanted. In fact, this led to several interesting plot lines, as members of his team got into trouble and needed him to drag them out. (That's how I got him into Euphoria, BTW-- I had one of his teammates die in the line of duty, but then he discovered someone was still using his accounts.)

Nor is that reason being handing down ultimatums. In my experience, the reason for GMs is to arbitrate situations, both in and out of game.

Good thing that you don't have to, as, like you stated, a professional beats a legend one out of five times.
If there are more professionals NPCs, that happens more often to even the legend character.

As a sidenote, no, I was talking about spirits.

From my experience, that's about the most annoying type of campaign.

That's assymetric warfare for you, and relies on a steady supply of manpower for the smaller force and better knowledge of terrain.
Which makes that pretty inapplicable to runs.

I do.

Just in the good old spiral of doom. Thanks, bu no thanks.

Actually, that's *why* you have to jack up the power levels; otherwise, there's a 1 in 5 chance that Joe Average can take out the important NPC's, no matter what precautions they've taken. In order to create an opponent who can match a whole team of runners, you need to really lift the caps. Sure, you can keep throwing armies at the team; but that gets boring quickly. Watch any action movie: the climax will be a direct fight with the bad guy, who has a solid edge on the main hero.

There needs to be more options for challenging a team than throwing more people at them. Throwing *better* people at them is usually a lot more fun.

And I know what you meant, but even then, you've got to jack up the power level significantly. Sure, you can throw a force-20 fire elemental at the party and give them a serious challenge... but what about the mage who summoned it? He's got to be pretty damn powerful to have pulled it off. You end up creating an opponent with a higher power level than the team again. Granted, this time you can do so within the rules; but the principle remains the same.

Any single-note campaign can be annoying. But Harlequin is essentially a One Big Bad Guy campaign, and it's one of the best modules ever written. It depends on how you treat it.

I'd prefer that to the "How many guards can we hack today?" type of game, that's for sure. Again, YMMV. Personally, I think having a lot of options for presenting a challenge is nice; if your only option is to throw more people at the team, I personally would find that monotonous.

You've got some great points. Like everything discussed on this forum, it all boils down to individual taste and style. My parent point being "you might not like to just rule on things, but some do, and whatever works is the right way".

And as I said, I do dialogue with my players. But the simple fact remains that I'm GMing, and it's my world. I don't make rulings to gloat over them, and I don't make them for a power rush or to lord over players. I make rulings that make sense in the context of my game, and the context of my game world.

We're talking in generalities, and that makes discussion of this particular subject all the more difficult. We're exchanging the backing theory for how we do things, but since there aren't specific instances being interjected, we're subconsciously applying the other's theory to situations of our choosing, which doesn't actually get anyone anywhere. It would be much easier if we were discussing specific instances and why we made a ruling.

That's a common thing in forums discussions. The level of exchange is patently poor compared to that achieved in real, open conversation. It would take days and pages of text to actually have a good discussion on the subject, IMO. I wish we had full on Matrix, this would be so much more interesting.

Bah. It's not so much an inability to articulate oneself in the written word, it's a matter of maximum effort for frustratingly little reward. We need a TeamChat style thing for DS.

You're getting closer and closer every time, then you just slip away. I'll give you a hint: not every game I play has the same players: almost every day I hand down some sort of GM Fiat in two of my online arena games, whereas in my face to face game we're generally pretty good at finding a middle ground. I'm sorry I had to spell it all out for you, as I'm sure you were enjoying the challenge of wrapping yourself around the problem.

Quick couple of examples:

In one of my online arenas I run we recently modified the Holy Word line of spells in D&D. Basically if your alignment doesn't match and your level is high enough your opponent dies. That doesn't work in an arena, because instant death is no fun for anyone but the instant death dealer. The player insisted that it was balanced because you could just be deaf and be immune to the Words. I (and the other GM) told him firmly that we understood his concern but that the ruling had been made. It was best for the game.

In my face to face game last night I had a lot of cocnern about the street sam's 17 dice for firearms, but because talking about lowering it upset the guy too much I just said I'd work with it in game. Oddly enough, there was only one combat in the entire night, and he wasn't involved in it. So far what scared me hasn't even factored in.

I have no idea why; according to the d20 rules, Holy Word only autokills enemies with 10 HD less than your character. Since you need to be 13th level minimum to cast it, I don't understand why you're even throwing 3rd level characters at him in an arena. You could simply start enforcing a rule that only characters of similar levels are allowed to battle, and have solved your problem just as easily. Which, IMO, sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do anyway... I mean, you're throwing characters with ten levels difference at each other, and *then* you worry about balance?

But did you ask the player why he wanted it? In this case, it looks like he wanted a way of dealing with lots of low-level opposition in his face. Well, you could have suggested Blade Barrier instead; maybe you could have even made a variant that would move with him, at a level or two higher. Maybe you could have suggested other tactics he could pull, instead of killing them-- maybe sanctuary spells, for example.

I don't see any indication that you made a counteroffer to your player. You just decided: "What I say is best, and if you don't like it, leave." There was a lot of opportunities to work with the player, to see what compromises can be reached, and so on. Heck, he might have even been able to suggest another variant that might add a bunch of fun to your games. GM fiat was not needed, just better understanding and communication.

So, are you backpedaling, or were you deliberately providing bad information? In either case, things that affect the ECL are pretty potent as well; maybe that's where you should start looking to solve your problems. Maybe you could have handled it there; maybe you could have come up with a compromise that also softened the effect of ECL bonuses. There's lots of things you could have done, if you were willing to enter a dialogue with your players and have an open mind.

Because Holy Word only affects characters of a lower level than you. Simple as that.

No. I prefer to game with friends, in long-running campaigns. I take it that you don't?

As the average guard can do that to a prime runner PC, too, that's fine with me.
Everyone is expendable.

Why? That's usually what happens.
After a certain point, only the number of response teams will increase - no Power Lone Ranger gunmen will appear.

Not really, but then again, the glamour power is not defined yet for SR4.

Harlequin is nice as an intermezzo, but nothing more - it leaves the players without any real possibility to understand whats going on.

..if you meant '..before one of those gets us', sure, I prefer those to games with twisted way adepts serving as containers for the hidden life of a free spirit.

Yeah, if the military has no more grunts to burn and the characters are finally declared WMD.
..not that the nuke has any skill beyond a normal Pilot, and even for building it, teamwork tests mean power.

I hereby name this weapon the "Angus Shot."

Python references aside, it's too high tech to just call it a "cowapult."

How about the hyper-velocity strategic bovine bombardment system?

Oh, come on. How many of us have experienced it when our most important NPC's died way too early in the adventure? Unless you're invoking a lot of special NPC rules-- which runs you up against charges of GMPC favoritism-- the best way to prevent this is to make sure he's got a lot more legal advantages than your players do.

No, after a certain point you throw tanks at them. If they've killed a squad of soldiers, you don't send in *another* squad, you send in heavy artillery. You up the power level, not the numbers.

Harlequin is probably the best campaign ever written for any game system, ever. It shows a Gm how to interweave multiple layers into a campaign. How far into those layers the players want to get is up to them; there's lots of possibilities, provided the GM is game. Which, natch, applies to any game you care to name.

Personally, I find it easier to roleplay with the one Twisted NPC than a horde of soldiers, but I suppose YMMV.

Because the bad guy might need a *lot* of edge to pull it off, more than a mortal character could reasonably have. If every big baddie is running around with Edge 6+, we're still in a rut. Plus, if we're not allowing PC's to burn spent edge on the ACD cheat, then we can't let NPC's do it either-- so, all PC's need to do is force the NPC to spend all his edge, and it's over with.

I had an excellent GM for Harlequin, who taught me an awful lot. Later, when I got my copy and ran it, I discovered how many more iterations it had to offer. As always, it runs best when you swap out certain NPCs for standing ones in your campaign. I seem to recall that he replaced Sandy, the rigger, with one they had worked with previously-- and after she turned into the air elemental, they later discovered "Sandy's" body in a ravine. (I later took a page from that book-- in Brainscan, I replaced Sebastian, the otaku who betrays the party, with a semi-NPC otaku run by another player. She had been part of the group for almost a year before the betrayal hit. Boy, were my players surprised. )

Good question - why not start qa poll about it?
As far as I go, there is no such thing as 'too early' and 'important', and most of the time I construct 'arch-villains', I'm bored/impressed/saddend to what lenght players go not to solve that personal problem swiftly...

That not only depends on the setting, but already was covered by my post, and concerns equipement, not skill.
Basically, hunting down runners in an urban setting using tanks is pretty stupid.

Wow.
It shows him to completly keep players from any deeper understanding whats going on, too, thus getting them involved... not.

I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Do you mean that they go for him immediately, or that they leave him alone until they absolutely have to? At any event, while I've since learned to roll with the punches, sometimes PCs will do something totally unexpected, and you have to deal. However, I really don't like it when I've set up a big powerful enemy for them to face in the exciting climax, only to have him taken out by a lucky shot from a hold-out in the first round. Combats that are too easy are no fun, and games are all about fun.

Your response said nothing about equipment. All it said was: "After a certain point, only the number of response teams will increase - no Power Lone Ranger gunmen will appear." You don't keep sending in huge numbers after a certain point; you send in better teams. If twenty normal guards couldn't do it, you send in fifteen cybered trolls. If they can't do it, you send in a five-man Firewatch squad or two. As you increase the power level of your opposition, the numbers drop; in order to maintain suspension of disbelief, you can't simply assume an unlimited number of super-elite guards. You can, however, assume one "last resort" hiding around somewhere. More believable, more exciting, and a lot more fun, IMO.

The obscurity/involvement factor is up to individual GMs. However, the fact it leaves both options easily open is something you rarely see. Besides which, this is off the topic. Harlequin is an excellent campaign, and a lot of fun, as you've already stated. *And*, it's the "One Big Bad Guy" campaign you said you thought was annoying. Which shows that your statement cannot be universal; the One Big Bad Guy campaign can be a lot of fun. But in order for them to work, you need to be able to *create* those Big Bad Guys...

Yeah, that occured to me, too.

No, I mean the behavior that they seem to freeze in awe: 'Look, that's an important NPC, we mustn't kill him'.

It said that the response teams will, at a certain point, just increase in numbers.
Which is thee case when the best (which are limited in skill and number) isn't anymore, and they rely on grunts.
I certainly not said that there won't be an escalation, just that escalation isn't a spiral in skill.

You seem to confuse what I stated and what not - it might be a good occasion for something improving your reading comprehension.
The statement was , that it's 'fairly nice', which is not really the same as 'lots of fun'.

As you seem to lack understanding, it is not only a 'Two Big Bad Guys' campaign, but most of those cliché parts are indeed annoying, too.

That's highly unusual, unless they've been conditioned to believe that each important NPC can hand them their head on a platter. Which, of course, requires that they've been experienceing powerful NPC's all along.

Why? Grunts have already failed. If the best has failed, and grunts have failed, why throw even more resources down the drain? You either throw something better, or let it go.

The statement was "Harlequin is nice as an intermezzo". Not "Fairly nice" or "Just okay". Before you try and insult someone else's comprehension, I suggest you brush up on your self-reading skills.

As you seem to lack understanding, Harlequin only has one major bad guy: Ehran. Harlequin isn't a "Big bad guy", especially since he's the one backing all the player's moves. "Bad guy" means antagonist; in a game, by definition, the PCs are the protagonists. Harlequin is a force behind the scenes, while Ehran is the antagonist. At any event, you're still contradicting yourself.

Will that be all, or will you require further grammar lessons?

Agreed. Awesome, Wally. It shall be sigged.

Exactly. Which is what I cursed any GM for, as using the N+1 scheme nearly certainly resulted in such behavior.
So SR4 might free their mind from that conditioning...

If you can do neither, you will.

Oh, as I'm to choose what I meant while stating it, 'fairly nice' desribes 'nice as an intermezzo' perfectly.

Ehran may be Harlequin's Antagonist, but not the player's - that is what the story is all about.
Both qualify as anti-heros, so 'Big Bad Guy' fits either of them.

Only in your definition.

Nice try.

Of course, as writing in a non-native language always needs excercise.
Just, grammar lessons don't really have anything to with the issue at hand - that would be about synonymous meaning or drama.

Yeah, but is that from your spent, or unspent Edge? It's not clear at all. If you've spent all your Edge pool for the session, your Edge stat is unchanged; burning Edge still carries a penalty. But if you allow that, then after players have spent all their Edge, they can still survive multiple direct THOR shots.

Except you can do that. You burn a point of Edge, and presto!