I think the problem really is that you've been too lax with the spirits.

Yes, spirits are powerful, but as a GM, it's your job to keep things in check to make the campaign challenging. Here's what I'd do:

You roleplay the spirit, not the player. The player can request what spell is cast by the spirit. The player cannot/should not request the spirit to overcast spells unless the circumstances make sense. For example, the player rolled extremely well on binding test, so that the spirit LOVES him. By the same token, some spirits should dislike the player. In fact, as stated in the books, spirits hate being in the service of mages with magic rating lower than their force as they see them as beneath them. When such a spirit is forced into service of a player, you can feel free to make the spirit be as difficult to deal with as possible. Think dealing with an evil genie who would love nothing more than to burst you into flames but is forced to grant you 3 wishes. Make the player word his wishes (tasks) carefully!

Always have magical support for the NPC if your mage is dominating the actions. In my experience when that happens, it's the mundanes that determine the outcome of the fight, not the mages.

Any astral beings will be able to spot the concealed people easily. Have some hellhounds/cocktrices as security pets. Or just plain old mages that spot intrusion and mark them up on other mundane security's AR.

Use more technology. Motion sensors, drones, ultrasounds.... I'd rule that concealment needs to beat technological devices' object resistance test to affect them as well.

A lot of this is just re-stating what's already been said, but:

Concealment might make it harder for guards to notice the runners, but alarms will still go off when they have to open doors, step on pressure plates, etc.

Any building with decent security is going to have wards around it's secure entrances. So just stick cheap force 1 wards all over the place (at choke points, entrances, in between floors in elevator shafts...)

My guards are fond of non-lethal attacks that don't require aiming or much skill, and don't cause a lot of collateral damage. Stun grenades, thermal smoke, gas attacks, sonic blasts, flash packs, electric shock defenses attached to doornobs, etc.

Anything that obscures physical vision also obscures astral perception (partial cover, smoke, fog, tinted glass, etc.)

If neither method (Passing through nor Taking it down) is stealthy then there is absolutely no method to avoid detection other than forcing the Mage to let you through?

That always confused me.
There's Physical Mana barriers that block magic on the Phyiscal Plane
and then there's the Physical Barrier spell that blocks phyiscal object on the phyiscal plane. It's weird because they refer to the spell along with the ward in the same section. I never quite knew what to make from that... At least that was confirmed for me, thanks for clairfying.

Oh, I read the section again and you're right. Slipping/breaking through does alert thr mage. sorry for being stupid...

I too have found that spirits and sprites are too powerful in SR4. By combining the abilities of both shamanic spirits and elementals things have gotten out of hand.

I once destroyed a buddies' game. There were only 3 of us playing (plus GM) so he let us all make 2 characters if we wanted. I made a Technomancer and a Mage. The mage had roughly 13 dice to summon and 21 dice to bind spirits of man (I don't have the sheet handy). He was hovering at 11 and 14 dice for all other spirits respectively. The technomancer was just god at doing everything in the matrix.

While we were doing legwork we alerted an opposing force. They sent a car full of cyber goons to tail us and scare us off. My technomancer compiled a Machine Sprite, waited until we were on a bridge with an oil tanker in the oncoming traffic lane, and then told the machine sprite to take over the goons' car and slam it into the tanker.

The building we were infiltrating had no wireless connectivity. There was no wired access in the sewers, only a link on the roof for the rooftop security and mundane needs. The mage bound a couple of spirits and summoned an Air spirit. The Air spirit flew the technomancer up to the roof while other spirits concealed him. He popped open the link box and hacked the system.

In one game I was running I tried to do a run where the players had 2 days to find a briefcase that had been stolen and was somewhere in Seattle. The briefcase actually had the SR equivalent of the CAS' nuclear football. The opponents were a team of runners who had made 5 fake briefcases and thrown them all with the football into the back of a truck and had a spirit randomly mix them up. Each then took a briefcase and went their separate way until their Johnson called.

The mage in the group read the Search power and then bound a Force 6 spirit. It takes a spirit no more than 2 hours (more like 45 minutes) to find a briefcase like that in Seattle. The technomancer then gains access to the nearest Grid Guide cam to see who is holding it and if it is one of the runners the team gets dispatched while he hacks the opponent's commlink. A little snooping around and a little interrogation later and they were able to find all the briefcases in a day.

SO the mage/spirit had prior experience (had seen/sensed it in some way) ahead of time? The only way you can find something via search is if you have interacted with it before, right?

Cheops, a question:
13 to summon, but 21 to bind? how'd you manage that?
(yes I know you'll have to look it up at some point)

Magic+binding+totem+focus = 21? Just don't see it.
(I can get up to 18 -> 6+7+2+3, but that's it for a starting character.)

I had every intention of making things much harder from now on. This helps in many-a-way. THanks to EVERYONE who posted useful tips for me and others with my magical doubts.

A ward won't stop a searching spirit, unless the ward's force exceeds the spirit's Magic+Intuition (i.e. 2x spirits force, afaict) see the Search Modifiers Table on pg. 290.

It may, however, delay the spirit long enough to render the service moot.

Multiple wards may help

As far as the searching goes, I assume that the summoner had seen the target before. If I was running the game, and the summoner had only seen a picture of the briefcase, I'd happily have the spirit dash out and find a picture of a briefcase.

Here's the next thing: unless the briefcase was a custom job, wouldn't the spirit find every copy of that breifcase in the city?

You can have a force 10 spirit with concealment, force 10 invisiibty spell (with all successes), force 10 stealth spell (with all successes), and 10 stealth dice (with all successes and it won't matter in the slightest because there's a gaurd standing directly in front of the door. You have to move him to get through.

You can attack him, but that comes with it's own problems.

Okay, attack that loafing guard, what's gonna happen? More loafing guards are called in? What will they do? They can't stop the runners. We're talking Chem Sealed (no gas), nonconductive (no stunning crap), enough skill to get through doors during a lockdown (hardware and muscle), and hacking skill to screw with alarms.

Ouch, that was blunt...

To be honest a lot of these defenses are great if you're raiding a Corp with something to hide but that hasn't always been the case. I guess the solution i need is to put the PCs up against opponents with resources.

You're right about the PCs getting a too much too quick. The problem is they have had so much fun with the runners they have created they don't see any reason to scrap them.

Oh, and someone else does GM on and off. We take turns an the players use the same PCs in each.

I do have in-game reasons why the PCs have had it easy up until this point (in response to my screw ups). Making it harder on them won't be too hard and doesn't invovle quitting but rather improving and becoming a better SR GM and player.

If your PCs are drastically overpowered for the scenarios they're encountering, their Johnsons are hiring people who are overqualified for the work. This means either the Johnsons are overpaying for simple tasks to get done, or your PCs are slumming and taking shit jobs because they can (and no J is gonna pass up on a skilled team for low rates).

I run a bunch of my security gear wired up, rather than wireless. Doors will often be hardwired to a nearby checkpoint. That checkpoint may be located somewhere else in the building, hooked up with CCTV (or fiber optics) to cameras at the checkpoint, and require the guard to be jacked into the control deck (and concious) to issue commands to it. Doors are easy to get people locked behind if you don't put control panels or wireless access to the security network on that side of the door. And nonconductive armor? Try stun grenades, or mounted LMGs loading gel rounds. Those will sit someone down fast.

Grenades are also excellent for dealing with spirits, if your NPCs are able to use them. The high damage is a great equalizer, and if you use defensive grenades (a misnomer, but the correct SR nomenclature), the blast shouldn't provide a serious threat to guards wearing FBA.

My typical corporate goon guard, by the way, wears either an armored jacket and helmet, or Full Body Armor and helmet (working out to 9/8 or 12/10 respectively). This can cost them a die or two for overrunning 2xBody (remember, helmets don't count towards your armor value for purposes of calculating encumberance) but trying to hurt those guys is hard. It'll keep 'em alive a little longer, and raise the likelihood that they can set off an alarm. Add in some useful gear to that helmet (smartlinks, thermal, AR overlays, enhanced vision (bonus perception dice, yes!), ultrasound...) and you've got guards who actually pose a threat to people. Got a problem with people tasering your guards? Nonconductivity is quite useful here. If your guards don't pose a threat to people, well... the facility is underguarded.

Have your guards act like they're trained to deal with these situations. Issue them weapons that can handle things like mid-force spirits (APDS shotgun slugs and automatics loading stick-n-shock are faves i've seen listed around here, although I personally made SnS rounds shotgun-only... that's a different story, though). The combination of magical, matrix, and meat-based assaults make it very difficult for even a well-trained guard to deal with situations, so the good ones have been trained to act aggressively and overpoweringly in situations that appear to be an incursion.

Think about it for a sec: guards have the gun and grenades they're carrying, the body armor they're wearing, a few pieces of cyberware and their radio-link to their buddies going for them. That's it. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to replace some busted glass, burnt carpet, and halon after a guard overreacts to a false alarm with a concussion grenade and a couple mags of gel rounds as a chaser than it is to pay the death benefits for 6 security employees and try to recoup the loss of a prototype. If a couple of minor security systems have been tripped or go "offline for scheduled maintenance," the rest of the security force is going to be watchful and worried, because their training and media exposure says to them "Shadowrunners are a real, constant threat, who will slip invisibly behind you and shoot you in the head if they get the chance." I'm willing to bet that security forces in any corporation of any size (that is, the ones skilled runners usually operate against) find themselves tested by their higher-ups on a regular basis with simulated incursions... if you've got one of these every week or two at work, you're going to be paying attention.

Your players may think of these guys as "rent-a-cops," but that's a serious lack of forethought on their part. If the corporate security forces are guarding a site with something worth hiring Shadowrunners to go out and get in it, they aren't going to be Barney the desk-dwelling donut-muncher, barely making that 5k a month and just waiting to get home to watch trid. They're going to be well trained, well paid, and tested on a regular basis. They get a kick out of their job (hey, if I got to run anti-intrusion exercises randomly every 7-14 days, I'd love my job... maybe not the parts where I actually get shot at quite so much, but those are much rarer). They get a kick out of that dose of Jazz in their autoinjectors that their sargeant just gave the go-ahead for using. They like the hardass attitude, the cameraderie, the competition, and the fact that if some random person staggers in the front door after hours drunk (who knows, maybe they're a shadowrunner acting drunk?), they're extraterritorial... the Star isn't going to complain if security beats the shit out of the guy and dumps him in a gutter a couple of blocks away.

With the advent of AR, simsense, and wireless weapon controls, it's even possible for the security supervisors to run simulated incursions without causing a significant disruption of daily life or letting their forces know that it was a drill until afterwards. Turn off their weapons, overlay on an intruding group, and use simsense through the trodes in the helmet to make it seem like their gear is working (the gun recoils and flashes, the grenades go off, bulletholes appear in the walls, they get hit and are in pain), and your security forces can run low-cost "live-fire" counter-incursion exercises during the workday. Every other employee gets a memo letting them know what's going on a couple of minutes in advance, and telling them to "act scared" if they get the word, but otherwise stay productive. If you screw up enough during drills, get killed off with regularity or cause massive amounts of useless collateral damage, you get transferred away... if you're good at it, you're on the ball, you like the job and you don't have the ugly habit of occasionally machinegunning a few officeworkers by accident, they keep you on and give you a raise.

When an actual incursion happens, security might not even realize it's real... or care. This shit happens every few weeks, right? Just another day going cyclic at the office, doing what they're trained to do, and get a kick out of. The fact that the targets this week happen to be actual intruders and the recoil they're feeling isn't being simsensed into their brain is only going to matter when their supervisor comes on the line and says "good job, guys... that was a real attack you stopped there. Medics, get up to sector 2 and try to keep Baker from flatlining. Everyone else, stay on station until you're relieved for debrief. And bonuses for everyone this week. All employees, check in with your section manager to make sure it's okay to get back to work."

God fuck, Shrike... That was beautiful.

Hey, I try

If the complaint is that the guards are getting steamrolled all the time, the logical solution is to have better guards. Thinking through the fluff reasons for why they might be better is one of the ways I can explain to my players why the guards aren't all fat and bored Turning their workplace into a positive-reinforcement training-warzone is one way to do it, now that the tech is around.

Besides, if you're a player, there's only so much cool shit you can do. When you're the GM, supplying cool shit is what keeps the game alive.

Hey, Shrike?

Samael, I have to agree with everyone here. It really sounds like you're underpowering your opposition. While simply jacking up the opposition to counter the players is a bad idea, there is a reasonable minimum level of security they should be facing. If the defense isn't capable of threatening them, then they're not capable of protecting the site.

Another thing to note is this: anyplace with anything worth protecting *will* have top-notch magical security. They might not have a total zero-zone set up, but they will have every reasonable precaution that can be brought into play. Not only will the security probably have access to more mages than the PC's do, they'll have had more time to set up their security. A fiber-optic network can make one security mage into a terror. And every site will have multiple spirits of its own to defend it-- it may only have a horde of watchers, but those watchers will be tasked to report to at least one BIG spirit. Remember, they've also got the luxury of time; they will have had much more opportunity to summon those high-force monsters. They won't have many of 'em, but they don't need many.

On the tech side, any high-value (and therefore high-security) site will have rigged security, as well as defensive landscaping and design. There will be a lot of fallback places for the home team, lots of places where they can get cover and call for backup. The security rigger will have at least a small assortment of assault drones on hand, and may have a lot more he can call on as needed. There will be bottlenecks, hallways set to provide the best crossfire, variable lighting setups, and so on. To deal with invisibility, there will be presure pads, zen sand gardens, ultrasound, and a lot of door sensors. (My favorite anti-invisibility trick-- the door sensor. When the door opens, and the video detects *nothing* coming through, it fires a narcojet dart into the doorway. Perfectly fair, perfectly logical, and yet totally evil and unexpected in the right hands.)

My Players and I are generally new to Shadowrun. When I was planning Corp/Triad/Opposing Runner Security I found it really hard to plan for everything or set-up security measures that covered a lot of bases at once. A lot of the suggestions that I have heard like specific sec measures and my own misconceptions have been invaluable. Thank you all so much for what you've provided so far. I as a GM have made a lot of n00b mistakes for my NPCs and my players have done the same. Whether it was misunderstanding the rules (some of those rules are pretty vague), forgeting certain rules/bonuses/modifiers, or underestimating technology and the Corps we have made tons of bad decisions.

Trust me I'm taking notes. THanks Shrike, Cain and everyone else

side note: I thnk Serbitar's limited extended checks house rule might help with the whole Search power.

Thanks Mr Unpronounceable I hadn't noticed that before. It helps make things a little less munchkin. They should have done what Exalted did with really important rules points and put them in BOLD. Makes it easier to notice important little rules like that.

Overall I am still finding SR4 to be worthless as a game.

The problem with designing all the heavy duty security measures first is that GMs will tend to have the local stuffer shack protected by a dumbed down version of super anti-runner defense bot instead of the stuffer shack being protected in a reasonable manner.

So:

Security must be cost effective.

Security does not exist for its own sake. It is there to protect something, the cost and effort of the security is comparable to the value of the thing being protected. Note also that the reverse applies, a security system should maximise the equipment and skills needed to defeat it, as this both keeps out the riff-raf and means that what you are protecting is additionally protected by the 'startup costs' of defeating it.

The security must be useable.

Security must be used by human beings. They tend to do stupid stuff like use their birthday at their ATM PIN, because it is easy to remember. Poor security that is actually used is better than great security that no one wants to jump through the hoops for.

Depth, time, chokepoints

In general, most security setups exist to give more time for the defending force to react. Any 'shallow' security setup can be beaten in a matter of seconds by a team with sufficient preperation and 'intelligence' (that is, knowledge of the system itself).

However, a good defense in depth will extend the time needed to breach the security, meaing that the defenders have more time to react. As safes and vaults are not made to be impenetrable, that is impossible. Instead, they are rated by the amount of time and tools needed to crack them.

Securing every possible avenue of approach is difficult and expensive. This is why security setups are designed with choke points, where extra security can be added. In a building, things like stairwells, elevator shafts, and high traffic hallways are typically set-up as choke points.

Attempt at some standard security setups:

The Stuffer Shack

Normally, you walk into the stuffer Shack, you pick up the things you want, you walk out. The cost is totaled up and deducted from your comm-link.

Risk 1:

Shoplifting:
The average shoplifter will be pretty unskilled, but the cost of shoplifting can be a constant drain on your resources

Risk 2:

The Run n' Grab

Guy runs in, grabs a double handfull of stuffers, runs out.

With people starving on the street, some idiot is willing to give it a try

Risk 3:

The armed robbery. With the advent of digital currency, there only really stuffers to steal. But to a squatter with a 50Y firearm, all the stuffers you can carry sounds like a pretty good deal.

[sigh] will have to come back and edit more stuff in later. Have to shift locations.

Now, where was I?

Point for discussion:

Should Stuffer Shacks stil have flesh and blood attendants? You could have a drone to do the stocking, floor mopping, etc. and have someone monitor the store via AR. This lets you stick it to the educationally dis-advantaged, as there will be less minimum wage jobs (see Japan today and the prevelance of vending machines).

So our basic security setup will look like this:

Every item for sale in the Shack has an RFID tag already so that regular customers can walk in and walk out with their purchases. If an RFID tag that has not actually been paid for tries to leave the store, the doors/turnstyle simply locks (this will happen to regular customers occasionally too) and they will have to go to the counter and re-do the transaction.

To prevent shoplifters from simply throwing the stuffers into Faraday Cage (blocks radio signals) and makuing off with the goods, the Shack's main computer talks to all the stuff in the store every (10, 30, 60 seconds) to make sure it's RFID tag has not been cut-off or disabled.

The locked doors will normally stop the grab and run type of theft as well. However, you will now have an evil criminal type now locked in with your attendant. This means that there needs to be a second line of defense for the attendant (if there is one). A 'cage' of moderatly tough material will protect the attendant.

Note that the computer actually running the Shack will be worth some money as well, it will be locked in a small safe, bolted to the floor/wall. Attendants will not normally have the key to the safe.

If you go the drone route, this makes armed robbery difficult, who are you going to stick up? Of course you conlud try a smash and grab... If this type of robbery becomes common, expect every 100 (more of less?) stuffers to have a high signal RFID instead of a low signal one, this means that a smash n grab without a large faraday cage (to put all the stuffers in) can be tracked by the long range RFIDs that the robbers have picked up. Of course, gangs with the know-how and equipment to do this sort of robbery are not likely to bother Stuffer Shack... Ditto for people with the skills to hack the Stuffer Shack's main computer.

Guys who are skilled enough to hack the computer will probably avoid doing it to reduce the rule of 1s that they have to risk (it's not worth having your 50K Y commlink grabbed by the cops because you wanted a free candy bar. To prevent long term hacks, the software from the stuffer shack computer may be reloaded from offline backups on a semi-regular basis (every month?, if that much).

So whenever you're hungry why not just walk into a stuffer shack, eat whatever you want, then walk out sans any RFID's?

Or if you want to stock up on food bring in your own cart and empty foodstuffs into it.

But who'd want to eat at Stuffers? That junk is positively poison! ^^

I'd assume that if you opened anything in the stuffer shack, the thigns RFID would go off, and the main stuffer shack computer would charge your commlink for it. Remember part of the objective is to show the 'haves' just walking into the stuffer shack picking up whatever they want and then walking out. If any have nots try the same trick then the drones come out and give them a good tazering for thier trouble, then the cops show up and drag the unconscious body off.

Sure commlinks and RFId tags will sometimes fail, so you might occasionally have to go to the counter to 'sort things out'', so the security system is mostly made to stop you from leaving when something goes wrong, so that you can go back to the counter and sort things out. If you are trying to run out, or whatever, then the tazering starts.

In most of the SR games I've run, the security setup at a Stuffer Shack has not been of great concern to the runners.

I operate on a pretty simple motto when it comes to security: if there's something in the building worth hiring a bunch of shadowrunners to steal, then securing the building with an arrangement that should pose a serious threat to those shadowrunners is cost-efficient. Most runners do not get hired to steal next week's cashier list so that Mr. J. knows when that cute ork he's got his eye on will be working the till, they get hired to steal the kinds of things that make the companies that sell them millions. Good security is expensive, but stolen prototypes are even more so.

Yes, but how much security is cost effective and useable? I was giving a sample of the stuffer shack since its security setup highlights without needing anything over the top. Much better to start off simple and work your way up. Too many newbie GMs when told to design runner class security will have Grimtooth's traps + an army of vat grown Cruel Pornographer Midgets ™ and still be bypassable because of some flaw in the system.

So you start with simple security setups like:

Stuffer Shack

Car

Normal House/Apartment (split by lifestyle)

warehouse

etc

Okay, then approach it from the same direction. A Stuffer Shack has high exposure and minimal risk of loss (stuffers are cheap, cash has gone to the bank the minute you commed it over), but there's significant risk to the attendant in the event of the store getting rolled by a bunch of boostergangers out looking for stuffers at 3 AM. Protecting the merchandise, therefore is a secondary concern... a place that has a series of snatch-and-runs will institute some kind of defense (like swapping over to vending machines rather than stocked shelves), but your "basic" Stuffer Shack defense would consist of cameras (to ward off shoplifters and possibly deter criminals), a hardened booth (to protect the attendant from a sudden attack) and a gas system of some kind (to protect the attendant from a sustained attack). In addition to this, I've got a feeling that in 2070, the attendant would probably bring his own weapon to work if one wasn't provided for him. There's no reason for someone to try and break into the booth (there's no cash anymore) unless he intends to rob or hurt the attendant.

You protect the things that are worth protecting from the likely threats. In the case of high-end corporate facilities with multibillion-nuyen prototypes in them, invisible levitating ninja shadowrunners with white noise generators are one of those threats. Plan accordingly.