Better yet than disembarking you should have just had the them try run the bastard over, if possible. Check out the damage from getting run over by vehicle. Mind bogglingly scary for something with as big a Body as the Citymaster. I haven't checked out the Troll's character sheet yet, but if nothing it'll make him burn Edge. Just to stay alive. If he's smart he'll be burning the Edge to avoid getting hit to start with.

"Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right." - Captain Willard

1 Charisma? He offends people by just being present. Plus Reduce Charisma would take him out of a fight with minimal effort.

If he's rushing in like that, it shows boldness and a strong force of personality; you may want to suggest he spend some karma on boosting charisma to reflect that.

I assume he's raised his edge above one by now?

The stats don't look extreme.

Is it possible that the invisibility spell is the only true problem?

Ultrasound, Motion sensors etc takes care of invisibility.

You could even use a sensor with some kind of vibration sensor to sense where people walk on the floor and a heavy troll would light up on sensors like a lighthouse.

The character as a whole isn't particularly gross, I'm a bit confused about where the 2 extra points for the Ruger come from? Not the 7 for the specialization, but the 9?

But that Uncouth with a Charisma of 1 and not a social skill in sight? Ouchies. All you have to do is touch on that one glaring problem area once a session and he's in all sorts of trouble. Especially with low Edge since the only way to even roll those forced Etiquette tests is a Long Shot. I likely would have had a chat with the player beforehand about that, and strongly encouraged him to round out the character. Because that is such a brutal handicap that played to it's potential could really dominate the game, in a mayhem way, and likely eventually have the rest of team absolutely hating him for the problems he drags them into.

Oh, and if he hasn't seriously boosted his Edge with karma purchases he would have been so hooped if that Citymaster driver had any meaningful driving skill and had turned on him to try run him down.

I'm sure his edge has increased. It seems to me the last time I asked it was a three. This is his first 4E game, and I don't think he quite understood how cool it was at creation. The 9 pistol skill is after figuring in his Smartlink.

I've been really trying to play up the troll with 1 Charisma thing, but it doesn't bother him in the least. I'd say it's at least partially responsible for much of the combat in the game. Now the group just leaves him at home except when they are on missions. In fact, that will be the focus of our next game.

I think that I'll have the group be set up when they go to get their next mission. It'll force the others to work without relying on the troll, and will remind the troll why it's not always ok to sit at home.

I've been trying to avoid it, because I hate to have one guy sit on his thumbs while the others play, but I think it'll drive home some of his social disadvantages.

that's rough for a guy's first character. at least he'll be real familiar with the game's combat system It's always a bit awkward when a team member becomes, well, a liability and misses out on a lot of the game.

It seems to me that playing up the notoriety would make sense. If this guy's drawing a lot of attention to himself, there's going to be a lot of upset people after him. And if the rest of the team is trying to get around the CHA 1 weakness by leaving him behind in situations where it would be a problem, that's a good time to "strike."

How about this: rest of the team goes off for whatever and leaves Mr. Troll at home twiddling his thumbs.

Lone Star found out his home address.

Without his mage buddies to provide backup, a Lone Star mage casts Decrease Charisma, turning the massive killing machine into a drooling, motionless idiot, and he's arrested without a shot fired.

As a sort of sub-plot, the team can try to bust him out, but they'll have to do it without the direct assistance of Mr. Kill as he's locked up with another (lonely) troll named Bubba who doesn't take too kindly to his lack of "manners".

"Decrease Charisma" is one of the mage's "Troll of Doom"-killer spells of choice. Any time you manage to reduce a mental attribute to zero, the character essentially turns into a drooling vegetable.

If you do end up needing to teach troll-boy a lesson, try some of these.

As others have recommended, say it with area effect weapons. Grenades of every shape and color are quite useful. Explosive, flechette, sleeping gas, tear gas, or my personal favorite, Incendiary grenades. Invisibility don't matter much when your clothes are on fire and people can aim at the spot the smoke is appearing from.

Firehoses spraying down an area could leave a troll shaped hole in the water puddles. Automatic fire with some unconventional weapons could work well. One of my favorite parts of The Incredibles was when Mr. Incredible got immobilized by lots of glue balls. Paint is another classic method of dealing with invisible people.

Snipers on the rooftop are a classic. Even more classic for the low charisma character, have an undercover op come after him. Preferably blond and stacked, with a warrant, a troll strength stun gun, and lots of backup. For reference, I recommend the movie Sin City, think Marvin and Goldie, Marvin being your no-social-skill troll.

I think I need to turn off the tv sometimes.

Both are corporations with deniable assets for dealing with things that are being a pain to their bottom line. In this case, if the runners are causing too much pain to their forces or to their image/public perception that they can handle the criminal elements on the street, then I can see either corporations having individuals in their organization giving the green light to have some unfortunate incident happen to the runners. They can chalk it up as an explosion caused by the runners due to their inept handling of explosives or any other thing to take out these runners.

Hmmm... that's another thing, hire them and send them far away from Seattle. To some place where they don't have a contract so they don't have to worry about them. Send them to an exotic place like Yucatan Peninsula (during the height of the conflict), drop them off in the middle of a desert, etc... Just have their return ride 'fail' to show up.

I don't think KE would even need to provide much reason.

"They were a team of known Shadowrunners. They blew up. I can't say I'm surprised, but we didn't have anything to do with it."

Definitely. If anything, letting the public think they may have had something to do with it would only increase their rep among everyone but the runner wannabes.

In fact, I bet that KE would probably take credit on TPK shadowrun teams that they didn't even kill.

"One of our Thor systems misfired into the Yucatan Peninsula, with, uh... no injuries. We've traced it down to a bug in the system, and it's been fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience that it may have caused. Yes, you there, in the back? No, we don't know why a combat axe was found at the site, embedded in the front of the penetrator. We think a team of shadowrunners may have gone out there and attempted to chop a hunk of the tungsten off to sell on the black market, but given up after the axe was ineffectual at damaging the penetrator."

The best way to take out a CHA1 troll, aside from cheesy reduce CHA spells, is to use a Pornomancer Adept.

Picture it: Invincible Troll is in the heat of combat, wading through cops left and right and ripping the armor off of a Citymaster with his bare hands.
.... Suddenly, the Citymaster opens up and out steps Officer Fragmore. The Troll, enraged at Fragmore's audacity charges with axe in hand. But, Fragmore is undaunted. With a smirk on his face he reveals his secret weapon. His absurdly revealing police uniform is held together by velcro. In one deft manuver the officer rips his pants away to reveal a thong that to two sizes too small. His shirt quickly follows. The heroic policeman begins gyrating his lithe and muscular body and the Invincible Troll swoons, having failed his save vs. wands and staves, and falls into Officer Fragmore's arms. His combat axe hits the ground with a clatter.



You see, the Pornomancer Adept has upwards of 30 seduction dice before edge, if he is built well. The Invincible Troll has 0 seduction resistance dice before edge.
Even if the Troll was extremely homophobic before the seduction test he'll be willing to experiment a little after it.

Don't forget the orgasm spell cast by Officer Fragmore's partner, Officer Darling.

I'm kinda on the puking side right now, my ipod was playing some techno music while I was reading it. Ugh, now it's stuck in my head, the image and song. Damn you Hyz, I think this is about the second or third time you've stuck some nasty concept in my head.

Backing away from the pornomancer topic, you might also utilize dual natured creatures, like hellhounds to go after the troll, or perhaps a gang of ghouls. You could hire the team to do jobs like bodyguarding which wouldn't (probably) require staring down a citymaster.

Send them on a bug hunt. Even someone who takes down HTR teams before breakfast will jump back when a juggernaut charges. Vampires, wendigo, or scarier for the troll the dzoo-noo-qua, basilisks, or any of a number of awakened critters can provide some challenge to the whole crew.

I need a life. I didn't even have to check how to spell dzoo-noo-qua.

Meh, dunno about the cyberzombie. It would be tough for the troll to handle, but everyone else would be even worse off. I think there need to be challenges that the troll is less suited for, if you are looking to nudge him out of the spotlight some of the time.

Pornomancers may be funnier than snipers, even snipers with Panther cannons, but I agree with hyzmarca that they are nothing but a similar bullying tactic.

Does the adept, non-buff build notwithstanding, have either killing hands or a weapon focus? Spirits, with immunity to normal weapons as one of their powers, would be one way to let the adept shine. Sure, the troll will still be able to hurt them, but they will be rolling far fewer dice to resist the adept's attacks. And the mage would be more effective against them, too, in a less supportive and more offensive role.

Hmmm - there are a few spells that could be used by a talented mage.

Decrease Charisma (which can be considered cheating)
Orgasm (watch the troll go...)
Agony
Confusion
Chaos

...or any other spell that targets Charisma, Intuition or Logic - all of which I assume Mr. Troll doesn't excel in.

Use a good hacker to mess with his gear.

Other spells that give dice pool modifiers.

Hmm - target the troll's armor with a Wreck spell...

Levitate. One net success is enough to slowly move Mr. Troll up up and awayyyyyy and drop him again.

Levitate is an opposed test vs Body+Strength!

So, we made characters for the new game tonight, and ran a quicky mission to get the new players used to their characters. After a good long talk, some reassurances, and a vieled threat ot two I managed to convince the problem player that his one-dimensional troll was a problem waiting to happen. It helped that in our last fight of the old game an enemy spellcaster managed to hit him with two seperate manabolts. The first was without the group's mage being able to counterspell, and the second punched through the counterspell. After two seperate attacks for 7P net damage (each) he got the picture.

And then I used the pornomancer threat

Seriously though, we talked, I pointed out the fact that a not-particularly-powerful mage managed to nearly kill his troll fairly easily. The troll couldn't figure out who was casting the spells, and he ran into the room first, and out of sight of the group's mage, leaving him unprotected. I just reminded him that if he wanted to be the front-line fighter such thigs would happen fairly frequently.

He gave in and built a more reasonable orc adept. Still a little mentally weak, but no serious negative qualities. A much better build.

Anywho, thanks for all the help.

Greeting all
I am the said troll in in question and I would like to clarify a few things. First about me. Although this was my first SR4 game I am an experanced SR3 player with an emotional attachment to trolls. (Good times when you have 3 troll like characters with combat axes in an elevator). 2nd All your ideas for dealing with the troll are excellant and would work if I was that cocky but even I know when to turn tail and run (just takes more than usual for most party members) As for the Troll himsself he is very limited to one thing and thats primarily Mellee combat with pistols as a back up, (Although I do admit I think I missed the need to buy the SL link seperatly for the ruger super warhawk.) His job is to handle all combat for the party as the point man but outside of combat he does take a back seat. All negotiations are done by the mage and all spirits are handled by the physad and mage we had in the party. I did take a swing at the spirit with my combat axe and it luaghed at me so I went after the 6 heavly armed security squad and city master instead, it was a better target for me than the spirit. Also my troll was never covered by counterspelling since our mage was very new as a player to SR in general.
As for the situation in question and the Ares City Master there are some points to clarify on that as well. The job took place in the Indian Nations so no lonestar or Knights Arant per say. We had set up an ambush on a convoy from a bridge to stop the convoy to steal some cargoe. As for the city master it was not one shot. It actually took about 5 shots with 3 being completly ineffective and the city master was only damaged, not stopped. It decided to retreat and when it did we ran for the hills too and one of our party members got geeked when the mage dropped the physads invisibility instead of mine where I could have taken more punishment than the physad could have. As for the conversation about making a new character I had already retired the troll due to not playing in that game anymore because of scheduling issues and I am also partial to Physads so I am playing in a different SR game with masterofthegame on a different day.
I am aware of all the counter troll actions that are available and it is the trolls weakness to deal with magic or paracritters which is why I don't play one if there is no magic capability on our side. As for leading off with violence its the only option when the entire party has no Breaking and Entering skills or capabilities so it leaves to a more direct approach method although the Troll does have some sneaking capability and he never ramapged on innocent civilians, helpless civilians or police who left the area. I only dealt with immediate threats.

PS as for the suggestion on flanking and smoke the troll also had the ultrasound motion sensor and spatial recognizer so this tactic would not have been as effective though still potentially dangerous. As for a GM ratcheting up the encounter I do enjoy a challange for any character I build although I would have had to change tactics to deal with each of the suggested situations. The troll is tough but he is not stupid. Can the troll be killed? Sure just like any other SR character can. It just takes the right situation and some bad dice rolls to make it happen. If I couldn't deal with the city master you bet we would have run.

As for the social settings limitation I have discussed this before with the GM before we started this game and its a limitation the GM has to enforce although the troll primarly stays in the seedy parts of town where a trog wisecrack will get one a hamfist to the gut very fast. Upperparts of town are avoided as security scrutiny is to much to bear. Happy hunting all.

A lot of the ways to dealw ith this character are tougher and tougher fights. I think this will backfire because if the troll survives everyone in the team will see that the bar has been raised and will think of ways to push their characters to make them even harder.
If the troll dies then his replacement will shore up the few holes he has in his defences.
And the rest of the team will think "OMG even the invinci troll didn't survive we need to be more powerful" and they will all hit the books looking for every ounce of power.

I think the best bet is to set some missions that emphasise the skills of your other team members. Put the mage centre stage for a run, then some of the others. Have a mission that requires talking and Mojo, understanding spirits... bit of fighting as it is SR after all, but mostly intelligence and personal skills to win through.

Also Notoriety is your friend. Start handing it out. Let the charismatic charicters have the opportunity for to improve their own names, but your uncouth troll is screwed.


You can never discourage a behaviour you don't like in your characters by meeting it head on with tougher challenges to that behaviour. You have to change tack.