We start the session from where we left off. Our covert ops specialist gets captured by an unknown enemy using some form of mental manipulation. I summon an air spirit and have him start searching for him. The air spirit eventually locates him after having to push through a ward. I however, don't find out anything because the spirit is banished as soon as he locates my team member. So, I send out another one, this time with a watcher following close behind. He finds him and I get the location. The whole team suits up and goes to the location. I summon another spirit and have him sustain Guard and Concealment. I obliterate the barrier and combat ensues. A Force 8 or 10 Fire Spirit attacks my Force 6 and deals 5 damage. As soon I am able to act I fire a powerful stunbolt with edge and take it down. The rest of my team takes position at the door and one of the street sams busts the door down. He find 4 heavily armed guards at the other side. A fire fight ensues with the street sams fire back and forth at the guards. One of the street sams notices a a woman standing at the top of the stairs. She is very beastial looking and pumps one burst into her. He nearly drops thing and leaves it very heavily wounded. The thing runs up the stairs and away from the fight. Just then a Spirit of Man materializes and then overcasts a spell at my Force 6 Air spirit. This disrupts him. I react by casting a high Force stunbolt only to have it resisted away by the spirits edge.

While this is going on the street sams have been putting a huge hurt on the guards and have killed all four of the original guards. 3 soon come rushing down the steps. One of them I ignite on fire and he isn't taking it too well. The two others engage the street sams. Now another Force 10 fire spirit comes by on top of the already powerful spirit of man overcasting every single spell he slings. The Force 10 begins using his elemental attack and noxious breath to cream us while the spirit of man overcasts his spells. I end up getting nauseated and confused. This is in addition to wound modifiers. So I have like a -7 to anything I do. One of my guys grabs me and one of the other street sams grabs another team member that was terribly burned. We get the heck out of there and luckily are not pursued by the spirits.

We later find out that the magician summoning all of those spirits was a vampire.


What tactic would have worked here? The 2 force 10 fire spirits and the overcasting spirit of man are what screwed us. I have counterspelling but when their doing that much, and with so much force it really only lessens the already insane damage that is being dealt. We almost dropped the vampire and it would have had to regenerate to get back up. It then somehow managed to summon a force 10 while heavily wounded, which is terrible luck for us. Man I really hate edge sometimes.

I know some of you guys have a lot of successful runs under your belt and have been dealing with spirits a long time. How would a professional have done this? Keep the spirits in mind too, because from the looks of it, we can expect many more Force 10 spirits.

EDIT: One last thing. What the heck can you do when an enemy magician is bunkered in and releasing spirits like mad? I mean this vampire was just going to keep on releasing all those overcasting bound spirits of man and summoning more Force 10s to replenish the ones I was able to disrupt.

Well, first I think I'd throw a really heavy object at your DM's head because I'm fairly sure that the second batch of Spirits were summoned via fiat instead of fair play, although I supose I could be mistaken...

Secondly, without details on what your group is really capable of I can't offer anything more concrete then the idea that in the shadows it always pays to know when the time for stealth ends and the time for firebombing the fragging building and leaving your teamate to burn alive begins.

We had 3 street sams that were all gun bunnies. One had medic, demolition, and infiltration skills. The 2nd one had technical, hacking, piloting, and computer skills. The last one was a martial arts guy. Then there was the magician. He is mainly a combat/mental manipulation magician. He can summon spirits, but don't ask him to bind or banish them.

Let's straighten a few things out. She did not look bestial at all. I said slightly feral, like something wasn't quite right. She was already upstairs, so she did not have to go up any stairs at all; just limp back into her room. They drop the first spirit like a bad habit and almost outright kill the antagonist in one fail swoop. That is Shadowrun though, it is fast and dirty. The street sams take out over half the flunkies in one combat phase. Under normal circumstances you would think the battle is in the bag, but this is Shadowrun, it is very dirty at times. Not realizing what they are fighting and the antagonist almost dying because of hubris(silly mortals, storming my adobe), she gets pist... very pist. Now remember, she was expecting company after having to dispel not one, but two force 6 spirits in less than 12 hours. So I really don't know what he crying about. Oh, none of the spirits over-casted either, Eleazar was just frustrated. He hates edge sometimes, his character's edge is 5. That can be annoying at times, but I don't say anything. Oh yeah, I'm the GM.

First, the sprits you sent to look for your friend might have alerted the magical security that something was going on, giving them some time to prepare a good magical protection.

There should be a lot of different ways to get to the vampire. One of them is just to blow his hiding place to bits with a mortar. Another one is to send an assassin drone there... Just take a small drone, equip it with some kind of poisoned dart (or have it carry some Fuel-Air Explosives) and send it there.

Anyway, here are some pointers to deal with heavy opposition :
1) Avoid them (sneaking in, talking your way in...)
2) Blow it up with heavy weaponry (Drones, mortar, rockets...)
3) Change the rules: they are safe and secure in their Thor-proof bunker ? What about their family and friends ? Guess they'll have to get out if they want to see them ever again.

i think one thing you could have done is spent more time looking for information, and/or been sneakier about it. other than that, i'd say the fight went about as well as can be expected--you did give the antagonist ample warning that you were coming. it might have been worthwhile to try and draw the bad guys out into an ambush, but given the level of spirit support they had, i don't think that would have worked.

like Blade said, if you don't have overwhelming firepower, you shouldn't try a frontal assault.

Oh, and another thing you could have done : draw the spirits away from the scene. Have your own spirit engage them in astral combat and fight defensively. It should keep the opposite spirit busy for some time.

To add to what was said before, you were obviously dealing with someone awakened, because they had wards and banished your searching spirits. So, go out and hire a couple of street shamans, and get a whole gaggle of low-force spirits. Knock down that ward, and let the spirits-for-hire play chaff. Even at low force, enough of them ought to be able to distract the higher-force spirits long enough for you to do something about them.

Plus, nobody like collateral damage. Let the grenades fly.

Well, assuming that everything was played fairly (Yeah, I'm sorry, unless Eleazar is mistating the Force of the Spirits I'm still getting weird vibes about the whole thing even with the advanced warning unless Summoning Drain has been House Ruled.) the next time you corner a vampire some things to keep in mind...

* Vampires can't regenerate damage caused from head shots, or any damage at all while peppered with wood, so its time to break out the crossbows or if you are playing a cimimatic game, wooden shotgun shells/grenades if you want to try for another frontal assualt.

* They are however immune to toxins, so any drones you send in need to be rigged to explode unless you are wanting to simply geek your own teammate, and as long as she has had him, he's already talked so silencing him doesn't really buy you anything.

However for the most part your team really isn't set up to be able to handle multiple high force spirits so personally once you manage to track the vampire down again I think I'd put your sammy's demolition abilities to the test and level whatever the vamp's new haven is with as much explosives you can get your hands on and simply writing your buddy off, provided of course that she doesn't want to make a deal, and since she's faced you once and won handedly that probably isn't in the cards.

As an aside, given that anyone who can summon and bind force 10 spirits can also put up force 10 wards (by having the spirits cast them if nothing else), how would a force 6 spirit ever get though it? And does it even need to, or is it enough for it to come back and say "he's here, behind this huge astral barrier"? The spirit certainly can't be penetrating every ward in th city, now can it?

If I'd been defending, after the first spirit set off the alarms I'd have summoned my flock of bound spirits and been waiting for the watcher (or mage), and nuked or followed it.

Anyhow, in the future I'd suggest not setting off all the magical alarms and then launching a frontal attack a short while later. Stealth is always a good way to start.

force 10 spirits are killers - elemental attack with force 10 and 20+ dice ( 30+ when the spirit takes edge )

imagine a spirit of men force 10 who throwes a 30+ dice manaball

The multiple high force spirits makes me wonder too. Unless I'm reading the rules very wrong, you cannot summon-on-the-fly more than one spirit. Binding these things takes time, money and a lot of effort (possibly also drain). Given the warning the mage has received, it is not unreasonable for them to have spirits pre-summoned and bound, but

Not only was it a recue mission, but we also went in not knowing anything about the enemy. And the location was in an upper class residential neighborhood. The team member was kidnapped at a club.

And yeah force 10 spirits suck. When else can you get eleven successes on your attack roll and do not a box of damage.

Not only was the summon-on-the-fly rule bypassed. (Seemingly, or else the GM in question has a yen for nastily overpowered opponents.) Also, I thought the convention here was that spirits couldn't be requested to overcast or spend edge just in the basic fulfillment of a service. If edge can be spent at the magician's request, your GM just gave you a huge honkin' cannon to tool around with. Direct combat spells are already nasty, they don't have to be upgraded by letting a disposable NPC overcast and spend edge while you personally don't have to cover any of the costs.

Actual mistakes on the run, mostly I wonder why you tried to force your way through the barrier rather than walk through it astrally inactive and called your spirits while you were on the other side, but aside from ringing the astral alarm you were just rushed by too many big things. The GM might have also been overlooking the fact that high essence NPC's don't necessarily have correspondingly high magic scores, but without knowing the specifics of the NPC or the encounter I can't say anything for sure.

The very fact that this thread even exists tells us something. And that tells me that the GM has to sit down and talk with his players.

The DM did respond in the thread - he said they were not Force 10 spirits, and the player's recollection of events was a bit skewed.

The original account was pretty charged. I'd be willing to bet that it was posted shortly after the game ended.

And the answer I give is the same one everyone else did - you never alert people you're coming, you never go in the front door, and you never underestimate your enemy.

The player seems to fling spirits around pretty wily-nily. It's safe to assume that the GM is aware of this, and probably has set up an opponent who can do the same at least some of the time.

The first time you run in to a spirit fthat can wipe the floor with yours, you pull back and reassess.

There is one surefire way to deal with vampires, SADM

Intel is very important. Start by having a good hacker get into their security system, hire one if you don't have one, and use any security cameras in the facility to get a good image of all of your foes. Then run a matrix search against those images to see what you can come up with. If they have audio surveillance or if you can set up audio surveillance, try to get a name, too.

This should give you some idea about who you are facing and if it doesn't you are either going up against SINless gangers or badass prime runners. If it is a place when you won't find SINless gangers, be prepared.
Do not send in spirits ahead of you unless it is absolutely necessary. That is a mistake many people make since it will alert astrally active characters and those with magical senses. If you can't set up remote surveillance then you could get intel on the targets by sending in a Task or Ally spirit with drawing or painting skill and have it sketch the faces of the people it sees so that you can scan the image and use it in a matrix search, but that isn't highly recommended.

In a public establishment, you should lead with your face. If people are supposed to be there, then your presence is unlikely to raise alarm. Give your face a briefcase full of explosives to set up a nasty surprise. Pair him with your stealth guy if you like.
If the establishment is not public, the face should still be able to sleaze his way in if he's good. But it doesn't work if he is recognized and it can be rather dangerous in a private residence.

Your hacker controls the terrain. Maglocks are very popular for a very good reason. In case of emergency they can be opened up or locked down from a central control. You hacker can open or close any maglock door that is connected to the security system once he is in and he can keep them that way. Using security cameras, he can tell you where to go and where your enemy is. Using maglock doors he can clear your way and funnel your enemy into a trap.
If your hacker can't gain control of the facility, for god's sake destroy the power meter and any generators that it may have.

Powerful spirits can be treated three ways, like bombs, like professional wrestlers, and like magic pants.
If you have two force 6 spirits on call, do not treat them like professional wrestlers. Do not send them in the right one at a time. Instead, treat them like bunker-buster bombs. Make sure that they are Spirits of Man with Stunball. Have them materialize in the target room and have both of them cast stunball on whomever is inside. This will incapacitate the vast majority of living characters. If there are likely to be drones inside, use indirect elemental spells (which are likely to kill any hostages) instead or don't send them at all.
After the initial damage is done, use another spirit as your magic pants, providing concealment as you sneak in so that your enemies have to make perception tests against huge penalties as you breach. Accompany this with a small explosive to destroy the door (if it isn't a maglock) and smoke grenades and flashbangs to make these perception modifiers even higher. The important thing is to make sure that all of your team members and your spirit use infiltration while breaching the room. Default if necessary. And make sure that the spirit isusing concealment on itself as well as all of your team members. Infiltration will force a perception test and concealment will jack up the modifers, making it better than Invisibility because the Stealth skill group also defeats Astral Perception.
Also consider having your magic pants spirit use Magical Guard on your team.
Once you've breached, have your magic pants spirit use Accident on all the remaining enemies, including drones, up to the point that you have one service left just in case you need one of its powers for the getaway. Between mass accident, pseudo-invisibility, and the huge stun damage, you shouldn't have that much trouble.

On your way out, drop a bomb just to be sure.

Edit:And if you know that you'll be facing a vampire then get a pair of Blood Spirits, rent them if you don't know Blood Invoking. Crank up their force by feeding a few bums to it and send it in with orders to drain the slitch dry. Vampiric essence contests are, by far, the best way to take out a bloodsucker.

and if the enemy thinks they're going with no tech security, don't forget that commlinks typically have built-in cameras (and probably speakers), and that most any electrical device is wireless by default. now if someone *actually* has no technological stuff whatsoever, you can use that to your advantage too. that means no maglocks, no MAD scanners, no cyberware scanners, no electronic sensors of any kind. you can sneak in microdrones and do recon, and there shouldn't be much of anything that's gonna detect it. alternately, they're using purely wired systems, and should be really surprised if you manage to get into it by tapping into their system remotely... but yeah, i'd say your biggest mistake was just busting in with insufficient recon. it's one thing to just break down the door and start shooting when you know it's a bunch of gangers whose best weapon is that big troll with a steel pipe. it's another when you *know* your enemy has magica resources, and that they were able to kidnap one of your team members from a public place, with no one even noticing. that should let you know your target has resources available to them, and that you don't want to face those resources unprepared.

Actually lorechaser I went back and reread the DM's post and s/he only said that the Spirits never used Overcasting, but did appearently use Edge in their attacks and very well could have been Force 10.

I'll just dogpile in on the intel thing. Unless you have absolutely no choice and no time, do not rely on just one method of legwork, especially if that legwork has already exposed your existence to the target. Drones and hacking should have been the order of the day.

I'm assuming the first spirit patrol was a gut "what the heck happened" reaction, with an aim for an immediate frontal assault. Once it pushed through a ward and was suddenly dispelled, things should have slowed down a bit. You suddenly lost surprise and initiative, while still not having any real intel other than location. Your buddy's not gonna get any more geeked than he already was if you wait an hour or two to recon. Minidrones would have been especially useful, and you have to assume that a house in an upscale neighborhood would be wired to the gills (if not, that should set off more warning bells).

Knowing something more about the opposition prior to breach (preferably, having rigger or hacker eyes inside all the way to entry), you could have had more options. Even something as simple as knowing the buddy was in the back room and the bad guys were all in the front would have opened up possibilities. For example, you could have used HE breaching followed by GL volleys. That would have effectively shredded everything in the front room, including the vamp. Or, you could have shot tear gas through the windows, or even simply found a back door or window and tried to avoid combat.

Of course, it's easier to come up with alternatives sitting at a keyboard than sweating it out at the table wondering what you're getting thrown into now. But that's why you get paid the big nuyen.

Placing two or 3 kilos of rating 12 foam plastic explosives on the bunker should put a nice hole in it.
That be 20 physical damage and halve the bunkers armor, plus hits from your demolitions skill.

...one question (well actually two) what was the starting BP level of the characters and how much Karma had they earned before the mission? If they basically were starting out on their first run, this sounds like they were in above their heads. With only one mage, on the team even force 5 - 6 spirits would have proved a challenge. Force 10 Spirits? Some of my characters are pushing 70+ karma and they still haven't dealt with anything more powerful than force 6.

As to use of spirits, Hyzmarca's comments make good sense. If you have multiple services use them. Another good way to thin the ranks (if your mage can summon a Spirit of Plant or Animal) is using the Fear Power since the Spirit effectively gets twice its force (WP & Magic) as a dice pool opposed the target's WP with the target running for the nearest point of safety (possibly opening the front door) for a number of combat turns equal to net hits. Even after it wears off, he needs to make another WP+ CHA test (with the spirit's net hits as a threshold) to return. Unless the GM has unrealistically pumped the Willpower ratings of the grunts, advantage is usually the spirit's.

Unfortunately one fairly useful spirit power against mundanes, Confusion, has been nerfed a bit with the re-write. In previous editions it imposed a TN modifier to all actions equal to the spirit's essence [force] and to resist or make any decision, the target needed to make a WP test against a TN of the spirit's essence on his next action. If used by a force 6 spirit, that Sammy with the Smartlink is suddenly needing 8s instead of 2s (+ any other modifiers for vision, range, cover etc.). Also, if he failed his WP test and/or nobody else went to shake him out of it (taking up their next action), he would simply wander around aimlessly.

Now, it is simply a negative DP modifier equal to the net hits the spirit gets.

We didn't know we were going up against a vampire and had no idea about the spirits either. We also unfortunately had to rush because for all we knew the team member was in imminent danger. This team member has been known for a long time by 2 of the other team members. My character made a deal with one of those 2 to assist him magically for things in return. We did actually speak of just forgetting him, but chose to help in the end. The reason why we didn't use stealth is because they already knew someone was coming due to the spirits I sent. We did have a demolitions guy with infiltration abilities, but we couldn't blow up the building because our friend was in it. Though with the amount of explosives she has, it would have been really cool just to do.

As far as intel goes, the only information we got that was of use was when we found out where they were located. This could have been used to check and find some things out, but this would have taken time, which I didn't think we had. In hindsight and after reading your posts it looks like we made one too many mistakes.

Eleazar, give poor azrael_ven a bit of slack. He's dodging heavy objects hurled at his head by Ravor. That could make one a bit defensive. ;o)

I think the biggest mistake you made was your lack of hacking support. That the Awakened have a poor understanding of electronic/matrix security is a stereotype for a reason, and it's probably doubly true for a vampire. If the team doesn't have a hacker or technomancer one of you should at least have one as a contact, and a good hacker could have had the entire building under his control in the time it took for your team to get from their pad to the vampire's.

One thing is bugging me though. Didn't your entire team survive (albeit heavily injured) and get their teammate back? (I actually am a bit confused as to that last point.) If so, well done. You took down some really heavy opposition within some very serious time and information constraints. It's Miller time, or will be once the Sammie gets out of the burn ward.

Well Hacking is great, but really thats a fight a magical force can win by simply not playing. You can't hack a system that is not Matrix capable. If your security is a guy thats say mindlinked, and spirits. With zilch matrix connection. The hacker is kinda screwed. However that brings up Mana Static as being an absolutely perfect anti-magic bit of magic. It can shut down Spirits, Adepts, and Mages and let the non-magical heavys in your group beat them down.

Mmm... I totally agree with Ravor in this one...

I have been following this thread from the beginning but did not want to post my opinion because of it being biased in favor of the players.

Even though I do agree that they made every mistake they could while underestimating the complications of the scenario and ignoring all the clues they had, the whole thing still looks (to me) as a GM overreacting to its players carelessness (maybe even cockiness; come on,"kicking the door in" may be the way to go in other games but when running the shadows it should not even be considered a last resort).

Nevertheless, despite the fact that players actions (as characters) are sometimes frustrating (even irritating), I think that screwing them by tweaking the rules (as GM) and manipulating the setting (as narrator) is distasteful.

Do not get me wrong: I have done the same kind of mistakes about a zillion times (and still counting ), I just wanted to point out my impressions.

I hope not having been rude, I sincerely apologize if I had.

There are many things that we as bystanders do not know. Whether the information given to the players was miscontrued as time-perishable or whether the players had time to gather more information or if the players would know that the mage was a vampire, we do not know for sure.

What I can see is this:

1) A player has posted what he thought was happening in a game he was in, he has asked what they should have done or should have done better.

2) Several forumites have posted on what they thought the players should have done.

3) The GM of that game has posted that some points were incorrect.

What I think:

A) (Deduction) The player/s and the GM had a disconnect somewhere along the line. It is evident from the GM's postings or else the GM wouldn't have felt the need to post.

B) (Speculation) The player that posted might not have enjoyed the game as well as he should. Perhaps he was not very happy with the outcome of the game or that he did not feel that given the circumstances, how they could have done any better.

Both A and B would mean that the game didn't do his job or at least do it well, ie to ensure that his players enjoyed themselves. Therefore allow me to reiterate: GM, talk with your players, instead of posting here.

To some degree, this reminds me of a thread in another forum, for another game. A player showed up and gave his version of events. It sounded like the GM was being terribly unfair. However, as more questions were asked, and the GM showed up, the story changed considerably. That case was far more drastic than here, but the core idea is the same.

At the present time it sounds like the group tried to brute force their way in and the GM met them at the door, responded with logical amounts of resistance, and the players got rebuffed. To the player they'd hit an immovable object. To the GM, he's just made it clear they're not an unstoppable force. Meanwhile, it seems, everyone's asking, "Why didn't you just go around?"

I think my opinion in this matter would be best summarized by a suggestion: to the player, analyze tactics and consider what other angles you could have come at the problem from. To the GM, look over what they fought and consider if the group's ready to handle it- both in terms of stats and approach. If you're expecting them to run The Italian Job and the group's out for The Matrix, it might not work out so well.

Past this... well, I don't know all the details, and I'm new to the system. All I can really offer is a look at it from the general roleplaying POV.

From reading through this topic, I have to agree with the many posts on more legwork...from the point of finding the location of the kidnapped runner, to the point of breaking in an fighting, there could have been a lot more done before acting as such.

Casing the joint, both physically and via the matrix could have helped. Trying to contact the covert ops, even if that was just to hack into his comm and maintain a trace.

Overall, the group seems to have been way too okay with going into this scene pretty much blind, so I really don't fault the GM for anything he did. From a player's perspective, seeing the group setup the way it is, and coming up against spirits, I would have really reconsidered the approach the group wanted to take. A decent GM is going to allow the players to overcome obstacles in a variety of ways, which the worst one also being one of the most difficult ones, IMO.

I wouldn't have gone into the building without knowing a lot more, layout, security, getting into the system, etc.

Yes, I guess I didn't finish my thought with my prior post. In the case of this scenario, with a group not geared for spirit combat, and seeing so much of it, withdrawing would have been my suggested option. The team was not prepare for that sort of encounter, so backing down and trying another method would have been the course of action I would have taken, given the sceanrio.

And you mentioned going back to the Johnson...that would be my next step after withdrawal...he probably knows more than he passed on to you, so working that angle to get a better plan would probably net a more successful second attempt.

This wasn't a run given by the Johnson. It was fallout from a run we had just done. So we weren't being paid and the Johnson didn't have any interests in this. It wasn't anything we wouldn't have been able to handle until that 3rd powerful spirit was summoned. That is really what hurt us, on top of the spirit of man, which we could have probably taken eventually with some wounds done to us. This fallout is all from a failed run we did from "On the Run" scenario. The vampire and NPCs I believe are something from this book. I really don't know because I haven't read it and don't intend to while we are still running the scenario. This is actually our first run. I guess you could call dealing with the fallout sort of like our 2nd run. We also did try to contact our covert ops guy and received no answer. We did so multiple times, each time without success.

It is still a good idea to go back and beat up the Johnson. Knowing what we know now and what we have to deal with, he grossly underpayed us for the job. Back then we had our social adept face and he wasn't even able to get much more off the guy than the original offer. I don't think we would be able to do this without terrible repercussions though. The Johnson was most likely working for Regency Megamedia or someone similiar.

Okay, I understand a little more...

I still have to ask, after that third powerful spirit, wouldn't the obvious solution have been to back down and think of a plan B? I mean, I seriously doubt the GM was railroading you into having to fight right then and there...it just seems that your group may not have wanted with withdraw and recoup, which given the circumstances, sounds like the best course of action.

The third spirit just materialized and started owning before we could do anything. After getting hit by him and the spirit of man we ran for it. If I remember correctly he materialized in the 1st IP or 2nd IP of combat round 2 and acted first in the 3rd IP of the 2nd combat round or 1st IP of the 3rd combat round. He wasn't expected and he got to go before I had a chance to start running. I only had 1 IP. I actually thought we could take the thing before I was able to realize how powerful the thing was. Once I saw it attack I knew we were in for it.

Use very heavy explosives. Demolish the building and all inside.

Pay for a good funeral for your bud.


And smack the DM for generating a sense of "kick in the door" urgency, then kicking you in the teeth when you responded in an appropriate manner, by, appropriately enough, kicking in the door.