My favorite part of any game is when a player is just about hosed and they go for some insane idea that has just the slimmest chance of saving their sorry hide and actually pulls it off. I'm curious about what kinds of "this will never work" stunts you all have managed to pull off. This is "stupid character deaths". You have to have lived through it.

I'll start it off with an example. I have a character that goes by the name of Havoc. He's a human mage (chaos mage of course). HE has the Daredevil edge, and the braggart and distinctive style flaws. Scary combination, but I thought it would be fun!

He was hired for a solo run (no one else could make it that night) for a willing extraction out of the Renraku Arcology. Now how could that POSSIBLY go wrong!?
Anyways, short story long, he's up in the target's room (target happens to be a 5 year old girl kidnapped by Daddy in a bad divorce. I worked for Mommy), and well, I hosed up. security chief type guy (daddy) is banging on the door I just locked, and the Res Samurai are of course on their way. Running a bit short on options at that point.
So I got this marvelous idea to lightning bolt the window, and jump out it. Thank god they lived on the outside. I didn't have anything smart in mind like say, oh, a levitate spell. Nope! I decided it would be a good idea to slide down the side of the arcology! After gaining a LOT of speed, I started throwing up barrier speels to make little chutes to zig zag across with, and slow myself down a bit.
Luckily my GM was to bus being stunned by what a stupid idea I had come up with to really frag me over with things like smacking my ass all over the building because it is NOT perfectly smooth. DID open a window in front of me at one point though.
However, I managed to get all the way off the building, little girl in tow (she's now terrified of heights for the rest of her life), and was promptly arrested by Lone Star (good ol' AAA zone). Better than the Red Sammy's though. Luckily Mommy had legal custody. I was shot while trying to escape (actually escaped though, with a lot of help).


So please, post away. Hopefully yours are more far fetched than mine. I'd hate to have the least reputable story out there.


Oh, by the way, the Red Samurai DID hunt me down later and make me pay. Big time.

my adept faced down a hind attack chopper. took out its chin turret with a well-placed called shot, so that the mage could concentrate on casting stunball on its occupants.

My mage was pinned down by a pair of HiND helicopters with six spirits supporting them and a small army of Awakened in LOS to the helicopters (but not to him or his allies, thankfully) providing spell defense and shielding. He finally let loose with an incredibly high-Force stunball, and poured a good amount of his karma pool into the centering test (to defeat the Confusion effect of the spirits and the shielding on the helicopters).

Long story short, the mages onboard the helicopters resisted, the spirits were disrupted, and the pilots got knocked cold, forcing the copters into autopilot retreat. If it wasn't for the adept disabling one of their 20mm autocannons, though, it'd have probably not gone well for the players.

an oddly similar tale !!

I had a player who was primarily a submachinegun adept face down a stampeding juggernaut and, with incredible target numbers, nailed it in the eye with a rifle. One shot, one kill.

They had a hell of a time hacking it up for telesma, though.

Had a former Seattle PD turned private eye/shadow runner, partnered with a former UCAS sniper.

We were hired to rescue a young lady from her abusive ganger boyfriend. I made a mad dash for the "compound", they had two sentries by the gate. The sniper shot the lock, I bust through, he shoots both of them before they even realize what's what. I yank the gas cap and spill the bike, lighting the fuel as it skids towards their bikes. I scramble for some cover as like 20 gangers come pouring out. A hairy fire fight erupts and somehow I manage to not only not get shot but we save the girl.

We were doing a semi-one-shot kind of thing. We had to break into a research compound (surprise! surprise!) and it was proving to be quite a task for the tiny group we had.

After a few unsuccessful, but not run ending jabs at penetrating security I was getting to that frustration point. The building was two-story and not overly large. It had a tall chain-link fence around it that from the map the GM had drawn up and what not was perhaps a little too close to the building. This oversight (if it was) proved to be the making of a crazy stunt.

The building was in a forested area and there was about 50 meters of cleared brush. Also, there were two guards on the roof walking so that one was always opposite the other. Probably another oversight by the GM during the game (remember a bit of a one-shot type thing) the guards seemed to be walking back-and-forth instead of in a circuit. Either that or perhaps the guards were lazy and wanted to chat a bit while giving the appearance of doing their job...heh.

So, my character (a pretty straight ahead merc with bioware mods) gets it in his head he can time a sprint across the open field, do some gymnastic jump onto the fence with a flip up to the roof just after one of the guards has turned around. The character, if I recall correctly, had an Athletics of 3 or 4 at most, but my dice were on fire and the half dozen stupidly high rolls the GM had me make all succeeded.

Top top it off, after I was on the roof I ran up behind Guard #1 and snapped his neck with an insane unarmed combat surprise attack, followed by a silenced pistol taking out the other guard on the roof before he could find it in himself to process what had just happened.

I'm not sure this counts, but hey works for me.

I was GMing for a team who's job was to clean out a warehouse that the Johnson said was a new Gang hideout. The team does some research and something about it seems wrong from the info they get. They camp out the warehouse before going in (smart of them, I was amazed) and discovered that it was infested with ghouls.

They then prepped with various gear and headed into the warehouse to clean out the ghouls. They slaughtered something like 200 ghouls, most of them asleep at the time. Then the continued searching and found the "leader" of the nest. A vampire. Here's where it get's interesting. The team had a Shapeshifter, who's player really played up the bestial nature of shapeshifters. When the Shapeshifter saw the vamp she ran at it. What ensued was impressive to say the least.

The vampire, pumped up from having just finished feeding, and from having the speacial vampire ability had stats in the mid teens. The Shapeshifter had fairly high stats as well, most of them aproaching 10.

The two of them fought in hand to hand combat, the shifter using a modified heavy pistol, and the Vampire using just his hands. That combat went on for about 20 turns, with both parties "dieing" and then regenerating again multiple times. The entire rest of the team actually stopped paying attention to what they were doing, and forgot where they were in the game to sit back and cheer over the battle. It's now famous among my group. "The battle of the Uber characters".

Oh yeah, the Vampire and Shapeshifter both survived, but the vampire ran away, so we can say the shifter won. On the other hand everyone who was at that particular run is now extremely paraniod and working on building an Anti-Vampire aresenal.

Did some runs for Deus once.

At one point, our team was being pursued along the highway fleeing Seattle after pulling off an INSANE rescue of a jailed comrade of ours (on live Matrix feed). We were travelling in a motorcade, with a Roadmaster and two bikes, being chased by several dozen armored vehicles and a helicopter. Said chopper had already taken a shot at us and we had just barely survived it, and my init turn came up. I was playing my Raccoon Shaman, and the only spell I had that would be useful (since Lightning Bolt probably wouldn't have worked well on something airborne) was Control Thoughts. Somehow, through the magic of Karma, I managed to control the gunner and get him to "launch" the copter's full battery of missile while they were still locked. The thing went down and took about a block of Seattle with it. We safely made our retreat to the SSC, where we had transport to get us and our rescued teammate safely off the continent to hide for a while.

Wow, I havent posted here in years.

Well, this was a few years back. My team and I were in a dense forest, pinned down by a sniper. Every shot we fired back missed, and he was out of grenade range. The trees we were useing for cover were not thick enough to survive more than one or two shots. So I dropped my empty pistol and sprinted in a straight line at the sniper with my Rem990. He was roughly 3-400 yards away. He fired and missed, I just kept sprinting. I finally got about ten feet away and took his feet out from under him with my shotgun.

Due to the cyberware my Dwarf was using (Magnetic cyberlimb system) the bike he was riding (Briggs and Stratton) and a successfull charisima roll (lets see if the pavements magnetic) the character stood straight up off his motorcycle, which went on to become a permanent part of a Chinese Resteraunt's Kitchen. Granted most of the soles of the boots were gone and the Sissybar left a Really Big Bruise across the Buttocks, but that was fun, and funny. GM Laughed so hard he had to take a potty break...

O.K. a little set up , we're doing a run that involved a set of 12 very weird free spirits that the called themselves tick-tocks( I don't know something about the chinese Zodiac or a Clock thing , I'm not sure =P) and at some point my group has decided that these guys need to go down so after some pretty nasty fights we chase the last two back to a warehouse of somesorts where they are going to try to regroup , well upon entering the warehouse we see that the last two of these guys are meeting with a Azzie Blood mage and at this point decide if we hit 'em hard here we can most likely end them once and for all , well long story short , my character(a 48 year old Merc who loves explosives) decides to cause a distraction and here is said distraction
Spirits and mage talking
enter into warehouse and older man walking around as if he's lost , looking at the clutter and boxes
Mage "Who the Frag are you?"
Old man "who me ? no one special , I'm just the guy with 8 Kilos of C-12 strapped to his chest ."
Typhon pulls open his trench coat to show his explosives to the mage
Mages eye's go wide

well with out getting into too much detail we end up taking them all out with out getting our runners killed , and amazingly with out our magic backup present

<GRIN> Gotta love those Greybeards with thier Not In My Back Yard attitudes...

Ok, my group was running through the prefab module that involves the Ork detective from lonestar hiring the group to "apprehend" this really bad criminal type who lives "above the law". Well, anyone who has played this run knows it has its final scene in a small, non-descript airfield somewhere in Seattle. I was playing a juiced up sam by the name of SpeedFreak (duh!) who had the impulsive flaw. (He was still about 19 at the time.) Well, anyways, we were "infiltrating" the airfeild, with our hyper sneaky adept and mage already in the corrugated tin shack on the airfield "questioning" one of the field workers for information. Myself and the Troll sam/tank were hanging back as backup.

Well, the advance members realize they are not going to be able to get out of the building and to the plane unseen on thier own and the mage asks for a "diversion". Myself and the Troll (Named Mauler) start looking around to see if there is anything we can do/use. Well, having a high INT (Better Speed you know.) I spot a fairly ubiquitous sight on most airfields, tanks holding jet fuel. I relay to the team, "Hey guys, I see some fuel tanks. They might make a good distraction, should I blow them?"

The Adept (named Monday) who was paying more attention to the interrogation than me, replied, "Sure Freak, blow the tanks."

Not being one to be told twice, I promptly used my AK-97's underbarrel grenade launcher to put an Improved HE Offensive grenade right into the center of the fuel tank farm. (Had about 8 successes.)

As you can imagine, the explosives convinced the jet fuel to combust rather easily and after figuring out how much fuel was in the tanks, we ended up with a 180D explosion. (90D AV) Well, the GM didn't think fuel exploded as well as military grade explosives, so he had the Damage drop by 2 for every meter of distance.

I started about 30m from the tanks and through having a very high initiative and alot of athletics, managed to make it far enough away to only have to resist a 16D. My heavy security armor, form fit 3 and 15 pts of karma allowed me to take only a serious wound. The mage and Adept, taken completely by surprise, both blew Hand of God, and Mauler (18 Body, titanium bone lacing and an anchored blast barrier spell. [he got blown up alot]) took a moderate wound.

Needless to say, the NPC's (having lower stats) pretty much went cheeseburger on us. (we got lucky and had enough of the target left to ID) And the airfield was leveled.

Our GM, after conluding the adventure and handing out karma, explained that he had put about 20 hours over the last week into preparing this encounter for us and had planned for it to take most of the game session. (Which were about 4-6 hours in those days.)

He was upset because I "blew the tanks" after about 20 minutes of game play.

Most of the time when players in my group do something crazy, they end up dying. Although one time, when I was GMing, the players escaped from a corporate facility by hijacking the news van that came in to report on a "terrorist attack". The shadowrunners, ever watchful for ways to throw out some misinformation, used the news van to broadcast that they were an ecoterrorist group named "Le Soleil De Frommage" (which means nonsense, but roughly translated stands for "The Sun of Cheese", I guess). After being chased halfway to high heaven across the southern portion of Michigan, they get stuck in the Michigan Lake Dunes. Half of the runners eventually ended up dying due to heavy machinegun fire, while the other half managed to escape with the goods.

After they delivered the goods to the Johnson and got paid, the street sam blew a hole in the Johnson's head with an Ares Predator at point-blank. He was not having a good day. And that started off a brand new campaign where the players had a rather unique "Hunted" flaw. They ended up taking "sanctuary" in Bug City.

Heh...this stunt had my jaw drop in the past run.

Group of PCs and a group of NPCs are pulling a keystone cop routine running towards the corner of a building from two different sides. They run into each other and the fire fight begins...with the lead PC firing a grenade linked Offensive AP Grenade at an healvily armed ork NPC...at 7m away.

Because he didn't realize what grenade was in the launcher, he got away with zero damage (as did the ork...AP is flechette) but the NPC hellhound has no such luck.

Of course, the NPC group leader replied with a grenade of his own - a IPE Concussion grenade. This made everybody run back the way they came...so basically everyone was thinking "deja vu..." Ironically, there was only a light stun on one of the PCs from the grenade.

And all of this from a range of 5-7meters. Of course, when the Concussion grenade hit the ground, the range opened up REAL quick.

Funny thing was all these explosions didn't draw much attention due the an earlier detonation of a McVeigh style bomb that accidentally touched off a underground gas line in addition to it's 45D damage... My poor NPC compound pretty much lost the entire North side of its fencing...as well as all the basements of the buildings nearby when the boilers blew.

ok i was on a simple (if there is such a thing) run, we had to hit a truck carrying military supples and snaffle everything in it. the hit went to plan, we make our escape back to the meeting point........ i come screaming round the corner on my bike to see the place swarming with loan star !! (dam) as i was playing a completely hipped up ork i took it into my head to go screaming down the road on my bike pulling a wheelie and giving them the v's........ may i add getting the best bike control test i have ever rolled (four 6's) so of course they take up chase, this worked out well as i have just created a diversion.
so more and more join in on the chase so that i am hareing accross seatle with about 10 loan star units on my tail. they hurd me into a road block, i manage to pass my bike hadleing again and get past them... but then the guns come out... im going at mak 10 and take two bursts to the back as i am heading to an ally to get away, again i get the best roals you have ever seen getting five 6's on my body roal of 9 and manage to get way with a moderate wound..... my god i thoght i was dead.

the outher one was walking into a corperation headquaters in hong kong and trying to blag my way into the security section....... well all i will say is i got my ass kiked but managed to jump out of a window into the river and get away.... that was good but not as good as telling loan star to stick it and living to tell the tail!!

torz

did you ever have teh star spot you after that lite incedent

NOPE

IRL I walked in front of a guy with a shotgun with the choke wide open throwing down on a duck and didn't get hit. He didn't have time to pull his shot either.