Problem 1: The rigger.
Our rigger has an armoured Bison that's armed to the teeth, and 6 drones that spew out of it like a swarm of death. The character never leaves the safety of his 'metal womb'. I quite like this style and it's absolutely cool, however if feel it's hard to challenge him. Why? For starters the MMG on a few of his drones can destroy most vehicles with only a single burst. His drones have excellent armour that stop most small arms fire, which means the drones can only be touched by AV mil spec stuff - a successful hit by one of these will absolutely obliterate the drone (i'd just like to damage them!). The player spent a week tweaking his vehicles and drones and considering we just started playing i don't have the heart to vaporise his personally constructed babies (maybe when they've got a bit more cash i'll give it a go).

Problem 2: The street-bitch.
Our gun-bunny equivalent has munchkin cyber-eyes to die for. He's got SmarklinkII for close up work and VisionMag + lasersight for distance work. So far i haven't seen an starting TN for him above 3! Additionally she's layering armour with dermal armour so much that she's got a ridiculous armour rating and no penalty (her Quickness is cranked through the roof via race/bodyalts). Lord, i think her impact armour might be as high as 9.

Problem 3: Decker/Assassin.
Our Yak Assassin purchased a complete camo suit full of Ruthenium Polymers giving +12 to his stealth rolls. Even against Thermo/Ultravision it's still +6.

Considering that i allowed the players to purchase whatever they could legally, and that i don't want to take away their toys, what would you do to challenge or to 'curb' the above abilities?

Over to you!

1. If the vehicle bogs down, a wheel plunging through a weak surface means the rigger has to abandon his vehicle.

The vehicle has to be serviced and maintained, which means the rigger has to come out sooner or later.

2. Start enforcing situational modifiers: using lowlight or thermo doesn't eliminate penalties, but it does reduce them. Moving target adds another penalty.

3. The hitter isn't wearing that cloak 24/7, which means any enemies (s)he/it acquires will learn and plan around the trick. Magic isn't dissauded by reuth, nor are booby-traps like tripwires, pressure sensors and so forth.

-Siege

1) Electronic warfare for your rigger friend. Also, try having an enemy situate themselves where it would be difficult to hit them, but not another drone. Maybe someone coming up from a manhole under the bison. Also, if he is attacked quickly he can have problems deploying all of the drones. Also, you can have Johnsons all pay X amount for each member of the group they see at the meet or who want proof the group has an able rigger. Our you could have someone try to seduce they're way into the vehicle and then confront him once they are in the bison.

2) For your gun bunny try making her swim, its hard to swim if you weigh as much as a small tank. Even a close call with having to swim should make her more careful about what sort of situations she gets into.

I like Siege's suggestions. A few more:

1. The rules don't really allow for "just damaging" vehicles. However, with 6(!) supermegadeathdealerkillermasterdrones, losing a few shouldn't bother the rigger too much. Employ Great Dragon ATGMs - at 2400 and Avail 8, they aren't that hard to come by. At least when you're expecting an attack by what amounts to a mechanized infantry company. Or you might just piss him off by firing a few (dozen) M79B1 LAWs at his drones and Bison.

2. Like Siege said, starting TN doesn't matter much if you're forced to run around in thermal smoke (at least +7 TN or something like that). Make everyone wait for him to come through some bottleneck (a doorway, a corridor, whatever) and pack a dozen men armed with assault rifles at the other end. Even if he wins the initiative and moves first, he shouldn't be capable of killing everyone, and will be facing several dozen rounds of FA fire. Now give those dozen men 2 IPE Offensive HE Grenades each, and the street bitch might actually have to do some real work.

Remember, an IPE Off HE nade is really cheap at 120. Using the optional rules for explosives, they do 15D or 15D+1 on average. Or use Claymores -- 400 each and 16D (avg 16D+2 with the opt rules) can really make things interesting.

3. Use the same things as with the street bitch (nades and mines). And the dozen men with ARs can do Suppressive Fire instead of normal FA, that ought to scare the YakDekAssWossname.

1) Enforce Maintenance and Overhead rules from Rigger 3. The Bison is an RV (I believe), and they can't go everywhere. Also, it'd stand out in the city making it easy to remember and easier to find. Occasionally have other drone riggers pick up and mess with his signals. Find his position and hunt him down.

2) Occasionally enforce the Effects of Enhanced Reflexes (i think that's what it's called) rules from M&M. Laser sights don't stack with vision magnification, nothing does in canon rules. Enemies should be mobile and seek positions with cover. Maybe a few have flashpacks or grenades, one might set up as a sniper. Keep track of ammo expenditure. Make sure more is being purchased.

3) Siege is right about ruth-suit not mattering a lot with magic; "excuse me sir, your aura is showing." Remember, the perception test is easier if the character is in motion (pg. 114 M&M). Keep track of the image scanners as well. Although not canon, rain would "outline" someone and make them easier to see. In a combat situation observers with thermo and or ultrasound know something is there, they just have a harder time hitting it. Use searching fire and suppressive fire (CC).

Depending on the types of missions your PC take will determine what you do. In general, make sure the opposition is numerous and or well equipped enough to present a challenge. If you're in the Desert Wars, give the NPCs bigger guns and better armor; trying some less conventional things as well. If in the 'plex make sure to enforce their flaws (anyone have a Day Job, or worse Police Record?). Yaks have responsibilities. Former Yaks have problems. The quick and the chromed have all kinds of social penalties outside of their usual social circle. RVs get tickets for double parking (which should be hard enough to find; $10 near the stadium, $5 if you're willing to walk half a mile).

Make runs a little more involved. Goto X in 30 minutes, pick up Y at zero hour exactly, but maintain Z the whole time or else it's all fragged. Your group is lacking in magical support and even simple magical security will stop them. Watcher reports to mage, mage calls alarm, building goes into lockdown. Spirits are nasty things especially without an adept or mage. No mage means no spell defense. I hope they took the magic resistance edge. MMGs are not street legal. If the 'Star sees those drones flying around, they'll do something about it, they're paid to. Get a little social; notice the social skills the infiltration expert archetype has? It's for a reason. Some runs require a bit of talking, bluffing, and otherwise verbally sleazing into or out of situations.

If you have access to any published adventures take a look for ideas. They have some problems *cough* railroading *cough* but the missions and situations are usually interesting.

I'm not suggesting you constantly take them out of their element. There should be plenty of opportunities to deck, drive, and shoot, but there's more to a run than that.

Remember
whatever the runners get, so does everyone else.
For #1 rigger
A) It's already been suggested you use EW against him, the drones do no good if they can't be controlled.
B) LS has bigger better toys. He pisses off enough people htey will go after him. They can pick of Drones long range with military missles, then go after the main vehical with a couple of Banshee's.
C) Who's hiring this guy? This is shadowrun, not "3rd Panzer Division."
D) Did he ward the truck? Have a fire elemental materialize INSIDE the truck.

#2 gun bunny
A) Sure you can't penetrate her armor, don't try. use nonleathal weapons- net guns smothering foam. Knocked her down and pin her. If she can't point a gun, it doesn't matter how good her shooting skill is. Once she's down sec guards can calmly undo the armor.
B) Spells, stun spells that afect the mind, not the body don't worry about armor. elemental effects that can cool off ammo-guns' no good if it blows up/melts, armor melted by acid
C) Elementals can embrace her and smoother her without having to get through the armor.

#3 ninja
A) Disable the "invisibility" a cloud of flour will settle on the outside of the cloak, layering over the polymers. (it worked in Lieber's Bazaar of the Bizzare). Also a surface like gel or flour on the floor will show the passage of the footpints "Foot prints!Someone's been through here"
B) Use non-visual means for detecting them- electronic motion detectors, guard animals with sense of smell- "never mind the freaking cockatrice they got rottweilers!"
C) Guard spirits and mages. Their ability to see life forms on the astral plane is not affected by camoflage. Even if the ninja tries to offset this by weaving living entities, like ivy, through the suit, the mage will still see the ivy strolling through the complex

FINALLYfor #1 #2 and #3
They've got to sleep sometime! The rigger has to get out of the car, the gun bunny doesn't sleep in her armor and the ninja doesn't got to mchughs in the suit right? If the runners make themselves into too much of a pestcorps will make a run against them, put a price on their heads and then things like spare parts for the car, battery packs for the suit etc become hard to find. Does the gun bunny go grocery shopping in full armor? And they don't call the cops when that comes htrough the door? Even if legal it's frightening and they can suddenly declare "we're closed" before trouble comes looking for her.-think of it this way,you arethe clerk in a 7-11 and someone comes in wearing full body armor, doesn't that just scream "here comes trouble?"

(even if the rigger does sleep in the truck he has to open it to take in food or gas. To quote the venerable Sprawl Sites "there's a bomb in my sloppy soy")

The Rigger:

Elementals can handle riggers like no-one's business. When the enemy mage tells his fire elemental to go destroy everything inside of that Bison, all of the armor plating in the world won't save him.

AV ammo. It's hard to challenge a rigger without breaking his toys... so make it clear that doing things the loud way will result in broken toys. Even if it's only the leader of the opposition with a clip of AV in his Predator III, it's enough to drive home the point of "Don't come in guns blazing." Other vehicle riggers are also a good way to handle it. Once he has all four tires snipped out from under him, he's probably going to crash when he gets rammed.

The Gunbunny:

Enforce the armor layering rules as they are written. You can layer two items and no more (You can wear 50 items, if you've got the quickness, but only the highest and second highest count, by the rules as written).

Entropy Kid is wrong, vision mag and laser sights do stack. See the record sheets in the back of CC for proof.

Base TN 3 is all well and good, but there's no reason it should stay that low. The first time I ever played shadowrun, a friend of mine was helping me make the character. About the third thing he did (after writing down archtype and name) was to scrawl "GET COVER" on the sheet. It was true then and it's true now. Bad guys will NEVER stand in the open once they've gotten their action (with a few exceptions). Use the Cannon Companion rules for cover, since they're quite nice, if you look at them as "cover over a function of time" etc. Even with a base TN of 2 at close range with smartlink II, that will generally be a 6 or 8 by the time modifiers have all been added in.

I don't know what you're talking about with the dermal armor, off the top of my head. Dermal plating and sheath both add to body (though sheath gives a bit of impact armor, though not more than 2 points).

Resort to things that aren't affected by armor. Spells, chemtech, and spirit attacks are all good options and the bad guys know this. While it might seem natural for the mages to handle the mages and the sammies to handle the sammies, any opposition who knows what they're doing also knows that this is the worst way to handle it. The mages handle the sammies and the riggers and the sammies handle your mages.

The Ghost

Did he spend the for a full 12 scanners? I hope you're not giving him the +4 camo bonus and the suit bonus? The suit does nothing for the noise he makes, nor does it fool any of the non-visual security systems. Pressure plates, trip wires, opening doors on video, smells (phenhormone sensors work well), MADs systems, chem sniffers, etc, will all detect him perfectly well. Of course, the last character I had with a cloak like that sprang for the rating 6 thermal dampening, as well, to make it even more effective. Also, keep in mind that once he's been spotted, the TN modifier to shoot him is only +8. Firing a gun at someone in a dark room with no vision modifiers is only +8, so there's no reason in the world he should be higher. The guards can just close their eyes to get the bonus, if you want.

As has been pointed out, he's still a glowing beacon of life on the astral. Bound spirits and astral guards of various sorts are highly effective against this strategy.

Quick answer for Rigger.
After he sends out his drones, have someone looking completely normal average citizen walk up to his Bison and plant a big chunk of C-12 on the hull. Or drop it into a nearby garbage can, or other odd concealment. He'll have no reason to suspect, nor able to detect the backpack full of boomboom.

Quick answer for Gun bunny.
She has only so many CP for soaking and only so much body. 2D is still deadly damage, and use full auto weapons or burst fire. She'll have higher TN to dodge, and also have to resist much much higher power.

and as for Sneak freak. Animals don't rely on visual senses. Paranimals don't need to rely on any physical senses they can see the astral. Trip wires pressure plates, motion dectectors are all fine and good. Make sure she knows how to circumvent them, or have every alarm in the place go crazy. Um... and yea do what the other people said too

One of our GM's destroyed my Ruthenium suit with a flechette explosive booby-trap. The character survived without issue, but the Ruthenium was suddenly shredded... and of course the explosive happened to signal our intrusion to the bad guys.

1) The Rigger. Have him get pulled over by the police. If he kills the police...well, that's bad mojo in my games. Otherwise, he gets arrested. Hilarity ensues as the rest of the runners have to break him out of jail and his wheels out of impound.

2a) The Gun Bunny. Someone's heard of her rep and wants to take her down. Or the kid of one of the many corp goons he's killed has hired a hitman. Either way, snipe her. You don't see the bullets coming, you don't get combat pull, and the APDS sniper rounds laugh at armor. After the deadly head wound, she wakes up in a street doc's office - with or without memory, your call. It'll be a fun adventure trying to figure out WTF just happened.

2b) The Gun Bunny. Suppressive fire from several low rent corp goons with cheap SMGs eats up her combat pool; a little more applied SMG fire should leave her badly injured and quite humiliated. (Kinda like taking down a high level warrior with kobolds.)

3) The assassin/decker. Have a mage spot him with astral perception and zot him good. Consider combat spells or something embarrassing like "overstimulation."

My NPC response teams always have appropriate kinds of grenades and are good at throwing them. When they smell drone/vehicle support, they throw chaff. When they know the terrain, they throw thermal smoke. When they feel like they can get you, they throw offensive and NS.

Also, drones get hurt by lightning bolts pretty easily, as I recall. Fire elementals using their flamethrower ability might also cook exposed rockets or ammo racks at your discretion. And if they're ground-based, you can use slip spray grenades, freeze foam grenades, ice sheet, shape earth, elementals etc. to slow them down, force crash tests, and allow your team to get better positioning. None of these things are really enough to destroy the drone forever, but they should help you provide a better challenge.

Hey Entropy: are you sure about the vision mag and laser sights? I'm pretty sure those do stack.

-Siege

A) Rigger: He's got an expensive lifestyle there. a few things to note:
1) Vehicles cost maintainance. It's right there in the rules.
2) A Bison is a big RV. He's not always going to be able to get it
where he needs to go. Also, a big RV kind of sticks out in the city.
3) Drones require control because they have teeny brains. What is his flux rating?
A city is a noisy place. Got ECCM? What if the other side has ECM? Anybody
want to make off with his drones? Another rigger can try to crash his network
or override his drones.
4) Drones are small vehicles. They have to make driving rolls to accelerate fast,
maneuver, etc. He can't control all of them at once. And they have teeny
teeny brains.
5) How complicated are his drone commands? Comprehension tests.
6) How long does he use the drones/truck at a time. Fuel economy is a pain
sometimes.
7) How much room does he have in his truck for his drones? How does he deploy
them? Note that drone racks are for flying drones only. Note that if the drone
has a setup/breakdown time in its stats, it requires more space to store when
it's not folded up.
Is the rigger showing good stealth skills? Remember that with Gridguide,
all the nicer neighborhoods /major roads are instrumented. Cops can follow
a car without actually chasing it. They just follow his transponder. No
transponder? Then the SIN registered to the truck keeps getting tickets. No
registration? Then the vehicle gets flagged for a Lone Star traffic control drone
to check out. add PC Reactions. Stir. It's all in Rigger 3.
9) As long as the rigger remembers to come out of his womb when he's not
actually on a run, that's ok. He can't actually live in there if he's filled the
thing.
10) So what does he do if the run requires stealth, and no big-badda-boom?

B) Gun-bunny. See rigger #10.

C) Polymer-bunny. That cloak is nice to avoid being noticed, yes. It's not
invisibility. Just good camoflage. And it's worth drek if you're not holding
still or moving _sloowwly_. Any fast movements and you stick out like a
sore thumb. You know, like dodging, running, fighting? And it can't hide
muzzle flashes. Also, its expensive as hell. Ever get shot and miss the dodge? Then a piece has just gotten damaged.

And for all of the above, think of SOTA rules.

If they have all this wizzer-keen gear, SOMEONE will want to take it.

If enough people try, one will succeed.