I have one quick (well i hope quick) question. what do you consider a normal shadow running team and what types of skills would they have (keep it simple name a few)? i am probably going to run it with 5 people and we want to make a balanced team at east the first time then we will start getting into specific specialized team.
thanks for all the help
The Schmitz

easy:

Some Kind of Firearmskill/Weaponskill. For the Gunslinger of the group the Firearm-Sillgroup

Someone MUST have some social skills, or the "Influence" Skillgroup

Someone SHOULD have First AID

EVERYBODY SHOULD be able to drive a vehicle at least for one skillpoint.

Everybody should have perception

The Mage Must have his Magical Skill Groups at a moderate to high rating. he could specialise to sorcery or summoning...

The Rigger should be able to handle nearly all kinds of riggable- vehicles/planes/boats

The Hacker should have all computer and hacking related skills...

And for more information just look at the sample-characters in your Hymnal

Like this thread isn't going to get flooded.

Well everyone should have some combat skills. Probably guns. Pistols and automatics are good choices. Someone should be able to use explosives and heavy weapons. Actually if you have automatics you should get heavy weapons so you can use the under barrel grenade launchers. Smoke and gas grenades are good. Everyone should have some stealth and at least one person should be really good at it. You can always get by with teamwork tests so it helps if people have a point or 2 in stealth. You need your face and your hacker. The hacker will probably be really good with hardware but you should have at least one other person who is good at it to. Again teamwork tests are beneficial. A guy with a really high first aid and medicine skills is quite useful. For FA specialize in combat wounds. Mages are really great.

In the end it really depends on your game style and what people want to play. We have 4 players in our group, we have a street sam with skills softs so he can cover just about anything, the hacker who is decent with pistols, a cybered troll mage who tears things apart in unarmed, and a physical adept who throws things and covers the role of the face. There is a 5th player who makes it occasionally and she's a human cybered adept. Good with automatics and longarms, she can sneak and is a much better face than the other adept.

I would recommend that you be sure to have people who can all do most things ok and one or two things really well.

For a team of 5, I'd recommend the following slots:

The Face
This is the guy with the social skills and friends.He's the one that talks past the guards, knows a guy in the city records office, and so on.
Alternative builds: Mind bending mage, social adept, Spook, Former Cop

The Mage
If you don't have magic in the world of SR, you are basically SOL. The mage should be able to whack spirits, protect against combat magic, and heal team mates at a minimum. Plus whatever specialty stuff he wants.

The Hacker
There's too many ways that computers can be used to screw you (and be used to screw other people to ignore this team slot. Ber warned though, hacking adds a lot oof headaches to the game. An NPC hacker is a common fixture in many a SR game.
Alternative builds: Technomancer, Hacker Adept, hijack rigger

The B & E Expert
Having your whole run stopped by a locked door is simply embarassing. The B & E Expert gets you past these kinds of problems.
Alternative builds: Demolition Expert, Ninja, Troll with a crowbar

The Heavy Hitter
This is your go to guy for dishing out the pain. The classic is the street samurai but there are many different ways to get the job done.
Alternative builds: Gunslinger adept, close combat troll, drone rigger, combat mage, spirit pack mage

Things to avoid:
The minivan solo
This is the rigger with the tricked out car who spends most of the time ferrying the team around. That sports car with 500 horses is gathering dust. If you have a car guy, give him some car chases to look cool in.

A mage for all seasons
Due to the flexibility of certain mage and adept builds, it's possible for them to dominate the game, especially against new GMs. Watch out for the mind bender mage build, the pronomancer adept, the mega spirit summoner, and maybe a few others that have slipped my mind right now.

my guy is just like yours, but better
Unless you and your players are highly familiar with the game system, if you have two characters who overlap in the same specialty one is likely to dominate over the other. Until you become more familiar with the system, enforce some meta-game niche protection.

I'd rather be triangle buttoning cars
Make sure that the characters are paid for their time, if they can make more stealing cars, why are the risking their necks running?

everyman skills
Everyman runner skills:

Athletics group 2
climbing running, jumping, everyone should be able to do these. If you can't afford the whole group, at least take running 1

Pistols 1 (Automatics)
Even if you aren't a combat guy, know which end of a weapon to hold. Because pistols are rather over-rated by the SR rules, this probably the best skill to learn.

Etiquette 1 (some specialty)
Everyone should at least be able to get along in polite society. More social skills would be better, but we all know that you need all your points sunk into combat skills so that you can kill tanks with knitting needles.

Pilot land vehicles 1 (cars)
Don't make the minivan solo kill you in your sleep. Know how to drive and have a way of getting around on your own. (Or just the skills to steal a new ride when you feel like it). Alas, revisions to the levitate spell mean you can no longer fly around the city like superman.

Perception as much as you can afford, but at least 3
The worst kind of fight to get into is one you didn't know about until the shooting started. Even a girl scout can hit you when she can get the gun pressed into the back of your head first.

I'll take this opportunity to mention my Shadowrun Resources page. It's got a bunch of useful things on it.

5 players is less than ideal in my experience, Too many people. You're going to have quite a GMing challenge to keep everyone interested. Unless you want to do the "you guys go play xbox while jim and bob stay here and do their bit" approach, you're going to have to keep the team together. That means NO SOLO SPECIALISTS. The whole team has to move together and get into action together, or else you are going to have bored players who don't like your game. You need to keep this in mind when designing your campaign and your team. 5 Players does not handle like 3 players does.

You definitely want to keep the group together, we have 8 in our group (including GM) and it causes all kinds of havoc when you split up. Which we did on our last run

Crusher Bob seems to have covered mostly everything.

A pretty good way to kkep control of the group is to partner everyone up. So when the face is going to his contacts, the samurai is along as his backup man. (Make sure you include bits to keep the non-primary character interested). For example, you can have the sam notice someone following them, or have some punks try to mug the face on the way to the meet, or something. When the sam is out buying guns with the face along, similar thigns happen to keepp the face interested in what's going on.
So the 'backup guy' has maybe 1/3rd or 1/4th of the screen time during the stuff the partners are doing. Then, you switch between partners or teams on a pretty regular basis to keep everyone from being bored.

We've gone to all mages and adepts. The up-front costs are not too big and the long term options are cool. Plus it means you'll always get spell defense via counterspell. It's not essential, but consider what it would do if you did a given character as an adept. Taking bioware that gets you 3 actions per turn is also very useful.

No character should be one dimensional. Everyone should be able to use a pistol (at least) effectively and everyone should have at least one other thing they do adequately outside of combat. It's fairly easy to do two things adequately, and I'd suggest thinking about it.

Everyone should be able to communicate. Give the team respectably secure communication methods. This keeps everyone in the action all the time.

Everyone should have infiltrate. This ties in with the player moving together, you want to avoid having a troll that has to sit in the van while everyone else goes in.

Everyone should have perception.

Everyone should be able to do something in combat, on a run while not in combat, and in a the legwork phase. Again to avoid people being bored, or hosing up one phase of a run to get into combat or whatever.

If you have someone smart enough have them be a hacker. Avoid technomancers in a starting group. At least have an NPC hacker, or punish them regularly for it as realistically would happen.

If you have a wallflower or two try and have them be the mage(s). A spellcasters power is undeniable, and this will help bring them out.

If you have an idiot or two in the group do not spare them their fate if it comes up. Plus it's more interesting for the other players if they know you'll let someone die (or at least have their edge burned saving their skin).

An NPC hacker would be my suggestion if no one wants to play one.
You can either look over his abilities and figgure out what he can do and how much time he would take, then apply that time into the run.
Don't let him outshine the PCs or suggest other options when they have come up with a plan even if it will end in probable disaster.
However, if they are stuck and have not seen the 'obvious' route that is critical to the adventure advancement then consider having him make a suggestion, but not the plan.

Giving the players access to a good Jammer or an EMP grenade to help disable wireless communications or would help things along for teams without a Hacker.

There are no EMP grenades.