these are the techniques people in the real world use to avoid getting shot. is there a reason you're discounting them for this?

One helluva trick though. Especially with enough Strength to be able to handle a gyromount... One sided, but fun to try out from time to time.

Combat should be horrifyingly deadly. Especially against such a specialist, a virtuoso of gunplay.

But the basics are:

1) Cover - Various ways to create it, bypass it, and seek it, but it's essential.

2) Smart opponents - Flanking, calling in support, a good mix of weaponry to handle almost anything.

3) Magic - Spirits can get blasted away by gun bunnies with sufficiently good damaging capabilities. Or Ex-Ex/APDS ammo. Mind controlling effects also wreak havoc. As do many Illusion spells.

4) Grenades - Used with cover. Can create distractions, smoke for cover and obsuring, and plain old damage.

5) Drones - A Doberman has an Armour of 6, a Steel Lynx 9. Not too tough comparatively to the guy throwing 20 dice sure, but they're firing Light Machine Guns. Upgrade them with acceptable levels of software; Pilot 4, Clearsight 4, Targetting 4, should be the minimum upgrade. Areas of sufficiently high levels of security would spend the extra 200 to upgrade to Targetting 6. And a few thousand more for a second mount on the Steel Lynx for a second LMG.

6) Meleers - With Stealth or Magic on their side. Ever met a Kung-fu Master who summons Guardian Spirits to provide Concealment? He will kick your ass without you seeing him. Typically, gun bunnies don't have a lot of melee defense.

7) Stealth - The 'runners are using it so why not their opponents?


But the number one main way to limit lethality in your games?

Limit Initiative Passes to 1. Maybe 2 for those with 'ware.

That just throws off almost all the uses of having that many dice, there's a limit after all to how much is necessary to kill something. If he can only fire two bursts, or two SA shots per combat turn then he's deadly still but it's no longer a massacre as he may not be able to kill them quickly enough to not get hurt.

Ahh that's when things get more specialized.

So not everyone can rely on Pistols 2 anymore. Pfft. Let them learn how to use a Grenade Launcher instead. One well placed explosive/"fun pack"/etc will do more than a few bullets.

Allow the Mage to use some of the spell ideas that we were throwing around in the "Spicing up Combat Spells" thread, gives him options that he won't have to resolve with firearms.

Make melee more useful and deadlier. Never really bought the "stun" damage of unarmed melee attacks. Martial Arts either disables you right off or kills you.

Combat is fairly lethal in SR4. Those that aren't combat gods will have to make do being pretty force multipliers.

Suppressive Fire, for instance, burns 10 shots but is eminently useful for those that aren't really marksmen.

By sucky combat characters, I meant characters that are *supposed* to be good at combat but are worse than the pistol dude.

Because being totally overshadowed sucks.

But no matter how you scale it, someone (or multiple someones) will always make a character that is the best of the best, doing the ultimate Combat-Thing-That-Can-Be-Done™ according to the rules at hand. And anything less will be ... less in those combat situations, no matter how rare they may be.

The GM doesn't need to throw anyone any bones, the system is set up so that you can throw yourself a bone by burning a point of edge.

You are under the mistaken impression that people with gunfighting skills have no BP's left over for things like social skills... If you don't need to invest BP's in magic, technomancy, or adept stuff (assuming this guy isn't an adept), you have MORE than enough BP's for the Influence group at a few ranks. Not the best talker, but good enough to do so when combat isn't an option/isn't going on. Same goes for other skills that aren't strictly combat-related - not needing to spend points on some of the "extras" that other characters do means more BP's for a well-rounded character, even if he is able to get a combat skill to 6 or 7.

--Xel

Edge is a very limited resource, especially when you start burning it.

--Xel

You can always renew it (through future Karma purchase) ... but not if you're dead.

Yes, but they won't be the -best- face. So they get the backseat to the best face. Can't be best at everything,

Very true, but if you are constantly finding yourself in a position where you are outgunned by combat monkeys, there's a major disconnect somewhere between you and the GM, and/or you and some other players. House rules for combat won't change that.

You may have a point there - there might be a disconnect between how the game was designed to be and how it is. I don't think we have ever been on a run without at least a few (read: multiple) gunfights, no matter how seemingly simple it is. Maybe I approached this from the wrong angle, so let me ask this question instead:

Roughly how often should one expect combat? I know that this obviously varies by mission, but as a general rule of thumb... how often should combat be expected?

--Xel

As often as anything else in the game does ... or maybe slightly more.

My concerns are mostly with non-combat oriented characters. Just because a character isn't combat oriented doesn't mean that he won't get shot. The technomancer or face (or whoever else) with only 3 or so body is the one that I worry about with that 18 dice pool. A troll with 8 or 9 body could survive that huge attack - too bad enemies don't only target the toughest person in the group (there is no "taunt" other than to appear to be the most threatening, and even that doesn't stop an enemy from attacking the person with the 3 body).

--Xel

Not without skillwires anyway. One gun bunny with even a Rank 3 skillwire system can pretty much cover the other aspects as well.

But being the back-up Face while being the back-up Rigger while having some limited hacking abilities combined with kickassery can spell doom to any campaign.

The point is that the Gun Bunny who is hurling 18+ combat dice should be good at combat. If that is a problem for the other characters who are also combat oriented, well, that's the way the BTL crumbles because he is a specialist who devoted a lot of his resources to being damn good with a gun. By all means he should be as good as his investment says.

Just don't neglect the other players. So we have this specialist and we have say a more normal Street Sam with the Firearms skill group at 3 or 4, heavy weapons at 3-4 too. Introduce situations where that can come into play better than pistols or whatever the chosen weapons should be.

And why is there so much grief? Honestly, it's a team effort, as the mage for our new games I'd be delighted if someone were kicking that much ass. So what if he kills more than I do, he doesn't get a bigger cut. And there's stuff that I can do that his bullets can't.

Is your Rigger pissed that his combat drones are looking dull next to the wondershot boy? Piffle. That's like your Street Sam being angry at the Combat Mage for blowing people up with his mind.

You gotta ask why there's so much friction in your group that's supposed to be working together. If everyone, or almost everyone, created combat oriented characters then they paid for their generalization or not-over-specialization with getting other abilities that this guy might not have access to.

Everyone has to have a good time, but they aren't in competition with each other. This isn't an EQ or WoW raid where you're counting the DPS, and if he is able to shoulder all the standard things you're throwing at him alone you should consider hurling more at him from different directions.

These problems haven't presented themselves yet - they are concerns before we start a new campaign. In previous campaigns, no characters (until the end) had STELLAR combat ability, and when the character with that ability did join, their overshadowing effect essentially ended the campaign (it wasn't fun for other characters to be outshined or nearly equaled in areas of combat AND social interaction). I drafted a pistoleer with a high-teen dice pool to demonstrate that combat could be a problem when you have people in the group that are heavily combat oriented and ones that are not, and the GM mentioned that there will be NPC's with that level of skill, as well. If we run into one of them, and they get a shot off on someone who DOESN'T have a decent body/reaction/whatever rating, there is a good chance that they will be one-hit-and-dead. If we DON'T run into people like that, however, the guy with the insane dice pool modifier for shooting will totally dominate any opponent that he comes into contact with (that can be shot).

Suggestions have been made to use spirits, grenades, and other such things to neutralize this threat. Problem is, those tactics will also work against the less-combat-oriented folks, just more so. If a grenade (or a few) can cut this combat guy down to size, what happens to the technomancer near the blast (or targeted by the grenade?)

--Xel

The problem is that it DOESN'T take that much by way of resources to be amazing with a weapon. Figure 32 BP for the skill to 7, 10 for the positive quality that lets it get to 7, 40 to bring agility to 5 (which isn't purely for that weapon - agility is used for many other things, too, so those points aren't sunk/dedicated just for the cause of being amazing with a weapon), and a few BP's for the bioware/cyberware to raise agility even higher (and ~10 more BP's if you want wired reflexes). That's really not much - maybe 1/8th - 1/6th of character resources, some of which don't only apply to that specialization. A decent agility, for example, effects all ranged stuff as well as some skills. Wired reflexes lets you do anything you want with the extra IP, not just shoot that gun. The only BP's that are dedicates solely to the weapon proficiency are the 32 for the skill and the 10 for the quality (the 'unitasker' skills, so to speak) - that is pretty much 1/10th of starting character resources (assuming 400 BP at char creation) - far more than enough to make the character pretty well rounded in other areas. He could take influence to 2 - 4, electronics to 1 - 3, and get some other bioware/cyberware to support those general efforts as well - he should have no problem affording the BP cost associated with this.

--Xel

Various disclaimers about type of game, type of run, blah blah blah
For my games the typical number of combats is 0-2, any more than that is rare, and usually a sign to my players that they've made some bad decisions somewhere along the line.
They usually plan for 0 combat, understanding that the job of the street samurai is to be there for when things go horribly wrong, and it's expected that he at least not be a liability in other matters. Of course, things do go wrong, and often their plans cannot fully compensate and combat results. But my groups definitely consider combat roles more as an insurance policy than as part of a plan. But it is not impossible for a plan to go well, to successfully adapt to what I throw at them, and for them to get away relatively clean and without combat.

Sounds to me like you need to ask how common those guys will be. If it's rare, then burning an edge if you screw up and get into a fight with them is ok. If it's common, make sure everyone knows so that they get decent combat defenses.

If the other players are going to be upset at your guy being great in combat, tone him down or tell them to fuck off, depending on your group dynamic. Also bear in mind that fighting 3 guys means that you cannot kill them all with your pistol before they get at least one shot off. Sure, you'll dominate against small groups, but when 8 guys show up and the 6 survivers or your opening salvo unload, you're going down.

Big combat dice pools are only unbalancing in very small engagements. Once a real firefight happens, they're handy but won't keep you alive if the opposition decides you should be dead. You don't need spirits, big guns, or explosives to drop one guy with a really sweet pistol, just a bunch of guys with fair-to-middlin' skill levels all taking aim at once.