So I recently GMed my first fight scene in SR4 based off the one found in the quick start rules handout. Concerned that the fight would be over too quickly I added some extra baddies into the mix (for a total of 5 vs the 3 PCs).

Can't say it did a lot of good, I think in total the fight lasted about a total 5 seconds game time (much longer real time). Now admittedly, this is probably partially due to the fact that two of my PCs are essentially gun slinger adepts, but even so that battle wasn't completely one sided, I was even somewhat concerned over the survival of one of the PCs (grenades can be nasty).

So the questions I pose to you are:

A) How long do your fight sequences usually last (game time)?

B) What are your tricks for drawing out the combat, without making it too lethal for the players?

Typically, our combats last about 2, maybe 3, combat turns. Combat usually takes a while to play out.

A) Two, maybe three Combat turns at the longest.

B) Don't have everyone enter at once. In the last Missions game I played, things lasted much longer, as the 37 ghouls didn't charge in all at once. They were spread out, too, minimizing the effects of full-auto, grenades, and AoE spells.

A) my shortest has been 1st initiative called (Mage + Stunball + Go-Gangers with no bike skills [I'm looking at you Missions for this error]= lots of failed crash tests) the longest was about 5 rounds.

B) I got to extend the combat for 5 rounds due to using counterspelling, good encryption on the rigged copter (plus having the rigger actively oppose the hackers), and positioning in a chase scene. It definitely made things messy.

And remember dice pool modifiers (and smoke grenades), its funny how much longer a combat goes when characters are down 4-6 pool.

Last combat I ran went well over forty five seconds, and saw the fastest PC fired two and a half magazines of assault rifle ammo.

Then again, the PCs were trading assault rifle fire at long range with a Cascade Ork militia patrol composed of an adept, a shaman, and 6 (unenhanced) orks with assault rifles. Between range, cover, darkness, and weather, hits were rare, and most of those were glancing shots that were soaked down to nothing.

The mage was unable to dominate the combat because the attacked opened with a spirit annihilating his sustained reflexes spell's focus in astral combat, and following up by doing awful, awful things to said mage when he tried to project to find out where his spell had gone. Meanwhile, the shaman from the patrol hung back from the orks' firing line, threw all his dice to spell defense, and spent his actions staring through a pair of binoculars, watching where the PCs moved. Since he never threw any damage at the runners, they never found his location, and couldn't put him down.

When the combat concluded, there were two seriously wounded PCs and 3 seriously wounded militia. The patrol blanketed their own position with smoke grenades, and (aided by the spirit's Concealment power), withdrew deeper into the woods. Rather than blunder into an ambush in unfamiliar territory, the already chewed up PCs took their tactical victory and went on with their mission.

Combats tend to be ridiculously quick when they take place at extremely short ranges, in ideal conditions for one side, such as a group of pistol-weilding fiends mowing down gangers in a convenience store. When the PCs are out of their comfort zone, and the opposition is cautious because they know they're technically overmatched, combats tend to take a little longer.

If he was acting as a Commando, there's only limited things you can do with the published scenarios. There's still things that can be done, however. He could always give them a wiz-kid mage to provide counterspelling, for example.

You mean he can't just say (silently to himself) "these go-gangers obviously have the Pilot Ground Vehicle skill with a Bike specialization. It is so obvious in fact, that the designers didn't even feel the need to list it" and then go on and just act as if PGV 3 {Bike +2} was written on the sheet the whole time? Why the hell not? No-brainers like this are inevitable in a multi-author-multi-editor environment, and just need to be fixed on the fly.

It is of interest to me that there has yet to be a combat mentioned here that has lasted even a minute, although in fairness that's typical of most RPGs I've played.

The one problem I have with such short fight scenes is that it makes it difficult to create a scenario where the PCs have to hold out until reinforcements arrive or have to flee before enemy reinforcements arrive. There is just not a lot of time for stuff to happen outside of the immediate combat. They also tend to be a little less dramatic then a fight scene you might see in your typical action movie.

It's a classic weakness of RPGs. Gunfights that in reality take minutes end in seconds. People hit way too often and suppression isn't modeled.

I've been in some loooooong fights but they usually involve a stalemate/siege type of situation but ya... 30-40 combat turns?

Shortest? 1 action of course, same as everyone else.

The longest combat I've had lasted 24 combat rounds (1:12). It was one on one, hand to hand, no weapons, no armor. It probably would've gone on longer, except the PC planted his foot anchor in the guy's forehead on a lucky kick.

Any time guns are involved, the combat's lasted at most 10 rounds, and that was thanks to good cover and myriad enemies.

There was lots of missing involved, and both had dermal plating.

I warned the PC to take unarmed, but he wanted to be "simply a heavy weapons specialist."

Typically 5 or so combat turns. Longest ever was probably about 20 something. Involved us dropping suppressing fire on a building, rappelling down to the roof, fighting down two flights of stairs and then chasing them through a drug filled building while their mage lightning balled himself to death.

Chris

Does it count as one fight, if you're on a tactical retreat for half the run?
Our Job was to break into a very secluded high security corp Think-Tank . . and to free someone(though at that time more of a something) from the insides . . so we go in, we find the target area . . and we find what we were hired to free . . a salvaged aztech cyberzombie that had undergone several modifications since our last encounter . . where we, coincidentally, were responsible for him being in the state of being salvagable . . so we had to fight him while alarms where blaring and we had to fight the corp security guards coming to stop us . . going in took about 15 minutes in-game-time . . and we were wondering why it was so easy . . going OUT . . took us almost one hour in-game-time . . i don't quite remember the number of turns, but heck, that was the first time two things happened . . my character needed to reload a weapon and he ran out of ammo for one of his weapons . . tactical retreats using cover and suppressive fire tend to take longer than rushing in and killing things . . fights without area effect weapons tend to take longer too . . the usual bar brawl takes us about 30 minutes in game time . . a shoot-out without grenades and area spells takes us about 15 minutes . .

Long fights tend to have something close to 10 combat turns. Those are rarely consecutive, as there is often noone left who has a direct line of fire to the opposition. Or runners for that part.

If you walk away from open exchanges of fire, adding crates (in warehouses), furniture, enemies hiding in doorframes, retreating a room etc., information gathering becomes an important part of combat. And that takes time. The increased use of reaction tests reduces the importance of maximum IP per turn, too.

It's hard to say for me. Sure there are some quick close quarter battles that got resolved in 2 combat turns. But when the battles start to last longer (for various reasons), I often drop the combat turn sequence as long as there's no direct confrontation (such as shooting someone) or I extend the duration of a combat turn (a shooting action becomes several shots) if the situation isn't likely to change much every 3 seconds.

Longest battle in my campaign so far has lasted ten rounds (30 seconds). My PCs laid a good ambush on Highway 5 heading out of Seattle. Ares was moving some captured Shadowrunner allies in a convoy and they intercepted this convoy. Some well placed mines on the walls of the median dividers, good cover fire, a stolen combat drone and a few well placed AT4's and it was over. All that was left to do was step over the bits and pieces of Ares's personell and get the Shadowrunner team out of dodge.

Well, we had one battle in SR3 that lasted RL...a LONG time.

What happened was it was our team(four people, me playing a game hunter, my friends gun specialist, and two mages), vs. another team(rigger, merc, combat mage and a hacker, who did have a gun also). We were in a field(open space), with a chain link fence between us.

Problem was, it was night(modifers, even with vision enhancements), raining a bit(more modifiers), we were at long range(we actually had the advantage there with our weapons...but still more modifiers), and it was foggy(even more modifiers). On top of that we had some light wounds(yes, even more modifiers).

Even with smartlinks and the like, our gun guys were looking at TNs of 10+, and the mages were a little better off; but still not by much.

The other team, though, had modifiers like we did. So it was a big whiffing contest. Occationaly a shot or something would hit home...which wouldnt do more than Light damage usually, due to the harsh modifiers, no one staged up damage and it was easier to stage down. Which, slowly piled on MORE modifiers. I think it took 2 hours or so of RL time. It was pretty insane. We eventually got the upper hand due to a couple lucky shots(my guy hit home with his rifle really well finally, and the mage managed to get a good shot on the car with a fire spell and it thankfully failed any resistances.) Still, though...wow.

EDIT: And before you ask why we didn't move closer...neither side did. Both sides had some scary pieces of weaponry that no one wanted to get close too. After the car finally got iced(it had rockets and an LMG), though, we stepped it up a bit. The car was what we were afraid of, and they were wary of our sniper rifle/assault shotgun combo. It could have been faster if one side had taken initative and went close; but thems the breaks. Still, though, they were of Medium distance from the fence....

Yeah if you want long firefights, Pile on modefiers..

Cover, crappy vision etc.. it all ads up.. =)

Our groups longest so far is about 10 rounds.. but then they hug cover like no tomorrow and so does the badguys.. After first shot is fired you wont see anyone in the open unless there are no cover to be had..

This discussion leads me to wonder if there's a way to stretch out the game-time duration of combats (so that a sustained firefight can actually last more than a minute, without taking an eternity real-time) without screwing things up.

Because, yes, cops meeting perps in an alley? That fight can last only a minute, 30 seconds even. Sustained running gunbattle? Lasts more like 20-30 minutes, I'd think.

A 'running' gun battle isn't going to last very long if the opposition comes out of cover against people with hyper perceptions and reflexes unless the opposition is attacking in a stream (or dispersed and being overrun).

1) typically about 3 combat turns, shorter if one side is ambushing the other. I have run some longers combats because I was dismayed that fighter were getting resolved in 10 seconds or less.

2)Here's how I've been drawing them out. First, be a real stickler for movement distances. At a fast jog (free action level movement) most character only go about 2 car lengths per combat turn. Second, be a stickler for environmental effects acting as penalties to peoples dice pools. Range, visiblity, movement, distraction, cover, and anything else you can imagine should be making your runners lives more difficult. If the runners aren't looking at a consistant -4 dice to their pools due to conditions then you aren't doing your job right.

Everyone seems to forget, -4 to runners dicepools means an average sec guard is looking at 2 dice to shoot them. Sure, the fight will take longer, but the runners are in almost no danger of being hurt.

Even better sec guards won´t like the combination of target in cover (-4), being in cover (-1) and thermo fog (variable). So instead of shooting immediately, some runners give suppression fire, one studies the map to find the quickest alternative route, and one throws a grenade (variety depending on situation).

You can also have the guards do something else than shooting at the runners. Try short! retreats. The first runner going around the corner will be the only available target for all guards with LOS. And all will hold their action for that situation. Lets say it is only fair play because the runner knows it beforehand. Unaugmented guards have either numerical superiority OR no business in an open firefight with runners.

Not sure if this will help but we'll do search and find/hunt type of missions. One of our pickup missions is the Wal-Mart run. Basically the GM will draw out a Walmart that is known to host portals for many weird magical creatures. He then ruled it as 1 square = 1 foot, so to get from one side to another is a full out run (mods for that). On top of that the monsters will randomly appear in different places and can move at any given time. Even when my character finally breaks her way into the security room I'm taking mods since it's many screens to watch and Wal-mart has crappy security cameras that shoot at even crappier angles. Since we're hunting down the prey and it's usually one on one fights it can take some time and many rounds. If you have something like that, where there's lots of terrain and you're not sure where everything is located at that may help. Dont know if this makes sense... Sorry.

barricades and digging in can make a fight last longer, but as already pointed out, grenades and the like can break that up pretty fast. so throw in something the runners don't want to blow up. if a delicate mission objective is hanging out with the enemy, the team is a lot less likely to start tossing grenades that way.

fire, smoke, toxic gas can make everyone have to displace a lot while reducing attack dice pools. and once a fire gets started, it can move around pretty quickly with the right material around. you can use a fire to push characters around and cut opponents off from one another. a collapsed section of roof or wall with it's five foot wall of flames should add a turn or two while people move around to get shots at eachother.

negotiation mid-fire fight can be tough, but can be done, especially in situations where everyone has grabbed some serious cover. if everyone can be convinced to hold fire for a minute, people can talk out their differences. (while the adept sneaks around for a flanking maneuver.)

and if you can make a fight last a few minutes, a docwagon high threat response team can really do some funny things to a firefight.

Typically 3 turns but that takes almos an hour sometimes.

Longest was 12 turns at 3 hours...

Granted last game we ran through 6 turns in under 30 mins. Having a pre-generated grid/map of the area and using figurines helped people make up their minds faster so there was less, "Umm so what do I see now?" quetions.

Must finish my mapping program...

Wow, this thread got brought back from the dead....

I'd say for our group the trend is roughly 4 combat turns per battle. We don't have uber-sick phys ads or street sams. Our runners are pretty much 'average' to 'above average' in fighting. They just tend to spend their skills on a broad spectrum to cover more ground.

Typically no more than 3 turns. Between the sniper, the troll, and now the mage... people don't really keep their heads on their shoulders easily (Suppressing fire+called shot FACE+liberal stunballs=Not A Lot Of Awake/Alive People).

I did keep them occupied with 2 APC's full of Azzie infantry for about 30 minutes in game. Once they sorted out that tactical problem they applied liberal amounts of APDS to it until the problem drove away (short one APC).

Generally speaking if runners are fighting for more than a couple rounds it usually a clear sign they've lost the element of surprise and no matter what the immediate results are, something big and nasty is going to show up shortly and ruin your day.

*Points at his players*
Better keep fleet of foot, I have a whole page devoted to "To Serve Cornered Runner: A Corps Sec Approach"


And yeah, wow. This was one dead and buried thread. Oops.
A final note, I just can't imagine any sort of intense gun battle going on for more than a couple minutes unless players are carrying embarrassing amounts of ammunition.

Same here...3-4 combat turns max. Granted, all of the runners have 3IPs, so that is still a lot of actions, its just that gametime, its only 9-12 seconds...

I run 4-hour sessions, and I can only really get one combat in per session and still advance the story arc.

Our combats also tend to be on the order of 3 turns. Occasionally 4, but usually 3 is a long combat for us. All of which makes it amusing to me when the GM says "You hear the sounds of an approaching chopper" indicating the cops are on the way. Obviously, they would not normally be able to respond that fast, but it makes for a better game that way.

Cover and other modifiers are about all you can do to draw out the combats when the runners have multiple Initiative passes, mages, snipers, wide burst machine guns, etc.

our battles last untill one party of the fight is dead and the other one is running to get out of there . . or something in between *g*
usually our fightsif facing larger groups tend to actually take some in game minutes(yes, minutes, i'm a tactical (read coward) player), so i tend to stick to cover and try to single out targets to kill and take my time aiming . . really annyoing if the GM let's a target stay in your line of sight for 3 turns of targeting just to have him drop (into cover or because of something else) before you can get the shot out with a -4 TN <.< . . in RL Time? dude, half to a whole day for one fight is more or less the norm with us x.x . .

I think I have seen exactly one long fight in Shadowrun.

A street sam that had managed to survive the deadliest set of missions I had ever thrown at the players had earned the attention of a cyberzombie. He had actually escaped this cyberzombie on three or four separate occasions, but had never managed to kill it. Well, I figure the player's had enough, so I mentally noted "Okay, today the zombie leaves for a week long vacation so the player can get things together."

Well, somehow the player wound up at the airport, lightly armed, that very same day. I can't let a coincidence like that go.

"He's here? He can't have tracked me here too... Wait... why is that lunatic essence-hole wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt?"

Neither had heavy weapons, and the sam didn't want to get even close to melee range with that thing, so the whole fight was a protracted running battle through an airport, with both sides being regularly distracted by security (and both the sam and the zombie were very tough targets.)

Three rounds is a long combat, mostly due to players going in for ambushes and any advantage they can get.

I think the longest we ever had was about 5 rounds.

The team defeated 4 slightly lower powered to higher powered enemies. In one round. At the end of IP 3, there was no one left.

Usually between 2 and 5 turns. This is a lot of action though when everyone has 2 to 4 initiative passes.

For making the combat last longer, try a few of these: good cover, long range, Chameleon suits, Invisibility, visibility modifiers, infiltration, Ork/Troll goons, counterspelling dice, Background Count, Pain Editors, regeneration, Immunity to Normal Weapons, vehicles, high reaction, full dodge, ballistic shields, heavy armor, reinforcements, and group Edge.

from the proverbial "1 pass" to really long battle involving skirmishes, tactical retreats, smoke grenades, long rounds of healing while sustaining suppressive fire, etc. Most combats end real fast and the one who surprised the other end up the winner.

I second Arathian's ideas, plus that of glossing over some parts of the combat. Still, Shadowrun is not a good game for protracted battles. Else it would be called Mercenaryrun

Cheers!

Max

Since he agreed with me in another thread, I'll agree with Max. Well, that's not the only reason ... I do actually agree with his statement too.

Well I believe the longest fight I ever ran lasted something like a half minute. Though it would have been longer if I had realized it was very, very tactically unsound for the opposition mage I was running to attempt to banish the mages spirit.