Hi everyone. I'm new to the SR system and some of its' practical aspects are unclear to me, so I thought maybe Dumpshock regulars will share their experience with the topic.

When I started studying game mechanics and comparing it with related and familiar Old WoD, it seemed that hurting the target would be difficult - defence pools are mostly greater than damage... but then it suddenly became clear to me that DV in SR is not a pool, but a full number. OMG. A little playtesting resulted in a number of dead bodies roughly equivalent to a number of init passes. If I got my numbers right, even being a dodge-happy troll in tuned up military armor, heavily 'wared toward subdermals and reaction, doesn't seem to protect enough unless you are full defensing all the time.

So, as the question in topic description goes, how do you stay alive in combat? What tactics, gear, 'ware to use, what to ditch, what dice pools to aim at? What do fights look like in your campaigns? Thanks in advance.

Cheat. Don't be afraid to dodge. Use cover. Gang up. Ambush. Toss smoke, flash-bang, etc, grenades. Stack modifiers that you're able to neutralize (thanks to superior tech). Learn when to fire single shots, bursts, long bursts, and aimed shots. Learn when not to fight at all. Throw grenades. Learn when to use Edge.

And, most of all, remember that fights are dangerous, and SHOULD be. That's why real people in real life with real guns and real training don't like to get into them.

I have to second what Critias said, pull every dirty trick that you can think of.

Be extremely selective in when you decide to go to guns, and think about choosing when to use force at all, and how to intimidate people without making them lose face and come gunning for you. Learn when to walk away. Realize that fair fights are for suckers, and that applies to the NPCs too. Time and numbers are rarely on your side, and the Law of Truly Large Numbers says someone will eventually get a insanely lucky roll. So don't wait around listening to the applause and allowing the the rest of his gang to show up and shoot your ass after you beat down/intimidate some obnoxious jerk, or wait for the SWAT team to show up after you shoot your way into the place. If you can complete the job without the use of deadly force it tends to enhance the likelihood that deadly force won't be applied against you during the job.

I think it boils down to what Critias says: Cheat like hell, you're enemy sure is.

But I especially single out: Pick your fights. Unlike the cancer causing game you can't really "tank'. The forum just resurrected a thread about combat length, you'll notice it's pretty damn rare that combat gets beyond 3 rounds.

We try to play vaguely realistic combat without bogging it all down with minis. As such we follow basic urban tactics to keep things from devolving into "Room full of equal numbers of dead people". Don't stop in a doorway, don't stand around in open areas, don't move through open areas, blow holes in walls to escape/flank, throw grenades at anything questionable (corollary: Don't throw grenades through 2nd story windows, you have grenade launchers for that.) , armor (drone, trolls with miniguns) are your friends, make sure you do things systematically, and don't stop moving and killing until your run out of killing. We work under the assumption that combat is typically going to involve small numbers of people for about 5 minutes. At the conclusion of that 5 minutes Very Bad Things will show up and waffle stomp stupid/slow runners back to character generation. So Small vs. Big will always lose unless Small is smart and runs away appropriately.

That said, if your enemy is doing the same things your doing you should go back to "Pick your fights" and get to somewhere where they can't do that.

If you think the fights are too short just remember that it takes a handful of seconds to empty a 30 round magazine from an M16 and that your average infantryman typically only carries, at most, 6 full magazines of ammunition at a go.

Oh, and suppressing fire is your friend, provided you can do it without dying and being sneaky isn't an issue.
Surprise is vital and being able to force the enemy to keep making surprise checks is an excellent way to ruin their day. All the wires in the world won't matter if you don't see it coming.

If you're really interested in urban, small unit, fighting you can read up on MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) that's the US gold standard for killing folks in tight spaces.
This is a pretty good article although it's long as hell:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/lib...0-10/index.html
The Appendix is especially illuminating if you want to know things like "Can 5.56 rounds go through walls? How much walls? etc etc".

1. First shot has right of way. Runners are more augmented than guards, so should go first.

2. Cover is your friend.

3. Carry a medkit, most guards will only be able to harm you.

4. Choose your conflicts. Ambush is good.

Also remember that using non-lethal ammo will not earn you points in the middle of a fire-fight, corp-sec is not going to say "Wait, these are the good kind of Runners, lets switch to tasers and SnS against these guys."

But an unconscious Lone Star cop is going to piss his buddies off less than a thoroughly splattered Lone Star cop.

Not shooting people is best because you can usually choose, at a later time, to shoot them in the back, or as you're running away.

Don't think like you're in SR3. In SR3, dodging was optional, at least if the opponents didn't have APDS.

Pretend you're in a real life firefight. There are some guys with guns, and they're definitely going to try to shoot you. Do you a) plant your feet, draw your weapon, and open fire? or b) Say "glbixhths!" and dive behind a nearby car? If you chose a, you're dead, if you chose b, you acted intelligently and you're probably alive.

Real life combat is not terribly deadly because a) shooting people at range is pretty hard, and b) people get behind things, making it even harder to shoot them. What makes it scary isn't the fact that you will get shot, because if you know what you're doing you probably won't. But the fact that you could get shot is what makes it terrifying. What makes SR4 combat deadly isn't the system itself, it's playing the system like it was SR3.

So when combat starts, first full defense everything that comes at you until you're in a good position. A good position is solid cover where the enemy won't be able to move around to negate your cover. Next, look for some way to negate the enemy's cover. This might involve one person pinning them down with suppressive fire while the other moves around. Suppressive fire is great for pinning people in cover, because it doesn't target them specifically -- cover is a penalty to the attacker, not a bonus to the defender. That means if they stick their heads out, they have to defend against the attacker's full dice pool with reaction + edge. The smartest thing for them to do is full defense as soon as suppressive fire starts, and then keep out of sight until it stops. In the meantime your friend has a covered position where he can shoot them without penalty, and they have to try and get out of there with you covering them from the other side...

I would tend to disagree with the assertion that real life combat isn't very deadly .
Ranges are significantly shorter these days and the things people hide behind typically don't stop bullets all that well (car for instance, really not good bullet sponges). Add in that grenades roll pretty well over short distances and you have lots of running and dying horribly.

But your general thesis is that no one smart walks into combat thinking "Man! Getting shot today is going to suck!" is sound.

I agree that the pigs would be less pissed off at the Runners, where I disagree is that the difference would buy the Runners any real advantage given that life isn't just cheap in the Sixth World, it's valued at basement bargin clearance prices and that whether Lonestar ices them or not isn't going to be decided on the basis of whether or not they geeked a Pig.

Fights are ludicrously short in SR, but that's a metagame issue. Essentially it's far too easy to hit in RPGs in general, because players don't want games that take hours to do combat (as a 3 second turn in an RPG will typically take 3-5 minutes) because it it's really hard to hit people. SR combat is less deadly in several ways than reality, as can be shown by the fact that it's impossible for a person with a total pool of 2 dice and a tiny pistol to kill you in one shot. I've got a film somewhere of a cop wearing body armor getting killed by one .22 hit to the chest while the unarmored guy he shot with 5 .357s was just hurt a lot. Plus in SR you don't have the issue of winning the firefight, then bleeding to death internally 20 minutes later from a "minor" wound that didn't really do much at the time.

Heh, you just discovered what one of my players experienced during our first session two days ago.
The guard had been cautious with his fire, cause he didn't want to destroy the medical equipment stored in the building they had made a "heroic entrance" to (actually one of the players had jumped through the closed window), but with his boxes counted up he decided F* this and sent a long burst into the poor sob, even with one die (wound modifiers suck) he managed to hit the PC, and the expression on my players face when i Asked him to resist 12P was priceless

"Holy shit!"
"You might wanna use edge on this test"
He managed to scramble up 6 successes on his soaking, he survived.. Barely, first run, EVER.
What a wonderful way of saying "Welcome to the shadows chummer"

Yup. It's only fun when you're the one behind the gun.

Ah but Kzt that's a rare Resonance Cascade Critical Body Glitch! And the ganger who shot the cop was obviously using .22 APDS rounds and used edge and called shot.

But yeah, it's definitely meta gaming. If you flip it around, what player would want to play in a game where a ganger kills them with a single errant .22 shot.
Wait, I take that back, there are players who want to play in those games. It's just that I don't think they're the people SR4 is really written for.


I dunno Ravor, you don't think that having as squad of personally pissed off Lone Star is markedly worse than just having a squad of Lone Star coming after you? I'd think that if Sgt. Bob is still alive and his buddies are looking to chase runners into a dark sewer grate they might turn to each other and say "Mmm... maybe we ought to wait for backup." rather than "Fuck these mother fuckers, they killed Bob! I'm glad I ran back to my car for these WP grenades."

But your right of course, in a given gunfight I don't think LS is going to suddenly swap out their Ex-Ex rounds for gel just because they miraculously realize the troll sami is laying down stick and shock suppressing fire.

You are right on both counts (there are games like that that some of us like to play, and no SR4 doesn't seem to be especially aimed at us).

I like to call you folks "Headshot 2020" players but I understand that they haven't really updated those rules .

From what I've seen, Ravor and I take more or less the same stance on the "Oh, deys nice runners!" theory, so I'll just go ahead and comment: So what if they're more pissed off after the fact? They might be, they might not. It's unlikely to be the deciding factor of whether or not the Star comes after you, since they have a job to do and if it's a group like the Yaks who hold grudges pretty much no matter what then killing them rather than potentially leaving witnesses may actually be beneficial depending on the circumstances. Awakening aside, dead people usually have a rough time holding grudges. It's really a case by case issue, and while killing sprees can certainly get you in trouble at my games you shouldn't really be expecting me to have the guards pull punches in the middle of a firefight just because you're only kind of risking their lives.

As for the Sgt. Bob analogy, you're forgetting the obvious counterpoint: What if Sgt. Bob is dead and they're deciding whether to pursue the runners in the first place and one says "This is bulldrek, I'm waiting for backup. Did you see how they greased Bob? That troll had a fraggin' Panther Cannon." Intimidation doesn't really hit me as less reliable than depending on the Star's sense of fair play and mercy. It could go either way, and I'd say it's the unpredictability of these kind of situations and the many feasible ways in which they can turn out that makes each run interesting, but as I've said before and will say again, just don't expect me to have the guards play nice that often.

Hmm... you guys confirmed my worst expectations: in SR combat both player and DM are supposed to think hard in every encounter . In D&D, which is what I play mostly, you can just think once, at character creation, where you get insane armor class, evasion, mettle, tons of immunities, etc, and after that fights do not require lots of planning and tactical strain - you pretty much level down everything that's not 5+ levels above you. But in SR, it seems, our DM will have to suffer much in every encounter because of all the situational modifiers, scenery updates (our smartguy got, like, 16 dice for demolitions) and stuff like that. Well, d'oh. Will see what it will end up like.

Related question: here's my character for this campaign. Russian text is here and there, but the charsheet itself is kosher and understandable, as I see it. Character concept is Alien-like, slightly cannibalistic ninja guy who crawls on ceilings and slices up unsuspecting guards. With 17+ attack and 13+4 infiltration dice he should be able to ignore defense roll and most of the target's armor, twice in a round (finishing move), which should be enough for covert kill most of the time, as I see it. But surviving anything in response - that is tricky. What do you think of this guy?

Just a quick note:

Standard US Army "combat loads" are 210 rounds for riflemen - that means, nominally, 7 30-round magazines.

The springs in the standard issue magazines don't like full capacity loads, so you will likely have 8 mags: 7 with 27 rounds and the 8th with 21 rounds.

The other factoid - few, if any, GMs can ever really incorporate all possible aspects of combat, including psychological issues. After a few gun battles, you will get a feel for how your GM runs his shootouts and plan accordingly.

A couple of hard, fast and dirty rules are always useful:
1. Geek the mage.
2. Everyone carries a trauma patch
3. Cover and concealment. Open ground is a bad, bad thing.
4. A battle is always safer when the bad guy doesn't get a chance to shoot back.

-Siege

i stay alive by not allowing the other party of the discussion to do so . . Savalette Guardian, 12S, Called Shot, 12D, even with Gel that's still 10D Stun on ONE success . . else Darts with Gamma Scopolamine, that's 10D Stun without Armor, else Assault Rifle with a 6 round burst that goes a long way in taking anything down actually . . and of course, there's trolldos . . er, i mean, trollbows <.< . . if i get the drop on my target, well, there goes a big helping of combat pool . . on the defense? Body, Body, and another round of Body and then playing Michelin-Man comes into the equation . . with a good roll, i did in fact manage to survive(and still be standing) after being hit by a PAC Round once . . 7 Worn armor + 2 points of internal and 17 Body and 10 Combat pool means MANY dice for dodge/resistance tests in such cases . . if all else fails? i am not where the damage is done, i run like an elf if i have to . . and then i hide and wait and then i pop up like a turret and do ouchies again ^^

you've got Gymnastics at a decent level, so (if i recall correctly) you should be fairly able to dodge gunfire. if you don't dodge fully, though, you're pretty much guaranteed to take some damage. you're going to want to keep to cover as much as possible, to help with that.

using nonlethal force is not an immediate helper, never has been and anyone who thinks it is, doesn't grasp the real world implication.
however what it does do is put you at the bottom of the stack for investigation. since your runner team isn't the only one out there and 90% use lethal force. you get thrown to the back of teh line, they want the killers off the street.

*shrugs*

I've always looked at it as a matter of motivation. Does a Star Patrolman get paid the same if he runs after you really fast or just kinda fast? It also comes down to crime and punishment. You kill a cop you go to jail (on in SR his buddies make sure you have an accident), you knock a cop out you go to jail for whatever crime you did before that and get slapped with a lesser charge. Now when LS turns you over to Aztechnology for stealing corporate secrets, you're right, it doesn't matter what the hell you did. But if you can evade Lone Star because you didn't provide a personal and utterly convincing reason to push that LS patrolman from a level 3 proffesional rating up to a "Fight to the death despite the odds" rating, that seems like a firm tactical decision. LS is still going to come after you, the Azzies are for sure going to come after you, but why the Star wants you is quiet a bit different than why the Azzie's want you.

Witness can be an issue but if an LS guys shooting at you there's a pretty damn good chance their security rigger is currently downloading all the traffic cameras in your area and you've already been made. So it's on you chummer, murder one ontop of armed robbery or just armed robbery?

And like I said, I don't think anyones going to be switching rounds mid firefight, it's more of an aftermath/follow up issue. Longterm survival versus KILL KILL KILL. It's also a matter of what their motivation is to come after you, there are things runners can do to limit the number of reasons someone will keep chasing you. Fencing gear, throwing away SIN's, etc. Life is cheap but all that ware the Yak's put in that enforcer? That's not cheap at all, and now they have to go pay a ghoul and pull it all out, what a pain in the ass. Killing people screws up an extremely mercenary orgs bottom line and if it's all about cash and asset management, well...

Nowdays, and I imagine in the future there are protocols for escalation of force. If they have pistols and you have everything up to a tank you're supposed to shoot them with not a tank unless you don't have any other options. This is partly because everyones such nice folk and mostly because the biggest stick in your arsenal leaves craters. For cops they have less than lethal alternatives so partly so they don't have to do a lot of paperwork and mostly because it's bad press if that stray round flies into an orphanage and blows up a baby. In SR i'm sure they have less than lethal weapons because the various corps get tired of digging 9 mm out of their front windows and coffee boys. Again, if a runner has an LMG and he's tinsel and soft candy into a crowd, he's going to get lit up by deadly force regardless. If he's shooting people with a super squirt... I don't know if the cops can jump right to using flamethrowers. But that's a stylistic choice in the end and I won't say you're wrong for saying that all cops show up and start putting down a hail of lead no matter what is happening. It makes for grittier play and that's not a bad thing.

Okay, you go on a run. The run recovers 50k worth of paydata. Of that your Johnnson gives you a cut of say 10k for your efforts (what a nice guy). Corporate security pays 20 grand to train a basic security guard, more if look at total costs and he and his family are on corp payrolls. Plus if he dies they have to find a replacement and that costs money too.

Scenario A: Runners case the joint, identify that the guards are armed with pistols, wear light armor, blah blah. Sami says "I can take em with gel and stick and shock" everyone nods and loads up stunning ammunition. They do the run, get in a couple brief fights, but get the hell out of there with 3 corps guards down drooling on themselves. The corps pulls up the list of what was stolen and makes a notation that the Runners have ganked 50k with of information. For simplicity I'll ignore trying to put a number on how much "real" damage that does because the data is just a mucguffin in this case.

Scenario B: Same setup but the Runners decide, what the hell, this APDS isn't going to shoot itself. They roll in, do the job, get in the same firefights and the same 3 guards go down. 2 of the guards die, one of the guards is listed as critical and requires a 6 month stay in a corporate hospital, as per his contract. The corp looks at their balance sheet. Now, by their reckoning the runners owe them for 50k in data, 60k in guards, and whatever they had to pay for hospital bills, which might be even more than the paydata was worth.

In option A the corps are only going to spend money if it's still profitable to hunt the runners down and get their data back. The amount of money they spend on retaliation might be a bit higher but it's not good business to throwing good money after bad. The corp puts out the usual bounties and files a report with Lone Star. Lone Star keeps an eye out. It probably makes the evening news but is a couple minute spot at most. If LS ID's the runners they're going to take the necessary precautions but they might not see it as necessary to call in the SWAT team, after all, it's not like the runners killed anyone.

In option B the runners have run up at least a 100k tab. Probably more because hospital stays probably haven't gotten cheaper. They've also committed a double homicide and put another person in the hospital. Corporate PR gets in touch with their branch of the local news net and broadcasts some crying family footage and a couple minute spot on "Rising violence in X!" these are pretty common but it gets the usual public outcry. Lone Star gets the same reports and goes "Damn, double homicide, goddamn runners." A detective gets assigned to the case, he's overworked but it's on somebodies blotter and now if the runners run into Johnny Law, their certainly going to get a more... vehement response. The LS patrolman who ID's them is going to see the highlights and say "Holy crap, these guys don't fuck around, better call for HTR and load up the APDS rounds." In this example we've skipped from routine traffic stop with backup enroute to "Send in the Marines!"

All I'm saying is that I tend to think that killing people is still going to be a bigger deal than not killing people, even in a dystopian future where life is cheap but not as cheap as rent. There are numerous occasions where pulling off the right kind of run is going to warrant the full waffle stomp response regardless of how many dime bag sec guards you kill. I'm just trying to show that dead people cost orgs money, live people cost them less, and no matter how worthless a meta life may be, the training and wares don't grow on trees. I don't think anyone in this situation is saying "Oh dhey nice runners!!!" and drooling like a mongoloid, I think they're saying "Oh they're thieves." vs. "Oh their murdering thieves." Now if you're playing a world where that distinction doesn't matter because... well it just doesn't, than yeah, I'd agree.

Wow, that was a lot more than I wanted to write. Oh well.

Oh yeah! Body! Even if you're a "wussy mage boy" you need at least a body of 4 to wear decent armor without stumbling around at -1 to everything. You can skate by with less using the gear in Arsenal but you'll be crying for that heavier armor when the bullets start meeting your insides.

And damn, one magazine in the weapon, duh. So 7 mags it is. I was just counting the six (or is it 8?) double stacks you can carry in one of those highspeed chest pouches. You can tell how many doors I've kicked in. And here's hoping they finally make magazines for weapons that actually accommodate the number of rounds it says on the box.

And the trauma patch thing is key. Giving everyone a little lvl 3 medkit isn't a bad idea either.

I hinted at it earlier but that it pays to know the difference between cover and concealment, Cover is better but only if it really is cover and not just particle board that looks like a sturdy wall.

Yeah but it means that security is much more likely to just go ahead and put you out of your misery rather than turning you over to the RnD chopshop people.

Sheeeet - I stay in the rear with the gear.

Army doctrine says "x" but the actual number can vary based on mission parameters or Commander's discretion. I've seen some chest rigs capable carrying upwards of 12 magazines - it all depends on how much gear you really want to try and haul around. Your gear will get hot and heavy in a hurry. The more gear you haul, the faster you wear down.

-Siege

Edit: "Cover" is protection from incoming damage. Usually, but not alway, from sight. Example - hiding behind an armored door.
"Concealment" is protection from sight. The bad guy cannot see you, but recon by fire can ruin your day. Example: I may not see you in that bush, but it won't do much to protect you from the rounds I put into the bush - just in case.

Just to be difficult - I might have "cover" behind bullet proof glass, but I won't have "concealment" because you can see me.

Carry on.

And for those of us expected to carry medbags...

But that's another story.

Doctrine might say X but all the grunts I've talked to carry roughly twice the ammo they have magazines for. They adjust accordingly but the major thing for them is having 12 magazines stuck all over your body tends to be a huge pain in the ass if you want to attach something like, your personal first aid kit or grenades. Might need those grenades .

Than of course we have machine gunners. I've met exactly one real life grunt machine gunner and his deepest wish was to get an E-tool kill so you can imagine how many rounds he hauled around with him.

But erm... yeah. Has anyone actually worked their way through 12 magazines worth of ammunition in a Shadowrun game?

Heh. You have to prioritize - and you still won't be right.

Armor, mags, weapon, water source, IFAK, misc. other gear you bring along and squeeze into buses designed for small people...fun stuff.

As to your other question - it really depends on the mission. "Against the Hive" is one of the few I can think of that involved protracted, extended gun battles. The whole "Sneakers"-esque missions tend to be pretty light on the intense gun battles.

Ymmv, as always.

-Siege

MG gunners have most of the ammo carried by other people. They may have 2-600 rounds on them but the AG and the ammo bearer have more, and typically there is more distributed in everyone's pack. This is also how heavy ammo like mortar rounds are carried, everyone gets a fiber on the approach march, in addition to what the mortar crew can stagger along with.

You will never run out of ammo in a typical SR game unless you are firing full auto and only have few mags. That's because it would take so long to play the game out.

We usually had three 20-shot mags on us in training, but 6 was what was touted as "if we were in a real combat zone" load. That and 2 hand grenades.

But we were mechanised artillery, not infantry. The machine gun was mounted on the APCs (M-113), and ammo stored inside the APCs as well. We were not planning on moving away from our tracks if we could help it.

In my experience, we went through ammo very, very fast unless the exercise did not allow free shooting and had us do the "and now 2 shots, aimed, on that target" bit. That was especially notable in the simulator exercises.

More like Suicide 2020. If you rolled a 1, and then another 1, on ANY attack test, it killed you. I once played a game where a super deadly expert martial artist character killed herself by kicking herself in the face. Yeah.

...oh, and your team's Matrix Specialist can be one of the best secret weapons as happened in the latest episode of my March Mahyem run.

Witness to KOMO4 Reporter: "...that was when the squad car came crashing through the front lobby windows and took out the officers who shot at the suits..."

Yeah Mister Doc, that's what I was getting at just letting everyone else think about it. thanks for the indepth explaination (and the you can't do it wrong in your game disclaimer) ~.^

now if I can just convince my group "this is not DnD" maybe they'll start planning runs out.

On the issue of lethal vs. nonlethal and the response, revenge isn't going to make the dead people any less dead. It might make the dead person's family and friends feel better, but it won't help the bottom line at all.

On the other hand, it is very easy to make an unconscious person less unconscious. Even if you take down a guard using non-lethal measures his buddy can easily wake him up with First Aid and pump him full of combat drugs to mask the wounds he couldn't heal. The probability of a guard breaking off engagement because of wounds and fear can easily be negated by putting Guts (Arsenal p74) into their water supply (Or just giving them the drug that permanently berserks its users).

You'll see occasional references to the cops as "the gang with the badges". If you kill a cop that's what you have, as it become the number one priority of all the other cops. Having several thousand motivated people looking for you is bad for business. And it was very uncommon until 20-30 years ago for cop killers to get taken alive. They usually got "killed resisting arrest".

One thing I rarely see runners take advantage of is to move while using full defense. You can abort to full defense which forfeits your next action but if you run behind cover and break LOS entirely so the enemy can't see you then you have a better chance of picking your fight and singling out the opponent you wish to engage.

If your whole team is new to the game learn cooperative tricks aka the dirty tricks and cheating mentioned by previous posters.

EG: Detection spells like Detect Gun [which with enough hits can even single out machineguns from pistols], spy drones putting the enemy on your team's AR [then you know where to toss the flash-bang grenade], Biomonitors used like health bars in an MMO, and other ways of making your team more effective makes a difference. Its not all about the thickness of your armor and the caliber of the bullets you send downrange.

I dunno, I think you guys underestimate how often guards and cops likely get killed in SR and the prevalence of drones in security forces and response teams because of this. The upside to using drones means that there's less guards to get hurt (and pay), but the downside is that physical damage causing weapons becomes more of a necessity since drones and vehicles (even light ones) don't go down to stun damage. And no, don't give me "Well, the hacker just takes care of the drones" line, because if your hacker isn't perfect (and he isn't) and your GM makes things challenging enough that the Hacker screws up just often enough to make life interesting (which he should) then mixed forces of meat security and drones should be pretty prevalent. I'm not saying nobody cares when someone dies or anything here, but I think you're overestimating the resources the Star and security divisions are willing to invest in tracking down a runner team even if they do get a li'l crazy once in a while. I'm sure the boys will all miss Sgt. Bob, but they're more likely take it out on the next bunch of gangers they meet than they are to convince their higher ups the runner team is a high priority target or to manage to track them down on their own. Remember here, we're talking about a setting where a dadaist street gang in halloween masks with a fire fetish has been known to terrorize people in downtown Seattle while go gangs get in small skirmishes with the metroplex guard and win. Frankly, law enforcement spends all it's time in a simmering sort of siege; it's not like they're losing that siege, per se, but running around looking for vengeance isn't a luxury that they have unless you make things easy for them or do something really crazy. I'm not saying that you can go ahead and level buildings without anyone noticing, but quite frankly, 3 guards dying and a few hand grenades taking out a couple of drones and crippling a squad car is basically life in Seattle.

Still a firm believer that if you get a reputation for not using lethal force unless absolutely necessary then you are more liable to end up in a bad situation rather than dead. Say you get popped for something else and are in handcuffs. Cops figure out who you are. Well if you got a rep for using nonlethal force, then you are less likely to end up dead for "resisting arrest", or "trying to escape".

Also trying to talk yourself out of a fight, "Listen chummer. I really don't want to do this fight, I just want to go home and have a nice juicy soy burger. You really don't want me arrested, then you'll get some crazy fragger through here next time that won't be tossing stunbolts, he'll be tossing HE grenades. You let me walk and I'll go have a beer, you go home and grope your wife. We all go home happy."

Not even taking into moral considerations, just makes good sense to use nonlethal when you can. It draws less heat from the cops, even in your view of shadowrun and the lack of police trying to hunt you down once you get away. If they got 100 groups/people they want to catch/kill. I'd rather be number 99 than number 6. The more cops you kill the higher on that list you are going to go. Which just means less people on the streets want to deal with you. You would just be to hot to do business with. "Sorry chum, Star already comes by about once a week harassing me. If they knew I did business with you they'd be by twice a day." Just good business practice.

Now I'm not saying never kill, or never use lethal force. Just if you can get away with using nonlethal without putting yourself at anymore risk. Then why not. Plus it is easy enough to cut someones throat when they are passed out from stun damage.

I use stick and shock most of the time as a player, personally; it's good against spirits, improves the damage code of the smallest firearms and has disorientation and disabling effects. The fact that it's non-lethal is just a bonus. But that's really all beside the point; I'm saying the "without anymore risk" part is something I very rarely give my players the option of doing; I'm the kind of asshole GM that has the security guard using a couple of LMG armed Steel Lynxes as partial cover unless you want to try hosing them alll with fully automatic bursts. I mean, I know what you guys are saying, really I do, but this thread is about minimizing fatalities within the context of an encounter and nothing more, and just using stick and shock and gel rounds alone isn't enough to make people play fair in the midst of a heated battle regardless of what its longterm effects may be. The guard likely won't have time for regrets when he gets a clear bead on you with his T-250 Defiance loaded with standard slugs.

I think it was Kira from DS9 who said "The best way to survive a knife fight is to never get in one"...
I think that pretty much covers it...

No, it didn't. Or, rather, not by the rules. Blame your GM for some stupid critical failure house rule, don't blame the system.

Yeah, that sounds more like some old AD&D optional rule silliness to me, the kind that was slapped into Dragon magazine and heartily adopted by people with no intentions of following the cautionary advice that came along with it.

that's in the main book (optional rule of course...but main book nonetheless)

Well it wasn't an automatic kill, I was exagerating. Now that I think about it, it was also harder to hit yourself in the head. But any roll of 1 was a critical failure, which made you roll on a critical chart, which for combat included hitting yourself. And when you hit yourself you rolled hit location. And if you rolled the head, bye bye. I kid you not. CP 2020 had a very stupid system which allowed someone with a 10 in a combat skill (i.e. a better boxer than Mike Tyson) to hit themselves with full force directly in the face.

On the plus side, it was really funny to everyone else at the table

Dijinni, the easiest way to break the D&D mentality is to run a typical encounter and show what sort of tactics work and what sort of tactics don't. They're natural instinct to roll big numbers will push them towards using all the rules in the books to gain extra dice and they'll start making sounder decisions. The other thing I find successful is explaining that unlike D&D, killing/stealing in Shadowrun has real repercussion and the "dungeon hack" doesn't end until they get rid of the goods or get killed by the "monster". Hope that helps.



I understand we're off topic but I think that we've pretty much answered the original two part question of how to kill people without getting killed. So I'm moving on to the next interesting rant of "How to stay in the state of not-dead for as long as possible." My fundamental belief is that killing cops is going to bring the hammer just as bad, if not worse, than killing cops today. In fact I'd say worse because now these cops have access to combat drugs, corporate mandates, and the very worst parts of 20 seasons of "The Shield".

If you're playing a"realistic" setting i doubt corps are going to have people hopped up to gills on combat drugs that lower your inhibitions and prevent you from being scared. Marines do enough stupid shit without combat drugs, I don't even want to think what would happen if they get their hands on some Jazz. I've always used combat drugs as something that is always in a cops breast pocket, ready to go at the first flash of black leather and pink hair. But they certainly don't come on shift, take a hit of something angry and roam around the streets shooting homeless people. They might run them over occasionally but that's mostly for the funny sound it makes.

I've found this conversation illuminating because it's reminded me that there are several schools of thought on lethal vs non-lethal and that I should be representing them all in my campaign. My players have been pretty damn lethal but they seem to have seen use for non lethals at least once a session. Different communities in the shadows will certainly have their policies and I'm sure Jackpoint has a 200 page long thread beneath an article about the effectiveness of stick n shock.

Yes. One in one ten times during the stress and chaos of combat, something bad might happen. Of course, 1-4 on that "critical fumble" chart is "nothing happens, no fumble." Two more just involved a potential jam or the weapon being dropped. This just in: shit happens in fights. Yes, there's a chance that in the flurry of blows that melee combat represents, something bad can happen to you (ever seen the video clip of an MMA fighter snapping his own leg when he tries to kick someone?). Yes, maybe a ricochet spits your bullet back at you or a teammate (but of course, no one ever has to deal with friendly fire in real life, right?).

And please stop exaggerating. It also isn't a "bye bye" just because you rolled a head location shot, just like it's not an auto self-kill one in ten times you roll a fumble. If you're going to gripe about a system, gripe about the system (not exaggerations you create in order to pick that system apart by criticizing it for flaws you just made up).

I find that the best way to get D&D players to think outside of the hack-n-slash mentality is to throw them against threats far in excess of what characters of their level are capable of handling. The ultimate extreme is to have the PCs be a band of 1hd kobolds up against an entire city-state run by a King and Queen who are both retired level 20 heroes and having an army of around 2000 men or so.

I found that focusing on social aspects helps a lot. If your typical D&D adventure is happening in a city, and encounters involve plotting nobles at court trying to impress and influence the king as often or more than dungeoneering, then your players won't feel that out of place in Shadowrun at all.

If you're having trouble getting your players to break out of the D&D mold take a look at this stuff:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070404110649/...k.com/bjcorner/

What it means to murder is an excellent article if you're trying to get away from the whole "Boiling anthills for Xp" mindset.

Also point out that the amount of karma they get, and thus their rate of leveling, has very little to do with body count. As long as you do the run you should still be getting the full karma.