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Knight takes Bishop
Have you ever had an encounter, be it with a guard, sniper, or brick wall, that led to your character's untimely demise, but taught you a valuable lesson about what not to do in during a run? Example: One character in a game I attended asked the mage of the party to make him invisible and levitate him up to a helicopter, so he could dispatch the pilot. Unknown to him, there was a mage astrally perceiving at the time. He was shot by said helicopter's heavy machine guns. Lesson learned.

Sometimes it's a faulty character, a bad strategy, or procrastination, but either way your character is dead.
Xane
Well, it's not my character, but last night I struck a Killing Blow (Though Edge was used to Negate it. Not without severe consequence of course) to about 6 drones with pain inducers and my wife's character using a Naga with the Powerball spell. My wife's character tried to "befriend it." So it overcast a powerball and fled. Honestly, I was expecting them just to shoot the thing.
Siege
True story - NPC girlfriend of a PC turns to the party mage and says, "turn me invisible - I'm going to walk around the corner and check out the security positions."

The PC beau who hasn't been paying attention to the party interaction announces "I empty the magazine of my Ingram SMG blindly around the corner."

Exactly fifteen seconds after the NPC leaves the scene.

Draw your own lessons from this one.

True story #2 - new gun bunny is sitting in the hideout, cleaning weapons and prepping gear. Internal security cameras register Lone Star SWAT units hitting the roof. Gun bunny grabs a bugout bag, pops a satchel charge with the anticipation of destroying casual evidence and dives into a sewer access tunnel.

Party neglects to mention the warehouse was also the ammo dump for the missiles, thousands upon thousands of explosive rounds, grenades and assorted munitions for the rigger and party.

Resulting fireball and shockwave wipes out a couple city blocks, including the party mage's initiate magic group next door.

-Siege
mfb
one of my characters, Race, has died once and almost died a second time (first aid and healing spells are wonderful things) in somewhat similar circumstances.

Race is a mobility/melee adept, and the only two times she's gotten her ass kicked, it's been by mages. the first time, it was her against a mage, a secguard, and her target; she took down the guard, then ran away and hid in the stairwell that the mage and the target would have to go up in order to get away. by the time they get to the stairwell, though, the mage has turned himself and the target invisible. Race is crazy, so she pops out and tries to take them anyway. the target hits her with an SMG burst, so she hops over the rail and disappears from sight again. the rest of the team finally shows up, so Race decides to pop out again and try and get some. what she got was a powerbolt to the face that instagibbed her and dropped her onto the stairs below. like i said, thank god for first aid and treat spells.

the second time, it was her and another mobility/melee adept going after four Yaks, two of whom were mages. we tore through the gang they'd hired for protection like shit through a particularly diahrettic goose, then went inside the semi-abandoned hotel they Yaks were holed up in. we started kicking down doors, and then one of the mages fireballed us both from several floors up. We hadn't seen him because the other mage was sustaining invisibility on him. Race ended up getting burned pretty badly, so she bailed; the other adept ran the other way, up the stairs to the roof, which happned to be where the two non-mage Yaks were chilling. he killed them both, the glory-hogging bastard, and then joined Race in questioning one of the gangers before hitting the street doc.

the lesson i learned is that melee/mobility adepts really shouldn't fuck with mages.
Cardul
Rigger is trying to get the party away from hot pursuit. Street Sam concludes he knows what the best course of action is, and tells the rigger to head towards Bellevue. The rigger, being the one driving, follows his plan, which is going to utilize vehicle mods only the rigger knows about, and keeps going where he plans. The street Sam grows impatient and tells the rigger to "Turn Left right now!" The rigger says something along the lines of "It's my skin to, and this is my job..I know it better then you, especially what this vehicle can do.." With that, the Sammie pulls a gun and points it at the Rigger's meat and says "I said, turn Left now!" Samurai finds his seat shooting him up int air before he react. As the seat begins to fall back down, Samurai realizes that a chute hasn't deployed..just before seat explodes. Shrapnel from the seat and the sammy's 'ware blows into the air intakes on two of the pursuing choppers, taking them out of the fight.

Lessons Learned:
1) Never pull a gun on the Rigger when he is driving.
2) Samurai and exploding ejectin seats make great bombs for dealing with pursuit.
Stahlseele
even as a troll, one does just not go hand to hand with a small feathered serpent . . for ong at least . . my character went KO in the third round and after that the dragon got shot to pieces by an ares great dragon . . by the twin of my character being played by another one of our group . . who did NOT forget that each of us had one of those in addition to the LMG . . end of story: my character got stabilized and went out of play because he had to get medical serious treatment for quite some time . .

Other lesson: if the GM tells you that another troll has a laser-axe close to the neck of your troll . . you DON'T TRY SHIT . . first wound, one hit, 1 box short of Deadly physical damage . . character being stabilized and going out of play because the need of serious medical treatment . . AGAIN . .

next lesson: if you get hit by a Katana which does S-Damage to you and the other guy does not let go of the sword . . you DON'T put your shock-glove to the sword to get rid of him . . period . .
DTFarstar
It didn't lead to anyones direct demise, but it was a close damned thing. We were assaulting a warehouse trying to steal some magical MacGuffin for Mr. Johnson and we decided to attack the situation from the top down. We burned through several security guards, and then had to descend to the ground level some 10 or so meters below. The mage levitates, I rappel, another guy rappels, one guy take the ladder- which is booby trapped- and almost falls to his death, and the last player tries to rappel down by defaulting to a STR of 3.

We learned 3 things about Shadowrun that day.

1. Falling damage is crazy lethal.
2. Never trust a ladder in a facility controlled by the enemy.
3. Never default on anything that matters unless the controlling stat is at least a 7.

Chris
Daier Mune
never leave home without Thermal Smoke grenades.
kanislatrans
back in sr1 or 2 I had a street mage who ended up with a short teleport spell. we were in the amazon somewhere and the plane we had acquired was falling apart. So Wormwood,my smart ass mage waits till the plane is about 8 feet off the surface of the river we had been following and smirking says" enjoy the swim suckers! see you on the shore!" and picking a spot on the shore, casts his little teleport

luckily I ended up about 20 meters out from the shore when I popped back in. cause I had forgotten a basic rule of physics. something about "a body in motion remaining in motion " or sum such garbage. He did an impressive imitation of a flat rock till he hit the mangroves. he never did live that one down, and was called "Skipper" for about 6 runs afterwards.

lesson: you can only fool with reality so far before she bites you in the privates> wobble.gif
Adarael
I'll give you some jewels from my experiences.

-With enough combat pool and karma spent, you can dodge 8 guys going full auto at you and kill them with a single spell.
-Dodging is good...but if you're not fast, sometimes riding the hit off your armor is better.
-Fast reflexes and big guns are no substitute for a solid plan and setting things up in advance.
-With enough explosives, you can destroy anything. The only thing stopping you from doing so is the aftermath of that action.
-Never try to bluff your way past anyone when you're in the middle east. Just shoot them from a distance.
-Sometimes, bad guys come back bigger and meaner when you kill them. Even if you cut off their head and burn it.
And, of course...
-Shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.
GryMor
Rating 12 fault sprites planted in a secure facility told to "inf 15 minutes, wipe out everything you can get to" WILL find a way out (perhaps via a separate booby trap igniting the facility and thus breaching the wireless shielding) into the general network and wreck extreme havoc... and will enjoy the adventure.
Chrome Tiger
One of my players learned that shooting at an explosives detonator is not the best way to disarm it.
sungun
most of the team was laying low in a warehouse owned by one incredibly paranoid demolitions expert. everyone was trying to figure out what sort of screwed up situation we'd gotten ourselves into. a job had gone wrong in some really suspect ways. a couple of characters put together some clues (incorrectly) to determine that they were being played by some of the other team members. the alleged offenders, including the paranoid demolitions expert, got surprise bullets to the brain. about half a minute after he flat lined, his internal biomoniter sent a signal to his horde of explosives in the basement. new character sheets all around.
toturi
QUOTE (Adarael @ Mar 4 2008, 12:14 PM) *
-Shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, ever cut a deal with a dragon.

What do you give a dragon? Anything it wants.
W@geMage
Shoot a Fire Spirit with a burst of Ex/Ex rounds while it's engulfing a fellow runner. wobble.gif
Prime Mover
When the Hit Mage says shoot me and I drop this vial of DOOM, maybe you should'nt shoot him.

When you get a phone call in middle of the night to meet strangers in a deserted place its best not to go alone.

Just cause your a Troll wearing an armored T-Shirt with the Superman logo does'nt mean bullets won't hurt.

When Lone Star and the FBI want you for killing officers/agents it's time to stop sticking to your normal routine.

Don't argue with the Dragon who has a vault with your blood samples in it.

Never bring a Katana to a gernade fight.

Breaking into an apt and tossing on a dress you find is not a disguise that will get you past the cops chaseng you.

Jumping off the boat to escape is not viable in middle of the atlantic.

HANG ON I"M GONNA RAM HIM!!!

Never bring a gernade to a missle fight.

Can you guys soak a Manaball?

What do you mean I can't jack out?

Well that was some new IC....just got the new matrix book huh.....got any character sheets?

That spirit will never find me in here!

I dumped a hundred rounds into that cow before it ate Cody.

So the hackers in full VR, mage is in the astral and riggers is knocked out and we need to evac.......which two do I carry out?

Adapt turns to the hacker "and your absolutely sure you were'nt tracked"? Hacker turns to the Adapt "yea and your sure that spirit didn't follow you right"? Ok then let's get some sleep.
Fuchs
One player learned the hard way that, when you're talking to some unknown character, after a series of attacks, and he exposes a cult that wants the character for a sacrifice, and then invites you into his car, a "detect lies" spell is only useful if you at least ask "and, which side are you on?", and not just assume that since he just gave you all that (truthful) info he's fighting against and not for said cult.
Knight takes Bishop
I learned a hard lesson about climbing, that eerily resembles the case of DTFarstar's fiasco. From then on I used this combination:

Str: (at least) 3
Climbing: 3 (assisted +2)
Gecko tape gloves

Simple, yet, effective....
Siege
Never, ever leave the commo codes for the mission extract with the guy using an internal radio.

-Siege
Ryu
The mage in our last campaign had to sustain a spell (Physical Mask) when he needed to rappel down somewhere. He had Athletics 1, but that did not help with a strength of also 1. The glitch that happend was *very* likely, and 10m-freefalls hurt. He´d better cast Levitate despite the sustaining mod...
Naysayer
Scenario: Streetsam has to haul in a "crazy paranoid" decker. He manages to track down the mark's hideout ad runs into some opposition, of which he disposes with all the subtety he can muster (shooting his AK through a car to take down the guy behind it.)
As he strolls up to the door of the Decker's doss, he finds it open.
So, he decides to look inside, peek-a-boo style and promptly finds himself with a gun pointed to his head, point-blank.
Quoth the sam: "I know you won't shoot".
...

As a somewhat fresh GM, I learned that pulling that trigger helped keeping the game exciting for the players years down the road and let me get by with plot-protection when needed, because the players knew, if push came to shove, the fail-safe is usually off.

And the player? He found out that he liked playing deckers much better.
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