In the campaign i'm currently running, one of the characters is playing a troll based entirely around the idea of rolling as many dice to resist damage as possible.

During last nights session, whilst dealing with a next of ghouls, the troll decides to put into action a plan he had been considering for a while. The ghouls were swarming him, trying to take down the single largest threat quickly (cos he is) and he dropped a grenade pretty much at his feet (well, he tried to land it a meter or so away but scatter dropped it closer)

The blast went off, most of the ghouls died, he came out of it with 1 box of stun damage.

He is currently rolling about 30 dice in a damage test (using an armoured jacket, riot shield, various bits of cyberware/bioware and a maxed out body)

I'm really starting to struggle to find things to challenge him physically, whilst also not turning the other party members into red mist, and also without seeming like i'm specifically trying to take him down (i'm not, i just want him to feel challenged when it comes to combat)

Any ideas?

Multiple enemies with full autofire weapons. He can't always roll 30 successes for damage resistance.

Mages with Mental spells. Make him resist with his mind.
That and electrical damage, only uses half armor.
Or run a mission he's required to swim during.
Then there's always the option of a speeding bull-dog step van running him over.

Along similar lines, Direct Combat mana spells, or even Direct Combat physical spells. In both cases, his armor is useless.

Have a subdual expert attack him. Armor doesn't help when wrestling.

disregard the other options, have him do some leg-work . . people are probably not going to talk to the tank asking the wrong questions . . or he has to try and shadow someone . . you'd have to be pretty distracted not to notice the tank following you . . also, chem-tech . . only natural body and certain special cyber/bio help against that one . .

Adept with a High-Powered Tranq Patch. Slap on the nose, Troll goes down.

Always an excellent way to deal with enemies.

An assault rifle with Stick n Shock rounds works as well. -half for AP and 15s DV on a full, narrow burst.

heh, SnS is the mundane equivalent of a mana based direct combat spell.

also, given how the rules work, the stun track will always be shorter then the physical track...

Well unless someone has 1 body and 8 will. In which case I think the Stun track might win.

heh, not gonna happen

Prolly not. If Bone Density Augmentation actually augmented your body it might happen (augmented body of 5) as no ware I can think of augments Will. But BDA just does it for damage resistance tests.

Short answer: If the rest of his team dies, he still loses, so what's the problem?
Long answer: I think you may be creating a problem where there is none. He wanted to play a character who is nigh-impervious. It's his whole shtick. It's not your job to prove to him that his character sucks. There are a lot of ways he can be hurt, people have already suggested great ones, and they should darn well show up when appropriate, but you don't need to go out of your way to hurt him. He may not be in any personal danger in a particular fight, but his buddies aren't, and there's only so many people he can kill at once. The grenade things strains believability a bit, sure, but being impossibly tough is his whole character concept, I say let him have it. That can't exactly be his go-to tactic that he uses 90% of the time; most situations he'd blow his own friends to hell. So my question to you is: So he's invulnerable, is that really hurting the game, or does it just seem wrong?
Now if it's hurting the game because he acts like an asshat and does dumb stuff that endangers everyone because he won't be killed and screw everyone else, then that's absolutely a problem, but I'd say that's more of a problem with the player and his playstyle than the character.

Challenge this character in combat by creating threats for the team, challenging him in combat doesn't necessarily require putting a lot of boxes on one particular damage track.

That said, if you do really want to put damage on his track, there are a lot of good suggestions here already. I just wanted to explore the issue a bit and offer another perspective.

Wait wait wait!

I forgot the ultimate issue with Trolls and their hatred of things built for a smaller people.

Weak. Flooring.

the braveheart genetic infusion can increase willpower. the adrenaline pump can increase willpower very briefly. the pain editor can increase willpower as long as it is active (but with drawbacks).

there are also a number of drugs that boost willpower.

...Force 6 Stunbolt or Manabolt with edge thrown in. Troll's Willpower defends.

Have him meet the troll pornomancer for some troll on troll action.

Let's not forget about Sound elemental effects, Stun damage that ignored armor is a tankytroll's kryptonite...

If there's a dedicated face in the party (which I am in my group), that face wouldn't let the troll do the talking, it would be an insult to his honor...

Good points, just because he survives doesn't mean he succeeded in his mission, our group has a good survival rate, so far, but ever since we finished the SRM's and started doing our GMs home made ones, our failure rate has gone up a lot...

Has all the negatives of genetic infusions.


Yeah, but when it wears off you can really crash (lost will power reduces your stun track and you take an additional 6 hits).


True.


Yes and there are also drugs that give +3 to all physical scores, +1 willpower, High Pain Tolerance 3, and +3 IP's. It just has that nasty 18s (unresisted) when it wears off. And the addiction thing.

Bah! He's a Shadowrunner! You want to live forever?

Ok, here are a few things to keep in mind when dealing with such hyper-specialized characters:

A. Acceptance "Damn I'm good!":
The characters are really good at this, far above the best a unmoded/non awekened human can dream of. Yes, the tank troll can survive a direct hit from a rocket. It's hard to imagine, but that's the way it is.
Most of the time the players spent a whole lot of BPs to get this. They deserve it. Sometimes that's the character concept. And when you create your character so that he's able to survive a rocket/shoot a fly at 500m/charm anyone, you expect your character to do just that. You don't expect him to get killed every time/miss all your shots/be ignored.
When a combat specialist is faced with regular opposition, don't try to kill him at all costs. He's the best, and he'll most likely be able to take the opposition down, and to look cool doing it. The player wants his character to be able to do that, he payed for it and it's consistent with the world. Everybody wins.

B. Challenge "To win without risk is to triumph without glory":
Killing everyone everytime, surviving everything... It soon becomes boring. The character needs to be all he can be. He needs a challenge.
But that doesn't mean he must lose face and dignity. That means he has to give all he's got, and shine at his brightest. Thor-shotting the tank-troll to death isn't challenging him. A better challenge would be to have him have to get in the way of a rocket to prevent it from blowing up his team or the character he needs to protect, or hold the huge and heavy door to buy his team enough time to leave the place...
A good idea is to rely on something else than just the character's natural strength, or to force him to find the way to put it to use to win the challenge. It's not fun if all the troll tank has to do against the BFG is to roll body and hope for the best. It's better if he has to get in the way of a shot in a specific place, so that he'll be pushed towards some other place where he'll be able to...

C. Reaction "To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction":
If the opposition knows it'll face a tank-troll and know what to expect from him, they'll adapt, as far as they can. This could mean sending mages with mana spells or heavy artillery, if available. This could also mean surrendering or avoiding direct confrontation if they know they don't have anything powerful enough to take him down. This can be a good explanation for the challenge, and if done properly, will avoid making the player feel punished for having a character who's just too food.

To conclude, I'd say the better way to handle it would be something very classic:
1. Regular guys attack the troll who just stands there and doesn't even move.
2. Regular guys panic and run "It's a monster! He's too strong! We can't hurt him!"
3. Panicking guys are getting blown away (or stop in their tracks, awestruck): here comes the BFG!
4. Troll tank faces a real challenge. It's not easy, he can't rely on his high body alone (even if it helps, and is probably crucial to his survival) but if he succeeds, that's something he could brag about later!

It would seem that armor is also context dependxent. There are a lot of places / situations where one simply can not reasonably wear heavy armor. But combat can still occur in those contextsYours,
Joel Halpern

You could have ninjas who call out special move names and make kanji flash on the screen before attacking. That tends to be effective against armor.

The last time the issue of indestructible machines of death, I think I said something to the effect of: "Being invulnerable doesn't help you succeed at runs, it just helps you live to fail another day."

Preach, brother!

I agree that GMs should not be averse to pulling Operation Flashpoints. That is to say it should be possible to conclude a given scenario alive, but with failed objectives, and furthermore the failed objectives could be due to something other than grotesque player incompetence. For example, in Operation Flashpoint there was one mission where the player was part of a NATO infantry assault on a town held by Soviets. However, during the assault, a Soviet armor column rolls into to support the Soviet infantry and thus the player is basically forced to withdraw, and thus the scenario ends.

There are some other missions where it can go either way, but the engine supports either a victorious or failure debrief depending on how things went.

someone hand me the bleach, i need to get that image of my mind...

Actually, there was a suggestion in the game I ran recently to start searching a Tenement where a Rave was going on, room-for-room, for the guy lobbing explosives at the group.

I described what they saw... Some with invitations to join in.

And a blow-up, Troll-Sized Sheep.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...mp;#entry442291

sonic rifles, paintball guns loaded with high powered acid, nano/bio/chemical weaponry, mana spells.

oh gawd hyz, you just had to bring that old thread up didn't you... I had forgotten about that one, and it's hilarious reading some of the old stuff. I had forgotten I had posted to some of those threads.

I for one believe that thread necromancy is mandatory.

Was this erattaed?
As far as I can subdual damage has to go through full impact...

Thanks for all the responses guys

Thankfully, the player is a pretty decent sort, and whilst he's made the troll as solid as possible, he isn't an idiot about it. He just has started coming up with some fairly unbelievable tactics (like dropping grenades at his feet)

btw, for those who mentioned limitations to the armour he is wearing - all he was wearing was a standard armoured jacket (8/6) and a riot shield (+2/+6)

The rest of his dice come from his maxed out augmented body, and +armour/+DP for dmg resistance tests cyberware. If he was attacked naked and in the shower, he'd still be rolling around 20 dice to resist dmg.

The next part of the campaign i've written for them will involve dealing with Toxic shamans and organ leggers, since they've already tracked part of the trail to the ghouls that the organ leggers have a relationship with. I'm hoping that the use of toxic spirits, mentally damaged shamans and individuals that will look at the troll as a supermarket for cyberware/bioware might provide an interesting challenge, both physically and intellectually.

I think part of the problem was that the group are playing a high powered game, the troll character made a high powered character whilst the other 2 runners went for characters with a wider array of skills (drone rigger and voodoo shaman) and thus seem to pale in comparison when stacked next to the troll. (the drone rigger also doubles as the face)

However, I've started introducing the voodoo shaman to some of the options available to her, and she's started to up her game a bit, to be more in-line with the troll. The Drone rigger has also started to undergo some personal changes. The character has always fought from behind drones and he's recently found himself in fights personally, which is scaring the crap out of him, so he's turning to drugs to give him an edge, of course, the drugs he's been using have had an effect on his personality in a fight, which the other team members are starting to notice (the inexperienced Japanese elf rigger suddenly went nuts with a Remington Roomsweeper, being scared out of his wits fighting ghouls and then dropping some drugs caused an over-reaction to his flight or fight response.)

I'm hoping by educating the other two runners into the options available to them, i can bring them up to the trolls level and start generating challenges that the whole team can be a part of (cos realistically, the fight with the ghouls could have been soloed by the troll)

There's no errata for subdual, as far as I know. My idea was not a way to kill or even cause any damage at all to the troll. More like it's an idea to keep the troll out of the action while the rest of the team is attacked. It's a way of telling the troll, "You may be nearly invincible, but that doesn't mean you are useful."



Do the other characters really need to be as super as the troll in combat for the group to have fun? In my experience so far, each character should have a specialty, and thus will be not so useful sometimes, and very useful at other times. In my group, the team's technomancer, for example, is next to useless in combat. But, in the Matrix, no one else comes remotely close. Should the technomancer in my group start beefing up for physical combat to match the team's street sam? I don't think so, since that defeats the point of each character. Same with your group.

Is there really a need to make them all equal in the same situations? As long as you give each of them a moment to shine, that should be good enough.

Meh. I had a similar problem in a game recently, not SR though. One character was the strongest, toughest and smartest in the group. He also had the most extrovert player, so he dominated all the social meetings too, despite not really having the skills on paper. I can't blame him alone, as the other players sat back and let him dominate play. I did try to encourage the other players to beef their characters up in their respective roles, but it didn't work so well.

Now I'm running SR, and he plays the group's Face, problem solved.

That's not an issue with the characters or the game situations, though. That's a problem with the players--if you call it a problem.

Samba's issue with combat is only an issue if combat is a primary focus of the game. If combat is only an occasional event, then this should not be a problem at all.

It sounds like things are pretty well stated for how to deal with it, but I think most of you are forgetting the best tactic at all: Traps. A simple super deep pitfall will make for a long, tough night for the troll. For extra fun, have the trap also dump something (molten metal works wonders ) on top of him. No more uber troll problems! ^_^

You realize that you are talking str+net hits on opposed test > target's body attribute, which I believe was stated as being maxed out (15-16).
Its quite the grappler that can come out with that 16-17 str+net hits after an opposed strength +unarmed test with a troll. Right up there with time travel and teleportation if you ask me. Unless it was an equally twinked out troll buff strength grapple monkey, which is more so supporting the uncontrollable giant troll problem then solving it.
So say your sorry and we can all forget this ever happened...

The most maxed out body (without resorting to adept improved attribute or pumping drugs like a looney) would be 13 (10 for troll, +2 for exeptional and optimization, +1 for sypratheroid gland), not 15-16...
Not a very big difference, unless I'm wrong once more...

So you're not going to bring out the team of Lone Star Officers Goodbody, Fragmore, Darling, and Howe? I'm disappointed.

I'm going to agree somewhat with Ranger. The troll is the character who gets hit. That should be his role on the team. It is a common MMORPG role. You always need someone who can draw fire and take hits for the team. Usually, in Shadowrun, the people who draw fire and take hits for your team are called hostages. But, a troll tank can do just as well. Obviously, the troll doesn't play much of a role outside of combat. It is difficult to do so when heavily specialized.

Maxed out usually means maxed out. I.E. resorting to 'crazy things'
There are plenty ways to raise your body to the augmented maximum for purposes of taking damage. Base 10? Okay... 4 levels of Bone Density and a Suprathyroid Glad gets you to 15 without much of a fuss. Do all that gene-therapy/quality business and you could reach 17, though it would cost you some of your ever danky Bps.

I'm done now.

Okay, look at my quote of me, then look at your quote of me, see my calculations missing?
Also, Bone density doesn't deal with augmented maximums, if you have bod 6 and aug max 9, you can still roll all 4 dice of bone density 4...
The only thing that actually increases body is the gland, the adept power, a spell and drugs to my knowledge...
So without cutting out my proof and asking for it, why don't you prove it is possible?

Theres a number of items that give +dice for dmg resistance tests without increasing the base body (like bone lacing). Add in things like orthoskin, double elastin and a couple of other modifications you can very easily roll more than 20 dice for resisting dmg even caught naked.



It would be a little unrealistic to do so, they are currently deep inside the Kowloon Walled City looking for a missing person. Last time i checked, Lone star just don't go into the walled city

I think its an interesting thing to try and work out, is it actually possible to hit the augmented maximum of 15 body (not body for dmg resistance tests, or body for toxin resistance tests) using just stuff available to a street sammy (no spells, no adept powers).

I've tried with what i have available at work, and i get the same result - 13, using Exceptional attribute, optimisation and a superthyroid.

Also, are combat drugs limited to the augmented maximum too?

(p.s. i know my guy uses things like titanium bone lacing to give +3 to body for damage resistance tests)

why the hell did they even change that? if natural max is 10, then how is a troll supposed to ever hit the cap of 15 body without being an adept or taking drugs like crazy or having some mage beef him up some more, which is incredible unlikely as i believe the target for the mage to be the base attribute?
in SR3 the numbers were rounded up and you still got to the limit in character generation if you really wanted to . .
but if i am understanding this right then in SR4
Trolls get +4 to body, meaning natural 10, exceptional rises that one to 11, gen thingy to 12 and the gland to 13 . . but with the exceptional and gen thingy your maxed augmented body is actually 18 again 12+(12/2=6) . . and you are stuck at body 13 without magic or taking enough drugs to kill you . .
granted there's things that add Dice Pool Modificators to damage resistance tests, but no way to get the body higher than that?
even replacing most of the body with metal bits (limbs) only gices + boxes to damage track . . and because you have to up those stats per limb the average is more likely to get lowered with limbs too . .

Kowloon PD officers Hugnkiss, Onatopa, Goodman, and Hunt, then?

That lot aren't part of the PD, they are a triad hit squad masquerading as Hong Kong Police officers
Life is complicated in the walled city

Yeah, the police officer is called Tequila. But one of the member of the Triad hit squad is his brother.

You are assuming that the subdual expert of which I was speaking is not a troll.

Troll with natural Str 10, Muscle Replacement 4 or Muscle Augmentation 4, Suprathyroid Gland for +1 = 15 Augmented Strength. Matches the tank troll's 15 Augmented Body.

If you like, add in the +1 die for Subduing from Aikido, Wildcat, or Wrestling...or all three, since technically they all stack, for +3 more dice. Add in Subdual Combat specialization for Unarmed Combat for another 2 dice.

It's not that hard for a specialized wrestler troll to beat a specialized tank troll in subdual combat. Now, whether the wrestler will do any damage--who knows? But, again, my idea was more to just keep the tank from doing much of anything else.

I suppose, the only question here is, can the wrestler troll stop the tank troll from pulling the pin on a grenade and dropping it?

(btw, the tank troll is quite strong, he's not maxed out on strength, but i think he hits about 12-13 Strength)

Whenever one person makes an insanely physical combat monster with low mental stats, and the rest of the party are insanely mental technical/magical types with low physical stats, the obvious answer is to mind control the Troll into going on a HULK SMASH rampage and piledrivering his teammates until they figure out a way to stop him.

Or maybe I just did that in a Champions game last weekend, and thought it was a lot of fun.