I don't have many people interested in Shadowrun where I live, so my group is pretty small. Like 2 or 3 people small. So my question is this:

Do you ever play with more than one character? If so, what's the most amount of characters you've ever played with?

Generally I play with a single character. Occasionally, I will play a second character if one of our players is out for the session.

One thing that I have done in a situation similar to yours is to use a character tree. Each player rolls up 2-3 characters and they function as a large team--selectively choosing which characters will take the job. There is normally no swapping mid-run and you keep the accruals separate.

Alternatively, you can give everyone a secondary add-on. A new skill group at rank 3 with the necessary gear. This way your Street Sam can double as covert ops, your Hacker can also do some rigging, and your Mage can be a face. It will mean that they aren't quite as good as specialists in their secondary fields, but it allows them to move without too many hindrances.

Don't forget that in the universe in which Shadowrun exists, a fixer would only find jobs that the team was capable of doing, Mr. Johnson would only want to hire a team that was capable of what he wanted done, etc.

For example, if you've only got two runners, and neither is magically capable, then the majority of their jobs would not involve, say, going after spirits. If you have no combatants, then very few jobs will be combat-intensive.

A lot of this is up to the GM, of course, but the beautiful thing about Shadowrun is that the team can always (well, often) turn down a job.

I currently have only three players in my game. It allows for a more personal approach to story lines and interactions in general. The trick is to weave the personal plot around and through tailored runs for the team. You can always have a few NPC's fill out the ranks if you have an idea for a run that the team needs a specialist for.

I do the same, although I have regular NPCs for the team. They don't take the spotlight, however.

We have a very balanced team of 4 PCs, but we frequently play with just 3 (when life happens and someone can't come to game night). With a shaman, a technomancer, and a gun-bunny, we do just fine (okay, okay, it'd be nice if we had a face. Heck, it'd be nice if someone had any social skill, defaulting is getting really really old...) Like Aaron mentioned, a Mr. Johnson hires a team that can do the job. Unless, of course, he's setting you up.

I'd also suggest that in a team of 2, you give the players a few extra buildpoints to allow them to be more proficient generalists, ie, a hacker/gun-bunny + combat shaman/face would be able to take on quite a few jobs.

I prefer raising the BP level and making multi-role shadowrunners to allowing players to run multiple characters.

If you mean 3 players + a GM, thats fine for an SR group, if you decide to play with the normal matrix rules someone justs needs some skillwires, and a tracebuster ^H^H^H^H^H^H agent, and you can run A street sammie (who is also the hacker) a face and a mage and your done.