Hello,
I recently started playing SR 4th after many years of not playing any pen and paper rpg's. I was wondering how you GM's organize your stats during battles so that everything is kept track of? Right now during a battle it takes me a ridiculously long time to apply all the modifiers, keep track of bullets, armor etc. I am constantly getting flustered with all of it. Is there some way to organize everything so that it becomes more intuitive? Or perhaps maybe a computer program that helps?
Thanks a lot!

I don't play fourth, but this may help, if you can find a copy of it. In 2nd edition in the back of the core book there was a sheet that had NPC condition monitor, stats, and notes. I use this for NPCs and PCs alike, cause i like to keep track of the PCs health myself and do all those pesky rolls that slow the game down some times. If you can find it it may work out for you.

I use this one: Aaron´s Grunt Record Sheet.

I do it two ways, grunts and other unimportant npc's do not get stats. They get a dicepool ranging from 4-8 that is supposed to include "minor" modifiers like recoil for the second shot and movement. Global modifiers like darkness can be subtracted beforehand so during combat I only have to track wound modifiers and modifiers that get afflicted to them by the players.

I don't use damage tracks but instead draw little triangles, with each side being equivalent to one box. A full triangle means -1 to all actions. 3 triangles is the latest point where they'll drop and that's only in case of highly motivated grunts.

Ammunition does not get tracked. Instead they get turns of shooting, but with magazine sizes being where they are and the shortness of SR combats it's seldom that this even becomes a point.

Important NPC's do get full statlines but those get optimized towards being simple to run (offensive pools of the same size, the same goes for decking, defensive or magic related pools) and the pools including all usual modifiers get added up beforehand and written next to the skills. Armor often gets modded with electricity resistance high enough to even out the half armor it would usually apply. Cyberware, Spells and Programs that forms the core of their tactic gets bolded in the writeup.

Using a dieroller also saves me a lot of time that goes towards keeping all the other niggling details in mind. And having one of the players announce the turn and pass everyone keeps me from leaving anyone out. While cheatsheets both on my laptop and in paper on the table help with keeping aware of modifiers. I trust my players to keep breast of most modifiers for themselves so I only have to tell them the ones specific to their current target.

But in the end Shadowrun allows you to stage confrontations that occur on three planes at once, and there is no amount of preparation that will ever make that intuitive or prevent you from forgetting something. So don't be afraid to wing it, because between group edge, and normal randomness a player won't notice the difference between a dicepool of 3 and one of 5 in the course of a single combat.

For the combat and spellcasting things, I have some javascript pages I've created. I'm still working on them (currently absorbing the new info) but they seem to work pretty well (the ones that are done anyway ).

http://shadowrun.us/sr4/cheat/index.html

I based them originally on the cheat sheets but have added a bunch of stuff.

For the "heat of the moment" battles, we use a battle mat with the various combatants using the wet erase markers.

Carl

Thanks a lot for the good advice. It seems like things have to be "winged" because there is no way for me to keep track of everything without ruining the pace of the game. If there are any other methods like Sma suggested that keep things methodical and organized I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks

I think everyone else has things covered, but I just wanted to say great handle there, manimal. I'm reading Generation Kill right now and its awesome!!!

Several hints that worked pretty well for me.

• Go through, in your mind, the locations where combat is likely to occur ahead of time, and note down the environmental modifiers. Fight on the docks at night? Note down light level penalties, and slippery footing.
  
• When statting an NPC, write down only the stuff you're likely to need. If the encounter involves your PCs talking to someone, all you're likely to need for that someone are his social stats and whatever Knowledge/Language skills will be relevant to the conversation. Sure, once in a while one of your PCs is going to do something stupid and you're going to need to whip up this NPC's combat stats in a hurry, but on average it still saves you time.
  
• Likewise, don't bother coming up with every single combat stat. Let's say you're statting a grunt mercenary, who's going to gun down your PCs from ambush with his assault rifle. So you need his Longarms skill and the stats for his assault rifle. (Figure out what his total modifiers are, allowing for environment, and write those down.) You might need whatever melee skill he prefers, and the stats for his favored melee weapon. Now, a merc worth his salt would probably be able to use lots of weapons beside those two, but chances are, in this encounter he won't get the chance to demonstrate that... so why should you, the GM, waste time and skull-sweat coming up with the entire list?
  
• Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate. Keep every single stat block you've ever come up with. The Mafia Hit Man your PCs wasted three sessions ago only needs a change of name, and perhaps a tweak or two, to become the Professional Bodyguard they'll face tomorrow.

Some of these suggestions flow very well into other GMing suggestions: for example, while you're considering the environmental modifiers, consider whether there are any cool ways your PCs or the NPCs might be able to interact with said environment. (Shoving people off the edge of the dock into the water, taking cover behind oil drums, stray rounds exploding those same oil drums a round later... that sort of thing.) However, that's not what the original question asked, so I'll shut up now.

I'd almost take it a step further and just writedown the dicepools your gonna need as well. Easier to read gun dicepool of 8 rather than looking up agility 3, pistol skill of 3 and smartlink bonus of 2.

Excellent advice from everyone. Exactly what I was looking for.

Insist that the players have their stuff written down for rapid reference too. An occasional time they have to look stuff up is fine, but they should know what their standard skill+stat+modifiers are to hit and what their base damage+modifers are for their guns and ammo they carry. If they start delaying the game start penalizing them, like have them not act during the IP when they are trying to figure out how many dice the gun they use EVERY session has.

But get yourself organized first, as it's not fair to penalize the PCs but not the NPCs for someone not having their stuff together. Take a short break before combat if you are not prepared and write stuff down. If you are fair most players are not going to care if you don't do detailed stats and damage on NPCs. Like everyone else suggested a full combat description for an NPC could be something like:
"Merc Initiative 8 IP 2 Alpha, AP 10 dice 6p-5, four 12p(f) grenades for alpha, Thermal imaging, 6 armor, 4 body" In this the smartlink is already included, as there isn't any likely event he wouldn't use it. You could also drop the armor and body rolls and just assume average rolls. Or just assume the first hit hurts him, the second makes him run, the third drops him, etc.
If they need to roll against a stat assume a reasonable score and roll away.

Using a tracking sheet helps too. In a larger fight an optional rule Frank Trollman suggested was just dropping the initiative roll and just using the stat. Then people don't change the order of action per turn or per fight, which means you don't have to rewrite the sheet.

Yes, only keep track of stats that will be relevant to the task at hand, if you need something you didn't prepare ahead of time you can always make it up on the spot by using basic logic.

For example, lets say you have a corp security guard, and you only recorded their perception and combat dice pools, but a situation comes up where you would need their intimidate skill. You can just assign a skill value based on how skilled the person would be (for a sec guard a 1 or 2 makes sense).

Also like mentioned above, only bother to remember dice pool modifiers that will come up, and instead of looking other ones during play, just wing it. A -1 is a minor penalty, a -2 is a significant penalty, a -4 is a major penalty, and a -6 is a penalty that should make the action impossible under normal circumstances.

Here's a little thing I do. I put the Condition Monitor maximum on a line for each NPC. Then when marking damage, I make hash marks after that number in the shape of triangles. So the first one is like a /, the second is like a _, and the third is like a \, making a triangle which kind of looks like /\. Then every triangle is a -1 dice pool penalty. Pain Tolerance is done with vertical marks. So an encounter might look like:

Henchmen:
10: /\ /\ / (This guy's taken seven damage.)
10: /\ / (This one's taken five damage.)
Boss:
12/2: || /\ /\ [The boss has Pain Tolerance 2 and has taken eight damage total.]

... if that helps at all.

Some GMs often need to know certain stats of the PCs. Feel free to take all that down from your players if you find yourself needing it. I've seen GMs use a standard reference sheet, that they have the players fill in for them.

That way you can tell them they go first, rather than asking them what their Edge score is, to resolve a tie. Or say, "Paul, roll six dice," rather than, "Paul, roll Perception." And maybe you'd like a reminder of what their 'ware is.

Good stuff. What do you guys do for ammo and reloads? For me that just is a big pain to keep track of for reloads and stuff.

I think I've seen someone reload in combat ONCE while playing SR. That was a pistol she was firing twice per IP, 3 IPs per phase at horde of ineffectual gang bangers that had pissed her off. On second though I think she had one round left when she shot the last gang member dead.

There are two critical differences from real life and the SR combat system.

1) Nobody ever misses in SR. You have a 1/3rd chance of a hit with one die, and if you have less than 10 dice (agil 4, skill 4, smartlink) you haven't been paying attention in "introduction to character design 101". So you have a 1.5% chance of missing. Now if people do clever tactics they can pull it down, but if you throw a -6 at them they still have an 81% hit rate. So PCs and bad guys will hit a lot. Yeah, you can roll reaction, but that isn't enough to stop most shots. Particuarly against a decently designed gunman, who will have at least 14 dice.

2) No mortal gets shot with 21 bullets and lives.
Typically 2 to 3 hits will drop most opponents, often just one will. And most opponents will exit stage left when they realize that these guys are shooting them and sticking around will get them killed.

If you can shoot the guy and your bullets are not doing anything something is wrong. So either the target is soaking the damage, which isn't too likely (as it it takes 16 dice of armor and body to soak a minimally successful heavy pistol shot) or is essentially invulnerable to gunfire. Facing Force 8 spirits does suck. If you are facing someone invulnerable to gunfire you probably are not going to get a chance to ineffectually empty your gun at him before he kills you, so I'd suggest a plan B.

Either way, I doubt you are going to be out of ammo before you either run or die. So don't worry about tracking ammo in most cases. If a particular scenario is going to make it important you should try to not have the guy who has a vest with 12 mags on it involved...

At the end of the fight just give a round number of ammo they need to buy, or ask the players to track their own, then just see the number makes sense.

I give the grunts two mags of what ever bullets they need, and for the players it is their job to keep track of:) at least in my games.
but for the grunts, if in a poor setting, then I make small lines, and when I have made enough for one mag, he has emptied it (one line every time he shoots:P) and then follows the standard rules for reloading

They only reload after some suppressive fire.

I seldom roll for drain either.

I've had many more drain disasters than combat reloads. A critical glitch on summoning a force 3 spirit in combat....

interesting article kzt. i think i am going to start slow and start adding more rules as time goes on. right now it is all very overwhelming. seems like the 4th edition rules allow for more freedom than the previous editions.

Another example of something that won't happen in an SR shootout. In this example the bad guy (not wearing armor or on drugs) soaked a 8-12 good center of mass hits (prior to the final volley) and was still up and functioning, and the cop who won the shootout got hit 5 times (one stopped by armor) at the start of the fight. Bad guy took 22 hits total, 17 center of mass. Truthfully these kind of events are hard to model in any game system, as it isn't typical - this isn't unique but it isn't common.

http://www.lawofficer.com/news-and-article...s_incident.html

SR combat is typically too slow (unless everyone involved knows the rules and can efficiently do their part) for most players/GMs to want many shootouts that have people shooting 25 semiauto shots. Player satisfaction is a reasonable reason to not get very bothered about the super-accuracy and super effectiveness of SR shooting. If you want people to worry about ammo you probably have to tweak the rules so they miss a lot more, then work on speeding up combat a whole lot. And I'm not sure how you can really get the miss a lot more effect using SR4 without lots of characters having no chance to hit. It's a lot easier to do with SR3.

I am not a fan of relying on PCs for this info as I've known too many cheats. I review their sheets before and after each session and keep track of their karma too because I've had some real liars in my time.

I also don't count dice rolls unless they've been witnessed either by myself or another player.

With regards to tracking NPCs in combat, this is something I really need to improve.

For everyone in the room, we track initiative on a whiteboard. For NPCs, I prefer to have their full sheets behind the screen and dice pools handy. Adventure books like Emergence make my life hard as I have to then come up with a truckload of NPC stats. Even if its a copy/paste job, it all adds up and is bloody annoying (and another reason why I loved the Ghost Cartels format).

- J.

Yea in previous sessions I noticed my plus's and minus's got out of hand on my sheet. I like the triangle diagrams that some of you posted up. I think I just need to find a way like that to organize myself.