Forget about standard corp sec and rent-a-cops. Time and time again, I have watched a team of runners decimate or utterly destroy Lone Star patrols in a matter of seconds. Go-gangers and Yakuza death squads? Bring 'em in by the dozens. Ok, maybe this is an exaggeration, but it brings up a good point. What do the Profession ratings mean to you and your group(s)? What rating actually provides a challenge, or do they provide one at all?

I've seen the Star get tossed around like dice and blown to kingdom come. Now, I find myself creating a team of prime runner bounty hunters for when the Star finally gets enough evidence to track the team down.
I've got a witch hunter on stand-by for when the team's mage starts raping people with the orgy spell or starts slinging fireballs in warehouse raves.
Think you're invincible in your Ork-underground fortress? What about a Demolition team from the Underground itself?

Should it be necessary to throw such opponents against the players in your game, or does the no-name, no-face NPC opposition work for your game? Could it be that your team is the kind that can only be challenged by prime runners? Share your experiences and opinions, and let's figure out what's actually going on here.

I think that combat violence is a bad area to challenge players. Characters are almost always going to kick ass, because a) they were designed to do so and b) if they don't you've just killed your entire party and now no longer have a game.

I prefer the risk of death to be implied and understood. Like, the mafia Don asked them to get a certain item, but they now have to chose between doing that and giving it to the Oyabun. Perhaps the Oyabun offers a better reward, or you need to give him the item so he releases a contact of yours he's captured. If you give the Oyabun the item, the mafia will be pissed. If you give it to the Don, the Oyabun will be pissed. And both know how to reach the runners. So the challenge is in the choice. What do you sacrifice? After that, you can send a death squad with gear, cyber and spells high-level enough to kill players, and possibly even do that, because the players will feel this is a consequence of their choice rather than the GM pointlessly throwing unrealisticly tough street gangs and cops at them in an attempt to challenge them.

But even so, it's easier to challenge the players with "damned if you do, damned if you don't" decisions that "cost" the players in ways other than physical danger. Physical danger is risky for a GM. If it goes wrong, you can kill off characters which has a risk of negatively affecting the game, or it can be so easy that the characters lose sense of risk and destroys the atmosphere by making it seem like everyone attacking the runners sports deltaware for some reason.

That's my 2

One thing to keep in mind for your generic NPCs (such as Lone Star Cops, Street Gang Members, etc.) is that they are designed to be a problem for Joe Citizen. If Joe Citizen decided to rob a Stuffer Shack with a Pistol and ran into a couple of Lone Star Cops on his way out, I am sure that the two Lone Star Cops would easily handle the situation. Hell, there might not even be a shot fired. I know if I had two cops point pistols at me, basic maths would tell me that I was outnumbered and outgunned. On the other hand, to a team of four shadowrunners, two Lone Star Cops would be an inconvenience. And this is how it should be. Beat cops, and people on this level are not the best of the best - they are average themselves, with a bit of training.

Training can be reflected not just in the dice they have to roll, but the way they handle a situation. Two LS Cops would no that they were outgunned 4 to 2 (to continue my example), and would seek cover, call for back up, and wait for said back up. They would try to contain the situation, within their power, and most of all, try to stay alive. They'd wait for the SWAT (or whoever) to come along, at most trying to Delay Actions and/or Observe In Detail. They can use Delay Action if they are set upon, and Observe In Detail will be handy to report on the shadowrunners and let the detectives and so forth follow up the crime/criminals later.

Standard NPCs can easily get overcome by shadowrunners if the NPCs all act like Clint Eastward, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, or any other action star cop. But if they play it smart, do their job, they should be able to assist in stopping shadowrunners.

NPCs need to be played by their strengths to be a challenge to PCs of any kind. I don't think there is any real need to beef up standard NPCs, and even SWAT and other response teams should be able to deal with shadowrunners, if played right.

Ditto on the part about the firefights being the challenge. The main challenge is how to avoid them, get the job done and get the pay. Of course tho ther bit is against a swat team, runners don't stand a chance. Agaiainst milspec forces-runners shouldn't even be there.

I think the big threat from Lone Star isn't the two cops in a patrol car. It is the 40 other cops those 2 cops are going to call to come help. "Well the 30th Lone Star shoots at you with his second shot. Roll your full dodge minus 59 dice." It doesn't matter how good you are, enough bullets start flying your way and you will go down.

Another thing to keep in mind is this. With billions of people in the world, someone else has thought up the same thing your runners have. So feel free to use what they come up with against them.

The main advantage the cops have is numbers, time and resources. It's perfectly possible that every runner on a team is better then every single cop in lone star. But they are not each able to take down 12 cops shooting at them at the same time. Particularly 12 cops in milspec armor supported by guardian spirits advancing in clouds of mixed thermal smoke and neurostun after an extensive recon by drones and magic.

Cops don't like to lose and they won't play fair. They know what their strengths are and they will use them. They can bring 20 mages along, and have a horde of other mages send them a spirit each to help. If they find where they are hiding they can flood it with NS gas, then can run multiple mil-spec tac-neted teams entering via seperate explosive breaching supported by hordes of guardian and combat spirits. They can run with radar and ultrasound as the primary senses, so can shut down visual and IR.

Hell, if the runners are sufficiently annoying, LS can just kill them with ritual magic. They employ many hundreds of mages. Some of them are really really good.

Essentially if you are letting runners beat off swat teams or high threat teams you are either being way to nice or you've let the power level of the game get beyond where it breaks.

Darn double post

I don't think that Lone Star would have the need to call in the kind of firepower and magic that you are describing here, but your point is valid. If it takes that kind of power to contain or take out a team of runners in an urban environment, then there are some serious problems with the power level of the game.

Sure, the two LS officers that the PC's just killed during a routine traffic stop weren't much of a problem...

Downside is that as soon as the vital signs on those officers went flat the Renraku Stormcloud with an HD panoramic camera that's meandering around the clouds just zoomed in on them. Now they know what the runners car looks like, what its license plate number is, and once one of LS's pet hackers gets the info, they're now tracking it via grid guide.

In the mean time an "officer down, shots fired" alarm goes off in the FRT ready room of the nearest station. An FRT unit (or two) gears up and gets in their citymaster as the runners flee the scene. At the same time the hacker deploys a rotodrone from one of the innumerable locations that LS has them stashed around the plex which begins closer surveillance of the target vehicle.

While all this is going on one of their wage mages goes astral and buzzes the target with watcher spirits. Now they know the number of hostiles, how many (if any) are awakened and have a rough idea of how much cyber they are packing. A Yellowjacket also takes off in pursuit of the car.

By this point in time unless the runners have managed to already make it into a Z-Zone they now have a Yellowjacket, and an FRT (or two) on their tail. The hacker busts into their ride via its connection to the grid guide and forces it off the road. The Yellowjacket lights them up with a spotlight as the FRT backed up by a couple of spirits sent there by the wage mage, moves in and takes them into custody. If they resist (or even don't get their hands up fast enough) then you're looking at a TPK. My rule of thumb for FRT's is to use the Renraku Red Samurai as a base, and make sure the runners are outnumbered at least 2:1. The mage and hackers are both equal in skill when compared to the groups equivalents.

Needless to say my players have found some very creative ways to deal with Lone Star that involves anything but killing them.

That's good enough to be SOP from a Lone Star handbook

On that note, does anyone else here have the SR2 Lone Star sourcebook?

Cops of any description tend to react in some pretty nasty ways to violence directed towards their own. They'll spend a lot more time and resources hunting down anyone who's shot a cop than they will on anyone who's knocked off a civilian, (we can argue the merits of this "us and them" mentality somewhere else, but this tends to be the case)and shadowrunners would therefore most likely try to bribe the underpaid woolly-suits rather than kill them.

On the other hand the threat of law enforcement shouldn't necessarily be superior firepower and cohesion, although once the shit hits the fan they may have that on their side as well, like several people here have already pointed out; it'll be the longer term threat of having an active investigation going after you that should really scare shadowrunners.

"There's been a new case of data theft, inspector, a warehouse in the D-zone. We think it might be those same guys you're investigating for the Renraku break-in last month. You feel like taking a look at that angle?"

Whoops!

Runners need to work regularly, and therefore, any investigation happening will likely start making the connection between the jobs. Siddenly a whole new world of hurt opens for the PCs and the GM can sit back and watch the fun unfold.

Come to think of it, I'm damned glad my GM's not a DS regular...

Also I would add that even in a routine traffic stop, the LS would likely have your typical runner group getting out on the ground hugging the dirt before approaching, and possibly already having backup on the way.
1) If it's more then two people in a car at 2:30am and it's not a limo or luxury car you can bet they'll have guns drawn with the finger on the trigger.
2) If it's a mixed metahuman group, especially if there's a Troll.
3) If the cars a heavily customized older model sedan or SUV with tinted windows, rust, dents, chipped paint and/or bullet holes in the middle of a high middle or wealthy neighborhood.
4) If there in or anywhere within throwing distance of a z-zone.
5) If there is any indication that this could be more then a routine traffic stop.
In a society where large swaths of the population are unemployed and street crime is the norm, a law agency will get jumpy at the smallest provocation. These guys want to live through there shift after all.

That is why my face tends to roll in her own ride if possible. Much easier to explain what you are doing there if a couple guys in armor and carrying assault rifles aren't in the back seat bleeding from some bullet holes.

Thanks to all. This has definitely given me some ideas on how Lone Star can put some fear into the hearts of my players.

Yeah, it's buried in a box somewhere (moving in about a week and a half) but I do have it.

The key with LS is to make sure that your players know ahead of time that every single Lone Star officer (and to a lesser extent Knight Errant) is simply an individual that you DO NOT fucking kill. If for some reason you do need to kill one then you make damn sure that it's his life or your's, you do it in a dark alley somewhere and you burn everything that is remotely connected to the crime while on your way to the street doc to get a new face.

On the flipside of this however, if the players know that shooting at the cops is a death sentence you need to be willing to offer them other ways out. In my campaigns I accomplish this by making sure that the Star is entirely and thoroughly corrupt. Provided you aren't a cop killer, every single person in the Star (from some random beatcop to the chief investigator of the organized crime division) has a price and will cheerfully let you go on your merry way for a bribe.

Even if the runners get brought in for throwing grenades into a crowd of SINners, money, a good lawyer, and a decent Face will still get them out of it. Evidence gets disappeared, random SINless get arrested and charged with their crimes to placate the masses, and the runners get to walk out of prison. They might even get an official 'apology' for having been incorrectly imprisoned. They might have to go into debt with the Mob to get everyones palms greased but hey, that's just fodder for more runs. All that goes balls up if the runners actually kill a cop though. Cop killing is an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the Star.

Tinted windows come standard on all models. You'd have you be getting a VERY OLD model for it not to be standard.

(However, all of your points are appropriate. Keep in mind also, the Lone Star officer is quite likely to call in backup, at minimum drones, BEFORE even approaching the vehicle if he feels at all nervous. It costs basically nothing to pull a drone over in most areas, but it costs a lot to train a new LS officer.)

Don't forget the LEB-1 drones are likke freaking gnats in the cities now. There're drones everywhere. And if the Star employs riggers (duh), there're eyes all over the city.

For the most part I agree greatly with the general sentiment here - Runners (at least those built with 400+ points) are top-notch operators in their field, and generally are better-equipped than your standard pair of beat cops in a squad car. However, said beat cops are not idiots and *will* phone in backup, make strong perception tests to gather information, and seek cover. They won't charge blindly into a firefight with shadowrunners unless forced into a corner or unless the see runners doing something particularly heinous (like randomly shooting people all around them).

Luckily I haven't had to deal with this yet with my current group because they're generally smart about not attracting too much attention (barring Shinobi Killfist and his copious amounts of explosives and large bang bangs ) or at least not messing with the actual fuzz when they do need to "go loud". I don't think anyone wants to deal with the ramifications of having LS actually know where you are, because that will generally mean they'll hit you with enough FRT squads to outnumber you 4:1 or 5:1 and ensuring they pack the same or better hardware (tech+magical) as the runner team that's about to be decimated

In A and B neighborhoods, sure. ITs expensive to run them, so C neighborhoods would have few. Z zones? 0. Or 1, till it got shot down.

another thing to consider is that all the members of your group probably have different weeknesses. if the hacker or rigger has a low perception he might not see the red samuri or ex military swat officer that yanks him through a car window. keep track of PC's ammo and reload times. full auto is great but changing clips can be a drag. and Lone star snipers are leathal , hopefully the gel rounds don't kill the pc from 100 meters. I like to be creative with it. bring in a water cannon or two. did the PC's prepare for visibility through water? are their grenades washing up at their feet? are their commlinks environmentaly sealed? was the mage throwing fire and lightning?

For me, that would really depend on the stats of the LS cops. Perhaps a roll of Police Procedure and Logic to determine their course of action. No successes, don't know what to do or blindly charge in thinking they are heroes. 1 success, call for backup. 2 successes, call for backup and Observe in Detail. Observe in Detail, depending on the levels of success, confront the runners or take cover.

For me, LS training is no more expensive than necessary to get their stats up from the rent a cop to Lone Star level. Or they simply recruit those people with the necessary skills already.

Depending on the security status of the zone the officers were killed in, the response could range from,"Lock and load, we've got cop killers!" to "Eh, a couple of rookies got killed in the Barrens? Serve 'em right."

Thing is though one thing that I'm sure LS emphasizes during training for beat cops is self preservation. After all a dead officer is a very expensive writeoff once you factor in lost training, death benefits, moral, public perception, and everything else. A wounded officer could be even more expensive once you tack medical bills on top of that. A Star officer knows that they will be outgunned by almost everyone but the lowest street scum on the foodchain and they will react accordingly.

They also need to be very proactive in the "kill a cop you will die, probably painfully" policy. If the street scum get it into their heads that the cops won't come down on them like a hammer from God if they kill one of them then there'll be a lot more dead cops.

Finally I doubt very much that you would ever see two rookies teamed up together nevermind wandering off into the Barrens. It'd be just like a modern police force where for the first year (or more) you are matched with a partner who has years of experience under their gunbelt. Even if the greenhorn is a hothead the experienced officer is a survivor and will keep the rookie in line, not to mention out of the Barrens.

That'd depend on the GM, I suppose. I am sure the one thing that LS emphasises during training is not to make LS look bad to the public. A dead officer is an expensive write off, if you put in a lot of training and if you pay death benefits, which I do not remember any mention of in the books (either training or death benefits). Moral would be just as bad if an officer was caught on the trid taking cover when the runners were not shooting at him. A wounded officer is a media opportunity.

The street scum should know better to come into LS territory (B or better rated areas) and pop an officer, just as the Star knows better to venture into Z zones with anything less than milspec support. C and D areas could be areas where neither the Star hold sway nor do the gangs truly rule. And those areas are where a lot of LS officers would get dead. Close enough for the street scum to blow a cop away and flee into the Z zones, but with SINners that pay for LS protection.

Not all Barrens are rated Z. Even rookies know that the Star do not go there. But certain areas in the Barrens are not Z zones and that is where you may have LS patrols. Even if the partner is experienced, he may not have the necessary force of personality to keep his partner in line either.

Killing an LS officer is not something the runners can do anywhere without repercussions. But there should be often times and places where violence against the Star can be a much more viable option. I suppose that's why some of the gang related NPCs have Police Procedures as a skill, they would know how far they can push the Star.