Its all about the medkit and the six free dice of victory. First Aid 4 (+2 specialization), Logic 4 plus rating 6 medkit and three assistants gives 19 dice. Take away the usual 4 (Indoor, magician/cyberware. perhaps street) and you have 15 dice, for an average of 5 successes. That's three boxes of damage zapped. With my players those three boxes represent one tac nuke spell per magician.

I blame myself. A new player was joining and asked what the party didn't have and I said a field medic. He made the most badhooped medic I've ever seen. So much so I even copied him for myself. The six edge is handy too. And yes, I have used it on healing rolls....

I think he's got it right. This is also how I run things and how I expect things to go in a medium-security corp-like context. Of course, it's also fun to add all sorts of twists once in a while.

Most runners are combat monsters and even if all team members aren't, a team of Shadowrunners is a high threat. They should be able to easily defeat most enemies. Actually, most people will avoid confrontation with them and will surrender/fake death. Their only action would be, if possible, to try to raise an alarm.

Once the opposition starts to get serious, it's another matter. Just remember to use tactics, cover (very important: the first action of any sane man in combat would be to rush for cover, except if he can end the combat quickly) and surprise. Oh and drones. There's no need to send men to get killed when you can send drones that are harder to destroy, better equipped, better at shooting things, better at resisting spells and cost less... Just make sure to script them and turn wireless off if they've got a hacker.

From Unwired p. 16 "VR games are even more popular, with many gaming corps producing almost-BTL level experiences even through cold-sim connections."

The line between entertainment and the real world is getting pretty blurry. Sure that Desert Wars simsense is entertainment but the user is still experiencing what it is like to be under fire.

Even if you ignore entertainment entirely your average joe on the street will have survived at least one major crisis. Imagine growing up in a working class neighborhood in Everett during the 2nd crash. There were riots and chaos around the world, thousands and thousands of people lost their SIN's, bank accounts were wiped out, and the C class neighborhoods in Everett more closely resemble Soviet apartment blocks to begin with than a modern suburb. Like I said, a competent stuffer shack clerk would have figured out how to handle himself in a crisis during that, imagine being a Lone Star officer or security guard in a facility that go hit by a mob.

Taking it a bit further, depending on how powerful you assume the go-gangs are, running gunbattles on the freeways are almost routine meaning that even some deskjocky wageslave probably survived being caught in the middle of a gangfight between the 504 Hellhounds and the Blood Mountain Boys during his morning commute at some point. Hell the Halloweeners are a big gang downtown, and they'll kill people just to watch them die. People in the 6th world do experience violence, perhaps not regularly but certainly more often than we do. This would end up weeding out the really dumb ones just through attrition.

How do you know it's a spell slinger? Because he glared at you and you blew up?

SR Magic doesn't involve a lot of D&D arm waving and spell components... all it requires is that you are in his field of vision (or the point in space where he wants to throw an indirect physical area of effect spell is in his vision).

Not to get into a big long argument about tell tail signs that someone is a mage, but there big ones are:
1. Very little equipment visible (why would they need it, they have magic)
2. Unusual items on their possession (especially if they are using a foci to cast a spell)
3. Some spells like powerbolt/ball or elemental spells will manifest for mundanes to see

And so forth. There are certain types of people that are easy to pick out at a first glance. They cybered guy is the St Sam, the guy with the comlink waving his hands is the hacker, the guy with the voodoo doll is most likely the mage. Geek him first!

1. Combat Camo. Our current Hermetic carries a PJSS and dresses in dark urban camo. He doesnt even have firearms.
2. I totally wish. I would love to have more dangly bits on mages, the color would rock but alas its totally optional.
3. At this point, its too late. You have been nuked.

Honestly, I totally wish that SR magic involved more of the cool handwaving , rods staves and whatnot. Just for color.

BlueMax
which reminds me of some research I need to do

Noticing spellcasting is one area where fluff and crunch don't agree. The threshold to identify spellcasting is 6-Force (don't have my books handy so somebody please let me know if I'm mis-quoting). I'd bet that most decent sec guards have at least Int-2, Perception-1, so on average they'll get the one success needed to tell when your mage is slinging spells of force 5 or higher. Depending on interpretation, you might say that force 6 spells (detection threshold = 0) are automatically identified.

It's a perception test... they get 3 dice to notice it when they're standing on top of a hill in broad daylight with no distractions.

Most of the time there's some level of limited visibility (-2) distraction (-2) loud noises (-2) and they get to throw -3 dice.

they can't make a threshold of 0 when they throw -3 dice. And if the mage is looking for carrier effects (lightning ball for instance)... they can toss at force 4 and make it impossible for the guards to notice.

Yep, by the rules mages throwing high level mojo are easy to spot if they are in your LOS.

Give one of the grunts Astral Sight.

...and you took said copy into my game where you went from 9 boxes of damage to 0 in one fell swoop of Magic Heal followed by your own First Aid Heal. It was yucky but I lol'ed inside

On the topic of how easy enemies are, I agree with the general feeling which is that people will fight in a way that encourages self-preservation and in a way that reflects their professional rating. Your average twinkie-eating security mooks aren't likely to employ bounding overwatch and suppressive fire (hell they are probably armed with light pistols anyway). However, even a lesser-trained threat-response team with lower skill levels than the Red Samurai would understand and utilize basic tactics to try to lock down the PCs until they can get into a more advantageous position.

For the average crap-level security guards, yeah I expect them to go down fast and I don't really have a problem with this. The PCs are well-trained badasses in a sea of mediocrity so I don't have a problem with them one-shotting lesser opposition.

I also strive not to power creep my campaigns. A low-level security facility is going to be guarded by crap security, that's it. My house rules (always 3 phases in combat, everyone gets 3 IP, I did away with all cyber/adept powers/magic/bio that give IP) cause enough difficulties for my PCs that I don't really need to power creep. In our last meeting, the PCs fought a semi-well-trained and well-equipped group of corporate enforcers + 1 street sam in a combat that was very very fun without needing to power them up very much. When everyone has 3 IP, gunfire becomes very very lethal and ugly and tactics become extremely important to survival. Well, that and Edge

Gease. Talisman (the staff), Gesture (the hand waving), Linguistic (the vocals).

Drop those on NPCs too. Each one is a 10 BP flaw (or good for making initiation cheaper).

You use first aid with a rating 6 kit to heal the 2-3 points of physical damage. Poof!

For the target yes but what about his buddies (as a GM you can always throw in more NPCs).

Enter 'Troll Tank' with Armor cast on him and a big flashing ARO sign saying "I'm the Mage!", with the actual little dwarf mage walking along behind him using him as cover.

I got a glimps of the election and Arthur Virgil with his running mate.

I see a really good rendition of "Who Rule Bartertown?" in the making.

MASTABLASTA!

Have a ganger on kamikaze and wearing an explosive vest connected to a biomonitor. TPK.

Mr Johnson has a platinum Doc Wagon card.

My GM loves to put biomonitors in corporate personnel. The annoying kind that monitor vitals. So it sends an immediate alert if the person goes dead and even (when he's feeling particularly evil) an alert if they fall asleep "on the job." Dang, I hate it when those corporate job-performance metrix are in place.

Not that there aren't ways around it, of course. But even low level corporate security guards can have biomonitors and cyber eyes. So (in one memorable situation), we've got dead guards blaring alarms to some place ("Uh, guys, we've got a problem") and the decision, do we stick around to finish the job, not to mention popping out the dead guys' cybereyes ("What if they recorded footage of us?" "What? You've got to be kidding. I'm not being paid enough to touch eyeballs."), or do we run before the guys with the big guns show up (even worse, they send a mage to check something out, and the mage brings along a pack of spirits. Gah, that makes us humble).

While my team tends to slice through most opposition our GM throws at us, we seriously pause when we know they have biomonitors.

Actually, going unarmed can be a great disguise. People won't know if they are:

-A non-combatant face or hacker, who won't be taken as a threat

OR

-An adept who will eat your face in about three seconds.

Thing is, do you risk it? The non-combatant face/hacker IS, indeed, much less of a threat than the sam with a gun pointed at you or the on-the-spot rigger with three armed drones whizzing around his head. But if you guess wrong, the unarmed guy might well be sneaking around you to knock your head off.

I have a partially-blind adept(legally blind; he sees nothing but black/white/gray, as if he looks through frosted glass-so basically moving...shapes/shadows) who sometimes plays this up as part of a disguise; stumbling around, etc(not movie guy faking a handicap melodramatic, but just enough so it looks real). No weapons visible. Hey, he's not even LYING about playing the blind guy. He just lies about being able to kick someone's head in with one blow and the fact he has every blind-fighting technique there is, adept powers sharpening his smell and hearing, and extra combat speed. What others might see though is just some...long-haired guy that's half staggering around.

Which brings me to actually being a big fan of the decoy. I recall one time, in another game we were playing(mecha), our unit was on the field, and were under attack by a few light units. Well, in the distance we see this one mecha pop up...a BIIIG one. One of the biggest, and deadliest. As in, we don't take it out now-we go boom. So we UNLOAD on it. Pewpewpew. We manage to blow it up...and of course...it was empty. No ammo in it(guns on it though.) No pilot. But we just saw this mecha of pwnage and just...nuked.

Meanwhile, the ''little guys'' were swarming us and we had one hell of a palms-sweating battle. Had we taken some...smart precautions, that battle could have gone MUCH easier. You could do this in SR; drones, sentry guns, things, people, etc, that simply LOOK a lot more dangerous than they actually are, to get them to turn their attention away from matters at hand; meanwhile, the team of redshirts are actually starting to get their act together and reposition, etc.

Yes, he probably survived being caught in the middle of a gangfight. But how did he do it? By being smart and actively seeking cover? By dropping to the ground and curling up in a fetal position (and incidentally making himself a smaller target)? Sitting tight (and pissing his pants) inside his vehicle (when he was in the vehicle in the first place)?

I think you missed my point about the entertainment. People seek entertainment, people know that when they subscribe to a Desert War feed, they are going to get violence. People should know on an intellectual level(at least) that when they go out, there's a chance of being victim of random violence, but they do not know or expect it will happen to them today.


I am glad someone is enjoying using this tactic.


Powerball. Problem solved.

Mix up the weapons and damage types for sure. electricity is awesome, but when their prepared for that, some punks cobble together a flame thrower and toss molitov cocktails. I had some gangers with a mix of combat axes and Wildhunter rifles knock out our street sam (don't get drawn into the open to show off your hand to hand prowess).

Now you know why my armor jacket has Fire Retardant 3, Non-conductivity 3, Insulation 3, and Chemical Protection 3.
I won't allow my GM to catch me off guard with elemental damage ever again.
(Also one reason we played one campaign with just the BBB: I wanted non-conductivity mods to my drones, which didn't show up until arsenal: GM threw a lightning ball on ALL FOUR OF THEM, spent the entire campaign trying to keep 2 of them in good repair).

I agree. Also, the other thing to remember is that in the middle of a gang fight doesn't make him a target. It's not like the gangers of either side of the fighting wanted to kill him, so his survival was probably based on being lucky enough to not have caught a stray bullet. If the gangers wanted to kill him, they probably would have.

Living in a violent society doesn't necessarily make the people living in it more skilled at making violence. Gangers tend to target there own (not fellow members, but other gangers) and the average wage slave tends to be overlooked. Occasionally they might get mugged, have a friend who was killed in a carjacking or maybe had there house broken into. VR games likely tweak the players abilities in ways to make using those skills in 'real life' not applicable. Although your typical corp wageslave lives in the same city as the low rent and SINless, it might as well be an entirely different world. If you've live in a major city in real life and take a good look around the contrast between the experiences of the typical cubicle jockey, short order cook, dopeman and street urchin will vary wildly despite sharing the same environment.

A few other things:

- Don't tell the player what happened to the guy he shot. If he asks, ask him if he wants to spend his next action to "observe in detail" or if he wants to shoot again and who to shoot.
- More generally, just describe the obvious to the players, everything else will need the PC to "observe in detail" the situation. And remember than a character unaware of an attack can't dodge. For example, if a character is busy shooting someone, chances are he won't notice the other guy flanking him and will get shot without being able to dodge.
- Don't let the players agree on a tactic, unless they spend actions to speak. If they argue that their character are much more used to this than them and that their character should use right away the right tactic, just ask them to roll leadership or tactics tests to see if that's true or not.
- Also don't let the player spend too long deciding on what he'll do. You can also ask for a tactics test to check if the player argues that his character is able to instantly choose the right thing to do.

Agreed. That is why gesture and speak are listed as free actions, but this still doesn't have much of a limiting factor. Though, although some gestures or call signs are pretty universal (pointing, yelling "DUCK!, etc.) it would be a good idea for a team of runners to develop a 'system' for more complex actions. As far as using a tactics related knowledge skill I wouldn't worry too much unless it's something more then basic simple tactics. Something like bounding and coordinated coverage and room clearing techniques I would want a player to make a role or having prep time to establish a protocol ahead of time.

Oh yeah, but while you do all that, try to decide whether you want to simply challenge your group and have them be on their toes, or escalate the game into all-out player-vs-GM warfare.

There are different views on whether that is a good or a bad thing...

That's why I wrote that I wouldn't worry about it too much unless it involved more complex tactics and higher levels of coordination. There's no real way to determine the full breath of knowledge a PC would have with skill points. More often then not. If the players can think of it (assuming they aren't shadowrunners or spec ops in real life) most likely the runners would be able to think of it and might have already done so in the past.

1) Why should a PC need to Observe in Detail? If he is sufficiently observant (a high Perception dice pool), it should be no difficulty for him to note whatever happens to the guy he shot.
2) Again, if a PC has a large enough dice pool to overcome "being distracted" and still be able to reach the Thresholds without using Observe in Detail, then the character should be able to notice someone flanking him.
3 & 4) True with a caveat - a tactics-type test or any related skill(like security procedures, etc) test.

1) I think this means to observe his condition. If knocked down, is the NPC knocked out, dead, crippled or concious. This is something that likely would not be immediately obvious in the middle of combat I don't think.
2)High stress and adrenaline causes tunnel vision. It takes training and actual effort to observe your surroundings in such situations. It's a survival response to keep you from being distracted in flight or fight situations.

In a firefight, even if you have training, you will get tunnel vision. The 'training' your talking about is making sure to look around, but your still tunneled and will focus on movement. Someone who falls down and doesn't move will not draw your attention unless you focus on them, especially if there are moving targets in your line of sight which will pull your eyes to them.

The key is to get into cover so you don't have clear LOS to the targets you were engaging and scan the area all around you to make sure other targets are not creeping up, shift behind the cover so you won't pop up where you ducked in, pop up and re-engage the targets.

Great comic.

But this is how I am. I don't need to prove that i can flex and kill the party. If I wanted to, I could say ''there's a group of 20 Tir Paladins-yes THOSE Tir Paladins that guard the princes-in the room. Who says it's not viable? It's my game. Anyway, they're facing you down. Roll initiative, though you'll lose anyway.'' But that's not how a game is fun. I mean, combat is deadly as it is-I don't mind using little things to make the PCs sweat a bit(some tactics, things like retreating, regrouping, calling for backup-natural things), but I don't want to start to nitpick. Besides, if the PCs have to Observe in Detail, and all of that-the NPCs do, too. Which means the grounds will be even once again anyway. Yes, there are some opponents that are redshirts, and if they get hit, they probably will go down. If the PCs end up biting off too much, I admit, it's kind of on them-but I make sure to give them a bit of warning(in game. As in, if they examine, etc.)

But if the PCs are careful, do their jobs, investigate, etc, I don't see it necessary to turn every Joe Security guard into a 3-IP Street Sam. There will be opponents under them greatly, under them slightly, equal to them, a little better than them, a LOT better than them, and opponents that if they pick on-yeah, they probably WILL die, even if I tried not to let them.

In other words, I like to make things challenging, yes, but not in a way that's...obvious? If that makes sense. (IE, not in the way of ''damnit! they shot my guards again! Ok, then take THIS and put it in your pipes and smoke it! I has bigger guys than you!!!111'')

I kinda agree and disagree with you. In a firefight there are natural reactions that kick in, they can either overwhelm the person or heighten them (depends on personality and training). Most security guards would be taught to identify intruders and apprehend them if needed, otherwise backoff and call in the big boys (companies hate paying out life insurance policies). If security guards are taught how to use weapons (even at a minimal level) they would be taught to fire as a reaction and to always look for a way out. That means they will naturally try to find cover, shoot at targets of opertunity, and if things get hairy to pull back and regroup.

If you really want to play security guards realistacly then you should have them do stuff like if they get shot they pull out (no matter what type of wound they get). They would shoot blindly around corners to cover their retreats, and they would be sending contact reports to a control centre (so that doors could be locked down, police called in, and wounded can be evacuated).

No one wants to die and very few people will lie down and play dead if they think someone is likely to go around shooting boadies "just in case". The flight side of instinct will kick in and they are more then likely going to run from the situation (trying to find cover along the way so they don't get shot again).

I was talking about reality, not a game. I have both training and personal experience in what I was talking about.

If the game is confusing enough, can we stick to it?

So do I.

Yes, that is what "being distracted" is supposed to simulate, the character being distracted by gunfire and other factors. But what if the character has sufficiently good situational awareness to overcome that? If he is good enough to perceive in the heat of combat, the things a person normally would not be able to?



While it is tempting to have an experiential pissing contest, it serves no real purpose here.

That would be what a perception role is for. To me it would seem like Intuition+Perception(1) as a simple action sounds fair. This would be used to observe anything not immediately obvious. The condition of a fallen enemy or NPC (It may be player knowledge, but I wouldn't get too anal about other PCs unless not present), maneuvers of enemies not engaged with, enemies approaching from out of LoS (not attempting to use stealth) and maybe something like IDing who's slinging spells/throwing grenades etc. The better the PCs spatial awareness, the better there roll will be. Also, if they PCs don't actively take stock I would likely invoke a roll at a 2 threshold or so as a free action to notice something not immediately obvious

The roll should be easy, but the use of a simple action representing that moment were the PC/NPC takes stock in the situation is the thing. It's realistic at least, though if it doesn't fit into your playing style, or if you feel it's just not needed no biggie. I like to make combat a bit gritty and a good number of my players like it that way, especially the ones with combat experience tend to appreciate little details like that.

That's the point. Unless specifically Observing in Detail, Perception checks do not take an action. And that is the thing, for some people, noticing things like this is as natural as breathing. They do not need to consciously look for stuff like this. For most people, I'd agree that since taking an action to Observe in Detail removes the distracted modifier and adds its own dice pool bonus, it would help them notice things not immediately obvious. But for some people, they are so situationally aware it doesn't matter to them.

I have used Perception checks in combat for my games before. Smokey conditions, loud noises all help to conceal footfalls and trips wires. Which is why my PCs have Mindnet up and a Perception/Astral Perception Adept with a large dice pool keying them in on details.

Yes, I have a really good (it's pretty much effortless) spatial awareness. It's like living with a wide focus lens, but when it comes down to life and death and that adrenaline kicks in that focus narrows. Yeah, maybe that's not as much as average, but it does narrow and if it's not something I'm immediately engaged in or an immediate threat it takes an effort for some things to register.

Let's say I'm in a fight with two people and one has a knife, but there's ten or twelve other people around. I know the other twelve are there, but it's out of my conscious perception. One of them might pick up a heavy stick, but I might not register as 'important' even if I see it. If in the middle of my desperate melee I see the person with the heavy stick makes a motion towards me, then it will likely register. If one of the guys takes a fall, even if I see him, for a moment he's out of sight out of mind because my attention has went to the next immediate threat.

No matter how good your situational awareness is, it reduces severely in desperate life or death situations. Yes it might be better then the next guys, but it is still reduced. Training and experience will teach you to 'look around' and take stock of things, and at some point doing so will come second nature but even if it's effortless and almost instinctual reflex you still do it. It's not a SR4 rule, but I'd make it easier for a player prompted perception check then one I invoke do to a situational change.

Tacnets from unwired can be helpful to corp sec +4 to hit and dodge can be a real boost. Make sure they are run on a central secure node(where the group cant get to it and steal it) with all the corp sec comlinks slaved to that. So that the moment corp sec see the group the all of the security are alerted.