from what i've read of SR3 materials, there's an implied power scale for the Enemy and Hunted flaws, but i'd like to get a finer sense of what people consider appropriate power level vs point costs?

especially as regards the Hunted flaw... i'd like to bug my GM (Cykotek) about modding the flaw to have a frequency of occurance variable (similar to the GURPS Enemy disad.) or something to reflect the intensity of pursuit. ex: i think a AA-Mega should be a Lv 6, but what if they're keeping the pursuit as supar seekret as possible? where would people step it down to? (like in the case where if anyone else noticed the pursuit, they'd jump in on it too?)

ideally, i'm gonna combine it with Dark Secret: Novahot Loot of Doom (because that's the best representation available. it's not really dark, but boy is it secret.)

i don't understand the idea behind taking an entire megacorp as an enemy. that's silly--that's beyond silly. take a gander at the statistics for enemies in SRComp--a mega, at the very least, would have several thousand points in its Resources attribute, giving your enemy flaw a value of 334 if the Knowledge and Motivation scores were only 1 each. (at least, i think--do you multiply the enemy rating by 3 or 2, to get the enemy's attributes?)

instead, you should probably pick a specific person or organization within a megacorp as your enemy--division manager of R&D for seattle, maybe, or a corporate-sponsored initiatory group. realistically, there is no way in hell a character should be able to do something that pisses off an entire megacorp, unless they perform a feat similar in scope to the Nanosecond Buyout--in which case, the character probably has no business in your usual street-level game.

There is a clinical term for runners who piss off entire megacorps.
We in the trade call them "corpses".
Someone around here has a sig to that effect. Listen to them.
Instead, I will give a brief rundown of my view of the Hunted flaw and the severities of the levels.

Hunted 2: Enemies decently powerful, not dangerous all the time but certainly not people you'd want on your tail. Show up every few sessions.

Hunted 4: Dangerous enemies, sufficient that effort must be taken to avoid encountering them regularly. Even then, they can't always be avoided.

Hunted 6: Tell your GM to scrap most of whatever he or she was working on for a plot, because having your character run away is now the central theme to the game.

In games where I have a decently coherent plotline, I forbid Hunted 6. If I were running a published adventure for a demo (FanPro Commando-style, though I'm not one at the moment) I'd forbid Hunted 4 and 6, except for the fact that the Commando rules prohibit doing that, which is kinda silly but I understand why they declared that.
Anyway. Less rambling, more sleep.

~J

Kagetenshi, thanks for the rundown. (btw: pissing off 'an entire mega' is simply a matter of pissing off a decision-maker. which hearkens to mfb's suggestion to use a specific Exec.)

mfb: taking a Hunted(Megacorp) basically demands that it's the Spooks division that's after you. because the job would need to be done off-territory, and thus illicitly. otherwise it'd just be a Publicly Wanted flaw. (which, afaik, doesn't exist, but really really should.) i shouldn't have even stated Enemy as a possibility, except i thought there was a direct-comparitive scale between the two.

and frankly, the corps *should* be going after the runners. but it would change the nature of the game.

There's a difference between having a decision-maker putting shadow assets on your tail (making said decision-maker your enemy) and having it be company policy to hunt you down, with them getting public support, hiring other non-shadow assets, etc. ("Ares number seven most wanted... and dropping!")

~J

exactly. i don't think people quite understand what it means to have an entire megacorp want you dead. megacorps are too big for one person to hurt the entire entity that badly; in the normal course of gaming, things like enemy (yamatetsu) should never come up. now, if you want to base a campaign around something like that? sure. but it's not going to be just another flaw, like colorblind or low pain tolerance--it's going to be the central point of conflict around which your entire campaign revolves.

Well, here is the thing.Shadowruners work for everyone,and the gian any corp gains from shadowruners is bigger than the loses they take.Ares gains more from having runners in the world than it loses from having them in the world.Keeping in mind that the big boys only care about the yen,then there is no reason for Ares to spend more money than it has to,to damage assists that could be used to gian money.

This doesn't mean that Ares, let shadowruns in it's doors, but they know that they do not have the clout to stop crime.They do have the money to make shadowrunning profitable for them,and to mitigate the damage the other corps runners do to them.Note, that even if the BIG TEN own 70% of all target for shadowruning,there is still 30% indie targets.SO even if the big ten breaks even vrs other big ten,they win vrs indies.Lastly not all shadowruns cause damage to the"target".Take the PCC.Think of cover up.THE CIA,wants to extract files from CATCo,their strike time is compramised,and runners,torch the building.The CIA call off their strike,as they can't afford to be wrong in a mater like this.

If you piss off Damien Knight personally, your future prospects are likely to change radically.

Really, that's about what you'd have to do to get an entire Mega mad at you.

-Siege

Or blow up large chunks of their headquarters, or steal massive amounts of research on a very tightly secured but legitimate project, but yes, something along those lines.

~J

i still don't see any of those options turning the entire mega against you, with the possible exception of taking direct action against damien knight. even then, it'd make more sense to take enemy (damien knight). to piss off an entire megacorp, you'd have to threaten that megacorp's total existence. to do that, you'd have to hold some kind of gun on all of their main assets. megacorps aren't stupid--they're very largely decentralized, so that no one event can cripple the entire mega.

As soon as you hit the megacorp's Most Wanted list, I think it's fair to say that the entire thing is gunning for you. I mean, sure, the Accounting division isn't spending all of their time figuring out how to destroy you, but security will for the most part be trained to know you on sight.

~J

sure. but a starting-level character shouldn't have the skills--and should never have had the opportunity--to pull off something that puts them on that list.

It's not as hard as all that -- roll a massive car bomb into headquarters.

Fill the entire vent system with toxins or poison gas.

Ram a chopper into a corporate window and detonate the massive explosive inside.

There are plenty of ways to find yourself on someone's hit list.

For the amount of munitions that find their way through runners' hands, suicide terrorists could make a substantial impression.

-Siege

even if a starting-level char managed to accomplish any of those--they wouldn't, at a corp HQ i designed--they wouldn't survive a week longer. any half-competent security specialist could trace an event like that back to its perpetrators without breaking a sweat. if you want to play a char who's done a job like that, a better flaw might be Borrowed Time.

Hence "suicidal".

I never said it was a particularly wise career choice, just that it was possible.

-Siege

i'm doubting the possibility, as well. countering suicidal measures like that isn't very difficult, in 206x, especially if you've got fat sacks full of cash money to throw at the problem.

Actually, their life expectency is then much longer. If a corp can take you and parade you publicly before letting you die of an accident in prison, they will. The whole quietly-vanishing thing is for when the public wouldn't support impaling you and letting you slowly slide down the spike.

~J

i'm really trying to think in terms of general playability, here--things that would work in your average game of SR.

i can defend against all the contingencies a starting-level char could manage. i mean, seriously, anyplace where a single car bomb could severely damage a megacorp's infrastructure is going to be very, very secure, no matter how unobtrusive that security needs to be. those places are also going to be very, very rare.

that's still better handled with an enemy (manager x) flaw. something that doesn't threaten the entire megacorp isn't going to be worth the time and effort of that megacorp informing itself and its subsidiaries about the nefarious doings of Random Runner Y.

another way for a GM to handle a runner with the enemy (megacorp x) flaw is to simply create a specific person for that flaw. say i create a runner with enemy (mitsuhama) 4. the GM knows that the idea of an entire megacorp lusting for my chitlins is silly; so he writes up Yokono Fukibuttmunch, Director of Human Resources at Mitsuhama Seattle. the GM knows that it's Fukibuttmunch that's after my runner; i don't know that, and neither does my character. given the resources that Fukibuttmunch has to call on, my character (and me!) might honestly believe that the entire mega hates me; eventually, i'll find out the truth.

I like that idea of an enemy-unknown. Coordinating it through a single NPC should make things a lot easier and more logical, too. Rather than trying to simulate a huge corp command heirarchy in my head, I can just make decisions based on the resources, information, and character of that one guy.

it's also easier on the character/player.

"okay, so you've all gotten a call to show up and meet this johnson, who wants to hire you. except you, mister pissed-off-richard-villiers. you were kidnapped, shot, and dumped in the bay a week ago. go make a new char, while we play."