Hi guys

I have left my team in a bit of a cliffhanger, the PC:s made successful infiltration of a storage warehouse and managed to get hold of a whole lot of tempo(this stuff seem to float around) for their Johnson, Laughing Wolf Esquire. The session ended with the team dropping an aztlan black op team interested in the same contraband as the runners, just outside the storage facility.

The team will now proceed to freight the cargo over LA:s toxic archipelago where they once on shore will meet a high response merc team sent to retaliate for the dropped aztlan black ops team and collect the contraband. This team will include a converted ares dragon with two riggers in a rigger cocoon one rigging surveillance drones, I am considering airborne drones mounted with flashbacks which will give some nice negative modifiers for the runner team.

Is it doable to mount a flashpak on a drone and fly it away and then activate the flashpak remotely ?

As for the the team they consist of:

troll tank with grenades and an ares silvergun,

streetsam ork which is kinda crazy with an ares alpha,

knife fighter phys ad,

magic 7 black magican no spirit summoning basically juicing it with manabolts, powerbolts and stunbolts currently on 4 phys damage and no edge ,

and a pretty skilled hacker.

As for the chopper the operations will of course be hardwired it would be sad if the hacker remote hacked the chopper and sent it crashing and burning considering its modded and worth around 2 mil nuyen packed wih an autocannon and missle launcher, as for the mage he wont be able to hit the riggers with mana spells no LOS, but he will likely powerbolt the chopper.

How much would he cast the bolt for considering he has 4 phys damage here and like 11 boxes in total and no edge. The chopper has body 22. What do you guys think can the team through shooting power and magic handle the chopper? Of course there will be some ground troops as well for the troll and phys ad to play with probably with some ares alphas and some funny grenades flash bangs I think.

Plotwise defeat or victory doesn't matter it will spin the plot in different ways depending on the outcome, due to the fact that I see defeat as capture or retreat more than TPK, same goes for the chopper if it takes a few hit the riggers may decide

Moreover the players are a bad ass team they have dropped intelligence officers from the Caribbean league and so far spurned the offer of an offer of protection from the CIA, plus pissing of Aztlan close to their home turf ( guess they consider LA their turf), accordingly the heat is on so to speak.

Anyway I think it will be loaded with awesomeness.

Am I to evil a GM? I really wanna use my chopper.

Over and out

Three members of the team will be able to do little against the copper. One is badly hurting and your redcuing their limit chance of doing some thing further and finally the hacker ,who might actually be able to do something, you plain out stopping from intereferring.

So if you want them to do nothing you have in all likeliness succeeded. Do they even have a vehical to give pursuit or are you hoping they will stop the hand off before it boards the near impossble to stop copper?

They may feel a little plot hammered here unless you are sensative to the sensation, (you can not do nothin' ha) that seems to have gone in to the planning.

I am not picking a fight here, just trying to point out that your players may lose and you may want this to happen but they should not feel that they never had a chance. The illusion of luck and player descision must be maintained for awesome to occur.

Yeah mainly I just wanted to use a helicopter the team has vehicles getting out of there and of course the merc team I described in OP are operating on a tight timescale as well, they will be in the outskrits of LA of throwing of heavy ordnance will mean they will need to leave as well. I might have to tune it down a bit. Thanks for the assesment.

We will see tomorrow the planning goes on.

I don't see what that Troll and Knife PhysAd will be able to do in this fight. The Hacker will have his hands tied because he can't get to the chopper (but maybe the drones).

Powerbolting a vehicle with that high a Body depends on how you, as the GM, interpret Powerbolt's description. The spell says it "affects both living and non-living targets and are resisted by the target's Body" which could imply that the Dragon would get Body 22 to resist it without needing a cap on hits for OR.

If however you interpret it as "living targets resist with Body and apply the Direct combat spell rules" he just needs to beat OR5+. Then it resists with Body 22.

In either case, it was probably a waste of time casting it.

It'd be a lot more fun if the dragon was hackable, and its ownership swung between the two forces.

Vehicles DO NOT RESIST direct damage spells with anything... they have a body rating, which divided by 2 and added to 8 is their damage track... if the spell beats OR5+, any net hits above the threshold are added to the base aForce and are applied to the damage track... Armor and Body rolls are only used for the Indirect combat spells...

So... If the Mage is Magic 7 and is capable of soaking 8 Physical (in part or full) then he throws that Powerbolt at Force 14 and prays for the best... maybe by using edge in both the casting and the Drain tests he might even actully succeed... chances are good though that he will probably hurt himself fairly badly... who knows...

It is never a wast of time to cast Highly Powerful spells if you get a resolution in your favor... I saw a character at our table cast a Force 12 Powerbolt at a Nightsky, and accumulate JUST enough damage to fill the vehicle's damage track (16 Boxes)... he took 4 boxes of Physical Drain doing so, but the mission was a success because he managed to stop the vehicle from getting away (Our Gunbunny and Hackres were busy with other tasks, keeping the team alive at the time)... it was a hell of a moment...

Keep the Faith

Holy cow. Seriously? Is that in the vehicle section or the spell section? I've got some SR4 reading to do!

The Spell Section... This is one of the reasons that many people think that Direct Damage Spells are so powerful...

See page 204, SR4A, 1st Fulll paragraph, left Side top...

Objects DO NOT GET a RESISTANCE TEST...

Keep the Faith

Thanks, Mr Jalynsfein!

It is indeed My Pleasure...

Keep the Faith

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

It seems he might have a chance of popping the dragon with a powerbolt which is good to know.

Another guy suggested that the chopper should be hackable. It just seem so stupid in game for a merc outfit to allow their 2 mil nuyen chopper to be hacked by wireless access. Maybe there are reasons for having wireless access to the the chopper, but when in flight mode I wouldn't want it to be hacked if I were the pilot. I do however like the idea of the sides switching control over the chopper.

The more melee oriented characters will have some ground soldiers to deal with. Having let of a small ground team for securing the tempo the team are transporting.

Great to be able to get this kind of feedback for a first campaign rookie GM.

The helicopter has to have a wireless portal or else the flight crew can't communicate with anyone outside it. Even if the helicopter has no wireless antennas, the flight crew has to have them somewhere to control their drones and coordinate with their own team on the ground, which gives them a point of vulnerability. The hacker will still have the option of finding the rigger's node, brute forcing his way in, sending a few agents to kill the rigger in cybercombat, then using the rigger's hardwired connection to the helicopter to attack the pilot in cybercombat, kill him, eject him from the helicopter's node, then take it over and fly it where ever the PCs want to go.

Well anyway I decided to go through with the scenario in OP, albeit a bit modified. The team managed to get the goods transported for to their GM step van proceeding to move out to their drop off point, with the phys ad and the mage on a bike with the mage improved invised. On the way my beloved chopper swoops in firing a light auto cannon as a called shot for the transport vehicles tires shredding them in the process.

A 4 men ground team had previously been dropped to secure the cargo some 600 meteresbehind advancing up towards the team, also a couple of drones where being remote rigged by the second rigger in the chopper, with flash paks which gave some nice blinding lights for the PC:s,

How did they do then:

The kid hacker piloting the vehicle kinda freaked halted the vehicle and moved for cover the bike proceeded to drive forward with the mage powerbolting the chopper. This failed miserably due to negative modifiers resulting in no damage and sizable drain to the mage in question. The teams streetsam proceeded to full auto the chopper with apds ammo and edge rolling like a god, giving the chopper 8 boxes of damages. The rest harley maneuvered forward and and the troll tank took cover.

Second pass the chopper fires light autocannon towards streetsam missing him... . Mage fails powerbolting chopper and are now one phys from death. Ork streetsam proceeds to fire again giving the chopper more damage. Hacker and phys ad shoots down flash pak drones.

Third pass Chopper fires at street sam again and misses . ( it should be noted that the rigger are firing full auto and rolls 13 dice to hit, being in a chopper I gave him no recoil setback, however cover and range modifiers applied)

Street sam proceeds to drop the chopper in question with his third full auto burst ( please note that the mag still has not damaged the chopper)

Kid hacker with a sniper rifle (wtf ??) drops one of the mercs damaging another his first kill in a so far 60 karma worth campaign.

Now however the ground team are in range proceeding to lobbing flash bang grenades towards the truck knocking street sam and hacker kid unconscious. The mage manaballs two guys leaving the ground team with one guy going unconscious in the process.

Down to the nitty gritty we have on pissed of solider and two infiltration close combat guys still standing. A game of cat and mouse proceeded with the troll going unconscious before the phys ad managed to get within range and finished the last solider of, himself being severely wounded, but the last man standing.

The way it panned out my players loved the scenario and we had a really great time of it awesomeness did occur during the evening.

For the lols my team had forked out around 50 k towards costumes, this being an LA run they figured they should make a trid about it.

They choose to act as the "five CEO:s". What was wonderful is that the street sam went as Damien Knight and singlehandedly gunned down the chopper with an ares alpha, does this have great market value or what ?

Now the team will proceed to sell the rights for said video production in LA, this will create great ops for me in terms of plot dev.

As you understand we run a kinda mohawk game which we enjoyed, and this battle on the outskrirts of LA, was loved by all.

Awesome... sounds like it was a great time had by all...

Keep the Faith