Ok I'm having an issue. I want my players to feel like if they slip up and do something that can get them tracked the will incur a Bad Thing ™. The rub is that I can't think of anything realistic that wouldn't be an insta-gib on my players. If a corp/syndicate/smart gang wants a runner dead and they know where they can find said runner it's game over. There are so many option for making a metahuman greasy spot before they have any idea that anything is up. A personal post Arsenal favorite of my is the 10k flying drone with a fully automatic grenade launcher with 250 rounds payload, and air-burst. It's a brutally effective tactic, putting 20 'nades in a room on a surprise round. Best part is you don't even need a scary huge DP. Air-burst scatter isn't that bad and volume does the rest. load it up with frag and the collateral damage wouldn't even be all that. I'm sure you all have boat loads of equally cheep and easy means of making heads asplode.

These leave me with a problem. To me it seem most logical to review each run after it's over. Figure out what the target could figure out about who hit them, and if they are willing and able to track the PCs then it's over. I imagine it would go something like this at the next meeting.

GM: Ok, it's the next day after your run. Who wants to do what?
Player: I want to hit my contact T-Bone for more ammo and to refill my first aid kit.
GM: Cool. You call you chat, she can meet you in an hour. want to jump to that?
Player: Sure
GM: Ok you leave your bunker of death and head out. Make a perception check at -8.
Player: ?... ok 1 hits
GM: mmmm sorry. You hear a burst of gun fire that doesn't quit sounds like the regular lead you know and love. You are about to wonder what it is when the world becomes a sea of explosions. Soak 10P -2AP 20 times.
Player: *Blink* .... I don't. Am I just dead?
GM: yup, sorry.
Player:What the hell happened?
GM: You took a shot on the run and left some blood at the MCT facility. A sec mage found the blood stain, tracked you down over night, and MCT had a drone waiting for you to leave your house. How do YOU like hammers now Mr. Eggshell!
Player: I hate you.

But that's about what would happen if any group with any resources wanted the runners dead. Thoughts?

there's jail, there'S abductions with kink-bombs to make them do your bidding . . in general, most of those are bad ideas and scream GM Fiat somewhere, but there's close to no alternative . . as for effective? a simply Sniper with a gauss-cannon as a weapon for example would do the same more or less . .

First: Remember that the Runners represent a future (deniable) asset to a corp. Even MCT uses runners(when it doesn't want to send in Cyber Zombies and handlers) because they cannot be directly traced to them. If a Runner team could get into YOUR heavily guarded facility, do you think they might be able to get into your opponents heavily guarded facility? You know have a known factor.

Second: Corps only have the freedom to act with impunity within their own extraterritorial property. They kill your guy at his Doss in Bellevue? Guess who comes a knockin for the person who flew the Drone?(I NEVER live in the Barrens! And, I generally, always play SINners)

Third: lets face it..killing runners is like closing the barn door after the horse already ran away....it is just not effective, and, really, only MCT or the Azzies are likely to go for revenge..and even MCT is likely to have to think about the cost-benefit analysis.

All though option had occurred to me, but I thought they all seemed wrong for the reasons you said. What I'm asking is do we simply have to over look this to make our game go?

What I like about my 'nade-bot most is that it doesn't require anything special. Literally the hardest thing to get is the contact with facility access, and 10F weapon. IMO that is way easier to get than a gauss sniper that can one-shot shadow runners. But yeah, you gota love the classics

If you murder too many players the paranoia begins to choke up game play. I would launch a few 'wrong room' attacks first. Or a price put out on the player's head. Or something scary, but not lethal.

The way I would rationalize the corps not always seeking bloody retribution is that they have need for mercenary talent too, and seek to damage the corporation that hired them far more then the pawns used to accomplish the treachery.

The PC can also burn 1 Edge to survive, and if the GM doesn't allow that to happen, then it is no longer about whether the in-game threat but why the GM wants a PC dead.

Sometimes, if the PCs are exceptionally skilled, the corps might well be trying to HIRE them rather than kill them. Why waste that talent? Some corps can be rather unscrupulous though, offer their friends money to sell them to the corp, offer THEM money to leave their friends, as well as power and prestige in the job, give them 'offers they can't refuse''. I mean, I liken it to those actual hacker prodigies that hack the government(not script kiddies), there are several instances where after some initial discipline they are offered jobs, since you WANT that kind of skill on your side rather than against you.

Grenade drone.

Do you not only get 250 rounds with belt-fed weapons?

Other than that you only get normal ammo cap' and that's all you get in an additional bin as well.

Others may know better but that was my understanding.

Good call on the HoG.

By and large though I think people are missing my question, which is what happens when someone wants the PCs dead? Yes, the unfeeling corps don't really care that you just ran against them if they can hire/coerce them. Yes the Triad, in their grandmotherly kindness, might give you a chance to redeem your honor some how, etc etc etc. But if the players do some thing where someone with 20k and contacts wants them dead that's it. Game over. What I''m struggling with how make that threat credible without with nibbing PCs to prove a point.

PC's have contacts too.

If they don't have enough to get wind of what's happening, tough...

I just built a very similar drone based on a modified LZ2065 mounting a heavy Gauss Cannon. It hovers in the upper Stratosphere and makes mince of anyone within 50 klicks that it's owner takes a dislike to.

The solution here is to not get caught by folks that will punch your ticket.

Give them one warning, even a near miss with a Gauss Cannon ought to catch their attention, and then give them everything they deserve.

That entirely depends on the paranoia of the characters involved - and soon, it may not be 20k total, but 200k or 2m.

Simply because you have to track down everyone in the chain to get at the end of it... and Johnsons and fixers don't really like that.
And of course, you better be damn fast at tracking, because normally, when the heat reaches contacts, someone is going to inform the target.

Actually...that makes alot of sense..

Why go after the Runners to make a point?
They have contacts, right? People you and them have built some sort of relationship with, that thye have put time and effort into building up.

I know, in one SR3 game I ran, they got in really good with a Metarights activist. They did things to help her out, she did things to help them out. They got a REALLY good relationship going with this contact...to the point wher they were seen in public with her numerous times(and..I mean, like Dante's level public). So, when they did something stupid...guess who they found dead one day? In one of those gruesome ways? And then, imagine how quiet their OTHER contacts got for a while? Especially when someone took a pock shot at one guys bar-tender contact(note: that was PURELY random violence..if it had been the people they had gotten on the bad side of..the guy would have died...slowly and painfully...but, it was enough to make contacts think that someone was gunning for the runners contacts)

Having appropriate contacts give the players a heads up is really good too. That enables story and choice rather fiat and graves.




Yes 20k doesn't buy enough firepower and skill to kill anyone ever, true. 20k and commitment can force almost anyone to live in highly controlled bunker like conditions almost all the time. For AAA execs that means Arcologies with amazing security, private estates, Sub Orbital planes with counterspelling initiates on in the crew etc. For a runner this mean well a bunker. Mr. Exec can live a long and happy life with tons of people trying to off them for 20k. A runner is forced into a siege situation rather quickly. Even if they can survive it moves in to game over rather quickly. As other pointed out, runners have a really hard time when everyone they talk to blows up.

The corps want to hurt the people that hired the runners much more than the runners. If they use a NadeStorm drone of doom on the runners, they will never know. The only time a corp would directly target runners is if the runners do something really bad, like in order to steal a datafile they kill the whole security team, or in order to destroy a prototype they bomb an entire facility.

But even if the runners act egregiously enough to get targeted themselves, it's important to remember what corps care about: the bottom line. They also care about reputation, but since they can't admit they were the victims of a successful shadowrun, and because they can't hold up the shadowrunners publicly and say "we got the guys what done the thing that we deny ever happening," they're not going to be able to salvage their reputation by killing the runners. If runners do something really bad, the corps will be asking: who the hell is going to fix this? Maybe if the runners slaughtered a whole security force, they'll get captured, and have cranial bombs installed, and THEY will get to be the security force. See how they like getting attacked by shadowruners, eh? That would save the corp the cost of rehiring security people, which would maintain the bottom line. Or if the runners blow up a 10 million yen facility, they might find themselves forced to do 10 million yen worth of runs to pay for it, getting compensated only for expenses, and maybe getting some rewards in gear, but mostly being pocket runners for the corporation.

One would imagine it be far more efficient for a corp, government, or syndicate to just put a price on the runner's head and be done with it. In order for an organization to go after a shadowrunner, they would have to divert resources from other projects. It's not like they have people just sitting around waiting for orders to go after shadowrunners.

how dead do you want your players? If you want them dead, then there's nothing they can do... unless their mage has a Ally Spirit looking out for them (I'd have my Ally Spirit watch my back while I sleep and then make damn sure he's happy!).

Also the group may have security running at their safe house. I mean slave the security system to an Agent and have another agent running Matrix overwatch for the first Agent. If the second Agent detects an intrusion then it screams to the Hacker and he can deal with any threats with the Black Hammer of Doom™. The first Agent on the other hand is doing a 360 degree scan of the neighborhood and if it's seeing drones of doom or armed men coming for the runners then it can attack with it's own drones.

Tryingto break out of an eddie this thread keep slipping into, I am assuming that someone wants to kill the PCs. Yes I have heard all the reasons that corps are not about that, I get it. At my table the corps dominate the game world, but not the game. In my current game we've been playing for 8 months and not once have we had a Johnson higher te PCs to hit an extraterritorial facility. When I say a hypothetical someone wants them dead, I'm not thinking about MCT -I'm thinking about nobodies. Punks calling out the resident big dog at high noon, risking an early death for a shot small time fame and a nice comlink. I'm thinking about Syndicate calling for a blood hunt on the PCs because they offed someone's relative.

As an aside I think it's funny you mention

>like in order to steal a datafile they kill the whole security team

I think the single most comment reason for a corp to target runners for elimination is if they took pay data and the corp thinks it can close the information loop.

That's a good point, though what are the odds of that, really? They can only close the information loop if they get on it right away, because it's probably a small matter of time before the team drops the data off.

Now, assuming a crime syndicate wants to do a Bad Thing to the runners, and you don't want to instagib them, I'd go for a good old fashioned shoot-em-up: a bunch of guys with ARs doing supressive fire into the team's hideout. It's something that the runners can survive, but it will wreck all their stuff and force them to relocate. Or they might use a few incendiary grenades -- same effect, and the runners won't die because a fire is not very deadly until it has a few rounds to get going. It would be especially bad if they had a hideout with a big ammo store, since they'd need to replace their ammo, and get the hell out of there before it blew.

The fact is, crime orgs don't automatically use the top shelf, instant death tactics on everyone they decide is their enemy. The streets share an uneasy truce. If one group starts playing hardball on everyone, everyone starts playing hardball on them. They won't pull out the master sniper assassin, or the full auto grenade launcher, for every Joe Runner that pisses them off, because they're just as defenseless against those things as anyone. If they annihilate their enemies' headquarters, their other enemies won't hold back. If an org is willing to go from 0 to full-on autokill against everyone they dislike, anyone who thinks the org might be about to become their enemy is going to try and do it first. And that's bad for business.

OK, I understand what you were asking and I gave two separate ways for the runners to get the bejezzus scared out of them, without reducing them to chunky bits scattered over the neighborhood. Here's a third way:

Hacker hacks into the Gridguide system and just gives himself a viewing login (meaning he can look through the cameras, but can't mess with the Grid itself). This type of account is so low key that Sys Admins would most likely overlook it for a long time (if they ever found it). The Hacker then slaves an agent to watch those cameras around their homes and if there's higher than normal activity then the hacker gets alerted and he then alerts the rest of the team.

The 'Runners would then know that someone wants them VERY VERY dead. They would then have to deal with this problem or be dead... which would suck twelve different ways from Sunday.

Hardly. It means using a new face, name (and leaving town, at most.)
Then cleaning everyone that had the great idea to offer up a bounty.

Said game works both ways, and runners are less tied.

20k? not enough?
some kilo of explosives and somebody to place them in an effective manner means a huge boom O.o

Uh, guys, WeaverMount was wanting to know how to 'Runners would survive if the Corps (or some other high mucky muck) wanted them dead. I gave three ways (more like two ways and 2 ways to do one of those... Magic & the Matrix).

Here's another way that runners might be able to survive. They pay off the local gangs to give them heads up when weird shit is going down in the 'hood. You can't exactly move in that much firepower without someone knowing it. The informants give the 'Runners a call and let them know that they may want to keep their heads down.

If they were so skilled they wouldn't be found 12 hours later, as they wouldn't have left the clues. Killing people who steal stuff from you is an effective deterrent. And SR is typically filled with random violence, so a runner getting "accidentally caught up" in something that gets him dead is also "deniable". My belief would be that they would want the Johnson and the fixer much more than the runner, though having the runner die is certainly not an undesirable outcome from their point of view.

The nerostun in the car with a hacked computer works well. The doors lock as the gas gets released, you pass out and your car drives you to MCT. However this does requires a lot more legwork than having an invisible f6 spirit just manabolt you 4 times in your sleep after it tracks you down.

Entangle them in the mess that is Tir Taingire. Nothing keeps your paranoia awake like vengeful elves do.

Or just have a SWAT move in on the player characters at embarassing moments (shagging mates, sleeping, taking a shower). A properly played SWAT will take out any single 'runner. Use tasers and Gel rounds and have them wake up and find themselves sitting across the table of Agent Malone, who details to them just how many centuries they will have to spend in maximum security porisons. Best, do this just to one PC, the sloppiest, and let him have the opportunity to sell oput his fellow PC ... just so everyone learns a little about how paranopia keeps you alive. PCs caught are sentenced and shipped to a max securioty prison in antarctica, thus effectively out of play entirely.

All that is assuming you really want to fuck them over, not just warn them in a serious way.

On the Corp front, it is some Exec that has a mad on that will orders the hit.
He then budgets X amount of black resources to handle it.

The thing is is that the exec has to account for those resouces.
If the cred runs out and there the hit hasn't been made or is only partial successful, then he has to make a decision on putting more cred after bad.
And that also assumes that he hasn't had some other issue come up with a higher priority. New quarter new goals to reach and new crisis to deal with.
And it he is promoted or replaced then it will be forgotten (mostly) as the new exec takes over.

The thing about runners is they are suppose to shadows. In a big sprawl like Seattle there are dozens of teams of runners that could have pulled a run off and tens of dozens of amateurs that are dumb enough to try and might have gotten luck.

After a big run the pros either act like nothing has happened and they were not involved or just go to ground for a few weeks until the heat is off.
They shouldn't be leaving traces that lead people directly back to them.
When the heat is on it should be because the corp wants to retrieve the extracted target or prototype or really needs to know who order the run (and that is a long shot if the Johnson did his job right).

Of course any runner that gets that predictable deserves what he gets. And if he isn't deep enough in to the shadows then his friends and family might end up paying the consequences. A runner should make a point of disappearing fairly regularly and if he knows a big run is coming up then he might want to have already set up an alibi (going out of town for a courier job a week before the run).


Obviously if they got made and IDed then they screwed up and should consider a new handle, a new face, and a new town.

As to how to do so without an insta kill, I would say remember the limitations the opposition is facing. Gangers, the various syndicate, and even other runners are not going to be the best of the crop. So unless they got the attention of the really big boys then... they might have a chance.

They might choose the wrong tactics, the wrong place, use the wrong people, not have enough people to hit everyone at once, or just hose up because they are making it too complicated.

They might choose a drive by rather than a sniper shot. They might have to do it up close and personal. They might ask around and ask the wrong person so word gets back to the players. They might try to put a bomb under one of your player's car and have it go off in their face. They might plant a bomb at an apartment and trip an alert and be caught live on vid, giving one of your players the tip off that someone is after them. Now image them franticly trying to let everyone else know before they walk in to an ambush or a bobby trap.

If you are really mean you can keep them guessing as to who is behind it or even if they were really the target. Was that drive by after us or the trio of local gangers we had just walked by.

It points up a really good reason to not get involved in gunfights on runs: It leaves evidence. Getting in a firefight and getting shot up leaves pools of blood. And even if you soak an attack with body, you've been hit by a "flesh wound", which means you have a hole in you out of which some blood will come. There are few things that would seem to provide better ways of tracking someone than blood and flesh. It provides DNA for the cops (you have any living relatives?) and a basis for magical tracking. If you ghost in and out there isn't much evidence.

Of course, as long as it's Stun Damage due to Armor, there isn't.

Going back to the OP...


... never mind that 250 40mm belted grenades are massively bulky and heavy (to put it into perspective, think of what kind of weight/bulk 200 full cans of beer has. Yes, 40mm grenades are smaller, but not too much lighter and belting means they take up more space than their size normally indicates....) never mind the launcher/recoil....


What I see is sort of 'look what I CAN do... therefore this has to be something that happens a lot'. Lets move away from the drone of doom (though, I ask you this: what sort of accuracy can a flying platform really get from 50km out? Yeah, you can insta gib someone with assault cannon rounds but really your chances of a:Finding the target, and B: putting rounds through him before he starts taking cover and otherwise becoming hard to target is actually pretty slim... and yeah, I'm sure Shadowrun skimped on actual penalties for that sort of thing, thats what GM's are for...)

Now: you're probably thinking '20k is pretty cheap, corps gotta have hundreds of these grenade drones of doom lying around...yeah. Why aren't they using them?'

First of all: Not likely. THis is 'possible', but why would they have them? Are they regularly engaged in open warfare? Don't just think about how it'll instagib the runner, think about how much collateral damage it will do, how much death destruction mayhem and just general public attention just one of these drones would create.

Now think of this: No one corporation really runs anything. Even the Megas have to deal with at least another 9 equally rich, equally powerful, equally paranoid entities, none of whom are going to react well to someone (to them a stranger... is MCT really going to announce openly that they've sent the 'death drone' to clear out a full city block of anywhere just to kill one dude? Not hardly!) wiping out an acre of real estate nearby? In an urban area where they may even have assets? Laying down autofire grenades of doom like this is roughly comparable to Thor Shot, only a little easier to get access too.

My take is if the runners are doing or have done something that really pissed some one or something off enough to want them "dead" you have to at least give them hints. This was one of the issues with some of the Clue Files. The GM assumed that all the players understood their own logic, and then used it against them. The good GMs gave them fair warning and then left the actions up to them. You should at least give them a heads up that:

"MCT's baseline took a huge hit because of that run and the executive who's job is on the line now is pulling out no stops to have you removed from this and any other plane of existence.

Roll Memory. You remember that you were shot and left blood at the Facility. Do you have magical background? Default to Intuition. You've heard rumors that they can find you from just your DNA using magic. What do you do?"

This then allows the character involved to defend themselves, find a warded safehouse, hire magical backup (call the group's mage), etc. I sincerely believe against killing the characters, unless they are given all chances and just roll bad or genuinely fuck up and make a stupid decision. I personally think the GM should give every runner common sense, or at least give them some rolls to notice how badly they are about to get boned.

It's not like you don't call for Perception/Initiative until they declare that that is what they want to do, do you? That would be foolish. How are they supposed to know that something is going on unless you tell them? Player action can only take a game so far.

Also, I disagree that MCT would want to kill them in the first place. Maybe an ex-Corp Executive (ex- as of today) will hold a grudge and dig into his savings to hire other runners or hire the runner's and lead them into a trap (this is why you do legwork). If they stole something from MCT on their own whim and still have it. Then hell yeah, pull out all stops and get it back. However, once it is in another corp's hands, they will grudgingly accept it (though they are not happy with it), after all, the entire premise of our game is that they are constantly doing this to each other. If runner's fall into their hands, it is also not in their interest to kill the runner, but instead to use him for their own benefit. You don't run into people as skilled as the runners everyday, you know. They will do whatever they have to do to coerce him into working for them. Roleplay this. Give him a cranial bomb if you have to. Hold a dependent hostage, even.

If you just want to kill your runners, then realize that they will not stay around long, player-slayer.

This is darn near a solid solution. The man issue I see is magical tracking. If they people who want the player dead can use the search power that's pretty much it. Any mage can summon a spirit with twice there magic stat in dice for tracking. The only thing that lets you hind all those dice is being beneath a mana barrier. Getting 2xForce of mana barrier while hard is doable. The issue is now you're pinned. Those wards and spells aren't really going anywhere, and aren't really concealable themselves. Yes players can bunker, but when they leave that bunker under these conditions it gets ugly quick.

The take away bit I'm getting from this thread is help conceiving of ways to see it coming further in advance, Social Overwatch. That keeps the game moving and fun the way starving to death in a bunker doesn't.


I don't want them dead that's why I'm here

There is only a certain amount of time someone is going to devote to hunting down runners, unless they did something HUGE. It's one thing to ask a few security mages to go spend 4 hours hunting down and killing a runner, it's an entirely different thing to dedicate 20 mages for a month to doing it with no further success.

If you do things that cause national governments or megacorps to create a 200 person task force dedicated to hunting you down, your ass is likely grass. So don't do that.

Eh, my players have stuck around despite my homicidal tendencies. Burning Edge can be a cost of doing business in the shadows, and it's generally better to burn a point early to grab a Critical Success rather than it is to wait around 'till you have to break out the HoG. Another strategy I plan to try out is designing a a stack of low paying "universal" milk runs that could feasibly take place in any setting with minimal tweaks. That way if the players really blow a run I can make things really hard on them unless they move to a new city (where they'll likely have few if any contacts) and work their way back up from the bottom again doing fairly low rent jobs. Meanwhile I can start adapting my old plots into new runs in the new city or devise a scenario that'll allow them to return to wherever they fled from in the first place.

It's a known issue that the search power is pretty much broken.

valid. 20 will do just fine. I think any machine that can hover and fire a LMG can hoist a few 6-packs. Recoil is a non-issue. The grenade rules mean you don't actually have to hit the your target. The hit is just to reduce scatter. The point of the NadeStorm isn't to put a grenade in the runner's eye. It's to fill the room they are in with grenades.

First this wasn't my idea, but I'm pretty sure that 50km is an exaggeration. 1/2 km and over head with thermoptic camo makes a blimp bot really really hard to spot and I don't think you can baulk at a 500m shot from a stationary shooter on a stationary target. Especially if you have indirect targeting. Now under RAW the target most like likely will not no spot the drone, will not get dodge, and will eat 2 bursts to the face from a LMG for 12P -1 before ammo, staging or mods. Cost of said drone? 2600 storm cloud, 2000k LMG, 600 in software, 400 in optics = 5.6k. That 100 more then the cheapest Motorcycle in the BBB. you can field 3 such drones with good ammo within the random budget of 20k.

Anyone who tells me what corps would or wouldn't do is not reading my post. Once again, I understand all the reasons corps are not about burring runners. That's not who I'm worried about. I'm worried about the Resonance 3 TM looking to make his rep. He could fund the the op with stolen cars he bagged with spirits. I'm worried about Vendette's of bereaved Kin and Comrades pooling gear and contacts to "clean up the neighborhood". Imagine incurring the ire of a HRT team that lost a member and was forced to to vigilantism because it would cost to much and look to bad to get the real guy. This is what I'm worried about. You compared these drone tactics to Thor shots. I'm showing how agents far less rational than AAAs could get a hold of them.

I'm not sure what the point is about arguing how easy it is to assassinate. Far and away the cheapest and most effective ways to kill people do not involve aerial drones. The old methods are best. Car bombs, sniper rifles, poison in the coffee... It is easy to kill people today, it will be easy to kill people in the 2070s. And if you're doing it in a lawless zone like the Barrens, where runners most often hide out, you don't even have to worry about getting away with it. That's a given, no matter what crazy extravagant "unbeatable" techniques you might come up with. The problem I'm having is: why would you do any of these things, as the GM? Are you sick of the game, and want to end it? Or you're sick of a player, and want them to leave your table and not come back? There are infinite ways a GM could kill a player, high cost or low cost, without the player being able to fight back. That's part and parcel with the GM's power. But should you ever use them? I really don't think so. Part of the game is that it's a game; the GM introduces problems, the players try to solve the problems. If they can't, then it's not a game, it's just one person on a power trip surrounded by (and soon to be deserted by) bored players.

The only time a GM should pull out a "you're dead, haha," is when the player has acted stupidly, and they know they deserve it, and they accept it. Or the player is bringing the whole group down, and the GM wants to teach them a lesson about not wrecking the game. Don't feed me any bullcrap about realism. Realistically, sure, if someone wants you dead they'll use the cheapest, most unbeatable technique they can. If they happened to be smart enough, and creative enough to think it up, that is. Especially if they had access to the SR4 source books, and they knew what methods gave the other person a defense test, and if they knew the player's dice pool so they could design something exactly to the specifications required to definitely kill the player. But even if you accept that an NPC could come up with a cheap and unstoppable way to kill a PC, even if it would be realistic for him to use it, the GM should not go ahead and do it. It does not advance the story to instagib a player most of the time, so most of the time the GM should not do that. SR4 is not a living, real world where people always act like they would in real life. It's a game, and it's about having fun. Acting to cut off fun at the source is antithetical to the GM's job. Unless you think the player would have fun having their player instantly killed by a pissant trying to make a name for himself, you should never make that happen.

Okay, so we aren't talking about Corporate Retaliation? Cause, you know, based on your example, that's kind of the feeling I got. Aaaaanywho..... so you are trying to come up with ways to hunt the runners? Reminds me of a write up Blackjack did:
After the Fight

All I can say is to give warnings. Maybe a suspicious character snooping around his normal bar. Word's going through the shadows that a guy is looking for you. Could stay in the background of a campaign, could be out in the open. Make surprise test as guy draws a gun on you as you pass by him in the street. Who knows, it is completely up to you. But seriously, give the player warning. Shit don't just happen. For the perceptive and well connected, they'll notice the ripples and react.

This is at the hear of why I posted. You say SR4 is not a living world, and that is true in so much as it is fiction. My table is enjoys simulating a living world. And often those simulation lead me to scenarios where the player should just be dead. As you pointed out that isn't very fun, and when I'm GMing it's my job to maximize fun. So I'm asking for DS's help in how to play a [get ready for some huge fricken quotation marks] "realistic" game where the PCs can make mortal enemies that don't just win the them. And to pages in I've gotten some good advice thank you all.

As far as being astrally tracked, get underground. The earth is an infinite mana barrier, and thusly will stop any tracking being done.

Now that I think about it, if my players did something so colossally stupid as to get the undivided attention of a powerful entity (keeping in mind that such entities rarely move fast enough to bother, so this would have to be pretty damn stupid), I would make it the basis of an adventure. It would tell the players in no uncertain terms that they were dumb and that there are ramifications in Shadowrun for dumb. It would give the team a chance to get themselves out of the hot water they so gleefully dove into (as the objective of the adventure). It would give everybody something to do for a session or two while the lessons are being learned. Everybody wins.

Earth is a pretty good barrier to humans as well, astral or not. If the PCs can go into an elevator shaft and go down so can an astral entity. Of course unless the entrance is warded....

Weavermount: there is a reason I didn't quote you, I was responding to the entire thread.

First of all the entire concept is a bit silly (you know, finding ways to instagib your players...) second of all most of the stuff mentioned makes little sense.

Your hovering AGL of death? Yeah, to be fair to the player you'd have to resolve the scatter for each grenade, reduce power accordingly based on distance, then check to see if any chunky salsa style bouncing is going on... or did you forget your initial example is 'on the street', not 'in his bucker o' doom'? If the damn thing IS firing into his bunker than accuracy IS important, as many of the grenades will fall on the otherside of the barrier, rather than land IN the room... all in all, not terribly effective, and garaundamnteed to earn more enemies than just the runner who shockingly DOES have a chance to survive the 'hit'.

Ditto the other guy's Drone Sniper of doom. Last I checked the max it's dice pool could hit (being a drone just hanging about waiting for orders) is 12, and that's top of the line hard/soft ware...with a 10k gun, just for a mediocre sniper who's gonna miss out on most of those dice anyway due to penalities to the shot.

In both cases the 'insta-gib' relies mostly on luck and way way way too much money available, not to mention the world not having 'other rich powerful people' in it who are NOT going to want grenade blimbs and sniper-sats anywhere remotely near their property (anywhere near the city of Seattle, for example) and will react with extreme prejudice upon the first usage of that level of firepower...


Which, as someone else smartly pointed out, could be replaced by a 2000 nuyen thug with a couple hundred nuyen of explosives or a 4000 nuyen slug with a reusable 1000 nuyen rifle for much better effect and much less fallout.

Though in all cases, your PLAYERS are likely to whup your ass.

By which I remind you that you are forcing a -8DP perception check with a threshold higher than 1 (from your own example) which seems a bit excessive. Either the dice are penalized OR he needs more than one success. Its a drone, not a ninja. Sure... I can see why/how you get there, but honestly...

To me, leaving off teh entirely stupid factor of 'instagibbing players' is the utter grasp of logistics. I'm sure, if I wanted to i could make a character that started with a quartermillion dollar 'drone of doom'... and nothing else. Of course, the very first run when I pull it out and put it to work its great... until it gets shot to peices or left behind. Then I'm just a gimped 350BP character with a lot of drone skills and no clothes.

Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean its a good idea. Just like some random technomancer (your idea) deciding to instagibb the players to make his rep? WTF?

Sorry to keep dragging old Gibson stuff into this (well, not really sorry at all) but one of the first things that happens in Neuromancer is a corp responding to a hack attempt by blowing the shit out of a residential apartment building using an airship-mounted railgun or some such ridiculous overkill.

Why the corps going to ever bother to hunt down the shadowrunners unless its to make an example of them (which means other people have to know that something was done to you and who did it in the first place)

If they extracted one of your guys and you are reasonably sure that they've given him to Ares or whatever, going after the shadowrunners is a waste of time and money, because Ares will always be able to find more unemployed criminals to replace them with and now you are compounding whatever loss the shadowrunners inflicted (say, stealing your shit) with yet more loss (paying a bunch of expensive resources to find and kill them). Whats more, you don't get fuck all of a PR exercise, because if 3 guys turn up dead in a dumpster in the barrens... so what? Maybe they were drug dealers? Who knows, and who cares. It certainly isn't going to function as a deterent or anything.

If the shadow runners succeed in something big and high profile - god knows what - and large quantities of the criminal fraternity know its them - ie they screwed up the 'shadow' part, then you take them out.

You also make sure you do it in a really big and high profile way, ie teaming/bribing up with local law enforcement, getting the news cameras on site, storm the hide out, 'accidentally' shoot them repeatedly with an AK-97 right in the face preferably with cameras rolling. Really make the point.

But some guy leaving a blood stain somewhere? No-one is even going to call forensics to analyze it. Whats the point?

Assuming that they have a mage on their team, it shouldn't be too hard to get an earth spirit (or equivilent) to dig them down 10 feet and have a little room to hideout in for a few days (take some MREs or something) to be sure they can avoid the heat.

It doesn't impact Search or Ritual Tracking. So they will be standing in the room, knowing you are directly underground. Looking at your air intake and considering ways to make your stay more exciting.

Spike you managed to do one useful thing despite completely failing to understand my position.
You got me dead to rights I made a mistake getting to -8 . It should be -6 given my assumption. I Was thinking -4 for camo mod with another -2 for the vision mods or range/cover/lightning/weather. That -2 could be a hell of a lot worse too, easily the -4 needed to hit the arbitrary number of 8. The other -2 was a mix up of visibility mods and concealment mods with a side of miss read. Thanks for getting me to re-read that.

Read my posts and before you start calling me stupid. After all:
You think a (5600 + plus ammo) system is "way way way to expensive" compared to a (4000 slug and 1000 rifle) system
You think a mediocre sniper can not kill a fish in a barrel at 1/2 a km
You let players wear enough armor just out and about that 20 HE grenades "relies mostly on luck" to kill them.
You think a few IPs of automatic weapons fire in the barrens is a big deal to anyone.
You think I want to kill players, rather than find ways NOT to kill my players.

See, what I don't get is if everyone is okay with the barrens being a huge nest of criminals, why would they care when some criminals come out of the barrens, do something criminal-y and go back. Chasing them down into the dangerous barrens and capping them in the head doesn't help anything, because the place is entirely comprised of criminals. It is literally impossible to be in the barrens and not be a criminal.

Actually, it was really 'pushing the threshold up' that annoyed me about your example. But I'm also assuming that, given that there isn't anything to hide behind up in the air like that, that any 'stealth' checks for a god damn blimp with an AGL are gonna be heavily penalized too. One success should be fine. Regardless, really the perception check at that point adds dice to their Surprise test as I recall.


No, I think trying to think of ways to instagibb player characters is stupid. No matter who says it.



Actually, I think a drone with full 'thermoptic camoflage', plus the AGL, plus the ammo, plus the high level Wagemage on 24 hours emergency response standby to do ritual tracking on a random bloodsplotch left at the scene of a firefight at whatever ungodly hour the Runners left the scene, plus the fact that the drone, the AGL and all the fancy software (which we haven't even gone into yet...) are going to be blown out of the sky within minutes of firing, if not seconds by any number of highly paranoid motherfuckers in Seattle (not limited to the other 9 megas, Lonestar, the UCAS army at Ft Lewis, and half the high end streetgangs in the city, the Organized crime syndicates AND the hundreds of other shadowrunners which apparently call Seattle home, for whatever god damn reason. And that's just off the top of my head.) never mind the aftershocks of this event raining down upon the head of teh corp that jsut decided wasting an entire city block to kill one guy was a 'great idea'.

And even if you suggest saving the drone is possible (this is me laughing at the idea), the ammo expense, alone, is higher than most other options en toto.

never mind whatever you meant by the 4000/1000 numbers. I suggest a trained sniper with a 900 nuyen hunting rifle and a handful of 2 nuyen bullets. Heck, since I"m still working on SR3 numbers for gear most days, I'm probably going a bit high on the cost of the rifle.



Sure can, which is half the reason I think this thread is pretty damn goofy. If joe Security guard, with more or less average stats and average skills (lets say a dice pool of 6 naturally) with a cheap ass smartgun rig (maybe not even an implant, now that image linked glasses do the same), and a few other vision mods can pull out a respectable DP 8 and still hit outside of decent perception range (meaning even his pathetic stealth pool of, lets say 6 again) and 'urban camoflage' uniform laying on a rooftop... well, you can put a dozen of those fuckers out there for the cost of one, highly stupid, disposable drone and still not piss off the entire city. And Joe Runner, well, he's more or less screwed.

Its still stupid to do it in a game.



Lets go over the facts. One: Most runners will be wearing, at a minimum, an armor Jacket. The ones that are hard to kill will also be cybered up, adding a bit to the pot.

Fact, while, yes, grenade scatter isn't that brutal, you're assuming that you get full power for some reason from each grenade. Power drops quickly. Never mind that to be fair to the player (which, since you are essentially ass raping them without the benefit of lube just by pulling this stunt, is only fair) workign out the exact scatter and power against said runner for each grenade is going to take... a while. Maybe the scatter rules weren't written to account for all the wonky shit you just put on there: an unstable platform at a fairly extreme range firing full auto. By all rights (and I should point out that I've got real expirence with AGL's, though not from a god damn blimp!) and I'll let you know right now that out of your twenty theoretical rounds you'll be lucky to get half within reasonable distance. Again, I'm not an expert on automatic grenade scatter rules, so maybe SR4 is really lax. Now, maybe you'll get lucky and land two or three right on top of him, and he's deader than dirt. Or hes one of those crazy '24 armor troll' builds that show up occasionally around here, and he laughs at your puny weapons. I don't know, really.

And I don't really care, either, as the entire feasability is a sideshow compared to the monumental stupidity of actually DOING THIS, which is what I'm trying to drill into your head. This, my misguided friend, is a reciepe for a total walkout of any reasonably mature player. You'll keep the morons and the masochists and the powertwinks who don't think it can happen to them, but the reasonable players? the ones who plan and do legwork and all those other things we want players to do? Yeah, they started playing without you.


While I do think a few IP's of machinegun fire does stand out, and a few IPs of SMG fire SHOULD but probably doesn't in the Shadowrun anyone actually plays... I can tell you that when you break out weapons that the military uses to clear small cities out that people, no matter how inured to violence, WILL SIT UP AND PAY ATTENTION! Yeah, you got Joe Runner. You also leveled several buildings and killed dozens, if not hundreds of innocent bystanders. And if he made his 'surprise check' and used his undoubtedly 3 IP to run the fuck away from your insane little toy, well you can probably start adding to that count until the damn thing runs out of ammo (250 grenades will clear an entire neighborhood!)

Yeah. People WILL notice. Then they'll wonder how long until some jackass brings a similar drone to THEIR neighborhood, to THEIR office building. Paranoia is a wonderful thing. Never mind that every other shadowrunner who could potentially be a target (Hrm... that would be... ALL OF THEM???!!!!) will alternatively head for the hills OR start hunting for the pre-emptive gack, depending upon what they learned.



You tell me, this is YOUR brilliant idea. I don't want to instagibb my players, so I don't think of crazy shit like this.

Let me put it in the 'other game system'. You just noticed that you can land a Elder Wyrm Dragon on top of your players 1st level character and kill him. Why don't you do this?

Because its stupid.


You just noticed that you can give your Elder Wyrm Dragon 20 levels of player classes, and he shapeshifts, so you decide to have him pretend to be a lady of the night and isolate one of your players 20th level characters, then change back to dragon form and utterly pwn him, since he's alone and every thign he can do the Dragon can do, plus all the cool dragon abilities too! Why not do this?

Because it is stupid.


You just noticed that MCT has more money than god, and you can stick camoflage and grenade launchers on drones, and this weapon is capable of killing any character. You not do this?

Because it is stupid.

For that matter why not just use Thorshot?

Because it is stupid.




What's next? Rolls to see if they are hit by a random car accident while walkign down the street? Rolls to see if they get food poisoning from the cheap ass soy vender on teh corner? Hey? That one run where they got attacked by a Barghest patrolling the grounds? Check for rabies!!!

You know, if the character could conceivable pick his nose (all of them?) he's got a 1:400,000 chance of dying of a stroke as a result. Sounds like a critical glitch on a daily body check to me! Why not? Even if they don't pick their noses, stuff happens to people every day!






What is the difference between your idea and any of the other ones that I've just listed?

Not a god damn thing. THey are all stupid within the bounds of the game we're playing. Heck, its pretty stupid OUTSIDE the bounds of the game when you look at the logistics and consequences of it. So are most of the things I've listed.


Hope that clears this up.

Spike that was just a one example (not very good mind you but still) what somebody who wants the player characters dead(in the shadowrun world) could do, there are many other nasty( and more practical) thinks those people could do.

WeaverMount is asking how to justify the that their not using any of those higly effective method against the PC, so chill out a little.

totally agreed. I totally believe WeaverMount is NOT one of those bully Gms we all have had a chance to know and love. Let's chip in "realistic-but-fun" replies. Now, if only I could get my mind to work... :smile

Cheers!

Max