Alright, still newbie-ish over here, had another session still tweaking with combat it seems. Couple of questions came up.

Elf Street Samurai was attacked by a Devil Rat. Now, do all players who get attacked by default get to roll a dodge? Even attacked by guns? So lets say Devil Rat rolls his attack, agility + unarmed 3 = 8 dice. He gets 3 hits. Street Samurai rolls 2 for his dodge, and so Devil Rat gets a net hit of 1. Than the Elf rolls the damage resist gets zero hits, so 1P + 1 net hit of damage to the Elf for a total of 2P damage. Am I doing this right?

Also, the Street Samurai is also an adept. Now does the Adept cast the spells he uses? Or are they simply magical buffs that stick forever aside from the Attribute Boost one which lasts X combat turns.

Also was trying to find the amount of hit boxes NPC enemies have, and honestly couldn't. Is it the same as players? 8 + 1/2 Body?

Again, really sorry if these are noob questions, I'm really enjoying the game and everyone is having a bunch of fun so I'm just trying to make the experience in combat go smooth before we get more detailed.

It depends on if you are on full defense or not.

Normal Defense:
-- Ranged Attacks: Reaction only
-- Melee: Unarmed + Reaction (or) [Weapon skill] + Reaction (or) Dodge + Reaction

On Full Defense:
-- Ranged attacks: Reaction + Dodge
-- Melee: Reaction + Dodge (or Weapon skill or Unarmed skill) + Dodge

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His powers (note that spells are different) just work all the time except those that explicitly state that he needs to activate them (like astral perception) or are time limited (like attribute boost)

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Grunts have only one damage track which is made up of 8 + 1/2 [Body or Willpower] (whichever is higher) See. SR4A page 280.

Sounds like you've almost got the hang of it. I'm assuming that by dodge you mean Reaction? Yes, all characters automatically get to roll their Reaction to dodge attacks unless surprised. For the Devil Rat's attack pool, you're right to add agility and unarmed together to determine how many dice it rolls but keep in mind that Devil Rats have a reach of -1 on their claw attack, meaning that they get -1 to hit in melee combat.

Adepts don't have spells, they have powers, and for the most part they are always on unless specified otherwise. Attribute Boost is a good example of this, as is Critical Strike and Killing Hands (which both require a declaration of use by the player). Other powers, such as Mystic Armor and Rapid Healing, are always on and function even if the Adept falls unconscious.

For NPCs, any rule that applies to players also applies to NPCs, so an NPC with Body 4 would indeed have 10 physical hit boxes. One exclusion to this rule is the use of Edge, which many NPCs don't have and which can be a shared group attribute of a mob of NPCs.

Finally, even if you don't play Shadowrun perfectly by rules as written it's fine. Remember the 0th law of gaming, "thou shalt have fun."

Full Defense uses up your entire combat turn?

Full Defense is a Complex Action. If declared in your Action Phase this is all you can do (except a Free Action before hand). If declared as an interrupt action it uses up your next available Action Phase.

If you have only one IP per turn then yes, it takes up your whole turn.

If you have multiple IP it only lasts until your next Action Phase.

PS- Full Defense sucks. It should only really be used if you're character's going to die otherwise or by melee fighters in order to get closer to their opponents.

Yep. Generally speaking, in SR the best defense is to kill the enemy before their Action Phase comes up.

Glass Cannons and all that.

It can be viable if you've got more IPs than the ennemy - baically you fight on the efensive until he has used up his actions then you fight.

I don't really get how the IP works... Or really how the turn system works. I get initiative, its who goes first, but do you roll for initiative each combat round or? Could someone give me a basic rundown?

Okay, at the beginning of each round of combat, everyone rolls initiative.

Starting with the player with the highest INitiative score, you go in order from highest to lowest. That's initiative pass 1.

Then, everyone with at least 2 IPs gets a second action, once again going highest to lowest. If you only had one IP, you're done until next round.

Then 3rd IPs go.

Then 4th.

Then 5th, for those rare characters that get 5.

Then, once everyone has used all of their IPs, you roll initiative and start all over.

Bull

When it comes to movement it gets a bit tricky since walking doesn't require an action, jogging requires a free action and sprinting requires a simple action.

Basically after you have gone through the IPs in a turn (usually 1-4), you're supposed to roll Initiative again. FYI, I haven't noticed this rule until recently as I'm used to one Initiative for the whole combat. However it actually makes sense in this game since the number of Combat Turns are often very few, and Initiative is modified by wound penalties during combat.

Beginning of combat, everybody rolls initiative. Whoever's highest goes first, then you go down the initiative order. At this point, it doesn't matter who has more IPs, everybody acts during this first pass of the Combat round. Once everybody's taken their actions it comes around to the 2nd Initiative pass. Only people who have 2 or more IPs can act during this pass unless they've delayed their action (meaning they took no actions in the first paqss and have decided to delay until the second pass or later to act). Once you've figured out who gets to act this round you take the initiatives rolled from the first pass and have each combat particpant take their actions in initiative order. After each character who had a second Initiative pass has acted you repeat this process for the third initiative pass, then the fourth. It is possible for Technomancers who have Submerged to obtain a 5th matrix-only initiative pass but for most characters 4 IPs is the absolute max. Characters can only act in as many rounds as they have IPs, meaning that IPs are extremely important. A character who has 4 IPs acts (and gets to attack) twice as many times as someone who only has 2 IPs. Note: by spending a point of Edge a character may act first in any one Initiative pass or act in one additional Initiative pass for one combat round (this does not allow players to exceed the limit of 4 IPs). Many things can increase IPs (drugs, spells, cyberware, Adept powers, Hot Sim in the Matrix) but a number of them don't stack with each other, meaning that usually you take the highest IP bonus a character has and use that as his total IPs. Check the description of the different IP enhancers if you want to be sure of its stackability (drugs do, the Increase Reflexes spell does, but Wired Reflexes doesn't and neither does the Improved Reflexes Adept power). That's IPs and initiative in a nutshell.

Edit: for movement the listed movement rates of each metatype (pg.149 of the Anniversary edition, 138 of the Main book) are the total amount of meters a character gets to move in one entire combat round. For the distance a character moves in an Initiative Pass you take that number and divide it by the highest number of IPs any of the participating combatants has (or by 4 for simplicity's sake). This means that often melee fighter characters will be forced to delay their actions until they get close enough to their opponent to make their attack and it is generally only useful for them to have high amounts of IPs if they have some method of ranged attack or if they can dodge enemy attacks while they are closing in (using up their IPs to do so as per the Full Defense rules).

Okay this is making things worlds easier for me, really appreciate it.

How long can a player delay his action? Let's say... he decides to go full defense during the first initiative phase. Does that mean, for the rest of the combat round he's locked in full defense mode, or can he switch out, using the next IP and attack, or run/close-in to his opponent.

Also, if you delay your action are you basically just a sitting duck? Or does it go something like, "Elf ducks behind a crate and delays his action" in order to cover himself. In terms of like, how melee characters close in on people, I'm guessing the rules allow sprinting + full defense?

I know you cannot use full defence if surprised, it came up last night.

You don't even get to use reaction if surprised ? are you sure ? can you maybe give a reference ?

So no active defense is possible. Hopefully the character has good armor on at the time, he's gonna need it.

Thank you.

You can delay your action until your next action comes up. Actually, you can continue to delay, but then you would have lost the previous action anyway. You can't delay 4 actions in one turn and just shoot 8 times with SA when everyone else have finished acting (sounds stupid but combined with total cover it could be worthwhile.

You can move even when you have no actions. However, to change your mode of movement you'd need an action, and anything above running requires at least one free action (which you normally have one of per Pass). The rules seem to indicate that you can, even if you have only 1 pass in a turn, spend a free action to run, and then continue running each pass until you reach your target or you run out movement, and then do a complex action (for example, a charge).

Thus a character with 1 initative pass can charge a character who has 4. Problem is, until the charger can close with the enemy, he is at the mercy of ranged combat attacks... which is pretty much the same in RL and the reason why guns beat knives.

In my example, if the attacker went on full defense, he would have spent his complex action for the round and would be unable to take another until the next round.

Sprinting (as opposed to mere running) requires a simple action, so if you do a sprint, get shot at, and then chose do do a full defense action, you will have lost your complex action for the next turn.

If however you have multiple passes yourself, you can of course take full defense action each pass until you reach your destination. If you have 25 meters of movement during a turn, and the enemy is 20 meters away and you both have 2 actions, then you can run 1 pass (going 12.25 meters), use your first complex action to make a full dodge, and then charge the enemy on your second pass (melee is also a complex action).

Clear? Ok, maybe not, but is it vaguely understandable?

Full Defense only remains active until the next time a player acts. This means that a player with 2 IPs who goes on full defense for his first Initiative Pass ends it when it comes to his action again in the second pass, so even if the player decides to delay his 2nd action from the 2nd to 3rd Initiative Pass he loses the bonus gained from full defense after he's had a chance to act in the 2nd Initiative Pass. It's different for players who spend their last IP to go on Full Defense. In that case players won't have a chance to act until the next Combat Round starts and will receive all the bonuses of Full Defense until their next active Initiative Pass. Also, Full Defense does not impede a character's ability to run and neither does delaying an action, a character moves each segment of his Movement rate every Initiative Pass, even the ones he's not active in. If a character wants to sprint on the other hand that requires a Running test to add on to his base movement and is only allowed once per combat round as a Simple Action, which does preclude both Full Defense and delaying an action during that Initiative Pass and uses up an IP. A player can delay his action until the 4th Initiative Pass, although that may mean giving up his unused IPs (you can only act once per Initiative Pass).

All the rules for Delaying Actions are described on pages 144 and 145 of the Anniversary Edition and Full Defense is described on page 160.

Okay, following everything so far. Though I remember reading in the Quick Start Rules, when you roll for initiative when players tie they act at the same exact time. So does that mean, like lets say there's a random ganger and an Elf Street Sam. Both are behind cover and when their first IP comes up they both choose to leap out from cover guns blazing, does that mean everything happens at the same time? Or is it more like, Elf runs out from cover, ganger sees this, shoots elf right as he leaves cover. Acting at the same time seems really kind of nuts but at the same time, nice and fast paced.

This is a tricky part for a GM- b/c if the NPC's get the drop on the PC's it can easily lead to a TPK (total party kill). TPK's are usually looked at as bad form, barring party stupidity.

I don't agree with this at all. Full Defense can serve you well in many situations.

For instance, if you catch yourself facing a mob of angry but relatively unskilled gangers who are all targeting you with their pistols, they can whittle away your dice pool for opposing them very quickly if you don't go on Full Defense. Remember - after every subsequent attack directed at you before you have an action you have to subtract 1 die from your opposed roll. Even with a high Reaction you'll be out of dice after 2 or 3 gangers take two shots each at you. For any decent Street Samurai that won't be a life and death situation, but you can mitigate the damage you take to a much greater degree using Full Defense.

It's also good (if you're running a rather fast/dodgy character) if you end up targeted by one big bad dude and you want to waste his time while your teammates get into position to help you out.

You can also make a grenade scatter farther with it. Even though this is an area where the rules don't make much sense, it still works that way.

Agreed. The melee physad in my group has 3 IPs and uses Full Defense(DP of 15), Great Leap, and Wall-Running to close the range to his adversary, all the while drawing fire away from other teammates. Alone this tactic would just result in him ending his Combat Turn surrounded by enemies who will soon mow him down; working with a group it gives the rest of the team time to find cover and start taking out the other enemies. Caveat that this techniques works less well against a smaller number of "prime runner" opponents. In that case even Full Defense cannot be counted on to avoid high skill/high damage attacks for long.

I also roleplay the difference between low and high Professional Rating by whether the antagonists can keep their cool and assess the situation to determine whether to fire at the unarmed adept zigging and zagging toward them or the mage running for cover.

sorry, double post

Our group house rules that the initiative score is used to break ties, if they still are tied, then yeah, the resolution occurs at the same time.

Like I said, good for when your character's about to die and melee approaches. Any character who plans on being in combat should take dodge/gymnastics with a specialization because those extra 3 dice are most likely at least one less damage box when you're in a tight situation, but overall the Full Defense mechanics do kind of suck for anyone actually planning on using most of their IPs. Even if you make a gymnastics melee adept monster it's still pretty damn easy to hit you with a Full Auto burst and you have to waste all your actions dodging. In terms of the four defense methods (Sneaking, Dodging, Withstanding and Healing) Dodging is the hardest to make effective as pretty much all combat builds in Shadowrun are designed to hit and it's generally easier to get a higher to hit dice pool than dodge dice pool.

Edit: as far as tied initiative goes, my group house rules that you roll a d10 and add the number as a decimal point onto your initiative whenever you tie, so a 12.6 beats a 12.3, and if two people who have tied initiatives tie on their d10 rolls they keep rolling until eventually they stop matching, so a 12.6573 beats a 12.6572.