Fall back, throw in a few frags and some thermal smoke.

Who ever's still a threat is the most dangerous.

Start by killing people waving knives in your face, because that's really distracting. Then anyone making a lot of noise and being visible. Then anyone else who is well-hidden and only occasionally shoots; everything else is "cover" for that guy.

Have your faces, social adepts, riggers, hackers, infiltration specialists and whatevers take a little cyberware or bioware to get that one extra initiative pass that makes all the difference (the difference between the samurai getting to do 300% as much as you and 150% as much as you). Boom. Balance.

That's my advice, anyway. It's what I try to do with characters I play myself and with my party.

Yeah, but having to initiate just to afford the essence cost for that extra IP's worth of ware is somewhat expensive

That's why mages have a spell that mimics wired reflexes and adepts have a power that does the same.

There is one aspect that seems to get over looked a lot. The setting doesn't have to focus so bloody heavy on combat, in fact, if you are staying true to the notion of the words Shadow and Run, the less you are seen and the more you just straight up don't stick around to be shot at, the better off your whole game is going to be.

I apologize if that seems offensive, just seems like I got tired of playing D&D because of combat pretty much seeming like the only focus of the whole thing, so obviously certain party members would get more attention than others based on how well they were able to put down the various monsters. In Shadowrun, kinda seems like there are so many other options than just combat, that it really should be a last resort, even in a wet work job. If it isn't a one sided ambush that ends in just about one IP/combat round before the opposition can even react, I suggest some one/thing screwed up their run ... unless of course this is pink mohawk we are talking about, then even the least likely characters to have multiple IPs should be grabbing every single combat advantage that they can.

Expectations. What did the GM suggest the campaign would be like?

While I agree that combat should be discouraged (from the runner's point of view, especially given it's lethality), it's still a part of the world, and a very possible, if not likely, outcome in many runs. Not every run is perfect, and sometimes just dumb luck (someone's working late, or the night watchman heard something thanks to a very lucky roll) can be the difference between sneaking out unseen and having to shoot your way out of that office building.

Never mind that double/triple/quadruple crosses are also feasible. Sure, you pulled that run off perfectly. But now the J is having second thoughts about having someone know what you just did, and hires a liquidation team. Hard not to get into combat now. Or you did a run against the Yaks, and the boss needs to regain some honor by hunting you down. Or a contact's in trouble/being held hostage/for ransom and you gotta go in guns blazing.

Not every run's going to be Ocean's 11. At least, IMO, they shouldn't be, as a mix is more interesting than running the same thing over and over again. SR has a combat system for a reason.

I don't particularly like the multiple IP setup of Shadowrun. Having multiple IPs is, IMO, far too ubiquitous due to its importance in combat. Characters without some type of IP booster can often feel deficient when the action starts. No matter how cheap (nuyen, points, etc.) IP boosters are to acquire the importance of having it can limit character builds. Unless of course you don't mind playing a character who is likely to get creamed in any fight or left twiddling their thumbs while the action continues without them.

I would much rather see 1 IP being the standard with only the highest level of Wired Reflexes, etc. perhaps gaining an additional IP.

To be honest, a ton of my (non-combat) characters have only had 1 IP. I've never found it to be that completely horrible.

It also kind of varies with what weapons you're using as well. You look at melee and you only get one attack an IP. On the other hand, anybody with a gun gets 2 attacks. Also, since IPs are used for defense, being a front line character almost necessitates having IPs just for defense.

And suppressive fire works until your next IP, so thats pretty efficient for 1IP characters.

Still, tad expensive for 1.5 pp. I know its expensive for balance reasons though. *shrug* just sayin.

I agree that a runner who doesn't want his ass handed to him in combat needs multiple IPs, and hence, getting them will take up considerable resources at chargen.

However, there is usually an optimum way of getting there:

Faces who are not adepts can use the cheapest cyber available, or drugs.

Faces who are adepts don't need that many adept powers, they can take IR1 at least. It's not actually expensive.

Backup combat characters (snipers/machinegunners) can pick any way to gain more IPs, either be an Adept with bio/cyber, only take cyber, etc.

Combat characters, i.e. sammies, can take Wired Reflexes or the MBWII, which is actually one of the best pieces of ware in the game. NO, they won't reach 4IPs as easily as adepts or mages.

Mages take foci. Mystic adepts take foci.

Hackers are either adepts, or do their stuff in VR.

Riggers get their IPs in VR.

Meleers will usually be Adepts, too.

None of this ties up extreme resources. It's pretty much standard. And if you feel your adepts are underpowered, then let them use the Geas-learned powers.

That being said, right now in our group we have three people with four IPs, one guy with two (I think) and one guy with one. The guy with the single IP adapted the Infiltration specialist from the corebook, and acts as a sniper, and while he does sit around a bit, he usually only fails to shine when the GM mucks up.

I think what somehow died in SR4 is the Synaptic booster. In SR3, one of the best pieces of ware. Now, overpriced and hardly ever an option.

The only real problem I (or my group) sees with multiple IP is ... Boredom. When you have one character with four IP and three characters with one IP each, the players of the slower characters get bored waiting on the actions of the faster character to play out. SR combat is a slow and very mechanical process. A simple fight between four characters and six enemies can easily take an hour or more to play out, and when you have three of the players sitting around for nine-tenths of the fight they get bored.

As a result of this experience, we as a group have limited all starting characters to no more than two IP at the beginning of our games. If you take cyberware or bioware that should allow you to go more than twice you also get a negative quality the impairs that ware until the GM allows you to buy off the quality and improve your IP. It seems to work well, and keeps the game balanced. It also makes an enemy samurai with three IP a very dangerous opponent.

Just my two NuYen.
-D

I'm going to have to say that you lack enough exposure to the combat system if you're taking a long and slow time to get through combat. If you think this is bad, I suggest you go play a high level epic campaign in 3.5 D&D.

sadly the problem with resolving fighting also happens to my group and we play SR4 since release (some times more or less) but no one besides me seems to try to accelerate things up so with currently having a char with 5 IPs (Cyborg rigger) stuff tends to take a while... frustrating

The group really doesn't mind that the fights take a while, the problem is when most of the group isn't doing anything during the fight due to IP scale issues. The easy fix... Limit IP.

-D

Easier fix, have everyone get more then 1IP as intended.
Runners aren't supposed to have just 1IP.

The easy fix is for everyone to gear up to 2+ IPs, in my opinion. Having only 1 IP is for civilians. WR-1 is only 2.2BP and it gives some additional Reaction too. Pretty sweet deal. Jazz/Cram.. it's not like taking higher Body and Willpower (to resist addiction comfortably) is wasting points on otherwise useless stats either.

Yes, the idea is to avoid combat; but if it happens then it's so dangerous that you need to be good at it.

It all depends on how significant of a role combat plays in someone's game. If a lot of game time involves combat, the non-combat characters need to beef up and get some extra IPs. It's the same as a sammie in a mostly talking game needing to buy up his Charisma and social skills. Runners should be very good at their main specialty, and able to function in other areas. As they get more experienced, they should get better at their specialty, and outside of it.

This is pretty much it. You're supposed to have lots of IPs to take out the mooks quicker than they can take out you.

Easy? It has immense repercussions. It is hardly easy at all.

The easy "fix" (not even a fix, because there is nothing to fix) is to just realize how the system works.

As others have said, you do not need to go out of your way to acquire half-way decent combat abilities, which will go a long way from useless towards viable.

If anyone insists of playing a character that is useless in combat (of course, such a character can still be a lot of fun and otherwise be a great asset to the team), then please, don't complain about that character being useless in combat. Don't blame it on the system. It's your choice.

Bye
Thanee

I would just prefer it if Skill were more important than having multiple IPs. As it stands now a low Skill character with several IPs will probably win more often against another character with high Skill but only a single IP, all other things being equal. IMO there is just too much importance placed on having multiple IPs in a game with even a moderate amount of combat. If the standard was 1 IP, with the possibility of gaining a 2nd IP from top of the line cyber, Adept Powers or what have you, then you could still have your combat monsters who have an edge without everyone else feeling quite so useless during combat. I just don't see any real need to have more than 1 extra IP to separate the combat monsters from everyone else. YMMV.

Yep, it's rather like playing a Bard in D&D and complaining that you suck in combat. Or a mage and complaining that you're no good in melee.

I never said anyone was useless in combat, what I said was that having a large mismatch in IP can cause boredom among the players. That is a problem.

Not everyone wants to play a combat monster and that is a choice, however when most social situations play out in 30 or so minutes, and even the combat characters can be involved in that, while combat with a lot of IPs play out in 60+ minutes and anyone who is playing someone not combat-centered is sitting out for a very large portion of that time is a problem. It is a problem that can be countered by forcing everyone to go one direction or the other. Making everyone have multiple IP balances everything out, and makes it more difficult to have opposition that is a challenge, where forcing everyone to less IP still maintains balance and makes balancing the opposition much easier. In the second situation the combat oriented characters have a standard two IP and the non-combat oriented have only one. This still allows the combat characters to shine in combat and doesn't have anyone sitting around for long periods of time (or heading out for pizza in the middle of combat because they know they have the time).

We have found ways to shorten the combat without hand-waiving anything, but SR combat has always taken more time than most systems due to the sheer number of options open to the characters and the number of dice rolls. My very first experience with SR combat (in 1993 or 1994) took over four hours for one player and six NPCs. We gave up at that point and went back to reading the books. Several months later we tried it again and it did go faster but was still slow when compared to other systems. That hasn't changed. SR combat is slow.

Multiple IP has one more drawback... movement. SR movement is wonky as it is, putting in additional IP makes this problem even worse. Charging attacks at a distance greater than the minimum possible charge distance becomes pointless with multiple IP. There are other examples but this post is too long as is, and I have taken away too much from the OP.

I really don't feel that multiple IP is a core feature of Shadowrun as others have suggested. If it was all player characters would start with a minimum of two IP for free and mooks would still only have one. That would make it core.

So to summarize I don't feel multiple IP is truly broken, but it is problematic.

-D

I (and my group) Agree completely.

-D

I don't see that at all. Lets say you have 6 mooks with 1 IP each, and 3 characters with 1 IP and one character with 4 IP. That means that the characters get to act 3/10ths of the combat. If you restrict the combat character to 2 IP, then they get to act 3/8ths of the combat. It really isn't that big of a change. They actually get more benefit by instead increasing themselves to 2 IP, then they get to act 6/13ths of the time. And I really don't see that it is easier to balance out low IPs than normal IPs.

Not really. I mean, if you're doing it wrong it is slow, but if you're doing it right it shouldn't take long at all.

There is a small problem with movement.

Not really. Having them being exceedingly common, able to be gained in a multitude of ways, and being a major part of a large part of the game makes them a core feature of Shadowrun. There are a half dozen ways to get IPs, and they are very important in combat. That's kind of like saying magic isn't a core feature of D&D because not every character starts with magic.

It is absolutely true that Shadowrun combat strongly rewards multiple Initiative Passes. I believe that a player who chooses a PC with 1 IP should not be complaining about the combat system skewing against him. He made the choice, let him live (or die) with it. I have two PCs on the go right now who have 1 IP. I deal with it.

I most strongly believe that the GM should gear the game to the team in front of him, rather than some arbitrary team for which the game system may be seen to be designed. There are lots and lots of ways for PCs to contribute outside of combat. If combat happens, then a weakness there should show, just as another's weakness may arise elsewhere. If the GM is gearing a game to a team of sams, and the players have generated a team of faces, then there is a disconnect the GM should fix, either by retooling the runs he makes for them, or talking it over with the players in the hopes of generating a different kind of team.

Agreed.

I do like the debate that is happening here about IP. I don’t see either argument as wrong or right. The OP asks if multiple IP is broken. I think that it is not, however it is something that weighs heavily into balance. As a GM (or player) it is something that needs to be watched and very carefully balanced for.

Good show.

-D

I also don't think that it is necessarily "broken", but it does create some wonkiness in the game. For me its simply a matter of personal preference. I prefer my cyber-punk game a little less "super-heroic" in scope and less combat focused. As such I don't want every combat monster in the game to be faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. I know I'm in the minority there as most SR players rather enjoy the Cyber & Magic as super-powers setup that the RAW supports. Nothing wrong with that, its just not really my cup 'o tea.

Why not just house rule that a character can divide their movement up as they please across IPs (instead of evenly dividing movement up by IP)? If they sprint during an IP, only any movement they take during that IP is affected.

Gives a slight boost to multi-IP characters, but it's not game-breaking, is it?

Sounds like a reasonable way to stop the oddness of a 1 IP character being able to charge further than a multi IP character.

Personally I like to handle it by forcing 1 IP characters to split up their movement over multiple IPs. Basically if they want to run their maximum movement, they'll just be moving for IPs 1-3, and then actually reach where they are going and get to do their actions on IP 4.

Otherwise you get melee characters that are able to close in on ranged characters well before they should be able to, denying the ranged characters the use of their IPs to shoot the charging character as they close, which they should be able to do if they have multiple IPs.

Personally I think an aspect of SR that gets left out too often is that there are big bad forces out there, and they'll gang up on you. Maybe in the barrens or deep in the woods you can have some D&D door kicking fun.

However in many cases there will be reinforcements inbound, and they will be potent. When players are doing anything in a AA or better neighborhood or if they're going against any opponent with resources they should always feel the clock ticking if they've been found out. Remember, even a small corp executive could drop a couple hundred thousand nuyen on some elementals who will arrive in all too little time for example. Lone star has drones, choppers, and a couple LAVs. ANd who the knows what the heck the megas might send. Don't even think for a millisecond that Shadowrun is supposed to have all encounters being within a proper challenge rating of the players or whatever.

The bottom line being that no matter how deadly your players are, they're going down if they take too long or get found out to early. And don't be afraid of letting that happen, this edition has that whole "burn some edge and get out free" thing. At first that bugged me as a GM as I thought it would lowering tension, however ultimately I've found it quite...liberating.

I find that when this aspect of the game is in place than the non combat skills naturally bubble up to the surface. It's not that you'll have no combat in your game. But the team will let the face, hacker, and sneaky dude do their things for as long as they can so that hopefully any combat is short and sweet and on the way out the door.

Of course its a vast advantage. Its the equivalent of moving at twice the speed (or more) of a normal human being.

If you treat combat as a game of targets to be serviced, then it becomes an even bigger advantage. Especially in close where everything is lethal. Some potential solutions without core system overhaul

1) Delayed actions. If a one IP character wants to act in later IPs, he uses the delayed action rule to wait...until the next IP. This means that yes, with guns, you can fire in the 1st IP, then fire again in the 2nd IP. or 3rd, or 4th. As mathematically efficient as firing both in the 1st IP? No, but it allows tactical flexibility.

2) Make your combat more realistic. Less "there are four guards, one drone, etc and they are here here and here, please select optimum killing sequence" and more "what the hell is going on, sh1t! window, saw him for a second..which window..hold on..hold on..trying to get it to you as an ARO for it. Brrraaap! Where did that come from!??"" Because when the enemy is only exposed for one IP, There's not a whole lot the 4 IP guy can do other than hammer the cover or pump HE into a room, ESEPCIALLY if you say "sorry, the face or the investigator who passed the perception check saw him, but not you. You need to wait for HIS next IP to come around before he can link you the info."

As has been pointed out previously, every single character starts out with the ability to act in multiple IPs.

It's called Edge.
If you're in a combat situation and you need to act again, you can, provided you aren't edge-dead.

You really don't understand the combat system or damage output.

Those melee sammies need 4 IPs so they can burn and IP or two for full defense actions so they have a better chance of not getting shot while still being able to knock in people's teeth. This is precisely why a sammy requires more IPs than the opposition to be most effective.

Character with 2 IP can be more than capable of dishing out more damage than someone with 4 IP, and that's assuming the 4IP character is going all out offensive.

--



That's an argument FOR multiple IPs. The faster stuff dies, the more time you have against that clock.

Easy "fix", adjust every movement rate to a multiple of 4 for easy calculation and consider that everyone has 4 IP's for movement, so every IP you can, at least, move your character at 1/4 of the total movement. So far, my group has been playing this way and we had no problems so far.

I see a few 'combat takes too long 'remarks. People need to get thier pools together, you should have a quick list ready to go that has your standard positive modifers already added up and then you just subtract any situational modifiers and roll. This is particulary true of the people who don't like combat and take a while to add up all thier modifiers, make a little index card that has your basic stats on it, maybe something like:

9 Initiative
3 IPs
3.33/8.33 (10/25) Movement Walk/Run
10/7 Armor (+6 Electrical)

Ares Predator IV: 14 Dice 6P -2AP
SA 15(c ) 5/20(-1)/40(-2)/60(-3)
Hammerli 620S: 12 Dice 6S -1/2 Impact
SA 6(c ) 5/20(-1)/40(-2)/60(-3)
Unarmed: 8 Dice 3S
Melee Defense: 9 Dice
Melee Full Defense: 13 Dice
Ranged Defense: 5 Dice
Ranged Full Defense: 9 Dice

I agree faux. No need for a person's IP to take more than a minute or so, and half that is just going to be counting the hits on the dice.

If the problem is that the players are taking forever to figure out what they should do, well, that is a problem with the players, not the game. Consider setting a time limit on how long they have to think about their actions. Their characters only have 3 (relative) seconds after all.

Rolling dices in SR would be one reason for me to want a better mobile.
Just to be able to programm and use an Application that quickly counts and rolls dice.

Or better yet an App in which i save dicepools an roll them by just clicking.

need smartphone >.<


And i totally agree that everyone should know their dicepools or have them written down somewhere.
The only problem is, that the GM is one of the slowest in our group and always needs lots of time to figure out pools and hits...

We had one player in a game whos average turn went like this:

GM: Its your turn Player 3
...
GM: Yo, PLayer 3 its your turn
Player 3: (Puts phone down) Oh, ok. I attack that guy.
Player 1: No, thats me.
Player 3: I attack that guy then.
Player 2: ...and thats me.
Player 3: Well who'd I attack last turn.
GM: This one.
Player 3: ...but he's not next to me.
GM: He moved on his turn.
Player 3: Ok, I move here and attack.
Player 2: You mean move here to flank with me right? You are a rogue.

Personally my IPs are over really quick, I pay attention to happens between when I go and when I get to go again. During that time I formulate a couple of courses of action that I might want to take and prioritize them, then depending on what occurs during the round make adjustments to my plans, even scrapping and/or creating new plans of action as I see opportunities open and close. So when my turn comes up I've already got my dice counted out, I declare what I'm doing, ask if there are any modifiers like range or vision, then roll.

There's nothing like the feel of tossing dem bones.

Anyway, if you're adventurous, just paint your dice. Paint the 1 red, the 5 green, and the 6 blue.

--



The major causes I attribute to lengthy combat.

1 - Not knowing your values.
2a - Not paying attention.
2b - Not thinking about what you want to do when its not your turn.

A character with many IPs but low skill will shoot often, hit occasionally, kill little. A character with a lot of skill and few IPs will shoot rarely and kill each time. In other words, the Slow Sniper shoots the Fast Maniac stone dead in the first IP. Combat over.




Keeping people amused is important, obviously. But multiple IPs isn't a problem unless you're the only doofus without them. If you have to wait through IPs 2-4 while everyone else is doing stuff, sure you'll be bored, but why do you have so much fewer IPs than everyone else anyway?
If only a few characters have many IPs, then a round will be 1-2 IPs of everyone doing stuff, then the Sam going Blam!Blam!Blam!Blam! and it's time for next round; it should go pretty fast.



My experience is the other way around; social activity, hacking magical scouting and other legwork takes forever and the action-focused characters wait, wait, wait..





There are lots of time-saving tricks for combat, most of them developed in the D&D world, that carry over quite well to Shadowrun. Make sure all the IP-heavies have a cheat sheet with all the common checks and stats on them to reduce page-turning, and enforce quick decision-making. "It's your turn. This is the situation; what are you going to do in the next three seconds? Three, two, one.." Over-analysis can slow down a game; make them decide on something, then quickly interpret the rules, resolve dice rolls and determine result, and move on. In combat people shouldn't get ten minutes to choose between options.






Guns are a core feature, but you still need to spend points to acquire them. The cheapest implant to get +1 IP costs 2.2BP, that's practically a giveaway. The only "class" that has trouble with IPs is Technomancers, but they're basically the MagiKarp of all characters. Faces shouldn't whine; Synaptic Boosters is hard to detect and easy on the Essence. Great for a social infiltrator/assassin/self-defense capable build. Mages have a spell, Adepts have a Power, Riggers have drones, Sams have implants. Techies will have to get by with Synaptic Boosters (little need for money anyway) or drugs or drones.



Take cheap D6s, paint the 1 red, the 6 green, the 5 blue, and everything else black. Very quick to count, check for glitches and exploding dice. Because rolling physical dice is just a lot of fun.

3: Even if you know what you want to do, then not knowing how!

It's pretty common that people don't know the rules well enough - even GMs.

If you don't know, and it looks too complicated to look up, the GM can just make it up for now and if it's important, read up on it later for next time.

People who take phone calls during RPGs should be kicked in the shins.

Sometimes it's unavoidable, but taking them away from the table and not holding up play is my preferred option.

Well, your "Slow Sniper" vs. "Fast Maniac" example misses the important part of what I said which is "all other things being equal".

Character A has 3 Skill and 4 IPs. On average Character A should achieve 1 success per attack from skill.
Character B has 6 Skill and 1 IP. On average Character B should achieve 2 successes per attack from skill.

The difference is that after the first IP Character A gets to attack 3 more times before Character B can act again. All other things being equal (i.e. armor, weapons, etc.) Character A will win a majority of the time because that single extra success that Character B might achieve over Character A during the first IP is unlikely to be a determining factor a majority of the time.

Certainly, you could create extreme examples to give Character B the edge, like super-high skill, but that isn't the point. The point is taking 2 average characters who are equal in all other areas except for Skill and number of IPs. In that case the character with more IPs will win a majority of the time. In my example above anything more than 2 IPs for Character A and they will win a majority of the time and at 2 IPs it will be 50/50. So again, all other things being equal, on average having multiple IPs trumps skill.

Except if character B is more skilled, he has a greater chance of surviving A's attack and putting him down when he gets his attack. Extra IPs don't matter if you're in no fit state to use them.

You're trying to boil this down in simplicity to situations that do not mimic on the ground facts. You're perceiving a problem that does not exist, I'm assuming because your group hasn't had enough exposure to enough deadly combat.

1. It is typically front line and melee characters that have/need 4 IP.
2. Melee is a complex action, shooting is a simple action.
3. Front line characters need extra IPs to sacrifice for full-defense in order to survive long enough to close in on opponents.

A shooter with 2 IPs will make 4 attacks. The front liner will 4 IPs will make 2-3 attacks, unless he's a dual-wielding pistoleer (which tend to give me headache contemplating).