Hell... in a recent game, the 5 Gangers ended up against 5 Runners. In the end, the Gangers lost out, but not before throwing a pretty good beat down on the runners. The Runner's heavy hitter (Fomori Mage Killer) was down and out (though unfortunately not quite dead) at the hands of the Troll ganger. It was quite funny indeed.

Sorry, I miscounted. Your total would also be 13/11 if you added two bits of Securetech.



No, they can't. At least not for long. See again the ganger example. It is incredibly easy to drop any dodge pool to 0. Even a great Dragon with a 45 reaction could be dropped to 0 if you have enough guys shooting at him with big enough guns that he has to try to avoid the hits.

High defense numbers are meaningless in SR's combat system unless the GM is not willing to do what it takes to overcome them. The only important thing is making sure that the PCs are built in a way that the GM can overcome them and is willing to do so, and the only way something can be unbalanced is if the players and GM allow it to be. Usually this means that the PC in question is vastly superior to the rest of the team, since there's no way he can be superior to the rest of the world. From the opening post it looks like the GM is having problems with all of the PCs, not just one. That means he can either drop some draconian restrictions on them all or step up his game. The latter lets them play the characters they want without waffle-stomping through every run.

My favourite tactic actually is to adopt an idea from many other games: mooks and bosses. Mooks are like the gangers I described above. They have 3 (or 4 or 5 if they are veteran / elite) in attributes and skills and provide numbers, while the bosses are stated a bit more like PCs. Don't forget the value of tacnets though...they add 2..4 die in most circumstances to all the bad guys.

Bosses on their own are toast: the samurais and mage all focus on them, and the boss goes down. With the numbers though, the boss is much more effective.

Yeah:

Defender has defended against
previous attacks since last action | –1 per additional defense
Attacker firing long wide burst | –5

Means that After 3 or 4 gangers shooting at the same guy, he's sucking -9 dice to his dicepool, worse is those gangers have FA weapons, then he's sucking -13. That will hurt even the most dedicated gun bunny.

Another nice thing for taking out groups of people. If you have 5 guys all lay down suppression fire: They don't take any penalty to their to hit, and it's a cumulative -1 to defense for every player in the area. It won't kill the players, unless they try to charge in, but it will cause them serious issues. Suppressive fire + grenades = fun.

Especially if you start using Flash Bangs with an Airburst. 6 guards, 4 doing suppression fire, 2 throwing flash bang grenades. that's 6S -3 AP x 2 you're soaking.

It depends on who you're fighting, of course.

You know, IKerensky, you could always sit your player down and say to them: "Hey guys, I know you love be uber curbstomping bad asses who have more guns than any third world nation and enough magic to make Dragons notice, but could you guys... I don't know... make real people." I made a character who is a combat medic mage, and here was one comment about the character:



SO you can have a fun character to play, but not so superhuman that they curbstomp everybody.

Great thread all (as I take notes for the gunslinger adept in my campaign),


On spirits using edge, I'd say say don't do unless you want the Players to be asking for their spirits to do so too.

Certainly a summoner can not order a spirit to spend edge.

Personally I like the suggestion that a summoned spirit will only spend edge to save itself some serious pain or if it really likes the summoner (or if doing so will really screw over the summoner if it hates the summoner).

No, they are a very convenient way to tell corp guards whom they have to shoot first.

Remember suppressive fire is not an attack at targets, and the target does not get a defense roll but a REA+Edge roll. As such the character is not defending and does not get the cumulative -1 for multiple machine guns. Also dropping prone which is a free action can be used to avoid the fire altogether. There is no penalty for shooting from the prone position. 6P-1(Assault Rifle and LMG suppressive fire) can be soaked with 19 dice half of the time. I'm too lazy to calculate the probability of taking less than 3 boxes. If that is the case the PC will have no additional penalty from the "suppression". It will add up but fights rarely take very long anyway.

Unless you bought War!, in which case "suppressive fire counts as one attack for the purposes of calculating modifiers to defense tests" and "if a target finds itself in more than one suppressive fire zone at the same time, he makes only one Reaction+Edge Test for the entire Action Phase, with a -1 dice pool modifier per zone beyond the first". However, as you said "the penalty from the defending against multiple attacks does not apply in this case, because resisting a suppressive fire is not a defense test".

Interesting. I love when core mechanics are assembled through a patchwork of variable-quality splatbooks.

Even worse. A possession tradition wage mage. Now the troll hasn't just switched sides he's gotten a hell of a buff.

In the opening post you mentioned the PCs being heavy user (and possibly abusers) of mind-altering magic. That's not going to do much good for their repute. If they're using it even during non-hostile interaction (say using an influence spell on the Johnson to bump up their payrate) and it gets notices, their repute will plummet really fast as nobody will want to deal with them - or at least not without some sort of defense (up to having the meeting's security fragging the mage the second he looks like he's casting).

Indeed. I have noticed that few people tend to enforce the Fluff of the Mental Manipulations in game. Either they forget it, ot they just don't apply it for some reason. Having a Reputaion for using Mind Altering Magics is BAD.

Mechanically, of course, you can only really gain a point of Notoriety for it once. But still, it should matter to those that you deal with.

You know, I'm surprised no one's mentioned the obvious....

Lighting modifiers. Defensive terrain. Cover. All these will be on the side of the mooks, unless the team gets creative. (And then, they deserve the advantage). You don't need to toughen up the stats and rolls to challenge the team.

Also Very true. There are a lot of conditional modifiers that the opposition can use to great effect.

What sorts of situational modifiers can the opposition use that the PCs can't? I'm especially having trouble thinking of any lighting modifiers that won't either cut both ways or be easily negated by a pair of glasses.

Elevation and cover in the proper ambush situation.

Always beware of areas in the Barrens that *DON'T* have wrecked and burned out cars everywhere!

Some things to remember about mental manipulations: they are continually resisted, with victims getting cumulative successes over (Force) rounds until they exceed the caster's successes. This may not matter in most combats, but any time you get out of combat time, it can be very quick - so it isn't that feasible to make someone a puppet for an extended period of time.

Also, control actions and control thoughts take simple actions to give commands, and the victim can act normally when not being commanded. Remember that they are sustained spells, so shooting the mage can disrupt the control by disrupting the spell.

Using these spells against security guards to sow confusion or get someone to open the gate won't get the group into too much hot water, reputation-wise, but using them during the course of things such as negotiations will get them a bad reputation, as well as cost them contacts and make them enemies.

And for the next-biggest gun, the social adept, remember that, unlike the spells mentioned above, social skills are not mind control.

Etiquette lets you fit in and look like you belong, or catch yourself when you are about to make a big social blunder. The best it can usually do is get people to like you, really.

Leadership seems the most powerful, since it involves you getting people to do what you tell them to do, but the big limiter is that you need to have some authority over the people you are using it on, or at least the potential for them to think of you as a leader. You might be able to take charge during a big quake, and get a bunch of people caught in a mall to exit in an orderly fashion. But outside of using Commanding Voice, you won't get a security guard to do what you say.

Negotiation lets you come out ahead in bargaining, but that's all. The Johnson can still only raise his price so much, and the used car salesman won't sell for a loss. So forget about PCs thinking a high negotiation roll can get them free stuff, or even stuff at below cost. If the face is too good, it can come back to bite him as "buyer's remorse" sets in.

Intimidation lets you scare people into doing something for you, or telling you what you want to know. It's only good when you're right there to back it up, and for a little while afterwards, and it breeds resentment or even hatred.

Con is the most versatile of all, both for manipulating people's emotions, and for getting things from them. But keep in mind that con is a hostile act - you are essentially deceiving people. Con artists generally avoid their former marks - you don't have a good chance to con someone more than once (depends on the severity, of course), since once they realize they have been taken advantage of, they will not be receptive to anything the character says.

And that is the key; any social skill needs a receptive target. You might be able to mollify a hostile stranger, but things like enemies, or guards with inflexible security procedures, can trip you up. Read novels about face types, and you will see that their social abilities are not a magic bullet that protects them from people ever reacting negatively to them, even people who would probably have mental Attributes of 1 or 2.

A social adept with 30 dice is like a street samurai with 30 dice - more likely to succeed, but still not able to break the hard limits of the skill itself. That street samurai will hit nearly every time, sure, but he can't shoot faster than his pistol's rate of fire. Similarly, the face can't simply magically make everything go his way - social skills are more subtle manipulations, and take a deft touch to be optimally effective.

I've never really understood Leadership; isn't it really just Persuasion, with a couple funny wrinkles?

Trying to fight with the opponents heavily backlit changes the equation. Flare comp helps, but they can also have UV lamps and do the same trick in total darkness. Heavily dug in positions also makes a huge difference.

Try to use Persuasion on soldiers that are under heavy fire and see how well that works out for you.

"Buddy, can you hear me? Sorry about that illusion spell earlier. Do those bullets sound real? Good! I'm off to a good start then. How do the soldiers on the enemy lines look?"

Works every time with a dice pool of 30.
Except statistically. For some reason it just doesn't work that way with dice and stats.

It's not a war game, CanRay. It's crazy that there's a skill for leading soldiers, but not one for simple persuasion… and that the latter gets rolled up into the former.

That's what happens when you read War! in a ER waiting room while worried out of your gourd.

The book does not say what the victim can or can't do when he is not carrying out an order.If he could operate freely, the spell would be totally useless as everyone would either cry mindrape or call for backup possibly even with a description or videofeed who the caster was

QFT

That would be hilarious.
You're ordered to shoot your friend, so you do. It just so happens you have more initiative passes than the mage, so you then go stabilize your friend, heal him a bit, and shoot the mage in the head.

Or a Mystical Adept that has the same amount of IPs.

*Shakes Head* That was one broken Pixie!

Why do I get the feeling I saw that in a Joss Whedon script?

Interesting suggestion all

To reply a few :

Use different opposition than pure fight. I do, the trick is that the game wont be fun without some fights, and thoses fight tend not to be fun.

Use gangers rolling 8 dices outnumbering PC 3 to 1 in a ambush position : could get boring after the few first times. I tend to outnumber players and use covers but it always work both way. Covers mean it is not open ground and thus the number advantage is lessened. PC are stronger than NPC and thus less hindered than them by lightning and covers, they are also usually more prepared than mere gangers against that. Flare is a one trick pony that wont work every fight. And I find that gangers rolling 8 dices is quite a lot, except if you consider all your gangers to have military training in weapons and smartlink.

Another element is that the Shadowrunners are usually the ones initiating the combat by their action. They could fall into a trap or an ambush but that doesnt sound like thoses are the usual combat condition for them.

About magic, I appreciate the comment on abusing controling magic. The trick is that, if the players are intelligent enough not to make it too much obvious there is not so much of a downside. But in this case it only show that it work correctly.

I feel the drain is far too small for players that usually have their Resist Drain Pool maxed from the start. Combat dont last very long and recuperation between combat is fairly short, no need to use magic, mundane cure for Stun work very well.

About Spirits, obviously there is no other way than to add "unspoken" rules or ressort to munchkinism against munchkinism. I can roll them over with nearly unlimited number of Spirits coming from security command but that wont solve the true problem : that, by the Rules As Written, mages can summon/control far too many spirits, far too much potent. the only limit is not a rule but a mere suggestion that spirit could use Edge to resist (with no real indication of when he should do so) I would have prefered a real rules with real setting.

This article is from the point of view of someone who does not have any uber 150-200+ post char gen characters so keep the viewpoint in mind when you read it.
p 188 sr4a
A magician may only have one unbound spirit summoned at any
given time, and no more bound spirits than her Charisma attribute.
Spirits on remote service and on standby count toward this total.

how high of charisma do they have, how powerful of spirits are they summoning, if they are lower force, full auto bursts from tripoded assault rifles will do them in quite quickly, at higher force levels stun bolts can still do them in. As a mage can summon only one unbound spirit at a time and the spirits are limited to the magic level of the caster for the drain to be stun, I don't see how a single force 6 spirit can utterly ruin a mid-high level facility's day especially if there are mages on call from higher up (astral speed run 5k/ combat turn) From Belleville to Tacoma is about 50km or so. it would then theoretically take 1 min for a mage in astral to move from downtown/high security main buildings to an outlying firm part of the business that stated they were under heavy magical attack.

Spirits are relatively expensive to bind in any quantity. especially if the spirit is causing physical drain. In street magic the authors reference the fact that spirits dislike being bound by people with lower magic than themselves*, and given that statement, as a GM if the players are overusing spirits the next time they attempt to bind a force 6-8+ spirit when you are already rolling 12-16 dice add the spirits edge to the roll and watch the player cry as they now have to resist TWICE the hits of the spirit which could easily cause 12-16p drain, if you want to warn them. Use a spirit of less than their magic attribute first just to show them how much it can hurt them, to urge caution, especially as there is no way to heal magical drain damage aside from first aid/hospitals, and first aid gets a penalty due to the fact they are a magician
sr4a p.178
Neither Stun nor Physical damage resulting from Drain can be healed by magical means such
as sorcery or spirit powers.

a decent ward around the guard booth would come as an unwelcome surprise for someone trying to mind control the guards to get the gate open as a ward adds dice to the willpower test to resist the magic in the first place as well as alerting the mage who set the ward that something is up. (From what I understand)
* I am unsure where I saw this, so I can not be certain that I am not just misremembering it

So what? The flare comp glasses have to cover his eyes, otherwise they'd be fairly useless. Which means our mage is watching his target through an electronic device, which means he can't cast on it, just like he can't cast via a CCTV feed.

I call BS to this post. I just finished a 300BP game and my players had a grand old time.

I unfortunately have to agree with this. A mage can't use any form of non-optical vision enhancement.

Sunglasses are the easiest way of glare compensation. Those needn't be electronic. Furthermore where does it say that as soon as Flare compensation is engaged the user views a video feed? The glasses' lenses are simply made less translucent by use of electronics. You are perceiving nothing electronically.

If a spell originated from the eyes, or the GM just wants to be a jerk you would have problems with indirect combat spells though. But that would be the case for simple corrective lenses as well.

I actually see Persuasion as a part of Negotiation.

Whatever Sengir... That Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, as Dakka Dakka has pointed out above.
Of course, You are free to say that Flare Compensation interferes with Magic. I do not agree with you.

Any Shadowrunner mage without a little bit of cyber is, IMO, a target waiting to get mauled.

My combat medic mage has 1.995 points of cyber/bio. His cybereyes have thermo, low light, Vision Enhancement, smartlink... and yes Flare Comp.

The example was gangers. It can be anything. The important part is that they have the numbers needed to rapidly lower dodge pools and the damage capability to back that up.

8 dice for a grunt isn't a big stretch. The gangers in the core book have 6 dice while the police and corporate security guards have 7. Also, you don't need 8 dice. Once someone's dodge pool is at 0 three dice is plenty to hurt most people.


If the secure facility is designed such that there's one way in and one way out then it's easy for the first triggered alarm to cause a buildup of guards outside rather than a stream of them coming down the hallway in a conga line of death.



There is a threshold for noticing spellcasting. Unless they put the Force very low (and limit their hits) then they're going to have a hard time preventing it from being noticed.



If drain were much higher everyone would just shoot guns. Combat spells have to be usable, and if they knock you out for trying then they're no longer usable.



Summoning is one at a time. Binding costs money (500 x Force). High force spirits (the only ones that are any real trouble to security forces) cost a good deal of money and could even resist the summoning with their Force x 2 dice. Likewise having a bunch of bound spirits on hand could rack up some hefty dice pool penalties (-2 per spirit but only when the situation warrants it).

How many spirits, and how many services each, does the mage typically have? Does he have nothing else to spend his cash on?

Uh yes, sunglasses against strobe lights...then again, I've seen people use surgical gloves when welding, which is about the same level of "protection"

"Line of Sight" is an interesting concept which can cloud some of issues surrounding how magic interacts between the caster and the target.

For reference you'll want to look at p. 183 in SR4A
"The act of choosing a target establishes a mystic link between
caster and target. It is through this “targeting link” which the mana
of a spell construct is channeled to produce a spell effect. Under the
basic Shadowrun rules, such a link requires line of sight or touch. Line
of sight can even be established using reflective surfaces and through
transparent objects, and is subject to normal visibility and lighting
modifiers. As noted above, sighting through an electronic vision-enhancing
device or other technological rendering of the target does not
establish the necessary link."

In gaming terms I would suggest considering "LOS" as a concept primarily from the POV of an outside observer(Classically the GM, or in table top war games, the Referee). The question to be answered is, "Is there a clear line between the caster and the target?" or even better, "Can the Caster perceive the Target?"

Why did I use the word "Perceive"?

Sight is only one means of perception. Assensing is not sight, but awakened beings can all use assensing for targeting. (Awakened creatures without eyeballs can Assense.... spirits, ghouls, etc...)

At this point we have two possible modes for the transfer of magic between caster and target based on the current arguments.

Eyeball Theory
Where the mages eyes are key, and sunglasses and contact lenses will block targeting and casting, and possibly even prevent assensing.

Mystic Link Theory
Both sight and Assensing can be used by the Caster to establish the "Mystic Link", at which point the magical energies are released by the Caster and effect the Target. Physical and Mana spells and powers represent the different ways in which the magical energy is released.

You choose how you want to play, but I generally find the Eyeball Theory at odds with the vast majority of the SR4 game rules and practices.

On a side note I've always wondered if it would be an interesting Quality to have where Hearing could be used as a perceiving sense for establishing the Mystic Link.

Its the 2070's Sengir... The Sunglasses of that Era will not be the sunglasses of ours.

According to the FAQ, you *can* use hearing… or even smell. No, it doesn't really make any sense. (Couldn't resist.)

Just to reiterate. This only applies to indirect combat spells. All other spells can be cast through any transparent medium. If photons travel from the target to the eye of the caster it works.
Yup and the last sentence applies to most of the FAQ. Couldn't resist either.

Well, what's even more irritating, if you're assessing with hearing, the normal visibility and lighting modifiers apply. Which means btw, if it's total darkness, you get a -6 to your targeting roll, even though you're using your sense of smell.

Only if your GM is being stubborn about that. Hearing and/or Smell does not care about Lighting, and Common Sense says that Darkness would not apply for such things, though ambient environmentals will add their own penalties, of course. Also, Your Threshold is likely higher to "perceive" something with Hearing or Smell. And unless you have Aural/Olfaction Boosts (or have exceptional Senses), it is unlikely that you will have a Sense that is even capable of true targeting capabilities. Of course, there is 'ware that can help with this dilemma.

Still does not make any sense though...

No. You can never assense with any of your normal senses. Astral Perception is an additional psychic sense. Even permanently dual-natured critters cannot do that, even though they perceive both planes simultaneously. Assensing always uses that other sense.

It's an other sense where lighting and sight modifiers apply. Which is the weird part.

Persuasion would be a bit of a catch-all social skill;
Con: persuading people to believe something
Negotiation: persuading people to agree to a deal with favorable terms
Etiquette: persuading people you belong and that you're pleasant company
Leadership: persuading the people to follow your lead.

Yeah, I can buy that...