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IKerensky
Hi,

I am planning to start again my SR campaign but I feel the character were to strong the last time... Even since the start using basic rules. They were very seldom indangered by opposition.

Magic user in peculiar were gamebreaker (adepts less than caster but even them), overcasting and spirit summoning make them far too strong, especially as spirit aren't enough limitated in the rules and are so damn fast to summon even on the flight. Mind control, healing or invisibility spell rules, the same than social adept talent they can ruin a scenario very fast by controlling NPC.

I fail to really hurt them in battle because of the amount of concealable armor avaliable, I had to resolve for all opposition to use narrow burst of APCR wich make a lot of the gear in the book totally useless. And even when I hurt them the mage wave his hand and cure it all.

Drain was a great disappointement, especially Overcasting drain who was a plain joke. Magician just doesnt really care about it as it was very easy to cancel/heal.

The only way I feel out of it would have been to resort to true Munchkinism but that is a way I dont want to follow.

Anyone with a set of rules/house rules to produce less strong characters and more lethal background ?
Hagga
Use the background count rules. Add in magical opposition - my favorite are insanely devout catholics who know healing magic, counterspelling and banishing and nothing else. If your mages are walking all over you, you simply aren't using the rules correctly. Huge amounts of concealable armour? Are you applying stacking penalties correctly? Spirits are quite limited - they're also quite strong. They're also very draining to summon at a useful force. Remember to use object resistance rules. Add a few points to that NPC's willpower and feel free to fudge rolls to prevent him being mind controlled, and keep in mind that he's got a damn good idea of what is happening to him (eventually, when he thinks about it) and if he isn't dead he's going to do something horrible to the PC's if it is within his power.

Blade
Drain doesn't magically heal and if you apply all modifiers mundane healing is often not enough to heal all damages.

But before changing rules, I think you'd have to think about what it is you exactly want.
For example, for damages do you want:
- The troll tanks/heavily armored guards or cyborgs to be still difficult to hurt?
- The characters to spend a month in the hospital after each run?
- A punk with a light pistol to be able to kill a streetsamurai?
- A heavily armed opposition to be able to completely wipe out your PCs in a single round?
There are a lot of possibles fixes, but each one of them will have side-effects and the choice you'll make will have an impact on the tone of your game.
In my games, I wanted all characters to get hurt easily (even troll tanks), but tough character to be able to survive longer. That's why I decided to boost condition monitor (8+Body instead of 8+Body/2) and remove the soak roll (armor automatically absorb (rating/2-AP) damages, and non military grade armor degrades quickly after a few hits).

So rather than say "Drain was a great disappointement", tell us what you want drain to be and we'll be able to help you better.
sabs
huge amounts of armor means that you're taking LOTS of stun damage.

You need 27 dice of body+armor to reliably not take stun damage from your standard short burst from an ak-97 (When you absolutely have to kill every mother in the house)

remember bodyx2 is the armor limit, before encumbrance. I prefer body+strength but thats' a different story. So with a 4 body, I can wear roughly 12 points of armor before encumbrance. (That's with abusing the formfitting body armor) 16 soak dice, reliably gets you 5 hits. Sometimes more, occassionally less. Throw in short bursts and people start falling unconcious pretty quick, even without APDS or ex-ex rounds.
Again, Overcasting. You need 18 dice to resist casting force 6 spells consistantly all the time. Use counter magic, use background counts. Adepts are not any more dangerous than a well built Cyber-Sam.

Getting super-crazy high drain resist dicepools is hard.
Willpower(7)+Logic(9) only gets you to 16, and those numbers are hard to get. If you blow a ton of cash and bp you can get willpower(8)+Logic(10) but that's really the top end.
Loch
Background Count (Street Magic p. 117) is your friend for dealing with powergaming magicians. Although really, the less the GM knows about magic, the more powerful it is in-game (the reverse is true with the Matrix).

Armor doesn't really matter when you use things like elemental damage, be it fire spirits, a haywire security system, or just the corpsec grunts toting stick-n-shock rounds to make sure they catch those felons ALIVE for questioning and sentencing. I'm not saying you bust out the laser cannons immediately, but if they're walking everywhere in full combat armor, that becomes a more appropriate response rather quickly.

Or you could do what I did and sic a bunch of hulked-out paracritters on them if they just keep shooting first and asking questions never. I've never seen a gunbunny lose his taste for fighting so fast wobble.gif
Brazilian_Shinobi
While throwing a lot of magicians to attack your PC's is cheesy, since they are rare, you could always use spirits against them too, with the Magician summoning spirits and sending them over to attack the group, never showing him/herself.
Also, summoning spirits on the fly, is quite difficult and draining, unless your magician have both drain stats maximized and a summoning focus.
Sengir
Killer security vs. mages: The building lights switch to strobe once an intruder alarm is triggered. Issuing guards cheap flare compensation glasses is no biggie, but a mage without cybereyes gets a -4 modifier for all spells and can safely be considered distracted for other tasks (like summoning).

If the action is not in a building, flash-paks do the same trick.
Warlordtheft
For increased lethality things to kkep in mind regarding NPC's:

Group edge for low level mooks:set at 2, 3 for mid level mooks. High level NPC's get their own edge (all mages are high level NPC's). Use it to go first, shoot straighter or other wise frag with the PCs.

Overcasting:Yeah, they do realize this physical damage from overcasting can't be healed magically?

Armor:After each attack that hits reduce the armor by 1 impact & ballistic (an optional rule I use).

Spirits have edge, use it. Also be aware of all the spirits powers and have a general plan for how the spirit will use them.

Security plan: How will security react to an intrusion. How long till back-up arrives?

Rember-well equipped guards have ultra-sound sights--unlless it is a cake walk standard guards could have cheap 2nd hand cyberware (older editions this was hard to justify--but lvl 1 wired reflexes can cost as little as 10K nuyen.

Remember that each attack reduces a defense roll by 1.

Layered armor does not have the same concealibility as armor by itself.

Stick and Shock works both ways. Also, nonconductivity is a really cheap.

Magical support is the only reliable counter to magic. Use it, cause if the target is important the guards will have magical support.

NPC's should remember to use cover and spread out (why I prefer to use maps in combat).










Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Sengir @ May 5 2011, 06:18 AM) *
Killer security vs. mages: The building lights switch to strobe once an intruder alarm is triggered. Issuing guards cheap flare compensation glasses is no biggie, but a mage without cybereyes gets a -4 modifier for all spells and can safely be considered distracted for other tasks (like summoning).

If the action is not in a building, flash-paks do the same trick.


And yet, the Mage could have those same cheap Flare Compensation Glasses. wobble.gif
After all, they are not using the glasses to target anything. So no worries there.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
[quote name='Warlordtheft' date='May 5 2011, 06:19 AM' post='1066523']
Rember-well equipped guards have ultra-sound sights--unlless it is a cake walk standard guards could have cheap 2nd hand cyberware (older editions this was hard to justify--but lvl 1 wired reflexes can cost as little as 10K nuyen.[quote]

Since Brand New Wired Reflexes 1 only costs 11,000 Nuyen, the used stuff is downright cheap at 5,500 Nuyen. smile.gif

CeeJay
Just two more things regarding magic:

- Casting of high force spells is very obvious (Perception test with threshold 6 minus force of spell). This makes 'controlling NPCs' in the public quite difficult...

- Make liberal use of wards! Wards are quite cheap and are a good way restrict the the mobility of spirits.

-CJ
Wesley Street
@OP. Limit your PCs to 300BP in charagen. It doesn't stop min-maxing but it definitely makes "standard" obstacles more formidable. Also, if the only challenges you're throwing at your players are ones that can be overcome via combat, you're not offering up enough diversity in-game. Mix it up a bit. Perhaps an adventure can only be overcome with investigation or some sort of diplomacy or negotiation. Your players may be sensing that you're only offering up one kind of obstacle and are modifying their characters to compensate.
nezumi
I don't know how new you are to the game. SR has layers of mechanics, so it's hard to master everything at once. If you are new, I would recommend you pull in one area (probably physical combat), master that, then move on to magic. The rules are complex enough that grabbing everything at once will result in a GM missing details, and that results in unexpected power shifts. If it's too late for that, just review the rules and maybe give some examples of play so we can critique your rules understanding.

Next to that ... armor is cheap. It comes with penalties though. Make sure those are enforced. If they are, well, why aren't your guards wearing armor too?

Defenses should always have layers covering each other. So have several perimeters, passive and active detection, magical and matrix overwatch and drones. If your defense is missing one of these, the PCs will exploit it and stomp all over everything. Also remember targeting; hit the mage first (at a distance and concealment, if possible), then the rigger, adept, street sammie and decker, in that order. Try to match your attacker to its target. Rigger or sniper vs. mage, sniper vs. adept, mage, magical critter or decker vs. street sammie, decker or rigger vs. rigger.

If the PCs are still busting everything, check out drones. They're much more immune to magic, they can carry heavier hardware and armor, they can be networked together to always use the optimum tactics (and provide indirect firing data, so you can have a tiny drone spotting and a big gun much further behind).

Blade
Since we've drifted towards a "non house-rule fixes" discussion, you can solve all your problems with a single thing:
Drones!

Drones don't care that you're wearing a heavy armor, you won't stay up very long against fully compensated long bursts.
Drones don't fear your stupid stun spells and your useless mana spells.
Drones don't find your pornomancer attractive.
Drones see through your magic invisibility.
Drones can't be mind-controlled by magic.
Drones do have a tendancy to listen to the hacker rather than their own orders but I guess you can't have everything...

And seriously, when you compare the price and maintenance cost of a security drone to the salary and equipement cost of a metahuman guard, you figure out that drones should be much more common than most GM think they are. Sure they can be hacked, but it's not THAT easy, especially when you have many of them or a spider/rigger to keep an eye on them.
Ascalaphus
What kind of opposition are you using? If it's just gangers from the Barrens, then 400bp characters are certainly going to destroy them. They might get in a few lucky shots, but mostly the PCs will win easily, because 400bp is just a lot more than the gangers are built out of.

CorpSec gets a lot of force multiplication from having a well-thought out plan to deal with intruders. Instead of just posting some guards in a couple of rooms, sit back for a couple of hours and really think out: if I were security director, how would I make sure no intruder lives longer than a few seconds once detected?

How well do you know the game system? It could be that you're overlooking important rules, particularly magic rules, which makes it too easy for the players.

If you're stuck without ideas on effective tactics, recruit the players. Run an adventure where they're hired to defend a base against NPCs who happen to have the same kind of powers and use the same kind of tactics that the PCs use. Watch how the players deal with it, and learn.

On to some of your specific comments:
Overcasting:
* It's extremely visible. All spellcasting leaves magical signatures that take a number of Complex Actions equal to the spell's Force to clean up, and last for Force hours. Overcasting is easy on the forensics guys.
* Physical Drain

Drain
* Can't be healed with Magic, and First Aid will not always heal the whole thing.

Easy Healing
* Generally healing, with First Aid or spell, takes a number of Complex Actions or even Turns equal to the damage to be healed, to complete. This means that healing will delay the PCs, giving security time to prepare a response, close down escape ways etcetera.

Armor
* A Body 5 character can wear up to 13 points of armor (of which 6 concealed) without Encumbrance penalties. (Enforce those penalties!) That means at most 18 dice to resist damage, for an average of 6 hits. Guns do at least [4+Net Hits] damage; so with a bad gun a security guard needs to get in 3 hits post-Reaction to do damage; not great. But if he has a Ruger Super Warhawk with Ex-Ex, he does [7+Net Hits] and -3 AP; then the average damage at 1 net hit is already 3.
* Tasers and Stick-'n'-Shock have AP -half. Against the well-armored dude above, SnS on a DV4 gun does an average of [Net Hits] damage, instead of [Net Hits -2]. On a Ruger, it does [Net Hits +4] average.
* You can also use bursts and auto fire instead.

Professional guards use
* Tacnet
* Smartlink
* Specialization on their main gun
* Good ammo
* Good gun

Also, try concentrated fire: one guard uses Suppressive Fire to distract most of the PCs, while all the other guards shoot at the magician. That's -1 die to dodge per shot; soon enough he's not dodging but dying instead.

Drone turrets with guns have no recoil and can't be mind-controlled. Wired, not wireless; likely too much work to hack. Not even all that expensive really.

It's not munchkinism for a security director to use technology optimally. That's just being a competent security director.
Sengir
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ May 5 2011, 02:23 PM) *
After all, they are not using the glasses to target anything. So no worries there.

If he's casting spells he does...
Blade
QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ May 5 2011, 03:57 PM) *
Professional guards use
* Tacnet
* Smartlink
* Specialization on their main gun
* Good ammo
* Good gun

* Home Ground (the place they're defending)
sabs
Mages wearing contacs/glasses will have problems with spells fizzling in their face. Indirect Combat spells will often explode at their glasses. Which means eating a firebolt to the face. Enforce the LOS and window/mirror issues.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Sengir @ May 5 2011, 06:58 AM) *
If he's casting spells he does...


No He Doesn't... he is not using the "Sense" of FLare Compensation to cast Spells (Flare Comp cannot be used to target). A Pair of Sunglasses does not impede Spellcasting.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (sabs @ May 5 2011, 07:02 AM) *
Mages wearing contacs/glasses will have problems with spells fizzling in their face. Indirect Combat spells will often explode at their glasses. Which means eating a firebolt to the face. Enforce the LOS and window/mirror issues.

Spells do not originate at the Eyes. Where do you get that?
sabs
Indirect Combat spells generate a spell construct at the point of origin (the caster) which travels down the mystic link to the chosen target.
As they travel down the link to the chosen target such effects may be impeded by physical obstacles or mana barriers. They may impact transparent obstacles (such as glass) and do not “bounce” off reflective surfaces used for line of sight.

It's an interpretation, but given that /sight/ is a key component of the mystic link, it's valid. You run into issues with the ManaSight Goggles, but really that shit is broken anyways, so I don't particularly feel bad about that.

Direct spells though, those work great through glasses.
Irion
@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
You need a free LOS.

QUOTE
A Pair of Sunglasses does not impede Spellcasting.

No, it does not. As long as it is optical.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Irion @ May 5 2011, 07:18 AM) *
@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
You need a free LOS.


Your LOS IS FREE. Your magic does not shoot from your eyes (Your not Cyclops afterall). I agree that Indirect Spells will likely impact any intervening barriers, as they should. But GM Dickery of having Indirect Spells impact Sunglasses is Stupid.

QUOTE
No, it does not. As long as it is optical.


And Flare Compensation is Optical... ALA Sunglasses... Sheesh...
UmaroVI
You seem to be describing two problems. Figure out which of them is actually the problem, or if it is both, make sure of that!

1) "Mages are better than the other PCs and outshine everyone else."

2) "My PCs are too powerful compared to NPCs."

One fix for #1 is to be a passive-aggressive jerk and "interpret" rules like "it's totally valid to say that sunglasses will make a fireball explode in your face, lol," or the people who think that having literally an entire city in background count 1-2 is sensible, but not tell your players upfront and surprise them with your not-a-houserule-its-a-completely-valid-interpretation-of-RAW houserules. Or you could be direct and impose some houserules to weaken mages and then tell your players before they make their characters. By the way, if you are finding that non-cybered physical adepts outshine street samurai then someone is doing something wrong.

The fix for #2 is to either give your PCs less BPs, or beef up the opposition.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (sabs @ May 5 2011, 07:15 AM) *
Indirect Combat spells generate a spell construct at the point of origin (the caster) which travels down the mystic link to the chosen target.
As they travel down the link to the chosen target such effects may be impeded by physical obstacles or mana barriers. They may impact transparent obstacles (such as glass) and do not “bounce” off reflective surfaces used for line of sight.

It's an interpretation, but given that /sight/ is a key component of the mystic link, it's valid. You run into issues with the ManaSight Goggles, but really that shit is broken anyways, so I don't particularly feel bad about that.

Direct spells though, those work great through glasses.


Your Interpretation is wonky, though, BECAUSE of the Mage Sight Goggles. They Work, becuase they Work. Which is why I said that it is just Dickery to have Indirect Spells Impact upon worn glasses. I agree that you should impose the physical objects that actually impose, but that is going way to far, in my opinion. wobble.gif
longbowrocks
Don't forget to apply the spirit's edge to its summoning resist roll if you think its pretty strong.
sabs
Mage sight goggles are an affront to shadowrun smile.gif Mages are plenty powerful enough without having these crazy fiberoptic goggles of win.
James McMurray
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ May 5 2011, 08:27 AM) *
Since Brand New Wired Reflexes 1 only costs 11,000 Nuyen, the used stuff is downright cheap at 5,500 Nuyen. smile.gif


Cram is 10:nuyen:, Jazz is 75:nuyen:, and even Kamikaze is only 100:nuyen:. A single dose of any of those is probably more than enough to last a typical security guard 6+ months.

QUOTE (Wesley Street @ May 5 2011, 08:34 AM) *
@OP. Limit your PCs to 300BP in charagen. It doesn't stop min-maxing but it definitely makes "standard" obstacles more formidable. Also, if the only challenges you're throwing at your players are ones that can be overcome via combat, you're not offering up enough diversity in-game. Mix it up a bit. Perhaps an adventure can only be overcome with investigation or some sort of diplomacy or negotiation. Your players may be sensing that you're only offering up one kind of obstacle and are modifying their characters to compensate.


Or use the karma generation system in Runner's Companion. You start with the same basic resources as a 400BP character but maxing things out is much more costly.
longbowrocks
QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ May 5 2011, 05:57 AM) *
Armor
* A Body 5 character can wear up to 13 points of armor (of which 6 concealed) without Encumbrance penalties.

Isn't it body * 2, and evey 2 points over that is a cumulative -1 penalty? In other words, shouldn't he only be able to go up to 11 without penalties?
sabs
form fitting full body armor is 6/2, but counts as 3/1 for purposes of encumbrance when stacking it with other armor.

SO: 5 body = FFFBA: 6/2 + Steam punk OverCoat(3/3)+ SteamPunk Vest(2/2) + Steampunk Pants(1/1) + Steampunk shirt(1/1)=13/9 with 0 encumbrance.

Fortinbras
Also, don't forget that if you need some examples of more balanced foes, the free Missions on the CGL site has tons of examples.
I've found when new GMs tackle Shadowrun they forget how dangerous more, weaker characters can be compared to a equal amount of more dangerous characters.
Don't forget to impose visual penalties to the spellcaster and don't forget that your NPCs shoot twice per IP.
When in doubt, take a look at some published runs and draw from there.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (sabs @ May 5 2011, 07:32 AM) *
Mage sight goggles are an affront to shadowrun smile.gif Mages are plenty powerful enough without having these crazy fiberoptic goggles of win.


Ehhh... They are Niche. Rarely have I seen a Mage that uses them. The penalties (-3 for Mage Sight Goggles, and -1 for Spellcasting from Cover... so minimum of -4, not counting visibility modifiers) are severe enough that they are only used in the direst of circumstances in my experience. wobble.gif
James McMurray
Remember that as GM you have infinite numbers on your side. It doesn't matter what the PCs have, you can have more. For instance, take a troll with 10 reaction and 30 soak dice. He can avoid any harm, right? Yeah, but not for long. 10 gangers with BF weapons can pretty easily take him down even though they'll have 2 dice on a long burst. The first 9 fire wide bursts and hope they hit. They should, but they're unlikely to get the 4 successes they need to stage the damage up past where he can soak it. But then the last guy fires a short narrow burst. The troll no longer has any defense dice, so he's soaking 8P/-1 plus successes. He'll probably take a point or two and it'll probably be stun. The next simple action is a long narrow burst, which he again can't dodge. Now he's soaking 11P/-1 plus successes. If that ganger spends one of their Edge on each shot you could easily drop the troll since his stun track can't be as big as his physical one and he's set himself up to almost always take stun damage.

Likewise, Control Thoughts is scary. But a typical runner is controlling the thoughts of a security guard while a typical security mage is controlling the thoughts of the aforementioned troll. Which one is nastier?

You mentioned healing drain making overcasting a joke. Drain can't be healed by magic and physical damage takes a long time to heal normally (at least a full day of rest).

What does the social adept do that ruins things? The only thing I can think of is compelling voice, but that only controls the target if you allow it. a lot of the time it just means that the adept spent one action to steal one action from an enemy.

Also, what are their weak spots? If the combat beast with a 1 charisma and no social skills only ever has to look up from the novel he's reading when a fight starts, he's going to seem a lot more powerful than he really is.
sabs
Never underestimate the power of suppression fire being fired by multiple people.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 5 2011, 07:35 AM) *
Cram is 10:nuyen:, Jazz is 75:nuyen:, and even Kamikaze is only 100:nuyen:. A single dose of any of those is probably more than enough to last a typical security guard 6+ months.


Quite possibly. But then you have to worry about your guards becomming addicted to the substance, have a recovery program, etc. In this day and age when Quality Security has tens of thousands spent in their training and outfitting, I do not see it as a stretch, in the 2070's) to provide a small bit of 'ware. And you have to admit, Wired reflexes are a hell of an equalizer. wobble.gif

QUOTE
Or use the karma generation system in Runner's Companion. You start with the same basic resources as a 400BP character but maxing things out is much more costly.


Karma Generation has its own issues, though. However, It is a viable alternative. smile.gif
James McMurray
QUOTE (sabs @ May 5 2011, 09:40 AM) *
form fitting full body armor is 6/2, but counts as 3/1 for purposes of encumbrance when stacking it with other armor.

SO: 5 body = FFFBA: 6/2 + Steam punk OverCoat(3/3)+ SteamPunk Vest(2/2) + Steampunk Pants(1/1) + Steampunk shirt(1/1)=13/9 with 0 encumbrance.


Armor encumbrance doesn't round down. Every 2 points (or fraction thereof) that your armor rating exceeds your Body x 2 costs you a point of agility. With 5 body you could have Armor Vest (6/4) + FFBA (6/2) + Securetech Forearm Guards (0/1) + Shin Guards (0/1) + Vitals Protector (1/1) + Helmet (0/2) = 13/11, but 10/10 for encumbrance. Toss softweave into the mix and it can go even higher. Concealability isn't really a factor since none of it's illegal.
James McMurray
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ May 5 2011, 09:47 AM) *
Quite possibly. But then you have to worry about your guards becomming addicted to the substance, have a recovery program, etc. In this day and age when Quality Security has tens of thousands spent in their training and outfitting, I do not see it as a stretch, in the 2070's) to provide a small bit of 'ware. And you have to admit, Wired reflexes are a hell of an equalizer. wobble.gif


Every beat copper carries 2 doses of jazz. Something tells me that, given how rare they'd have to use it, addiction isn't really a problem. Likewise, the addiciton rules themselves mean that if you're only an occasional user you're fine.

Besides, when Security Guard #17462917-B shows up saying he "lost his jazz inhaler" you don't rush him off to rehab. You fire his druggie ass and hire one of the thousands of out of work Lone Star cops to take his place. Knight Errant's takeover of Seattle's contract was a boon for corporate security divisions everywhere. biggrin.gif
Sengir
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ May 5 2011, 02:08 PM) *
No He Doesn't... he is not using the "Sense" of FLare Compensation to cast Spells (Flare Comp cannot be used to target).

He is watching the target through an electronic device. Electronics and Magic don't like each other
sabs
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 5 2011, 02:56 PM) *
Armor encumbrance doesn't round down. Every 2 points (or fraction thereof) that your armor rating exceeds your Body x 2 costs you a point of agility. With 5 body you could have Armor Vest (6/4) + FFBA (6/2) + Securetech Forearm Guards (0/1) + Shin Guards (0/1) + Vitals Protector (1/1) + Helmet (0/2) = 13/11, but 10/10 for encumbrance. Toss softweave into the mix and it can go even higher. Concealability isn't really a factor since none of it's illegal.


That's EXACTLY the same amount of armor I listed! except with a slightly different armor package. And softweave is from War! Huh! What is it good for, absolutely NOTHING. The worse SR book /ever/.

So what we've said is with Body 5, you can get 13 points of ballistic/11 points Impact.
More importantly with Body 2, you can get 7/5 which is pretty sweet. But even 13 points of armor only slows down an AK-97, it doesn't make you immune to it.

Where it breaks down is the body 9 trolls smile.gif who can put together dicepools in the HIGH 30's.


Fortinbras
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 5 2011, 10:02 AM) *
Every beat copper carries 2 doses of jazz. Something tells me that, given how rare they'd have to use it, addiction isn't really a problem.

I don't know. I've read A Scanner Darkly.
DireRadiant
Shadowrun is not Arena combat. Arena combat can be part of Shadowrun, but it is small subset.

Forget Mechanics. Don't look for attack and defense numbers for NPC to beat PCs.

Strategy > Tactics > PC Attack/Defense numbers.

Tactics tactics tactics! Use them.

That smart corp sec team is going to use every single possible advantage to move things into their favor, and they will have the resources of a Megacorp to train them and point them in the right direction. They'll know what to look for and use cover, mutual supporting fire, and combined tactics to create a situation where every possible modifier is a bonus for themselves and a minus for the shadowrunner team. Guards with a base offensive dice pool of 4 with 6 or more extra dice from modifiers going against a typical Runners defensive pools suddenly start having a good chance of putting the runner team down.

Poorly paid mall cops will just get shot in the face and rolled over by the runners... but the bracelet biomonitors will signal for the heavy weapons response team and packs of tracking spirits and astral entities to show up instantly and act as spotters. Spotters who won't engage, act totally defensively, and do their best to stay concealed while drawing in the group of people who will have nothing else on their mind except "GEEK THE MAGE!".

Yep, you have Magic, you're powerful, scary, capable of great things no one else can do. Welcome to the top of everyone's targeting list. Enjoy. With great power comes a bullseye on your back, front, sides, top and bottom.
Dakka Dakka
QUOTE (Wesley Street @ May 5 2011, 03:34 PM) *
@OP. Limit your PCs to 300BP in charagen. It doesn't stop min-maxing but it definitely makes "standard" obstacles more formidable. Also, if the only challenges you're throwing at your players are ones that can be overcome via combat, you're not offering up enough diversity in-game. Mix it up a bit. Perhaps an adventure can only be overcome with investigation or some sort of diplomacy or negotiation. Your players may be sensing that you're only offering up one kind of obstacle and are modifying their characters to compensate.
Don't, just don't. With 300 BP the characters can't even have average attributes (average costs 160 BP which is illegal at that point value). I doubt it will be fun for your players to play such cripples.
Varied obstactles especially those that can't be shot is a good idea.

and +1 to DireRadiant's post.
Irion
Throw a granade.
Blade
If you want to restrict your PC's power after chargen, there are better solutions than restricting BPs: restricting max money/magic/skill rating/availability and banning some gear/powers can be much more useful, especially when you've got munchkins.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Sengir @ May 5 2011, 08:04 AM) *
He is watching the target through an electronic device. Electronics and Magic don't like each other


Flare Comp does not have to be electronic. It can be optical as well...
As for if they are electronic, he is not using them to TARGET a spell... he is using it as a defensive measure against brighht light. Big difference. Sheesh... smile.gif

And Electronics and Magic get along quite famously in Shadowrun. It is not the Dresden Files, after all... smile.gif
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 5 2011, 08:02 AM) *
Every beat copper carries 2 doses of jazz. Something tells me that, given how rare they'd have to use it, addiction isn't really a problem. Likewise, the addiciton rules themselves mean that if you're only an occasional user you're fine.

Besides, when Security Guard #17462917-B shows up saying he "lost his jazz inhaler" you don't rush him off to rehab. You fire his druggie ass and hire one of the thousands of out of work Lone Star cops to take his place. Knight Errant's takeover of Seattle's contract was a boon for corporate security divisions everywhere. biggrin.gif


Sure you do... Right... The Corporations just write off the expenditure of training and outfitting someone, and then spend it again to do so for another. Methinks that you really need a lesson in economics 101 there. wobble.gif

Corps are about the bottom line. They do not fire someone they have spent thousands of nuyen on for training and equipment just because they might need help to kick a habit that has developed because of their primary duties to the corporation. Remember, Corporate Citizens are an investment. Corporations do not throw away their investments casually.
Dez384
QUOTE (Irion @ May 5 2011, 11:43 AM) *
Throw a granade.

Second this. Especially in tight corridors where it rebounds and hits people multiple times.

First action when reacting to an ambush? Throw grenades and get out of the kill zone.


Also, don't be afraid to exploit their negative qualities. They exist for a GM to use to get one up on the players. If a negative quality never comes into play, then it's just free BP.
Seth
I have a much simpler option than the above: numbers

I find a gang of (say) 15 people with 1 or 2 options armed, and about 8 die on their attack with heavy pistols, or worse smgs, can take down almost any PC, as long as they are not stupid.

Stupid is standing in a clump where they can be grenaded or stun balls. The important thing to this strategy is make it hard for the players to kill the gangs in one attack, the other important thing is for all the gangers to shoot at once.

If they are behind cover (lots of visibility modifiers - which apply to spells too), which gives them a bit of armour as well, then they cannot be taken out with a single attack.

As there are 15 of them, and they are shooting twice, that's 30 attacks (I recommend invisible castle to roll when its that many). Every time your super hard characters dodge, they are -1 on the next attack. So if they all shoot at the elf with (say) 15 die in defence, the last 15 he has no defence, and he probably glitched or critically glitched a roll. So now he has been hit 15 times for around 8 damage AP -2.... let me say that another way...he is dead. If he has enough armour to with stand that...you bring in the smgs, and use narrow burst.

This means that the players are losing 1 character at least every time the gang attacks.

By the way the gangs might have a grenade or too themselves... grenades cause players problems

You don't have to use a 15 group gang...even a 10 member gang is good. A 5 member gang however will probably all die before they get a go.
James McMurray
QUOTE (sabs @ May 5 2011, 10:07 AM) *
That's EXACTLY the same amount of armor I listed! except with a slightly different armor package.


No it's not. You said 13/9 and had to break the rules to do it. biggrin.gif

QUOTE
And softweave is from War! Huh! What is it good for, absolutely NOTHING. The worse SR book /ever/.


I won't argue opinions, but I specifically did not use Softweave in my numbers, just said that they could go higher if you use it.

QUOTE
So what we've said is with Body 5, you can get 13 points of ballistic/11 points Impact.
More importantly with Body 2, you can get 7/5 which is pretty sweet. But even 13 points of armor only slows down an AK-97, it doesn't make you immune to it.

Where it breaks down is the body 9 trolls smile.gif who can put together dicepools in the HIGH 30's.


Nah, even that's not a break down. See my earlier post for gangers taking down a 30 soak troll (without resorting to elemental damage or stick-n-shock). If his soak is 35+ the same example works but you give the gangers bigger guns. Soak is the worst possible defense you could have, since it takes 3 soak dice for 1 DV, but only one dodge hit to negate 1 DV. If you're soaking shots you're already in trouble (unless the GM put you up against dudes with SA pistols).
sabs
What rules did I break? I'm really confused as to where I broke any rules?
13/9, 13/11 are both very cose, and I could make it 13/11 if I used the PPP system items that give 0/1 as well smile.gif so that's not really much difference.

5 body = 10 points of uncompensated armor

The Steam Punk outfit has 7. The FFFBA has 6 div2=3 3+7=10

Yes, but Trolls can have both High Dodge and High Soak totals.
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