The troll race, with a racial body increase of +5 eclipses a human's natural body. With players choosing the troll for their combat types because of it's naturally how body, how do you balance the troll so that the other players aren't dying in combat when the troll is staging deadly wounds to light?

mana bolt.

Dikoted weapons.
Spells.
Extra Explosive rounds sprayed out at full auto.
Being hit by very large vehicles (at LEAST car sized).
Adepts with killing hands S or D, and improved unarmed combat out the yang.
Snipers.
Poison.
And, at least once, a greataxe in the hands of a nordic berzerker adept.


Trolls have stats. Trolls are animate objects. Ergo, I can think of a reason and a means to kill any troll PC I've yet seen. They're a lot harder, sure, but that's why god gave us the word 'devious.'

Trolls are nasty pieces of work on the battlefield.

They tend to get screwed everywhere else.

Which, as you've pointed out, tends to be a power-balance problem. We could, of course, arbitrarily raise the damage of weapons against trolls (sorry, 3rd edition initative dig) but the simple fact remains that anything fatal to combat troll is going to annihilation to anything else. You can start giving gangers EX ammo and Ares Alpha combat guns, but the power escalation just gets obscene fast.

That being the case, trolls and augmented samurai just tend to run amok over the battlefield. The smart players hide behind the tanks until the shooting stops.

-Siege

yeah. i mean, that's sorta like complaining that "i've got a player who plays a dekcer, and he's just walking all over these computer systems i made!" trolls eat damage for breakfast. that's their place in life. they way you 'balance' that is, everybody shoots the mage first--and the troll second.

I've found in the past that player overconfidence and stupidity nicely balance out Trolls. Besides, somebody has to soak up all those fireworks or you would be left with two options:
1) take away the opponents' weapons
OR
2) spend every second session starting up new characters

Even the weeniest of gangers can kill mere humans/drawfs/elfs with a couple good rolls going their way (say they get surprise for some odd reason), and there is only so much karma to burn.

Employing the necessary force to wound a troll causes two things to happen
1. Every one hides behind the troll, waiting for combat to resolve it's self. If someone gets caught outside the trolls area of protection, they get geeked by excessive force.

2. The troll becomes even more one-dimensional. Only devoted to combat, the player requires combat to take place in order to see his character being effectual.


Now, number 1 isn't so bad but after a while I can see it getting real old and in turn creating a world where everyone carries heavy ordinance just in case a troll jumps them.

Number 2 exposes the other PCs to risk, especially the other non-troll combat types who deserve the spotlight. I just don't see how it is possible to balance a party combat-wise if they include a single troll.

-put trolls in the opposition; if the meatshield is slugging it out with another meatshield, the rest of the team will have the chance to do their thing

-use drones; same reasoning

-field more bad guys, with the 'extras' ganging up on the troll

-use illusion spells on the troll; take advantage of his low Int

-use spirits on the troll; powers like Confusion can take him out of the fight

Weeelll.....

The smartass in me wants to say....
That's why your job, as the GM, is so hard. It's up to you to balance everything out and make the game fun for everyone.

The nice part of me wants to say....
Stunbolt at D.
Really easy to stage up into Physical and it just rocks.

You can take you pick of the answer that suits you best.

-Wolf

What kind of Combat Pool do Trolls have, in your experience? I find that to be a bit of an evening out factor. Sure Combat Pool only gets you so far since it runs out over the Turn, but it is only there to buy your non-Combat time for that one sprint to cover that saves them.

Once again, personally i find it is the Troll/Orcs that end up in the hospital or morgue.

P.S. Trolls are low on the list of reasons to carry heavy ordinance, well behind Cyberzombies, Red Sammis, armoured vehicles, and blast doors.

Balance? The trolls already balanced if you play him outside of combat. Sure hes a monster in battle, and can do 21S with his dikoted cyber spurs. But can he fast talk the guard? Can he manipulate the simplest computer system? Fit inside a phone boot? Can he walk down the street without the man hassling him? Hell no.

A troll isn't just another metahuman, he is a presence, Have you ever stood next to someone who is 8 feet tall (a small troll). There frigging huge. Treat a troll like the giant he is and the game will more than balance out.

EX ammo ....100¥

Smartlink-2.... -2 to TNs

BF capable shotgun

called shot to the head, bypassing armor...

Priceless.

Even with a body of 18 or so, a troll is going to have a hard time rolling off 4-6 successes on an average shotgun using EX ammo and burst fire (13D) with only a helmet to reduce damage.

Hand-to-hand combat? Outnumber him by 4-1 to increase his target numbers by +4, and use weapons with reach to negate his.

While he's busy defending himself, anyone with a rifle can pop called shots at him and quickly chop him down to size.

IPE Grenades can really ruin a trolls day, (16M stun or 15S Physical).

Shoulder launched LAW (avail 6) will put a nice dent in a troll.

Trolls aren't that indestructible.

As Shadow said, the real balancer for trolls isn't a game stat, or escalation of game lethality with funky ammo or supermegahyper corp ninjas. It's the simple day to day difficulties that come with being 10 feet tall in a world made for people half that height. It's the general public who is, at best, uncomfortable being around the monstrosity who has fists bigger than their head. It's the landlords who won't rent out to you, the shop whose door you can't even fit through, the clothes you can't find to fit.

This is a great question. It isn't just for Trolls, its also for when some characters have much higher karma pool than others. Or when you have two Combat-Oriented samurai on the team but everyone else dies easily in combat. What is challenging for one character may be instantly lethal for the other.

Part of the answer is that the Troll initially attracts fire from all sides, and thus runs out of combat pool earlier in the Combat Turn than others do. Opponents also use their Karma Pool in attacks against the Troll that they might not do against a mere human.

Opponents concentrate fire on the character that appears most threatening.

Opponents use more Combat Pool and more Karma Pool on the most threatening character.

With these intelligent actions on the part of the opponents, weaker characters have more time to take cover. Yes, a weaker character will still get plastered occasionally, but he did choose to make or run that character.

If the first burst bounces off the Troll, opponents switch to autofire and do 6, 7, or 8 round autofire bursts. They can switch back to burst fire when they are done with the troll.

And finally, a point others might disagree with, opponents should use GM knowledge to make combat have the right level of challenge.

Heh, I faced this problem the last time I ran a game. One of my players (also room-mate) played a combat troll named tank, and he was. dermal sheathing and max body, with decent armor. I pretty much could not hurt him with guns.

Then it hit me, and I had my inspiration.
I made an orc phys ad, legally specced out the stats one or two below his (the npc group was a bunch of retired runners, so around 200 karma)
He one-punched the troll when he made a stupid move.

Silly bugger forgot that to do deal damage in melee, you gotta get more successes than your opponent. Imagine his surprise when he dives at someone in close quarters and gets punched in the nose. In the air, he got no chance for a dodge test (this ain't Sega after all) and did not do well on his initial unarmed check. The orc however with around an 8 or 9 unarmed combat and an equally heinous combat pool, knowing it's take this guy out or suffer it's wrath drops all karma and all skill into the test. Stagged the damage to well above deadly (we weren't using the rule for increasing power when going over deadly) the troll barely managed to stage the serious physical (from a single stun based punch) to a deadly stun wound. (called shot to bypass armor can suck mightally) The otehr troll, who was a combat mage immidiately surrendered seeing Tank one punched out cold and was very co-operative to them.

Thing is, the player bitched at the NPC, so I showed him the stats and walked him through the logic, he grokked fine.

I am resisting the urge to get pissed (angry, not drunk).

Trolls are good at combat, it is what they do. It is what players live for if they are a troll. Why do you want to take that away form them?

Do you have plans to reduce the deckers effectiveness? Do you stay up at night working on ways to undermined the dwarf rigger? Do you slap your hands in glee at how you can screw with the elven mage? No, why?

This is like a MMORPG. Where everyones complains cause thae warrior is better in combat than all the other classes. Well of course he is, it's all he does.

Instead of trying to one-punch the troll (which I admit was cool) every time you go into combat, why not let the player have fun? Some of us enjoy Shadowrun for the combat *gasp*. So we make combat oriented characters. The balance comes when there isn't combat we have to make ourselves useful. That should be the true goal: find a way to work with your player so that when the bullets arn't flying, he can have a use.

Otherwise, when the drek hits the fan, let him hit back.

Yeah, there's a fine line between finding ways to challenge a character, and singling a character out for abuse. Trolls and spellslingers aren't really unbalancing. They are more effective in melee, but also attract more of the enemy's attention. The decker cowering behind a car and occasionally plinking with his light pistol may be less effective, but he won't be targetted as much, either. It balances itself.

Now, on the flip side, a good GM should be thinking of ways that he can mess up the decker, the dwarven rigger, and the elf mage.

...but his motivation should be to make the game challenging enough to be fun, NOT to spitefully punish characters just because they are effective at their roles.

I balance trolls by forcing them to take Priority C for race. Harsh, I know, but that's just the kind of game I run.

Ooh, not as bad as me. I subtract shit from their INT and QUI while I'm at it.

And sometimes people are racist at them.

Seriously though, the gangs had that missile for a while, and Trolly McTrollerson looks like a prime target, unless someone comes rolling up in an Abrams at the same time. Then your game sucks.

Every troll or, in some cases, orks need to have an anti-vehicle missile weapon shot at them at least once in their lives. I mean, it's like a rite of passage, almost.

And a good test to see if that 18 modified Body of yours really is worth the nuyen you paid.

I find the priority system tougher on Trolls than the point system, but I also learned that in lower point games (100), the points spent on "troll-up" could really be used elsewhere. However, in higher point games, it doesn't really matter.

nit: I assume that you are talking about SR2 with the requirement to take priority "C" as race for trolls 'cause troll / elf is priority "C" in SR3.

- theartthief

he was being sarcastic, saying that the current limitations on trollage are enough.

theartthief, yeah, he knows it's Priority C, and he smply goes with that. He doesn't layer on other penalties ... other than size of doors, cost of equipment, cost of adjusting vehicle controls, racism, limited employment in Japanese corps ...

I think a lot of us have gotten off the track. I think the original poster knows that Trolls have other penalties.

He is asking for advice on running a challenging combat when there is great diversity in ability of the characters to soak damage. How can he challenge the troll without being instantly lethal to other characters?

Ok, I'll try posting with no flames, so if I say something that seems insulting, it's not intended that way.

First off, a GM should never ask himself: "How can I _________ this character?". That's starting the really bad player vs GM scenario that causes the truest forms of munchkinism. You will be at fault for their next, even more powerful character.

Secondly, a player playing a troll has a ton of negatives to make up for his bonuses in combat. Hell, I can't even get my players to play a troll, not just because the numbers are bad, but because they do "stealth" runs. They don't want to be the big lug (I've only got one that'll even play an Orc.)

Lastly, think about why the player made a troll. If he made it to be a "Tank", then that's obviously what he wants to play. Blasting him away because he made a tank will diminish the fires of excitement RPing had so much of when you started playing. Nothing discourages RPing more than doing something to a character that he spent hours on avoiding at character creation. One-shotting or easily taking down a "Tank" could be detrimental to a gaming atmosphere.

Those 3 things being said, the best way to take down a troll is to gang up on him with about 4 humans (or dwarves if you really wanna annoy him). Even a small street gang can take down the best combat monsters. He will soak all the damage, but will be a fun punching bag for hours and every once in awhile, he won't soak all the damage. That lets him keep his Tank feel, lets you take him down (just not in a discouraging 1-shotter) and keep everyone happy.

Sphynx

right. the best overall option is to just make the opposing teams bigger, and have the extra guys focus their fire/fists/spells/whatever on the troll.

Also remember armor degradation rules level the playing field. Sure, with a body of 10 or so resisting 4d after 7 points of balistic armor or thereabouts is easy, but after the 3rd or 4th burst that jacket and FFBA is torn to shreds and you're resisting 11D. A much tougher proposition. Given that a combat phase is 3 seconds long, even an unaugmented human could drop a troll in 12 seconds, especially if he's got cover/range/superior lighting/elevation.

It all depends on how much detail you're willing to go into as a GM, enforcing distances, armor degradation etc.

Just my opinion, but when I GM I want every PC in the game to fear for his life. No one should think that they're invulnerable regardless of whether their the albino gimp decker or the steroidal troll in security armor. If they think that they can't be hurt no matter what they do, then what's the point of thinking of clever plots? or every trying a subtle approach?

That being said, I also don't want most of my PCs dying on a regular basis. So that means that I have to arrange combat so that everyone has some level of threat without creating certain death for the gimpier PCs, and without completely throwing reasonableness out the window.

With this in mind:

• If he's seen, NPCs geek the mage first
• Characters with lots of obvious armor get hit with lots of called shots to bypass armor
• Riggers hiding behind hardened vehicle armor will often find spirits manifesting in their compartments
• Armored cars and drones are forced to take crash tests (ramming, accident power, etc) [which ignore armor]
• Characters with obviously high body like trolls are targeted with spells that are resisted by mental attributes (stunbolt, etc)

To me, none of this seems unreasonable; it's just having the enemy use their brains when it comes to tactics.

Why balance a fight for anyone?

Send as much stuff as you think the opposition would send in that situation.

I play a shaman, I have increased reflexes on a sustaining focus, not to fight but to get the hell out of dodge. I made a character whos only form of fighting is running like hell and I have a troll on my team. I know when combat starts I will be wasted in short order, so my best option is to throw up some barriers and other defensive spells, maybe ice sheet or something and get the hell out of the area. I will put spell defense dice on the troll to protect him from Stun Bolt and other "Troll Killers" and barriers to stop that armor by pass rule, but only so I can get the hell out of there. I am a Shadowrunner not a Mercenary, I get payed to do a job not get in a stand up fight. Any other character looking to fight along side a troll and is not in his class should be udderly destroyed. Your players should assume that if a troll is on the team the enemy will act accordingly, the team should also plan accordingly.

Stop trying to take away things from players. Make it challenging but it is ultimatly a game to have fun, not make it hard for the players to accomplish anything.

It is not just the GMs responsibility to make the game work, players need to try also. If your character is not a fighter don't fight, if you do fight don't complain when you are wasted.

I can't believe no one suggested suppressing fire yet! It's the daddy of all combat pool wasters, sure it hurts everyone, but it hurts trolls the most, since they never have as good a cover modifier because of their bigness, and they have a low combat pool in the first place.

Net result, your troll will be needing those body dice and every point of combat pool he can muster for resisting damage, which he may resist most of the time - but the more he tests, the more the chance of failure. It fair, because he will seldom take damage, it effects everyone in the group, and yet it prevents him from completely dominating combat since he's not able to throw 12+ dice at every attack test.

Be careful though, because if you go over the top 5 or 6 guards all laying down suppressing fire from Supermachs will probably ruin all your players day.

Hmm the troll. Lets see, I pay build points or priorities so that I can LOSE quickness, intelligence, charisma, and signature to gain... body. Now, which of those is easily raised by cyber etc... hmm body.

Really, troll aint all that impressive. If the 5 body is giving you trouble, your players need to take a look at the bodymods in m&m. Some of them are quite tastey and dont screw your other abilites.

High body means jack compared to good armor and good skills. Its all been said, high power attacks still work, out-dicing in hth works, magic etc. There really isnt any challenge involved with dropping a troll. And the pros of playing one arent always in line with the penalties.

IMG, the smarter NPCs will try and geek the mage first; but if the mage is smart, they won't catch him until after a spell's been cast. So, instead they focus on the most dangerous target, which is usually the troll. Less-professional NPCs will either shoot at the most dangerous target, or the biggest one; in both cases, that means the troll.

You play a troll, you expect to get shot at. Having a troll with max body isn't munchkinism, it's a survival trait.

Regarding supressive fire, usually the troll doesn't even bother dodging suppressive fire. He just soaks with Body and Armour.

Nah, for a soak test it indicates moving your body into a position to maximize your armor's potential or just dumb luck in doing so, more than dodging to avoid the attack completely. That's why it's two different tests.

I'm a bastard GM.
We've got one huge troll in our group, and if I let him, he could unbalance the game, but he doesn't. My bad guys will often see the giant troll as the biggest threat (rightly so) and concentrate fire on him. If there is some one with a Barrett, he will shoot the troll first. So far, he's survived two sniper rifle wounds, although one required immediate stabilization to keep him alive.
The theory of shoot the mage first is a D&D rule, and if you shoot the mage first in the group that I run, you'll be dead before the mage is.
If one guy is 12 feet tall and has a huge, drum fed shotgun in his hand, DO NOT shoot the mage first.

The fun thing about Shadowrun is that the twelve-foot-tall guy with the huge, drum-fed shotgun in his hand might be the mage...

p96 CC quite clearly explains that it's only if someone actually takes a moderate wound that their armour degrades. If you manage to stage it down below moderate, acording to the rules, your armour doesn't degrade.

The armour degradation rules, while perhaps quite realistic, are very harsh as written. If you're wearing an armour vest with plates it would be completely destroyed after two hits from a predator, even if you have body 20 and laughed off the damage. Sure a predator is pretty big for a handgun, but it's hardly likely to utterly ruin a very heavy armour vest with two hits, which is what it does acording to the rules.

We've actually house ruled it so your armour only degrades, and only by -1/-1, if you take a serious or worse. Not hugely realistic, but much more satisfactory if you ask me.

Also, using the armour degradation rules as they are, or indeed making them even more punishing, just makes things like Armour spells even better and those are pretty good already.