Hi All;

Just as I have been asking for advice about the Mage in my group, now I am asking for advice on what to do with the Face.

He has high charisma, high "social skill group", tailored pheremones, and first impressions and sometimes uses edge. In social settings, he is regularly getting anywhere from 4-6 net hits.

What does that look like, in game terms? What can I do to off-set it?

For example, in our last session of Ghost Cartels, they were getting ready to go into the DocWagon clinic to get Jaina Shield's corpse. The group tries to hack in and couldn't get past the system/spider. They make a plan and, at the last minute, realize there are Beast Spirits watching them as they are casting spells left and right to get ready for the run. They scrap that plan and decide to go totally Pink Mohawk. At the last second, the Face remembers that he's ex-Lone Star (as stated in his background). He and the group go in and he makes a con roll (with edge) against the receptionist (they're all dressed in nice business clothing and he still has his old Lone Star badge). He gets 6 net hits. She leads him down to the morgue. He makes a con roll (with edge) against the doctor and gets, again, something like 6 net hits. I decide that with 6 net hits, he's able to get the corpse and the info from the autopsy.

Was that realistic with 6 net hits? What does 6 net hits (or any high number of net hits) do/look like in a social challange?

Just as I learned there are things I can do to challange the mage, what can I do to bitch slap. . . . . I mean challange. . . . . the Face?

Thanks in advance for your help (I hope you're not getting too tired of me asking for help/advice)

Remember, someone that charismatic who uses a pretty distinctive lie is going to be very, very memorable. Did they apply any disguises apart from the clothing?

The receptionist and everyone has to fill out paperwork so they take down his info. DocWagon's internal security gets tipped off about this, perhaps a standard database crosscheck of the name the Face provided showing up as not existing or no longer in active service.

Boom, there's a trail right there. And now both DocWagon and Lonestar are interested in them. If they have DocWagon contracts (and they better if they're smart) then those may get cancelled right after they get picked up.

You seem to have a really optimized group.

the killer here would be the paperwork in my opinion. There's only so far you can convince people, especially people who work for police forces and shit. It depends on the security/professionalism of the facility of course (I've never played Ghost Cartels.) I usually give the defenders bonuses based how outlandish the lie is that the character is trying to pull off. As Marwynn mentioned, if he used his old badge, they would have recorded, probably actually checked it with Lone Star first. If Lone Star comes back with someone saying "no that guy doesn't work for us anymore" gonna be pretty tough/impossible to get past that. Seriously though, considering the prevalence of the matrix and all, it seems highly unlikely that they wouldn't be able to check his badge number on the spot.

Also agree with Marwynn on the nature of your group lol. Bunch of munchkins? I mean, that's one style of play, but if it's causing a problem you might want to encourage them to round out a little bit.

Um, what's the problem?

You have a group that's just starting out, you've been having problems with them killing everybody and the mage hogging the limelight, and now that they're trying to be sneaky and subtle, and the face is getting some action, you want ways to minimize it?

They're being subtle and other players are getting involved. Where, exactly, is the problem?

First, try watching Leverage and Hustle. They're entertaining series with a lot of Face-moments in them; it might give you an idea of what high social skills look like, and also what kind of things can go wrong

Second. Does your player just say "I go up to her and use Con"? That's not good enough. See my signature: using social skills can be much more detailed too. "I go up to her, flirt a little bit to get her off-guard, show my badge, and meanwhile the hacker uses Spoof to back up my (expired) credentials" is much more like it.

There's a lot more to playing a good face than big dice pools. Unlike combat, which you (probably) don't live-act, it makes sense to play out social "clashes", and a socially inept player with huge dice pools grates on suspension of disbelief.

On the other hand, it's no fun to say "you can't play a face cuz you're an awkward creep". So you could have the player explain
1) What he wants to achieve
2) How he's doing it, in-game (arguments, threats, bribes..)
3) What game mechanics he wants to use

When a player has a more detailed approach to social interaction than "roll dice", it becomes much easier to interpret what winning the dice roll looks like.

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Then, how to keep the Face from running rampant.

Unfortunately, the rules for social skills aren't really balanced. In combat, there's a lot of back and forth with to-hit, dodge, damage, damage resistance and so forth. "Social combat" tends to be just one dice pool, which one person has heavily buffed.

So. Corporations are vulnerable to smooth-talking people who can get past the receptionist and convince the nerdy scientist to hand over secret prototypes. How do they protect against that?

1) Protocol. Employees have to follow protocols when dealing with anything sensitive; they have to get your ID, get a signature, ask some questions, and so forth. You can't go in armed, aren't allowed to bring a commlink into the lab, get weighed on the way in and out. You have to have paperwork to take stuff.

2) Credentials. Employees aren't supposed to believe you are who you say you are just because you seem nice. They have to verify your biometrics and SIN against a database. This is a technological process; the machine doesn't care about your social skills.

3) Layers. You have to go past several (increasingly paranoid) people to get near sensitive objects. Fooling just one of them isn't sufficient.

4) Scanners. Tailored pheromones can be detected; so can a lot of other technological and magical aids. They even scan for legal things they consider "tools of the trade" for intruders, such as unusually-advanced commlinks, weird implants and so forth.

5) Counter-Social Engineering: employees can be trained to recognize social engineering techniques. They'll be aware that some innocent-sounding requests are actually not innocent. Or that certain reasonable requests can't be allowed ("you're not allowed to use the employee bathroom").

6) Surveillance: someone's watching the receptionist the Face tries to charm, and raises alarm because it looks suspicious. This is particularly nasty when Magic is used to charm people, because a person looking in through a camera won't be affected, but will notice the odd behavior of the receptionist.

7) Polygraph/Biomonitor/Stress detection bracelet mandatory on all guests

Magical examination (detect lie spells, aura analysis - "why is the pizza delivery guy a powerful magic user?")

9) Highly-trained/Augmented employees - give some of them really good social skills too. To catch a con man, use a con man.



All these things could be circumvented by a good Face, backed up by a good Hacker and maybe wizard, but they do make it more challenging.

With standard success tests it is enough to meet the threshold (barring certain exceptions) and any net hits add to the "finesse and flair" of the success. Thresholds never apply to opposed tests, though, where equalling the opponent's roll is a draw which must either be re-rolled, conceded by one side, or ruled in favour of the defender as the GM sees fit. There are no stated advantages to gaining more than one net hit except for the critical success rule, which kicks in at "4 hits more than what is needed to reach the threshold or beat the opponent". So 5+ net hits in a social test is a critical success which "means that the character has performed the task with such perfection and grace that the gamemaster* should allow her to add whatever flourishing detail she likes when describing it." So at 6 net hits the face writes their own ticket really.

Challenging players is important, but kicking them in the dice pools purely because their dice pool is so high is a really bad idea. For better or worse the player has created one of the best con artists in the world and making such attempts less likely to succeed purely because you want it to be difficult for them is counterintuitive. Theoretically you could rule that in the world of 2072 (or whenever GC fits in) modern society is so clued up on the tricks of the tricksters that they have every conceivable countermeasure in place, but you must then bear in mind that if it is even slightly tricky for this face to succeed then it should be all but impossible for characters with only 5 Charisma and 5 Con and I think you'll have a very disheartened player when he finds he's wasted all those BPs.

I would say that a knee-jerk reaction to super-high dice pools is to be avoided. The player has legally created these critical successes and if they can happen for anyone they shoud happen for him. Instead, you should be looking to all the things he didn't think of. The 'paper'work suggestion already noted is one such example, but I wouldn't use it because conning is about people believing what you say even to the contradiction of real evidence. With this level of success they wouldn't think to check up on him and if they did it'd be more probable to them that the database records were wrong.

The player should be allowed quite a bit of leniancy in the execution of his plan, because even fairly implausible outcomes should be possible at this degree of success, but anything he doesn't cover is entirely in your hands. Cons always start to unravel after the event and the conman just has to hope (if he even cares) that it takes longer than memory and concern take to fade. Anything reasonable you can think of that would cause the story to come undone quickly enough is fair game so long as the player didn't guard against it. For example, being led down to the morgue by the receptionist (Was there someone else to man the reception? Were they fooled too?) could easily result in a passing colleague noting the visitors to ask her about later. If the player used any kind of threat in his ploy ("You're now obstructing a hot murder investigation sweetheart – let me speak to the director immediately!") it's quite possible her nervousness will be picked up by a spider watching the corridors and he runs his own checks on the visitors to make sure nothing funny's going on.

To summarise, don't take away what the player has legally achieved. If you must hit him at all then you must work around his success and in a way that is more justified than you simply not liking the capabilities of the character. If you don't like this level of ability you should have stopped it at chargen.

* Why, oh why, oh why did they make it "gamemaster"? Not only does it not roll off the tongue as nicely it phonetically implies superiority over a whole sexuality!

Acting like you belong and conning the receptionist into waving you in is a great staple of shadowrunning. I don't think you should discourage that lest your players stop trying. As for challenging the face, remembering the social modifiers table is always a good start.

Getting into the morgue: Receptionist is Neutral (hospitable but wary), and unauthorized access is Harmful to her career (-3). The real badge is rather convincing (+2 for supporting evidence). Total of -1 modifier against a threshold of maybe 3 or 4. Easy enough for a good face to get in, as it should be.

Now to get the body released: -1 for a Suspicious NPC (what's a cop want with the body itself?), -3 or -4 for Harmful or Disastrous Result for NPC (unauthorized release of the body is either bad or really bad if its an open case), no supporting evidence (the badge only helps you get in or get info, not get the body itself), and the subject has time to consider for another -1. So that's maybe -6 off of the face's roll against a threshold of 6 (lower if the morgue is more ethically challenged or the body is SINless). Getting much sketchier.

Those modifiers can rapidly chew up a face's pool, so keep them in mind. It also adds incentive for a team effort. If other members of the team can manufacture supporting evidence or provide a distraction, it makes the job easier.

If that's still not enough, you can also make it costly in terms of exposure and make sure the players know it and have to find ways to work around or cover up. Describe the cameras over the receptionists desk while they approach. What do they do about those? Have the doc agree to release the body but require a thumbprint signature for record-keeping. (Getting him to skip this step requires another very hard check with brutal mods.)

Another option is to simply throw a bureaucratic wrench in to the works every once in a while (but not constantly or it's back to knocking on doors with a breaching charge). Maybe the body has been lo-jacked to the bone. Without specific release authorization from the regional office, alarms will go off once it leaves the room, and nobody at the morgue has the authority to override that. Of course, the point to the bureaucratic wrench is to add another layer to the puzzle, not to screw the players for trying to talk to people. Does the team run a con on the regional office? Does the tech MacGuyver up a lo-jack bypass while the hacker spoofs a release form? Does the team say screw it, taser the staff and make a run for it? Ideally, all three (or more) should be viable with their own risks.

EDIT: Aerospider's comment about thresholds not applying to opposed tests is true and requires me to adjust my suggestions a bit. Since thresholds don't apply, it would be better to view net hits as the enthusiasm of the result. If a single net hit gets a begrudging "fill out the form in triplicate, sir", that may be technically sufficient to achieve the goal, but unsatisfactory to the player trying to minimize his footprint or speed things along. So view my threshold numbers not as necessary to achieve the desired goal, but necessary to the achieve the desired goal in a satisfactory manner.

Paperwork and the social modifiers table have been mentioned, so I won't touch on them. Having the tech guys come up with supporting evidence has been mentioned as well.

What I'm going to suggest, is asking for appropriate social skills. Sure he may be good in all of them, but they all have different modifiers. In addition, I like to start my social interactions with Etiquette rolls from all characters present, not just the ones talking. The face might be good at talking and fitiing in, but if the Troll starts trying to "hock a luggie", people are going to not take the group as seriously.
Another thing that entered my mind, why was he using Con to get the body? Con might have helped him fabricate a story, but I would have required a negotiation test to get the body out. See Ascalaphus' quote of Yeramahu. The right ammo for the job.

It's indeed difficult to deal with large social dice pool since we can't relate to real life persons (The most charismatic man will have something like 14-16 dice) and we can't extrapolate from them like we can for physical attributes. But there are still some guidelines you can use:

First, you have to keep in mind that you can cross the line between what's possible and what's not. Even a sharpshooter with 30 dice can't shoot someone outside of his weapon's range or someone he can't have in his line of fire. In the same way, even the pornomancer won't be able to convince the guard that he's Damien Knight, and that the troll next to him is Lofwyr and that they need access inside the Zero Zone to have a tea party. Well, I guess they can if the guard is high and critical glitches his test, but I think you got my point.

Second, use the modifiers table and don't hesitate to add new modifiers. There are a lot of possible modifiers that aren't in that table. For example, if a guard with military training has been told that he should allow absolutely no one inside, he's likely to get stubborn and refuse to let anyone inside even if they've got a very good explanation and are very convincing, so you can add a modifier for this. The pornomancer might find a way to get him, at least temporary, to agree to let him in but it won't be that easy.

Finally, consider that some con attempts can take a lot of time, and that the victim might realize he's been fooled afterwards, when the "effect" the face had on him has faded.

Then there's the roleplay but that's more complicated. A character with a high con skill is probably able to come up on the spot with excellent reasons why people should let him do what he wants to do, but the player might not. So requiring the player to roleplay it or give the explanation might be unfair to some players (even if it's funnier and more interesting this way).

I'm starting to see a pattern. You still aren't looking at their character sheets.

You're writing the other half of the story for these characters and you have no idea who they are or what they can do or how good they are at it, so when the metal hits the meat you're left standing there wondering what happened.

Help us help you. Get a copy of the character sheets. Write down expected dice pools. Note weaknesses. You're suffering because you're not creating scenarios appropriate for the characters, and you can't do that because you don't know what the characters can do.

Note: "high charisma, high "social skill group", tailored pheremones, and first impressions and sometimes uses edge" isn't really all that good of a face. It's more along the lines of bare minimum. I'm not sure what you were expecting for a face or what you thought the baseline should be.

If you're worried about high dicepools so much you can simply use the optional rule to cap all dicepools at 20. Dicepools can go above it, but you can only roll 20 dice (which ends up making dicepools higher than 20 have a little room to soak dicepool penalties - distractions, called shots, damage taken...).

First and foremost, it sounds like your playing a street level game with pro level PCs. The dicepools your describing are, in world, the equivalent of very solid running teams. Experienced men and women with the gear, the skills, and the background to be reliably called upon to conduct high-risk, high value, discrete missions against the most powerful entities in the world. They may not be the best of the absolute best, living legends, but they're good. Real good. Because if they weren't they'd be dead, jailed, or working as a mook. That is the default state for a 400 BP runner with a bit of Karma underneath them. Hell, by fluff, an average street sam (a 15-20 dicepool) is better than Wyatt Earp ever was...and thats without munchkinning.

Thats one of the tickers of Shadowrun GMing...you need to plan on a post-human level, not a human one. Its an easy trap to fall into, because it seems modern, and you should just plan like your defending against Crazy Aces, Ronin, or Spy Games...DON"T DO IT! Your PCs are BETTER than iconic movie figures, because already movie level stats are boosted with 6th world gear and magic.

Which leaves you a couple options:

1) Play a low BP game. Instead of experts, you get merely competent professionals on average frames. This is especially telling on the stat line...you'll find the players much more in line with how you expect things to work "realistically." You can even handicap things like dryad pornomancer.

2) Understand and accept that your team will break most passive defenses. There's no way they wouldn't. They have overwhelming power, surprise, and intelligence on their side. Its consequences, complications, and delays that kill runners. Challenge comes from those, and the counter-moves.

The mark of a good run isn't that the mage can stunball down the guards, or that the face makes the receptionist all tingly before she lets you through to the next area...its executing the run without a sound, without a trace, like you were never there, except for a choice body or two or a missing macguffin...or at the very least being well into another jurisdiction by the time the HTR team seals all accessways, and making sure your paid in full before anyone is on your tail.

As such, your goal in a well thought out defense to challenge the players shouldn't be "I'll hammer em down at the gates!" but "I'll slow them down, build the case against them, make them spend more time, resources, and personal visibility than they want, and then bring those to bear."

In this case, every single member of your team is on camera, identified, recorded, tied to an old lone star badge number - TIED TO THE GUY"S REAL NAME AND SIN ALONG WITH EMPLOYMENT HISTORY, has at least two living witnesses, has left a matrix-commlink profile that the spider will comb over and immediately deploy a bot net to try and find, flashed their fake SINs all over the clinic, and is inextricably linked to what will be surely identified as the theft of a high visibility corpse the moment the real authorities bother to ask a question about where it went. So, you figure, maybe 6-12 hours after your face walks out with that body, game on.

Either your team is about to spend a ton of nuyen on clean up, is about to experience the joys of trying to get paid with a man hunt on, or the next time they walk into an associated facility, they will be kindly escorted to the visitors lounge to wait thirty minutes and then they will recieve and offer they can't refuse. Well, they could, but there will be some new char sheets coming.

Keep it simple, stupid:

Lying can't alter reality.

It doesn't matter how many dice you have if a guard watches you shoot someone, you can't talk your way out of it.

Also keep in mind the social rolls modifier table. Has such things as "critically effects the NPC's job negatively: +4" or "NPC is hostile to the character: +4" (noting these as bonus dice to the NPC).

These are actually a negative modifier to the 'attacker'.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. When you're dealing with a player who has a dice pool over 20, the difference in -8 dice to him versus +8 dice to the other guy is statistically insignificant.

It's also way easier on the GM; "That's really unfavorable *adds dice* plus an unnamed bonus you don't know about *adds a few more*"

It's like cover being a shooter penalty versus defender bonus: statistically identical, but fluffwise logical.

This is true, unfortunitely. Which is why I play with fire (I mean, uh, diseases). They can throw a nice wrench in anyone's plan, especially faces.

Of course, it's not identical.

Giving the NPC more dice decreases the NPC's chances of glitching. Going from to 10 dice is a huge leap, where odds of glitching are concerned. On the other hand, curring a PC down from 15 to 10 has negligible effect on glitch odds.

So, shifting PC penalties into NPC bonuses is good for the NPCs. If that's what you want, go for it

Personally I think that the face did a great job, and that you should encourage him to look for solutions like that in the future so you game does not become a predictable chain of 'I blow away the opposition, and then I go home.' You also don't want your runs to consist of nothing but con-rolls, give the combat oriented characters their time in the limelight. And that really comes down to how you plan your adventures out (mind you players will always find time to do something unexpected).

If you're worried that you can't challenge your Face then there are a few things you need to know. The thing about high dice pool faces is that GMs don't think of social rules the same way they do about combat. Expecting a 50 something secretary to hold her own against a seasoned con man is a long shot, but here are a few tricks I've picked up to make it challenging for your face:

Drugs: there are several drugs in the book that boost charisma by a point or two, not much but they can be used to make a gang member or frat boy a little bit more of a threat socially.

Teamwork bonus: If a gang leader has his whole entourage by his side throwing in their two cents that might help.

Emotetorys, Lie Detector Software, Emotion Reading Software: Just a few progs that might add a bonus to your social skill rolls and possibly bring in a roll for the hacker to crash them. It is not outside the realm of possibility that someone's receptionist might have these pieces of software running on her PAN if a company has social engineering holes, but if you want to bring in the hacker make sure they know the company uses these pieces of software before hand.

Situational Modifiers: Let's say you look like the ex-husband who just ran out on the secratary you are planning on running a fast talk on, or your Johnson has just lost 10 points off his blue chip stocks. They are less likely to do something in the runners favor if they are all ready ill disposed towards them. These modifiers can be used as role-paying quirks making your NPCs more memorable. Your players will remember their encounter with the chain-smoking, bitter, old woman, who was reminded of her old husband more than the faceless NPC where they just rolled some dice.

Some other tricks involve micromanaging bosses or persistent heads of security, or smart guards. Justify someone with higher social skills show up when the runners want something. You could also give them high perception skills to notice the heavy amount of cyber ware, magic, or non-standard weapons the runners are packing, making them even more suspicious.

Also remember that Con rolls might only buy you time, if you only get two or three successes you might have just bought yourself some time before they follow up with a background check or decide to keep an eye on you.

Remember that the goal is not to be obstructionist but to add complications that challenge your players so the run does not brake down into a series of con rolls. Social tests should involve roll playing, planning, and a bit of tension as you wonder weather or not the mark is on to you. You might with the test, but a skeptical stare from the office head of security might make you realize that this was a temporary victory and you better work fast.

Ascalaphus did a great job breaking down what kind of hindrances a face can run into if he simply jaunts into a corporate facility and thinks he can schmooze his way past everything. Ideally, the face should be working in tandem with a hacker for best results.

I think the biggest other thing to remember is that social skills, super-high dice pools or not, are merely fairly subtle manipulations, NOT mind control. After a certain number of successes, additional successes should not tempt you to allow ludicrous things ("You got 12 successes, so he gives you his keycard, cuts off his finger so you can use it for the biometric ID, then shoots himself"). All they mean is that you have the mark firmly convinced... until later. I agree with several other posters that the face should be encouraged, not discouraged. But social skills, like firearms skills, are best used tactically, in conjunction with the other members of the team acting to support the face. Social skills should not be an "I win" button.

But with proper support, Social Skills are a "You lose" button, just like many other things in SR. IMO, "I win" buttons are pretty rare in SR.

Well, I guess this will end up in an other Roll VS Roleplay debate.

Draco18s already brought it to the point:


It is mostly calls for a GM to say: NO! Does not work.

I mean if somebody has cancer, you can't shoot the cancer in order to heal him. No matter how many dices you have shooting guns.

A social test is called for, if you have an angle to work with. Like a firearms test is called for, if you have a target!

So yeah, this angle might be small, but there should be one.

Ask the guard to let you out of the cell? Not happening.

Thats the reason I think such situations should be roleplayed, because you need to see how the player thinks to solve the situation.



One remark on them: I do not like how they work! Period!
If I got my high dicepool, I am able to spot a liar when I see one. I know if someone is sad etc. The emotoy won't give me another edge.
And no software will.
They should have their rating rolled against wilpower (suppress your emotions). If they win, they tell the user the emotion. (Modifiers according to GM/strength of emotions)
If this gives something to the user, depends on the situation.
"I sense you are angry"
"Of course I am angry with you, you fucked my own sister"
(This empathy software did not pay out for the poor guy. Not to mention, I guess the attitude of his girlfriend might just be obvious.)

Spotting no sorrow in a should be griving widow(er), would help a lot, on the other hand.

It is most certainly not statistically identical. Besides what Ascalaphus said about glitches the win/lose probabilities are notably different.

Suppose the attacker has a DP of 20 and the defender only has 6 and there are 8 dice in modifiers against the attacker.

Bonus to defender - 20 vs 14
Probability of standard success ~ 53%
Probability of critical success ~ 18%

Penalty to attacker - 12 vs 6
Probability of standard success ~ 66%
Probability of critical success ~ 11%

One way has a higher overall success rate but the other has a higher chance of a critical success (which is pretty important to tests like Con). The distinction becomes more pronounced the bigger the difference in base DPs gets.

Well I did manage to get a character sheet from the Face. Mage and GA have yet to get me one.

Here is his sheet:

Metatype: Human

B 3
A 5
R 3(5)
S 2
C 5
I 4
L 3
W 3
EDGE 4
ESS 3.7
INIT 8
IP 3

Active Skills
Pistols 2, Longarms 3 (Shotgun Specialization +2), Infiltration 3, Dodge 4(5), Con 4, Etiquette 3, Negotiation 3, Perception 3, Data Search 3 (Street Rumors +2),

Knowledge Skills
Seattle Street Gangs 3, Security System Designs ,2 Corporate Security Procedures 3, Whiskey 1, English (N), Japanese 3

Colt Manhunter w/ internal smartgun, Remington 990 Shotgun w/ internal smartgun system
Cybereyes 3 w/ smartlink and thermographic, Tailored Pheremones 2, Reflex Recorder (Dodge) (1), Synaptic Boosters 2

Pos Qualities
Erased, First Impressions

Neg Qualities
Mild Allergy (Sunlight), Sensitive System, Moderate Addiction (Alcohol)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Seems pretty straighforward to me. What should I be looking at/for?

Thanks to you all and your great suggestions, I am getting better at it.

<edit for formating coherency>

Pay more attention to the rolls and modifiers. The amount of hits he's getting vs his dicepoll is way off.

Edit- Clarity. Also even with Edge those rolls seem high.

I agree. The way it looks, his dice pool is about 13 for most situations. That is reasonable in mostgames, low for dumpshockers. The edge could be making a difference, but I doubt it.

Careful with these, I see an immediate 2 Notoriety, which is a negative dice pool modifier for social situations.

What the?

Nobody plays at my table, whatever the game, without me seeing or better, having a copy of - having a copy of their character sheet.

Not because I suspect they might cheat, but because I want to know what the characters can do so I don't set an impossible task thinking its easy, or accidently kill them with somethign I thought they should be able to deal with, - or vice versa.

I can't imagine starting a game without seeing the characters sheets.

I have to agree, here. Not just for these reasons, either. There are times when you don't want the characters to roll (sometimes, having them roll a perception check tells them they need to be on the lookout for something. In this case, roll the highest pool+1 for each other in the area, similar to NPC checks, to determine if, and how well, any of them hear/see/smell anything), and having their actual stats helps a lot.

This is an edit. I knew I missed something (see below) but wasn't awake enough to catch it.

Trimming down
As noted above, an addiction to Alcohol is not a good quality for a face. You and him should work out how this will play out at the table just to get you both on the same page.

Assuming First Impressions & Con, I see (still half awake) 5+4+2+2 = 13 dice so 4-6 hits are to be expected. Let's look at this closer because the statistics may be odd.
1) 1/3 of the dice are hits on average. So you're looking at an average of 4 1/3 hits every time he rolls. You're going to see mostly 4s, then 5s, then 3's then 6's.
2) If he rolls 2 hits the he'll probably edge his roll, depending on how often you refresh edge. (Last night I burned edge like a maniac because I knew I could...) So, assuming he rolls a 2, he'll then be re-rolling 11 dice for 3 2/3 more shits, so 2's are likely to become 6's, possibly 5's.
3) If he rolls just 1 hit, he'll be re-rolling 12 dice for 4 more hits, so again, 5's.
So yes, you're should expect to see a LOT of 4-6. If he's rerolling on 3 because edge refreshes often, then those are going to be a lot of 6's as well.

If he's edging first that's 17 dice. 5 2/3 hits, including at least 2 6's so probably 6 hits every roll. But to edge first all the time, edge has to be refreshing really fast. I'm betting on the rerolls of 1's and 2's.

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As noted above, this is NOT a high pool face. Actually, my generalist is tossing more social dice than this guy is. I'm not understanding Angelone's logic. 4-6 seem right to me as detailed above.

Hopefully, this gets your expectations in place so that you can build effective oppositions.

Things to think about:
1) The opposition has edge as well. If they don't use it, the characters have a huge advantage because edge moves the bottom of the bell curve (1-2) to the top of the bell curve (5-6). Edge often turns an expect loss to a win and only leaves the close calls.
2) Social modifiers matter. Did the receptionist and the doc just agree to let a drunk cop leave with a corpse?
3) Detailed actions matter. Did they enter the transfer of custody of the corpse into the computer using the Lone Star employee ID number? And isn't he an ex-employee? Shouldn't the computer have red-flagged the action? Go though things step by step, even if just in your head or on paper, because that's where good ideas fall apart.
4) Appropriate challenges matter. He's a face. He's going to pwn the wageslaves. Once the team works as a team, getting a corpse out of a morgue is not meant to be a challenge. This is the kind of team you hire to extract a live body from his bodyguards. Grabbing a corpse from a morgue should be a milk run.

I realize you said half asleep, but you did miss his Tailored Pheromones 2.

Regarding the First Impression quality, remember the rules actually reads "Whenever attempting to fit into a new environment - such as infiltrating a group or trying to meet contact in a new city - the character gains a +2 dice pool modifier on any Social Tests during the first meeting." That is, the bonus should only applies when you are or pretend being a newcomer.

Using First Impression bonus means you're playing that angle. Against M. Johnson, it should first give in a -1 modifier the other way because any M. Johnson should be suspicious against any newcomer, and then ends up with something like "Since you're new to the business and I'm doing you a favor in giving you work, you shouldn't expect being paid as established pros, don't you ?" With a security guard, you can't be trying to "fit in" and claims it's an "extraordinary, unscheduled security check ordered by the head office". So your perfect roll may simply result in him not firing at you and explaining "We have different security procedures in this facility, sir. Wait here while I call the security officer so he checks your access rights."

Still only puts him at 13 dice. Social rolls have the greatest number of modifiers in the game. The face at our table was rolling 13 dice via the matrix. So he wasn't getting about half his dice pool (pheromones, glamor, first impression*, or a handful of other things I don't recall offhand).

*It was his own contact

You're absolutely correct. I'm doing a re-edit for clairity's sake. It's interesting to see how much of a difference those two dice actually make.

I see no bonus for pretending to be a newcomer.

I have no clue where you think meeting this particular Mr. Johnson for the first time means you're new to the business.

That being said, the -1 is NOT given by First Impressions. The social modifiers are given by the situation regardless of the presence of first impression. The same social modifier you give for meeting the face for the first time should apply to meeting everyone at the table for the first time. The difference is, this face can get past that social modifier (meeting people for the first time) easier because he makes a good first impression.

YMMV. What if the face is impersonating a corporate employee that would be a newcomer to the facility. He would really be "attempting to fit into a new environment" as he never worked here, but he isn't a real newcomer, as he don't intend on showing up at work on next monday morning.


I'd count a Sprawl Shadows as a "new environment". If the Johnson already heard of you, which fixers and runners you worked with and for how long, then it's too late to try to "fit in". If he never heard of you, he should be be at least a bit suspicious: he's about to offer money and ask for something illegal, and he has no way to know how skillfull you are and if you are the kind to talk to the cops or a rival corporation.

In the end, it basically expresses what was originally my point: the GM has the final say on when First Impression +2 bonus should apply or not, not just because it's a first encounter.

This is what Street Cred is for. If he's heard of you you get Street Cred and not First Impression. If he hasn't, you get First Impression and not Street Cred.

Advice to the OP based on this page: Do not attempt to justify overthinking. Down that path lies overcomplications and, in the end, you're gonna want simplicity over details.

As an example, yeah, they didn't check the computers to see if the ID was legit. Don't sweat it. It's just a possibility, not a universal requirement. Going for a detailed simulation based on reality as you see it is gong to give everyone else a headache.

Well, the simplest method of figuring how good someone is going to be is to add up the dice. So here we have:

CHA 5
CON 4
Pheromones 2

For a baseline DP of 11, even if stripped naked in a jail cell. Divide by 3 for average sucesses. So, you can assume at anything he tries to do, he'll start with 3-4 sucesses. Of course, if he's working in anything other than English, he's going to be limited by his lack of language and merely competent japanese.

Depends on where and how you run if that matters or not...but keep in mind, ironically, the less educated his mark is, the more of an issue. A truck driver in Atzlan will probably not speak english, or speak it poorly, and will find that reagrdless of how charismatic your character is, its hard to convince him he should go out of his way for "ME TARZAN! YOU DIRVE TRUCK! BIG CITY! LATE!" There's a whole series of rules for how language limits social skills (fairly easily bypassed with a linguasoft.)

Now, add gear. He doesn't have any. To include a commlink, which is an issue in its own right...but ignoring that, it means that the base Dice Pool we ID'd earlier is still a flat 11.

Add traits. First impressions...still not looking at more than an average of 4 successes without edge.

So, what can he do? This is what defines how to challenge and accomodate him.

Well, an average secretary with a some time spent dealing with people for her boss (CHA 3, SOCIAL 1) is going to score 1x sucess. So, net advantage is 3 sucesses for the face...pretty good. Minor social modifiers, such as this being a stupid idea for the secretary, will pretty quickly eat that down to 2 sucesses. Good, but not exceptional, unless the whole team pitches in to make the sell convincing. Enough to cause a few minor complications, delays, maybe he doesn't have to fill the e-form in triplicate, but needs to put on one of these visitor badges...

Any large modifiers have a good chance of a net tie or worse. Not every time, but enough times. So, his base DP is not really that threatening for pulling of the crazy, and will likely get eaten for lunch by a true Social Monster (Mr. J for instance).

Which leaves us with Edge.

The current char needs to spend edge just to get into what is considered "primary field" ranges (15-20 DP) for moderately optimized tables. If all is stacked for him, and the usual 50% ratio of exploding dice...call it 7 sucesses base line. Which is enough to crush most social resistance from minor obstacles like a no-frills secretary (5 net hits for a minor issue against our 3/1 secretary from before), with a good chance to pull off very negative things with only minimal complications (3 hits), or even go toe to toe with a pro-Mr. J and get something out of it (1 net hit versus an 18 DP Mr. J).

As a Face, its his job to burn edge doing social stuff, just like a sammy burns edge killing stuff. So, you should anticipate during major events (run negotiation, pay out, critical cons, explaining why the extractee is terminally dead but its really not your fault...) that he will. Plan on it accordingly.

The biggest issue with social chars is that they are rarely wondering if they might need edge around the next corner, the way a sammy might save edge shooting a guard just in case there's a cyber zombie around the corner that REALLY needs it. So try to create situations where he wonders if he might need it for something more than beating the secretary, or create enough social interaction that he can't just burn edge every time he talks.

AFB so correct me if I'm wrong (applaud if I'm right) - isn't Notoriety subtracted specifically from Street Cred? So if you have no cred there's no penalty for notoriety...?

You are correct.
However, for most runners (i.e. those with 15 karma or more, which you should have by your second run), Notoriety is effectively a DP penalty.

With a dicepool of 13 even with edge on an opposed test with social mods his successes seem high.

Honestly, looking at the character, it doesn't look even remotely like any kind of powergaming build. He got a lucky roll, and the GM maybe let that lucky roll do a bit too much. No biggie. I think the OP just needs to take some of the advice on what a face can, or can't, get away with without some good preparations or an assist from the team's hacker. I don't think any more drastic measures will be needed - it is hardly a gamebreaking dice pool.

I may be mistaken, but a Home Turf bonus of +2 dice is pretty reasonable for anyone opposing a con in a facility that has a measure of security. In this case, the Home Turf is simply procedural methods, body language and habits, vocabulary, specific ID requirements etc. that all stack up and make a con-man stand out against the system.

Combine this with Suspicious and Harmful for a -4 DP penalty and maybe another -1 for having Time to Evaluate The Situation and you are getting to a very, very reduced DP. Especially if the character is running ~13 dice. Even a lackey with 3 Cha and 1 skill will be rolling 4 + 2 = 6 dice against 13 - 4 = 9 dice.

Depending on the difficulty of the Con, the Threshold of the test is then set. A simple con is 1 die - having someone look the other way at the right time or bluffing a hand of cards. From there, things only go up. Generally, I tend to look at the DP penalties of social checks based on the results (harmful, disastrous etc.) to determine a threshold. Also taken into account is the complexity of the Con, its plausibility and the time taken to execute it. Conning your way through a door is a totally different animal than trying to get through the door and get clearance to take a body.

Mechanically speaking, Thresholds are a fantastic tool to combat DP bloat. When players have impossible DPs and try to accomplish impossible tasks, set an Impossible Threshold (4 or more). They may still make it, but the difficulty of the task should make the test itself in doubt. Which is the whole point.

Finally, as other users have noted, there is a lot of room in Social checks for Teamwork tests. (They are social, after all, and require a few people to work!) Conning the front desk person is one thing. Conning the morgue manager - the guy who is responsible for the bodies themselves - is a horse of a different color. And heck, why not have a few morgue workers in the room chime in. All of these things can be used to increase the difficulty of a social test without punishing the player for a high dice pool.

And, as I suggested last thread, you should always be testing your oppositions' dice pools against your players known dice pools. Get their sheets, learn their capabilities and build challenges to suit. In the case of social checks, the kinds of mental exercises contained in this thread can help you set boundaries between the plausible and implausible, and help you adjudicate these kinds of conflicts in game without having to lead to break down.

Yeah. No.
Social tests are opposed tests. Opposed tests do not have Thresholds, beyond those set by the defender's roll.
The fact that what you're trying to do is nigh on impossible should be reflected in the dice pool modifiers. Double dipping that will make people react less than enthusiastically, to my experiecne, anyway. As alwways, YMMV.

"We don't like your kind around here..."

Opposed tests aren't always head to head equal. All tests have a threshold set at 1 by default, opposed or otherwise. Likewise, any test can have its threshold increased. What if one person is trying something significantly more difficult than the other? Situational modifiers already exist to express a change in circumstance, but not necessarily in the complexity or difficulty of the task at hand. That is what a Threshold is. I think that the ruling would stand on terra firma.

The only way I think that the ruling would stand on terra firma is if you have an explicit rules quote to back it up.

Social skills are primarily limited by negative modifiers, rules-wise. They don't use thresholds, because they are opposed tests, and the rules are very explicit that thresholds are never applied to opposed tests (SR4, pg. 57). The number of successes does determine the degree of success, as the examples illustrate.

Wrong I'm afraid. Opposed tests are indeed head-to-head equal (if you're discounting the difference in dice pools that is). The text is clear enough IIRC (would quote, but AFB) that opposed tests are one character against another in such a way that the only opposition to one roll is the number of hits scored by the other.

It's also incorrect to assert "All tests have a threshold set at 1 by default". The vast majority of tests with any kind of threshold require that you exceed the threshold. If all tests had an implied threshold of 1 then a single success would almost always be considered a failure, which is not right.

Feh. Threshold of 0 makes a success test.

If you wanted a way to use standard SR4 mechanics to return some measure of reason to high dice pool social situations, thresholds are as good a way as any.

Also, head to head tests are only equal if both parties are attempting the same task... if they aren't, then the tests being equal makes very little sense. Combat skills are usually open, but most long term skills are threshold based. Heck, even hacking is threshold based. Social skills could easily function on the same mechanical paradigm, gaining a level of resolution and playability whilst doing so! SR4's rules are clunky, generally poorly written and full of loopholes, aberrations, goofy stuff that makes zero sense and is replete ways to abuse the mechanics to produce results that are utterly insane.