So how do you handle, at your table, a team of player characters that's missing something? For instance it's looking like my upcoming campaign arc will not have a Technomancer or "Hacker" style character, and maybe even no magically active player characters. (Two people are still generating characters, so who knows.) But at any rate how do you handle this at your table? Do you subcontract? A liberal dose of handwavium? Or something else entirely?

As the system is right now, Hacking in general seems to detract from the rest of the gameplay. It just makes the other characters feel left out, unless you make it so they can also participate. Having a hacker or technomancer does make the party more diverse, and the ability to run a Data Search instead of legwork is wonderful, but it isn't absolutely necessary. That being said, it wouldn't be nice or fair to have the team's commlinks get hacked if they don't have a hacker to fight back with.
Magical support is a bit more important than matrix support. Make sure you have a magician, or at least a mystic adept.

This is the way my current group is right now. We have an infiltration expert, two gun bunnies, a brawler and a master of disguise. No matrix, no magic

Don't change a thing and force the characters to adapt. This adds drama and suspense to the game in my mind. For example my character has had to invest in more software himself (Encrypt and the Pocket Hacker package) in order to make up for the lack of matrix support.

This is so much nonsense that gets spouted by some people. A hacker will not be any kind of detriment to solid and enjoyable gameplay to the other players, as long as he and the gm have a firm grasp of how the Matrix works. If one or the other doesn't, it tends to drag on and on things that are unclear to either, which tends to take too much time for other players to not mind losing the spotlight for a bit. This however also holds true for a face and his business, or the street sam and his business. How many combats have you seen last for an hour while certain characters were barely, if at all involved?

OT: if either type of character is really needed, you can always DMPC one, or have the team outsource the jobs to NPCs, possibly contacts.

And don't let themselves get bogged down in Matrix minuta by getting into the sculpting of each environment (which seems to be trying to turn each hack into a side adventure through a metaplane). Keep it straightforward and stick to the tasks that need to be accomplished.

That depends on how you run your game. Personally I figure a Fixer/Johnson would only offer jobs to teams suited to the task. If you have a group that's hacker free then no Fixer in their right mind would hook them up with a Johnson that needed some data covertly stolen. A Johnson that needed a hit team or an extraction however might find them suitable enough. So design your missions to fit your team. Don't hamstring them by forcing them into a task they can't cover.

Now if you give them a job and they decide they really do need a hacker then I'd let them sub-contract one

Pocket Hacker, Unwired Page 127.

As for magic... Geek the Mage first!

EDIT: Alternatively, have a TM or Hacker and a Spirit Summoner Expert for contacts and subcontract them to do some gigs.

According to the fluff, seriously powerful mages are still rare. However, since most player groups include mages, the GM is often bullied into placing NPC mages to provide Counterspelling.

If your group doesn't have a mage in it, you won't need NPC wagemages nearly as often; you can keep them for special occasions, as a "monster of the week", instead of only occasionally not needing an NPC mage. So that's not really a problem.

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The hacker... the way the game is set up in SR4, it's hard to get by without one. However, it's also a job that's well-suited to delegate to an NPC, because a hacker can often function without being physically near the PCs.

As long as the party can keep open a comm channel to the hacker, they can be his "hands and eyes", attaching wiretaps so that he can hack stuff from his bunker.

Be sure to use this opportunity to play around with the plot device of connections getting cut off, or the problem of how to pipe down a signal to the deepest vault of an R&D facility.

You could toss magic and the matrix out the window and end up with a very enjoyable campaign. The advantage of doing so is that everyone is in the same world, not blocked from participating in a world by matrix or awakened rules.

You can do that but you lose a lot of the SR flavor. I find if you keep the Matrix and Astral portions of the game downplayed to an appropriate degree they can work fine without really excluding anyone. For the Matrix, stick to the tasks needed to get into the system and get the information, try not to get bogged down in sculpted environments or matrix combat. In astral stick to it being a place mages can use to scout or as an alternate vision type.

The world is what you make it so the degree to which matrix and astral space play a role is really up to you

I'm down for the subcontracting thing. I have no problem with the players giving me campaign hooks and stuff by letting NPCs know about parts of their jobs and such.

Also though, I generally go halfway between the make-them-adapt and just-skip-it strategies. If the players don't have a mage I make sure it clear at points that having one may have been very helpful and I definitely try to make it an inconvenience for them, but I'm also not going to make a run that could not be completed without magic.

How does the player group having mages bully the GM into placing the NPC mages to provide Counterspelling? I do not see the players bullying the GM into do so, in fact, I think the players would be overjoyed if the GM doesn't do so.

More realistically the opposition will have a spirit or two. Mages are rare but as far as I can tell a free spirit can pop up anytime one get's a chance to say screw you and break away in one way or another. Not often but probably more likely then mages being born since one mage can summon multiple spirits. Let's say 1/100 break away. Multiply that a few times for every mage on the planet and you have a decent amount of free spirits lurking around looking for something to do. Then consider that these spirits could pay a mage to bring one of their buddies to the physical world. Now they begin to multiply as long as they can find someone willing to bring their family over.

Keep in mind that spell defense does not use the Magic Attribute, so an NPC mage with Magic of only 2 or 3 can still protect the mooks pretty well if he has a decent skill.

Actually, the Runner's companion states the Worldwide estimated free spirit population to be ">5000"(pg70) which I would assume means more than 5k but less than 6k.

You have to remember, it's not every 1/100 breaks free and then gets a job or whatever. I would say that 1/100 is already very generous, because most of the spirits a normal magician summons aren't going to be F10 demigods, they're probably going to be F1 or F2 support spirits. Of the ones that break free, the vast majority are described as simply leaving the Material Plane, because they're not interested in it.

That said, giving your groups of enemies a spirit or two is still an effective strategy, because wagemages and such do have the ability to lend spirit services to people, and it would be a cost effective way of getting magical support for your ground troops.

I agree with all you said Hound except the demi gods part. It doesn't take a force 10 to break away. I've seen force 4s to 7s do it. All it takes is one bad roll to cause a spirit to break away.

Because a lot of GMs get frustrated if the PC mage can go wild because the opposition doesn't have Counterspelling. Obviously players of PC mages won't be upset if NPCs don't put up effective resistance.

Before we get into a discussion of "other ways to keep PC mages in check": I'm aware of them, but they tend to require preparation from the GM, and most of them aren't very flexible.

I'm just trying to point out that the lack of a PC mage can be fun for the GM, too. Because he doesn't need to a) spend time figuring out how to keep the PC mage from overrunning everything, and b) the occasional magical enemy becomes a lot scarier.

Bound Guardian spirits loaned out to group of guards should take care of counterspelling. Anyone who can't afford that is fodder anyway.

By fluff, having no mage would be quite normal...1% of the population, really good ones are maybe 30% of that...so 0.3% of the population that could be making absolute bank working for...well..anyone, decide to take to the shadows because? I guarantee that any Mega worth its salt would be more than willing to expedite some digital paperwork and plop down some yen for the normal "magic 5, DP 15" runner mage.

Substantially more so than just another sammy or hacker. Because for a quarter million yen and some competent-level training, your probably 95% as good as "Das uber sammy who was once a special forces sniper of dooooom" or "the most talented hacker ever to grace this generation (number 57 in Seattle)."

Mages though? Mages are a finite resource. So, hell yes let them run without a mage. It would be comparatively, normal. Also, watch how quickly their view of magic turns from happy inclusion where every mage is pulling community service, and into one of ambivalent tolerance at best. Plus, your table creativity will go way up when you don't have "I Conceal! I send a spirit! I use a range of spells to be 95% as good as anyone else at anything else!"

As for the hacker, others have said it. Off site hackers, subcontracted/NPC'd, are exceptionally easy. Just give them a DP, and occasionally narrate some matrix-side observations in to planning and stuff. Hell, in a lot of data steals the whole point is to deliver the hacker or a means of communication to the otherwise matrix shielded node. Same concept, only now its laser links or a hard tap instead of the body...though you do lose some of those cool "and I turn the gun drone on them" moments. Still, for anything other than battle hacking, it works fine.

But the GMs being frustrated doesn't mean that they are being bullied. If NPCs do not put up effective resistance, no one should be upset, much less the GM.

yeah I didn't really mean that a force 10 was necessary for breaking away, just that they're much more likely.

I agree. I think the term I was thinking of for "NPCs do not put up effective resistance" was "bored" or "bored and surfing the web".

That's just my personal preference, but if I'm just needed to phone it in, then I might as well be doing something else as well to keep my brain busy.

A lot to digest here, I'll need some time to process it all and then I have some things I want to comment on, and ask questions about.

Well, Cover counts just as much as does Counterspelling against magic. No Prep at all for that.

I too am of the opinion that Johnsons hire the team that fits their job.

If the team doesn't employ a mage (for example) they won't get jobs that require magic to complete. If their opposing force's have magical capabilities not directly related to the mission objectives, the runners should be smart enough to do their homework and plan accordingly. In fact, this can be beneficial to the GM because NPC magicians can be used as a force multiplier that makes the NPC opposition tougher in creative ways without TPKing the party. I'm talking: NPC mage with Illusion spells, Heal, Increase Reflexes, defensive manipulations, etc instead of "He casts mana ball...you all die...".

Where you have to be careful is that just because magic isn't a focus in your game doesn't mean it should cease to exist in the SR world. You just shift away from the mechanics, but still sprinkle it in for flavor. Also, you could make non-mage dependent magical defenses cheeper, easier to come by and more ubiquitous. Use lots of manatech. Make the Magic Resistance quality cheeper (1 BP = +2 dice to resist magic). Allow mundanes to purchase Arcane Arrestor. Etc.

Ditto the above for Matrix blah blah blah.

Talk to the players