I'm going to be starting up a military campaign for Shadowrun.

The group is either going to be special forces, or expeditionary forces (on the ground first, securing a landing zone, etc).

What I am looking for advice on is what sort of base skills would these forces require, in general?

I know I can look at various soldier-type contacts and "mooks" for ideas. But they seem to be lacking when it comes to hacker and mage characters. I'm fairly confident I can give the "samurai" types the proper base skills and base cyberware. But I am not sure what a combat mage would have as a base character, that is to say, what would the military insist on teaching their mages and hackers?

War!

Mage: serious counterspelling; serious summoning/banishing; custom detection spells for gaining situational awareness; and a wide variety of low-drain spells for frequent use.
Combat groups are generally involved in sustained actions not swat team style activites so a military mage can't afford taking lots of drain or they quickly become useless and leave their team without magical protection. Spirits are functionally disposable so lots of summoning ability. I can see a serious argument for a trauma damper to help reduce drain during extended operations.

Hacker: heavy electronic warfare and hardware hacking skills; communications tapping and spoofing are the most valuable battlefield activities of a hacker. Most normal shadowrunner hacker activities are very rare on a battlefield; your hacker is mostly a communications/repair/refit specialist whose only likely hacking will be of the form "spotted a scout, hack into his TacNet system and get us full intel on their locations".

War! doesn't really help me.



Would a technomancer be better over a hacker? And wouldn't a hacker also be able to provide drone cover as well? For both tactical and information purposes?

Hmm, I can see the benefit of a trauma damper for the combat mages. Alphaware naturally. Thanks Hax.

A battlefield is a dangerous place - especially for a high value target like a hacker (it's not as bad as a mage, but odds are he'll be a priority target compared to a mere riffle-hauler). The ability of the hacker to use cyberware gives him and edge there. From a commading angle; it's far easier to find some smart guy to train and equip as a hacker than getting your hands on a technomancer.

Hacker would be my choice here.

How not? War! goes into great detail about exactly what you asked.

Care to point out the magician and hacker grunts then? Or the suggestions of skills for either sort of character?

Hacker over technomancer, definately.

If the campaign is military, the hacker will likely have access to some military grade hacking stuff.

A technomancer not only starts off behind the rest, he's a karma sink, won't like places away from the wireless grid, and is likely deemed too valuable (or freaky) to be put at risk on the 'front lines' anyway.



For a combat mage, I suggest good weapon skills and lots of spirit support. Support spells like Makeover, Fashion, Fix, Crank, Heal, Stabilize, Levitate, and Awaken could be godsends in a prolonged engagement. Mindnet can be quite useful, and Spatial Sense as well as various Detect spells - extended range. Clairvoyance. A low drain combat spell.

For the hacker, as was said, Electronic Warfare. Drones. Augmentations for hacking, rigging and combat.

This is straight from War! about technomancers (Cybercom Officer contact):

Cool, now I'm cooking with butter.

Thanks snowRaven!

Glad to help!

You may want to take a look at the hermetic doctor in the Contacts section in War! as well, plus there's a section on Small Unit Tactics on pg. 72-78, with magic touched on specifically on pg. 74 (these are specific for the Aztlan-Amazonia war, but there's some general stuff in there, and if nothing else it can serve as ideas).

Eeh, War is mostly lacking, but I have gone through what little there is.

Any specops or first recon team is going to have members with primary and secondary roles on a team. They can't get by with over specialization that a shadowrunning team can, in case one of their members gets taken out. And all team members would need basic combat skills (i.e. Firearms combat skill group, Athletics skill group, some form of hand-to-hand training)

Typically, I'd think the roles would be:

Electronic Warfare: Hacker or Technomancer to protect the teams own communications, and defeat enemy intelligence and communications. Likely with heavy Agent/Sprite support.
Fire Support/Heavy Weapon Support: Someone on the team has to be able to take out any heavy ordance (tanks, drones, aircraft) that may be thrown at them. Either a soldier with big guns, or a rigger with combat drones (or both).
Magical Support: Provides counterspelling, astral recon, healing, and spell support. As others have said, conjuring heavy as spirits would be an effective force multiplier. Mages are always in short supply, so any mage on the team is likely overtaxed with multiple responsibilities. But first and foremost is protecting the team from opposing magical threats.
Medic: At least two members should either carry a high-rated medkit, or know enough to keep the team operational.
Scout/Surveillance: Stealth-focused for running point and gathering intel. Could also be a rigger with ample intel-gathering drones.

So a 5-6 person team, with ample cross-training (or just activesofts). Additional skillsets/roles would be gravy. Basically, any team such as this needs to have skills to take on just about any eventuality. Additional roles might include an engineer, for sapping/breaching facililties or providing fortifications, an urban combat specialist/close combat specialist, a linguist (though loading the team up with linguasofts works too), etc.

Hrm, I think a heavy-weapon support person could double as the demolitions expert. And the scout/surveillance specialist could also be the urban combat/close combat specialist also.

And I think the entire team would carry some form of medkit, or at least trauma patches and stim patches, and know how to use them.

Cool beans though, lots of info to work with now. Thanks again folks.