Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Almost murdering your PCs
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Tanegar
The Setup: My technomancer player, while doing a recon run, hacks a network tap on a Matrix repeater tower; said network tap belonging to a secret hidden research facility in the Puyallup barrens. He learns that the tap is a portal to another system, but can't get through; in making the attempt, he trips the alarm, gets into a fight with the security spider, and nearly kills said spider when he whips out a Black Hammer CF.

The Payoff: A day or so later, the technomancer goes back to try the tap again. This time, he squares off against a super-high-end black IC program and suffers a dose of his own medicine: in three IPs, the IC inflicts a whopping twenty boxes of physical damage, and inflicts an Incompetent (Blades) quality on the technomancer by virtue of having a psychotropic add-on. The technomancer is forced to burn a point of Edge to invoke Hand of God, and the rigger successfully stabilizes him with First Aid.

What are your tales of putting a PC within a hair's breadth of dying?
Raiki
Well, it turns out that when you have your Runners clear out an army barracks full of (mostly) mindless ghouls...and a couple of these ghouls were Troll Elite Trooper style combatants still wearing their heavy milspec armor, complete with droned shoulder-mounted machine guns...

...Well...

...yeah.


~R~
Aerospider
In the opening run of my current campaign, which was long and designed to set up a theme to last many arcs, half the team contracted Ebola+. Nasty as that was, it wasn't the closest they came to fatality.

They discovered the location of some antidote in a UO black lab, got the entry requirements sorted out nicely and then, this eight-strong team sent in just the squishy dwarf technomancer and the total-amnesiac dwarf weapons specialist knowing full-well the security included a bleeding-edge cybertooth tyger biodrone. The weapons specialist was decent enough in combat, but had no idea how good he was with what. He didn't even know about the nanoweapon spray in his own arm (which would have REALLY helped).

Both came off badly. The TM had to HoG and was left with a mental handicap from brain damage (heh heh) whilst the WS (spared a worse fate by his armour) was left unconscious with broken ribs (six boxes of stun) that wouldn't heal without professional medical treatment. The rest of the team had to go in after them and put Kitty down with some FA and a fire elemental.
Wolfgar
I wanted my players to be screwed over by their Mr. Johnson. But I also wanted them to get away. Specifically, I wanted them to run.

They had completed their job for the session, and had two crates of a prototype mana-barrier spray loaded up in their van. They met Johnson's bodyguard in a Sydney warehouse, and unloaded one crate when the infiltrator spotted two armed men approaching from behind. Everybody draws guns, and the bodyguard (a combat focused Blood Mage, but they didn't know that) says "Get 'em."

My 5 Player's- Technomancer, Shaman, and Street Sammy are all in the van (and all sitting on the couch). A wired-up reaction-monkey of an infiltrator and a beastly lion shapechanger mystic-adept are outside, unloading the second crate.

The Bad guys- Serious Blood Mage and 4 Aztechnology Street Sams (2 hidden) with Ares Alphas. Also there was a hacker protecting their comms.

This was our second campaign, and with plenty of battles under their belts, my players were justifiably freaking out but nobody wanted to run yet. . Except for the shapechanger, who was very mad. The shooting starts, and they manage to take out one Azzie and damage the bloodmage before the baddies act.

I know I have to shock and awe them, so I drop a mana-ball on the car and unleash some short bursts on they guys outside. The mana-ball knocks out the mage, leaves the techno with 2 boxes, but the street sam did fine. The Azzies missed the infiltrator, and the shapechanger get's hit twice and soaks it all.

So now it's round 2, and I've got 2 of my players on the ropes, and everybody in the van wants to leave. But not the other two, who are doing just fine. So they stick around. Now I've really got to hurt them, so the hacker starts probing their system. Techno jumps into VR, get's smaked with some Black IC, and has to burn a point of Edge to survive. Sammy fires some shots, but basically justs get's the van ready to leave.

The Infiltrator lobs a grenade at the Blood Mage, knocking him out. (Here's where I should have flubbed the rules and let the Blood Mage keep pounding them, but the player spent edge and got mad successes, so I had him drop). However, the infiltrator, seeing two teammmates down and hearing the sirens, decides to hop in the van. Just one player left.

Now it's the shapechanger's turn. He drops two of the remaining Azzies with a edge boosted stun-ball, and yells at the last Azzie to yield and run away. (The guy's got full health, well trained, and know reinforcements are on the way. Also, I need Johnson to get at least one of those crates for my meta plot).

The Azzie's response- a full burst to the shapechanger's chest. Dealt 12 damage after soak. He was finally ready to run.
kzt
So then the Azzie puts an HE grenade into the van and killed them all? Because they are never going to get out of of there before he gets to act.
Falconer
One of my gaming buddies doesn't like to GM anymore because he thinks we'd consider him 'too bloody'. (I'm all for it, I have nothing against the occasional burning of edge or making up a new character for the fun of it).

But he has a small group of runners...

First they kick the door... all good
Then they proceed to stand silhouetted in the doorway loudly arguing for a while....
THEN after a few hints... they're shocked when most of them get gunned down when a machine gun they didn't notice being setup in the far back dark guns them down... still silhouetted in the doorway and loudly arguing.
*sigh* I love it when Darwin gets his sacrifices!

Wolfgar
QUOTE (kzt @ May 26 2012, 09:53 PM) *
So then the Azzie puts an HE grenade into the van and killed them all? Because they are never going to get out of of there before he gets to act.


They laid cover fire on the way out. Honestly, by that point (round 4 or 5 of combat, with all 10 characters having multiple IPs) we had run about an hour late. I finally got them to run for their lives.

I guess an ambush by a professional merc squad was not enough to scare them outright. Hopefully they learned their lesson.

ShadowDragon8685
I have a potentially-murderous scenario coming up for play either today or next week (depending on how long my players drag their heels and participate in 'slice of life aboard ship' RP.)

They're going to be caught up with by some scurvy sea dogs in a small boat who have been at sea for a day or two and are pissed, and looking for the cargo my players acquired recently. These guys don't fuck around, either, they've got a Nimrod with a fucking gattling gun flying air support, their boat has machine guns and can submerge (they're all wearing breathing gear, natch,) the works.

And, if they drive them off without killing them, they'll call their Johnson to give them the details of the ship that fought them off that they believe has the goods aboard, which means docking will turn into a fight because the Vory will be waiting for them.

And they left their street sam at home, AND the AI's player quit. So yeah... They're not in great shape. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Neraph
QUOTE (Wolfgar @ May 26 2012, 10:10 PM) *
They laid cover fire on the way out. Honestly, by that point (round 4 or 5 of combat, with all 10 characters having multiple IPs) we had run about an hour late. I finally got them to run for their lives.

I guess an ambush by a professional merc squad was not enough to scare them outright. Hopefully they learned their lesson.

My team and I recently took out a 5 person strong ex special forces prime runner team. Enemy mage, mystic adept, adept, rigger (two or three drones though), and street samurai. The magically active ones had like 9 magic and lots of nifty foci. It sucked, but we took them out without having anyone die or burn Edge.
Seriously Mike
I threw a pack of gangers against an almost unarmed 3-man team: the rigger in a tough, but otherwise unarmed van, the shaman riding shotgun and the burglar on his bike. All beginner characters, beginner players.
The problem: knowing full well the modifiers for shooting from a moving vehicle, I upped the gangers' stats. A bit too much (they had 4-5 dice after modifiers, against my players' 5-7). And then, my dice attempted to murder my players and only by judicious roll fudging I managed to get them out in one piece, with gangers losing three men and two bikes.
That and the combat was a complete spazfight. The van suffered a Powerbolt hit for 4 and some paint scraped by shotgun slugs, plus a busted windshield and driver's side window. Shaman and rigger both got hit once, but hard.
thorya
I did a one-shot with 3 of my regular players when we didn't have enough people for our regular game. They were hired to deliver a hand-written letter to a super-paranoid former demolitions specialist. I made it pretty clear at the start of the game that they probably weren't making it through this one.

The guy lived in a death trap that looked like a 1950's style house in the middle of the barrens. It featured such amenities as a murder drone for the mailbox, electrified doorhandles, a yard full of land mines, a few haven lilies in every room, a lead lined child's room that had huge amounts of radioactive materials, stairs that turned into a ramp spikes at the bottom, monofilament trip wires, a refrigerator full of liquid nitrogen that burst open when the handle was pulled, an underground tunnel lined with machine guns that led to the demolition specialists actual home, etc.

They entered by blasting the door with an assault cannon from the street and the groups drug dealer/chemical expert talked a few of his buyers into helping him raid the house in exchange for drugs. They entered the kitchen and one of the druggies died outright and the chemical expert triggered gas grenades and several stun paks. He was knocked unconscious, but always wore a respirator, so was spared being killed by stun overflow.

The Troll Street Sam almost bought it when he tried kicking down a door in the house, after the handle shocked him. The door panel was filled with shock sensitive plastic explosive designed to go off if the door was shot or damaged. He burned edge and managed to avoid landing on any of the explosive traps or the falling onto the trip wire he had already discovered in the area, but was still unconscious a good way into the home. The mage stabilized him and they retreated and came back two days later.

In the end, they resorted to launching grenades at the house until they could see most of the reinforced metal structure and shooting everything before they went into rooms afterward.
Tanegar
QUOTE (thorya @ May 28 2012, 01:37 PM) *
In the end, they resorted to launching grenades at the house until they could see most of the reinforced metal structure and shooting everything before they went into rooms afterward.

That sounds like an extraordinarily rational plan, given the nature of the house.
kzt
Yup. Or steal a 5000 gallon gasoline tanker and apply liberally before holding your weenie roast amidst the cooking-off IEDs.
Raiki
QUOTE (kzt @ May 28 2012, 04:31 PM) *
Yup. Or steal a 5000 gallon gasoline tanker and apply liberally before holding your weenie roast amidst the cooking-off IEDs.


Quotes like this are why I wish DS had a rep system. +1 to you, sir.


And that run does sound pretty brutal. I honestly can't say that I would have done very many things differently. Ultra-wideband radar, maybe? At least then they would have had a chance to see that the door was full of explosives. rotfl.gif

~R~
thorya
QUOTE (Raiki @ May 29 2012, 02:25 PM) *
Quotes like this are why I wish DS had a rep system. +1 to you, sir.


And that run does sound pretty brutal. I honestly can't say that I would have done very many things differently. Ultra-wideband radar, maybe? At least then they would have had a chance to see that the door was full of explosives. rotfl.gif

~R~


Yeah, it was really brutal and realism went out the window, because it was just a way to kill time when we couldn't play our regular game. That was half the fun for everyone. Normally launching grenades at a house for ten minutes would attract attention, even in the barrens, but no one came to investigate.

And they did try scanning the house, there was a sensor system that scanned for various types of detection devices (MADs, radar, etc.) then tracked the signal back to it's source with a mini grenades. Like laser guided bombs in reverse.

They also tried releasing rats onto the property to trigger the traps (after the druggies proved reluctant to continue, no matter how many hits they were offered).
Pendaric
Had my 3 PC's and a couple of NPC's do a last ditch save the city from toxic magical ritual plot with the added incentive that the adopted son/student of the street sam was part of the blood ritual sacrifice.

8 feral ghouls, 4 ganger ghouls with SMGs, 4 force 5 (cool.gif toxic spirits in a back ground count of three area and toxic shark shaman hiding behind cover and a ward.

At the end the PC's had won but everyone was unconcious and or in overflow. The sam having cut down the shark shaman after dead heat intiative, was in over flow and passing willpower to first aid the overflowed PC wizzer, his lord and set his son free- then passes out.

His student stim patches the NPC wizzer who past out from drain to to first aid the other NPC while he meds the Sam. Finally the student meds (blowing his one karma pool) the combat decker PC who would of been dead if he hadnt been an Ork.

NPC wizzer and Sams student call in some of the teams contacts from prior in the story for a swift DOC wagon pick up and expense cover deal.

I was proud of this one as one hairs breath more opposition (or bad luck) and it would of been TPK

This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012