how much Combat do you see in your runs and or full games? how much combat is too much combat in your opinion? just want to see everyone's thoughts,

We tried to minimize gunfights. We much preferred shootings.

Though we usually used tasers or stunbolt/ball They are crazy effective.

Depends entirely on the run. Ideally no combat, all violence should be sudden assassinations with no notice and be completed before the opposition has a chance to act at all.

That being said, it is somewhat rare that one manages to avoid all combat on a run. As for how much is too much, the amount that results in your death.

If you run out of ammunition for all your guns then you're probably getting a bit too much combat on that run... unless survival horror is the whole point!

survival horror,, I love the sound of that >:3. hmm. zombies bwhaha, my group will hate me forever XD

My GM tried that on us at one point... he forgot that last mission he'd let me loot an Ares alpha with several hundred round drums of ammo!

Heavy Weapons Troll: "Svetlana is belt-fed. I did not run out of bullets."

played a troll one time, dual wield LMG belt fed (think rambo ammo) bwhahaha. poor gangers

Since I'm playing low street level right now, combat is fairly common, as in at least one per session so far. The combats have been varying in scale though, some only melees/brawls, and some shootouts. Due to the fact that the "runners" are not Shadowrunners but rather fairly ordinary people, they don't usually get the drop on their opposition but rather have to react to unforeseen events.

I think as their competence as players and characters increases, they will have the opportunity to plan out their missions more, gather more intel, and thus limit actual combat alot.


For a full-fledged Shadowrunner group I usually had 1 session planning, 1 session legwork and then 1 session with more legwork and execution at the end, which might involve a firefight.

Sr combats are deadly. My personal feeling is that a combat should only happen when all other options have failed. When I started thinking about them this way we dropped to just a little less than 1 combat a session, which mad things much more manageable and really kept things tense since the PCs knew the cost for messing up and often tried to avoid it.

My games tend to run like an episode of a TV drama (think Leverage or Burn Notice) or hardboiled detective novel (I'm a big Spenser fan myself). Mostly it's talking, sneaking, finding clues, setting up cons, legwork, etc. But there's usually a spot or two where things go to hell and there's no option but to shoot it out. Or blow something up. Sometimes it's planned, but usually it's not.

In my old gaming group, combat always happened every session without exception. We had a few combat-oriented characters, and not having combat would have been boring for them. Even if we did everything right, we were constantly getting ambushed by various interested parties.

Well, we usually try to not let it come that far.
Yes, even me, even when playing the "can only do combat" maxed out Troll-Monster.
And i STILL get to say:"i told you so, give me a big gun" pretty much every single time.
Usually because one of the others fucked up somehow/somewhere too ^^

That is why Heavy Weapons Troll took Computer Science while in Military School.

Does he also have a degree in Russian Literature?

No, he worked for a living, so only College Courses.

Computer Sciences, and Civil Engineering focusing on Industrial work.

aww, I was hoping for a Heavy weapons guy character lol.

Heavy Weapons Troll Decker.

Really surprised the group when he slung Svetlana (An LMG) over his shoulder like an assault rifle and pulled out his cyberdeck to cut through IC like a industrial laser through butter.

there is usually a combat every 12-18 hours of game play (about every 3rd game for us). 2/3s of these are usually planed (assassination or what have you), 1/3 are generally bad because someone is going to die and it could be a PC.

Combat I think averages once a session in my group, but if it lasts more than a full round the characters likely did something horribly wrong(like let them shoot back). Surprise, initiative, and IP win fights.

I think that, in a scenario of 3 game sessions, 2 of the 3 must have an action scene. An action scene doesn't have to be a real fight tough. The action scene in the 2nd game session must be less intense than the 3rd one.

Ofc, the PC can usually avoid those by beeing smart or creative.


This is, of course, just a general rule of thumb. Sometimes it's way more, sometimes way less, and usually, it depends on the PC plans and their success or failure.

We seem to get into combat every session because of the ludicrous number of negative qualities we have that generate encounters or stuff. Honestly, I'm surprised if we're ever dealing with stuff that isn't related to our NQs. All of our combat thus far has been, I'm quite certain, related to these NQs.

With 3 characters we have....

Enemy (1 Incidence, 4 Connection)
Enemy Group (1 Incidence, 4 Connection)
Enemy Group (2 Incidence, 2 Connection)
Lost Loved One
Vendetta
Wanted
Wanted

So our first and current mission has ran two sessions, I think, and we've had combat for two sessions (a bunch of bounty hunters after the wanted guys, the 2 incidence 2 connection group (non-combat), and I think the 1 Incidence/4 Connection enemy group making an appearance) and we haven't even got near the objective to do legwork and planning yet.

I'll be honest, it'll probably bite my character in the ass one time but he does try to provide first aid (nonmaterial first aid) for injured foes. He's already been shot at once by the teammates of the foe he was trying to help. I don't think he's going to keep doing that for long.

My group tries to avoid combat, but when we do have combat we try to end it in one round or less, either by taking out the leader & the faces asking for surrender, or just downing all of the biggest targets quickly & quietly, & scaring the others.

We have 1 Sniper Specialist who always tries to stay about 800 yards out (if there's room) & a sneak specialist who can slip up behind opponent & punch them with shock fists to unconscious quickly & 2 mages who can put people down quickly so we tend to drop 4 targets in one round quickly, quietly & makes anyone still standing worried about the 3 people who have not made an action.

Holy shit! The GM must love you guys.

They don't have Amnesia to go with all that.

Maybe they do, they just can't remember!

We tend to have at least 1 character heavily slated to combat in our group, with others able to "take care of themselves long enough to get away." The combat character gets VERY bored, because we rarely use him. The idea being if we are needing his services, we screwed up already. Sorta what ShadowPavement said: the combat gets peeps killed. Unless it's a run where we know we are going in as an exterminating service, we shoot long enough to run away.

There are always more NPCs with guns than runners.

I don't think so. I think he hates it. I base that off the fact that when I told him I wanted to add a 1 Connection 6 Incidence enemy to round out my enemy group (the 1 incidence 4 connection one) he kind of balked at it.

An incidence 6 enemy will be "the central focus of the scenario" in 1 out of 8 times, and be a subplot through the scenario 3 out of 8 times. That means he has to be worked into the plot in at least a meaningful way half the time. I can understand why a GM wouldn't want that.

EDIT: bad math, it's in fact higher than this. I computed the chance of rolling it with either entirely 5's or entirely 6's, neglecting some of the combinations.

The group for me was initially worth 8 BP and it was also the 1/1 enemy that didn't pass muster either because of adding more rolls.

That's exactly the calculation and realization I made when he came to me with the idea (I'm his GM).

Also, I didn't think it would be sustainable for me to be able to run such a character without straining what would be believable. There would only be so many times or ways that I could Hand of God such a character to make sure he escapes to menace another day. And I know I'd have to hand of god him every time knowing my group. I would have had to force him to use his next batch of karma to pay that quality off so I could let him die.

But yes, this adventure has been fun so far...forcing me to change plans and throw in more monkey wrenches.

On a positive note, I like watching them squirm because they never know if they're ever really done with their enemy encounters (they never are) and they can strike at the most inopportune times.

It was meant to be a comic relief antagonist and hence the 1 connection score. Snowflake is the most prone to killing people. Spitfire generally goes out of his way to avoid killing people if it can be helped. Ret, well, I don't know half the time whether Ret is trying to kill people or not.

A large group of enemies, that for some reason only ever send one member at a time against their enemy

Our group is fairly similar to the others here. We used to have at least one combat a session, though if we had more than one, one of those was usually a cake walk. Our current group though consists, in part, of a mage that specializes in control thoughts, a phys adept face with Commanding Voice, and a really good sneak, all of which means that combats are often over before they start. Sometimes the group will let the mini-gun wielder in on the fun just so that the player can do something. Our last session pitted us up against a rival group of runners as we both tried to secure "trophies". We started out by having the rigger hack the opponent's van which proved rather effective since they didn't have a hacker or rigger of their own. Crashing the van into a police station pretty much wrapped up the contest before it started.

Depends on the people in your party. Some people just aren't very well suited to planning, information gathering, cons and the like. My home town team (who are historically DnD players) will typically demand at least one combat per session if not more. Even at a convention I find at least one combat encounter is expected and typically a few more are thrown in just in case the team frags up. That being said: follow the oldest rule in the game, find out what is fun for you and your party and do that! If that is very little combat great, if it turns into a constant death fest of HMG fire and rockets more power to you. Of course SR is a more lethal system so I advise a few extra characters as stand byes if that is the case.

As long as it is fun. Personally I enjoy using a few sideline encounters just for my PCs qualities. In this case it sounds like the PCs are just going to be running these encounters as a main theme in this campaign. Which might be the biggest tragedy or greatest campaign idea ever, hard to say which.

"Hide behind the Mountain of dead Bards!"

I think I should take the opportunity to lump those seven NQs together....

Enemy (1,4) + Vendetta + Wanted
Enemy Group (1,4) + Lost Loved One
Enemy Group (2,2) + Wanted

The NQs are, for the most part, linked to the enemy.

The Enemy (1,4) is the one who put the bounty out on the character and obviously the Vendetta is linked to that enemy.
And the Enemy Group (1,4) is responsible for the Lost Loved One.

It's also worth noting that only the enemies and the wanted NQs generate and "force" encountered. Lost Loved One can do that but like Vendetta a test is permitted to avoid succumbing to it, which for that character a Logic + Willpower test yields 9 dice against a threshold 2.

*Hacks the commlinks on dead bards*
THIS
*Links to all the grenades, explosives and guns carried by the bards and slaved to their commlinks, linking them all to a single big red AR button*
IS
*Presses big red AR button*
SHADOWRUN!
*Boom*

That is a great idea. Only issue is how well the PCs flushed out the qualities. I require at least some back story for most qualities that would naturally require them. That being said I now see the up side to my lazy player's argument that I should do it for them.

Don't get me started on some of them dodgy RC qualities ... Enemy is one I particularly hate - a NQ for a character that more often than not ends up boning the character's team. (End of rant).

Back on topic, as a GM I must admit to having a pechant for building runs that lead up to an epic battle at the end, it tends to help the players feel like they've enjoyed their popcorn. On occasion where the run goes oversmoothly or the PCs come up with a curveball that lets them get the gizmo with ease, I tend to throw in a random encounter to let loose on them and pass the time until the end of the session.

Oh, my character has the Enemy Group/Lost Loved One combination. He used to work for the government but sought employment in the shadows after his son was kidnapped due to some information he ran across and acquired while in his last job. My enemy group is more of a conspiracy and my character is aware of it but doesn't know anyone that is involved. There is, at best, one member of the conspiracy that has been "drawn" up and I am loath towards dealing with him because the member in question could result in a TPK if we're dumb.

Yeah.... I uh.... gave the GM a sniper as part of my enemy group.

--



And how does any NQ that has a functional effect not bone the team? Enemy is just a bit more direct about it.

How about the multiple personality disorder negative quality? Let's see. Bampf. Test! FAIL! Swap personalities. Well shit, now I don't have the skills needs to complete my job on the run!

The nature of Shadowrun is such that it is sensitive to cascading failures. Any NQ that cause a failure has the risk of cascading and compromising and affecting the whole run/team.