Ok, here's the story. Some time ago some Russian slavers were thwarted by our runner team. They fled, and our runners decided that the mission was over.
It's not.
The Russians have returned, gunning for the group that interfered last time.
Now their favored tactic is to capture their enemies and use the various forms of mental reprogramming available in the sixth world to turn them into allies. most of their money comes from sailing from town to town, kidnapping attractive women and using the same techniques to make them pliable before returning home to sell them off to rich unpleasant people. They have a large operation, are involved with organized crime, and have a metric ton of resources to throw at problems if provoked.

The plan is for three teams to come back to Seattle and capture the runners who annoyed them last time, as if they were capable of defeating their elite teams then they're perfectly valid targets for recruitment. Now here is where I would like some help:
I'd like for people to post some of those ultra-munchkiny builds that they do for theorycraft, possibly polished off with some extra karma and wealth assets to really round them out. Now I should add that while metahumans are preferred, nothing is really off limits (except toxic mages and bug spirits. blood magic and cyberzombies, on the other hand, are perfectly fine.)

Can anyone help me?

The easiest thing to do is ignore the NPC rules and just give them whatever dice pools you see fit. If the team is superior to the runners, give the NPC's dice pools roughly equal to the team's, plus one or two dice.

and a FA grenade launcher with MRSI software......

I thought they wanted to "capture" them... not kill them and the city.

Have you looked through HERE? Several of the characters have substantial karma loads.

Alternately, planning can often be much more important than a high dice pool. If the Russians can research where the team hangs out, find their safehouse etc, then it's a matter of piping in neurostun while they sleep, having a Technomancer drag them into VR on the dance floor at a club, etc. Use treachery rather than overwhelming firepower.

Players remember who out-fought them maybe a couple of months.

Players remember who out-smarted them forever.




-k

Perhaps when the players start having trouble with the Russians, some nice people who say they have the same enemies will show up to help them escape. Then again, it may be associates of the Russians. They just need to be attacked enough to forget to be paranoid.

I wouldn't do that if I were you, FuelDrop.

If you use cheaped-out munchkin builds to screw your players, they're not going to be happy. Assuming they don't walk away entirely, they're likely going to declare no quarter shall be offered or taken, fight to the death, any who are successfully captured will be written off as a lost cause, and they're going to make completely minmaxxed munchkin characters.

Don't start an arms race with the players. They may not be able to win, but neither will you if you have to keep resorting to just giving the opposition arbitrarily munchkin stats and equipment to outfight them, and the loser will be the game.


Have the Russians cut their losses and move on, or if they can't do that, pursue the more traditional Vory tactics of finding everyone the Runners ever loved and torturing them to death by way of payback.

I can only second that.
I got severely outgunned once. Granted, the GM lacked a bit on the rules side of things, so it seemed to us we got handwaved to doom.
Then another time I got severely outsmarted (twice, two days in a row, what a weekend). We were eventually able to turn the tide, but barely.

But if you think you can make it fun for everyone involved, go ahead. I know neither you nor your group

Well, I've heard of a situation like that going somewhat more smooth than it did for my group back then. But still...

Also, high-munchkinry opposition can lead to the players outsmarting you.
My group once gunned down five or so beta-grade chrome hitters. If we had known how and were to sell the parts (something in there has to be salvageable, even though betaware cannot be implanted second-hand), we'd have made an awful lot of cash

Along the lines of treachery:

--Have the Russians track the runners, maybe find a Johnson that they are working for. During the job, the Russians rough up the Johnson, alter his memory to make him think the runners burned him, or even kill him and leave evidence that the runners double crossed the Johnson.
--Start beating up contacts, especially low loyalty ones which may turn on the runners. A higher loyalty one may get a call out to the runners that there's a trap, or they lure the runners into an ambush.
--Car bombs. Could be the runner's cars, contacts, or use a similar explosive to something the runners use/tamper with evidence, to frame them for assassination/attempted assassination of someone important.

Come at the runners sideways. The Russians know that when they came head-on, they got trounced. Have them learn from the mistake and use a new tactic.

I agree with BishopMcQ... mostly.

Problem is: Unless the Runners have crazy security, they can easily be kidnapped by professionals. To make it "fair" you NEED to have the russians make mistakes.

Let them find out where one of the runner lives for example (if possible), but then mess up the observation or the infiltration once. Or have them slip up on their legwork, so a contact can warn the runner that someone is asking questions or such.

If you play the russians perfectly (Like your Runners might do it) it is a matter of: Runner A wakes up in a cell, Runner B and C and D wonder where that guy is: Ah well, let's look for him... HEY WHERE IS RUNNER C... wasn't he with us, why am i breathing neurostun? WHAT IS GOING ON?

The active-aggressive... intruding party always gets the advantage. Ambushes and surprise-attacks are ridiculously effective in Shadowrun. (Also the good old infiltration-knock-out-exfiltration) - Unless you live with crazy security)

But hey, if you want to vanish your team without a chance... why not? (I have been thinking about doing that to my group too... but i would really like it if i get invited (ever) again *g*)

EDIT: Oh and also: If your runner aren't doing something proactive when they had their warning - take them down, they had their chance. Shadowrun is boring if you can't "lose". -My opinion though

Well, our team went to ground for the last two months, changing IDs ect. so I'm playing the Russians as cleanup crews who'll capture the group if the opportunity arises but haven't got it on the top of their list of priorities. Now I've thrown some hints they're back in town, and plan to have the group's next run (which is repaying a favor for a contact) lead them to stumble on some more concrete evidence. The PCs are supposed to be proactive for this whole thing, and love having an excuse to break out the heavy weapons.
Hence, the request for munchkin builds. They need foes who're capable of providing an interesting tactical challenge (as in 'if you attack these guys head on then you'll probably get badly hurt/killed, maybe you should try something else'). I will be cherry picking builds that aren't out of our league, so I don't want to gm them to death. Thanks for the reminder though, it's good advice.

@BishopMcQ: Thanks for the link.

Summerstorm... you make it sound like the Russkies (probably Vory) are sending the keystone cops. Not their A-game 'recruitment' squad.

This is how I often do it if I'm GM. To give the team challenge I give their opponits their stats, +/- what's needed to amp up or ramp down the threat level as needed. Granted that's just general purpose. Every now and then you need a BBG

Exactly... because if they would... the runners would go to bed one day and wake up in a reprogramming chair the other. My point is: EVERYONE can be defeatedif they don't know what is coming. VERY easily most of the time. Sometimes a concession or lapse in logic is needed (as hard as i like to play) to not do a "Rocks fall, everyone's dead".

I had to do something similar in my group a while ago: Had one of the "security" people tell the runner that they think someone is watching his house. The runner acted and got his fair fight. Plan of the bad guy was revenge/mutilation... which wouldn't be fun if he had just succeeded without the player having any say. (The bad guy could have and would have broken in and knocked out/kidnapped the runner no problem)

It sounds like FuelDrop is looking more for opponents that the PCs will have to outsmart rather than take head-on. Take a look in the first link in my signature; you might be able to adapt some of those characters with some minor work. They also have advancement options you can tack on at the bottom.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=23592

If you want opponents the Runners have to outsmart rather than take head-on, then it's fine to use overpowered shit - but the Runners should be in the acting position, with the OP guys on the defensive.

The acting party always has the advantage over the reacting party.

The group didn't make it to the heavy hitters. one of their recon runs went so badly wrong that they have one character using hand of god and the rest going into hiding... and this was against corpsec who were for the most part being engaged 1 at a time and were using gel rounds!
I would not have thought it was possible.

Welcome to Shadowrun.

Did the dice mutiny against them? That happens some times.

On the other hand, this will probably throw the Russians completely off their trail. They'll think there's no way these bozos can possibly be the guys that iced one of their elite teams, the real doers must have faked the evidence to lead back to these clowns.

Honestly, the problem was that 4 members of the group went in black trenchcoat, only to discover that the fifth member had decided to throw the plan away and roll pink Mohawk.

Full story: A pimp contact of ours contacted us with the news that several of his girls had started acting oddly, and he was calling in a favor we owed him. our investigation led us to a drug dealer's house in Renton, and after a brief and successful recon we determined that within the house was a commlink that was somehow connected to the girls' odd behavior. We had floor plans, our hacker owned their security system (Though we expected them to reboot the moment they realized this), and there was a Lone Star station about three minutes out. The plan was simple: The hacker would lock most of the on-site security out of our path, prevent the system from calling backup, and hand control of their drones over to our rigger. The team would infiltrate silently, take out the guards with precision bursts of gel rounds from suppressed weapons, grab the commlink (and if it turned out the commlink was in the drug dealer's head, we'd kidnap and sedate him), then get out of there before the security system could come back online and sound the alarm. We knew that the guards were carrying SMGs loaded with gel rounds, and if we hit fast the situation would at worst be 1 street sam with full combat loadout vrs 1 or maybe 2 wage-slave security types. We spent about an hour planning the raid while we waited for the pizza to arrive, working out which guards could be effectively eliminated by our air support drones (packing sniper rifles) and which would be locked out of the fight. We had most of the run fairly well thought out.

The plan went well enough at first, with one guard disabled by our infiltrator, another three downed by their own drones (which were outfitted with ingram smartgun X's, again loaded out with gel rounds), and a fifth going down quickly to our troll's suppressed machine pistol. Then captain stupid decides: "Screw this stealth business" and blows his guard away with a three-round burst of ex-ex from his unsilenced shotgun. This is the point where he reveals to the group that he doesn't have any silenced weapons after all.

Worse, this guy was our point man, so he was going to get to the target first.

Now I was taking a turn at GMing, and I figured 'hmmm, everyone else has been silent, this guy is running up the staircase with a shotgun (Which raised the alarm early, by the way) and has obviously got no intention of being non-lethal... the wage mage lieutenant at the top of the stairs isn't going to hold back.' Captain Idiot runs up the stairs and straight into a force six power bolt, fails his will check, and takes a healthy 9 physical. (Yes we are using the optional rule about adding hits to the spells force for extra drain. the wage mage overcast for all he was worth and took 6 physical from drain). The guy beside him pounds the intruder with a pair of shots from his pistol, and the good Captain needs to use his last point of edge to avoid hitting overflow. He geeks the mage and the guy next to him, then runs into... the drug dealer's 5-year-old son's room. Nothing to do with the mission, he just decided that he was too close to death to take on the likely armed drug dealer so instead of waiting for backup he decided to go for a defenseless target. He announced his presence by busting open the door and shouting "come out little kiddie".

Now the drug dealer heard that and, having jumped out of bed and armed himself upon being woken by explosive shotgun fire, charges fearlessly across the corridor to protect his son. Captain Idiot takes a shotgun blast to the back and I roll, giving the drug dealer 12 dice. the result: 9 hits. Captain Idiot then blotches his dodge and soak rolls and goes into hand of god territory. With no time to think and no knowledge of what just happened (She was focused on taking out a particularly stubborn guard in the courtyard) our rigger switches to the alternate clip on her sniper drone and shoots the guy who had just KOed our team-mate. the alternate clip: Anti-Tank rounds. The drug dealer was still in his pajamas, and never stood a chance. The rest of the team rock up and I tell them that they have to decide RIGHT NOW what they're doing, there's no time to think and if they delay for even a single initiative pass Captain Idiot dies. They follow their first instinct of help a team member and manage to save him, but Lone Star are on their way and Doc Wagon have assault choppers already in the air so there's no time to search for the commlink (Note: I decided that to get him out alive they needed both of the other on-site runners to pick him and the medkit up and carry them carefully, in exactly the right relative positions. that meant no time to so much as glance around if they wanted to get out before the cops turned up. They did get a manservant drone to grab the dead drug dealer as well in case the commlink they were after was implanted, but it wasn't.)

Of course, not only was the mission a total disaster but Captain Idiot was quickly located by the authorities. Now it would have been through ritual magic (He left a lot of blood lying around, after all) but before the wage mages could do their thing a group member slipped the authorities the location of the guy's hospital bed.

End result: Captain Idiot was arrested and is claiming that he never killed anyone, it was all because the troll mage mind controlled him and set him up. While no-one believes his ramblings he has effectively compromised the whole group, the most paranoid of whom are only going to have to burn a SIN and get some minor cosmetic surgery while some of the others have to burn everything they own and everyone they know.

Oh, and this was the first time my hacker ever came on-site for a run... in fact, it was the first time they'd even met her in person. yeah, probably not happening again.

Leeeeeroy JENKINS!

I think we've all had experience with that type of player. I once had a group sneaking into a low security compound from the back. There was a guard at the front desk watching the security footage. They sent the character without any stealth skills in through the front to distract the guard while they made their move. Everyone else knew that distract the guard meant, "talk with him, ask him directions, keep him from watching the screens as we climb the fence, etc." This player decided that distract the guard meant stab him in the chest. A similar shit storm ensued. Some players.

If you still want some opposition, beyond umaro's list, I've got 1 or 2 I can post. And just a suggestion to keep it from being, "you wake up breathing neurostun and then you wake up two weeks later with a cranial bomb", if the Russians are going to go after them again at some time in the future, have one of their contacts let them know that the Russian mob is asking about them on the street and to watch their backs.

You guys got Leroy'd.

Make sure everyone (most importantly the GM) is on the same page regarding the type of game you're playing.

If you're playing Mirrorshades and the GM is trying to run Pink Mohawk, he's going to be frustrated that you spend two hours OOC planning out an ambush of a handful of gangers that you could reasonably knock over by coughing too loudly in their vicinity.

If you're playing Pink Mohawk and the GM is trying to run Mirrorshades, you're going to wake up breathing neurostun and then wake up again with a cranial bomb and/or a date with a firing squad and/or you just never wake up.

If you're playing Mirrorshades, the GM is running Mirrorshades, and one player shows up to the game with a Great Form Force 10 Spirit of Pink Mohawkery, your run is going to get dropped into the depths of shit.

The most interesting way to run such a situation is forcing the players to react to the thread in unconventional ways. Do your players have loads of contacts, houses, luxury cars etc? Congratulations, you have provided them with something to loose.

I´ll second that the attack should not be driven by superior stats. Combat tends to get binary with higher numbers of dice, and there is no fun in that. There is nothing positive at the end of an arms race, especially not for the GM. I prefer simple stat lines that can get the job done, combined with very few signature pieces of gear/ware. Running a full team of kitted-out runners all alone is challenging, and unless one does it in style meaningless for the players. If you give the opposition superior stats, don´t give them strength of number topped off with being the offender.

Give them a regular task/run to keep them busy. The Vory asks around for information on their team. The more loyal contacts will inform them. Have them wonder about traitors, have stuff going mysteriously wrong (fixers not showing up, security being alerted before the fact etc). Do this until the team starts to look for the culprits.
Step 2: Take existing ressources away. Spies in front of their safehouses, B&E on their homes, loyal contacts being blackmailed etc. Hurt the more paranoid/stealthy characters less than the loud noisy ones.
Step3: Give them intel on the vory boss that is after them, have them assault the bosses home. There you place an adequate "personal bodyguard" with equal stats and one signature weapon per guard.

How was "getting mowed down by automatic fire by their own drones" silent? I refuse to believe that "Captain Idiot" was the first thing everybody noticed... Also: I love that. Tell that player he did nothing wrong. Where would be the excitement if nothing goes ever wrong and all players work with surgical precision.

Ah well... depends on how the players took it, i guess.

Because Hollywood Silencers, that's how.

[Hitler clone (Superman: at earth's end)]Of course! Don't you know anything about science?!?[/Hitler clone]

This is true.

My players to this day still shudder when there is a mention of the assassin. In the the other game I managed to give a PC group of about 6 players a run for the money with a single assassin that was 1 level higher than them...in a single dark storage room...in their home base.
Use of obscuring mist, smoke, great hide checks, and exceptional use of terrain had them sweating, nearly killed one player with a death attack followed by poison, second player nearly died from poisoned throwing knife. As he ran out of the room and up the stairs towards the healer before the secondary damage kicked in and killed him, he ran across the caltrops that one of the other players left to hinder the assassin....