Argh! Help!

My players are too good. I'm one guy up against 6 players who are using HeroLab to create characters I can't challenge.

Half of the group are magicians or adepts and the rigger & the decker are very good at what they do.

At the same time the players are very analytic people - we have:
- a Chief Financial Officer (very good at number-crunching) in Excell
- a former military officer, turned programmer, turned business developer for a very large company
- a regular programmer (who work with DNA-sequencing)
- another business analyst for very big bank (who crunches number in analytic tools all day)
- one more guy who is a bit more chill

They are all very passionate about the game, so they bring everything they have to the table.

The problem is I don't have the time or energy to match them.

I mean: this is the level of planning they put into things (made by x-military officer): Tactics for scouting. This is based on his experience as a in-field military commander from live operations. How can I match this?!??!?

Their characters are min/maxed to the hilt. They're all very interesting characters, but they're also shadowrunning monsters. They have no discernible weaknesses that I can challenge. Besides they see all that I can send at them way before it has a chance to reach them.

I can't use the pregenerated characters as opposition - they'll eat them up like Oreos (When will SR learn to make proper pregen characters?)

There is a huge complexity issue: I can challenge them by throwing single hostiles at them - dragons or large spirits - but that just not interesting or realistic. If I'm going to create an interesting encounter for them, the complexity of making it is staggering - 4-8 unique characters made with every single trick in the books? If I'm going to create encounters that are varied, I'll have to spend weeks preparing.

I can't set up an ambush - they discover them way and just go a different way - meaning all preparation is moot.

Essentially I have to be able to improvise encounters on the fly based on what they do and run them - and Shadowrun is not a simple system that makes it easy to improvise.

So can you help me? Do you have any suggestion for a way to challenge them? or to reduce complexity?

Best,
Adhoc

Sure. Chicago.
BGC, Insect Spirits, no Matrix-Access.
Or the SOX. Radiation and BGC and no Matrix.

Otherwise get them out of their comfort zone.
Runs in the Wilderness(i hear horrible things about Australia)
Pirate/Anti Pirate Runs at sea.

The Jungle. The Arktic Regions. If you wanna go full hog, Shadowrun . . IIN SPAACEE!

I dream of a group like yours. They mean that you can unfold your sinister wings of umbral evil and soar into the night like the vampire of souls that you truly are - that we all are.

... or maybe that is just me.

Hey, and this is just a hypothetical question, if I kill you and eat your liver wrapped in bacon and grilled in a skillet, do you think they'd want me to run that game? Just asking, no real reason ...

Anyway, you wanted ideas, and I am here to provide ideas.

Let's start with some basics: your players are sharp, and play tightly optimised characters. I'll take you at your word, that you found no real weaknesses. Great! That actually simplifies your job a lot, because what it means is that you expect to put regular opposition in their way, and that is not intended to defeat them, but is kind of an annoyance/delay factor, it eats up their ammunition and supplies, and distract them in the moment from the big picture.

I put up a post not long ago, talking about physical security strategies. Here's a precis:

o Direction. Security architecture is intended to drive people in manageable ways. When the fire alarm goes off, the signs flash and tell people how to best leave the building. Similarly, the walls and razor wire and barking dogs suggest to people that it's just easier and less risky to go through the security checkpoint. The security guard there doesn't have to lift a finger to make people come to him. They just naturally do. If enemies such as runners do penetrate, the architecture should suggest how they leave as well, leading them into the waiting arms of overwhelming power.
o Deterrence. Big walls, razorwire, visible checkpoints and scary security dogs deter most gangers, casual vandals and drunks. This principle does stretch beyond intimidation as well. If a place just looks uninteresting, people are less likely to bother with it. Another facet of deterrence is making it clear that one is under surveillance. Cameras (real or fake) can be quite obvious, perhaps every fifty feet on top of a fifteen foot wall. Large, open, sweeping lawns also make people less inclined to try to cross them if they are up to no good.
o Detection. So Drunk Dave decides to climb the fence and play with the security dogs. The surveillance will collect his data. It might archive it, or send it off for analysis and correlation with other trespassing reports, or notify security and Lone Star, or try to identify him by public records - or all of the above. Either way, they know more.
o Disable. This one is often more subtle than it seems. It doesn't mean crippling every customer or vendor who shows up, but it might mean offering people approaching the building a poor view of what's going on. Maybe the shrubbery screens people from outside. Maybe the pretty lights tend to blind surveillance. This can also extend to vehicles, with bollards or other vehicle management tools to prevent people from driving a van in through the front entrance. The whole system is designed to put the security team at an advantage, and enemies at a disadvantage.
o Depth. Bad security is like an egg - a crunchy perimeter and a nutritious centre. Good security provides defence in depth. The runners should always be challenged, confounded, confronted and confused.
o Delay. Everything goes better for the corporation when shadowrunners have to slow down. Time delay safes? Great. Slow opening doors? Great. Locked doors they have to navigate? Excellent. Strategically placed structural bars that make trolls have to constantly bend down? Installed everywhere. Complex internal corridor structure? Of course.

Those will help give your super-organised players something to chew on, but it won't stump them.

OK, so where is the real meat? If you can't defeat them in the field, you can't get the jump on them, what can you do?

The long game. I will write another post about that soon, I just need more coffee...

The long game
or
How to challenge people who are experts at the short game

If your players are tactical experts, you can't expect to plausibly challenge them on the tactical field, unless there is plausible reason for something to have gone wrong - but this reason can come after the fact.

Example:

Alice, Bob, Cindy and Dave break into a supposedly low security lab to make off with a prototype. Standard run, no surprises, it looks super boring from the outside, scouting indicates nothing particularly weird until Dave the Decker does a wireless assay of the lab and discovers that the whole place is rigged to flood with nerve gas, and there are pop-up autoturrets hidden at the angles of every major passageway. This is obviously insane, and way out of proportion for what the job was supposed to be. If the team is novahot, maybe they do the run, and discover that everything is also covered in panic buttons and there's a HRT response on constant five minute watch as well, but it's more likely that the team regroup for a meeting, maybe involving the fixer, and say: "What is up with that fragged-up site?"

What you as the GM know, but they don't, is that the prototype itself was a red herring. A macguffin. The team's security expertise was what Johnson really wanted, because Johnson really wanted intel on the site. Johnson was working for RunnerFragger Corp, which is trying to get the jump on their competition, Boese AG, and was thinking of using the lab but wanted to see if the lab was really up to keeping their secrets.

That is just a small example. Think of it like a psychological test: the first thing that psychologists absolutely have to do when designing a test is to make it look like something else. Testing someone's compassion levels? Make it look as if you're testing their reaction time. Testing someone's reaction time? Make it look as if you're testing their preferences in computer games. Something, anything else.

OK, so we've established the principle that no run is ever what it looks like. If you have a run that is what it looks like, it's only to fake them out. But really, no run is ever what it looks like.

If you're having trouble with this, when you plan a run make sure that you have at least four conflicting interests in play: The original sponsor of the run, Johnson, the team's fixer, and whoever's delivering the message to Johnson.

Example:

The fixer likes the team, but thinks they're too low profile. If they were more notorious, they might command more money, which would get them more jobs, and the fixer more money. So the fixer nudges them towards higher-profile jobs .... meaning, more risk.

Johnson wants to get maximum results for minimum cost, so lies about the nature of the target. Not the security necessarily, or the name of the target or anything that blatant, but says things like: "We want to make sure you exit the facility with at least one cockatrice in the bag." when what Johnson really wants is not the cockatrice as such (although that's certainly useful) but to do an analysis on the cockatrice for tracking hardware, because targetcorp has been working on sexy new tracking hardware for paracritters.

The original sponsor, someone like Ares, or the Tijuana Inflatable Sexdrone Company, Incorporated, has their own priorities. They want the opposition's prototype, not to slow them down or confuse them or steal technology (although that's all good too) but to send a message that they can achieve this, that they will spend the money, and that they're hard targets who aren't afraid to get dirty. Whether or not the prototype is stolen, or even ever existed in the first place, is kind of irrelevant. They might send the runners on a wild goose chase and not care.

And then the person pulling Johnson's strings might have entirely different priorities. The company might not care about the opposition's prototype, but Johnson's handler totally wants the prototype, and will sell it under the table to a third party, and turn to the main company and say: "Yeah, the runners fragged up, they got the wrong thing. But whaddya gonna do? Ignorant street scum."

OK, so that was kind of the medium game... long game post coming after more coffee.

EDIT: Just realised this was my post #666. Cosmic symbology at work!

OK, more coffee inserted into the IV. On to the long game.

Your runners are fish, and every run is a flap of the tailfin. But where are they swimming? In a vast, all-encompassing reef of mutant madness.

What you want to do is create a rich, vibrant, colourful environment in which they can swim, and admire the scenery. How?

The first thing is that you want a corporate family tree. You want to have a list of corps operating in an area, all the way from small business development loan recipients to Horizon. You want to know their ownership relationships, their contract relationships, and their general attitudes. You want to have a list of at least VP-level people in them, and if there are any major relationships with others.

Example: You're in the Seattle 'plex, and one of the corporations is a baby one: Olive Street Organics. They sell naturally scented beeswax candles, evergreen resin incense and stuff like that. Big money, disposable items for the luxury market. To get them off the ground, the original owner sold a 30% stake to the landlord (Interbay Realty Corp.) and a 30% stake to their major supplier (SuperNatural Supplyco). The owner retains 40%, but lives in a constant state of paranoia about being muscled out of the business by the investors. It turns out that the business is way too small to interest the investors - they're more interested in Olive Street Organics staying in business and making a profit and driving more business for them, but there's a wrinkle, because you as the GM also know that Interbay Realty is a joint venture between Ballard Property Development and Queen Anne Drones (who make domestic robots). Queen Anne Drones has a part owner who really wants to buy out Olive Street Organics, but nobody in Ballard Property Development gives a damn, so you can have entire runs where a rich eccentric living near the space needle is doing everything in her power to get the team to go on nonsensical runs to convince SuperNatural that Olive Street's owner is incompetent and needs to be bought out by SuperNatural and Interbay jointly, with Interbay getting 51% and SuperNatural 49% (or less) so that bit by bit this crazy control freak can corner the scented candle market in the Seattle enclave.

Now have at least five different parallel stories of greed, spite, animosity and ego running at the same time, with conflicting lunatics driving the team in different directions ...

Your goal is to have the team sit down and say: "Why the frag is Septic Sewage asking us to run a datasteal on Vashon Yacht Design? This makes no sense!" It's not because they can't do the datasteal. Of course they can! They're the experts! And you're sitting at the table, grinning like a maniac because you know that the datasteal isn't a datasteal, but a message being sent to the wife of the principle sailmaker, who happens to be a professor at UW where she's responsible for teaching Sperethiel to the daughter of the local Vory boss.

So there's one thing missing, and that is: why do, or should the team care about this level of depth?

On one level, they don't. It's scenery. It's window-dressing.

On the next level, it's cool, because as they develop more understanding of the NPCs and corps in their environment, they get more involved, and more able to develop a bigger appreciation of what they have going on. This is fun, and can even open their options.

On the next level, this is where you get to really cool things. What does your group care about? For example, does a shaman care deeply about green space and urban raccoons on Magnolia Hill? Slowly, it should become visible, ever so slowly, that the corps are planning on buying it out and turning the whole hill into an arcology. Piece by piece, every run, every plan, everything has been moving to destroy all that this shaman holds dear - and he had a primary role in the whole scheme. In fact, even runs which appeared to promote the raccoon population were there to increase the corporate argument that there's a health risk on the hill. Everything turns around in the end.

This is the long game. Watching the runners screw themselves in slow motion, and slowly, gradually, sprinkling grit into their lube.

First give them a hug from me--a group like that is pure gold.

Second, you're not the opponents of the other players, the point of the game is to have fun.

Third: What you're really asking is how can I challenge my players--I'm not a dragon with 18 intelligence, or a corporate master with 3 tours in Desert Wars (unlike at least one of your players).

To the third point: Design the security system as if you were the corporation in question. Does this mean that a low level Mcguffin will be less protected? Yes. Could it be a complete cakewalk for the runners? Yes. That is ok. Most security is designed to handle some issues, like low level vagrants or mass mobs of civilians or prevent terrorist attacks from entering the facilities. For the professional runner, most facilities should be a piece of cake.

Heavy magic groups will be tapped for heavy magic issues. So don't be afraid to up the magic challenge.

A good decker and rigger is worth its weight in gold. That is another area that can be upped in the challenge level. Drones (even combat ones) are cheap compared to personnel. Matrix programs are also cheap deterrents. So don't be afraid to throw them some curve balls.

The social and moral: Suppose they enter a facility filled with children being experimented on. Their job is to rescue prisoner #453 and torch the place. Have there be fall out from that inicdent that goes beyond the job. Are they cold hearted and burn it down, have a relative (a prime runner) of one of the kids find out what happened and go after them. If they save the kids, the Johnson might go after them for failing to do the job.

Another good counter plays off the last point. Either the johnson or the prime runner hires another team to take the team down.

Challenge them? I think their point is that you DON'T. In fact from your write up, your players seem to be not only experts at the short game but also the long game.

This said, you CAN use the pregens. Use them fully expecting them to be overcome. Go with the flow, your group is the irresistable force and you don't seem to have the time nor inclination to come up with the immovable object.

Thanks for the great replies - I'll sink some time into some considerations and come back to you.

As for challenging them: I try - but they are very good. Case in point: yesterday they went to a small abandoned town to search for an artifact.

Samuel (the one with the map) of them have Spatial Sense with extended range, so he can "capture" all architectual structures (and warded areas) within a 600 meter radius. The scouting route on the map is set, so that if they drive it with a Spatial Sense range 600, they'll have covered the whole town.

The character also have eidetic memory, so han kan remember all the details of this - and the skills to sketch it all out for the rest of the team.

Congratulations, they now know every single buiilding, basement, tunnels - whatever - in the whole area.

The only thing that took them for a ride last game night was that they weren't prepared for the background count in the area - a toxic mage ghoul had been deliberately polluting the area for a very long time.

So...I believe it is about time for the corp/runner-community to take notice of them and up their game.

A.

From the linked PDF: how does this work out? I mean drain, force 1 invisibility?

SYL

Drain would Force -1; aka 1.

However from description of Invisibility:


So if they don't have a lot of Hits, they'll be easy to spot.

And the Force (1) acts as the limit on the spellcasting test, so they can maximum have 1 hit. And if they use Edge to bypass the limit ( :Force) they loose that Edge while the spell is in effect.

I think they might be using Reargents to change the limit to get more Hits:
"

A.

That was my thought as well (using drams to bypass the force limit). However force 13 spirits mean that these spirits have usually 13 dices AND 13 edge to counter the summoning, especially if thesummoning mage does not have 13 magic as well. How exactly are your players able to summon force 13 spirits without bigger drain issues? Even with 20+ dices and edge it should not be that easy, especially if the spirits feels that the raw power of the summoner is below of that of the spirit.

How are the spells sustained? Ally spirit? Focus? Advantage?

SYL

I smell a problem in game-mechanics here. I am not very experienced in SR5, but i am quite fluent in all other versions. I cannot remember if the rules changed that much, but if not, the problem you describe seems like you don´t use all the options you have to challenge or limit the characters, while they misuse the RAW by the sheer lack of knowledge of the rules. I am a powergamer as well and even (or especially in SR5) you cannot simply run around with spirits of that force. Summoning alone is a death-risk. Also the spells work wrong (or better: you let your players use them wrong). Levitation cannot be put on/off at will. You levitate with a certain speed. You cannot say "i use it when i need it, on all other occasions i will walk". If you want to change direction, if you want to move, it costs an action. This is so hindering, that no one sane enough will use this spell for mere travel reasons. I tried, believe me. It is not superman-flight-spell. Sorry. Also invisibilty doesn´t work that way and honestly most of the chars should be able to negate the effect. Also he still is a astral-bonfire with spells sustained / quickened / whatever, and if you don´t throw initiation-grades at them like smarties, this should stay like this for a while. Don´t forget background count, that should negate the spell completely (SR4-knowledge, though). Could have changed.

Vel mødt

You already have some good advice above, so I'll keep it brief:

First of all, if your players are optimizers, make sure that you know the rules as well as they do. I'm not up to speed on 5th ed., but I always become suspicious when I see multiple Force 10+ Spirits and spells being cast and sustained. And bear in mind that as the GM you do have the option to both houserule and ban stuff that you deem unsuitable for your campaign or overly powerful and gamebreaking. Don't be afraid to exercise that power, but remember to be consistent.

Second, forget about specifically challenging them. Your job is to make sure that the players are having fun. If they have fun stomping all over their target's defenses, you're doing well enough. Build the world and the target location and make it "realistic". A really professional crew will be able to penetrate most places, either with ease, or with some level of preparation, and most defenses are designed more to delay an intruder until heavier opposition can arrive, rather than to stop them outright. As you say, these guys are very good at this, and their characters don't really have any obvious weaknesses. IMO that's actually a good thing, because that means that they are likely to be more "durable", which gives you some more room to misestimate the danger of the opposition you put in front of them, and still allow them to survive, even if they become a bit singed around the edges.

Third, remember all of the options you have available to you. Mages can be severely hampered by background counts. HTR teams and other Prime runners are as capable as they are, and there might be more of them in some places. Though it's the most common, not all places will have WiFi running. Highly secure locations might well be running everything on wires, and have the important matrix systems inaccessible from the general matrix and from off-site. Some really low end places might even run on some form of legacy IT equipment that the players modern equipment won't even be able to interact with (how do you think a modern piece of software for Windows 10 will work out, if it tries to interact with whatever OS existed on an old Commadore 64 from the 80'es?). The hacker might still be able to hack into the computersystem, but he might need to use an ancient hardware keyboard and mouse configuration, he'll have to be in front of the computer in question, and he'll have to decipher how the hell the code from back then worked in the first place, before he can really hack it.

Fourth, in terms of planning things out, bear in mind that you might not have to stat out every bloody NPC mook that you put in their way. Unless you have a crew of players who loot like crazy, it really doesn't matter what particuler gun and armour the security guards are carrying. It's just something that does 5P AP-1 in damage, and the guy shooting it rolls X dice as basis when he shoots, and resists damage with Y dice basis and have Z boxes worth of "HP".

Just cherry pick your npc's from these two sites and build your own teams to throw at them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hubchargen/

https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowchargen/?cou...after=t3_3cqfv8

Use strengths against them once in awhile. Disinformation, countermeasures and distractions.
Health and confusion spells are great for decreasing stats and turning a strength into weakness.
Reoccurring antagonists will certainly be expecting there tricks and plan accordingly.

It's not just about doing the crime; it's about getting away with it too.

I have good players in my group (including an ex Ranger whose character is optimized beyond belief). Tactically, against mooks, they are more than likely to win. Every now and then, I throw them up against parallel opposition - eg a rival runner team using the same tricks they do - drones, magic, snipers, sneaky hacks, who are more challenging. Plus add in complications, unexpected civilians, multiple groups in competition for the same prize, etc.

But the real challenge, as I see it, is for their characters to go on living safe and secure as they pile up more and more consequences for their actions, people they've pissed off, little mistakes they've made, evidence left at the scene. Keep secret records of what weapons they fired, in which jurisdictions, and what happened to any bodies they left, how well any crimes were investigated - maybe bullet fragments match, maybe they killed someone with cybereyes who was recording at the time, or there was a witness hiding... Think about how fast major criminal / terrorist investigations can go, with access to all the data and cameras etc that cops have now - then think how much more data they're going to have in the 2070s, with some near (or actual) AI combing through it looking for matches. And then there's the dogged detective who just can't let the case go, or the mob enforcer who starts by targeting their contacts and friends.

Honestly though, your players sound great!

Did the mana static spell make it to 5th? That was pretty good for portable background count. Completely takes out low-force spells and spirits, and weakens stronger ones. Throw counterspelling on that, and magic is pretty well weakened

But yeah, most problems with magic seem to combine rules abuse with the GM not using background count or counterspelling. Something like 1% of the world is magically-active. The corps will have prepared for that, and have enough money to hire plenty of their own for protection. If mages are getting paid much better to do magic than work on an assembly line, you'll see a much higher percentage in security or similar roles. Maybe they are not present every run, but they should have at least left behind some spirits and wards.

Good planning and careful use of resources though? Reward that.

Challenge them, but keep it fun. Don't go all Minority Report on them. The occasional enemy trying to track them down is fine, but keep in mind that this is a corrupt, decaying, balkanized world. An enemy that is after them is likelier to simply fabricate "evidence" rather than have a dossier on the last three places they hit. Use background count sparingly. It is a horrible, fun-sucking mechanic which is also a horrible way to "balance" awakened types since flat penalties actually encourage min-maxing. Even a background count of 1 should have a good story-related reason to be there.

I do agree with Machiavelli and Kyrel that all of those high-force spirits and mutiple high-force sustained spells are very suspicious. There are only so many ways to mitigate drain - they should not be soaking physical drain so reliably. Reagents only reduce drain for ritual sorcery.

It's old, but still relevant:

Levelling the field

On a mechanical level, you might want (for game balance reasons) to adopt the following rule from the Missions FAQ (which is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/022gpaf8wkohvwy/S...200.1.pdf?dl=0)



But my main suggestion is that at least some of the time, make the game not tactical. They get hired to make sure that a trid shoot doesn't get disrupted -- and that includes them not disrupting it with heavy handed tactics. They need to extract someone from a formal party (without getting all the attention of shooting up the place). A new group in the barrens is offering free magical training to the awakened, a wealthy family traced their run-away child as far as the cult but don't know what happened to him or her afterwards, and they want the group to find out. A deep undercover agent has indicated to his controllers that he has an item to pass along, but is under heavy surveillance, so suggests contacts infiltrate the corporate Christmas party as part of the entertainment and he'll pass it along disguised as a present. Etc.

They can still prepare and plan and all of that, but the final objective is not so clear, so they have to adapt on the fly. And more critically, there are loads of innocent bystanders, so they can't do this with pure brute force. Your group is good--I have no doubt they can pull these off. But pulling it off by being clever and adapting well is much more satisfying, IMO, than succeeding because you can just outplan the scenario.

Last time some players asked me to challenge their 40+ karma pool SR3 PC, I found the perfect opposition: a hundred sick kids.

The PC were good samaritans. They were convinced that they were big heroes, always saving the world. Since most of the other GM just threw the biggest thing they could think of (bugs, cyberzombies, blood/toxic mages and even horrors) at them, they pretty much did.

So I designed a run where they slowly uncovered a child trafficking network (killing everyone involved in the process). The physical opposition was low-key, but when they had to rescue a dozen of children from a brothel, they had to call another PC to find a solution for them. So imagine their reaction when they found, at the source of the network, a science research ship full of sick SINless children (about a hundred of them). That made them realize that no matter how good they were, they were just glorified killing machines.

EDIT: I did this because I thought the players would find it interesting (and they did), but I it probably won't be to everyone's taste.

...updating an old 3rd edition setting (pre Crash 2 2060s) of mine, I'd say send them to the Balkans to extract an up and coming musical genius (and daughter of a high ranking and respected noble) who is abducted by State Security of a ruthless dictatorship (backed secretly by a major power or powers) of which is little detail about their internal workings is available to the outside world. This nation tends to rely on old tech to store critical data (that actually requires the decker to physically jack into) and what wireless there is available is heavily restricted both within the nation and to/from the outside. Awakened characters need to be very, very, careful as the intelligence bureau actively recruits awakened citizens (mages and adepts) for their special corps and astral overwatch. This nation is also not above sending dissidents, prisoners, or people they just don't like, to "Re-Education Centres". The lucky ones tend to become "good members of society", the unlucky ones are sent to "reconditioning" for indoctrination into the "Special Soldier" Programme.

Does any of them speak the local language with an idiomatic accent?

How good is their General Etiquette skill?

Does the Decker have a Datajack, data cable, and Knowledge of Legacy Architecture and Data Structures?

How good are they about keeping things as quiet and moving as quick as possible (because the incident has not gone public and it would be best if it didn't)? This would be an extreme "black trenchcoat affair" as they are heading into a political and social dystopia as well.

Of course Dr. Nowaks' (Mr J's) generous offer, hint of a nice bonus if everything is kept mum should be incentive enough to entice them.

If you're looking for a combat challenges there's always Tucker's Kobolds. While the write up is D&D focused (hence my statement about combat) there's some good advice hiding under there about using "weak" enemies to the fullest extent of their powers to challenge the PC's.

Sounds like they were the inspiration for the kobolds in the Dragon Mountain boxed set from the 1990's. I purchased that one when it came out and thought "Dear Gods! I never thought kobolds could ever be dangerous! These guys are actually smart. Worse, they're organized, and trained!"

I dunno. I specifically built more than one character to mitigate the effects of up to 5 spells being sustained at a time. I assumed certain dicepool penalties and calculated what kind of successes I'd need to offset them. These people seem smart enough to have done the same.

That said, one of the more challenging missions I gave my PCs was kidnapping a cyber-and-bio-enhanced rooster and keeping it alive for a week so it missed the cock fight and the owner had to forfeit. The "robo-cock," as I called it, nearly killed two people before they were able to put it into a medically-induced coma.

One of the things I always disliked about such so called "good" advice about using weak enemies is that since they are often reliant on tactics, someone needs to think it up and kobolds can't walk up to the Akodo War College and ask for advice. Another thing would be the kobolds need to be trained and disciplined enough to execute the battle plan and not to revert to instinct (Will save?) when something goes inevitably wrong.

But tactics isn't always down to book smarts either.

Look at the number of wars where generals neatly lined up troops and marched them straight into crippling enemy fire while their opponents sniped them and harassed them from the sides, rarely meeting them face to face.

Tucker's kobolds were an extreme example and I would have had one or two kobolds turn out to have had some tactical training or some one behind the scenes backing them.
But even kobolds should have been able to do some of the simpler tactics they were using just based on what would work for them, like the small side tunnels that they popped in and out of to puncture the party.

I agree that tactics isn't about book smarts. But simply that the kobolds are usually statted without the mental capacity to come up with tactics that in effect utterly outsmart/outclass the PCs.

I agree with toturi. Kobolds are smarter than your average humanoid, and they do like using traps, on top of the fact that human-sized opponents would suffer penalties in tunnels sized for creatures half human size. But they are still weak monsters, and are supposed to have a cowardly streak on top of that. I could see a good GM playing up the cramped quarters, some simple but brutal traps, and a frustrating enemy that volleys missile weapons, then squeaks and runs away when you counterattack. Tucker's kobolds, though, seemed more like a wildly metagaming killer GM with a "favorite" monster.

Sure, it could have gone that way. However, I got the impression that folks loved telling those stories later if not exactly enjoying the experience. You could argue that as long as the adventurers don't kill ALL the kobolds - and, really, can you be sure of it? - then some of them will live to teach their children about how to attack the monsters that regularly invade their home.

If you had an old timer kobold that remembers a time where the kobolds successfully routed the adventurers, then yes, it could be possible that the victors could have taught their off spring how to attack the adventurers. But if the adventurers won, it is not a win for the kobolds, the main thing that they'd have learnt is to run away and escape. So the next time some other adventurers attack, they should run.

As a victim of Tuckers Kobolds, it taught you one thing--the GM can make your PC'c life a living hell if they want to. It also teaches GM's and players to think about the tactics they are using!

Some practical, tactical suggestions:

* Use fields of overlapping Suppressing Fire to apply penalties to the PCs
* Astral Security -- a Spirit/Watch with orders to report to the mage in question if it sees any active magic in it's patrol area. Invisibility Spells are glowing beacons of "I'm over here!" on the Astral.
* Choices -- Doors A and B are identical from the outside. Employees are told NEVER to use Door B. If Door B opens, the area gets flooded with Neurostun X.
* A good Spider is worth his weight in gold, even if he can't go toe to toe with the PC decker. Creating obstacles via locking doors, providing intel to the sec chief and hiding building security nodes, for instance.
* Moving Targets -- if Security can figure out what the Team is after, they can create problems by moving the Target and/or creating decoys.

Most Security isn't designed to STOP a concentrated attack. It's there to deter, to slow and to contain. The longer it takes a team to accomplish its goal and get out, the greater the chance they are fragged. All those scenes of robberies in movies where there's a guy counting down/watching the clock? It's because they know that if they are not clear in a certain amount of time, their lives are going to become very unhappy, very quickly. HTR teams can deal with most SR teams, if only via the sheer number of bodies and lead they can throw at them.

I recall a point in reading Cyberpunk 2020 material (maybe Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads?) and the book actually suggested nuking characters from orbit (you know, the "It's the only way to be sure" line) and I don't think they were joking. Cyberpunk games, and Shadowrun in particular, can get hijacked by gamers who know what they're doing. Now, the opposition should always be at a realistic level, so why not give the PCs higher-level jobs? Have them meet a new fixer with lots of clout, have him or her hire them for a trial run, and if that goes smoothly, leverage them for high profile jobs. Raid Shiawase North America's regional offices. Have them work a hit on a dragon. Have them make enemies with a prominent suit (VP in an AAA, or CEO in an AA) and watch the sparks fly. Maybe run The CFD/Bug Spirit/Shedim/Zombie apocalypse. Then society can collapse around them!

Actually, that Zombie apocalypse idea isn't bad. Zombies aren't difficult to work into the setting, and the chaos they'd cause would be interesting. And here's an article for zombies in a Cyberpunk game!

http://www.verminary.com/cyberpunk/cybzombi.html

Of course, that's just for Cyberpunk 2020, but it's mostly zombie genre advice with a Cyberpunk slant, as opposed to actual rules.

But back on topic, just give the players higher level jobs. It's pretty fun doing that anyway.

The GM can try to give them "higher level" jobs. But the players should not be forced to take them.

True, but really, how many Shadowrun characters actually refuse jobs? It might make sense in the fiction, but it's kind rude (at the very least) to the GM who put the adventure together.

We have had Characters refuse jobs in the past, and will probably have some in the future. Sometimes the Cost/Benefit analysis indicates that you tell the Johnson No and walk.

Ideally, yes, but not every GM is willing (or in some cases, even able) to run a sandbox game. At some tables, the unspoken rule is to take whatever job is offered, even if it doesn't pay enough or smells like a setup, because it is the only adventure the GM has prepared for the session, and improvisation is not one of the GM's strong areas.

Then there should be a compelling in-game reason why the characters took the job despite their misgivings, this is simply good roleplaying.

If the players can motivate their rejection based on their character's motivations, they are welcome to do it. We've even had a character call the Johnson midrun and insist on a payraise as a dragon suddenly was involved. Johnson wasn't happy but it panned out in the end.

I write the scenarios myself; partly because I like it and partly because we're playing in a very specific setting - Copenhagen, Denmark, 2076 - where we all live IRL so we really know it really well.

And adapting commercial scenarios to the setting would require almost as much work as making them from scratch. Besides, very few of the commercial scenarios have the required quality. I can't improvise at the same level of quality as I can do when I have prepared. So the players are welcome to reject the prepared scenario, but it comes at the cost of reduced quality of content.

I wouldn't mind running a sandbox game, but then the players would have to accept that a lot of it would be improvised.

A.

I have your answer, I think.

If you look back at my early posts in this thread, where I recommended setting up a list of companies, people, and interrelationships, it becomes a lot easier to put something out on the fly, partly because you should already have some run ideas at least floating out there based on the background, but it also becomes a lot easier to create a rich environment.

Also, I think it's perfectly reasonable, if the party refuses a run, to say: "OK guys, I'll roll with that, but give me ten minutes to organise my notes." You step aside, they grab a drink, and you grab a run idea from your big backlog, make sure that all the preconditions make sense, and then step back up to the table.

Good compromise between preparation and flexibility, and it goes really well with playing the long game to torment their souls ...

Oh, and if they refuse a run, there should be negative effects to their rep, at least with the fixer who set it up. Maybe their next run will pay less? Hooding? Bringing toys to the orphans of Christiania?

I sincerely doubt most people can improvise better than when they are prepared. What I do is prepare the background as much as I can similar to Koekepan's suggestion. I also have a backup run prepared, usually suited to one or more characters' personal motivations/contacts, so that there is a smaller chance of it being refused.

I think it depends on why they refused a run (scruples? wanted more money than was feasible for that kind of job? smelled like a setup?), although their actual reputation would be affected by how possibly biased outsiders would view their motivations. In other words, maybe they smell a setup, then another team takes the run, and fails because the Johnson's second choice of team was less capable than the PCs. Even though there was nothing actually wrong with the run, the team will still get a good rep as being "nobody's fools." On the other hand, if they refuse because of scruples, the rumor-mill might say that they got cold feet because they thought the job was too tough for them.

It depends on the game. In games where the GM has a run ready to go that is intended for play, refusing a run might give the characters a worse reputation (since there will be less valid reasons to refuse it). Other GMs not only expect runners to turn down runs, but will also occasionally give them a run that it is a good idea to turn down.

Excellent points, and I should have taken account of the possibilities. What I was mostly considering was the embarrassment of the fixer, because presumably the fixer told Johnson that these guys were the go-to team, who could make the problem go away.

Usually I do not turn down jobs offered through the fixer. But if the fixer simply introduces the job and the runners deal with the Johnson direct, then it is not the fixer's fault that the runners turn it down. As a GM, I do give my players runs that they should turn down. Or I have their fixer tell them that so and so Johnson had tried to offer a job that did not smell right.

Our group used the "Japanese Method" (see the section "Deniable Assets" under Neo-Tokyo in SR4 Corporate Enclaves) of working directly for a fixer back when we were running "traditional" Shadowrun games. When your work is very illegal, exactly what sense does it make to let the client know who you are by meeting them face to face? Or, from their perspective, why on Earth would they let the "hired help" for an illegal enterprise actually know who they were? The whole "traditional" method of actually meeting the Johnson makes no sense at all. When the team works for the fixer, the fixer is the go-between and sole point of contact between the two parties, and that's safer for everyone all around. Neither side can betray the identity of the other, as they don't know who they are. I really recommend reading that section of SR4 Corporate Enclaves, if you haven't already; the Japanese really do have a much better system in place here than the poor, unenlightened gaijin.

@JanessaVR: The different methods make sense, culturally speaking. In the US, at least in the fiction, middle-men are always "don't tell me what you want to do with that gun, I'm just a middle-man". They want deniability. In the US, fixers are often people with some legal business or social status. They can't be flagged as criminals so they keep their involvement in the business as liimted as possible.

I can't talk about Japan because I don't know much, but in China your business partners aren't just business partners (unless they're stupid westerners who don't know how to have good business relationships). Friends might not be the best word either, but it goes beyond "client-supplier" relationship. So the link between the fixer and the runner will be stronger, and the fixer will involve himself more.

I've been out of the game for a while, and I suppose I'm not even sure what ruleset you're using.

However have you considered going epic? Players often like cutting their teeth on "regular" runs that are very episodic. However at some point you can start having them mess with biggerplayers.

Doing so however runs into the complexity issue you mentioned. The "real" high ups are constantly focusing on their intricate plots and have an army of people working on security. You've got a couple hours after work and a can of red bull.

Shadowrun offers one solution of a sort, which is fundamentally changing the rules on the players. The infamous "Harlequins back" does this.

You can generally go there by throwing in Earthdawn stuff without explaining it.

On that note the players shouldn't always have the best toys. In my games I would slowly drop the contents from various rulesbooks onto the players laps, but other forces could get them first. If you've given them access to everything published, it's time to make some stuff up.

In a more general sense, I find spirits and vehicles relatively "simple" to create and throw at players. It's also more realistic those might arrive.

Also I find time pressures help immensely. Let them be the clever people they are...but do limit they time they have to do it. Time spent planning around the table "counts" as the seconds tick down.
This also tends to simplify opposition as the PCs might not "look too close".

Also consider reinforcements. Depending on what they're doing, eventually somebody could in principle call in a nations army or a tac nuke or who knows what.
Again that goes more in line with goings on at a higher level.

People have discussed turning down runs. But sometimes stuff develops through means other than a fixer. And you can also just start offering less karma for what you could start referring to as "knocking over another stuffer shack this week"

I'd go along with what other have said here: your lucky to have such a dedicated group!

Something does seem off about the magic use though; Force 1 Invisibility is pretty useless (unless they use reagents, which we ban at our table for just that reason) and having a bunch of force 13 spirits around seems wrong (both game-wise and balance wise).

It also seems their use of the the spell Spatial Sense and Photographic Memory is "pushing the envelope" a bit far. I mean memorizing an entire city's worth of 3D building space is just not, well, believable and certainly not anywhere close to being balanced.

I'd stop that from working in an instant.

If you want to stop them cold from using it on a specific place toss in a mana barrier, the spell can't see through them.
Don't use Mana Barriers? You should stick one on every room, building, site that needs some kind of security.
Banks, places that sell weaponry and any place client-provider discussions are private (like a doctor's or lawyer's office) will have them up and running.
Rich people and rich neighborhoods would have a veritable profusion of them.

Have you considered Background Counts?
I use them regularly on our runner team, it's important in 5e as without it you end up with no need for mundanes it then becomes 100% "magicrun".

Finally what about throwing the odd random monkey wrench at them?
What if they are stopped by a cop for a random check, can they fast talk their way out?
Do they drive around with large weaponry that might cause the cops to arrest them?
etc.

Sorry, this always drives me nuts, and (will be) relevant to topic. Those tactics (sniping, skirmishing, and harassing fire from sharpshooters) never won a war. In the American Revolution, half the reason the US couldn't win a battle was due to the militia's inability to fight in those "neat lines". The battles fought early in the war (Concord, Lexington) were essentially a fighting retreat. The tactics of raid and counter raid used during the French and Indian wars, as well as the Boer War, were a symptom mostly of lack of logistics and lack of targets. When their was a target, the armies stood up and smashed them, because the inherent limitations of weaponry and training meant that it was the best way to delivery maximum force. More force, less front, and just like in physics, things break.

While you could argue that Cold Harbor and the Wilderness were proof that rifleman could now stop an advancing enemy force from a secured position, I can't think of a time in which a battle was won, rather than simply ceded, by a major force relying on hidden fire.

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Relevancy:

Shadowrunners go around the edges, because at the end of the day, you die in a hail of bullets. This depends on if you are running a episodic game or a more campaign focused, but I think the best things you can is start to change the tone a little bit. The cream rises to the top, and they start to have people notice. The fixer starts to get that high school football coach vibe (Phil, from Hercules). After all, this is world that is enamored of the mystique of shadowrunners. The best are pulp heroes. If they're flashy, maybe they get an offer to go do runs in LA for a TV show. Maybe they get groupies, or a media given team name.

Are they a blackops type? Start to pull them into the true void of the intelligence game. Congrats, they can go be James bond.

In the meantime, give them the best jobs. The real milkruns: Maybe not kitty from trees, but ops that pay better than needed for the guarantee. Jobs in cool places, flight complimentary. Give them a sense of pro athletes, rising rock stars, and legend.

Then, BAM. Throw them into a meatgrinder. Botched parachute behind enemy lines, gear broken, low on ammo, and you landed in the hellhound kennel.

Point is: don't always challenge the characters mechanically. Challenge them with the story. You can build a deathtrap. (Hell, its not that hard. Its a warded hallway with claymore mines on both sides. Mm...flaming PC mist. ) Build challenges to the mindsets of the characters, whether its pride, morality, rage (going after loved ones), lust (if you're good enough, someone is running counterintelligence on you, and the girlfriend is a spy reveal, especially if you set it up for months, is just great), greed (i can get the grail before it falls Indy!), anything will make for a better story, and it wont make you have to right up more bads guys.

Final thought: Humanize your dehumanization. Craft it well, so it hurts more, and they'll remember it longer.