A lot of movies end with a shootout in a carnival Hall of mirrors, or a warehouse full of mirrors, or some other location where the last 2 characters standing (main antagonist and main protagonist) have a gunfight, but keep shooting at mirrors instead of each other. Except a lot more entertaining than my description of it. (examples: 1 2)

So GMs (or whomever, I'm not going to check): describe a run that would probably/hopefully (players will try to go a different way if they think you only have one plan, which is just as entertaining) ends with some sort of hall of mirrors shootout. For bonus points, what rules would you use for determining if someone shot a mirror or their opponent?

This might work with someone who doesn't have radar vision or Ultrasound, but honestly, what 'Runner isn't rocking at least ultrasound?

In 4th edition my combat medic mage had both. In a Hall of Mirrors situation, he would just close his eyes and rely on ultrasound to know when his target was in line of sight, and Radar to know where he was in relation to himself.

EDIT: Heck... I just thought of this... With Radar and a good AP ammo, I would use the radar sensor and shoot directly towards the target. Forget getting line of sight!

I've never seen anyone bother with ultrasound in my games, when they mostly just take astral perception instead.

"Which one of these is real?" Is pretty quickly solved by either 'which one has an aura' or for illusion spells 'have the remote decker check the cameras'.

That gives you a penalty for doing actions in the material world. Ultrasound doesn't. Then again my character (4th edition version) was a little weird in that he had 2 points of cyber/bioware in the very beginning. Sticking ultrasound in his cyberhand and radar in his leg did not take up that much room.

Yeah there are a ton of ways for people to get around it on the physical However with that said.

It starts like any normal run. A call from a fixer, a meet with a Johnson, a job offered and cred negotiated. Only this is an extraction with a difference. You're going to get back a lover or fiance or a spouse who's run off with someone else, which is kinda weird for a run. Making it more weird it's not just one but several, the Johnson was a face man for a group of people (community, employees, neighborhood) where significant others have been going missing. Not in a sudden way, but people leaving in obvious fashions with no one really knowing where they've been going, bit it's odd enough for the group to look for help. They tried the 'Star but that has been a week now and nothing and the (local corp sec for the community if they have one) are also no good, due to territorial issues. So they've come looking for outside help.

The investigation by the runners IDs a few common threads, leads to a couple of small scuffles and links all the absent people to a single person. Who happens to own a rather opulent residence and employs some private security. Once the runners have got through all they they may notice some of the weird magic in the area, a bit of background count etc. The person responsible is a Toxic Shaman with Seductress Totem and has been whisking people away from their loved ones and making them into, for all intents and purposes, dolls and toys. The final confrontation comes down in a labyrinth of mirrors (one of the favourite play places for the dolls) with the extraction targets occupying parts of the labyrinth as well as the shaman in there. So you have images in mirrors of the extraction targets, the shaman (who will be able to change appearance with illusion magic) and the runners, meaning UltraSound is less reliable. Give the shaman some Masking, throw in some wards, add a few toxic spirits Astrally and tag a few spells about the place and you have a challenge.

Spotting the reflections etc comes down to using Observe In Detail (TN modified by things like UltraSound etc) to work out where mirrors are with more successes require to ID threat or non-threat successfully before taking an attack action. Astrally it's going to come down to assensing targets in much the same way. In both cases you have to be real careful to pay attention to the sensory information you have to NOT shoot/stab/manabolt extraction targets.

Conversely the hall of mirrors motif works very well for Matrix Runs especially if they stumble into a UV host and for Metaplane quest stuff too.

Considering what you want to do, and all the issues with technological matters and stuff making such a confrontation highly avoidable for the average group of runner (I know a lot of Sam would just go with 'I take cover at the labyrinth entrance and level the mirror Hall with grenades and autofire'…), I'm afraid in the real world, you might prepare an interaction that will never happen, which can be frustrating for you or might lead to railroading.

The only time I was in such a situation of really wanting the players to undergo a specific ordeal in a semi-specific way, I used a metaplanar quest (or is it astral quest?) assisted by a free spirit. This lets you strip some players of some of their abilities (be fair, if the sam can't use heavy weapons and not all his reflexes, put a high background count for the mage's actions). Here you can play the astral quest as being a part of a film noir scenario similar to the video you proposed. Don't overuse it and I think the players can actually enjoy it from times to times.

Of course, the player might just kill the free spirit proposing the quest or refuse it. But, eh, players will be players.

I didn't even think about grenades. I don't think the players or I ever used them, although I planned to once (fire-themed mystic-adept with an incendiary grenade).

And of course the players could easily avoid something like this. That's why I'm discussing it online (and also being short on players). Theory is where it works. I would imagine you'd have to split the group to keep them from assisting each other for it to work. Easy enough to get the decker busy with something else, but I guess you'd have to send another caster/summoner to keep the mage busy?

I'll be honest, I haven't seen that penalty matter since 2e. The min/max of 4e and 5e is easy enough that people who would be shooting have dicepools that are effectively beyond penalty.

Oh, I understand, really I do. IMO, a real character shouldn't be min/maxed. Take my character for instance. I mean what kind of mage would have two points of cyber/bioware? Obviously NOT to most optimized build. The reason I went with the augmentation is because of backstory.

The TN penalty in SR3 I found was also a good impact as even with some higher skills and metamagic you're pushing against the probability curve.

Frankly, if you get the players to enter the hole of mirrors without destroying everything on their path, I'm not sure you really need to plan to split them or not. Just add in some background count (and you can justify it in such a place in some cool way) and that should keep the mage from figuring too fast what to do.

The main work for me would be to have such an antagonist that the player would accept to enter the place to talk to him. I know my players would just try forever to avoid such kind of interaction. This is why I suggested the astral quest.

Heck, have you read the novels lately? I'm stranded in an airport thanks to American, and read a full Jimmy Kincaid novel. The protagonist is a 5th degree initiate rocking 5 Essence worth of genemods and cyberware on top of having essence damage from a vampire attack. His one 'weakness' is that he can't deck.

Really?

One or two points of bio/cyber have been a very common way to min-max a magic user since at least SR3 (and probably SR2, but that was probably more difficult).

IMO, all characters should be minmaxed in the sense that depending on your backstory or the kind of character you wanna play, you should look at the options yielding the best abilities in the most varied domains.

That's the way people end up having the most fun. I have had too many friends not enjoying their game because other characters outshone them regularly even in their domain.

It depends greatly on how that cyber is done though, in SR3; Magic A, Resources B, Attributes C, Skills D, Race E is perhaps the most optimal spread for mixing Cyberware and Magic but you're going to be super specialised in your skill choices and your physical attributes are going give you some tricky choices.

That said if your okay with a small skill set and risking Physical Drain then it's the beginnings of a truly nasty character.

Talisman geas.

There are a few cyberware that can truely kick ass without needing B ressources.

Plus, you can use the Point build to get the maximum cheese and exploit flaws to get build points.

As I said, it is a common way to min-max a mage, but it probably isn't the only one.

Every build I've seen here on this site says that a straight mage taking cyber is not optimal. Adepts are a different story, but that's just the weakness of the power points system.

True, but not to the level some of the builds I've seen here. Granted most of those builds are a "Let's see how many dice you can have for (insert skill)"



I've been on the receiving end of this in a recent D&D campaign. We were told to make 5th level characters, and I did so. My 5th level Factotum was pretty nice, but a few other characters had 5th level gestalt characters (Druid/Bard for one and a Warmage/Sorcerer for the other).

Who assumes that a Gestalt Character is an option to use with no discussion? Just WOW.
Good Luck in that game.

That campaign is going to be ending soon and I'll be taking up the mantel of DM.

To make sure crap like THAT didn't happen, I put together an 8 page guide to character creation/ways I'm going to run this campaign. I figure that if I clearly spell out how I'm going to run the game should make less bitching when I pull something on them... something that I spelled out that might do in the Guidelines.

I'm a bit surprised, because it's here that I learnt about the advantages one or two points worth of cyber could bring to a mage. It's actually basically free in SR3 with the talisman geas for sure. I don't know about later versions, but I seemed to remember SR4 was said to be much more cyber friendly for the mages, at least at the begining.

And builds that are oriented toward 'let's look at how much dice I can throw top for this specific action' are not min-maxed. That's not what min-maxing is.

Love me a good Campaign Guide...
I always produce one for my games that I run....
Sadly, in my experience, many of my gaming group do not ever actually read the guide.
It is kind of frustrating.

Not that I blame them, of Course...

My Harnworld Campaign Guide (DnD 3.5) is over 300 pages long.
My Arkham Guide (Fate/Dresden) is over 500 pages long.
and my Manhunters Guide (Fate/Diaspora) is over 200 pages long

I tend to use them as living documents and add/alter as campaigns continue... they are always a constant work in progress

If I know anything (and that's debatable) it's that any document over 1 page is pointless, because almost nobody will ever read it.

Sadly, the boss at the previous job didn't believe that, so we had to explain to half of our customers why we sent them a letter and what it said. I wish that was an exaggeration. We would have had to explain it to more, but everyone else just threw it away because they didn't plan on reading it.

Yeah, I know... that is the reality.
And it is definitely sad.

But I still persevere - Ah well, it is a labor of love.

Understand that. You can't really communicate nuance in under a page. Just another thing to fight human nature on: trying to do better.