I'm not really planning on doing this, because who wants to die after their first run anyways, but one of my players brought it up, and I thought it might be interesting.
Is it possible to make a team that can take on a dragon and it's minions (Not a Great, mind you), and come out on top, using standard character creation rules for availability, resources, etc...?

For the following, I will focus on the actual final showdown. If the players could feasably make it to this situation is up to the individual GM.

I'm thinking that heavy weapons are the order of the day here. However, LMG's are the heaviest you're gonna get at character creation, so you better be packing EX explosive to get through that hardened armor.

Grenades are another option. But they'll have to be accurate, again because of the hardened armor. The only viable option here would have to be the infamous "open-mouth shot"

Drones will perhaps be the team's second-greatest asset. From spotting, to fire support, a well-stocked rigger with a hefty remote control network will do the team wonders.

The greatest asset for the team (in the final showdown) will be magical support. The team must assume that the dragon is very proficient in magic. Magic support will be essential to giving the big guns a chance to do their job.

On aside, a professional face will be the team's most important member, when it comes to tracking down the agents, minions, and eventually putting the pieces together to find the lizard itself.

So the way I figure (just as an initial study, more on this later), the minimum team needs to look like this:

2-4 Combat Characters: Good reflexes, great skills, and smartlinks are essential. Damage soaking capability is not so important as more than likely, the first shot they take is going to kill them. LMG's and grenade launchers with specialized ammunition essential.

2-3 Mage/Shaman : One mage by himself will not stand a chance against the formidable magical defenses of dragon. 2 or better yet, 3 might have a shot.

1-2 Riggers : A well-stocked remote control network with heavily armed drones and vehicles. Must have Air/Sea/Land capability to adapt to situations. Includes must be good reconaissance capabilities for indirect fire.

1-2 Face Characters : These characters will be the best asset away from combat. Information is valuble, and knowing who to talk to to score the right gear, and find the dragon itself is the realm of the face. A social adept would be even better.

1-2 Deckers : Information is power, and deckers are great at digging up hard-to-find info. Add to that, the many other tricks a good decker can do, and he becomes an invaluable member of the team.

Any thoughts?

edit: fixed for accidental ommissions

Yes. Lunch.

Part of the problem you are going to have is how well dragons soak damage.

The drones are going to be toasted quickly. I would say triple the riggers at least. You're going to probably lose quite a few to dumpshock, but for this they're pretty much expendable.

The combat characters are going to need rocket launchers for when the dragon is airborn. An AK may be nice, but the distance factor will kill its damage potential. You also may want to double their numbers. They're also expendable.

The mages are way, way too few in number. The only way they even have a chance is in large numbers. The more resistance tests the dragon has to roll, the more likely it is to fail. You also may want two team of magicians, one flinging spells individually while the other uses ritual magic to target the dragon with more powerful attacks. You can probably expect the majority of the magicians to die.

And that's not even for a great, either.

Looks good to me, for the most part. What kind of minions does this dragon have and are they present for the finale?

I'm no rigger, but can't you get a Strato 9 w/ MMG and its under the availabilty cap?

pshaw. dragons aren't so tough when you hose 'em down with a fully-compensated 10-round HMG burst.

Yeah, that good lonestar rotodrone.

Sabosect: You can't get rocket launchers at creation.

I am working on the bare-minimum a starting team could get by on for taking on an adult (But not Great) dragon.

The finale is just the team vs. the dragon. If they can take a dragon, they can probably take the minions, but we'll focus on the dragon for now.

beg to differ. there are no less than three missile launchers you can get at chargen: the Arbalest II MAW, the Great Dragon, and the M79B1 LAW. not to mention rocket launching platforms for drones.

edit: faugh, beaten. i'll get you next time, gadget.

Grenades and grenade launchers are below the avail cap. Even better if they're mounted on drones.

Are flame weapons below the avail cap?

You could try to use a splat gun creatively. The glue stuff or slip spray.

Elementals. As many as your mage can summon. Ditto Watcher Spirits.

Whoops, my bad. No CC here at work. Hell, flubbing dragons just got easy.

chemicals are another option they avoid armor completely. the bad side is, you can't stage up, and dragons have a lot of body to resist with.

If you ever make it past all the dragon's mininons, expect to fight it in close quarters and on it's terms. Missiles are not a very good idea when you're crammed in a tight space with your target and a slew of critter minions crawling on the walls. Traps seem to be a mainstay for an inner sanctum. Illusions and holograms have been common ploys and often times you may end up wasting your resources on something that poses no threat whatsoever... on occasion you may even be entering a lair which is not a lair but in fact just one big trap designed to catch people who go trying to do something crazy like dragon hunting. ^_^ Really it mainly depends on how well the GM runs the dragon.

I'll always imagined that a dragon would perfer more open territory so it could make use of its flight.

Guess thats the "GM perspective" thing you were talking about.

I have two words for you: Loose Alliances.

I think the grand canyon would make an awesome finale battleground for a dragon.

Well, all good dragon hunting teams should pack lasers. Nothing says frag you verry much like a good old fire lance laser. Barring that, lots and lots of C14?

You forgot the ball bearings for the C14.

C14? Ball bearings? What do I look like, a suicide bomber?

Now dikoted ball bearings....

Things like Neurostun grenades and Great Dragon ATGM's are good ranged weapons. You can also be effective in melee if you have, say, a troll adept. A dragon has 2 or 3 reach, but only 7 Reaction or so, so a high Strength troll adept with improved ability/polearms and a dikoted spear can win against it in melee, and do some damage. Spellslingers can be effective, too. Two or more of them, with decent foci to help them pour on the dice, can ruin a dragon's day.

There are lots of ways starting characters can hurt a dragon. The deckers, riggers, and faces are a good idea, though. It's getting to the point of a face-to-face confrontation that can be the real challenge.

Forget the spear with the troll.

I really, really hate to drag this guy out again, but:

Give him dual cyberspurs and ninjitsu with the close combat manuever.

i'd take silat. ninjitsu's kinda dumb, in the book.

The way to make a successful dragon hunting team is to make a team of mages and play in the "Magic Unchecked" game.

I'll take your Troll with Silat and spurs and then raise you the "Off Hand: Cyber Implant Combat (Spurs)" or Ambi 6. At that point you could also make him an Adet with Improved Ability: CIC.

No, I see your Troll with Silat and spurs and Off Hand: Cyber Implant Combat (Spurs) or Ambi 6 and raise you Troll with the Magical Power(Geased) with Weapon Foci and Ambi 6.

Not very practical though. Spurs require implantation and Magic power is the first to go in the case of magic lose. I'll keep him clean with dual dikoted katanas, one of which is the weapon focus. Don't forget Attunement metamagic, available to all adepts but not magicians.

Fair enough.

I'm not familiar with Attunement. Is that from SOTA 64?

Yes, SOTA 64. You really should keep up with the SOTA, my friend.

But I understand the rationale for dual cyber spurs.

Heh. Kevyn = poor. That and I don't have a RL group.

:Sets up a "Donate so Kevyn can get SOTA64" booth. Gets three nickels, two dollars, and a broschure on birth control:

Hey! Who put in the birth control?

Thank you!

But I'd rather you set up a "Get Kevyn a RL group."

Somebody set up a Paypal link.

I need a group too...It sucks making a trip 240 miles to get together and maybe have a run.

I'm with you on that one, Frosty. I trek 200 miles once a month for our gaming sessions.

I don't even have a group to travel for...

Are either of you closer to central california that 200 miles I wonder?

I wish, chummer. Central New York is my stomping ground.

Well damnit, what good are you then...

So, is there anything left on this thread or does everybody agree that a beginning group of only a handful, preferably with multiple riggers, can indeed make lunchmeat out of a dragon?

Also, don't forget the Tazer weapons. Cheap, available, and hardened armor doesn't protect vs. tazers.

My personal choice for anti-dragon weaponry would be chemical:

1. Smoke grenades, because if he can't see you he can't hit you with his massive magical arsenal.

2. Get him dosed with Hyper (DMSO grenade?). Goodie Goodie Cheesecake, Dragonboy gets no resistance roll, takes a +4 modifier on all concentration rolls, such as Spellcasting, and a +1 for everything else, plus every 2 boxes of physical he takes gives him a box of stun for some horrible wound modifiers. Anytime I need to take down a single tough individual Hyper is my best friend. This is really only backup against step 3's failure and subsequent firefights involving other nasty stuff.

3. My friend the Satchel Charge 'O much painfulness. Demolitions test to make a bomb out of compound 6, then have somebody really good at throwing lob it with a remote detonator and me with a reserved action to detonate it before the Dragon can toss it back. Yeah, your hardened armor of 8 is real scary dragonboy. That means you have to resist 52D instead of 60D with my 10 kilo bomb. Good luck, hope you've got a 15 digit Karma Pool because otherwise you just died.

Why do people always assume that dragons are somehow hard to kill? 2060 Main battle tanks will be many times tougher than any biologic, and the weapons to kill them will be readily available (relatively, anyway) and some will be man portable.

Dragon is hit by ATGM than will penetrate 2000mm of RHA, bye bye dragon.

Main Battle Tanks don't cast Armor spells on themselves and then powerball your group from above.

Because in SR Dragons are supposed to be scary, not something that an average street gang could probably kill for kicks. Actually almost all the scary stuff in SR can be killed pretty easily, it's just a matter of the GM not letting you use all your toys. Demolitions is clearly king though.

Actually come to think of it the satchel charge plan is a stupid one. It would be much smarter to have the team (Consisting of 1 Rigger) simply start with 300 kilos of c6 and a volkswagen rabbit rigged for remote control. Get it within 150 meters of the Dragon, which should be that hard. The dragon now has to resist 900D less his armor. If you can't get within a 150 meters that'll suck, at 250 meters away the dragon only has to resist a measly 300D. He might stage that down if he gets around 3 billion rerolls.

Hmmm. Do you think Lofwyr could survive a tactical nuke if you got it anywhere near his lair?

edit: If he can get 3 billion rerolls he can use his karma pool to reduce his target number if you allow that rule.

Don't answer that Lofwyr thing, I was just trolling...

Hmm, let's see now. Taking down Lofwyr. At Chargen, the Face takes "Friends In high places" and get an executive in SK as your high level contact. Meanwhile the disposable character gets a million Nuen worth of C6 (12500 kilos). Use the contact to smuggle in the Explosive, using as many munchy face edges as possible, Good Reputation, Profieciency, etc. to get the monster box with all the explosives anywhere remotely nearby. That much explosive is actually on par with a mid-grade tacnuke anyway.

Lofwyr gets to resist 75,000D. Using the explosive rules he also has to stage down (I think) an average of 18,750 boxes of deadlier overdamage. Of course he might not be at ground zero, perhaps he'll only have to resist 40,000D what with his armor, distance, and the explosion tearing through 50 meters of concrete and quickened spells into his lair. And a lowsy 10,000 boxes of overdamage to stage down.

If that's not enough, buy more explosive with the Face's money, and a few other characters. It's pointless but it would make a big boom.

Reread the explosives rules. 12500 kg of C6 results in only 111 times the base damage. Way short of 75,000, it's only 666D before chunky salsa effect which is not likely to happen since you won't find many barriers strong enough to deflect the blast. The blast radius will only be 111 meters according to the actual SR explosives rules.

dragon versus MBT, my money's on the dragon. the dragon will outmaneuver the hell out of the MBT, invis itself, and chaff the tank. after that, it's just a matter of the dragon finding a big enough can opener.

I love this place.

12,500 kilos would probably take a semi-truck or two to deliver, so don't forget that the face will need to smoothtalk the guys at the weigh stations.