We are still going to have to get to him somehow. This fight with the vampire isn't over yet. After we get done licking our wounds and healing up we will have another go at it. The only thing is, the enemy is going to be expecting an attack. So they are going to be at an even greater defensive advantage. They now know what we are capable of and the cards we are holding in our hand. Another frontal attack would definitely be suicide in this case.

There are a few things I am thinking here that might work:
1. Steak out the location and wait till she goes for a night out in the city. Wait for the opportune time and kill her.
2. If she is always heavily guarded every place she goes, have the demolitions guy place a very powerful car bomb, killing all the guards along with her.
3. Use alter memory since I have it to get loyalty from one of the guards and infiltrate the vamp's estate that way. Once we have covertly entered the building we go directly for the vamp and take her out.
4. This strategy should be applied to all of the strategies. Have our hacker take full control of the building if possible, to help ensure we are not hindered by technology.
5. I will summon an air spirit and use concealment and guard on all party members(I did this before till it was disrupted). If battle ensues I will instruct them to take out the vampire as soon as possible. Wounding the vampire horribly is not enough, she must be killed.

One last question about concealment. How exactly is a test done against concealment to tell if someone is seen or not? If I have a Force 6 spirit that is a -6 on all perception tests to see them. The guards and spirits were obviously able to see us without any problems. So how much does it really hinder them?

Concealment only works if the enemy characters have to make a perception test. No perception test is required to see things that are obvious, which is why it is very important that you use a Stealth skill in conjunction with Concealment, usually Infiltration.

Also, it is highly important that you don't rely on Concealment alone, if you do your enemies will get a +5 modifier to spot you because the guy shooting at them is kind of obvious (+2) and they'll be making an effort to find you (+3). This makes Concealment rather useless. You need to stack other modifiers with it, use bright lights (flares or portable flood lights) (-1 if they don't have flarecomp) and thermal smoke grenades (between -2 and -6) to conceal your positions. Use throwaway comlinks as noisemaker grenades, simulating the muzzle flash and gunshots to provide further distractions (-2).

SInce you'll be dealing with Spirits and magician's, you'll want to use living biomass help lower astral visibility. FAB grenades are useful for this, but a few devil rats tied to drones should be enough to provide distraction penalties.

Remember, it is a test of your Infiltration+Agility vs their Intuition+Perception+Modifiers and they get to make a test every time you take a shot, if not more often. You have to go out of your way to stack up the modifiers against them.

Don't know if this has been asked yet but:

Have you received a ransom call yet? and
How long was it from kidnapping to attempted rescue?

Hacking is going to be your friend for the next attempt. If it is a modern luxury or high class estate it will have the accutrements including cameras, etc. At least next time you storm the place everyone can have an AR feed of the locations of all participants.

Also, try intercepting wireless phonecalls and tapping hardwired phone lines. Vampires hardly ever work alone so she'll probably be communicating with someone else. This is especially true if you guys had no clue that there was a vampire after you.

@hymarca: If the GM just used stats straight out of On the Run, which I suspect he may have since this event has been stated as fall-out from that run then the vampire mage does not have Alter Memory and is not actually all that super powerful unless she's been feeding just prior.

No ransom call yet. If they asked for ransom I wouldn't pay it. There is no way I am going to spend my nuyen towards that. The only option would be another rescue attempt. I would think they would change locations if a ransom call is made since we already know where they are. At least that is what I would do if I was in their position. Makes it more difficult for the enemy to do something, and they have to do more legwork to find the location, which they may not be able to find out in time. If they want a ransom it is very possible the covert ops specialist might die or be turned into one of the vampires goons. In which case a new character would have to be created.

Just a note that if this is the published adventure On the Run which many of us have read, then we should avoid making any comments about specific details in there which players will not know. For two reasons: one it might be bad advice because the GM could easily alter anything in there and two, how would any of us feel if a player went online and looked up details of our adventure?

Incidentally, two tactics that have yet to be mentioned. Firstly, time the attack appropriately. If it's a vampire and you're planning to blow the roof off the building or something, then make sure you do it near dawn.

Two, don't forget the power of the false alarm. Send in a few cheap / disposable drones / spirits / thugs. Make the opposition waste those valuable spirit services, blow their ambush positions, etc. Even back it up with a trid phantasm in the background to make it look as though you're following fast behind. Wait, watch, study, attack.

-K.

Thanks for that clarification knasser, I doubt anything people might have given away was deliberate or realized. I very much appreciate the input thus far. Thank you.

just a side note, remember that normal smoke blocks astral sight, too.

you don't need some fancy bacterial mist, you don't need devil rats tied to drones, you just need smoke.

also, i'll chip in my 0.02 and tell you that the ultimate doomsday device vs spirits is actually... *drum roll* ...the defiance ex shocker. sufficient to chew through 16 points of hardened armor, +2 per net hit. furthermore, if i remember my taser rules right, it even hits on a tie, because it's a touch attack. seriously, unless you literally are facing force 10 spirits, the shocker will kick the crud out of them... and it's 500 for one with an integral smartlink. (also usable in melee, if you so desire). plus it's perfectly legal, so no availability check needed.

i might also suggest some gas grenades (pepper punch especially) or flashbangs as being good ways to take out guards without worrying about your friends safety. and once again, the pepper punch grenades are both legal and cheap.

Woah woah woah! We had a whole five page thread on whether or not spirits were affected by electrical damage which I recall being one of the major arguers in. (here if you're interested).

My considered opinion is that spirits will not be affected by stick and shock as they explcitly do not possess a nervous system. If you're going to follow the rules that slavishly, then for consistency your fire elemental is not immune to fire and your water elementals are prone to drowning. RAW is also that the Immunity to Weapons applies to electricity damage too, so a Force 4 Fire Elemental still has some pretty good resistance rolls against stick and shock.

does a car have a nervous system?

remember we're talking about a strong enough charge to short out vehicles with a fair degree of consistency.

the defiance ex-shocker can penetrate a spirit's hardened armor not because of being non-normal weapons, but because it has a base DV of 8S and AP of 1/2, which means it ignores half the spirit's armor and the half which remains is dealing with 8+net hits damage.

after all, if you can disrupt a spirit by shooting it with a bullet, keeping in mind the spirit has no vital organs or anything, you can disrupt a spirit by electrocuting it, regardless of whether it has a nervous system or not. i could certainly understand if you rule that the spirit doesn't have to worry about getting knocked unconscious, though.

+1 on Super Shocker. Smoke, Flashpaks and Flashbangs are good, too. Actually, take out all the lights and use ultrasound. Research vampiric vulnerabilities. Crossbow bolts (wooden) and wooden clubs may help. Wearing gas masks and using CS gas when you enter will really slow down guards, too.

Call your contacts - they may know what's going on. Call your kidnapped buddy's contacts (if you can), they may be interested in helping out.

Consider placing a call to the vampire. It may be willing to negotiate (which will at least buy you some time). It may also get you a name your hacker can research. Maybe the vampire has enemies who will help you out.

Keep the place under surveillance (at least remotely).

Finally, make sure to keep your escape route open. You don't really want to explain this to Lone Star. And has anyone considered hitting this place in daylight? Blowing open windows to let sunlight in will probably keep the vampire unhappy.

You know, something that another poster mentioned earlier is starting to resonate with me, why not get Lone Star to do the dirty work for you? Have your Decker whip up some evidence framing the Vampire for a crime against someone holding a Lone Star Security contract and then turn it in, if you play your cards right, you might even be able to get a small reward. (And if your DM is the type that plays the light and fluffy Rainbow Brite and Dropbear version of Shadowrun they might even consider not simply geeking everyone inside and calling it a day.)

After all, getting your buddy out in the aftermath can't be any more stupid then trying to hit the vampire a second time given what we know about how the first battle went.



Still, in the end I'd strongly advise calling in Lone Star and then blowing the building with everyone inside, after all, based off what the DM wrote in another thread your buddy is only going to end up getting himself and possibly your entire team killed with his loose lips anyways.

How much would a spell like physical barrier give as a distraction or hinderance on an astral perception test. What about mana barrier? The physical barrier gives a -1 on the physical plane due to it's appearance, but what about its appearance on the astral?

Quick question about this character:

Is it a PC?
Did the player not show up that session and that is why he is kidnapped?
Will the player be showing up to subsequent sessions?
Why hasn't the PC if the player was there made efforts on their end?


Another really good option is to make a joint strike. Have 1 or 2 sams gas the room where the hostage is and make a non-lethal entry (using gel and shockers) directly into that room while the remaining sams and the mage make a diversionary attack at the front (or some other location).

It is usually a good idea to have a PC with very high Logic or even Intuition. I'll explain why. A smart(high Logic) or a streetsmart(high Intuition) PC can enable the team to actually pull off a clever plan without the GM jumping in and declaring that since the PCs are dumb and said NPC villian is smart, the villian has already anticipated the PCs' moves.

In fact, if a PC is smarter than the villian, the PCs could conceivably kick in the door and ignore the "smarter" ideas. Why? Simple, since the villian already knows the PCs are coming, he would expect them to make use of a smart tactic to get in, then kicking in the door would be a surprise!

Is there a window to his room?
Is it tinted?
Does your mage have Levitation and Invis?

Also, next session the hacker should find out how their place is wired. If all the doors are maglocked and controlled through matrix security the hacker could have some fun. Override the locks on all doors and basically herd them through like cattle in order to separate and defeat in detail.

You could always A-Team it too. Armor plate a van through means of montage and use said van to drive through the front entrance. They wouldn't see that coming!

Lonestar might have something to say about an armoured van being driven into a building in a high security area...

They'll say it after the fact. After they have driven it through the firefight is going on. Maybe the players might want LS intervention if it really hits the fan against a spirit summoning vampire.

We do not know the specific room he is being held in, only that it is upstairs. We were also given no perception check to hear where the vamp went, so I can't tell you. I don't know if there is a window to his room. All windows are tainted and have shades. I have invis and I think I might have levitation.

It is difficult to say what Lonestar might do when a vampire is involved. Especially one summoning spirits like this. I was also incorrect about the Force of the spirit, after speaking with the GM, he said it was a Force 12.

Force 12

*dry chuckle*

Well, even if you do decide to try to rescue your buddy a second time, if I were you, I'd advise everyone to make new characters, just in case, so when one or more die you can get on with the game with less of a hang-up.

Oh, it may be advisable to rig the team with Dead Man Triggers and Biomonitors, that way when you do suffer a TPK you'll at least take the fragging slitch down with you when the triggered bombs brings the building down, just be sure that you trust the team member(s) setting it up so that it isn't solely hooked to their monitor(s) and will only go off in case of a TPK or with a triggered command.

And even if you manage to rescue your loose-lipped buddy, blow the building behind you so you run a slightly lesser chance of the slitch's boss figuring out who did it and coming after your team.

Force 12...

I have to ask what you did? Kill and eat the GM's dog?

Nah, the GM just wanted to challenge the characters and there was no great dragon available.

Well there is always a stray IE to throw at them then...

a force WHAT spirit!? I can´t believe you said 12... It almost (almost) makes me forget about the vampire, but who could forget "something" (I find no other way to say it) capable of not just summoning but also binding such a spirit?

I may be getting this wrong, but I think Eleazar has already said the characters had no karma spent on them. Am I right? I also assumed they where generated with the standard 400 building points, but actually it was not stated anywhere.

Eleazar, did I get things straight?

I have one adventure module where Lone Star has had quite the busy day, between a three-way ganger war between the Ancients, the Spikes and the Halloweeners stretching from Tacoma to Bellevue and a newly free Force 14 Fire spirit summoned by an overconfident LS mage. The spirit, for its part, proceeds to toast any and all Lone Star personnel that it can find while the gangers duke it out.

So, to put it mildly, Lone Star is slightly "occupied" when the runners are hired to break into a station house and raid the personal effects locker in the morgue.

Force 12 is uncalled for - even I don't do that. Not sure that even the super shocker gets through that. Forget this GM - he sounds like more trouble than he's worth.

Wow, force 12 better hope you have Adept focused around being a magical threat killer. Failing that get mana static, great way to fubar a conjuror.

Well, slightly in the DM's defense he claims that the bound Spirit(s) weren't Force 12, but he refuses to say exactly what Force they were...

But I'd bet that the Vamp rolled Edge on the Summoning Test and the Spirit didn't....

Even just summoning a force 12 spirit is likely to knock the wind out of a person. Average hits for the spirit is 4, doubled to 8P...

I guess as a vamp has regeneration that might not slow it down much, but that leads to another question; Can a vamp regenerate drain damage?

Honestly, I'm just starting to think that the GM is having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that he has 3 street sams in the group. This can be pretty daunting and he is trying to find ways to actually beat the group in combat.

I think it is time to reset the game or else find a new GM. It has gotten to the point where I think he is trying to win against the group. I used to do this when I first started GMing and it leads to very bad places. It still happens from time to time when everyone is grumpy at the game table.

Is there a reason why the Face got dumped in favor of a Street Sam?
Was the player not enjoying it?


Edit: I don't think that the Armored Van driving through the front door is LS's biggest concern at this point. There's already been one large firefight at the address including high power spirits.

A non-initiate vampire can summon a force 12 spirit with stun drain. An initiate vampire can do better and convert unregenable drain to perfectly regenable knife wounds.

In fact, if I were a creature with Regen the first megamagic I'd take is Sacrificing for this very reason. They should be thankful that regen has been toned down in SR4, because under the old rules a vampire mage could cut his own heart out during the ritual, mitigating a great deal of drain, and still have a 5/6 chance of being completely uninjured at the beginning of the next CT.

It is a perfectly reasonable use of the rules and, if this were a minmaxing exercise, the GM didn't pull out all of the stops. Force 12 is nothing to a vampire mage.
To be worthy of a vamp mage those force 12s should be Blood Spirits and the bound one should have eaten its fill of the homeless, pumping itself up to 24 but with the vampire getting services form it when it was still 12. Or worse, the GM could have exploited the little Blood Spirit Essence Drain rules glitch and had the vampire summon them at Force 1, bind them multiple times until she has an absurd number of services, and then feed them half dozen people each, pumping their Forces up into the thirties.
But then that invites the players to do the same.

Anything the players do the GM can do, as well. This is an old motto to retaliate against absurd rules and equipment abuses. Under normal circumstances, the inverse isn't true. But, in this case, it is truer.

The PCs know that she is a vampire. They know that she is bad news. They know that a full frontal assault is suicide. If they have the resources to spare, they can contact a blood mage who is looking for some dough and have them summon a Force 12 Blood Spirit on their behalf and sell them the services that it owes (by canon, a mage can order a spirit to obey someone else and that person can then spend services) it sain't no skin off the blood mages back because Little Miss Has Never Known A Man will be taking all the drain for him.
And then they can spend a service to feed their new spirit with a random homeless guy. Then he becomes a force 18 blood spirit. And their Force 18 Blood spirit, asside from being able to kick her force 12 spirits' asses, can Essence drain the vampire slitch. Give her a taste of her own medicine.

If the vampire has the unaltered stats from the On the Run adventure, then I know what they are. I wont refer to them here, but others who are waling on the GM in this situation and have the adventure should look them up, bearing in mind that a vampire can get her essence up to 12 with the Essence Drain power and then trade ten of those points for an extra 5 magic points.

@Hyzmarca: Regarding blood magic, Street Magic does say that knowledge of the blood invoking metamagic is extremely rare, and it also has two pre-requisite metamagics meaning that the blood mage would have to be at least a grade three initiate to pull this off. So it's a little misleading to suggest that the players could pop down to their "local blood mage." Even if there is a local blood mage, you can bet given the nature of his magic, he wont be advertising it. That said, I would expect most GMs would house rule the loophole in the blood spirit rules anyway, perhaps by capping the maximum essence as with vampires.

Blood Magic is rare, but the distribution of blood mages is fairly concentrated in some areas. You can't throw a still-beating heart in an Aztec temple without hitting one. Yeah, calling up an Aztlaner priest to get him to make a ritual sacrifice for you isn't the brightest of ideas, but where the blood magician ply their trade people know. It is hard for them not to, given the need for a steady supply of sacrifices. Where they don't have open state sanction, they have their claws deep enough into local interests to ensure that their works go unimpeded. And that attracts attention. If you know a guy who knows a guy, it shouldn't be difficult to dig up that info. The Friend of a Friend rules should be able to put you in touch with a freelance vampire blood mage, a cybermancer with gambling debts, the Ordo Maximus, Havenherds, an African blood cult, or something.

It doesn't have to be a local blood mage at all. With the electronic economy and Astral Fast Movement, you can have a guy halfway across the world summon your spirit for you with the guarantee that it'll be at your doorstep in half an hour or it is free.

Only one problem there, you and I can both be fairly certain that didn't happen because draining 6 points of Essense at the fastest still takes 6 minutes of intense but non-resisting emotion and when the DM was responding to this thread his defense of the powerful spirits was that the vampire was pissed because a group of mortals had broken into her lair and that she used Edge, not that she had jacked her magic up to Great Dragon levels beforehand. (Of course, at the time he was refusing to comment on the actual Force of the spirits, other then to say that the bound one(s) was less then Force 10, so my gut is telling me that he more then likely knew what type of response Force 12 would have gotten and that is why he never corrected our impression of the unbound spirit's Force.)

As for the question of Regenerating Drain Damage, well in my opinion it doesn't work because Regeneration is a magical effect, and you can't use Magic to heal Drain. Of course that is just my take on it, if your DM rules otherwise, dig through Street Magic and figure out whatever you have to do in order to enter into some sort of Pact to gain Regeneration yourself.

Also, something else to think about ....

Eleazar exactly how long after you sent your First Spirit through the barrier passed before the team kicked down the vampire's front door?

No, he isn't "obligated" to do anything provided his players are happy enough to stay at his table (In fact I seem to remember saying something along the lines that DMs can break whatever rule they damn well please provided they keep their players happy in a thread asking that very question not all that long ago.), however bare in mind that he did enter the fray albeit somewhat vaguely.

And one of the statements that he made is that the vampire in question used Edge to summon what we later found to be the Force 12 spirit, not that she jacked up her Magic via Essense Drain some time beforehand, so lets try not to confuse the issue with possible retconning.

As for altering the module, sure, if the NPC was changed beforehand to be the type of Mage who kept a couple of Bound Spirits around then ok that solves the puzzle for me, but if not then I wonder what had happened to her in order to alter her M.O. in what appears to be the short time between On the Run and the incident we're discussing? Because believe it or not, I am honestly curious as to what really happened and so far we have part of the story from a couple of players and a few hints from the DM that to me at least aren't really adding up.

As for Harlequinn, well personally I find statless NPCS who can do the impossible just to be cool rather distasteful. (And besides, I don't think anyone has ever tried to claim the the vampire in question is really an Immortal Elf or a Great Dragon who later becomes a Cyber-Zombie and saves the multiverse from an early Scourge.)

I would very much like to remind people that the topic of this thread is "what could we have done better?" "we" in the above context stands for "the shadowrunners"; I am getting quickly bored with the uncalled GM trial that keeps rearing it's ugly head.

Now, I second those who suggested stealth and intel gathering instead of more brutal combat tactics.

Also, considering the future of the characters and taking into account green shadowrunners vs. force-12-spirits tossing vampiric mage, I would suggest negotiation. The players now know about the vampire and where she lives, that might give them some leverage, especially if they are reasonable and move quickly.

I do not think killing the vampire is worth anything at all, just finding a way to set the kidnapped guy free. (Note that I did not say rescue)

A professional shadowrunner team requires someone to cover the hacking and social departments, if not you have a mercenary outfit.

Not that I do not like punchy shadowrun; one group that I am currently Gming for has an ork islamic terrorist, another muslim -non-fundamentalist- serbian merc, an ork sioux samurai and a russian dwarf conjurer. They are around 50 karma now and have spent many points on improving social and electronic skills, though.

Cheers,

Max

What a funny illusion.

About the negotiation suggestion. This might work, but it will end in the vamp getting the best end of the bargain since there is no face. When I say mercs I mean mercs, not some James Bond MI6 agent. One of them even has uncouth which I told him wasn't a good idea, especially for a first character. So far this hasn't hindered him much at all. If the vamp ends up wanting anything of value I doubt she will be getting it. There is no way I would cough up nuyen or items for this guy. We aren't even sure why she even took our guy yet. We are guessing it has something to do with the disc from On the Run but aren't sure. We might do negotiation but I doubt we will be willing to give up anything for him. The two characters that are his friends are poor. You don't kidnap someone and then ask for a paltry ransom.

It would be nice to negotiate with the vampire, but when you don't really have anything to offer it makes it rather difficult to negotiate with someone. The only thing I think we could give her is our services. She would have to find some use for us. But then this begs the question, what does a vampire that can summon Force 12 spirits and bind powerful Spirits of Man need from us? Not only that, she has a whole assortment of guards and her very own posse loyal to her.

What do we really have as a bargaining chip for her?

Because I have a thermal detonator
[/star wars]