Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: prismite on <11-01-13/1624:55>
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Hi folks, want to get some feedback about things.
I am currently hosting a game of 4th Ed SR4a and my players have been picked up as DA's (Deniable Assets) by Mitsuhama. Mostly MCT has them do odds and ends, like long distance jobs, or jobs relating to external security.
The group is composed of 2 mages (1 is combat based, the other is an illusionist), a human skill-monkey, a troll gun-adept and an Oni with a penchant for large weapons. The face of the group is the illusionist and has been VERY effective at her job. Between these 5 people there are 4 High-Velocity weapons, 3 High-Powered weapons a modified Krime Cannon and 4 suits of SWAT-style armor.
Recently the mages have begun complaining that the game is getting more and more unfair to them because the enemies are carrying AR's with underbarrel GL's or Snipers with Desert Strikes. I've tried to integrate critters and casters, but with 2 spellcasters on the team almost everything is counterspelled immediately and the big lugs make short work of everything else.
I dont like using Dragons or such very often because I think that cheapens their value. I dont want to put the party up against something that is sure to kill them for the sake of killing them, either.
So I'm looking for interesting ideas to challenge the party with.
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Send them to Manhattan... *snickers*
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prismite, I got one word that will solve all your problems: Asamando.
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bug spirits. A hive of them.
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If they like the Call of Duty feel, you could have MCT send them to Desert Wars '72 to represent the Corp.
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A bodyguarding job where they are very public and can't use the big weapons could make them think of other ways then brute force to accomplish the job.
Also for the spell casters a couple or more spirits can tie them up while the mudanes have to deal with the mudane problems.
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bug spirits. A hive of them.
Chicago CZ where the Background Count messes with the mages.
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That simply gets the mages to complain things are unfair to them. You want something only mages can handle properly.
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Blood mages. Mages using Mob Mind. Spirits taking advantage of the surroundings to prevent the party from bringing their heavy weapons to bear. Illusions. Knight Errant wanting to see your license for the assault cannon.
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Are the mages worried about how easily they might die or are they worried that they are not inflicting enough damage when they cast spells?
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Hmm. Some really good options here!
The mages are concerned that enemies will be carrying progressively bigger guns that make correspondingly larger and larger holes in spellcasters, lol.
I *LOVE* the WarGames idea ... that would be the perfect outlet for their violent tendencies and explain why there are so many like-formatted npc's!
As for the mages, I integrated a bug-spirit this last session that bit them (so to speak) in a particular nasty fashion so they are a bit more attentive at this point. Vengeful bugs might be looking for them at this point ...
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The mages are concerned that enemies will be carrying progressively bigger guns that make correspondingly larger and larger holes in spellcasters, lol.
I'm a fan of localized background count issues to keep spell monkeys from tipping everything sideways. This gives me a little break from the normal over the top pink mohawk action. With a lower key mission theres correspondingly less panthers running around....usually...maybe.
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Hmm. Some really good options here!
The mages are concerned that enemies will be carrying progressively bigger guns that make correspondingly larger and larger holes in spellcasters, lol.
I *LOVE* the WarGames idea ... that would be the perfect outlet for their violent tendencies and explain why there are so many like-formatted npc's!
As for the mages, I integrated a bug-spirit this last session that bit them (so to speak) in a particular nasty fashion so they are a bit more attentive at this point. Vengeful bugs might be looking for them at this point ...
Are the mages trying to play pure flesh or do they have some crome in them?
Magic is powerful enough in fourth edition that they can afford to get some cyber implants (probably cheap ones since they won't have to worry that much about the stats on the limbs in question) with armor built into them to make them more squishy.
A friend of mine once played a devilishly effective Fomori Burnout Mage who had two cyber legs and was able to withstand shocking amounts of punishment (20+ soak dice) while still throwing spells hard enough to level whatever he was aiming at.
Also what kind of attack spells are your mages using and are they happy with the results? If you use the right powerful spells you can afford to loose some essence/magic to make yourself harder to kill.
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An alternative to Desert Wars maybe the Rad Wars that are scheduled to run in the irradiated SOX region of Europe. The original SOX supplement was written in French/German, but I have a translated version if you want it - PM me with an email address and I'll whizz it over.
This brings in the issues of limited equipment/ammo, radiation, mad locals and Feuerschwinge (radioactive dragon). Bugs and atomagic are also options. I've run this along the lines of Fallout 3.
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IMO, to give any effective advice, I think we need to know exactly what the players are complaining about. The scaling up of weapons against them? They're company men, they have "4 High-Velocity weapons, 3 High-Powered weapons a modified Krime Cannon and 4 suits of SWAT-style armor" - in other words, if they don't kill it in one pass, it's probably some sort of tank. The fact that they ARE taking out everything in one pass? The fact that because they're doing that level of damage, in order to balance the playing field, you need to haul out your big guns??
Overall, the best advice I can give you is to remind them that what they bring to the game is what you have to match. They're stomping around the 'plex in medium armor and toting weapons that'd wipe out any small- to medium-sized gang. If they don't want the opposition to start targetting them with headshots from 1200m out, they need to get more subtle. If they want to romp around the way they are, they're going to face opposition with heavy weapons which, if they get through, are going to smear them across the wall. If they don't want to face that sort of opposition, they should seek out more subtle missions. IC, the PCs talk to their handler; OOC, the players talk to you.
Ideas as a GM, to get away from the 'hi there, headshot with an assault cannon!' issue - pretty simple, really. More mages. Gino and Nunzio might be able to smack away two or three spells at a time, but what about five or seven? What if the opposition is equal to their skill rating, is actively attacking their magical defenses? If you've got your spell defense up, your ability to cast goes down, which means a solid opposition team with two or three spellcasters and a good bunch of tactical soldiers can force the PCs to choose - either keep spell defense up and not be able to defend against the incoming bulletstorm, or start working against the bullets and have to scramble to protect against spells. If one's doing the spell defense and the other is doing physical defense, again, have an opposition mage magically attack their magical defenses against the physical attacks - and another one sic a spirit on them.
And if you really want to scare the pants off them, I have two words for you: Ritual Sorcery. "Hi there, headshot with an assault cannon" becomes something they KNOW is happening, but they have a limited time to find the 'shooters' ... who could be anywhere on the planet.
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If these guys are so tough, wouldn't you just mental-manipulate the biggest one to get him to fire at his teammates?
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Honestly? It could be a situation of where the wizard with nothing but spells targetting Fort saves is continually faced with creatures with high Fort Saves. Diversity on the mages' part might help.
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Honestly? It could be a situation of where the wizard with nothing but spells targetting Fort saves is continually faced with creatures with high Fort Saves. Diversity on the mages' part might help.
Diversity in Shadowrun 4th edition when it comes to magic is a fools game, all you need is Stunbolt for single targets, stunball for when they bunch up, some spell of your choice for targets that are immune to stun damage (possibly both power bolt and power ball if you want to get fancy) and if you our GM lets it some fancy mind control spell (take your pick they're all good) .
Is not like in D&D where you need to be a wizard who has to find exactly the right spell for or exactly the right situation, something like 90% of of the offensive spells a Mage should cast in combat is either Stunbolt or stunball.
Because force +net hits resisted by an itty bitty dice pool means someone (or a lot of someone's with stunball) is going to take a nice long nap.
At least these were the results that I saw from watching our group's Mage and never felt any reason to complain about his effectiveness.
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Diversity in Shadowrun 4th edition when it comes to magic is a fools game, all you need is ...
*hysterical laughter*
Clearly your GM is running only combats.
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I agree with Wyrmy here. If you think stunbolt and powerbolt are the answer for all the 'offensive' spells you could ever need, either you are hopelessly naive, or your GM is still letting you bowl with the bumpers in the gutters like the little kiddies.
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I agree with Wyrmy here. If you think stunbolt and powerbolt are the answer for all the 'offensive' spells you could ever need, either you are hopelessly naive, or your GM is still letting you bowl with the bumpers in the gutters like the little kiddies.
It's entirely possibly we were playing on "easy mode" since my group only ran season two and season three of missions, could you let me know about some other combat spells besides bolts, and balls of the stuns and power verity and what sort of situations you've found they are useful in?
(I already also mentioned mental magic also but that wasn't legal in a lot of the missions we ran).
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Diversity in Shadowrun 4th edition when it comes to magic is a fools game, all you need is ...
*hysterical laughter*
Clearly your GM is running only combats.
Not only combats but we were running only seasons two and three of missions with a technomancer in the group handling most of the legwork and the rest being done by a non magical face.
Can you give me some examples of other magical spells and when you have found them useful?
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Well, the indirect combat spells (especially those with elemental effects) are beautiful for dealing with drones and unseen enemies.
While they might not be flashy, a lot of the Detection spells can swing a fight, especially things like Combat Sense or Mind Probe (surface thoughts include what they're about to do next, you know), but Analyze Object can make you an instant threat with a weapon you pick up.
Health spells. Oh my, the health spells. Do you know how many beautiful debuffs there are in the health spells? Decrease [Attribute], Decrease Reflexes, Intoxicate, and so on. Dropping someone's Reaction or Agility to 1 turns them from a serious threat to sitting duck. And taking the Samurai's initiative down makes him all the easier to fight.
Illusion spells. Also in the 'king of debuff' category. Orgasm/Orgy, Agony/Mass Agony, Remove Sense, Improved Invisibility, Trid Phantasm. So many options to go with here. Orgy is actually one of my favorite spells for a combat build, because it is a solid debuff with low drain, and it is less likely to have any survivors coming after your head if they are incapacitated to 'gushing'. Remove Sense: How well do you think the enemy will be able to shoot at you if you take away their ability to see? Likewise, how well will they be able to shoot at you if you're invisible? Trid Phantasm is a very powerful spell in the right hands. Being able to create realistic, moving illusions is not something to smirk at. I'll just give two examples. 1) What do you mean, there were eight air elementals that were waiting on call here? 2) Dragon. If you can't think of a way that a dragon suddenly appearing on the battlefield can change the flow, then you need to be playing something other than a mage. Even if they suspect a trick, they are going to react. You just can't ignore a dragon, afterall. Of course, you do it too often, they'll start ignoring it, but that's when you summon a spirit and have it take the shape of a dragon. "Oh, its just another illusion, igno--OH MY GOD THE FIRE IS REAL!"
Manipulation Spells. Ice sheet is always a classic, going back to the days of using Grease in D&D. Slipping and falling on your face tends to make your shots go wild. Wall spells have a natural function of halting the enemy, channeling them into choke points, or setting them up for chunky salsa. [Energy] Aura turns a street samurai with a sword into "OH GOD THE PAIN!" since it increases both damage and gives the -half AP. It also means his attacks count as magical for fighting those with ITNW. Petrify (or the permanent, ice-element version I made, Flashfreeze). You know what a statue is really bad at? Shooting you. You know what a statue is really good at? Being pushed off a building to break on the ground below. Fling, it works on grenades, you know? Poltergeist - Nothing says 'go away' like having a room full of sharp pointies going up in a whirlwind. Mass Animate - Oh god, the rug is trying to hold me down while the chair curb-stomps me! Levitate - It can be cast on enemies, too. What do you think will happen if you whip someone up, say, 30-40 meters, and then stop sustaining the spell?
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Well, the indirect combat spells (especially those with elemental effects) are beautiful for dealing with drones and unseen enemies.
While they might not be flashy, a lot of the Detection spells can swing a fight, especially things like Combat Sense or Mind Probe (surface thoughts include what they're about to do next, you know), but Analyze Object can make you an instant threat with a weapon you pick up.
Health spells. Oh my, the health spells. Do you know how many beautiful debuffs there are in the health spells? Decrease [Attribute], Decrease Reflexes, Intoxicate, and so on. Dropping someone's Reaction or Agility to 1 turns them from a serious threat to sitting duck. And taking the Samurai's initiative down makes him all the easier to fight.
Illusion spells. Also in the 'king of debuff' category. Orgasm/Orgy, Agony/Mass Agony, Remove Sense, Improved Invisibility, Trid Phantasm. So many options to go with here. Orgy is actually one of my favorite spells for a combat build, because it is a solid debuff with low drain, and it is less likely to have any survivors coming after your head if they are incapacitated to 'gushing'. Remove Sense: How well do you think the enemy will be able to shoot at you if you take away their ability to see? Likewise, how well will they be able to shoot at you if you're invisible? Trid Phantasm is a very powerful spell in the right hands. Being able to create realistic, moving illusions is not something to smirk at. I'll just give two examples. 1) What do you mean, there were eight air elementals that were waiting on call here? 2) Dragon. If you can't think of a way that a dragon suddenly appearing on the battlefield can change the flow, then you need to be playing something other than a mage. Even if they suspect a trick, they are going to react. You just can't ignore a dragon, afterall. Of course, you do it too often, they'll start ignoring it, but that's when you summon a spirit and have it take the shape of a dragon. "Oh, its just another illusion, igno--OH MY GOD THE FIRE IS REAL!"
Manipulation Spells. Ice sheet is always a classic, going back to the days of using Grease in D&D. Slipping and falling on your face tends to make your shots go wild. Wall spells have a natural function of halting the enemy, channeling them into choke points, or setting them up for chunky salsa. [Energy] Aura turns a street samurai with a sword into "OH GOD THE PAIN!" since it increases both damage and gives the -half AP. It also means his attacks count as magical for fighting those with ITNW. Petrify (or the permanent, ice-element version I made, Flashfreeze). You know what a statue is really bad at? Shooting you. You know what a statue is really good at? Being pushed off a building to break on the ground below. Fling, it works on grenades, you know? Poltergeist - Nothing says 'go away' like having a room full of sharp pointies going up in a whirlwind. Mass Animate - Oh god, the rug is trying to hold me down while the chair curb-stomps me! Levitate - It can be cast on enemies, too. What do you think will happen if you whip someone up, say, 30-40 meters, and then stop sustaining the spell?
You are correct I forgot about a great many important non combat spells.
Healing is very important (especially because in 4th you are allowed to use magic and normal healing on any drain the group's technomancer gets) likewise self buffs are very important because if you are a Mage and spent ugh of your karma on magey things you might not have as much edge as other people so buffing yourself till you our to initiative is in the 20s very useful.
Conceal /invisibility can be very useful though they slipped my mind since I was used to having the group summon spirits who used the conceal power on us rather than having the Mage cast the spell themselves.
Levitate was also very useful for extractions, as it once helped us move people to and from our group's helicopter and at one point steal a very heavy fish tank.
However I think you are getting too "cute" if you try to use levitate as a combat spell, I do not know the rules for that kind of thing off the top of my head but I recall every combat round in Shadowrun lasting five seconds (please correct me if I am wrong) which would mean that in the time it would take to lift someone up and then drop them, they would get a few passes to take actions in (like shooting you/someone on your team with the their gun) that would not happen if you had just stunbolted them.
Also a levitate spell lets the person you target roll strength and body against being lifted by the spell, which are exactly the stats you don't want to let street samuria roll against your spells slinging.
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You're right about using levitate on the sammy. However, the sammy isn't the only one you'll be fighting, yeah? If, say, there's a ninja adept type that is too damn slippery for your crew to hit, then you'll find that ninjas are remarkably less trouble when they are floating motionless in the air. And you don't need an attack roll for Levitate, unlike with indirect combat spells. And for direct combat spells, if the person has a high Willpower, then they may be able to resist the spell. That's what Wyrmy and I were talking about. Using the right spell in the right situation to target the enemy weaknesses. Levitate is great on some enemies. As a note, if the drone isn't too heavy, it also can be used against combat drones to, say, send the Steel Lynx that was targeting you up into the air. Fixed position weapon mounts can't shoot down.
Creativity can often be more powerful than raw power.