Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: prismite on <06-18-14/1635:06>
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So I have a table of 4 (soon to be 6) players and I'm starting to notice a continual pattern and could use some community advice.
Some of the folks at my table think that they can only be good at this game if their character has dice-pools in excess of 15 from Char-Gen. Now, I have often scolded those individuals for not being in the spirit of the game but sometimes I am told things that do kind of make sense.
For example, the last time a player was scolded it wasn't by me, but another member of his team who stated that they hated to play with him because his "Munchkin'd" character always forces them to abandon character flavor in favor of combat power. The accused responded that since combat is 1/3rd of the time spent in game, it makes sense to drop a sizable amount of resources into being really good at combat. Even after this argument, and rolling new characters, the accused ended up with a combat spellcasting pool of 16. Seeing this, the other mage sighed and erased all his skills he had at 2 and settled on several combat skills at 6.
Now my problem is that I agree with both sides, I do ... but I'm not sure how to 'fix' this scenario.
Currently I have instituted a "Rule of 10" policy. Essentially, I've capped all skill-related pools at 10 dice, regardless of stat/attachments/specializations/etc, but the cap goes up by 1 for every 10 karma earned, and is obiliterated completely at 100 karma. We play with an accelerated Karma rewards system, so that should take 6-8 sessions to happen.
This system seems to inhibit the Cyberware guy even more than the default price listings want to! Should I just abandon this rule and avoid combat until the important of diversity is felt or am *I* in the wrong and should I alter my approach? I'm pretty much up for ideas at this point!
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This is where knowing your group comes to play....
Are they all combat centered players? (Meaning do they want other elements?)
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I think the problem is not the large dice pools of the optimizers, or at least not just that. Generally in a team there are people who throw massive quantities of dice during different sorts of situations, but the way you're describing it, it seems like your players are only concentrated on combat. How are you handling legwork? Are there exciting quantities of dice flying away there, or is it just an occasional Loyalty check on contacts?
The thing is, the 'roleplayer' player shouldn't feel compelled to make a combat monkey just to compete with the optimizer player, unless they're feeling like if they can't shine in combat they can't shine at all.
Not to mention mages. Combat is the least interesting thing mage can do. Are they trying to be the same sort of mage? Why?
For some reason for your players the game turned into a competition instead of a team game. So maybe figure out what's going on there.
Reaver makes a good point. Are they all coming to play for combat? If only some of them are, make sure that the players that don't prioritize combat get a chance to shine too.
That said, a few things you can do to make the roleplayers feel more validated:
- give karma for well-thought out backstories
- give dicepool bonuses for good descriptions
- have Knowledge skill checks matter
- just in general, look at the roleplayers' backstories and character sheets and try to make use of the 'flavor' skills they have there while thinking about the run.
You can scold people or cap people's dicepools or force the optimizer players to buy flavor skills they don't want, but the only thing you can really do as a GM is make it pay to be well-rounded in your game. I'm my group's hacker and driver, with pretty shitty fighting skills. Guess what I'm cashing my last run's karma for? The first dot in Intimidate. Because it comes up and is useful, and it felt shitty to fail that roll when I actually made a pretty good case to the target that he should be afraid.
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10 is not a lot of dice for a normal-level campaign and since combat is an opposed roll vs. a non-skill related dice pool, things could get out of whack pretty easily. By way of example, my non-optimized PhysAd rolls 17 dice on his defense test.
Assuming that power level isn't part of your vision for your campaign, I say let the players make what they want and then come up with different ways of letting each player have his/her time in the spotlight. Sure, the guy with all the dice is going to be great at combat, but as he pointed out, that's only 1/3 of the time. (And having a guy good at combat is a good thing for everyone else). The other guy is presumably good at something, so you can devise ways of introducing those sorts of elements to the table to fill in the other 2/3 of the time.
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12-15 dice is pretty standard for a character's area of expertise, and that's straight out of chargen. I don't think it's Munchkinny to make a character that's better at fighting than the rest of the party: like the others have said, that still leaves 2/3 of the game for the others to get their kicks. It sounds more like you're nerfing combat because other players get envious of players with combat-based characters.
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Combat is the easiest way for the players to get that 'instant ggratification' kick. Bad guys pop up, throw a double handful of dice till they fall down. Rinse and repeat.
The trick is to let the other aspects of the game shine by putting more of the spit light on them.
Johnson needs an item recovered.... without drawing attention.
Johnson needs a face to act as a middleman for an exchange...
Run involves lots of legwork to find the item....
There are ways to get the other parts of SR to shine.... but if your characters are the shoot first type, you may be wasting your time.
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Straight up; some characters are going to be good in combat, they're supposed to be. there is nothing wrong with that, it is the bread and butter for two character archetypes: physical adept + street sam.
Mages can also be devastating in combat.
Thing to remember is that shadowrunners are supposed to be good. they have to be good, otherwise they die. if they're only as good as corpsec, then they dont live to the point where they get good.
Shadowrunners should be able to walk through standard corpsec + ganger mooks relatively easily and a dicepool of 10 is a good starting point for characters and is usually where non-combatants like deckers/technos finish up as well
Agi 4, pistols 3 (semi-auto +2) +laser sight 1 =dicepool of 10 and that is super easy to get; a very small investment for most players.
What I would say is that if combat is taking up 1/3rd of your games as your player said, then perhaps combat is happening too frequently? if the spotlight is frequently on the street sam because you're always fighting, start doing other stuff. give the decker more chance to shine {btw, logic 6, hacking 6 (+ hosts +2), hot sim 2 =16 is not unreasonable at all if you need to break into corporate hosts!), chuck in a car chase or two for your rigger, have a wagemage turn up in the corpsec to challenge your mages or build in heavy astral security.
in otherwords, dont over emphasise one aspect of the game. if everyone gets chance to shine, this problem should go away. and yes, your payers might need to suck it up and optimise a bit more, primary skills need to be 10 or higher so account for opposed rolls and -ve modifiers and still have a chance of success.
Also, a mage shouldn't be huffing and puffing about combat dicepools, a reasonably built mage can totally outshine a well built street sam in terms of utility in a fight
btw a munchkin build is usually one where it is so incredibly good at what it does that it practically never fails, it is also absolutely terrible at everything else!
You're looking at the old pornomancer face type who had a con (seduce) dicepool of about 25+ out of chargen iirc but didnt know which end of a knife was the pointy bit
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Hmm. You guys have given me a lot to think about.
Thank you!
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You're looking at the old pornomancer face type who had a con (seduce) dicepool of about 25+ out of chargen iirc but didnt know which end of a knife was the pointy bit
40-50, IIRC, not just 25+.
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Do you think you could show us the character's stats first?
But sure, I don't see much wrong with firing on someone with low dice: if you see a fragile-looking character in a team of runners, chances are high it's either a decker or a mage, and both should be a high priority for focusing fire on ("geek the mage first", and if you take out the decker, they'll probably have to give up on whatever they had planned) - it doesn't matter if they're actually a decker or mage, the NPCs just have to think they are.
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I think the old pornomancer build got up to something like 60+ dice in the end actually.
But yeah, 12-16 dice is a fairly reasonable dice pool for a character's speciality. The mage should be tossing that to cast, the decker should do it for hacking, the street sam should have it for combat and the face should be around there for social rolls. You can easily hit those sorts of dice pools and have room for a well-balanced character. It's when they start tossing 20+ dice that it gets to be a problem.
On the subject of hitting the pornomancer with a low combat dice pool, I'd say go for it. Have some corp sec toss a flashbang near them or put a few gel rounds in their direction, something non-lethal.
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On the subject of hitting the pornomancer with a low combat dice pool, I'd say go for it. Have some corp sec toss a flashbang near them or put a few gel rounds in their direction, something non-lethal.
Oh you are far too kind sir!! Short of the phonebook, the pornomancer deserves the heavy weapons troll treatment :-)
It is the GM's duty to smack munchkin builds around with their corpsec + gangers so go have fun, dream of full auto bursts create sizeable blemishes all over his pretty little body :-)
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In my case, I've seen a character with nearly 50 dice to dodge when in full defense. Something like 4 spells quickened.
I always feel bad for hitting a character in their obvious weak spot. Feels like the cheap thing to do ... but sometimes you just have to.
I've just never played a game where 16 dice is considered 'the norm'. Starting numbers were always like 10-12.
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In my case, I've seen a character with nearly 50 dice to dodge when in full defense. Something like 4 spells quickened.
I always feel bad for hitting a character in their obvious weak spot. Feels like the cheap thing to do ... but sometimes you just have to.
I've just never played a game where 16 dice is considered 'the norm'. Starting numbers were always like 10-12.
thats an awful lot of dodge dice but that's also a character that isn't much apart from not getting shot.
If you want to affect chars that go that silly, then gas grenades are your friend!
Have your security drones load up on CS/pepper punch/neurostun and laugh as he's not able to utilise his gimmick :-)
unfortunately I think some of this mentality comes from trying to "beat" the game/GM rather than enjoy the game.
Problem is, the GM controls the game world and who their opponents are, what they're armed with and how good they are at using it.
It might be worth sitting down with players going for a monobuild and just explaining the effect that it has on the game and on the other players, if they don't listen then hell, you're the GM. either boot them or come up with brilliant ways to sucker punch them into submission.
(I like having the 35 dice pool sniper with CHA 1 insult a Troll doorman when he glitches his social test to get into the meet, then get his arse absolutely handed to him. GM- Your character is now hospitalised, and is permanently disfigured. roll a new character. perhaps more rounded this time?)
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The best way to deal with this is to use the right of veto during chargen. If one of the characters, for any reason, doesn't fit with the power level of the group, or the power level you wish the campaign to be at, send them to redo it. Things like this only get into play because the GM allows it.
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Some excellent advice in this thread! If you have player's that want to play rounded out characters with lower dice pools, reward that behavior! Not blatantly unfair rewards, mind you, but sometimes when players build combat-skill based characters, they do that because they aren't aware of other options (don't get me wrong, I love to play a combat beast on occasion! ;) )
It will take more work, but show your players you can be successful with both types of characters. Give karma for good ideas and smart playing as well as combat prowess. Maybe Mr. Johnson appreciated your discretion and smart decisions and kicks in some extra Nuyen or special gear -- or another job! Combat teams are a dime a dozen - a team of troubleshooters that have all the skills to adjust quickly and quietly to situations, well that's where the big pay days start. :)
Heck, take a look at Tucker's Kobolds if you haven't read about them -- perfect example of 'weaker' characters playing smart and with tactics!
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The best way to deal with this is to use the right of veto during chargen. If one of the characters, for any reason, doesn't fit with the power level of the group, or the power level you wish the campaign to be at, send them to redo it. Things like this only get into play because the GM allows it.
I am going to start doing this. Better to be a straight shooter and be thought of as an A-hole than to let it get out of hand and make EVERYONE disgruntled.
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I would highly recommend discussion and the power of the veto before the game starts over giving people a single bit of extra reward for playing a non-optimized character. Nobody is going to enjoy an argument over why the street sam is being punished for being a good street sam, and that's exactly what extra rewards for non-combat characters is doing.
They don't call them street samurai for their problem solving skills.
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Giving rewards for good roleplaying is not equal to 'punishing the combat character'. One of the best roleplayers at our table is a phys.ad, he gets his Edge refreshed during play for genre-appropriate descriptions and extra roleplaying karma after the run. If the street sam is playing a street sam beautifully he should get rewards too! And well, if he doesn't, he still gets those large dice pools to fall back on.
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Like I said, I have never played a game of SR (before this one) where 15+ dice was not considered extreme. In all my other experiences, the group policed themselves to keep a lower profile so as to not bring HTR teams down on themselves.
And as a member of my table often says "Just because you CAN do something doesnt mean you SHOULD." I could make an adept with an unarmed pool of 20 right at CharGen ... but that doesnt necessarily follow the spirit of the game. Well, to be fair, it MIGHT at your table, I dont know.
At the GenCon before this last one, my group ran into one of the game designers (whose name I totally forget at the moment, but he signed our books for us) was asked a question from one of my players.
"I took the Cavalier Sheriff and made a series of modification (including upgrading the gun to FA). Was this legal?" To which the guy said "Yes. But thats not really in the spirit of the game, now is it?"
Dont get me wrong, I'm totally ok with a runner w/ 200 karma earned having a high dice pool. Right out of the gate, though, it feels like there should be a control mechanism.
*Shrug* Maybe I'm just old school.
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Depends on your group mate, shadowrunner don't survive through being crap at their jobs. Decker has to be better than the spider and the Sam has to be better than corpsec. It's just part of the game. When the dicepools are 2x or more the npcs then yeah, it's getting silly and the GM needs to up the professional ratings of the npcs to scale
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Heck, take a look at Tucker's Kobolds if you haven't read about them -- perfect example of 'weaker' characters playing smart and with tactics!
The only thing Tucker's Kobolds are good for are maybe for a laugh. Any enemy played intelligently should be a challenge, the only point of using a the weakest mook in to the game to do it is for psychological effect. If it's purely a metagame reaction to player power it seems like a jerk move to me. Top it off with the fact that most GMs have to "cheat" to get the results from Moore's article and to me it looks more like it's about putting players "in their place" for daring to get as powerful as the GM let them.
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Giving rewards for good roleplaying is not equal to 'punishing the combat character'.
Guess I could have quoted, I was really replying to this in particular.
If you have player's that want to play rounded out characters with lower dice pools, reward that behavior!
Giving one player something extra for having lower dice pools and being rounded out when you didn't tell the people up front that you want them to roll characters that way would not come across well to me, and will likely be seen as being punished for not following a rule you didn't know was in effect for many players. That's all.
Though I will say that I personally do not really agree with the practice of giving players different amounts of karma or nuyen rewards based on something as ephemeral as what the GM happened to like that session. It smacks too much of a performance rating for me and I don't think it's a healthy thing for group cohesion.
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Telnaar, ah, I see. Apologies.
I can see where you're coming from with that second statement, but I guess I've become jaded and mercenary with time. If I was the one that saved everyone's bacon by asking the right questions, making good calls and planning for contingencies, I expect an extra karma point at the end of the run. (I actually don't get RP karma a lot - if at all; I get Brains Karma. Or, depending on your view, Genre Savvy-ness Karma).
I think it depends on your players a lot. If people start getting competitive and disappointed about not getting extra stuff, then it might not be the best thing, yes. But at the same time, people at the table who try harder might get discouraged because all that trying didn't get them any farther than the guy that just showed up and said "I guess I shoot the thing" a whole bunch of times.
the group policed themselves to keep a lower profile so as to not bring HTR teams down on themselves.
So do they simply have large dicepools or are they behaving like idiots too? Because no amount of dice will save a shadowrunner who's blown their cover and has those HTR teams on their tail. Just large dicepools are okay when they're using them in a smart manner. If they're cutting a bloody swathe through corpsec mooks every night and having armed carchases with Yakuza left and right sooner or later they'll meet people with even larger quantities of dice...
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First of all, I have a simple policy: "If the players can do it, so can the enemies." If you can put together the close-combat character that rolls 30 dice in hand-to-hand combat, there's nothing preventing the opposition from doing so -- and the opposition has more resources to back these guys with.
Second, out of character generation, I place an absolute dice pool limit for anything other than armor/soak rolls (which have to be pretty high to ensure basic survivability) at 20 dice. If you have figured out how to set up your Con dice pool at 24 dice, that's nice -- I'm still only going to let you use 20 dice. That being said, you may as well design your character to acknowledge that dice limit, and add a little round edges to your character. (I do like the rate of relaxing that limit at 1 die per 10 karma, though.)
Third, I look for ways to screw the party. I don't always USE those ways, but I make sure they're always an option. For example, the character who's hyper-focussed in Pistols -- what happens when he's facing guys who stay at Assault Rifle ranges? He closes, they back off -- he's going to be at a disadvantage. Or the character who had all the Qi Focuses -- and then had to cross into an area which turned off all his Foci. And kept them off.
And there are some times when it doesn't matter how many dice you have, it's not going to help you in the slightest bit. That security guard who's on alert and knows there are intruders in the area is not going to believe your Con roll when you show up in his zone, a stranger without identification -- He's going to shoot you and ask questions of your corpse. I don't care if you're a pornomancer with umpteen-million dice to your Con, it's just not going to work.
Dealing with players who want to make overly-specialized one-trick-pony characters is easy. Combat character? Put them in a stealth-oriented run and make sure they know that if they blow stealth, the entire party gets penalized. This way, sure, they can always resort to violence, but the group only gets paid half.
Dealing with the attitude that they NEED to specialize like this is harder. The problem with Shadowrun is that almost everything is based on opposed dice rolls. It's only natural to want as much dice as you can throw to beat the other guy. I tried setting the opposition die pools low, to get players to realize they didn't need to have those high dice pools -- it only made them realize what bad-asses they were, compared to Joe Blow the Rent-A-Cop. Incentive doesn't work as well as limitation. I hate being the restrictive GM -- and the bully -- but getting them to do it themselves doesn't work.
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For my money, they shouldn't be running into the 30d6 combat monsters during ordinary runs. Extraordinary runs, sure, but someone who's designed to mop the floor with people should mop the floor with people.
Sit down with your players - all your players. Find out what kind of game they want to play. Do they really want to play Combat Run? If so, go to town. If not, then give the 'Gotta Have It All At 6' player the gimlet eye, but let him build his character that way - with the clear understanding that he's going to spotlight only as frequently as everyone else.
Spotlight time is important. Does Mr. 3's and 2's have unique skills? What's that you say - he took locksmith at 2, which nobody else has? Guess what, the very next door is going to have a standard SuperHeavyDuty TrollProofTM manual-key-lock. If you want to up the pressure, force them to split the group, and put those locks in both places, and allow Mr. 3&2 to say sarcastically to GHIAA 6 "well, I guess you shoulda taken some other skills besides beat-his-ass-up, huh??"
A couple years ago, over at DragonCon, I played in a late-night game where several players (used 'gimmie' characters from the GM) said, "It's ShadowRUN - if you're not running away from something, you're not doing it right." This being the same guy who got into a bar brawl and nearly got his character greased. (I knew I should have killed him, but that's bad-mood-making in a pickup game.) The point here is that he figured 'combat combat' was the name of the game, when really it's 'spotlight spotlight'. Every player's character, at some point during every game, should get a chance to shine - and not always for the same thing, either. And after a few games where CombatBoy doesn't get a chance to slaughter the Hordes of Mordor, let him go to town - but then go back to letting everyone else do their thing.
Otherwise, remind everyone that they aren't individuals; they're a team, and need to support each other. If that involves having lesser outright skills but thinking ahead (as I would guess Mr. 2&3 does), then that's as good - or better - than just having lots of dice to throw. And you, as GM, should highlight that.
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Like I said, I have never played a game of SR (before this one) where 15+ dice was not considered extreme. In all my other experiences, the group policed themselves to keep a lower profile so as to not bring HTR teams down on themselves.
And as a member of my table often says "Just because you CAN do something doesnt mean you SHOULD." I could make an adept with an unarmed pool of 20 right at CharGen ... but that doesnt necessarily follow the spirit of the game. Well, to be fair, it MIGHT at your table, I dont know.
At the GenCon before this last one, my group ran into one of the game designers (whose name I totally forget at the moment, but he signed our books for us) was asked a question from one of my players.
"I took the Cavalier Sheriff and made a series of modification (including upgrading the gun to FA). Was this legal?" To which the guy said "Yes. But thats not really in the spirit of the game, now is it?"
Dont get me wrong, I'm totally ok with a runner w/ 200 karma earned having a high dice pool. Right out of the gate, though, it feels like there should be a control mechanism.
*Shrug* Maybe I'm just old school.
No, you're not old school. You are just playing a slightly different. more low-powered variant of Shadowrun. I have played in "street level" games, but I don't consider them the default - basic Shadowrun has the premise of above-average individuals working under the table doing difficult, dangerous work. The archetypes (which are far from optimized) include characters with 15+ dice pools. I think a dice pool cap of 10 punishes certain specialties a lot more than others. Combat is an opposed dice pool contest with lots and lots of potential negative modifiers for movement, cover, visibility, and so on, where the weakest statted goons have 6 dice to roll for their passive defense.
Ito doesn't seem like the "munchkins" are the real problem here - it is the other players, who apparently have to be just as good as them - why are they treating it like a competition? Although the optimizers may be part of the problem, too, if you associate low dice pools with a low profile (meaning that the players with high dice pool characters like to shoot everything in sight, maybe?). Part of the problem is that you don't have to be a glaring hyperspecialist, or a rules weasel, to be good at something - a decent Attribute, a skill of 6 with a specialization, and maybe some bonuses from gear, augmentations, or magic, and there's a high dice pool. The pitfall of a character creation with so many options is that you can make so many different kinds of characters, with wildly varying levels of experience and effectiveness.
I don't think a character with middling dice pools always has to feel useless. They need for the GM to give them opportunities to use their skills, like the locksmith example earlier. I mean, compare the street samurai and the bounty hunter. The former is a lethal killing machine, while the latter rolls less than 10 dice for combat. But what about jimmying a lock, or scaring a captive into talking, or finding food/water/shelter in the Barrens/wilderness, or climbing over a chain link fence, or rappelling down a cliff, or changing the getaway vehicle's flat tire, or spotting an ambush?
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I said this on the other thread but I'll say it again;
"This kind of discussion goes on with every RPG (Roll Playing Game, not Rocket Propelled Grenade).
I haven't played much Shadowrun yet, but you wanna define the strengths of the fight based on the toughest players, and give the rest something to do. You don't have to make the fight super tough for all the players at the same time. Quite the opposite, you may want to leave holes in the opponents defenses that are sufficient for one or two players to shine. That's not always obvious, but cool when it works. (Like facing overwhelming force while indoors, but when the players get outside, the Rigger's Drones get to lay down some serious lead.)
One thing that comes from experience is to be careful not to geek the softer characters in the energy given off between the toughest players, and the toughest opponents."
I tend to be against over optimized characters, and I prefer variety myself, but you can see where this troll came from;
http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=16871.15
I'm rather proud of that munchkin.
The question is not how strong the characters should be. The question is how much fun your players will have. Players have fun if you can find a way for them to shine in the adventure. That means your decker needs to deck, and your healer needs to heal, etc. Your combat dudes need to lay waste.
My team has a Decker, a Rigger, a combat mage, an intelligence mage (Face), Knuckles the Troll, and Shreddie (small tank, loves his monowhip). Everyone is pretty specialized, the Rigger and Decker are the least useful in direct combat, they are medics, and helpers at the back. If you really wanna make a Troll cry, try a blast door, and wait for him to cry "Decker!" In the group, only the Intel Mage is relatively low across the board (lots of skills at 10), but he will grow to be kick ass awesome in no time.
In Pathfinder, my players repeatedly and stupidly learned the hard way that they had to work as a team to win. Leaving a clear path between a traditional troll and a sorcerer was a quick way to loose the sorcerer. Tough guys can't just go all glory hunting for themselves, they have to hold the line and earn A's in "Standing in the Way 101", then hoping he healer they were protecting can keep them standing.
If you want your game to be fun, concentrate on finding ways for your players to shine.
(By the way, my players had their first fight on the weekend. Everyone had fun and contributed their bits. In combat, Shreddie, Knuckles, and the Combat Mage laid waste. Heads and bodies were flying, then the lighting ball cooked the rest.)
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Appreciate everyone's thoughts.
I've kind of changed my mindset about what is too strong and what is munchkin. I'm trying to not focus on the persons dice pool anymore and just run the game. Fortunately there was a situation recently in my game where a 32-soak dice troll caused a failed mission and tons of stress for the other players without my causing it :)
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This seems like jealousy to me. One guy wants to play a more novice runner and the other wants to play an elite one. Either lay down some rules before the game starts or teach the jealous player that this is not a competition. In my group, we intentionally play super weak characters just for fun. When there is someone powerful in the group we are grateful for it. If all 3 of us want to be powerful, we go for it. The GM can balance his campaign around the power level of any group so this really shouldn't be a problem.
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If you absolutely insist on weaker characters then pick the street level entry point. Heck its hard not to optimize in shadowrun.
The other option is to pick fun maximums... like 15 dice. (This will eliminate gun slinger adepts... ) Any optimizer will tell you that increasing those last few dice is really really hard. Going in other directions for less than primary capabilities can really make it interesting.
I prefer to think of the story before character design, before the optimizing.
Another idea is the make each player choose dual primary roles, and set dice minimums for secondary capabilities. Face + Street Sam, Mage + Rigger? Decker Rigger?
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I do see a problem, the player being so optimized that it nearly forces other players to over optimize their characters as well for combat. It seems that not all of your players seem to want to be straight up combat junkies, but they may feel that they need to be.
A simple fix I'd do for this is put them in situations where combat is not a good idea. You could have them infiltrating an area where there are already HTR teams in place (I did this last weekend with 10 fireteams of Red Samurai in a building, plus normal corp sec for an extraction, and the Face owned the scenario and did some really quick thinking on her feet).
Basically, put them in varying situations where the players may understand that the entire game isn't revolving around just combat. You still do want to throw in combat as well to give the combat junkies something to look forward to, but this will put other players at ease with being able to avoid combat when needed.
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That's an issue with how the GM is approaching combat, though, not how the players are. Other characters should not have to be combat-optimized; in fact, it's self-defeating if they are. Fighter should be combat-optimized; Decker should be Matrix optimized; Mage should be magic optimized, and Driver should be driving optimized. Should they be useful in combat? Sure, for whatever definition of 'useful' they want to be, whether that's hacking the other guys' links, tossing a manablast downrange, or sending a grenade-carrying drone down to bomb the suckers. But they should not feel pressured into being optimized to live up to another character's prime competency.
See my more extended thoughts here. (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=9496.msg167820#msg167820)
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I dont think its a case of combat envy. What I'm seeing is this:
Party agrees on roles and there end up being 2 full mages.
Mage A says that he will be mostly illusions and face-based skills.
Mage B says that he will be a combat mage.
Then, when characters are presented, Mage A ends up being a better Face than the Face, a better gunner then the adept gun bunny and a better offensive caster than the combat mage. Its like everyone agrees to a certain power level, but then one person goes outside of those parameters causing the others to feel like they have to make changes to reclaim their role.
Now, to be fair, I never instituted the 10-Cap like I was thinking. And yes, despite all I see on here, I think it would make for a great low-powered start campaign. But I realize that "low-powered" doesnt interest everyone ... and that was my misgivings.
Also, I've spoken with the player in question and we talked for a long time about his expectations and my expectations. It feels like we're in a happy spot right now. He has some issue with tailoring his guy to be weaker just to satiate someone else in the party and I understand that ... but after this last session with the aforementioned Troll SuperSoaker running amok and causing him to fail the mission, it seems like he re-evaluated his stance.
Generally speaking ... all's well at my table now. :)
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prismite: I hadn't really thought of it that way. Your description pretty closely follows what the our Face Elf, Mage is doing.
If you look under the hood at what is being argued about here, its 3-6 dice, right? 1 or 2 bonafide hits for a dice toss in Shadowrun terms. I don't think its worth getting excited about.
Furthermore, I think there is really more depth to combat characters than shooting a single gun real good. Troll McShooty has gyro stabilizers to bring his heavy guns to bear. He's naturally fast, and dodges really well (Defence). He's normally wearing heavy armor, and digitally locked down. In short, he's meant for a higher form of combat. He lives for the days that he can wade in with his Gatling gun or Panther XXL. On those days, your combat mage better bring his Armor spell, and make quick with the healing magic. Your Decker better make his cyber gear doesn't get bricked.
For me, balance more than anything else means that all the players can participate at all times. If the game master really wants more balance in the game, I feel that demanding the players seriously add two roles to their characters be made a requirement. Otherwise, find a way to let each of the players shine.
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I think players who wind up overshadowed in their main role, by someone who has it as a secondary specialty, need to take some responsibility too. They need to realize that other players are going to have some ability in "their" area, especially for things like combat that most characters will participate in. So if they want, say, being the gun guy to be their role, they need to commit to that role. If you want to be the gun guy, and you are playing someone with Agility: 4 and the Firearms skill group at 4, then don't whine and pitch a fit if the face outshines you with Agility: 5, muscle toner: 2, and pistols: 5 with a specialization in semi-automatics. I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who wants a designated role, won't make the simplest, most obvious choices to be good at that role, and then complains when someone else is "better" at it.
I'm not turning around and putting all of the blame on the overshadowed players, though. People playing characters with their A Priority in "Asskicking" still need to remember it is a group game, where everyone wants their own niche and their own time in the spotlight. Assume the gun guy at least tries, and has, say, Agility: 5, muscle toner: 2, and the Firearms skill group at 6. The close combat guy might have two cyberarms with maxed-out Strength and Agility with retractable spurs. But whoops, he has two ranged skills at 6, with specializations and reflex recorders, so despite close combat being his main thing, he is also rolling 5 more dice than the guns guy, with guns! So at that point, maybe the close combat guy needs to dial back his ranged combat a notch, so the guns guy won't be overshadowed. It all depends on how well-rounded each character is, though. If the guns guy is also a break-in guy with some face abilities, it may not be as big a deal if he is overshadowed at guns, especially if the close combat guy is a more narrowly focused combat machine. Sometimes four dice pools of 12 can be as good as one dice pool at 17.
If your group has such problems with stepping on each others toes, maybe (if it is feasible) they could do character creation together, as a group, in the future, so everyone can play what they want and have some protection for their individual roles.
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Also keep in mind that as the group earns karma, things get muddy fast. That huge dice pool advantage takes much more to improve then the middling pool.
After 1000 karma, there really isn't such a thing as archetypes anymore, as all characters have a good amount of high skills...
After 3000 karma.... the only difference is "are they mundane or awakened?" As everyone has maxed out several lines of skills... (our hacker is the weakest in combat... with only 18 dice for is pistols, automatics, and heavy weapons.)
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Have you considered making their character for them? Ask them what they want to play and go from there.
At my table, I'm the guy who knows the books, and I'm frequently the one stuck GMing. I always have extra characters that I've made- I do it for fun. Nowadays, when we have a new player to the game, or someone just needs a new character, I offer to let them pick through my back-up characters instead of spending the night making a new one. They're happy and the characters are all in-line with the power level that we've already established.
It's worked for me so far, in both my gaming groups.
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I'm not sure that would work for his group. The whole problem is that there isn't an "established" power level. Plus, it is a lot harder to get excited about playing a pre-gen character when you are used to creating your own characters.
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Which is why the GM needs to be an active part of character generation, so that he can say, 'no, that's going to screw with everyone else, I don't want to allow that.' And why the player needs to be aware of the stories that the GM - and everyone else at the tale - are trying to tell, and not get in their way.