[Richtenstahl]

I just started GMing Shadowrun, and I admit I´m totally still learning the ropes (and rules).
Of Shadowrun, that is, I GMed other games for years.
Now I get the feeling, Shadowrun got a very fast combat system. Most of our fights last about 1 round. OK, I haven´t got my players very strong opponents so far, and mostly they managed to surprise their targets and act first. But still I´m surprised.
On the other hand by now I´m really scared to up the opponents. Because if my players fall as fast as my NPCs, they will not have much fun with stronger opponents.
We had actually one dead player, who was "beleidigt" (what the hell is that in English?), and so didn´t invoke the rule of burning Edge to save his charakter.

Now my two questions:
1: Do you have similar expirience with combats?
2: How do you get a combat to last longer without severily threatening the charakters with death?

[Michael Chandra]

Insulted / Pissed off.

Yeah, I got the same experience. 6 Humanis guys heavy enough to drain a player's Edge to 0 purely from Damage Resistance rolls were subsequently slaughtered in a single Initiative Pass.

Add cover. Flashes. Distracting sounds. Gasses that cause nothing but nausea. Have running opponents. Hidden ones. Tactical movement where you try to outmaneuver the other party. Basically rack up penalties on attacking and bonuses on dodging so that the fights take longer, because hitting suddenly is no longer a sure thing.

And check out SR5 if you haven't invested a lot in SR4, because in SR5 dodge pools are up, attack pools are down, initiative passes are a less sharp curve and you only get 1 attack per action phase, not 2. It's coming out soon and Pegasus Press is standing at the ready to have the German version out as soon as they can.

[RHat]

One good thing is to adjust the tactics to suit the opponent.  Security guards, for example, are just trying to stay alive and maybe contain the threat until the big guns show up.  This means that they'll stick to the best cover they can get and favour relative safety over a better firing position.

[Walks Through Walls]

These are all good ideas and work well.

Two things to add that will help make it last longer and can even out a fight without making it too tough.

1) Suppressive fire. Especially if you have a couple people from the group of guards alternate or link up their suppressive fire. By link up I mean overlapping or adjacent fields of cover.

2) grenades work well. Flash bangs or gas grenades can wreck havoc without threat of killing a character outright. If they need more cover use smoke or even thermal smoke grenades to buy time until the heavier guns show up.

Hope this helps

[RHat]

Suppressive fire works especially well if you're using the rules for it from War.

[GiraffeShaman]

You are wise to be worried about this. It's the first lesson every SR GM has to learn.

1. One big tactic that can drastically cut down on fatalities is having security guards use gel rounds, sleep spells,  and the like. There is even an SR world reason for this. Many of the lesser secured and less expensive sites are known to be less lethal and gung ho about putting runners into body bags. On the flip side, as the runners take on tougher targets, lethaltiy becomes more common. There are also Megacorps notorious for wanting to kill people and being vicious. MCT is probaly the worst. And of course the Azzies.

But lots of the runs starting out shadowrunners should be doing are against forces using non lethal means.

2. Challenge or stop the runners with non combat means. I was just part of a ridiculous mission failure and near TPK due to some nurses closing some maglock doors, us not being able to open the doors in time before the cops arrive, then having to flee in the nick of time. Yes, we were beat by nurses. But really we were beat by some of our team rejecting workable plans, then insisting we boot and shoot. And some bad rolls on my part trying to open the damned doors (The big failure with all boot and shoot plans is that if the GM is thinking, then you just did the equivalent of calling the cops at the start of your run)

3. Guards should be more dangerous in that they will call the police or responding security forces, than that they will kill you. Exceptions to this would be elite guards of elite sites like red hot R&D labs. Or the infamous cyberzombies guarding the executives.

4. Take everyone's heavy weapons away before the big fight. For example stage it in a nightclub, where the guards have taken everyone's heavier weapons away. Weapons scanners and patdowns at the door. If you get a chance, look at how Fallout New Vegas does similar with the casinos. There's missions you out right have to rely on ..22 pistols, fists, knives, or whatever weapon you can steal inside the casinos.

[Boomstick]

Also, that is not a real problem having the fights being lethal. If the players feel like the fights could cause them to lose on bad luck on tough opponents, or because the fight are pretty dangerous per se and thus don't rely too much on luck for being deadly, well, they will do their most to avoid this. Smarter shadowruns. What would you want better?
Indeed, it can be a problem about one thing; NPC that you don't want removed from the game, and when runners have the upper end, cops intervention time. Must say that NPC take extra precautions to be kept alive (but if they don't want to risk their lives, PC will try to avoid direct confrontation, so they will try more devious means, like snipers, bombing, or negociation/intimidation...), and cops threat can be a real good tension builder...

[Belker]

Another way to make fights longer, without necessarily changing the lethality, is to use physical space. When the combat takes place over a large enough area, you can get into fights of maneuver, cat and mouse hunts, etc. A battle in, say, a sprawling junkyard, can really open up a lot of options for both sides.

[Richtenstahl]

Thx for the hints. You got me thinking, and I guess I´ll think out my encounters more, regarding those possibilities.