[Shamie]

I usually preffer smaller groups of players (3 normally, 4 max).

I currently have a adept, a rigger and a samie.

in my experience those numbers work best as you get time to develop in the personal lifes of the runners. One example that have inspired my was an episode of critical glitch podcast name "karma & nonsense". You get to play almost entire games in wich the players dont even do a run and can do a lot more solo scenes. One of my previous games i keep juggling on PC date with a fomori, another one fighting his way out his home infested with devil rats while the last PC was trying to get his bike fixed. Play a lot on this if you want.

For the balance side i would say that you dont need NPCs to fill "roles" but more adjust the game arround the players. In my games the party dont have a mage so i keep all magical threaths (astral & spirits out) and limit a lot what mage enemies (mostly throwing fireball) can do until the adept gets astral sight. They dont have a Decker so most matrix threats are out or at least with lower menace. Taylor the game to the roles the party can cover. Nothing in the rules say that they have to encounter everything in the game, so why include spirits if players cant touch them for example? so the players need a NPC to solve a situation for completion sake?

With the face my solution was nothing, i just let them suffer the disadvantages of not having a face and after 2 games the adept started putting points in social.

[All4BigGuns]

Do not, I repeat, do NOT build the NPCs (or GMPCs) supporting the players' team either above or below the team. Build them on the EXACT SAME build conventions.

And yes, DO create those. It's much easier to run the game with some supporting NPCs (or GMPCs) than it is to scale stuff back.

[GiraffeShaman]

I tend to avoid NPC Faces as it can create some problems. One of the most glaring is the ridiculous situation where the GM has a long conversation with himself as he roleplays the NPC runner and some other NPC.

You can do both add NPCs and adjust the game balance in certain areas. Adding NPCs creates it's own problems. Namely bookkeeping. It can be annoying to players for everyone there to have to keep track of an NPC. However, I find the game works best when there are 3 or 4 runners in the team. I generally choose to put an NPC in if there are only 2 runners. And I generally won't put to runners in to make it up to 4, even though 4 is a good team number to have.

Adjusting social challenges is one of the easiest things to adjust. You can make it so that wise dialogue choices take the place of high social rolls. You can make the rolls easier or remove modifiers such as racism for guards.  You can give the team more information on their social targets, so they have good clues what sort fo dialogue will work well.

I put in lots of NPC vehicle riggers as well, in addition to any others I'm putting in. I just do this because I like them and car chase scenes.

[Elektrycerze3]

Do not, I repeat, do NOT build the NPCs (or GMPCs) supporting the players' team either above or below the team. Build them on the EXACT SAME build conventions.

How come? I get the part about not creating them above the PCs, but what's wrong with making them weaker?

[Shamie]

Do not, I repeat, do NOT build the NPCs (or GMPCs) supporting the players' team either above or below the team. Build them on the EXACT SAME build conventions.

And yes, DO create those. It's much easier to run the game with some supporting NPCs (or GMPCs) than it is to scale stuff back.

why is more easier to make an mage NPC in order to put spirits and astral as enemies or a Decker NPC for the party in order to use Deckers as enemies when you could just dont use them?

I mean you have to micromanage the NPC and make sure that they do not overshadow the PCs. While on the other hand you could just make a game ignoring spirits/astral/matrix.