[deepomega]

I've got a decker in my group who likes to find lateral thinking solutions to her problems - e.g. hacking the lights of a club to turn out to help her steal commlinks and sell them. That means I've often got to invent stats for a host AND for the spider running it. Any suggestions for how to handle this on the fly, short of just always using 3s across the board or whatever? It often feels very mushy, but I can't realistically create the host/spider combo for every single location we'll be going to on a run.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Option 1 The Meta Approach: Just tell her she's off-task for the Shadowrun at hand and that 'side activities' like the example given are best handled during downtime between missions.
Option 1b The other Meta Approach: Let your player believe that you'll put nasty Grudge Monster stats on non-mission-essential hacking activities.  And/or you'll time 'random' events like Police raids or Thriller Gang assaults to coincide with (and override) time-consuming non-mission related activities.

Option 2 Simplifying On the Fly GMing:  For one, I definitely wouldn't use rating 3 hosts.  Bookmark page 247 for appropriate host ratings.  The sample PCs make great on-the-fly NPCs.  Just add however many dice to whatever test depending on how much more fierce (or worse) you want the NPC to be than the PCs.  One of the nice things about SR5 matrix rules is the IC is very GM-able on the fly.

[Csjarrat]

Option one: use example server layouts and sample spiders from unwired and do quick conversion from sr4 -> sr5 on it
Option 2: accept that a hardcore Decker will trounce basic security unless you chuck loads of patrol IC in and spawn lots of combat IC at them.
Option 3: if your player is pissing you off with this, have another hacker or tm runner be attacking it at the same time; they think your hacker is the competition and launch a high dice pool cyberattack on them.

[$/@mm-0!]

Nothing wrong with a little out side the box thinking, im curious though if she is into stealing comlinks she at least formats them and removes the info from them doesn't she? I think they have a section in the SR5 matrix section about stolen property and such, this could get her caught real fast if she keeps it up.

[deepomega]

Yeah, so far it's been pretty haphazard - the cell phone thing was a downtime mini-run, where I was expecting her to stick more to her stealth skills. When the shit hit the fan she ended up in the host, and I hadn't prepped enough for that. I've also had her hacking traffic cameras to follow a car, e.g., so having some flexibility would be easier. I don't want to discourage her too much, especially since she's generally doing a good job of staying on task and using her hacking for the team - just in ways I don't expect!

Probably I just need to put together a "panic book" that includes host ratings, spiders, and packs of IC to throw at her depending what she's doing. Maybe a few miscellaneous decker characters to drop in, too.

[Djinnocide]

If you do generate something like that I'd love to see it. I keep telling myself that I'm going to do the same thing, but haven't got around to it yet.

[thinklibertarian]

I tend to treat NPC's like devices. Low level threats are rating 3, and so throw 6 dice on skill and stat tests. Rating 4 baddies throw 8 dice, etc. these are the gang leaders and such. Professionals, as in "they do this for a living but are not shadowrunners" are rating 5 (10 dice). Anything more than 5 and I use the archetype stats from the book.

I also don't bother keeping track of damage in great detail. Their defense rolls are rating x 2 and their base body+armor = rating x 4. Damage they take is divided by three giving me their wound penalty, and that is what I track. -1 is a light wound. Most baddies keep fighting. -2 means moderate wounds, and most people start thinking of a retreat. At -3 they are in serious danger and even hardened pros start heading for the door. At -4 they are dead.

So if my lateral thinking player needs an instant generic opponent, I just pick a number from 3 to 5 and go from there.