[TormDK]

Hello all.

We had our first Shadowrun session this weekend, with myself as the GM.

The runner team consisted off;

A Decker
A Troll Adept
An Elf shaman / Face
A human shaman / manipulator
A dwarf who likes explosives (He carries at least 5kg Commercial grade explosives on his person at any one time - licensed of course).

Overall things went rather smoothly (It was just a one-shot milk run) but I can see that the Troll adept with his maxed out strength and near maxed out Body is going to be a "problem" because of how good he is at pure damage dealing, and due to the silly absorb levels he has.

So my question to my peers is ;

On one hand, I do not want to make things harder than their professional rating should be, but on the other hand I'd like the others runners some spot light in fights as well. Given that the troll can easly handle one or two grunts per initiative pass, and given that none of the others have any enhanced initiative - how is this best accomplished?

I'll likely be having them fighting gangers in their next run as well so that they can continue to work with their current Johnsonm but I would appriciate your input.

[firebug]

I've seen people with similar issues before...  It's not that the Troll is too strong; it's that no one else can handle more combat.  Gangers are supposed to be a joke for an actual shadowrunner.  Making the gangers stronger than they should be is, as you feel, unreasonable.  But the team shouldn't just be dealing with basic street gangs all the time if you want them to actually be in danger.

And really I don't see why none of them have any initiative boosts.  For magicians it's just one spell that can make them as fast as the adept; the decker should have some for AR hacking.  Though I don't know what "a dwarf who likes explosives" does in combat (him carrying explosives all the time is another problem to address at a different time).

Fighting gangers, there's no reason they should be challenging to this adept.  Untrained, undisciplined petty criminals against a magically-boosted troll warrior?  He would probably also destroy corpsec, but that's okay too.  The guy is clearly built around it.  I do have a few suggestions for future runs though...

Your team is very well-rounded for extractions or sabotage.  While you don't have any stealth, a decker, and the human shaman will likely be able to make enough openings in the security that it shouldn't matter.  A High Threat Response team coming in should be a challenge for the adept, and believe me when I tell you this:  High BOD is not enough to absorb bullets.  The most armor-plated street samurai will fall to sustained fire if he's not smart about it.  When the HTR team is alerted and told there is a troll destroying people with his bare hands, they just grab their Enfield AS-7 shotguns--  Even if he's rolling 24 dice, he'll still be taking four or five boxes of damage each hit.  During this time, your two magicians can also make use of spirits, which are combat powerhouses that should never be overlooked.  I'm serious, check out their stats and inform your players.  They have high attributes, can have things like Elemental Aura or Elemental Attack, and always have Immunity to Natural weapons (meaning it is very hard to damage them without using magic, be it spells or weapon foci).  Though, magicians abusing spirits is another hurdle that can make combat too easy.  Don't forget though, the opposition can also have spirits...  If the decker wants to be better in combat, there's a few things he can do.  He can invest in a single drone and get some Gunnery skill, because you don't need to be a rigger to make use of one drone with an assault rifle in it.  He can also try and get a good cyberarm with a lot of agility and use a pistol.  He'll have some solid accuracy and be able to make some good shots.  Combat hacking is sometimes an option, especially against groups like the HTR that will likely have smartguns, but once any of them notice the hacker is trying to brick them, the whole team with switch to wireless (as it's better to lose the bonus than lose the gun entirely).

Long story short:  The Troll is not too strong; you're just throwing baby stuff at him because the rest of the group is behind the curve.

[raleel]

Don't fight seriously. That's where he lives, and if you escalate, you will grease everyone else. Change the game, and make it more complex. His strength should not be in whacking people, but rather having the restraint to know when it's the right choice and being able to do it quickly and quietly.

the decker may only get one pass in meatspace, but I be the gets a couple in the matrix. He needs to do his part or the heat is going to be coming down and the troll will be fighting guys that are far higher rating. His job is to keep this down and get information on the target

The face has a job as well, and it's to get access, information, and trust of the target. They are there to move the target into a vulnerable location, perhaps even physically.

It is hard to know exactly what to do with the other two because those aren't really roles. They don't have enough skills defined to say. Where do their strengths lie outside of explosives and manipulation spells? It also helps to talk about the players as well. Players have personalities and like certain things. That can fill you in on what they will embrace and shine at.

Make the game more about whittling down the variables so that the end result is getting to fighting rating appropriate dudes, and without everyone else's help, the troll is going to take panthers to the chest.

As a side note, I highly recommend picking up the RPG Leverage for reference  material. It nicely builds out roles like this, describes their place, how best to use them , and gives lots and lots of advice on how a GM can construct a heist that would fit a group like yours. Everyone gets a place and input and everyone gets to shine.

[TormDK]

Thanks much for your input.

I realize that they are fighting things on the lower end of the scale.

The mage face didn't use his face side as part of the run (It was a simple wet work run so that we could learn the rules etc. together), but they did manage to take a prisoner and used Mind Probe on him, which let me give them some hints at what was going on, and drop some hints on why a runner team was put together for simple ganger cleanup duty. (The face didn't really push the Johnson for information as the team was too busy eating real food to do much other than roll negotiation regarding their pay and eye ball each other as their Fixer contact put them together without prior relationships - the "Five Guys walks into a bar" method . The drain mages have to roll against seems well balanced compared with the results they can achive, so I'm not too concerned with having that many awakened onboard - the troll was simply massively more powerful than the other runners.

The Decker was doing commlink hacking and kept "the man" from making a scene, while acting as the teams driver (He was the only one that didn't go with Resources E or D during character creation, so he had Money to burn on Wheels.). The dwarf is built like a rigger with high logic and mechanical skills, he just wants to blow things up (A demolitionist) rather than pilot drones or being the driver.

The manipulation mage is all about controlling others, using Control Thoughts and Control Actions. Why he thinks like that is a very good question - he's pretty much as anti-social ingame as you can be due to trust issues as part of his background, which also cost the team's face some dice pool penalties during the negotiation with the Johnson as he showed up late to the meet and greet, and was dismissive and generally non-professional during that social encounter.

Since it was our first run, and our first RPG without classes, I asked them all to fill in the 20 questions on this site; http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=4a1e5d966da00cd78cea6e9e7b64f0cb&showtopic=39700&st=0&p=1259347&#entry1259347 as to get more background information that I plan on using after another one-shot.

The troll adept simply raised a few eyebrows during combat, but we'll see how it pans out going forward once I pit them against something with a Little higher professional rating.

[firebug]

It sounds like you did a good job having them all have a place during the run.  I think you should have them do a run where they are infiltrating some kind of factory in order to blow up a prototype drone.  That'd give prettymuch all of them a clear role.  Both mages would be trying to find out where the prototype is kept, the hacker could be doing that too while keeping security fooled, while the adept keeps the demolition man safe as they go into the area and the bombs are set.

The dwarf, if you could convince him, could probably also do with getting a single drone to follow him around.  Like a MCT-Nissan Roto-Drone.  Give it a gun (or a grenade launcher if he wants more boom) and he can use Control Device to fire it with sensor-assisted targeting (allowing him to use Logic + Gunnery).  Normally I'd point out that having a drone with a clear weapon mount would be too obvious, but I feel you guys are going for a fairly pink-mohawk, action-movie kind of feel and so more obvious stuff isn't out of the question.

[TormDK]

I stopped them a few times at various road Blocks as they went from a low lifestyle nabourhood into the higher tier areas and into downtown for the meet and greet (I set the "Meet the Johnson" scene at a fancy french hors d'oeuvres and lobster place downtownm complete with an arrogant Elf greeter), as to give them the feeling that KE was out there keeping the public in check, especially in the well to do areas.

The manipulation mage's SiN (He only had a rating 2 SIN) failed the scan (The scanner was also rating 2, and got 2 hits - so the SiN isn't burned, yet), so KE stopped him and asked him some additional questions, after which he was given a little  card with KE's logo on it, that included a RDIF chip so KE could monitor his movements further, on his way to a clothing store (He was dressed as a hobo due to his E in resources and low lifestyle, and so needed to find some new clothes asap before the meet). He dumped the card in a mall nearby, quickly made a purchase for some new clothes and managed to Con his way out of being stopped by a KE officer just after leaving the store as he saw a KE patrol was going for the RDIF chip he had dumped.

All in all I'd say we had a good day, and everyone is thirsting for more - which is good I do need to make some additional book purchases though, especially the Seattle 2072 book since I loathe inventing an entire city if it has already been done

[mrcatman]

We have a troll bio-adept that is like this too, exploding people in one hit with a base unarmed damage of 19P (or 20P if you let knucks stack with bone density aug / critical strike), and very high defense/armor. Add in throwing knives, and he has a potent ranged attack as well.

As others have indicated, your best bet is to make peace with the reality of it (let him be the combat monster he is), and just make the runs varied and fun for all the PCs. Ratcheting up foes on a regular basis (simply to be on par with the troll) will not be fun in the long run, and it will likely kill everyone.

That being said, beyond the above, below are some things you can sprinkle in there (and I do mean, sprinkle - certainly not often).

Take advantage of limits on movement, and have a fight where enemies are all spread out. Presuming your troll has an AGI of 4 (since you said his STR was the max attribute), his walk rate is 8m and run rate is 16m. That's max movement for the entire Combat Turn (not initiative pass). So if troll has to run most of that in the first pass to get into melee with a foe, he won't have enough movement left to run over to the next foe in the second pass.

Take advantage of scenarios where outright killing people is a very bad option, forcing the troll to use non-lethal methods.

Use minions. Add one or two grunts. They're not there to amp up the NPCs, they are there to use up the troll's actions punching them (rather than the more important NPCs). Gives you maybe 1 or 2 passes more in combat.

Focus fire on the troll (within the same pass) will reduce his defense dice pool for each additional foe attacking him. Eventually he'll get hit.

Have an enemy mage use the Control Thoughts spell on your PC troll. This might encourage teamwork (mages must use counterspelling or their own Control Thoughts on the troll) and change the player's tactics in the future (as the prospect of their troll monster turning against them should sufficiently scare them).

Have an enemy mage apply penalties to the troll, with things like the Bugs spell (potential for losing an initiative pass), Chaos spell (potential for penalties to all dice pools), or Decrease Attribute [Agility] spell (potential to floor his AGI to make him less likely to hit, or even paralyze him).

Snipers + Ambush. This is a decent chance to "surprise" the troll (denying him his defense against the attack). The sniper rifles have base damage of 11P to 14P, and armor pen of -3 to -5. Add APDS ammunition, and it's even more deadly (troll loses more damage soak dice). Without the troll's defense test, you'll probably looking at bumping that up with at least 3 or so successes on the attack test. Even with the cheap Ruger 100, odds are the troll will take some damage and have to deal with wound penalties.

Enemy's mage casts Impvd.Invisibility spell on all his buddies (sustaining all those, being his only real function in the fight). Now troll must deal with the fact that he can't see his targets.

Grenades. Not only do they disallow defense tests, but high explosive ones start at 16P (with -2 armor pen).

Area spells. An enemy mage's Force 6 Fireball disallows defense tests (like grenades), has a base of 6P damage (and the potential for more), as well as a huge -6 armor pen. I'd imagine 1 or 2 boxes of damage might make it through. For more challenge, enemy mage now overcasts (say, Force 12), uses Edge/Reagents to limit hits to 6 [so he doesn't kill himself], and uses "aid sorcery" from a bound spirit during casting (to make sure he gets all 6 countable hits). Now you're looking at no defense test for troll, 15P damage, and -12 to troll's armor pool. This will hurt.

Presuming your troll doesn't have a weapon foci or the killing hands adept power, enemy spirits with enough hardened armor could be a problem for him.

The nemesis. A nice one-time thing, where someone your team has pissed off sends an equally powerful shadowrun team after them (with their own troll adept). Or just an underground boxing ring, where the champion challenges your troll to a cage-fight.

Trap the troll in a dome-shaped Physical Barrier spell. Now he has to spend actions punching through the barrier.

Distract the troll with an illusion of fake enemies (Trid Phantasm spell). Now he might spend actions punching the air.

Levitate spell on troll. Now he's floating upside down against his will, unable to run around punching people.

[firebug]

Good suggestions, but beware of just having the troll get sniped...  That very much could just kill the character instantly, and will result in the player just feeling like you were being an ass and deciding he should be dead.  Unless the PCs have done something that has seriously caused them to feel the heat and force them into hiding, in which case an assassin being hired to take them out would make sense and they should be preparing accordingly.

Like the catman said, don't do all that stuff often.  Too often and the player will just feel like you're punishing them for having a well-made character. 

[Belker]

Damned if I can remember where I saw this, but the idea is a pit trap over which a lighter person can run, but a sufficiently heavy person (or animal if I remember the example correctly) would fall into. Since trolls tend to weigh many hundreds of pounds, this is the kind of thing bad guys who know a bit about the team could prepare.

[Reaver]

Hello all.

We had our first Shadowrun session this weekend, with myself as the GM.

The runner team consisted off;

A Decker
A Troll Adept
An Elf shaman / Face
A human shaman / manipulator
A dwarf who likes explosives (He carries at least 5kg Commercial grade explosives on his person at any one time - licensed of course).

Overall things went rather smoothly (It was just a one-shot milk run) but I can see that the Troll adept with his maxed out strength and near maxed out Body is going to be a "problem" because of how good he is at pure damage dealing, and due to the silly absorb levels he has.

So my question to my peers is ;

On one hand, I do not want to make things harder than their professional rating should be, but on the other hand I'd like the others runners some spot light in fights as well. Given that the troll can easly handle one or two grunts per initiative pass, and given that none of the others have any enhanced initiative - how is this best accomplished?

I'll likely be having them fighting gangers in their next run as well so that they can continue to work with their current Johnsonm but I would appriciate your input.

When it comes to combat, the troll is always going to shine, for the simple fact that the  others are not combat characters. On the flip side, the Troll isn't a decker, or a smooth talker, or can fling spells. Basically you have the typical "Raging barbarian" running up and whacking things while the "bard" the "mage" and the "thief" hang back and throw stones...

raising the combat level of the encounters isn't going to help as what will happen is simple, the others will cave first and then the Troll goes down.

Combat is not the be all and end all  of Shadowrun, and the argument could be made that combat is what happens when Runners fail....you got a diverse group, let the troll have his combat glory. the Face will get his porno time, and the shaman will get their "sparklie" time, and the dwarf his boom time.

[TormDK]

When it comes to combat, the troll is always going to shine, for the simple fact that the  others are not combat characters. On the flip side, the Troll isn't a decker, or a smooth talker, or can fling spells. Basically you have the typical "Raging barbarian" running up and whacking things while the "bard" the "mage" and the "thief" hang back and throw stones...

raising the combat level of the encounters isn't going to help as what will happen is simple, the others will cave first and then the Troll goes down.

Combat is not the be all and end all  of Shadowrun, and the argument could be made that combat is what happens when Runners fail....you got a diverse group, let the troll have his combat glory. the Face will get his porno time, and the shaman will get their "sparklie" time, and the dwarf his boom time.

Thanks much for your input.

Yes, my initial thought was "This guy is exceptionally good at one thing, and one thing only" - that one thing just happens to be turning people into paste. The Group needed some muscle anyhow, and the player in question had considered a chromed up Troll sammy untill I told him about Adepts option of getting Reflexes 3 at char gen.

So in the end it's my own fault for not shutting up about that potential

We did make a few mistakes with rules based on what I re-read once we called it a weekend, but overall everyone at the table had fun and the dice pool calculations were relatively simple once we got our head wrapped around how the system flowed.

Giving them all screen time is going to be the tricky part. Traditionally we have always focused more on the combat aspect, but since Shadowrun is our first non-class based RPG, I wanted to move away from that where possible, so I asked the players to commit some additional thought to their characters compared with what they used to. I also stated in my intro email to the Group that a run is 3 days planning, 15 minutes of sneaking and 60 seconds of pure adrenaline as something goes wrong. It turned out to be pretty true

The gangers didn't pose much of a threat, but then they were not meant to so it will be interesting to see how they handle the next bit (which will focus on sneaking and stealing data without tripping alarms)

[Reaver]

IMO, this is where Shadowrun really shines as a game, and that is at non-conventional characters.

People tend to stick to the stereotypes, like the brutish thug, or the geeky computer nerd... and lets face it, they are iconic images....

But so are the ultra sexy Deckers, that can sleazy their way past security, both electronic and in the meat..

Or the sharp shooting pistoleer, faster then the eye, and able to shoot eh wings off a fly.

The Sage warrior, whose wisdom and tactics win out over brawn evey time.

And the list goes on and on and on....


Don't be surprised when your characters start to branch out.... and this will happen naturally as you move the focus away from the "hack and slash" of DnD type games.... Soon you will see the Decker picking some combat skills, or the Face learn some Decking. The Troll might invest in B/R skills, and the dwarf might learn some anger management!

Soon, what you will end up with is a well rounded team that each member can fill in for the others, or expand on tactics that they were unable to do before. So be aware of that. Yes they will still out shine the other players in their given fields (like combat for the troll), but the others will catch up a bit, and the troll will expand out as well... 

[Csjarrat]

Other thing you can do is after having him beat up a stack of gangers, is have a seriously pissed off gang leader challenge him to a one on one.
You build this guy as nearly equal (either chrome or adept) and have him duke it out wi someone of similar capabilities

[TormDK]

Other thing you can do is after having him beat up a stack of gangers, is have a seriously pissed off gang leader challenge him to a one on one.
You build this guy as nearly equal (either chrome or adept) and have him duke it out wi someone of similar capabilities

I had considered that, but truth be told, whoever wins initiative will win that fight, since both combatants can typically handle two blows from the other. (The adept likely will since he has access to Reflexes 3)

[Csjarrat]

Other thing you can do is after having him beat up a stack of gangers, is have a seriously pissed off gang leader challenge him to a one on one.
You build this guy as nearly equal (either chrome or adept) and have him duke it out wi someone of similar capabilities

I had considered that, but truth be told, whoever wins initiative will win that fight, since both combatants can typically handle two blows from the other. (The adept likely will since he has access to Reflexes 3)

Yeah, maybe. Don't forget your lieutenant gets an edge pool to use though, he can burn his edge to tank more hits if your adept troll goes first.