[Shamie]

If you want your team to be much starter-runners, then yes. 300 BP is reasonable. Anything exotic gets shut down instantly, as it's pretty much impossible to do anything outside the typical metavariants with it, but you'll typically end up with a bunch of people who only have 1 or 2 IP's, and no armor or weapons worth a darn. There's really no room to spend any Karma on money when you only have 300, so you should plan on giving them equipment for free if you have them start like this.

However, your main first point seems to have been that the technomancer with only 1 IP seemed to feel left out from everyone. Keep in mind that technomancers have 3 IP when they go VR. If there wasn't anything for him to do there, that's not IP's fault. That's poor mission planning, or poor character creation. Picking up a drone or two in character creation and putting some guns on them would give him something to do with those 3 IP's right along side the rest of the party. If he didn't pick any up, and you gave him nothing to hack, then yes. He'll feel left out, because he was. However, as soon as matrix things start happening, he won't feel very effective if you cut down his 3 (and later potential for 5, yes technomancers can get 5 with some karma) IP's, because hacking is usually a multi-IP process. If he's never able to hack through a simple door faster then the street samurai is able to hack his way through it, he'll never feel like he will have a place.

This is kind of my fault i dont quite understand something about the matrix. It said in the book that in order to use it you need a near device with connection, one example in the books was that in some deadzones the left a trail of toasters. But in the game they were in a boat in open sea and he wanted to hack the GPS and intruments of the other boat. How would that work? can he access the matrix from the boat? if not how does the GPS works them

Im not quite sure here but what metavariants are you talking about? because i only allows for the normal human, ork, troll, elf and dwarf. Besides the first thing they do is to get 50 bps in equipment 250,000 Nuyens and buy their stuff they never have had a lack of money.

hehe, i can just imagine trying to hail a cab outside a renraku facility as the alarm goes off and the response team are shooting at you :-)
cab-"please enter your destination"
runner-"anywhere, just effing drive!!"
cab-"destination not recognised, please retry"
runner *dead*

Well last week we had  Vort the eco-friendly machete weilding troll adept who went everywhere in a bycicle and was very smug about it 

But thats the thing, i dont want my game to be about veterans. I want it to be about professional or barely professional runners. How many bps would that take 300?

As I said, the 400 is representing about a year in the shadows. I am more inclined to say 350 if you want them to be
skilled, but not screwed. 300 is the "We are just gangers!" level. One thing I noticed you mentioning was that they
used very little, over all, of their BP for gear. Were you watching the availability levels of what they were getting?
Were they getting things modded(which drives prices up real quick). Also, I would play up that it is easier to detect
cyber-ware then Bioware.

Russian Mobsters? as in Vory? Are you playing up the stuff about the Vory with them? Are they actually the Vory equivalent of "Made Men"? or are they wannabes? I can see a smuggler having Wired...I would also expect the smuggler to have a VCR, and kick ass command program, and an expensively modded vehicle. As for the Vory, well...what is their job? If they are soldiers for their bosses, out there fighting the other gangs, etc...I could see them going with Wired, as it is cheap and
easy(ish) to get compared to the better options like synaptic booster and move-by-wire.

Also....I see one thing you can easily do to counter the combat monkey-ness of them: throw some NON-COMBAT runs at them.
If they are so elite, though....then it calls for a) the creation of a long term storyline and b) The Sandwich.

Not, really they spent 50 bps in gear 250.000 nuyens and they brought all the augmentations the wanted with 6Rating and 12Availibility cap so they started with assault riffles with every single addon avaible, granades, wired reflex R2 etc etc. and they still got 10 or 20 bps left for extra skills
If understand correctly here at character creation you can only get items with Rating 6 or below and items with avaibilty 12  or bellow (no matter if it is 12F, 12R or 12)?

They were arms dealers russian mobters my problem was that every member of the party ended up with wired reflex because they expect some kind of combat, they werent really street samurais of commandos but all had to have them.
So there was no edge to have it in the end: Troll heavy bruisser 3IPs, sneaky ninja commando 3IPS, han solo smuggler 3IPS and so on. It felt like in the 2072 the whole world was populated by spastic shadowrunner on redbull. 

[Zilfer]

Just an aside, you can do more than 1 spell per turn... there are consequences but the mage if he really wants can throw four F6 Stun bolts.

The difference is with each successive casting it gets +1 Drain Value. That and you split your dice pool 4 ways. So If you have Spell casting 16 Dice then each roll only gets 4 dice with an average chance of a hit being 1.33 which is easy to resist.... so most people don't cast more then 2 because the dice pool gets very low especially with moddifers.

So first stun bolt is F6 / 2 = 3 DV*
Second F6 / 2 = 3 +1 DV*
Third F6 / 2 = 3 +2 DV*
Fourth F6 / 2 = 3 + 3 DV*

These drain value's however are resisted each time with the FULL resist drain pool. So the first few castings if you have 9 or so you'll only be taking on average 6S from all of this... While potentially hitting someone 4 times with about 7S (if they don't resist anything)

Extreme sckewed example but i'm at work here so xD sorry! Just thought I'd make you aware of that.

*Disclaimer = Not the real drain value just an example to show how you can do multiple castings.


Also Mages have good ways to give people more Initiative passes for those who do not have IP's of 1 or higher. If they get a few foci they can bind them to the foci to give other team members on the job improved IP's and improved Reaction.

Mage = teh awesome. xD

[Shamie]

Just an aside, you can do more than 1 spell per turn... there are consequences but the mage if he really wants can throw four F6 Stun bolts.

The difference is with each successive casting it gets +1 Drain Value. That and you split your dice pool 4 ways. So If you have Spell casting 16 Dice then each roll only gets 4 dice with an average chance of a hit being 1.33 which is easy to resist.... so most people don't cast more then 2 because the dice pool gets very low especially with moddifers.

So first stun bolt is F6 / 2 = 3 DV*
Second F6 / 2 = 3 +1 DV*
Third F6 / 2 = 3 +2 DV*
Fourth F6 / 2 = 3 + 3 DV*

These drain value's however are resisted each time with the FULL resist drain pool. So the first few castings if you have 9 or so you'll only be taking on average 6S from all of this... While potentially hitting someone 4 times with about 7S (if they don't resist anything)

Extreme sckewed example but i'm at work here so xD sorry! Just thought I'd make you aware of that.

*Disclaimer = Not the real drain value just an example to show how you can do multiple castings.


Also Mages have good ways to give people more Initiative passes for those who do not have IP's of 1 or higher. If they get a few foci they can bind them to the foci to give other team members on the job improved IP's and improved Reaction.

Mage = teh awesome. xD

actually it says in the Core that you only need to split you dice pool while casting spells in the same action phase would that applied to casting also during IPs?
If so that would also apply to shooting and melee wich would make a whole lot sense.

I mean like i said to a player who wanted three fire bolts in the same turns during IPs "so let me get this straigh you think you could muster the power of magic, a dicipline that requires concentration while acelerated and performing the appropiated spellcasting for three spells in 1 second each? i think not"

[WhackedMaki]

Don't think of "You can do one per turn". Think of the fact that it's a complex action. You get one complex action per IP. You do not have to split dice casting only one spell per IP.

This is kind of my fault i dont quite understand something about the matrix. It said in the book that in order to use it you need a near device with connection, one example in the books was that in some deadzones the left a trail of toasters. But in the game they were in a boat in open sea and he wanted to hack the GPS and intruments of the other boat. How would that work? can he access the matrix from the boat? if not how does the GPS works them

Im not quite sure here but what metavariants are you talking about? because i only allows for the normal human, ork, troll, elf and dwarf. Besides the first thing they do is to get 50 bps in equipment 250,000 Nuyens and buy their stuff they never have had a lack of money.

You need to figure out what your technomancer's range is, then figure out the GPS's range. This is based on signal, and can be found on 222 SR4A. If the two are within mutual range, then they can communicate, and he can hack it.

In runners companion there are a slew of different things you can make a character. From variants on the typical 5, to shapeshifters, spirits, even AI.

Keep in mind, that you don't have to let every character convert 50 BP into nuyen. If it makes no sense for the type of character they're playing to have 250K worth of stuff, tell them they have to take less. Also, money not spent in character creation is lost, it does not transfer over, giving them funds. The only money they get is based on their Starting Money roll found on 88 SR4A. Another thing to keep in mind that their rating 2 wired reflexes eat up 3 essence. This makes them harder to heal, and limits the amount of implants they can get in the future. Anyone magical can also tell that their missing essence, and cybered, at least if they get enough hits on assensing. For their weapons, keep in mind that there are only so many modifications a weapon can hold, so they can't get it with everything. On top of that, open carrying a weapon is going to draw suspicion, and if they don't have high ranking fake permits, they could be in a world of trouble quite quickly if they get the cops eyes on them.

[Zilfer]

Just an aside, you can do more than 1 spell per turn... there are consequences but the mage if he really wants can throw four F6 Stun bolts.

The difference is with each successive casting it gets +1 Drain Value. That and you split your dice pool 4 ways. So If you have Spell casting 16 Dice then each roll only gets 4 dice with an average chance of a hit being 1.33 which is easy to resist.... so most people don't cast more then 2 because the dice pool gets very low especially with moddifers.

So first stun bolt is F6 / 2 = 3 DV*
Second F6 / 2 = 3 +1 DV*
Third F6 / 2 = 3 +2 DV*
Fourth F6 / 2 = 3 + 3 DV*

These drain value's however are resisted each time with the FULL resist drain pool. So the first few castings if you have 9 or so you'll only be taking on average 6S from all of this... While potentially hitting someone 4 times with about 7S (if they don't resist anything)

Extreme sckewed example but i'm at work here so xD sorry! Just thought I'd make you aware of that.

*Disclaimer = Not the real drain value just an example to show how you can do multiple castings.


Also Mages have good ways to give people more Initiative passes for those who do not have IP's of 1 or higher. If they get a few foci they can bind them to the foci to give other team members on the job improved IP's and improved Reaction.

Mage = teh awesome. xD

actually it says in the Core that you only need to split you dice pool while casting spells in the same action phase would that applied to casting also during IPs?
If so that would also apply to shooting and melee wich would make a whole lot sense.

I mean like i said to a player who wanted three fire bolts in the same turns during IPs "so let me get this straigh you think you could muster the power of magic, a dicipline that requires concentration while acelerated and performing the appropiated spellcasting for three spells in 1 second each? i think not"

I think you may have miss understood.....

This example is taking into account the mage's first initiative pass.....

So i'll do an example of what a mage like mine might do.

Say two mooks come out of a door and are here to get me. I win initiative and I have 2 IP's and they have 1 IP.

Well I definately want to take at least one of them out figuring these ganger mooks have low will power and assuming I don't have Stun Ball and only Stun bolt I'm going to try and knock them out.

I don't want to overcast and take a good amount of drain this early in the adventure so I'm going to cast low.... I have some odd 16 dice to spell casting so I decided I'll make sure to take one out, hoping I can take whatever slugs the other one throws at me or that i can dodge it.

So I tell the DM I'm using my complex action to spell cast, and I'm going to do two F6 stun balls. In order to cast 2 spells, I have to split my 16 dice of spell casting. So I decide each spell will have 8. I get about 2 hits on both, and the mook only has 3 will power. Average of one so each Stun ball takes it's toll of 7S and 7S. Dropping that first guy out of commision.

Resist drain with a low force is an easy feat, for stun bolt I THINK the real code is 6F / 2 = 3 - 1 = 2 DV so I really probably don't even need to roll but I will for DM's sake of getting no hits. With 11 or so dice it's easily made. Now for the second spell I cast in the same round it's 6F / 2 = 3 - 1 = 2DV +1 for being an additional spell = 3DV easily made again but if I had done another one.... it'd be +2. Ect.

Mook 1 is out cold, and mook 2 gets his turn he fires at me possibly does some damage (hopefully I got a good reaction / armor to cancel out most of the damage and hopefully it's physical so I can just HEAL spell it later).

Next is IP 2 oh look I have IP 2 and mook doesn't. So I'm going to do the same thing since it was so effective on the last one. IP 2 I spell cast and cast 2 F6 stun balls splitting dice evenly between. Same result, that the mook goes down to stunbolts to the chest. I haven't killed them so I now have the choice whether I need to kill them or if I can just leave him there to wake up with a really bad headache.

As you can see in 1 Combat turn I casted 4 spells with only 2 IPs. Now most people won't split their dice pools to cast mulitple spells but if you have enough dice it's quite possible to do. If i had kept all my dice in 1 Stun bolt I would have gotten about 11S compared to 14S from two bolts just going by averages, but it would have been harder to resist. That mook either one could have gotten lucky and rolled all hits with my average of 2 not being high enough to affect him.

But yeah I just wanted to let you know you can cast multiple spells in one IP it just ADD's to the Drain....

[All4BigGuns]

Really, I think the real issue would be that the players built for the type of game they wanted out of the whole deal, and he's just complaining about it because he wanted lower powered (and thus less enjoyable, IMO) than the players wanted.

[Decade Rider]

Really, I think the real issue would be that the players built for the type of game they wanted out of the whole deal, and he's just complaining about it because he wanted lower powered (and thus less enjoyable, IMO) than the players wanted.

Well balancing encounters is hard in shadowrun..at least for newbie GM..you dont have a challenge rating table like in DnD to tell you how to do it. I wish someone would do  new "Professional" level thugs sheets rather then having to experiment with the game

[foolofsound]

Well balancing encounters is hard in shadowrun..at least for newbie GM..you dont have a challenge rating table like in DnD to tell you how to do it. I wish someone would do  new "Professional" level thugs sheets rather then having to experiment with the game

I can write some up for you, if you'd like.

[Decade Rider]

Well balancing encounters is hard in shadowrun..at least for newbie GM..you dont have a challenge rating table like in DnD to tell you how to do it. I wish someone would do  new "Professional" level thugs sheets rather then having to experiment with the game

I can write some up for you, if you'd like.

Sure that would be nice

[Zilfer]

I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with as well

[Shamie]

Don't think of "You can do one per turn". Think of the fact that it's a complex action. You get one complex action per IP. You do not have to split dice casting only one spell per IP.

This is kind of my fault i dont quite understand something about the matrix. It said in the book that in order to use it you need a near device with connection, one example in the books was that in some deadzones the left a trail of toasters. But in the game they were in a boat in open sea and he wanted to hack the GPS and intruments of the other boat. How would that work? can he access the matrix from the boat? if not how does the GPS works them

Im not quite sure here but what metavariants are you talking about? because i only allows for the normal human, ork, troll, elf and dwarf. Besides the first thing they do is to get 50 bps in equipment 250,000 Nuyens and buy their stuff they never have had a lack of money.

You need to figure out what your technomancer's range is, then figure out the GPS's range. This is based on signal, and can be found on 222 SR4A. If the two are within mutual range, then they can communicate, and he can hack it.

In runners companion there are a slew of different things you can make a character. From variants on the typical 5, to shapeshifters, spirits, even AI.

Keep in mind, that you don't have to let every character convert 50 BP into nuyen. If it makes no sense for the type of character they're playing to have 250K worth of stuff, tell them they have to take less. Also, money not spent in character creation is lost, it does not transfer over, giving them funds. The only money they get is based on their Starting Money roll found on 88 SR4A. Another thing to keep in mind that their rating 2 wired reflexes eat up 3 essence. This makes them harder to heal, and limits the amount of implants they can get in the future. Anyone magical can also tell that their missing essence, and cybered, at least if they get enough hits on assensing. For their weapons, keep in mind that there are only so many modifications a weapon can hold, so they can't get it with everything. On top of that, open carrying a weapon is going to draw suspicion, and if they don't have high ranking fake permits, they could be in a world of trouble quite quickly if they get the cops eyes on them.

Oh i see, but would the technomancer  be able to do a google search from there conecting himself near the GPS on the boat.
He wanted to search all the public data from a guy they heard about so basically "googling: main villain" would that be possible near a gps in the middle of the sea?

Really, I think the real issue would be that the players built for the type of game they wanted out of the whole deal, and he's just complaining about it because he wanted lower powered (and thus less enjoyable, IMO) than the players wanted.

Well that is one interesting assumption you got there  , your insight of my group of players is trully deep its like you have been DM for them for the past 6 years. So when they told me afterwards they didnt like the aspecst i post before they were in secret telling me with their eyes "ignore our complains, please".

talking serious here, high powered games can be fun so does low powered. We prefer walking the curve from low powered to high powered. If i wanted a low powered game i would just put IP2 for everysingle character so everyone has them, that old lady in walking with a cane ip2, hobbo without a leg IP2 and just jam wired relfex on everything as the universal equalizer.

The issue was kinda resolve actually Character creation in SR4 isnt for trully "starting characters" but for veteran characters we dont like playing new games at that level
so i guess im gonna only allow bp 300 and Availibilty 8.

Well balancing encounters is hard in shadowrun..at least for newbie GM..you dont have a challenge rating table like in DnD to tell you how to do it. I wish someone would do  new "Professional" level thugs sheets rather then having to experiment with the game

I can write some up for you, if you'd like.

That would be great 

[Orvich]

If you're close enough to access a gps (Which connects to satellites), you're close enough to access the entire Matrix. That gps satellite is in range of other satellites and so on, until you've got the entire world, pretty much.

[foolofsound]

I can write some up for you, if you'd like.

Wrote up gangers and rent-a-cops so far. I'll write up beat cops and rapid response teams soon. If you guys want to see my take on any other mooks, let me know.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p44GV268vK25FjitxCvdThNO03hcPk9-f-Rn3cqI2w8/edit

[wolfrider66]

Well balancing encounters is hard in shadowrun..at least for newbie GM..you dont have a challenge rating table like in DnD to tell you how to do it. I wish someone would do  new "Professional" level thugs sheets rather then having to experiment with the game

I can write some up for you, if you'd like.

Count me in, I would love it.

Thank you sonsaku for posting and to all who answered. I am also a new GM for Shadowrun and this topic has helped me out greatly. This coming Saturday is my 2nd game and it seems I too must take a closer look at how we did things in the first game. We forgot that an armor value greater than damage value causes stun. But that mistake really sped up combat lol 

[Mara]

We forgot that an armor value greater than damage value causes stun. But that mistake really sped up combat lol 

Really? You had them fighting people who had bigger Stun Tracks then Physical Tracks? Or are you meaning that
all damage went to one track?(Though, it should have all been going to the stun track, anyway..what sort of psychopaths
start with lethal ammo and trying to give the Corp incentive to hunt them down...)