My gaming group is new to Shadowrun and we recently had encounters made difficult by critters' use of edge. Our group consists of two humans with 5 edge and various other races with only 1 or 2, and we had to make willpower + logic tests against a critter with a pretty sick magical ability that ended up thrashing our party pretty severely.
I'm wondering what you all consider to be the "normal" or "expected" rate of edge accrual, because our last two combats had a critter with 4 edge, and then two critters with 3 edge each. Considering that the first critters was using edge on AOE attacks, matching it would have required the group of six to spend a total of (6 group members times 4 applications = ) 24 edge just to draw even with the critter. The second combat with the two critters with three edge each were using single target spells, so that would have only required a total of 6 edge from the group to draw "even" with the critters' use of edge. However, the group as a whole has only about 16 edge, meaning we can't even begin to keep up.
First reading the rulebook gave me the impression that edge usage was a somewhat uncommon event, and that edge accrual was somewhat uncommon as well. I am intimately familiar with the bullet points on page 56, reposted below, but those are very much up to GM interpretation as to what constitutes phrases such as "good," "heroic," "important," "particularly," and so on. Now, however, I'm reevaluating how common edge usage is expected to be, so, again, I'm curious as to whether or not there's an expected, or "normal,' or "typical" return of edge on a per-fight or per-session basis, since right now the 1-5, average 3 edge per combat situation is...unbearably rough on us.