[Glonthein]

So, after the last run I did with my table, which went unexpectedly bad, I had this thought : Have you ever had some/many/one character(s) that you put a some effort into their background and build, but somehow never made it past the very few first runs ?

After a year of playing Shadowrun 5th, I have only 2 characters that lived after their three first runs : one is a combat medic that somehow always managed to stay alive and well ; the other one is a melee focused elf adept, but she has gained a few negative qualities after some events - first was losing an eye when an underground parking she was in "fell", she somehow survived using the vents. ; second was after being captured by azzies, and gained a modified version of borrowed time : she now has a few months to live unless she pays a huge debt to Aztech. So not the luckiest person out there.
But even that one is luckier than the other 5 characters I have created other the last few months :
-A spec ops type character dying against level 8 blood spirits controlled by some 4th world horror under the underground parking I told about before. (first run)
-A dwarf who made an oath to never kill any metahuman, killed by corp anthrodrones who didn't know the meaning of "non-lethal" (first run)
-An archer adept, who died opening the door of a van because of an explosive set to activate when the lightning increased. She would have survived that, but not the explosion of the submarine mine the van was carrying. (Third run)
-A pilot adept, knocked uncouscious (almost dead) when someone managed to fix a pack of 15 HE grenades to his car, and then killed by a shot to the head when ennemies scavenged the remaining of the car. (third run)
-The last one, a technomancer who got insta-killed by two of her teammates when an ennemy team told them that a dead-only bounty on her head had just appeared. (second run)

Now, your turn, guys ! I didn't give many details in my examples, but if the story is good, don't hesitate. I'd like to see if my experience is really unique in that sense, or if there are many of you who can relate to such sad events.

[Csjarrat]

Lol, that's some crazy runs you guys are doing for your early ones!!

[Crimsondude]

Your GM seems a little ... tough.

[Glonthein]

To be fair, most of these come from two different tables (Most of the player are the same, but 2 different GMs), and we are at a prime runner level. However, I believe it has less to do with the gm being tough/crazy and me probably being bad/cursed, since I alone have as much (maybe one more, not sure) deaths than all the other players combined in the same elapsed time.
But hey, shit happens, and most of the time I was having fun (except the technomancer, that one still hurts) trying my best not to die, though it obviously did not work.

But that topic isn't all about me, anyone having tragic stories about the death of their beloved character ? There are so many ways to become a corpse in the 6th world, surely i'm not alone here.

[Tarislar]

When I saw the title subject I was thinking something different, those that lived that shouldn't have.

I had one of those situations a couple years ago.

Only 3 people showed up to game that day & none of them were melee combatants.
The mission involved a Bug Spirit Nest & we had no Samurai, Rigger, Adepts, etc etc.
So the Decker, Mage, & Mystic attempt to move ahead by themselves.

We go inside the 1st door and are confronted by 4 Force-6 Warrior spirits & think, crap, we are sooo dead.
My Mystic had a load of spell buffs on & went full defense spraying the room in automatic fire to attempt to get agro.
The Mage & Decker poured on fire & got some agro too & I'd pour fire into whatever pealed off me.
With a staggering 32 dodge dice I just kept bouncing & weaving & using long bursts turn after turn as we ground down the spirits 1 at a time.

[Glonthein]

Haha, that sounds indeed like throwing yourself into trouble. Full auto isn't a bad idea when dealing with spirits, but it really is best when combined with APDS rounds - helps a lot tearing apart that hardened armor. You got lucky you could buff yourself to literal invulnerability - 32 dices, I haven't seen that much so far in a play.
It does remind of something : my pilot adept first mission was to help a fixer creating a big safehouse... right where some bug spirit were beginning to build a nest. What we did was using trucks containing massive amounts of  insecticide, and pouring it into the buildings from the vents, then waiting that they force their way out of the living hell it had become. Forgetting the Force 12 warrior that destroyed one of the wall just to be rammed by the truck I was piloting, most of the thems had so much malus because of allergy that it was a breeze when the fight began.
Conclusion : always have some bug killer in your pocket when you expect those damn Bug spirits.

[Tarislar]

You got lucky you could buff yourself to literal invulnerability - 32 dices, I haven't seen that much so far in a play. 

You have no idea.
I didn't initially go Full Defense thinking I didn't want to loose an action.
But after several of their claws nearly connected & I kept taking the -1 per attack to my pool, I ended up triggering it to reboost the pool back up.
They were fast & lots of attacks started adding up quickly, lol.
You can get a higher pool than that, but it takes a lot of Karma investment.

Conclusion : always have some bug killer in your pocket when you expect those damn Bug spirits.

Its funny you say that.  We did have some of that stuff specifically designed for killing bug spirits in capsule rounds & grenades.
Just a couple mags or grenades each, but, it certainly slowed them down a lot & as you say, APDS when it ran out.

[Ghost Rigger]

I've seen a magic character die before the game even started trying to summon a spirit, but that's hardly a unique claim.

[RowanTheFox]

I'm genuinely amazed my marksman adept made it long enough to be updated for 5th and dragged into a new game (granted with some major changes because her old sheet has been lost to the four winds).

[farothel]

When I saw the title subject I was thinking something different, those that lived that shouldn't have.

We had a team like that a long time ago in 4th edition.  We were in Lagos and we went into the slums to find someone.  As you might know the Lagos slums is not the most safe of places and we had quite a bit of shiny stuff with us, so soon we found ourselves surrounded by more people than we had bullets.  Our mage decided to take matters into his own hands and cast a force 11 fireball (the max he could cast was 12).  He managed to survive the drain and when the wooden shacks in the slums started catching fire (it was dry season) the inhabitants suddenly had other things to do.  And so did we, as we had to get out before we were encircled by the flames.
That's how he got his new nickname: Nuke.
We didn't get the information though.

[Raphael diSanto]

Thankfully, I have always tended to play with GMs (and players) who were more cooperative than combative (and as a GM, I myself lean much more to that side)

I don't think i've ever actually had a character die, and I'm pretty sure I've never killed a character off. Our games tend to be more cinematic in flavor, so character deaths don't tend to happen. NPC deaths happen all the time, especially NPCs that the players have gotten to know and liked.

I second that earlier comment about the GM being ... tough, LOL..

I mean, was he/she the one who decided your technomancer had a dead-only bounty on her head?

And the players that took that bounty.. Man, ouch. I don't think I'd play with players like that!

[Glonthein]

The GMs we have tend to say they are realistic, and that they put "appropriate opposition". Once a dice is rolled, the result is here and nothing except spending/burning edge can prevent it. One GM also decided that every single NPC should have Edge, because "that attribute is way too broken". Sometimes, it means plays will indeed be tough, other times, it will result in milk runs that weren't supposed to be.
Yes, he decided that my technomancer had a dead only bounty on her head. During the previous run, she had pissed a security rigger/decker from KE because she had resisted without a flinch every single data spike he had launched at her. Somehow he managed to get some info on her - including street name - and used 25k nuyen from his own pocket to put the bounty. The two players who decided to take the bounty were weird ones : one was some sort of prototype with 6 cyber-arms and a weird view on the world, the other was an Oni fighter who had the bad habit to act first and think when harm was already done.
As an excuse for the GM, it must be said that when he told those two that there was a bounty on my head, he never thought even an instant that they would try and kill me.

So, I was talking about milk runs that shouldn't be before. Because of some events, one of the Draco Foundation's team (the one that basically replaced Assets, inc after it disbanded in our GM setting) was in our sprawl (which is Sydney), and one Johnson wanted them dead. Reward was 20k per head, which was huge for us. There was a lot of hesitation, but we decided to give it a try. We chose to attack when most of their linked spirits were away chasing that one guy they were after in the city. We had the help of a headcase melee adept that worked for our johnson, and we charged the building the ennemy were in with an autocar, while our decker helped by a technomancer we hired attacked together the ennemy team's decker that was in the UCAS (they were supposed to hack her, get her localization, give it to our johnson and then brick her and come back to help us).

Well, to sum it up, let's just say that right now at our table, there are now 6 players with the "tough and targeted" quality that didn't have it prior to the run. No casualties on our end, besides two rotodrones. The GM told us after that every single guy in front of us were better than us in every possible way. What helped us was the good use of small unit tactic, and the fact that they didn't take us seriously immediately. By the time they did, their heavy armored drake was possessed by one of our cabalistic mage's spirits, and the headcase had found the ennemy rigger and cut him in half.

But I must admit that one run was a huge exception for me, so I'm partially surprised to read you, Raphael. For me, it sometimes feels like the GM would find a way to use our team as cannon fodder so the NPC he created for the campaign would be kept alive.

[Rooks]

Few stories Few deaths few close calls

Honorable mentions

Extraction of an elven diplomat whos plane crashed and needed a ride to Tir we drove up then an attack helicopter showed up we were mostly fresh out of character creation except for one who had move by wire the heli had a sniper that shot our vet and well had to hand of god to survive bullet went through their shirt but didnt hit flesh (3rd edition)

Food fight Dwarf with shotgun hiding behind product popped up and blasted my character took a serious wound before we had to cheese it

Job was to clear out a gang from their hideout had a Full magician and a rigger, full magician astral projected then casted a force 12 fire ball then knocked herself into having only one physical overflow box left I played an aspected dwarven with kid stealth legs and I think the rigger managed to hit a tn 38 on his auto fire (3rd edition)

Did a job went to a hide out until we got the call from Mr J everyone but our mage was in there we then were beset by an attack squad took most of them out one guy tried to get out of the safe house stuck his head out instead of an endoscope and got a serious wound for his trouble my character had high perception so was able to spot which rooftop the shot came from phoned up our mage who had a day job as a professor at some college to astral and stun bolt the sniper

Now onto the Deaths

GMing a game in Denver milk run deliver an envelope to a ranch crossing borders can use a coyote or use border and chance it with security 2 crossings 1st crossing tried going with the border vehicles boxed in by a local gang got wind of the package everyone was able to make it out except the guy with cyberlimbed everything (had like 30+ soak) everyone else got away except for him the gang asked him whats the story chummer the guy flipped on the team and started leading the gang to the drop. so he goes to the drop with the gang the team drops off the package and starts fighting the gang and the cybered up terminator mage casts direct damage spell (soak does nothing to direct spells) cybered guys insides become microwaved on the inside rest of the team takes out the gang and cause it was a mana spell was able to scavange the guys cyber limbs (arms legs torso skull)

Nother game I GMed they meet Mrs J jobs to kidnap a kid at some private school munchie mcmunckerson decides to try to do a search on the school patch comes up with zlitch (its private drekhead nothing on the trix) so he starts demanding more money rolls like 20 dice asking for enough money to litterally hire an ex navy seals team Mrs J is not pleased asks anyone else 5k to the person that shuts this drekhead up the mage without thinking casts manabolt and bam munchie mcmunckerson is now drowning his a bowl of soup (no one bothered to pull his head up)

A game I was in we were a 2 man team I was decker rigger fire support he was a hippie mage that refused to use tech so we meet up with another teammate to get back someone from another corp mage is able to astral track the mark we go in get the mark back and go back to Mr Js corp to drop off the mark the new guy pulls a gun on me aiming it at my head and grabs the phone demanding more money to Mr J well the alarm goes off klakons flash bunch of armored guards surround my vechile (ford canada bision) the drekhead tells me to drive I punch it run over some of them they open fire, then the hippie mage pulls off the manabolt on drekhead and he drops dead I get on comms explain the situation strip the drekhead of his stuff drop his sorry ass on the cret Mr J calls off the guards we exchange mark for money (minus medical costs for the guys I ran over) but I was able to hack his gear to find out where he lived and found some sweat lmgs to secretly mount on my bision

[Raphael diSanto]

Glonthein - Wow,. yeah. You guys play WAY more hardcore than we do.

I'm primarily a narrativist in the Bartle scheme of things, and my players are the heroes and the protagonists. Our games, while appropriately "shadowrun-y" and "noir" (they don't always win, or even when they do, it's often a pyrrhic victory), never veer into player deaths very often. I don't know where we sit on the scale of trenchcoat to mohawk, but I've always felt that my job, as a GM, is merely a facilitator. That said, as a narrativist, I have no problems fudging rolls to keep PCs alive, if necessary.

But then, as a GM, I don't think I'd even let any of my players make a character with six cyberarms, LOL. I'm not a big fan of special snowflake PCs.

With regard to the last thing you wrote - Yeah, I would definitely not GM in that way. In my games, as GMs, my players are the heroes, and my NPCs are written specifically to die. That's their entire job. Like Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Rene Belloq in Indiana Jones, and even Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars - my bad guys are written to, eventually, fail. That's kind of how the stories work.

I would never sacrifice a PC in order to save an enemy NPC. Enemy NPCs just aren't that important and I can always make more. I do have a habit of sacrificing -friendly- NPCs, however. I might have a friendly NPC that's accompanied the players for a half dozen sessions or more, and then just when they've got to know him and like him, I'll have the Big Bad kill him off, LOL.

But hey, if you guys love playing that way, more power to ya!

[Glonthein]

Rook : Your sentences are sometimes are to read, you should try to use more comas... But I think I got most of it. Sounds like a mix of players not giving a shit about others life and the guys who died being assholes (if your allow the term). But in a world like shadowrun, that's nothing new. At least some of them were useful in their death, apparently.
Raphael diSanto : From what I've gathered, many people play Shadowrun with the intent of having the players come on top at the end while, our campaign is focused on survival mostly. I guess it isn't surprising that we have much more difficulties, then.
The 6 cyberarms thing is simply a result of someone having 2 ranks of Shiva Arms (SURGE quality), allowing to have up to 6 arms, and then having all of them changed into high quality cyberarms (yeah that costed a friggin ton of money and essence). When you look at it, It is something you can do with just the corebook and run faster, so it isn't so much a special snowflake, in my opinion.
I will be honest with you : I do like the epic, heroic kind of plays, it just happens that the GMs we have wants to turn the game differently. But hey, can't be difficult when you don't know a lot of people who can masterize SR.