To cover your points specifically:
- The first attack may or may not have qualified for the "Defender unaware of attack" modifier (SR4a, p.159), but with Sammy's spirit cloaking us, it seems like it easily could have.
Spirit's concealment wouldn't protect from mechanical sensors so the drones (and any jumped in rigger) can see them.
- Con wasn't surprised by the drone, which implies that he scored more than the drone on the surprise check. But then the drone shouldn't have been able to fire a smoke grenade back at Con in the first pass. The ambushing modifier would give the drone +6 on the test, but since we were approaching hidden, it's hard to justify that it (or its operator) would have been "aware of the movement and actions" of our group, so it would still have had to go through the surprise test.
Ambusher does indeed get the bonus, and the rigger could respond.
- Range shouldn't be much of an issue, since your average city street block is less than 200 meters. I'm not sure what rifle Con's shooting, but that's a -1 DP at most.
For the first and second shots, range was -1. He also specified firing from cover, which is an additional -2, technically since he declared his movement as running for the turn after pass 2 for the entire turn that should have applied as well, but it wasn't relevant.
- Drones dodge with pilot + handling; for the MCT-Nissan Roto-drone from the book, that's a total of 3 dice, which would diminish each time Con attacks it. A -5 DP to that should result in a nearly automatic hit. Going through the listings in Arsenal, I don't see any drones at all with a pilot+handling greater than 5.
Jumped in rigger uses his skills and gets a bonus for full VR
- If it's on full defense, it gets to add its defense auto-soft if it even has one, but it can't be using full defense for more initiative passes than it gets (and it took an action on the first pass, so it clearly wasn't on full defense then).
Any character fired on can abort to full defense, losing it's next action to go on defense. With the modifiers I mentioned before, Con had 1 hit on the second and third shots. Even with a dice pool of -5 it is not mathematically unusual to get a single success on back to back rolls.
I wish my character had her shotgun...
It seems like a long time, but you placed the order less than a week ago, game time, Clem is supposed to be stoic and patient.
I feel that the opposition is very strong. I don't know if that's like this in the books (if I recall correctly, this is a pre-written campaign) or if you have toughened them up. But in most fights, I feel we get our asses kicked.
You guys have come through 3 fights I can remember where you were outnumbered and ended up barely scratched. Sammy has
ENDED two fights through her spells and has consistently kept misfortune at bay at other times, in and out of conflict. I know you guys are coming off the ambush, and that put you on edge, but you have not been seriously pressed outside of that.
Maybe they are written like that, but it gets frustrating from time to time.
I will speak candidly about the prewritten adventure, it is crap, but I haven't significantly upgraded the opposition. You just need to have a little faith in me. I am not interested in playing a TPK, but it is a scarily lethal game sometimes.
All that said, in the interest of expedience and measure of desire for the ability to use a GM's fiat if I need to, I have stopped rolling my dice online. That may be an error but I made that choice so I could roll real dice and just post results, plus it was easier to work on the game AFB at the job.
