[prismite]

So I have a table of 4 (soon to be 6) players and I'm starting to notice a continual pattern and could use some community advice.

Some of the folks at my table think that they can only be good at this game if their character has dice-pools in excess of 15 from Char-Gen. Now, I have often scolded those individuals for not being in the spirit of the game but sometimes I am told things that do kind of make sense.

For example, the last time a player was scolded it wasn't by me, but another member of his team who stated that they hated to play with him because his "Munchkin'd" character always forces them to abandon character flavor in favor of combat power. The accused responded that since combat is 1/3rd of the time spent in game, it makes sense to drop a sizable amount of resources into being really good at combat. Even after this argument, and rolling new characters, the accused ended up with a combat spellcasting pool of 16. Seeing this, the other mage sighed and erased all his skills he had at 2 and settled on several combat skills at 6.

Now  my problem is that I agree with both sides, I do ... but I'm not sure how to 'fix' this scenario.

Currently I have instituted a "Rule of 10" policy. Essentially, I've capped all skill-related pools at 10 dice, regardless of stat/attachments/specializations/etc, but the cap goes up by 1 for every 10 karma earned, and is obiliterated completely at 100 karma. We play with an accelerated Karma rewards system, so that should take 6-8 sessions to happen.

This system seems to inhibit the Cyberware guy even more than the default price listings want to! Should I just abandon this rule and avoid combat until the important of diversity is felt or am *I* in the wrong and should I alter my approach? I'm pretty much up for ideas at this point!

[Reaver]

This is where knowing your group comes to play....

Are they all combat centered players? (Meaning do they want other elements?)

[cantshutup]

I think the problem is not the large dice pools of the optimizers, or at least not just that. Generally in a team there are people who throw massive quantities of dice during different sorts of situations, but the way you're describing it, it seems like your players are only concentrated on combat. How are you handling legwork? Are there exciting quantities of dice flying away there, or is it just an occasional Loyalty check on contacts?

The thing is, the 'roleplayer' player shouldn't feel compelled to make a combat monkey just to compete with the optimizer player, unless they're feeling like if they can't shine in combat they can't shine at all.

Not to mention mages. Combat is the least interesting thing mage can do. Are they trying to be the same sort of mage? Why?

For some reason for your players the game turned into a competition instead of a team game. So maybe figure out what's going on there.

Reaver makes a good point. Are they all coming to play for combat? If only some of them are, make sure that the players that don't prioritize combat get a chance to shine too.

That said, a few things you can do to make the roleplayers feel more validated:
- give karma for well-thought out backstories
- give dicepool bonuses for good descriptions
- have Knowledge skill checks matter
- just in general, look at the roleplayers' backstories and character sheets and try to make use of the 'flavor' skills they have there while thinking about the run.

You can scold people or cap people's dicepools or force the optimizer players to buy flavor skills they don't want, but the only thing you can really do as a GM is make it pay to be well-rounded in your game. I'm my group's hacker and driver, with pretty shitty fighting skills. Guess what I'm cashing my last run's karma for? The first dot in Intimidate. Because it comes up and is useful, and it felt shitty to fail that roll when I actually made a pretty good case to the target that he should be afraid.

[Kincaid]

10 is not a lot of dice for a normal-level campaign and since combat is an opposed roll vs. a non-skill related dice pool, things could get out of whack pretty easily.  By way of example, my non-optimized PhysAd rolls 17 dice on his defense test.

Assuming that power level isn't part of your vision for your campaign, I say let the players make what they want and then come up with different ways of letting each player have his/her time in the spotlight.  Sure, the guy with all the dice is going to be great at combat, but as he pointed out, that's only 1/3 of the time.  (And having a guy good at combat is a good thing for everyone else).  The other guy is presumably good at something, so you can devise ways of introducing those sorts of elements to the table to fill in the other 2/3 of the time.

[ZeConster]

12-15 dice is pretty standard for a character's area of expertise, and that's straight out of chargen. I don't think it's Munchkinny to make a character that's better at fighting than the rest of the party: like the others have said, that still leaves 2/3 of the game for the others to get their kicks. It sounds more like you're nerfing combat because other players get envious of players with combat-based characters.

[Reaver]

Combat is the easiest way for the players to get that 'instant ggratification' kick. Bad guys pop up, throw a double handful of dice till they fall down. Rinse and repeat.

The trick is to let the other aspects of the game shine by putting more of the spit light on them.

Johnson needs an item recovered.... without drawing attention.

Johnson needs a face to act as a middleman for an exchange...

Run involves lots of legwork to find the item....

There are ways to get the other parts of SR to shine.... but if your characters are the shoot first type, you may be wasting your time.

[Csjarrat]

Straight up; some characters are going to be good in combat, they're supposed to be. there is nothing wrong with that, it is the bread and butter for two character archetypes: physical adept + street sam.
Mages can also be devastating in combat.

Thing to remember is that shadowrunners are supposed to be good. they have to be good, otherwise they die. if they're only as good as corpsec, then they dont live to the point where they get good.
Shadowrunners should be able to walk through standard corpsec + ganger mooks relatively easily and a dicepool of 10 is a good starting point for characters and is usually where non-combatants like deckers/technos finish up as well
Agi 4, pistols 3 (semi-auto +2) +laser sight 1 =dicepool of 10 and that is super easy to get; a very small investment for most players.

What I would say is that if combat is taking up 1/3rd of your games as your player said, then perhaps combat is happening too frequently? if the spotlight is frequently on the street sam because you're always fighting, start doing other stuff. give the decker more chance to shine {btw, logic 6, hacking 6 (+ hosts +2), hot sim 2 =16 is not unreasonable at all if you need to break into corporate hosts!), chuck in a car chase or two for your rigger, have a wagemage turn up in the corpsec to challenge your mages or build in heavy astral security.
in otherwords, dont over emphasise one aspect of the game. if everyone gets chance to shine, this problem should go away. and yes, your payers might need to suck it up and optimise a bit more, primary skills need to be 10 or higher so account for opposed rolls and -ve modifiers and still have a chance of success.
Also, a mage shouldn't be huffing and puffing about combat dicepools, a reasonably built mage can totally outshine a well built street sam in terms of utility in a fight

btw a munchkin build is usually one where it is so incredibly good at what it does that it practically never fails, it is also absolutely terrible at everything else!
You're looking at the old pornomancer face type who had a con (seduce) dicepool of about 25+ out of chargen iirc but didnt know which end of a knife was the pointy bit

[prismite]

Hmm. You guys have given me a lot to think about.

Thank you!

[ZeConster]

You're looking at the old pornomancer face type who had a con (seduce) dicepool of about 25+ out of chargen iirc but didnt know which end of a knife was the pointy bit

40-50, IIRC, not just 25+.

[ZeConster]

Do you think you could show us the character's stats first?
But sure, I don't see much wrong with firing on someone with low dice: if you see a fragile-looking character in a team of runners, chances are high it's either a decker or a mage, and both should be a high priority for focusing fire on ("geek the mage first", and if you take out the decker, they'll probably have to give up on whatever they had planned) - it doesn't matter if they're actually a decker or mage, the NPCs just have to think they are.

[Taejix]

I think the old pornomancer build got up to something like 60+ dice in the end actually.

But yeah, 12-16 dice is a fairly reasonable dice pool for a character's speciality. The mage should be tossing that to cast, the decker should do it for hacking, the street sam should have it for combat and the face should be around there for social rolls. You can easily hit those sorts of dice pools and have room for a well-balanced character. It's when they start tossing 20+ dice that it gets to be a problem.

On the subject of hitting the pornomancer with a low combat dice pool, I'd say go for it. Have some corp sec toss a flashbang near them or put a few gel rounds in their direction, something non-lethal.

[Csjarrat]

On the subject of hitting the pornomancer with a low combat dice pool, I'd say go for it. Have some corp sec toss a flashbang near them or put a few gel rounds in their direction, something non-lethal.

Oh you are far too kind sir!! Short of the phonebook, the pornomancer deserves the heavy weapons troll treatment :-)
It is the GM's duty to smack munchkin builds around with their corpsec + gangers so go have fun, dream of full auto bursts create sizeable blemishes all over his pretty little body :-)

[prismite]

In my case, I've seen a character with nearly 50 dice to dodge when in full defense. Something like 4 spells quickened.

I always feel bad for hitting a character in their obvious weak spot. Feels like the cheap thing to do ... but sometimes you just have to.

I've just never played a game where 16 dice is considered 'the norm'. Starting numbers were always like 10-12.

[Csjarrat]

In my case, I've seen a character with nearly 50 dice to dodge when in full defense. Something like 4 spells quickened.

I always feel bad for hitting a character in their obvious weak spot. Feels like the cheap thing to do ... but sometimes you just have to.

I've just never played a game where 16 dice is considered 'the norm'. Starting numbers were always like 10-12.

thats an awful lot of dodge dice but that's also a character that isn't much apart from not getting shot.
If you want to affect chars that go that silly, then gas grenades are your friend!
Have your security drones load up on CS/pepper punch/neurostun and laugh as he's not able to utilise his gimmick :-)

unfortunately I think some of this mentality comes from trying to "beat" the game/GM rather than enjoy the game.
Problem is, the GM controls the game world and who their opponents are, what they're armed with and how good they are at using it.
It might be worth sitting down with players going for a monobuild and just explaining the effect that it has on the game and on the other players, if they don't listen then hell, you're the GM. either boot them or come up with brilliant ways to sucker punch them into submission.
(I like having the 35 dice pool sniper with CHA 1 insult a Troll doorman when he glitches his social test to get into the meet, then get his arse absolutely handed to him. GM- Your character is now hospitalised, and is permanently disfigured. roll a new character. perhaps more rounded this time?)

[Mirikon]

The best way to deal with this is to use the right of veto during chargen. If one of the characters, for any reason, doesn't fit with the power level of the group, or the power level you wish the campaign to be at, send them to redo it. Things like this only get into play because the GM allows it.