[Lighthouse]

I have one player that through RAW rules has over 30 soak dice, an air tank, and maxed out the quality magic resistance. This character using edge was shot with a Barrett sniper rifle and only took one point of damage. I feel that the character throws off the game balance. I am trying to scale the difficulty up but I am worried if I go to far it will be a TPK. The last run I threw a blood mystic adept vampire at them wearing armor and with immunity to normal weapons. They took him down way too fast. How do I make my runs challenging to the party without killing everyone?

[MijRai]

Use spells that target Willpower, instead of trying to shoot through their Body/Armor.  Direct spells wreak havoc as well by consistently hitting 1-3 damage without too much effort (even with Magic Resistance).  Contact and injection vector toxins can also do some horrible things.  There's ways to mess with soak-beasts. 

I'm not sure how that coincides with the group taking down your big-bad all that fast, since it's a matter of taking hits, not dishing them out.  That might just have been a bad introduction of your vampire, in all honesty.  I mean, why would a vampire (a natural predator) go after them as a group, when they're fully prepared?  Ambush tactics, stalking, etc. should all be in the repertoire of HMHVV victims. 

[Lighthouse]

The player has magic resistance and a high willpower. You are right about dishing it out and the vampire not attacking them. they stalked the vampire to his lair during the day and would have surprised him had they not brought rotodrones. It was actually the spell casters and their spirits that took down the vampire because immunity to normal weapons doesn't affect that. It did give the team more to do than usual so it was a plus.

[Namikaze]

Sit down and tell your players to stop being cheese-monkeys.  If they want to play that way, and you don't, then you're not playing the same game.  If push comes to shove, throw a dragon down their throats.

[Lighthouse]

It's only one player which is why it's throwing off the balance.

[Top Dog]

Only one damage by a Barrett? That's more luck then anything else - that's at least 15P, AP-6. That's an average of 8P or 8S stun damage (depending on how much of the soak pool is damage). Can't really fault people for rolling well. And if the sniper is using APDS (which he should) it should be 9P on average. APDS works well on high-soak targets (though, admittedly, also on low-soak targets).

Can the player dish out the damage as well as he can take it? If he spend a lot of his resources on defense, his offense might be lacking - and in that case, it's not a big deal. People should be good at what they focus at - and there's always the option of targeting squishier players.

Willpower spells probably won't work well if he has maxed Magic Resistance - they tend to be weakish (being balanced by the lack of defense). But if his Willpower is low, it should still work. Contact and injection vectors still work indeed. So do inhalation vectors - he has to turn on the air tank, so unless he runs it all the time you might still surprise him without it active.

Spirits work well - Critter powers aren't affected by Spell Resistance (except for Innate spell). The straight damage will face the same problems as before (although it still has enough damage and AP to be dangerous), but spirits have loads of nasty effects like Fear and Confusion that he'll be all but defenseless against.

[Lighthouse]

The sniper was using APDS. The players response to my feelings has been that when it comes to dishing it out the player is not that effective (and this is true the player has few dice to actually hit something and is mostly melee anyway) They have a high willpower and an internal air tank. I didn't know spirit powers were not affected by magic resistance. It is not completely unbalancing just tricky which is why I allowed the character to exist.

[Glyph]

30 soak dice is not a huge deal (the tank archetype has more than that).  That's 10 hits on average, and damage can go up a lot more than that.  And the character is still vulnerable to threats from any other vector than a direct physical attack.  Honestly, from the descriptions of blood mystic adept vampires with immunity to normal weapons, and Barrett sniper rifles firing APDS ammo, it sounds like the GM is the one who needs to tone it down.

[Namikaze]

It's only one player which is why it's throwing off the balance.

My statement still stands - just change all plural noun forms to singular noun forms.

This is clearly causing you stress, so let the player know that things are out of whack and tell him to get it back in shape.  If the player wants to play with this character, make the rest of the players aware that this is going to result in getting their characters killed.  They'll get it together.

[Lighthouse]

I think the core issue is it is hard to balance the different archetypes in SR.  So I was starting with the sam because I understand the combat rules the best. Being the toughest character I was trying to judge what the team could take based on the Sam but if the sam goes down the rest of the party would be challenged (depending on what tactics they take) to face the difficulty. But as I think about it that isn't a good way to judge difficulty because the mages, and the decker, and the rigger are going to handle problems differently. So to formulate my question better. How do you determine how hard to make a scenario? How do you determine how tough the enemies should be? How do I determine what force the spirits should be at? What the matrix defenses should be like?

[Jayde Moon]

Hi all!  I'd like to help my GM out, because while I don't think the character is cheesily built (though I must admit some bias, as it's my character), I do think that Lighthouse could use some tips on how to run encounters so that they are challenging without being overly so.

We've all played and run adventures where Runners have thoroughly mopped up on what we thought would be a difficult encounter.  As a Missions GM, I have seen encounters that have absolutely stopped one group while another group just ploughed through it like a hot knife through butter.

So, the character:

Ork

B7 A3 R5/6 S7/9 W6 L3 I5 C2

PQ: Magic Resistance 4
NQ: Destinctive Style: Chicago Lightning Helmet
Prejusdiced (Outspoken) Non-CZ dwellers
SINner: UCAS
Uneducated

Skills:
Automatics 4
Intimidation 3
Perception 1
Pilot Ground Craft 6
Running 3
Unarmed Combat 6

Chicago Gangs: 5
Sports: 5
The CZ: 5
Russian: 6

Augs:
Bone Lacing Alum
Cyber Arm
Cyber Hand (Stated to equivalent natural/enhanced Agl and Str, +2 Armor each)
Orthoskin 3
Wired Reflexes 1
Muscle Augmentation 2

Equipment:
Bike Racing Helmet (Chicago Lightning Helmet)
Riot Control Armor
Ballistic Shield
Metalink

Medium Lifestyle (Recently upgraded from Squatter after GM blew up all of our old doss...es... dossi?)

About to make a bunch of purchases now that we have some down time.

Honestly, I don't see anything cheesy about it.  Some might make an argument that stacking armor from cyberlimbs might be cheese, and while I disagree, I can see where they are coming from... but it's only 2-4 of the armor points.  As Glyph says, the Tank 'archetype' has over 30 armor.

I'd also note that the GM is new to GMing, I think in general, much less a difficult crunch system like SR5.

Finally, it's easy to pick on the 'tank' because I have the single highest dice pool, in soak and have also padded myself against the easiest physical tank counter: magic.  I'm an experienced Shadowrun player who has seen many a tank fall to a singular well cast stun bolt.

The rest of the team consists of a Hacker who is consistently hitting her limits on hacking and computer tests off of the Sony CIY-720 Cyberdeck; a Shaman who is well built and played by a very savvy and experienced RPer who consistently has a (minimally) force 6 spirit of man rolling with us, a Rigger, a Medic, and joining us for the event with the Blood Magic Mystic Adept Vampire was another mage who can bring a Force 8 spirit to bear without over summoning.  We are all also pretty experienced RPers and Shadowrunners, so we tend to take our time and plan things out to give ourselves the best advantage in most any situation.

Fighting us in his bedroom after we neutralized his guards and security without the use of my tank's impressive soak and catching him mostly by surprise... well, I don't think it's the 'one character' that's overbalancing.  A Force 6 and 8 Spirit, the Mages, a Rigger's Drone and a Street Samurai catching something mostly by surprise in it's bedroom is going to have a relatively easy time of it.

As an inexperienced GM, Lighthouse could really use a bunch of pointers on how to challenge a team of established-level Runners without going overboard, without relying too heavily on GM Fiat, and staying within the parameters of his campaign, which is on the surface a mob-war in Chicago (we've basically taken sides with MacAvoy against McCaskill) with a deeper (and ultimately more important) subtext of some crazy blood magic shit about to go down.

He could also use some advice on when he should expect that we are challenged and when he should be OK with us rolling over something.  I think expectation management of how runs should play out is key as well.  He's definitely been OK with us just powering through mooks, but I think us taking some of the more creative challenges he's laid out for us has taken him somewhat by surprise.

You can actually see the write-ups of our adventures here.

[Peter_M_Andrew_Jr]

Figuring out balance like that is always a little dicey. The only game I saw get it mathematically correct wasn't a lot of fun to play. I've seen a lot of attempts in the industry but the success level varies a lot just by the nature of different party mixes and how they players themselves problem solve. I've had a group of runners call Lone Star to handle a terrorist threat, just because the players the risk/reward wasn't in their favor.

I normally start with a threat level I know the party can handle and crank things up each following run or encounter in different combinations until things start to stick. I also find the combinations tend to be the key.

Peter

[ScytheKnight]

Also it can be a good idea to mix Hard and Soft threats for sake of variety, and it also rewards players for their builds.

For clarity, a Hard threat is one built to the party's strengths. If the group is a crew of combat monsters, then throw them up against some elite 'wared up combatants backed up by drones. Are they going to win? Probably, but such a head on clash will probably get their blood pumping. Conversely a magic heavy group could face off against a Blood Magic coven.

A Soft threat however, is one that exploits the group's weaknesses, and this in no way, shape or form needs to be combat focused.

How do you balance it? The short answer, you can't. The long answer, you could spend a whole lot of time crunching the numbers and trying to make the perfect encounter, but simply put players are unpredictable and will almost always ruin your plans. Go with what you feel is right, and err on the side of being too powerful... without the threat of characters dieing, there's not a whole lot of point, and the payoff for the players is bigger if they manage to defeat something that almost killed them.

[Jayde Moon]

Couple more things:

As a result of showing our faces in an early run, Lighthouse had the mobsters hit our homes.  In the case of Rollrgrrl, this was her squatting community in the CZ, including non-combatants and children, that she was fond of.  It also happened right after Rollrgrrl spent her first runner paycheck on improvements (working for the People), like purchasing a couple of weapons for the guards and buying toys and other necesstities like blankets and stuff, for the other residents.

Having it burned out and many of them killed shortly afterwards was like smashing her in the feels with a brick.  Very well done and just the type of response that I felt was entirely suitable.  In a story-centric game, these are the elements that really make it memorable.

----------

Also, Top Dog, can you point out where you got the information regarding Critter Power and Magic Resistance?  I don't see it under the Quality itself, nor in the Critter Power section (though I may be using what my wife calls my 'man eyes', you know, the eyes I use to find shit she needs in the cupboard).  It seems like it should work, as Critter Powers are 'Magic'.  I do get that Magic Resistance specifically says "Spell Resistance Test" and a Critter Power isn't, by the mathlish that is Shadowrun, a 'Spell'... but is that further clarified elsewhere, or is that the (legitimate) basis of your interpretation?

[Namikaze]

The problem arises when one character can take a massive amount of punishment and the other characters cannot.  There is no "tank" in Shadowrun, contrary to the Archetype name.  There's no "aggro" and no "taunting" or any of those other video game mechanics.  So the best way to defeat a character like that?  Don't engage them - kill their allies, friends, family, etc.

That's why building a character who can survive a small explosion to the chest will generally result in the rest of the characters getting killed.  Diversity is the solution here.  Also, ask yourself why the character would do this kind of thing?  Why on earth would a shadowrunner make themselves nearly immortal - it does nothing to help the mission's success if the character cannot do other basic tasks like lying (Con skill), getting Mr. Johnson to like him (Etiquette skill), hiding items on your person (Palming skill), etc.

So really, JaydeMoon, what you've built is a character that cannot do some of the basic tasks of a shadowrunner.  Presumably this is because other character can "take over" for those tasks, but all three of the examples I gave are things that everyone needs to be able to do, even on a basic level.  If you want to know what makes a character cheesy, it's the lack of diversity and metagaming knowledge of your teammates' skills.  Sure, everyone should know what someone is good at and bad at, but your character is ridiculously bad at all aspects of being a shadowrunner that don't involve shooting automatic weapons or hitting someone with your fist.

Lighthouse, if you want to challenge this character, take it out of the CZ and into a situation involving socializing with non-CZ residents.  The outspoken prejudice, lack of social skills, lack of stealth skills, and lack of covert options will make this character crumble in seconds.