[kyoto kid]

The hardest thing about shooting a Force 9 spirit is that they're rolling at least 18 for Dodge and probably more like 20+. Let's say it's a Queen - then it's rolling 23 to dodge and 33 if it goes on Full Defense.

...so you have a couple drones armed with Ares Alphas go lead hose on it to knock it's dodge pool down, another doing suppression fire, and then your sniper nails it with the Barrett.

[Lorebane24]

The die pools that you guys are posting makes me think that you are all playing a very different game than I am...

[Dinendae]

The die pools that you guys are posting makes me think that you are all playing a very different game than I am...

*nods*
I'm happy to see a dice pool of 12 in my primary skill(s), and 16 with bonuses.

[kyoto kid]

Small reminder that weapon foci ignore basically all magical defenses, aka "the only thing spirits have standing between them and deadsville."  There's a reason melee adepts are the #1 spirit killers.  And vampires, too.  They turn to mist?  Just kinda vaguely wave your sword around in the mist and laugh when it pierces through all immunities and regeneration, leading to it suddenly raining dead vamp bits.

...in this situation, the Adept would need a minimum Force 7 weapon focus Claymore (which would effectively be Force 1 because of the BGC), score a really high initiative, have a really damn good skill pool (somewhere in the 20s without the help of adept powers), be juiced up on Kamakaze, and pre-edging the attack, then she might have a decent chance to tag it provided it doesn't dodge.

[Lorebane24]

Yeah, I've generally tried to encourage a game world where an average professional has a die pool of 7-9 in the skills they use on a daily basis, and shadowrunners are a cut above in the skills they use a lot.  Generally when I help new players I try to encourage them to try and hit die pools of 12-15 for their most important stuff, with 8-10 for secondary/tertiary skills to have a reasonable chance of success.  I figure that shooting die pools are a little higher since it's easy to tack on a smartlink, but I think the highest die pool in the group that I just started up is 18, and I see them go as low as 6, though we do have a few players that are completely new to the game.

I think that when I played 4th edition in college I just got so sick of people hyper optimizing and shattering the system and force 8 spirits becoming so commonplace as to lose any sense of wonder.  I try to encourage characters in games now that favor versatility over that kind of extreme specialization.

[kyoto kid]

...my Face in Missions has a Pool of 20 when dealing with a Johnson.

8 CHA, Negotiation 6 (Bargaining +2) Tailored Pheromones 3, Trustworthy Quality. 

Her Social Limit is 13 (14 when wearing high fashion armour clothing).

Her combat skill?  Well....if she cant talk her way out of it, she has a lot of armour (21) and very high full defence pool to get out of harm's way (Too Pretty To Hit quality) as well as excellent leadership  (so her chummers shoot better).

[MijRai]

Yeah, I've always run a discrepancy between 'normal' folks and 'runners/high grade folks.  Your average 'professional' has an 8 die pool before modifiers; 4-5 from Skill, 3-4 from Attribute.  Average office workers have 5 Computers, 3 Logic, with the occasional smart-dude running 4/4 or maybe 4/5.  Average cop has 3 Intuition, 5 Perception, average boxer has Agility, 4 Unarmed Combat, etc.  Some of the metahumans can throw this off a little; your average ork or troll has a higher dice pool for manual labor, sure.  An elf is better for Customer Service. 

Your experts have dice pools around 12, your dabblers have 4, your perfectionists have 16+.  I use the tiers (based off of the dice pool, including 'ware/magic but not equipment) for buying hits as my rankings. 

[Rift_0f_Bladz]

We can safely assume that a F9 spirit has only 1-2 services and it is unbound (lol, try to bound F9 spirit). So, use banishing: 6 + 6  with edge (second chance). The spirit is defending with 9 dices and if you get more, it is gone. It's possible that the summoner uses the edge, which means on average 5 hits on the spirit's defense test => 10 drain. This is difficult but with increase drain stats spells you can get on average like 6 hits, so you do not die.

In bc6 this does not work anymore, fleeing is still a good option.

Buying Banishing 6 just on the off chance of needing to deal with a super high Force spirit is even more of a ludicrous opportunity cost than buying a missile launcher.

Can you even banish a bug spirit? I don't think they play by those rules.

Best bet is using the Barrett model 122 with Bullseye double tap and ADPS for AP -22 ((-6*3)+-4). What harden armor? Now it soaks 14Dv +net hits with just body. When you go bug hunting, you bring the big toys.

...in this situation, a Barrett 122 with APDS would have been the right answer (well maybe besides a drone with a 5 AGMs). Still would require a good roll to counter any attempts by the spirit to dodge.  Pre edge the test and limits don't apply any more and quite possibly it would be taken out with one shot.

Don't really need edge as the AFC of the gun is 7(9), but sure, go for broke.

Also true for the stupidly high background count. Hence why A) I don't play missions & B) If I did it wouldn't be an awakened character.

[schenn]

Something no one has mentioned yet...

Drawing the spirit into an area with a lower background count and engaging it there...

[Whiskeyjack]

The die pools that you guys are posting makes me think that you are all playing a very different game than I am...

This kind of stuff varies greatly from table to table.

Really the game makes it very easy to get dice pools of 16+, so it's understandable for people to "default" to the max possible, in lieu of getting guidelines from the GM.

[Glyph]

A mundane, unaugmented human, with no qualities granting an extraordinary attribute or skill, can start out with agility of 6, pistols skill of 6, a specialization in semi-automatics, and either a laser sight or a smartlink (with wireless enabled) for his pistol.  So in a strongly transhumanist game world, where magic gives you incredible powers, and augmentations can make you superhuman, a completely normal human can start out with a dice pool of 15.

But games with a lower power level are fine - I imagine most such games don't have the players running into force: 9 bug spirits very often.

[Herr Brackhaus]

To be fair, a mundane, unaugmented human with an Agility score of 6 isn't exactly ordinary. Racial maximum is what it is for a reason.

[ZombieAcePilot]

Small reminder that weapon foci ignore basically all magical defenses, aka "the only thing spirits have standing between them and deadsville."  There's a reason melee adepts are the #1 spirit killers.  And vampires, too.  They turn to mist?  Just kinda vaguely wave your sword around in the mist and laugh when it pierces through all immunities and regeneration, leading to it suddenly raining dead vamp bits.

Unless you don't have one... Or he's dead/out already... Or anyone else wants to engage in the encounter meaningfully. It's even worse than the hacker, at least he sucks the rest of the time, so people might be less bitchy about his spotlight time. Adepts are good when street sams are good. So basicly, the street Sam gets shafted while the adapt hogs his spotlight as well as his own. Great game design there.

[kyoto kid]

Something no one has mentioned yet...

Drawing the spirit into an area with a lower background count and engaging it there...

...and give it a chance to act first.  Not a good idea.

[Mirikon]

In my experience, it is far better to cede the first move to a mage or spirit rather than to try fighting them in the middle of their power site, unless you are convinced you can take them out on the first attack. In this case, yes, you let the bug spirit get a chance to hit you first, but with a swing of the spirit losing six dice and you gaining six dice (among other things), that is a much more acceptable risk, IMHO.