[Fatespinner]

Hi all,

I struggle with describing and playing action scenes. I am an saturday a GM in a shadowrun game with advanced characters. One rigger and one muuscle and one spirit mage. The mage often summons big powerful air spirits, but does nothing much beside that. The rigger and the muscle are more for the action.

Combats and action scenes are difficult to handle. I want to give them a feeling of danger, but also to survive and present believable oppositions. And it should not bog down to a long gun fight. So for mooks I reduced their health.

But still action scenes feel boring and like they are no challenge. The high level spirits are a pain and finding good stats for the opposition as well.

Maybe you have some ideas and tips? We play SR5 and they need to beark into a luxury penthouse to execute a organized crime boss.

But tips for action scenes in general and not only Shadowrun are welcome.

[FastJack]

In 6th Edition, we use Professional Ratings for the NPCs (SR6, p. 203). When the NPCs boxes of damage exceeds their Rating, they make a Composure Test (SR6, p. 67) to see if they stay in the fight or run away, that way you don't have to adjust their health. I can't speak on making the action scenes more compelling since I don't play 5th and haven't looked it's Combat rules in a decade.

[Michael Chandra]

SRM uses the optional rule that any powerful spirit (Force - 2 > Magic, so Magic 6 Force 5+, etc), uses F/2 Edge to force the summoner to reroll hits. That really helps.

[Fatespinner]

Ok, I tried it yesterday and it went well. What worked for me an my group was to use as the gm always the average and let the players do the rolling. That made the rounds significant faster. I also used a time limit like it was suggested. And did not use maps and minis, instead. I described smaller scenes that handled a few opponents that suddenly show up and attack the players. It helped to remove the tactical movement as that forced my players to often drop out of character and start to plan.

It was quite helpful to use a ward Aagainst the mage and the spirit