It is extremely frustrating, because every challenge I design for this infiltration expert results in him breezing through it.
I have asked him not to run off and leave the party on it's own so often, but that is the only concession i have gotten from him. It is irritating to the extreme when I have to fiat just to get the story to stay on track and the super-important NPC does NOT die.
Well, there's your problem. Sure, maybe he's megalucky with dice when he's hands-on, maybe he's subtly cheating (numerous ways to do this, note), and maybe the cup-roller thing will slash it into ribbons. From where I'm sitting, though, your challenges are the wrong ones.
Clearly, he's acing every infiltration challenge you're giving him -- sneaking past Guard A and Dog B. For an add-on, please remember that you cannot sneak through a maglocked door, no matter how stealthy you are; you need to hack the maglock. And sure, maybe he's got that beat too, but I personally wouldn't bet on that right this second. So your problem is that you're challenging character (and player) in the Area Of His Expertise.
Of course he's gonna succeed.
The place you have to challenge characters if you want them to lose and have a growing experience is
where they are not good. In the convention mission (CMP 2011-05, Burn Notice) that I played in with Spanner at DragonCon, one of the characters -- personal combat, stealth, had monofilament whip out the wazoo, I think -- was a Russian with some deep Vory contacts. We were making contact
with the Vory, and needed to negotiate some stuff. The table GM, instead of going with the Elven Pornomancer and his 28 dice (y'know, I still wanna know how you get 50+ dice), apparently decided that the Vory would only deal with the Russian.
Guy played it great, but the point here is that suddenly Stealthy McWireslicer is being required to play
outside his area.
This is the challenge; not the stealth-required squeezing through here or there, tip-toeing along to recover the target, but being shoved in front to act as the Face.
How's your problem child set for --
- Driving
- Negotiation
- Con
- Covering Fire
- Hardware
- Hacking
-- or any of a dozen other skills?
Athletics? Diving? Force him to 'sneak' underwater through one of Seattle's dozens of submarine outlets.
Let him wander off, mousetrap the rest of the team, and require him to hack a car's security, hotwire it, and drive to the rescue.
Manipulate the team into wanting him as a sniper / overwatch gunman in an office directly across from the building in which they're going to meet The Bad Guy, ready to start punching AV rounds through the windows so the rigger can get his drone carrying THEIR gear in through the window as well as give them time to arm up. Oh, he'll think his challenge is sneaking up there with a TK-7A with 150 rounds of AV ammo, but you know the real challenge is going to be when he has to suppress the guys sneaking around the far side of the other room, trying to flank his crew,
Guy isn't invisible/intangible, or even Not There on the Astral, I presume; let a security mage running a 'detect sneaky bastard' spell locate him. Or have a security checkpoint in one direction, and a bunch of half-drunk 'Joe's Birthday Party' wageslaves come the other way, completely filling the hall. Use a security rigger; 'Wait a minute, the door to 1021 just opened, and there's nobody there.'
Or like the story above -- drop him into a group where his uniqueness matches
their uniqueness, and Bossman decides that he'll only talk to Sneakerboy -- with a jammer running. Uh-oh, no wireless help from his friends, he's gotta negotiate the deal on his own.
Give him things to do, events to win, but challenge him (or beat him like a drum) in
other areas.