Shadowrun Play > Character creation and critique

New(ish) GM looking for some advice regarding a group new to SR.

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Karrth:
So, back when 5e just came out I tried running a game with my gaming group at the time but was overcome by the complex system and general burnout on GM'ing.

Now I want to try giving it a go again and I am looking for some advice on a few things:

Mainly I'd like to know how many dice a dice pool should have for a starting character in their main area, so I can give advice to the group during character generation.

And do people have some advice for a new GM to this game?

neomerlin:
For a character's main schtick, I would say 11 dice is the minimum. Add a commonly used specialisation or a bonus from a Quality and you get something respectble. This is, of course, unless you are an adept and thus made of cheese and I expect a minimum of 15 without a problem. But the broader your schtick, the more skills you neex to stretch points across.

Redwulfe:
To be honest it depends on what you and your players are going for. A well rounded party with room to grow in a black trench coat style game would probably have dice pools of 12-14. If each team member has a specific place in the team and are specialized in that are over others to grow wide rather than tall then your pools will probably be in the 13-16 range. In power game builds you will see higher pools.

One thing to note is that, IMHO, if your players start to escalate the dice pools into the 16-22 ranges the threat starts to escalate in kind and you start an arms race that is hard to remove form the game. There is nothing wrong with this style of play just be aware that it exists and is usually made better when all players and GM really know the system well to be able to find a balance in the nukes that players and GM will bring to the table. This can be a more forgiving style as it is harder to kill PCs when they start to really min/max their concepts into hard core runners. This can at times be frustrating for a GM as some characters will feel imposable to kill and any well rounded character will typically feel underpowered.

On the other end of the spectrum with characters that start out wide with dice pools with high ends of 12-14 you as the GM will need to be very careful not to oppose them with something that is to overwhelming for the party which will be easy to do. When this happens the arms race will begin. Try to teach the players that direct confrontation is not as good as circumventing the opposition and thinking out the of box to resolve the mission. focus on the problem solving aspects of the game. "How do you get past the threats without getting caught or dying and still get the job done?" this style of game will be deadly for your characters if they do not solve this early.

Overbyte:
One easy thing to do is consider that on average 3 dice = 1 hit.
So a skill of 12 dice = 4 hits on average.
Also a skill of 6 with a stat of 6 is 12 dice. So that is very good. I know others on the board will say that is not enough but it really depends on what your game is like. Since you are the GM you know how tough you will make the enemies.
An "average" person on the street would have a stat of 3 and maybe a skill of 3 so that would be 6 dice.

It is very important to think about the dice pools of the characters when you make up your mission. If your characters have 12 dice, then the enemies should have similar amounts (less for "grunts" and maybe a bit more "bosses"). You want your characters to have a challenge but not get instantly killed. Keep in mind SR combat can be very deadly for those that try to just shoot it out head to head in the open. I'm talking about combat here but the consideration of dice pools is important in all areas: magical threats and wards, matrix hosts, negotiations, etc.

SR rules can be a pain in that sometimes they are difficult to track down in the books. My recommendation is that you agree with your players that you will make reasonable rulings if you don't know the exact rule (and it isn't super important) and move on quickly while playing. Later you can track down the rules to find out for next time. Otherwise you can really get bogged down.

Example (This happened to me the other day):

Your player has Vision Magnification in his cybereye and wants to know how that affects shooting his rfile:
So you look up under cybereyes SR p453 and it says
"Vision magnification: An implanted version of thevision magnification enhancement (p. 444)."
So you go to p444 and it says
"This zoom function digitally magnifies vision by up to fifty times, allowing distant targets to be seen clearly. For rules on using vision magnification in ranged combat, see p. 177."
So you go to p177 and there is nothing there.. because its really on p178. :)
So you go to p178 and it says
"Making faraway targets look closer (and bigger) makes it easier to use the old “aim small, miss small” mantra your sniper school instructor whispered in your ear. Image Magnification reduces Range modifiers when used properly. In order to use an image magnification system the attacker needs to use the Take Aim action to gain the benefit of the system. This includes both accessories, such as scopes, as well as cybereye enhancements.

Great.. so all that and you still don't know what the rule is.. How much does it "reduce Range modifiers"?
So I just ruled in the moment that it reduced the range category by 1 level..
Later we found the actual rules and it turns out that is actually what it does.
Now I can't find where it was. :)
But don't let this stuff bog down your game or as a new GM you will spend all your time look stuff up in the books.
However.. there are some good "cheat sheets" that others have made that can really help, especially for magic and decking.

Redwulfe:
Another thing you may wish to consider is to place a range ban on your characters so they are all in the same range. If you have one character that is in the 12-14 band and another in the 18-22 it could be hard on you to build the encounter so that the threats are not over powering the 12-14 character.

This of course this may not matter if it is your hacker as threats to them are usually only threats to them.

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