[lawndart]

Hello All,
  I'm starting up a new SR5 (Street Level) game soon and I have just started wrapping my head around the combat balance. I have an embarrassingly large amount of experience with SR2 and SR3 which is absolutely useless in this case it seems. For example, one of my folks is making an Ork Melee Adept, and I think he's being pretty middle of the road about it. He has about 12 dice for defense (6 REA + 5 INT + 1 Combat Sense) and 23 for Soak (7 Body + 12 Armor + 2 Helmet + 2 Bear Mentor). I'm looking at what kind of attacks will actually injure him, and not coming up with much. Looking at the Archetypes (I know they are more guidelines than legit builds) he's not out of control in any way I can find, so what kind of combined force do you folks use? Pretty much pure magic against folks like him? All the FA?


Lawndart

[RHat]

Small point:  If you're looking for the idea of a Street Level game, the Street Scum rules on page 354 are probably more in line with what you want - the Street Level stuff printed in the character creation chapter doesn't really do the job, as it fails to really impact Awakened in any real way.

Still, hurting that guy isn't actually that difficult.  It might take some stronger weapons to get to doing Physical damage (though, APDS is reasonably available, so maybe not), but Stun will still do a very nice job of shutting you down.  He might be able to soak about 8 damage semi-reliably (and indeed, it's clear he's partly built towards that so that he can actually close to melee range), but what that actually means is that his final damage from, say, a heavy pistol will be equal to the opponent's net hits in a typical case.

As for the archetypes:  They're not really even a guideline; mostly, they're a lower bound.

[Michael Chandra]

Pff, I got more soak dice than that guy and I still got injured in Humanitarian Aid, thanks to having to jump in between the mages and the enemies. Let's say he takes a 9/-4 attack, that will do ~2.75 damage on average. If fire is focused on him, he WILL go down.

[Belker]

The classic answer to "How do I hit the meatspace tank?" is "Magic." While stunbolt isn't the WTFPWNZR level it was in SR4, it's still a potent weapon that can begin to impair and eventually take down an opponent.

Hitting him with Confusion or Chaotic World won't take him out of action but will impair his combat effectiveness.

Have multiple people engage him - remember that he loses a defense die for each subsequent attack. And if they need something potent to shoot him with, hunting rifles pack a wallop. So do grenades, particularly in enclosed spaces. Toss in some full-auto suppressive fire.

Make encounters that take place at range, and a melee-focused adept may have a long, hot trip to reach the target.

And just because this character may waltz through a combat encounter doesn't mean he's going to be able to accomplish the whole job on his own.

[Ryo]

Have multiple people engage him - remember that he loses a defense die for each subsequent attack. And if they need something potent to shoot him with, hunting rifles pack a wallop. So do grenades, particularly in enclosed spaces. Toss in some full-auto suppressive fire.

A word of warning about grenades: Don't use them unless absolutely called for, as they completely ignore the target's defense roll. Throwing a grenade is a success test with a threshold of 3, and they are amazingly lethal, especially in encloses spaces. If you bring explosives into the mix without advanced warning that they're going up against people who have grenades, you'll just piss your players off because they'll feel like you cheated them, and you may very well encounter a total party wipe as you blow them all to hell with amazing ease.

[lawndart]

Small point:  If you're looking for the idea of a Street Level game, the Street Scum rules on page 354 are probably more in line with what you want - the Street Level stuff printed in the character creation chapter doesn't really do the job, as it fails to really impact Awakened in any real way.

Thanks for that RHat, we are switching over to that option (so maybe I should finish reading the book then).

Thanks everyone else too for the advice, I'd rather not unexpectedly TPK so I'll save explosives for later...

[Michael Chandra]

With enclosed space, you definitely want to make the walls weak, so that the blast tears right through them and doesn't chunky-salsa-rebound. Only load-bearing walls of solid buildings should rebound.

[Csjarrat]

I love fucking with high damage soakers by not playing to their game. Have security drones that are loaded with mini grenades putting out pepper-punch or CS gas. or a Pain inducer to make him run away to break the beam etc.
it skews the team's experience if you have to bring an assault cannon to the party just to challenge the combat char so like to bring out the weird and wonderful stuff.

[baronspam]

I love fucking with high damage soakers by not playing to their game. Have security drones that are loaded with mini grenades putting out pepper-punch or CS gas. or a Pain inducer to make him run away to break the beam etc.
it skews the team's experience if you have to bring an assault cannon to the party just to challenge the combat char so like to bring out the weird and wonderful stuff.

I agree with this, to a point.  If a player has put alot of character resources into something, like being tough, be sure to let them be tough a good deal of the time.  Its something the player finds fun.  But when its a "serious' combat, your suggestions are spot on: chemical attacks, direct spells, injection darts, pain inducer, etc.  Also, it shouldn't happen all the time, but once in a while there is nothing wrong with some heavy weapons pointing in the character's direction.  Keeps them honest.

[Frankie the Fomori]

While playing a Human damage soak in 5E the GM used simple spirits to really sow confusion on our battle field.

Example: fear on my tank while moving up narrow hallway... The team was huddled behind me while I had shield out inching my way up...fear and I turned around and started running as fast as I could in opposit direction....poor team mber (decker) was crushed for some ballistic shield stun, then it got worse for them as there decker tuned on the riot shield stun damage..... Have yet to being shield along on any other runs lol

Next time I got hit with influence and was smartly told My team members where in danger and I should tackle them to protect them.... This has led to more confusion and unfortunately a growing phobia against spirits..... As of this time I do believe my street tough would cower watching ghostbusters    

[Michael Chandra]

You might want to consider Full Defense, I succesfully used that against Fear in Humanitarian Aid. Of course I also have a Willpower of 5 on my Street Sam.