[All4BigGuns]

I say this from personal experience as a player. A TPK, now and then, can be a good learning experience, especially when you didn't know there was a lesson you needed to learn. Now, should every encounter be trying to wipe the players out? Of course not. But every once in a while, you have to throw a fastball in on their hands to keep them honest.

Whereas I feel that if a TPK occurs while I'm running, that I have failed as a GM.

[Mirikon]

I say this from personal experience as a player. A TPK, now and then, can be a good learning experience, especially when you didn't know there was a lesson you needed to learn. Now, should every encounter be trying to wipe the players out? Of course not. But every once in a while, you have to throw a fastball in on their hands to keep them honest.

Whereas I feel that if a TPK occurs while I'm running, that I have failed as a GM.

Not so. Sometimes, the dice gods hate your players. Sometimes, they make really stupid decisions. Sometimes, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Now if you throw a Dire Tiger against a party of Level 1s because it came up on the random encounter chart, then yes, you fail as a DM. Throwing a tough encounter at the party that they need to be clever to overcome, or should to run like hell from? If it is something appropriate for the facility they're hitting, and they get wiped, that's just the way things go. Have them wake up in a 'secure facility' with an 'offer they can't refuse'.

[All4BigGuns]

I say this from personal experience as a player. A TPK, now and then, can be a good learning experience, especially when you didn't know there was a lesson you needed to learn. Now, should every encounter be trying to wipe the players out? Of course not. But every once in a while, you have to throw a fastball in on their hands to keep them honest.

Whereas I feel that if a TPK occurs while I'm running, that I have failed as a GM.

Not so. Sometimes, the dice gods hate your players. Sometimes, they make really stupid decisions. Sometimes, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Now if you throw a Dire Tiger against a party of Level 1s because it came up on the random encounter chart, then yes, you fail as a DM. Throwing a tough encounter at the party that they need to be clever to overcome, or should to run like hell from? If it is something appropriate for the facility they're hitting, and they get wiped, that's just the way things go. Have them wake up in a 'secure facility' with an 'offer they can't refuse'.

"Tough" is relative, and far too easy to go too far on. I'd rather err on the side of caution and end up going a bit too low than risk going overboard and ending up slaughtering them all. Better to end up things being a bit too easy than to cause them to end up wasting their time with making that character. (The "wake up in a secure facility" thing is just contrived, and can far too easily end up turning into railroading)

[dertechie]

I'm used to the groups I'm playing in having wildly differing optimization levels, and only sometimes realizing that.  We had everything from a straight-up powergamer to the classic bard, in the same group.  It was. . . interesting.  In such a group, its often easier to take a battlefield control or buff/debuff style build and optimize that than it is to get the other people to step up their game.

That said, all the pregens I'm building for my test session will have 2 IPs or a damn good reason not to.  I intend to show them the power of IPs the easy way rather than the hard way (and the jump from 1 IP Profession 4 goons to 3 IP Profession 5 goons seems rather steep).

[The_Gun_Nut]

There are some that will say that extra IP's hurt their game, that it breaks with what they think the world should be like, that the means to get them are too easy and therefore broken, and other things.  Most of your players are new to the game, as I understand it, so they may get that opinion if confronted with opponents with those extra IP's.  Here is something that should be asked of them should they acquire such an opinion:

If extra IP's are so broken, then why haven't you taken them to stay alive?

[RHat]

The rest of the party is a face, a sniper (who doesn't believe in 'ware or drugs and isn't an adept), and a troll street sam with a tank build. The sniper only kills one mook per turn, and so does the troll, since she either melees (complex action) or uses a bow (which is really devastating, but also a complex action). The face only kills a guy if he gets lucky. I encouraged the sam to get wired reflexes, but she didn't want to, which means the technomancer is the only one with more than one IP.

Yeah, I missed this post at first, but I have to agree with Mirikon:  The technomancer is not your problem.  Your players need to understand that in Shadowrun, power comes at a cost.  If you won't get multiple passes in any method at all, you're just boned.  That's just how the world is.

Of course, for the sake of character development...  Throw some weak multi-pass enemies at them - even just gangers who are all on combat drugs would do.  They should probably lose that fight because of the fact that they just don't have enough passes.  Demonstrate the failings of not having more passes.  If you want to make sure that losing won't carry too much risk of character death, than just change the goal of the encounter - maybe they have to stop the gangers from doing something specific (use an Extended Test with a Complex Action interval, perhaps).

Extra IPs, at least in your specialty (social stuff aside) is something of a must-have; this isn't overpowered due to the simple fact that this is how it's supposed to be.

[Decade Rider]

Things like street sam and anything that supposed to be a combat monkey "should" have more then one init pass..as would a combat mage..however stuff like the face or rigger, hacker can do with only 1 in the meet world..sure more pass would help for those random encounters but not everyone wants to take rank two wired reflex or improved reflex for all ther characters. I mean I dunno if what you guys throw at your playes but im just looking the Seasons Missions sets and theres no encounter that iv been in that requires every to have 3 init pass..also remind you players about Cram..its a nice way to get an extra IP even if there not combat monster for those do or die situations

[RHat]

Noone's saying everyone should have 2 or 3 passes all the time.  But for combat characters it is not optional to have multiple combat passes - and none of the OP's players took multiple passes, not even the combat characters.

[The_Gun_Nut]

I have made mention of this elsewhere, but this is a good place to reiterate it:

Technology uplifts those who utilize it, and subjugates those who ignore it.

Ignore it at your peril.

[Mirikon]

Technology uplifts those who utilize it, and subjugates those who ignore it.

Ignore it at your peril.

AMEN! And you don't have to have a top of the line 'link frozen solid with Black IC, either. Just having some basic encryption and IC that simply alerts you to the presence of intruders is enough to deter most hacking attempts, or making it difficult enough that they can't hack in during the span of combat.

[Critias]

But for combat characters it is not optional to have multiple combat passes - and none of the OP's players took multiple passes, not even the combat characters.

Except that, in fairness, right there in the core book we offer up stuff like the Weapons Specialist, that kind of tells people otherwise (or at least heavily implies otherwise).  It sounds to me like this dude's campaign is built at the archetype level (including some of the stinkers in there), is all.  If it's working for him except for this one optimized dude, then...well...good for him.  I hope he reads over published adventures carefully before kicking up a fight they don't have much chance of winning, but otherwise it sounds like that lower level is working out for 'em okay.

It all comes down to the threat level the GM wants to run at, and the game world the GM wants to present.

[Elektrycerze3]

When I first asked my group if they wanted to try out SR, a friend of mine exclaimed: "Dude, it's fraggin' CYBERPUNK! I'll love it even if I have to play a noodle vendor!"

If they are enjoying the game... why bother? Slightly nudge them in the right direction from time to time, but don't spoil the fun with "oh noes! You are doing it wrong!" stuff.

And The Red Samurai definitely don't qualify as a slight nudge. Look up Jazz in the book - Lone Star cops use it when they encounter runners and the dispenser looks cool. A fight with a bunch of Jazzed up rent-a-cops might change the perspective ("how come these fat-bags shoot us twice in a round?"), but it won't make them suffer.

As for the TM - well, he is having fun, right? As long as he contributes and doesn't steal the spotlight - let him do what he likes. Or maybe he just doesn't understand his own capabilities: you can always simply ask the player why he isn't hacking all that scenery.

[Lemdul81]

Not sure how much of an option this is but check out strong encryption pg66 Unwired.  Pretty sure that would stop combat hacking for any device it is on.

[RHat]

Not sure how much of an option this is but check out strong encryption pg66 Unwired.  Pretty sure that would stop combat hacking for any device it is on.

A: Requires massive setup

B: Cannot be used for signals encryption, so certain vulnerabilities (including to Spoof, generally the bread and butter of combat hacking) remain.

[Lemdul81]

Okay, I was under the impression that you could not get the matrix id of a node that was encrypted so wouldn't be able to send spoof commands from it.  Guess I am gonna have to brush up on the matrix rules a bit more.