Make some NPC snipers first. You may learn something that will help you audit his character. And if not you'll have a bunch of counter-snipers all lined up and ready to go.

Sniping is very deadly.

So, why don't snipers kill more people in real life?

Because, as soon as they shoot, everyone goes to ground and fires at the place they were hiding, assuming they were spotted. Even if they get someone, they are not guaranteed a kill and have a high chance of being taken out themselves, especially if they stick around for shot number 2.

Quote from: Kaldric;4921213. He's not cheating, and there are no errors. "Well, I guess by the rules, sniping is just that super-effective, so much so it's ruining the game for everyone who isn't a sniper. I'll take suggestions on rules/playstyle modifications for leveling the playing field. What do you guys think is fair?"

Anything he can do, you can do too. He's far far from the only sniper-for-hire in the game world, and the security services have had over a hundred and fifty years to develop their anti-sniper tactics.

First, though, ice an NPC friendly to the party. Just so they know the game world means business.

Without actually knowing for sure there's a problem (more than "it kinda seems off"), I wouldn't do anything except keep my eyes open and ask the players what they thought of the scene/situation.  If they're cool with it, shoot them with an NPC sniper and see if they're still cool with it. If they are, then no problem, just keep playing. If you find a problem, then do something to fix it.

Quote from: Ladybird;492218Anything he can do, you can do too. He's far far from the only sniper-for-hire in the game world, and the security services have had over a hundred and fifty years to develop their anti-sniper tactics.

First, though, ice an NPC friendly to the party. Just so they know the game world means business.

I was kind of assuming that in the third situation, there was actually a problem with the rules - as in, they'd been written by a sniper fanboy type.

Part of the general feel I've gotten with sniper rules in various games is that they sometimes they try to be realistic with sniper rules, while going for "cinematic" handgun rules, melee rules, etc.

In real life, a sniper kills you with one shot. In real life, so does the guy with a .45 from 10 yards away.

They tend to try to keep the first, and complicate the second - which makes sniping much more effective in comparison.

Quote from: Serious Paul;492023Shadowrun 4 has some funny loop holes in the rules that don't come up often, but can ridiculous when they do.

Such as?

RPGPundit

Not sure how familiar you are with SR4, so forgive me if I over simplify.

Well basically Shadowrun 4 uses a dice pool approach to it's system. So you get a pool based on (Usually) a skill and an ability score plus or minus modifiers and all of the target numbers are the same (5 and above counts as success.) There are some tasks that have a threshold that requires you to score a certain amount of successes.

By Rules as Written it's well with in the realm of possibility to generate a character who can throw 26 dice down on a given task, usually before modifiers. (Although a clever player can try and cherry pick a scenario to get the maximum benefits here and there.) A lot of players tend to invest this solely in combat skills, but it is possible to do it with social, magic, or technical skills. Add to this, that certain character types when hotsimmed-basically operating in a virtual relaity environment (In most cases used by Hackers, although a lot of use is seen by Riggers-people who operate drones, and vehicles in most combat scenarios)-can end up with twice as many, even three times as many actions as the rest of the group.

Combined with poorly written rules and confusing rules; and a confusing organization (A lot of see page X, and when you get to page X it refers you back to page Y or another book completely with out a page number to help speed it along) it can be both mathematically difficult to keep track of, and leads to some frustration on the part of the other players who sometimes feel like why bother getting shot or doing anything when the rigger can just wipe the floor with the opposition.

There's a lot more-the guys who built SR4 hate magic, and love anime (Yes, a generalization.) so they tried really hard to squash magic in this edition and encourage anime, manga and furry character concepts. This in itself might not be a problem at every table-obviously your mileage will vary; but don't need them to pick what concepts we need to play or not play; the game has some gaps in how it deals with some weapons and ammunition types.

The setting is powerful enough for us to wade through it all, and still have fun. We've been tightening up our game trying to be a little more conscious of the rules we tend to miss.

Oh god, you poor bastard, you aren't actually letting people use stuff from Unwired, are you?

That way madness lies.

I'm actually pretty lucky. My players are pretty cooperative, and they collaborate with me pretty well. Over all we do a good job of keeping the absurd stuff at bay.

Glad to hear it. Shadowrun 4e is one game that my group will no longer play, despite it also being the mechanical basis for one of our best campaigns (the one where I played my own grandson).

The dice pools just got too insane and too slow, and the house rules we initially tried to make cover more useful weren't adequate to the task.

I was under the impression that 4e was an improvement over previous editions.  But then, I've never liked the system for any Shadowrun, it was always the big barrier to playing the game for me.

RPGPundit

Improvement? Meh-really it's the same game just sort of turned side ways. There's a few places where they improved, but really it's no btter or worse than previous editions in my book.

Quote from: Serious Paul;493085Improvement? Meh-really it's the same game just sort of turned side ways. There's a few places where they improved, but really it's no btter or worse than previous editions in my book.

So you're saying all SR sucks, then?

RPGPundit

The crunch? I might cosign that. The setting? No-the setting is awesome for us. But for me it's an example of how even a game that at times is written like crap can still be fun for the right people.

For me in all the editions it's never been the rules that sold me-I could run Shadowrun in any mechanical system out there. It's rules are neither ground breaking or unique. It's the setting that makes the game for me.

Quote from: Serious Paul;491964I appreciate every suggestion I get. Tonight was kind of a perfect storm of situational stuff-great terrain combined with superior positioning, an unaware target and an incredibly high die pool. Add in superior tactics on their part and they got the results they deserved but I just felt like I missed some opportunities to balance it properly.

So...They worked hard for a victory and had an awesome time.

I'm not seeing the flaw here.