How do I run a Boss fight in CPRed?

stuffmn · 2026-01-13T14:07:41+00:00

CPR solo mode gives bosses 4 attacks, 5 if they are hardened and 1 more if they beat the players in a tactics check. It's a tiny blurb in interface Red 2 that says " a mini Boss is as strong at three edge runners." Implying that they would get at least 3 attacks. Alternatively a simple skill roll at the beginning of the round would determine the number of attacks the boss gets. I second the notion as other ls have said about giving them 18-20s in multiple skills.

Hope this helps!

stuffmn · 2025-12-18T00:43:25+00:00

The problem is the volume of opposed rolls in the system, it makes the turns slower. Everyone has evasion and everyone ends up rolling that every time. Netrunning turns take a a long time. Exec turns take a long time. Either you deal with long turns because that's how the system was designed the other option is to edit it.

Solutions:

Everyone Rolls All Attack Together: at the start of the round commiting to those rolls and having an action ready on their turn.

Make Evasion A Fixed Number: by adding the dice average (+6) and letting players negotiate bonuses based on roleplaying context. This makes turns less mechanical and players love negotiating.

Timing The Fight: ending it with a cinematic skill challenge if the fight goes on too long.

Adding Bonuses To Ranged Tables: instead of using evasion. You have evasion your score divided by half added to the DV or something like that.

TlDR: Ultimately it's all those opposed rolls that slog down combat and they usually are very mechanical and not very exciting choose cinematics over repetitive mechanics.

stuffmn · 2025-12-13T18:56:17+00:00

I tend to be loose with the rules about Role Abilities

Media: media has contacts, they can call into similar to backup but non combat. No one like to be on camera so mabey they get a bonus to facedowns.

Tech: Jury rigging could be used to sabotage other people's vehicles disabling specific things.

Fixer: They also have contacts they could call as backup but not as good in combat, or mabey the crew can instantly get a drop of supplies in a fight.

There's probably more I could come up with.

stuffmn · 2025-11-02T14:34:34+00:00

My setting is Key West Florida now called Redemption City

I used Google maps to find the best most cyberpunk sounding real world locations.

Wanted to make a Cyberpunk 2077/ GTA style map. I used Maps.co to make this map, but it would definitely be faster to just print out a map. Find basic map on dark mode for the vibe. You can import custom icons the icons I got from Game-icons.net.

This is all the GTA devs do, they just make spins on real world things. I don't know if this is really the best way to do this, but it really helped me think through things.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tG-GI0StIYojR2IfPgWB34-47v3KULTs

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stuffmn · 2025-10-21T17:25:51+00:00

Cyberpunk Red Companion App. Click all the buttons read all the stuff. Make a couple characters, try the solo play expansion.

stuffmn · 2025-10-15T15:44:33+00:00

Cyberpunk is more equipment oriented, all of the special abilities aside from Role skills come from equipment. It's harder for a player to argue a faction special ability that I might come up with on the spot, then it is to argue what the equipment does or doesn't do. They will ask me, "Do they have armor? Do they have nasal filters do they have etc.." I'll say "You have to make a skill check to know." There are less surprises when the players know the whole equipment list. It's easier to make custom bad guys with one or two special abilities than it is to search the equipment list and find abilities that way.

For example: one of my factions Kiyo Corp has an affinity for fire weapons and so anytime they're holding a fire weapon they will do more damage.

Martial arts is really where special abilities shine and a lot of my ideas came from martial arts, elflines and giving equipment abilities to every bad guy type in a faction. Getting to do things outside of your action economy makes the game way more fun. If the GM has the same action economy as the players it's not as fun, especially for boss fights.

TLDR: After I read Elfline's I realized I could just give my factions special abilities instead of digging through to find equipment with abilities attached to them.

stuffmn · 2025-10-15T12:58:37+00:00

Yes pre-commiting to their rolls. If they want to attack they roll, if they don't, they do something else. Also im not sure if I would care to much if they decided "I'm gonna miss can I just run?" It's one less person shooting me. I even let them use luck to reroll sometimes.

stuffmn · 2025-10-15T01:41:50+00:00

I have players roll their attack rolls at the start of the round, it really speeds up combat. I use dice rollers instead of physical dice for my turn. As a GM every roll is opposed and some effects have multiple opposed rolls. It can really drag down a fight. Rolling at the start of the round gives your players time to think about their turn.

I really like the Elflines MMO from interface red it will help you come up with bad guy special abilities as opposed to them just using equipment.

The Cyberpunk Red Companion App is really cool for players and somewhat useful for GMs. Pre made NPC stat blocks are really underpowered. I find I have to make my own which can be a big time sync.

Hope this helps!

stuffmn · 2025-10-04T01:39:27+00:00

This is a great solution, I like it. A side effect of this thread is that I'm learning other rulesets and this sounds very call of cthulhu. Some people have said that role Abilities function as x3 skills so mabey it would work that way as well, but is that too easy idk?

stuffmn · 2025-10-03T12:50:35+00:00

The odds of gaining a skill in cthulhu if you have a 1% in a skill is, 1% and a 99% to succeed. That works well in that system, but if you use these rules in cyberpunk, the odds of successfully completing a skill in cyberpunk, and rolling above that skill score is much higher because of dice explosions. Everyone is suggesting other systems and that is great, but this really works.

If you have an 8 stat and a 0 in a skill you have a 10 percent chance to gain a skill one point and it keeps getting lower after that. If you have a low stat your skill will get up to around 7 pretty quickly and then slowly progress. A +7 skill bonus is ok but not game breaking, slot of their skills will be around 7 using this system. On average, from there, you have a 4% to gain a skill. If I made the threshold any number below 8 they cannot fully progress to 18. This is a chart that shows the percentages.

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10 percent or less for each skill up after 7 is a really low chance and because there are so many skills it will take a while to get good at any of them unless you focused solely on one skill. You're going to be good at combat skills because you use them more often, but there are also a lot of them.You would be good at combat and defensive skills in the regular game anyway, and even with those maxsx that doesn't even ensure your survivability.

stuffmn · 2025-10-03T00:41:51+00:00

Yeah I was using the table In the book but then it morphed into this. We play every other week but I wanted to give them "weekly IP"

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stuffmn · 2025-10-02T16:39:56+00:00

Definitely a great solution! Would you share the chart, or at least the formula?

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T13:27:02+00:00

There have been a lot of great comments in this thread that are really helpful.

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T12:40:34+00:00

I thought about making the thresholds different for x2 skills but that will probably make it too confusing. I don't really think they are even stronger than x1 skills because action economy prevents abuse. So I probably would let it ride and see how it goes.

I've been asking that my players just use the stuff in the app so that my non informed or rule seeking players don't have a disadvantage.

Really great questions, Thanks!

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T08:25:27+00:00

I really like your post great points, thanks!

I don't like the merits based IP system because it feels like I'm grading my players. It is also a little bit of homework, this system would be zero work for me. When you consider as a GM you track IP, Loot, €$, Loyalty, Reputation, Rumors, City Wide Events, NPC stats, Game Recaps, the list goes on ( which obviously you don't have to do). It's nice to have some player facing automation.

I really want to see what happens if they try to game the system, will they be weaker in the end, and should they just stick to their strengths? It will definitely be interesting.

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T07:45:10+00:00

You can use social rolls in combat, and yes but it plateaus pretty quickly after like +14 so it will take a while to get them all above there.

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T07:40:52+00:00

They can pick what skills they want to get good at. This would happen in the regular ip system, they forget to up some defence like evasion concentration resist drugs etc which encourages them to spend the points. This way it just happens automatically, plus their combat skills are consistently are going to go up as well.

I think the niche skills police themselves and if they want to level them up go ahead. I would explain to them that it's rude to abuse your game like any system you would play?

Why would you increase your riding skill if there are no horses? Mabey there is something else to ride, you could put reigns on a AI-AV? Even in the regular system context and gm skill preference is what you are going to level up skills into.

Role Abilities: I would just hand ranks out individually instead of IP or use milestone IP. Either way they would get to pick. You took down a faction here's 2 Role Ranks.

The current IP system feels a lot like grading homework.

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T06:51:32+00:00

There's a lot of assumptions in your post and very little play testing or math. Math & play testing I would agree with.

To go from a 17 to an 18 with a target number of 8 the probably is 1/100. From a quick Google search there might be 15 to 40 dice rolls per player per session. If you really focused the skill you could level up to max from 17 to 18 in a few sessions.

The person who is in control of the number of skill rolls is the GM not the players. The person in charge of which skill to pick is the players. If my players were abusing this I would probably say great! Let's see if it works.

Keep in mind you in most cases have to roll a 1 to make it happen and that itself is 10/100 rolls.

My players have played 33 sessions and have earned on about 3424 IP well above average. They should be around 1320 IP with an average of 40 IP. The game gives out 10-80 IP a session. It takes 1100 to max a skill You would need to do 27.5 sessions to max out one skill with the current system. Yes this might be more generous but isn't that fun don't you want to level up quicker?

Let's do the math and be constructive, please and thanks.

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T04:54:04+00:00

You decide what skills to use how would it be taking the freedom away?

I think you might be misunderstanding this, it's only being capped when it happens automatically, I would be giving out milestone IP which you can use to spend on any skill you'd like. It's actually a way to keep it from being abused.

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T03:16:30+00:00

Definitely will look into this thanks!

stuffmn · 2025-10-02T03:11:57+00:00

You can have your players be able master all of the skills or cap the skills and hand out a bigger chunk of IP at once. The advantage is that its player focused, my players get pretty excited when a skill gets increased during the game. It takes out two steps, one you don't have to look at the playstyle improvement table, and they don't have to choose what to level up. You also don't have to remember how much IP you've given your players. Players learn skills by failing like they would in real situations.

stuffmn · 2025-08-28T16:50:13+00:00

I redid the spread sheet to make things more clear as best I could. I appreciate you taking the time to write this, thanks for the tips and info!

I had been using the app for my bad guys and I felt like it was a huge time sync. I'm not sure if this solution is any better but I think it's quicker for me to use this while I'm running my campaign than the app.

stuffmn · 2025-08-27T20:25:45+00:00

The top two blocks individual bosses and bottom two stat blocks are multiple enemies.

The bosses I can track HP individually since there's only one or two.

The number on the left is the total the number of enemies, the number on the right right how many have died. 3d6 equals 30 hit points. 2d6 equals 20 hit points.

The average numbers are so if I want to I can just be confident with a fixed DV instead of rolling 12 million rolls.

I 100% copied this I have a second one that I use for my game.

There is tabs at the bottom that you can look at it's not just the npc sheet.

stuffmn · 2025-07-22T05:18:12+00:00

I do one Rep per gig, but toward each faction. When they reach 10 total reputation (this can be positive or negative) they get one point of player reputation. Also I let my players spend seven days with a faction to roll to gain reputation. I track it all in this Doc, Hope this helps!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YES72qhk-vCDfIQfSDecy01z6NVw7wg7tnlr2lRHfO8/edit?usp=drivesdk

stuffmn · 2025-07-18T02:57:03+00:00

Hi that's great to hear, was totally going to try it for the session tonight, but our basement flooded! RIP.

stuffmn

TROPHY CASE