Heat & Hunted

Most of the time, shadowrunners operate free of risk of reprisals from their targets after a mission is done. A number of factors combine to shield them. By far the largest is that the injured party is usually a corp, and there’s no profit in revenge. 21st century forensics is sophisticated - but the jurisdictional nightmares of extraterritoriality plus law enforcement fracturing into a mishmash of privatised services that hate each other mean blunts that risk.

Still, if a run goes seriously sideways, it is possible that there may be repercussions. If the team attracts significant attention, they’ll find their usual contacts less willing to deal with them than usual. Nobody wants to be near someone who’s at risk of getting scooped up by the feds or a corp strike team. This is tracked using a mechanic called Heat.

An even worse scenario is if the team torques off someone with the means to track them through the shadows. If they make it personal with someone, and that person has enough of an idea of who they are, then they might become Hunted.

Note that Heat and Hunted generally (but not always) apply to the team as a whole rather than individual members.

Heat

As a general rule, Heat will only come about when the story demands it, and will have been clearly (and explicitly) foreshadowed. Most shadowrun targets won’t waste time in zero-sum reprisals against the team that hit them; the exceptions that will take it personally usually don’t have the resources to make a shadowrunner’s life difficult.

Still, whoever you left feeling aggreived might rattle some cages and put out the word on the street that they’re out for your blood (even if it is a bluff). In return, some of your usual contacts might refuse to deal with you until the heat blows over, for fear of becoming collateral damage.

Heat is represented by a die type (d4-d12) that opposes any roll you make during Downtime. This models that every part of your illegal existence gets that little bit harder when you’re second-guessing which of your contacts might sell you out for two grand and a Stuffer Shack burrito.

• d4 for a large and powerful street gang, organised crime lieutenants, a single policlub branch, or any other organisation with fewer than two dozen people to call on.
• d6 for local city-wide police, a gang with multiple chapters in one country
• d8 for a Mafia capo, an A-grade corp, the feds, a gang with international chapters
• d12 for a large chunk (think global division) of an AAA megacorp, if you somehow mess up that bad (don’t mess up that bad.)

On any Downtime action where the Heat die beats you, the action is nullified - whatever you attempted didn’t work out (a contact didn’t come through, you were unable to get supplies, someone tried to rat you out and you had to walk away, etc.) There are no other ill-effects though.

If you roll a critical fail, expect to either “upgrade” to Hunted or for there to be consequences during the next mission! Probably at a really inconvenient time too.

Heat can be reduced or removed by using the Lie Low Downtime action.

Hunted

Hunted is like Heat, but now it’s personal. You haven’t vaguely annoyed some organisation bigger than you this time, like a mosquito buzzing around a cow. Hunted is when you stung a lion, and now the lion is pissed, and also some corp mad scientist grafted a flamethrower onto it for some reason.

Hunted has the same dice tiers as Heat, based on the resources that your hunter can muster up, but now it also adds a Wild Die.

If you fail an opposed roll during Downtime, you’re probably going to be found. If you get a critical fail, you’re probably going to walk into an ambush, unless I can think of something worse / more devious.

Hunted can be reduced or removed by using the Lie Low Downtime action.

Like Heat, Hunted should only ever arise as a result of clear and direct story action where you enrage a powerful NPC who knows exactly who you are. If I spring it on you out of nowhere then I’m being a crummy GM.