spycraft with more then three people

[Piratecat]

Not a bad idea. Hey, what do you think of this team lineup for 3rd lvl PCs?

1 - D-0 (home office) wheelman, with all her gadget points dumped into her souped-up police car.

2 - D-3 (computer espionage) snoop, with beefed up Computers and Electronics and most of his gadget points dumped into a portable Cray attache' laptop (+5!).

3 - D-2 (military ops) soldier, bitter and cynical with lots of shooting feats.

D-1 (power brokerage) faceman, a filthy rich ex-diplomat and businessman who's the friendliest guy you'd ever want to meet.

I'm going to add one more PC as team leader - probably a Home Office Point Man. Do I have any glaring skill holes?

The plot should be fun, a little genetics problem that has to be sorted out. It will be perfectly safe and for for all of them. Ahem.

 

[Baron Von StarBlade]

Why not just go the Nick Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D. route?

Well I don't really have a problem using a SHIELDesque group, but I just loved the idea of a Global Organization made up of the best of the best (ie Delta Force, British SAS, Russian Spetnaz, etc.). I'm not sure if you've read Rainbow Six, but the premise of the organization was to have an anti-terrorist Task force that could be utilized by all Nato countries. Therefore if France had a hostage situation, then Rainbow Six would go in, dressed up like French Special Forces and deal with it. Pretty cool stuff.

 

[spatulalad]

My group is 5 players. Fixer, Sleuth, Snoop, Soldier, and Wheelman. So far, its been great fun, and nobody (to my knowledge) has felt left out of the action. And this is counting a few moments where one of them separated from the group to do his own investigation elsewhere.

I've gotten very good at cross-cutting between each agent and giving them all a little spotlight time. Its especially neat when you can cut right at a suspenseful moment; the other players get into the thriller aspect of the game, wondering what will befall each other's characters.

Things tend to get a little goofy with combat, though. Most people's cinematic gunbattle models feature one or two characters fighting together, not half a dozen. Therefore, especially in close-quarters, things get more chaotic, confused and there's a lot of agents nearly shooting each other. I've had them shoot up through the floor they KNEW a fellow agent was standing on and then the same agent turning around and shooting through a smoke grenade cloud, also knowing there was an agent on the other side.

Chases can also be a little hard, as typically you have one agent driving (Wheelman) and the others trying to find ways to contribute. This means a LOT of shooting at the bad guy's cars, which makes sense in some ways, but with four guns blazing away out of the windows, sunroof, and back, it also can lead to very, very short chases.

No easy solutions for this, and I do agree that smaller groups work better for this sort of game. My best advice is as above: Give everybody something to do, and give them all spotlight time.