If the sammy never fires a shot, the rigger should never lose a drone.

As to the OP, I think your problem is that you define the Rigger as being able to do anything and everything at any and all times. Rigger does not equal jack-of-all-trades. A rigger needs to specialize just like any other archetype does. A sammy doesn't use pistols, rifles, blades, clubs, and assault weapons while planning on being an infiltrator and face. A sammy specializes in one or two weapon types and maybe one side ability.

Sure, a mage doesn't -need- foci and summoning materials, but they help. A rigger doesn't need a dozen drones, but they help. And a sammy that looses their reflexes is likely in even more trouble than a rigger that loses a single drone.

Also, I'm not sure how Riggers are the most demanding class in stats, they don't really need str, bod, or cha. They don't get dumpshock that often, so willpower isn't that nessicary. Don't remember if they need Agi or not to be able to fire weapons through their drones... seems odd that they would, who cares how agile their meat body is? The main ones they need are reaction for piloting, and logic for mechanic type skills, everything else is of limited importance.

I have a request of you. Would you mind throwing us a character sheet of a Rigger for you? Point out why you have what you have, and where you desperately need more points so that you can function properly. I'll do the same, and see what I come up with, though it'll take a while as I've not done a rigger before, just a bit of dabbling as a hacker (Usually some spy drones only)

Silly me ... I looked for that information under "Jumping In" not "Hacking and Spoofing." Thanks!

It's not that you can't do it, it's that it requires almost all your BP to do it. You compare that to the required BP for other archetypes to fill their roles and it's stupidly expensive in comparison. With the exception of jumping into drones and vehicles, the drone pool isn't an advantage since any character can now utilize it. There's nothing preventing a sammy from getting a pair of doberman's that have standing orders to follow and defend the sammy. Best part is that sammy can even entirely shut down their wireless link. So he doesn't even have to worry about a hacker. So not only can other archetypes utilize drones, they can use them more effectively since they will more frequently have LoS to their drones and thus mitigate most of the issue with the drone being hijacked. Any character that goes in on the meat can have drones with him to supplement him in combat or otherwise. There's no innate benefit to an armchair rigger aside from the withdrawal from combat, and that benefit comes at the price of his drones now being far easier to crack than anyone who goes in with their drones.

A drone rigger is an extension of the vehicle rigger. The skills necessary to operate drones essentially make the character the most adept at driving vehicles. The trick is that once you jump in to a drone you substitute its pilot and autosoft with YOUR skill ratings. That further pushes home the whole fact that the skill versatility of a drone armada is nothing unique to a rigger since anyone can have drones with any activesoft. If I jump into my demo drone and I don't have the demolitions skill, I'm wasting time. The drone is far more capable of doing demolitions than the rigger.

What it boils down to is that you're either a PC that requires and is dependent on another character and can be three dimensional, or you're not dependent on another character to function properly and you're two dimensional. The drone rigger is a stupidly tight build. There's not a lot of wiggle-room for the build. That is unless you are blatantly min-maxing by putting any attribute you won't use at 1, in which case you deserve to be slapped upside the head. Using blatant min-maxing I sit at about 356BP including 50BP on resources. That's just attributes, skills, and resources. If I put each of those min-maxed stats at 2, that's 396BP. That leaves you possibly 39BP to use on contacts, edge, and positive qualities IF you take the full 35 worth of negative BP.

A new drone rigger under the standard 400BP system cries out "You have to min-max me!" and that is what bothers me. I just now realize that describes exactly how I feel about Drone Riggers. You don't choose to min-max drone riggers, you have to min-max drone riggers.

Well, give me some time and see what I can come up with. You say that any archetype can get drones and use them... then why is it that a drone rigger magically requires an extra 100 BP or so to pull off the same thing? Like I said, give me some time, quite likely tomorrow.

I don't know... have you tried building a good hacker recently? I don't know about you, but mine cost me 60 BP of Nuyen and I wasn't even close to being done yet. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Yeah.... you realize that you're pushing 60BP in resources, and a lot of the augmentations between a drone rigger and hacker will be similar? Add onto that the number of activesofts and pilots a rigger has to buy (hopefully just 1 pilot agent for each class of drone). On top of that the Rigger probably needs a vehicle to haul those drones.

Yeah... you realize that riggers -don't- need a whole stack of high grade hacking software? Hackers need basically every one in the book, and in another book, if they want to be able to do what they are supposed to do. Each one that a Hacker needs that a rigger doesn't is 6,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) which is over a BP. That's about 8 programs, so a good 9 BP, just from the basic book. And what is so wrong with Hackers and Riggers having similar augmentation? I mean sammies all tend to have similar augmentation, mages that use augmentation tend to stick to a particular few, faces -really- tend to have the same augs.

Sure, Hackers and Riggers overlap some, but so do alot of other archetypes.

Edit: Oh, and you also don't need nearly as high grade of a commlink, and quite a number of other things.

AI style software is more expensive than the hacking software, and that's what Riggers require more of. There is nothing within the rules of SR4A that indicates a default pilot rating which means that each drone requires a pilot software. The pilot software is used in a lot of checks so it is the most valuable piece of software on the drone. Further, piloting software is specific to a type of drone. That means that each drone model requires you to purchase piloting software for it. Hopefully the GM allows you to buy the software once and than copy it to multiple drones of the same model.

The important drones should see a Pilot 4, Autosoft 4 for their primary role (max possible at character creation). That's an extra 14,000 on top of the cost of the drone, which is rarely below 2,000. If you go with a Pilot 3, Autosoft 3 for drones, it'll cost you 4,500 on top of the drone cost. You can also run multiple autosofts on one drone. Each hacking program you purchase, if you purchase them all at rating 6, is only 6,000. Can you purchase every possible hacking software at rating 6? Sure. Are you going to need every hacking software at 6? Probably not. Go with rating 3 on the uncommon to rare use hacking programs and it costs you 1/4 as much.

Hacking Programs have the same costs as autosofts, Rating x 500 for 1-3, Rating x 1000 for 4-6.

But drones already come with a pilot of 3. And an autosoft of 3 is 1500. Why even upgrade your drone's software and hardware at character creation?

Pretty Simple actually... throw a high rating jamming signal at the drone... if the drone/rigger cannot compensate, well, dumpshock is definitely a bitch... problem solved, log on/hack yourself some access...

A rigger should invest in the most powerful ECCM and Signal COuntermeasures that he can afford...

This is very true indeed...

Where does it say that? I didn't see anything in the rules that indicated that. As for why? You'll probably want your primary combat drone to function at a 4 autosoft instead of a 2 or 3 that comes stock.

Every drone/vehicle in the book lists its pilot along with what autosofts it comes with.

This is a very valid point here... I cannot tell you how often orur team has pitched in to augment/repair/replace the Rigger's inventory (Mine)... we generally used any number fo small drones, medium drones, and various vehicles that are rigged in any given scenario... hell, they are even used to augment our tactical network for more over-all coverage...

I think that you are asking too much of a starting character myself...

Fancy that, I managed to miss that little fact, mostly due to the info being embedded in a chart. However, since the pilot rating acts as a limit on the rating for the autosoft, you need a Pilot 4 for any drone on which you want to use a rating 4 autosoft. Chances are there will be one or two drones that you want that rating of autosoft.

--



Consider the counter of it. There is nothing -requiring- the rest of the team to pitch in to replace drones. If that is the situation you are in, how do you rectify it? You harden each and every drone to increase its survivability, and you certainly don't sacrifice them haphazardly. That directly increases the cost of the drone via all the modifications and time you have to put into it. What says a rigger need to have a bunch of disposable drones? Why not harden a smaller number to have survivability on par with PCs?

Why?

You are right, of course, that there is nothing that requires the other team members to assist in the replacement of lost drones... however, when this is the case, you should tend to not support those characters with drone support. they will eventually get the idea and begin to pitch in...

Also, your other reasoning is also sound... hardened drones are great, if you can keep them... ever had a Drone take 16 point of damage from a Power bolt? I have... it is kind of hard to harden them against everything out there, you WILL lose drones if you use them enough... A Drone is never as survivable as a character... That is the reason that you use drones when you have the opportunity... it is generally cheaper to replace a drone than it is a person...

Drones can be crazy expensive... this is no joke... but with judicious use, and the acquisition of drones on the fly when you have the opportunity to do so, you will do okay... and if your team actually pitches in, then you will have the best of both worlds...

Also a side note... most jurisdictions will almost totally ignore unarmed drones, while an armed drone draws all kinds of unwanted scrutiny... if you can use these unarmed drones for your legwork/surveillance you will not probably tend to lose very many, and if you can install concealed weapon mounts, you will be able to disguise your drones for greater survivability... only place a combat drone in harms way if the option of losing a character is unacceptable, as you will probably lose (or sustain a great deal of damage to) the drone in question...

I have played a rigger (more a communications specialist) for a while now and he rarely lost a drone, and never when it was unexpected... proper precautions and decent security on your network will eliminate most problems... and as a side note, I rarely purchased anything rated higher than a 3 for drone autosofts, and rarely, if ever, increased a Dron'e Pilot rating... if your augments to the drone are equal to or greater than the cost of the drone itself, you probably have a problem... as replacement has now become an obstacle...

For the record, I had 8 ground vehicles, 8 fly-spy drones, 2 Optic-x Drones, 1 plane, 1 boat, 4 crawler drones, 2 rotodrones with concealed weapons mounts, 4 Dragonfly anti-drone drones, 3 dragonfly anti-vehicle drones, 5 independant surveillance platform drones, and an uncounted number fo micro-sized camera drones for surveillance...

Yes, I lost one or two of these over the course of the campaign, and spent a great deal of monetary resources maintaining my drone fleet, but that is the price you pay for playing a character that is so extremely versatile...

Keep the Faith...

do you punish street samurai for not implanting their own 'ware into themselves, also? do they have to build their own guns? how about magicians? are you not a proper magician unless you produce all your own supplies from scratch, including personally gathering the materials, refinining them, etc? do your hackers take penalties for buying software instead of taking the several months required to code their own? do you punish them for buying patches for their cracked software instead of repairing their own? do all the characters in your game have to take up knitting and become a shepherd (and own a spinning wheel) to avoid being naked 24/7 since *gasp* we can't have them relying on anyone else for anything!

seriously, this is a bogus argument. no archetype is an island.

stealthsigma: with pilot 3, autosoft 3, the drone is already matching most security guards. throw in a smarlink, and it's got 8 dice. not amazing, but when you have half a dozen, it's quite respectable.

also, security drones are device rating 4. this negates the only substantial cost to upgrading to 4 anyways; otherwise, you just buy pirated software (or get open source for free). which means that for under 5k, you can have a passable throwaway (if required) combat drone. for under 10k, you can have a pretty respectable combat drone that hurts to throw away, but isn't crippling. and if you're losing 10 of those (to get the described 100k loss), well... let's just say that i'll be surprised if the samurai didn't just gain the "bullet in the brainpan" flaw while the hacker flops around chanting his new allegiance to aztechnology (all hail aztechnology!), and the magician is learning about negative modifiers to spellcasting caused by being lit on fire. heck, i'm not even sure what could possess you to *deploy* 10 of these things into a situation where you could use them... if that isn't overwhelming force, the run is already toast. people are going to be burning IDs and safehouses... let's just say that if you need 100k worth of these combat drones, then your rigger should be counting their blessings that they're even alive.

Nor should they have to be, but in the case of the Rigger someone rolled up the welcome mat and took the island out. Where the island used to be there's a small rock with gull shit on it. That doesn't preclude fun, or game-it just means we have to be a little more clever. And I'm all for clever.

Give or take. In Corporate Security, hardware was introduced that would allow deckers some measure of rigging ability, also, but you're almost entirely correct. This was a major divide, based on the differing protocols used by riggers and deckers, and based on the differing portions of the brain used to perform the tasks. I don't think this makes any more or any less sense than SR4's combination of the two; ultimately, both meta-explanations are just justifications of the desired rules.


Huh. It wasn't until just now I realized that there's almost no benefit to being a rigger when it comes to being jacked into a vehicle. I'd only tried making drone - which is to say, remote-controlled - riggers thus far in SR4, and hadn't considered how somewhat pathetic the SR4 vehicle rigger is. Am I missing something?


Yes, within the limits of the signals involved. And if the drone rigger is, for whatever reason, controlling his drones within range of a wireless mesh connected to the matrix, the decker doesn't even need to be physically near the drones. Of course, neither does the rigger, which is nice.


Yeah. This has always been true. Just as in SR3, magickers were karma-starved, riggers have always been cash-starved. There are various solutions, but you're right that it's a consideration.


Someone please explain to me how this could be considered "simplified" or "streamlined." Good lord. This is why we never allowed PC deckers in SR1-3.


In theory, the drone and rigger wouldn't have to be stationary; the drone and rigger [his vehicle, more likely] could just use directional antennae on a swivel mount with targeting autosofts pointed at each other. This would allow at least line-of-sight unhackable[ish] communications.


I remember the good old days, when I used my drones from kilometers away. In an RV. Submerged under a nearby lake. A little harder to do that, now, with the low signal ranges. [Waaah! Sorry.]

QF-effing-T. Just as no one today with mindbogglingly sensitive data and a criminal mentality would be foolish enough to transact their business on a wireless connection, no one in Shadowrun should be taking the same chance, unless there's an incredibly compelling reason to do so. C'mon, think TEMPEST.

Wireless computers should and would exist in Shadowrun, because their convenience outweighs the risks for the average person's average information, but penetration should be commercial, and not corporate, military, governmental, or criminal.

The Rigger reminds me of a Thief or Bard character in D&D. They are the skill monkey. And sure, They'll never cast Fireballs (without a lot of extra work) or take the punishment of a fighter, but some of us enjoy playing them. A bard is nearly worthless in a munchkin type way, and a thief can do most of the same stuff. but It's fun to play a bard sometimes.

I have a Rigger right now, he is definitely not set up for hacking(at least not as good as the hacker) But our Hacker doesn't have the gunnery skill that lets me shoot anything I mount to the truck/roto drone/doberman etc. He can't drive like me, which I would argue can be very important. he can't hack the van when I go to manual steering. Plus the Hardware skill has 101 uses if you're creative.

If all you want is the best bang for your Build points, be a Bioware Adept or something. I concede your point about the changes from SR3 making life for a rigger hard, but it just makes sense. Its all computers and radio signals. Splitting the two is just weird

Ok, a few others have mentioned this, but I want to elaborate on it.

There is no I in team. <<<<See? Look at it. There is no "I" in that word. Bare with me, this is not criticism of you.

Team is paid (G) amount. This is your gross product.

Team deducts (E) amount for expenses. This includes: Ammo, bribes, information purchase, disguises, necessary explosives, any and ALL specialized equipment necessary for the run, including new drones that you may get to keep.

Team deducts (L) amount as losses. This includes: Personal gear belonging to any member of the party which is lost or destroyed during the normal course of the run including YOUR DESTROYED OR LOST DRONES! If they lose it by being an idiot, the team is not liable.

The end result is profit, which is divided evenly by the # of runners into (S)shares for the survivors (and dependants of the deceased if it's part of the deal.)

So, lets recap.

[G+(-E-L)]/#=S

If S is not, both, a positive and lucrative number, there is no reason for ANY member fo the team to go on the run.

I read that this is not how your team has been handling it. Well, I'd say it's time to renegotiate. No need to be rude to them, but you have to make them understand that it is not fair for you to absorb so much of what should be TEAM expenses and losses. If the rigger was getting screwed each run, and the team would not use the above formula, odds are that the rigger would find himself a new team.

As to the rest, well... You're pretty much right, though somewhat dramatically overstating it. Riggers are money and BP intensive. You have to micromanage the whole chargen process and specialize in just a few things. Later you can branch out into more skills. You gotta do what you gotta do. Start small, work your way up to having your own shop and doing your own build/repairs. More than most other archetypes, riggers need time as "small-time" runners in order to build up to the big stuff. Personally, I love riggers. I love building them up from small time drone hijackers into a one-man-army+death-in-a-can.

But hey, these are just my opinions, and nobody really cares what I think.

And here I thought I'd never use algebra outside of school.

The only real problem with your algebra is that (likely) many teams don't consider things like ammo to be part of group expenses. Bribes are certainly group expenses, as would basically anything that falls under legwork expenses.

I can see two arguments about taking ammo/drones out of group vs personal profit.

On the one hand, if the ammo/drones come out of group expenses, then it encourages people to be reckless with their resources. Why should the Rigger be particularly careful with his shiny new drone when he knows that he only has to fit 1/# of the bill? Why doesn't the sammy just run his gun on full auto all the time when he knows he is only paying for ever # bullet? This punishes those who try and be conservative with their resources. A melee fighter doesn't need bullets, but he is still paying for them.

On the other hand, making everyone foot every personal ammo/drone bill means that people might be overly hesitant to use their gear. As great as that new drone is, it may never see real use due to the rigger being afraid of losing it, and the sammy may not want to spend a big chunk of his profit on laying down cover fire for others, especially not when his gun is filled with that really expensive ammo.

Personally I'm a bit more of a fan of the latter method, as the desire to win overall generally overrides the desire to save a few (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . I look at things like ammo as operating costs. I mean, I -really- don't see anyone forking over (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to a mage each time he calls up his bound spirit to help out (Which actually costs quite a bit) They don't get refunded disposable foci that they burned to save everyone. No one pitches in for the sammy's new chrome armor, even though the expense of getting it is no less an investment in a mission's success than anything else.

I've got the better part of a character sheet written out, but I want to add reasons as to why I picked the things I did. I think I may have stumbled on a rather interesting new breed of rigger... we'll see.

Now you're just picking nits.

Resources expended in the course of a run, fall on the whole team.

They won't be reckless with thier resources because it will cut into their own profit. However, not firing that "really expensive ammo" gets people wounded or dead, which would be more expensive in the long run as you either have to pay medical espenses or lose a valuable asset. If the expenses are spread across everyone, and the runners aren't idiots, they'll use only what is necessary in order to maintain the largest share possible. Waste will create negative backlash from the rest of the team. However, they will understand that each and every expense is about the TEAM, and keeping it fit to fight/run.

The melee fighter in your example is paying for the ammo that the sam uses to keep him alive while he is closing to melee range. Any melee specialist with more than two brain cells to rub together will recognize the value of that investment. The same with the mage's "disposable foci". After all, you wouldn't want him to skimp on the mojo when your ass in the one on the line would you? Besides, replacing it out of team funds guarantees that he has it the next time you need him to keep you alive. As for your sam's "chrome armor", well, buying it is his problem, just like the mage's foci, replacing it (without chrome, if he wants the flash, he can pay for that himself) after the run if it's been damaged is a team expense.

My point...
Everyone has their own personal gear, paid for out of their own pocket, and augmented with special gear needed for this run that is provided at team expense. Any personal gear expended should be replaced out of team funds. Any special gear that survives the run becomes personal gear. Any team member that wastes gear, or otherwise selfishly sells that gear for his own profit after the run when someone in the team may have had use for it, is an idiot and should not be tolerated. (Exceptions being that sometimes you HAVE to get rid of gear thst is to hot to keep, like the gun you just used to murder that security guard.)

Our differences are mostly a matter of opinion. You see the team as a collection of individuals. I see it as a TEAM.

It doesn't really matter, you'll run in your game the way you want, and I'll run in my game the way I want. I was just trying to help StealthSigma defray some of his per run costs in a logical and fair manner.