SR5: Reworking PAN Rules, House Rule Concept Options

[BlackJaw]

So one of the things I was sorry to see returning from SR4 was the limited number of connections a device can handle. I personally feel it's more complexity than is required for most characters (IE: Street Samurai with a lot of implants and gear may need two or more commlinks to protect all their devices,) the exception being drone riggers and RCC special features. In particular the current rules make it difficult for a Decker to act as matrix overwatch with his Deck limited to (a typically low) Rating x 3 devices for his deck, which flies in the face of the examples of street samurai letting their Decker teammate protect their gear on runs. What I'd hoped for was a system more like Counterspelling, where the team expert can protect most of the group as long as they stay close.

PAN House Rule
Pan rules work more or less as described in the book but with one major change: Ignore the current limit on number of devices that can be connected to the PAN. A Commlink, and by extension devices like Decks and RCCs which can act as a commlink, can have any number of devices slaved to it, but all those devices must be within 100 meters of the Commlink. Devices that become too distant immediately loose the benefits of the PAN but remain on the matrix. They automatically reconnect to the PAN once they are within range again. With this house rule, you can't leave you gun at home and expect it to still be on your PAN, but the Decker can protect his entire team's set of devices as long he remains within 100 meters of them. It also eliminates the need to count devices to see if you've hit your device's connection cap.

This house rule needs a tweak for Drones and RCCs. RCCs are now defined to have special Drone Control Channels equal to their device rating x3. Drones using this channels gain all the benefits of the PAN at any range as long as they on the matrix, and gain all the special RCC benefits like Autosoft sharring, drone hopping, etc. Drones not on a Control Channel do not gain these special RCC benefits, but can still benefit from the basic PAN enhanced matrix defenses while within 100 meters. Changing a drone between being a simple slave or using a Control Channel can be done as a Change Device Mode Simple action on the drone itself, as part of a Reconfigure action on the RCC, or even through the use of the Configurator cyberprogram.

WANs still work exactly as described in the book.