anthroform drones vs. walkers with mechanical arms. Options

[Stahlseele]

yeah, maybe . . i dunno . . but good to know *g*

[PlatonicPimp]

walkers (all walkers, in fact) are piloted with anthroform. that's what the skill does.

anthroform drones get to use the pilot skill (including any modifiers such as that from a control rig or presumably specialisation) as their agility attribute, and do not have to actually make pilot tests ever. they can use skills as if they were in a human body (for example, gymnastics dodge, climb tests, etc). they can also use the regular weapon skills rather than always using gunnery.

as far as cyborgs in non-anthroform bodies, per the rules they actually work almost identical. i believe the implication on synner's post was that those rules were intended to be specific to rigged anthroform drones as opposed to cyborgs in general, but i could be mistaken about that. you'd have to find his specific post to be sure. if those rules were indeed intended for anthroform drones as opposed to cyborgs, then it appears that a cyborg in a normal drone body would use the normal rigging rules (which is a terrible waste of a cyborg, mind you). that's how i would run it, at least.

Thats more what I'm needing, thank you. I'm sure all that is in the RAW somewhere. Just not all convienent like.

Now we just need to know how much capacity our anthroform has for cybernetic mods.

[Jaid]

actually, a good chunk of that is derived from reading dev posts here on dumpshock. i suppose it might make it to the FAQ someday, or even to the errata.

as for that last little bit, though...

At the gamemaster’s discretion, full arms can be tricked out with accessories just like a full cyberlimb (see pp. 335–337, SR4, and pp. 44–48, Augmentation).

it would seem reasonable to use a similar rule for walker legs.

if you're talking about a roughly human-sized drone, it stands to reason the drone would have as much capacity as a normal cyberlimb. if you're wondering how much a body 1 microdone with such arms could have, though, you're on your own there =P

[Fortune]

A Babushka is a triangular headscarf, worn by Russian grandmothers.

Shrug. It was funny! He tried! Gotta give him a little credit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[PlatonicPimp]

Capacity-wise, I'd base it off body. Perhaps an anthroform drone has something like 10xbody capacity. Or if you like, you could break it down to 2xbody capacity in each limb and torso. I kinda like leaving it as full drone capacity instead of doing it peicemeal. Less record keeping, plus a bit mroe free-form with what are less strict design requirements than trying to work with flesh.

The other way to do it would be to go with 20 in each leg, 15 in each arm, 10 in torso and 4 in head, which is using the cyberlimb capacity strait. That adds up to 84 capacity, before "bulky." Anthroforms with the mimic mod would instead use the stats for synthetic limbs.

[Mordinvan]

So how would you purchase str boosts? what stats in what limbs would be needed to increase handling?

[HentaiZonga]

So how would you purchase str boosts? what stats in what limbs would be needed to increase handling?

Strength boosts are just cyberlimb Strength enhancements; Handling increases are just cyberlimb Agility enhancements.

[PlatonicPimp]

I'm not sure I'd allow stat-boosters at all, but I'll crunch the numbers.

There's really two ways I can see this going. One is to treat an anthroform as a special case of having 4 cyberlimbs, a cybertorso and skull. If you do it this way, then you use the second capacity scheme from my post, and you allow strength and agility mods as 'zonga suggests.

The other way, and the way I'm leaning, is to treat the anthroform as a special case of vehicle. In this case, you have one large capacity rating for adding cyberware, many cybernetics are disallowed, including stat boosters, and all customizations are handled by the vehicle mod rules. Looked at this way, perhaps adding cyberware capacity is a new vehicle mod, which gives you (bodyx2) capacity, takes 1 slot, and can be taken multiple times. Perhaps you get some capacity for free and can mod up for more. In the case of mechanical arms on other kinds of vehicles, I'd say (bodyx2) capacity is a good estimate of how much you should be able to fit in each arm.

'nother fun question: what happens when you take the mechanical arms mod for an anthroform? More arms, natch, so how do we make that work?