SR4 Rigger Balance Options

[StealthSigma]

This is something that has explicitly bothered me after reading this thread. I'm looking for insightful feedback, not aggressive feedback, about the concerns that I have based on my perceptions.

From what I understand, in SR3 Riggers used to have their own rule set and could really only affect each other. They were safe from Deckers. In moving to SR4, rules were essentially condensed into one of three major categories, meat space, magical, and matrix. As such, Rigger then got lumped into the same rule set as dedicated Deckers. The comforting factor is that vehicle or drone which a Rigger is jumped into is immune to hacking. I've also been lead to believe there are two types of riggers, the drone rigger and the vehicle rigger. If you're of the vehicle rigger (who can drive anything on the planet), this thread isn't for you. You can already move into other roles easily enough. This is to express my concerns over a drone rigger.

First, I thought I should describe my definition of a Drone Rigger. A Drone Rigger fulfills other roles in the team through his drones. He provides combat ability through his drones. He provides first aid through his drones. A Drone Rigger can fulfill any role through which you can get an Activesoft. That is the basis for my definition of the Drone Rigger. Add onto this an ability to effectively drive vehicles.

Second, I consider a core competent character to be able to fulfill it's archetype without reliance on other PCs or NPCs and without positive or negative qualities. This is very important. If a character needs to take negative qualities to fulfill its core competency, something is wrong with the archetype. The negative qualities I view as a way to offset positive qualities as well as pull in some more BP to use on ancillary skills, contacts, or edge.

This leads to my first major concern. The Drone Rigger is extremely vulnerable to Deckers due to combining both Archetypes into the same rules and allowing them to affect each other. This means that unless the Drone Rigger only brings one drone into an area and is constantly jumped into it, his armada of drones is vulnerable to any individual with the ability to hack. This in turn leads to a Drone Rigger being required to actively defend his drones, or rely on the drones firewall which can eventually be breached by a Decker. Even worse, the Drone Rigger could be reliant on having a dedicated Decker in the team to deal with other Deckers so the Drone Rigger doesn't have to. Chances are the dedicated Decker is likely to be more skilled than the Drone Rigger and it will very likely be a losing battle for the Drone Rigger.

My second major concern with Drone Riggers compared to other archetypes is their overall cost. You already know that with so many drones, Activesofts, vehicles, and augmentations you will be running a high bill at character creation. I tend to assume that Drone Riggers will run very close to the 250,000:nuyen: limit on character creation. Can you fit a core competent rigger in 350 BP? All the appropriate stats, skills, contacts, and edge? Compare this to about any other archetype. So you spend 250,000:nuyen: on augments for your street sammy. Are you at risk of having large portions of that cost being nullified, stolen, or destroyed by one single archetype? Even if you spend 250,000:nuyen: on materials for your magician, do you have to ever worry about permanent losing those spells because of what another character does? Even so, you will probably find that you can easily fulfill the core competency of most other archetypes within 350BP.

My third major concern. Due to my second major concern, it causes using non-humans to be a detriment to fulfilling the Drone Rigger's core competency. Dwarf is the only metatype which provides any bonuses that are useful to rigging, which is just +1 willpower. The other meta-types do not provide any meaningful contribution to the archetype. So you're hurting yourself by limiting the BP which you have to fulfill your core competency. This leads to Trolls, Elves, and Orks being highly undesirable towards Drone Rigger, which humans being the best suited for the archetype. I tend to view races in an open ended character creation to be a style opportunity, where any race should be capable of performing the archetype good from character creation. Due to concern #2, I don't see a Drone Rigger as an archetype that is open to every race.

My fourth major concern. The juggling act you have to do between skills and gear in order to fulfill your core competency. If you want to repair your drones, you either have the mechanic skills yourself, get a skill wire with activesofts, get drones with the activesofts, or take the drones in to an NPC for repair. The 1st option is the most expensive, BP wise, but it doesn't eat into your resources. The 2nd and 3rd options eat into your resources, thus limiting your drone pool variety. The 4th option requires you to spend BP on a contact. Options 2-4 likely will cost similar in BP. Now to make sure I fully articulate why I see this as a problem. You have to juggle these options to meet your core competency. This isn't deciding how you want to deal with repairing your drones, this becomes a matter of fitting your core competency in 350BP + 250,000:nuyen: in resources. This is completely ignoring the detriment of my third concern.

My fifth major concern. To make a core competent Drone Rigger you should not need to take In Debt or Born Rich just to make sure you can cover your costs.

All of these concerns together lead me to a conclusion that the Drone Rigger is not a self-sufficient archetype within the constraints of a run as well has having huge weaknesses that make up for their versatility and power. In turn, when compared to other archetypes the Drone Rigger requires a much higher upfront investment, both in BP and nuyen than other mundane archetypes, and is at best on comparable BP/nuyen investments as awakened characters, which are considerably less vulnerable than the Drone Rigger. The rules changes to lump everything into one of a few categories has lead to opening up the Drone Rigger to considerable weakness without adequately providing some compensation to mitigate that weakness, or make the build cheaper. The only way for a Rigger to mitigate the risk from hackers or other riggers is to utilize one drone and constantly be jumped into it.

[Karoline]

I don't have my books on me, so I can't find the exact page to reference you to, but if you read very closely under the command program, it mentions that in order for it to work, you first have to copy the original user's signature or something along those lines, which I believe can only be gotten from the original commlink that the drone accepts commands from.

I believe this rule is generally ignored, because it would make using the command program virtually impossible for most hacking circumstances, but it is one you might want to force into the open when playing a drone rigger because it means that the hacker first has to hack into your own private commlink, get that signature, hack into the drone, and then be able to command it. At any of these points, you can rely on a simple reboot of your commlink or drone to get the hacker out, and give him/her dumpshock.

Things like running in silent mode (Which you should be doing anyway... or whatever it is called, don't remember off hand) and ENCRYPTING YOUR SIGNAL make it much more difficult for the hacker to even figure out that you are there, and then more difficult to actually do anything to you. Fighting off a hacker is all about making them burn as much time as possible getting to you, and then hitting them with dumpshock once they are there. It takes an amazing hacker to get into a good system quickly without being noticed.

Your other concerns are all fairly similar, and basically amount to the high cost of making an effective Rigger (Both in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and BP). To this I counter that Riggers also have the highest survivability of any Archetype. If they are truly acting as Drone Riggers, they need not even be in the field of combat, and if they are in the field, they tend to be near the edge. This makes them near impossible to kill or track down. So yeah, maybe you lose a 30k drone, but the sammy is dead.

Combat drones can be as tough or tougher than most sammies, so the risk of them being destroyed is somewhat on par with the risk of a sammy ending up near dead.

I admit I've never played a dedicated Rigger before, so I'm not 100% certain about all of the combat things, but as I usually run a hacker, I'm fairly certain about the countermeasures for hackers.

As for the cost requirement in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ... like I said, not played a rigger myself, but many other Archetypes can be very expensive to be properly effective. I almost always seem to be knocking on that 250k limit... Then again, I'm greedy and like my running toys.

[The Monk]

Is a vehicle that a rigger is jumped into immune from being hacked because you can just turn off the wireless signal or is there some other rule that says this?

[Dashifen]

I don't have my books on me, so I can't find the exact page to reference you to, but if you read very closely under the command program, it mentions that in order for it to work, you first have to copy the original user's signature or something along those lines, which I believe can only be gotten from the original commlink that the drone accepts commands from.

I believe this rule is generally ignored, because it would make using the command program virtually impossible for most hacking circumstances, but it is one you might want to force into the open when playing a drone rigger because it means that the hacker first has to hack into your own private commlink, get that signature, hack into the drone, and then be able to command it. At any of these points, you can rely on a simple reboot of your commlink or drone to get the hacker out, and give him/her dumpshock.

You are correct, though I don't ignore the rules. It makes spoofing too easy and too powerful if you can do it willy-nilly without any effort. You must have the Access ID of an authorized user in order to Spoof a command. The Command program actually only works if you actually ARE and authorized user. Otherwise, you must spoof. In order to gain the Access ID you must use a Matrix Perception test on the authorized user which is most often found using a Capture Wireless Traffic action and then Tracing the communication back to its source. You may need to decrypt the traffic, as well, prior to capturing it. The trick is doing all of this before combat turns begin because it's going to take some time to perform if you need to do it during combat. Usually, my riggers have actually attempted to do this during Legwork portions of the run in an effort to try and identify the Access IDs of one or more security spiders which they hope to use during the run to spoof commands.

The upside to Spoofing is that an alert is never thrown. If a Spoofed command is not appropriate, the drone or device simply discards the information after ignoring it. Sure, you could hack the building just to open a door (or hack the door to do so as well) but if you set off an alert while doing so, the full might of the security might come down on you. If you get the right information during Legwork and then restrict yourself to spoofing (at least until spoofing fails to work) instead of hacking, you can get away with a lot more before problems begin.

The next question, might be, how do those problems begin and that depends on the attention level and perception capabilities of who ever might be monitoring the system. If it's a security rigger dedicated to doing nothing but watch the network for odd occurrences, I would not reduce their matrix perception in anyway. A spider sitting in AR who's job is not system security until after an alert is thrown is likely to be facing -2 to -6 (he's at least distracted, might be not paying attention at all) to his matrix perception to notice things going strangely.

[Dashifen]

Is a vehicle that a rigger is jumped into immune from being hacked because you can just turn off the wireless signal or is there some other rule that says this?

Not sure. It's nothing I've ever come across and I think the original poster might be mistaken. Otherwise, rigged security systems couldn't be hacked (since the security rigger can jump into them) and that would be quite problematic for the game, IMO.

[StealthSigma]

Not sure. It's nothing I've ever come across and I think the original poster might be mistaken. Otherwise, rigged security systems couldn't be hacked (since the security rigger can jump into them) and that would be quite problematic for the game, IMO.

When a rigger is jumped in, the drone's pilot is disabled and the drone only responds only to the rigger. Perhaps I misread, but at best that would mean an attacker against the drone would have to somehow kick the rigger out of the drone in order to hijack it and give it other commands.

[McCummhail]

Is a vehicle that a rigger is jumped into immune from being hacked because you can just turn off the wireless signal or is there some other rule that says this?

You cannot spoof a device being actively controlled by a jumped in rigger.
You can exploit and hack a device being actively controlled by a jumped in rigger.

It is a subtle difference that makes a big difference in play.

[rob]

In order to make your drone rigger effective vs. a hacker, you have to spend most of your time in your programs and autosofts coming up with a good communications architecture. Making drone riggers is hard at character generation, because they have a lot of moving pieces.

The following habits should prevent utter takeover:
1. Carefully circumscribed network. Run your drones only on communications directly within signal range of the main commlink, and turn off every bit of it from the wider matrix (including the main commlink). if possible, try not to use retrans units.
2. Use a lot of encryption.
3. Have some agents with analyze, the electronic warfare autosoft, and drones with the RF signal scanner sensor at rating 6. Look for him while he's after you.
4. Have scripts for what to do if you detect that you're under attack.
5. Use nonstandard wireless links.
6. Most of the time, I use sensor software and issue instructions to my drones about when to talk, so there's relatively little to capture, as well.

This will mean that an enemy hacker cannot use scan to find you, rather has to use sniffer. He will have to intercept and decrypt your traffic, and then attempt to hack your drones. If he's trying a brute-force hack, you have the drones turn off its wireless link and go home. If he's attempting an exploit, well, you're listening for him on sniffer, too, so he had better beat you before you figure out where he is.

You're still vulnerable, but you will have invested heavily in making your network invisible and elusive, and your drones slow to hack. He has invested in hacking your drones, but he can't do that if you spend effort denying him anything to hack.

One of the other advantages of drone riggers is that they can get VERY good over time and money. They are almost infinitely scalable.

[Dashifen]

You cannot spoof a device being actively controlled by a jumped in rigger.
You can exploit and hack a device being actively controlled by a jumped in rigger.

It is a subtle difference that makes a big difference in play.

Can you provide a page reference? I can't find that in the neither the Spoofing nor Rigging sections of SR4A. It's likely that you're correct and I'm just not looking in the correct place.

[The Monk]

A tactic I have been batting around to make a drone fleet unhackable is the use of scripts and beam links. The idea is to give each drone a set of scripts that the drone will run for a given amount of time at which point it will await for the next command to run another script (since the drone and rigger has to be stationary to use the beam link).

Examples of scripts are:
always stay within line of sight and 6 meters of rigger
scan for hostiles
if hostiles are detected engage for 12 seconds and then await for instructions

always stay within line of sight and 6 meters of rigger
engage targets that rigger is attacking for 12 seconds or until target is eliminated
await further instructions

name these scripts attack pattern alpha and beta for style points.

[d1ng0d0g]

The cheapest option for Drone security is to give the Pilot a list of unacceptable commands.

As some said before, scripting is also useful.

Slave them to a master node with massive protection. This will return all connections an opposing hacker makes to the Master node where you can put down some massive security. The only thing the opposing hacker can then do is Spoof commands as if they were coming from the master node or attempt to hack that Master Node.

Equipping drones with facial and voice recognition software is an interesting option as well. Then turn of the wireless until a very specific password protected command is given to them by someone in person.

***

And I'm not entirely certain if this trick would work, but you could set all your drones to an alternating access ID from which they accept their commands. This can be done by having several devices on hand which function as a proxy server. That way the opposing hacker will only get one access ID from you, which at the time he can use it, won't work anymore.

[deek]

Nothing is unhackable.

The sooner we all can cope with that fact, the sooner we can always just play the game and have some fun.

I can just see some of these tactics used in a real game and the player getting quite angry when the GM says the drone was hacked. While these are all good theories, remember the GM is driving a story, so if he needs to hack your drone for some important reason, he's going to make it happen. The other 99% of the time, you will probably be safe running you drones with little to no security, cause the GM isn't really wanting or needing to hack your drones.

Unless your GM is a dick and he's constantly hacking your comms, stealing your drones, ripping out your ware and blowing up your apartment, I think some of this is a bit excessive...

[Karoline]

Nothing is unhackable.

The sooner we all can cope with that fact, the sooner we can always just play the game and have some fun.

I can just see some of these tactics used in a real game and the player getting quite angry when the GM says the drone was hacked. While these are all good theories, remember the GM is driving a story, so if he needs to hack your drone for some important reason, he's going to make it happen. The other 99% of the time, you will probably be safe running you drones with little to no security, cause the GM isn't really wanting or needing to hack your drones.

Unless your GM is a dick and he's constantly hacking your comms, stealing your drones, ripping out your ware and blowing up your apartment, I think some of this is a bit excessive...

Very good points.

[StealthSigma]

So far, I really haven't seen many people address whether the cost of a Drone Rigger is in line with their effectiveness and vulnerability compared to other archetypes. The only person that has even touched this is rob stating that Drone Riggers are hard to make because of a number of moving pieces.

So far all I have seen is gimmicks to mitigate the vulnerability.

The point is that a Rigger's effectiveness from 100k in drones is lost if those drones no longer respond to the Rigger or are acting on the Rigger's commands. If that Rigger spend 250k on resources, he now has the resources of a 150k character. That 250k street sammy or magicians very likely will always have their 250k of resources available to them. My concern is how much of the versatility Rigger's have via autosofts and drones is offset by the inherent vulnerability of drones, and if this vulnerability does indeed offset the versatility benefit does the average BP cost of Riggers compared to other archetypes is appropriate. I've also not seen anyone state whether they do feel like they need negative qualities in order to make a good human Drone Rigger. I would like someone to validate that perception of mine, since as I said that is a huge flaw in an archetype if you have to take negative qualities to make it good.

Like I previously said, one of my concerns lies with using other metatypes beyond Human and Dwarf. Dwarf at least partially offsets its cost with the bonus Willpower, however each other metatype does not contribute towards the archetype, so you're pissing away points, potentially a lot of points depending on the metatype. Taking negative qualities to support a less effective metatype seems fine to me.

[d1ng0d0g]

As for cost. You could always steal drones.

Just make sure that all tags are removed from them, and you have yourself a new drone.

[Karoline]

I actually addressed it to some extent, in that any case in which you are likely to lose a drone, you are likely to lose a sammy. So yes, the rigger loses some resources (Very very unlikely to lose 100k unless you've really really screwed something up), but the sammy loses the character. Now, given the limited repercussions of losing a character in SR, maybe you'd -rather- have your character die than lose a big chunk of their resources, but I think in the most part, people are willing to trade resources for the continued existence of your character.

So the tradeoff is resources for enhanced survivability. A rigger is more likely to make less on a run due to losing equipment than a sammy, but a rigger is also more likely to survive the run. This is similar to a hacker. A hacker stands to lose his commlink if he gets in over his head, but he isn't very likely to die because of it.

Also, if your GM is being really picky about hackers going after your drones, don't forget that cyberware can be hacked as well. Most people will fall back on the 'My character keeps all his ware off when on runs.' but ask the GM to enforce people keeping track of this sort of thing. Not every runner knows to do that, it isn't inate knowledge. Also keep in mind that most people wouldn't have a means to turn their cyberware wireless back -on- if they ever turned it off. And if a hacker really wants, there is some nanotech fun that invades a body and not only forces all cyberware into wireless on mode, it automatically slaves the cyberware to a spesific commlink... oh the fun of controling the sammy's cyber arm that holds his pistol.

Personally I think your reading way too much into the concern of being hacked. Unless your GM is just really being a pisser about it, your not going to run into an elite hacker every time you walk outside who wants nothing more than to steal your drones, and a moderate level of defense should be enough to keep yourself safe.

As for metatypes.... well, that is just how things go. Not every metatype makes a good everything. Not many troll/orc hackers, or elves for that matter. In the same line your not going to see many troll/ork infiltrators or faces. You won't see many elf tanks, and an elf melee fighter tends to be rarer than an orc/troll one thanks to the strength benefit. Mages can benifit from the high con of a troll/ork, but I think they are somewhat less common than other races thanks to limited mental stats.

Part of your problem is that you've looked at rigger and said "Here is every bad point about them... and no other archetype has anything bad about them." Each archetype has advantages and disadvantages. I could look at mages and say "How can I make an effective mage character when I have to burn all these BP on magician quality and raising my magic and bonding my foci and all my karma goes to initiation and I'm expected to be physically competent on top of having to buy a half dozen specialized magic skills and I need mental stats to be good at my magic and ........?"

[McCummhail]

Can you provide a page reference? I can't find that in the neither the Spoofing nor Rigging sections of SR4A. It's likely that you're correct and I'm just not looking in the correct place.

Search-fu!

Hacking and Spoofing
Another way to fight a rigger is to take control of her drones. Hacking
a drone can give you full control over it. The drawback to hacking is
that it takes time. Spoofing is faster, but limited in what you can do.
Spoofing also requires that you have the rigger’s access ID, which may
necessitate the Track program if she is in a remote location. Still, a
single command, such as “unload your weapon� or “reboot� can take
a drone out of a fight.
Such hijacking attempts against your drones can be foiled by
jumping into a device. A jumped-in rigger overrides any other control
of the drone, including by its Pilot.

There is this.

Also, even if a rigger is jumped-in there is the old kick-in-the-door style involving hacking-on-the-fly, cybercombat and various other things that are a lot of work and fairly involved.
But I view this as an even trade. That is a lot of work for someone for potentialy minimal pay-off.
If I can keep the Hacker tied up for 10+ passes this way then tracing, dumping, resetting, etc are possible.
Also, the course of a firefight is often decided in less.

EDIT: avoiding double-post

...snip...
I've also not seen anyone state whether they do feel like they need negative qualities in order to make a good human Drone Rigger. I would like someone to validate that perception of mine, since as I said that is a huge flaw in an archetype if you have to take negative qualities to make it good.

I am curious what standards you are using to define 'good'.
At a previous table I played at, the GM discouraged negative qualities due to experiences with min/max'ers.
We had several drone riggers deployed at the table over time. The only one I would say was a bad character was the one that tried to tackle all that entailed rigging in one fell swoop as a starting character.
This was the same issue we saw with a first time magician character that tried to do everything possible magically in one fell swoop as a starting character.

Are you asking too much of a rigger character at character creation?

[StealthSigma]

I actually addressed it to some extent, in that any case in which you are likely to lose a drone, you are likely to lose a sammy. So yes, the rigger loses some resources (Very very unlikely to lose 100k unless you've really really screwed something up), but the sammy loses the character. Now, given the limited repercussions of losing a character in SR, maybe you'd -rather- have your character die than lose a big chunk of their resources, but I think in the most part, people are willing to trade resources for the continued existence of your character.

So the tradeoff is resources for enhanced survivability. A rigger is more likely to make less on a run due to losing equipment than a sammy, but a rigger is also more likely to survive the run. This is similar to a hacker. A hacker stands to lose his commlink if he gets in over his head, but he isn't very likely to die because of it.

Actually yes, losing resources, for a Drone Rigger, would be a reason to scrub the character and make a new one. If the Rigger is constantly having to replace his drones without contribution from the rest of the team, meaning that the Rigger is barely making any profit if not taking a loss every run, why in the world would the Rigger continue on with that team? It would be like you having to supply your own laptop for my job, and it getting constantly destroyed thanks to the ineptitude of other employees. Would you stay at that job if they company didn't bother to compensate you for the destroyed laptops? A drone may be disposable, but it is in no way a consumable.

As for metatypes.... well, that is just how things go. Not every metatype makes a good everything. Not many troll/orc hackers, or elves for that matter. In the same line your not going to see many troll/ork infiltrators or faces. You won't see many elf tanks, and an elf melee fighter tends to be rarer than an orc/troll one thanks to the strength benefit. Mages can benifit from the high con of a troll/ork, but I think they are somewhat less common than other races thanks to limited mental stats

Okay, thanks for bringing in the min-maxer perspective. Yes, some races will be better than others at an archetype, and others will be the best. Stereotypes are meant to be broken, but if breaking the stereotype means the character is exceedingly underpowered there's something wrong.

Part of your problem is that you've looked at rigger and said "Here is every bad point about them... and no other archetype has anything bad about them." Each archetype has advantages and disadvantages. I could look at mages and say "How can I make an effective mage character when I have to burn all these BP on magician quality and raising my magic and bonding my foci and all my karma goes to initiation and I'm expected to be physically competent on top of having to buy a half dozen specialized magic skills and I need mental stats to be good at my magic and ........?"

No my problem is that I've looked at the cost of creating various archetypes, and wondered "Why is a Rigger so much more expensive, and is that expense justified?" The Rigger, as far as I can tell, has one of the larger sets of required attributes. They have one of the largest skill sets among archetypes. You've brought up one reason, survivability, which is tenuous at best since it entirely depends on how frequently you encounter large numbers in combat. A Decker also doesn't need to go on the run physically. You're basing your entire argument of survivability on an aspect that a cheaper archetype also shares. An archetype that also has a lot of BP to fling around on whatever he wants to build whatever versatility he may want.

Even if the costs for Drone Riggers are appropriate it all leads to a situation where attribute and skill wise, all Drone Riggers will look alike. Their uniqueness between Drone Riggers will solely be in the domain of their chosen qualities and drone armada. That is an outcome I utterly despise. I want to see differences in skills and attributes beyond +1 here, -1 there. I want to see Drone Riggers that can have differing skills and still be effective. Your street sammy can choose blades, he can choose unarmed, or he can choose clubs. You can probably make each style of melee equally as effective.

[The Monk]

The variety in the drone fleet rigger is that a sammy can do it, a hacker can do it, a magician can do it, an adept can do it, anyone can do it, and if you have a deck optimized for defense, then you are almost as protected as a dedicated drone rigger against a hacker.

[StealthSigma]

EDIT: avoiding double-post
I am curious what standards you are using to define 'good'.
At a previous table I played at, the GM discouraged negative qualities due to experiences with min/max'ers.
We had several drone riggers deployed at the table over time. The only one I would say was a bad character was the one that tried to tackle all that entailed rigging in one fell swoop as a starting character.
This was the same issue we saw with a first time magician character that tried to do everything possible magically in one fell swoop as a starting character.

Are you asking too much of a rigger character at character creation?

I'm wondering if perhaps by having multiple riggers, it makes it a lot easier to cover up weaknesses by focusing each rigger on "class" of drones as defined by the piloting skill it uses. That definitely relaxes the requirements as opposed to having a single rigger where the party may need naval or air drones to supplement them for whatever reason. As is there are benefits to designating both anthroform and groundcraft style drones as your "primary" jump in drone. The ability for each Rigger to draw on each other for aid is something a lone rigger does not get.

My basic definition of good is that the Drone Rigger is capable of fulfilling its core competency without requiring other characters. What I consider the core competency of a Drone Rigger is that "a Drone Rigger can fulfill any role through which you can get an Activesoft. That is the basis for my definition of the Drone Rigger. Add onto this an ability to effectively drive vehicles." The most obvious example I can think of is that a Rigger should not be reliant on an NPC or other PC to fix, upgrade, and service his drones. This requires you to spend BP on skills, get a skillwire and activesofts, or just equip one of your drones to to perform the maintenance. The second example I can think of is being able to defend a drone that is being hijacked.

Also, the other thread brought up the question of why even have the Drone Rigger archetype anymore? There's nothing preventing a sammy, a mage, or any other character from running drones. All it does is keeps them from effectively jumping in.

[Paul]

Nothing is unhackable.

I think that's exactly the point. Why would anyone use a wireless connection with anything they value? The answer is of course, they wouldn't. So while the wireless world is okay for John and Jane Q Public, I don't think it'd see nearly the same kind of usage in the "Shadows".

For those of you who watch modern pop culture TV look at the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Watch how fast, in the pilot, the machines hacked through anything on the network,and what the results were. I think it has bearing on this conversation.

[Sponge]

The point is that a Rigger's effectiveness from 100k in drones is lost if those drones no longer respond to the Rigger or are acting on the Rigger's commands. If that Rigger spend 250k on resources, he now has the resources of a 150k character. That 250k street sammy or magicians very likely will always have their 250k of resources available to them.

Mages can lose fetishes, foci, and summoning materials. Sams can have their cyberware damaged in combat. And both of those archetypes are more likely to be in the direct line of fire than the rigger - as someone said, the rigger may lose their drones, but the sam ends up dead....

[McCummhail]

I'm wondering if perhaps by having multiple riggers, it makes it a lot easier to cover up weaknesses by focusing each rigger on "class" of drones as defined by the piloting skill it uses. That definitely relaxes the requirements as opposed to having a single rigger where the party may need naval or air drones to supplement them for whatever reason. As is there are benefits to designating both anthroform and groundcraft style drones as your "primary" jump in drone. The ability for each Rigger to draw on each other for aid is something a lone rigger does not get.

My basic definition of good is that the Drone Rigger is capable of fulfilling its core competency without requiring other characters. What I consider the core competency of a Drone Rigger is that "a Drone Rigger can fulfill any role through which you can get an Activesoft. That is the basis for my definition of the Drone Rigger. Add onto this an ability to effectively drive vehicles." The most obvious example I can think of is that a Rigger should not be reliant on an NPC or other PC to fix, upgrade, and service his drones. This requires you to spend BP on skills, get a skillwire and activesofts, or just equip one of your drones to to perform the maintenance. The second example I can think of is being able to defend a drone that is being hijacked.

Also, the other thread brought up the question of why even have the Drone Rigger archetype anymore? There's nothing preventing a sammy, a mage, or any other character from running drones. All it does is keeps them from effectively jumping in.

I would equally question the validity of "Street Samurai", "Hacker" and the other non-exclusive archetypes. The beauty of the open ended archetypes is their fluidity. Only "magic" is an exclusive club these days (and for this discussion I am including technomancers). The technical and 'mundane' side of things is open and interconnected, much like the wireless of the 2070's. As archetypes they are a starting point and can all be thrown out the window. I prefer to have the drone rigger archetype around to plant the seed in players minds as to what is possible.

I think that your notion of what a drone rigger is, is actually one step too large for me. I see a vehicle rigger as someone who can drive vehicles effectively, can provide vehicular support, and can maintain/protect their vehicles. A drone rigger is someone who can effectively command their drones, provide surveillance/firepower/technical support, and who can maintain/protect their drones.

Coincidentally, the most fun I have had with drones was with a team that had one dedicated drone rigger and the rest dabbled in drones. It was better than a tacnet for intel and more vicious than HRT team in combat, all because of the fluid inter-connectivity that seems to be threatening "the niche".

[Paul]

Mages can lose fetishes, foci, and summoning materials.

Which they don't need to cast spells.

Sams can have their cyberware damaged in combat.

Which they don't need to kick your ass, or shoot you.

And both of those archetypes are more likely to be in the direct line of fire than the rigger...

That is subjective, and depends on how you play the game.

...as someone said, the rigger may lose their drones, but the sam ends up dead....

True enough-to a point, but there's dead and then there's dead! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Depending on how you're doing it this may never even be a factor in the game. With the right strategy and tactics your street samurai may never even fire a shot. On the other hand, of course, the game can be a brutally simple gun fest!

[Kerrang]

Actually yes, losing resources, for a Drone Rigger, would be a reason to scrub the character and make a new one. If the Rigger is constantly having to replace his drones without contribution from the rest of the team, meaning that the Rigger is barely making any profit if not taking a loss every run, why in the world would the Rigger continue on with that team? It would be like you having to supply your own laptop for my job, and it getting constantly destroyed thanks to the ineptitude of other employees. Would you stay at that job if they company didn't bother to compensate you for the destroyed laptops? A drone may be disposable, but it is in no way a consumable.

If your Drone Rigger is constantly having to replace his drones without contribution from the rest of the team, then your team has not quite grokked the meaning of the word 'team'. At my table, the Rigger (she is less of a drone rigger than a general rigger, but she still uses plenty of drones), is quite often the beneficiary of the ill-gotten gains of the rest of the team. They steal a vehicle, drone, or just random gear that no one wants, she ends up with it. If the Mages or the TM are wallowing in unused Nuyen (and they quite often are), they are never unwilling to slide some her way to pay for whatever she needs. They know the Rigger is watching over them, and has the ability to pull their irons out of the fire when things go really wrong, so they keep her happy.

Maybe you need to have words with your 'team'.