If a team is lax on magic, you hit them with magic. If a team has poor combat skills, you challange them with combat. If a hacker has terrible social skills, you make him take a few social tests.

There's no shortage of times that you could reasonably call for one -- in fact, if you did one every time you logically should, you'd bog down the game. Every cop that pulls over his illegal van, every security guard he goes past, every confusing club scene, and every sensitive Mr. Johnson meet is a wonderful time for your utterly sociopathic hacker to roll to avoid humping the furniture.

I would think that this is the players responsibility.

But for you, people will react to him, if they ever come into contact with him, considering, that he will probably want to stay away from them most of the time.

He won't be able to do even routine tasks in a social environment without having people react in some way (laugh, call the police, whatever fits the situation).

Shoot him. A reasonably able shooter (not over-munchy 20+ dice super gun crack, just something normal with 12 dice or so) should be enough to wound him with a decent weapon (i.e. heavy pistol; a submachine gun or assault rifle on burst fire or full automatic should put him in a world of hurt already).

Bye
Thanee

Do you actually need all those for rigging (Cracking/Electronics), or is it just, because there is enough overlap so it makes no point not to give the Rigger full hacking ability as well?

Additionally, a Pilot skill or three would be useful, I guess (aircraft, anthroform and ground craft mostly).

Bye
Thanee

You don't need all of those - Cracking, certainly, you can forgo. It's a three skill group, and while you want Hacking and Electronic Warfare, in all likelihood you won't ever really need Cybercombat. You can save 8 BP and get those two at 4 a piece, or you can bump one (I'd go with Elec. Warfare) up to 5 unless you're getting Gunnery 6. Riggers tend to suffer a lot from the skill cap at chargen.

As the GM, you simply color the character's perception of the NPCs around him. For example:

To a character without Uncouth
"The waiter approaches your table with a smile, and asks if there is anything else he can get you."

To a character with Uncouth
"The smarmy waiter comes back, a fake smile on his face. He asks about getting something else, like he's pushing you to spend more money. He's also obviously looking for a tip after his terrible service."

To a character without Uncouth
"The Lone Star officer approaches your van with one hand on her gun. She asks you why your PAN is in hidden mode."

To a character with Uncouth
"The Lone Star officer walks up to your van with one hand on her hip. She asks about your PAN, but you can tell she's just hot for you."

And the like.

Like someone with either a lot of skills or a lot of Pilot programs. And a few very heavy drones. Most of the specifics have already been covered by others.

That particular hacker? I'd start by either blowing out his tires or hitting the vehicle with some electrical damage to shut it down. Then I'd slap a jammer to the side of his van. Then I'd tip the van over, so that it really isn't going anywhere. After that, there are options: open up the van and hit him with Decrease Charisma, roll the van into a lake, drill a hole and fill the interior with Neuro-Stun, drop a set of welding tools and contact a local enclave of ghouls, set the whole thing on fire, open it up and fill the guy so full of lead he dies of Essence loss, whatever.

I'd never thought of that, but that is so true!!

iirc, the rigger programs still require hacking skill in some cases. for example, spoofing another drone to add yourself to it's subscription list or give you an account, you roll hacking + spoof, do you not?

it's probably not quite as important as computer skill (which you would use for analyse, scan, etc) but it's still good for someone who is going to use all the options available to a rigger.

Half the fun of Rigging is using the drones of others against them. And perhaps more importantly the largest risks of rigging are getting cut out of your drones one way or another, or being data tracked back to your commlink. Hacking can be added to:

• Matrix Defense
• Spoof Checks
• Trace Redirection
• Traffic Interception

You need that stuff. If you don't do it, logs of your wireless traffic will appear on area nodes with your ID and people will be able to trace your commlink down to a city block and set you on fire.

The Hacking skill is the VR "Flexible Signature" and a Rigger needs it to live.

-Frank

A powerful focused combat rigger will look like a walking metal freak day parade.

Having played one, a rigger will need to be able to transport 3-6 full size arial and ground drones along with some micro drones for recon. With out a vehicle to transport the drones, your rigger will be pretty weak.

As for what equipment and skills? Control rig, Reaction enhancers, cyber eyes w\ Smartlink (if you're really into it, get the occular drone too).

As for skills, piloting skills, Hacking group, Electronics group, gunnery, dodge or athletics, and a really good perception skill, since (IIRC) by rules you won't be using intuition from a drone, only the drone sensor rating + Perception. So if you want to see anything, you'll need a good percep skill. Strangely enough, it appears that you still use agility for gunnery even when you're jumped in.

Be prepared to make a lot of house rules about what riggers can and can't do, riggers are the most rule light archetype in the book, so it's not very clear how spoofing commands should work, or intercepting traffic.

As for way's to kill the hacker, and the hackers social inability:

Um, how did he get 12 armor? It's certainly possible on a troll, with a ballistic shield, but not really any other way. Anyway, use stick'n shock, it resists with 1/2 impact armor, impact is the lower of the two armor ratings usually and with SnS it's halved.

And the hacker can be intimidated by small children, uncouth characters can't default on social skills, so a small child could actually threaten the troll to give back their lollypop and win. Of course the book doesn't say what to do when you have an opposed test and one of the parties in the test can't default and has no skill, but it'd be safe to assume that they fail automatically, or have such a huge dice penalty to their roll that they have no chance anyway, or can only roll if they use edge, or something.

I would think that's more hacking than rigging (or rather a mix between the two), tho.

I see. The two (hacking and rigging) certainly do have some overlap. Thanks!

Bye
Thanee

Full body armor and a helmet would do it. Or he might have some armor 'ware.

The game hasn't started yet, they can't have access to availability 14 items.

With a camo suit (8/6), +1/1 for troll-ness, +1/2 for helmet, that leaves them at 10/9, so they'd need either 2 points dermal plating, or 2 points orthoskin. or drop the helmet and go with 3 points orthoskin, for 12/10. It's possible to get that high, but it's pretty expensive.

Either way, the troll will only be rolling 5 armor dice against stick'n shock.

I wish I could take credit for the idea. I can only take credit for adapting the idea of a fellow named Eric Wujcik.

Heh. I think the idea predates the release of the books.

But here's kigmatzomat suggesting it in Aug of 2005.

And just for yucks, Here is a thread for October of 2005 talking about pretty much every other portin of the game hat doesn't fall under the Skill + Attribute mechanic and what can be done about it.

-Frank

Actually, it does predate the books. In fact, Mr. Wujcik came up with the idea even before that. The book in which I read it was published in 1991 (you got it, Thanee, it was indeed Amber Diceless Role-Playing). I've been using the concept for various role-playing games (including Shadowrun) since around '93, which would be when I read it.

Also ... hey, Frank? I was checking out the links you posted, and while they're great links, I'm not seeing how they're related to what you were quoting. We were talking about the idea of coloring a character's perception of the world around him through narration; the posts you linked seem to be discussing game mechanics. Could you help me out a bit?

I've actually got that book some where at home.

You know, Rocket launchers exist for a purpose

OK OK, seriusly, theres no invulnarable character and as someone mencioned before, putting this one in a social situation will put your misery out ^^

And even if He has magic resistance, a capable mage will toast him in two spells if the group mage insn't back him up. It will just be a little more difficult to the enemy mage that's all.

Another thing is that even with all his body armor and his van, he will had to exit his vehicule for some reason (you know, you still must go to the market for food, or maybe he has to go to some run on foot, etc) and even with good armor and body, a well aimed shoot can frag anyone

If you want a solution with more style, have you think about poison or gas?

And if all of the things mencioned above fail, you still have the rocket or the C-12 if you preffer something more glorius like to put the big red botton (a love that part ^^)