One of my runners in the game I ran on Friday played a drone rigger. It seemed pretty unbalanced, but I felt that if I constantly threw situations at him that undermined his skills like powerful hackers, other drones, situations in which he can't bring his drones along with him, it takes away his fun. How do you balance out games with combat drones?

How was it unbalanced? How many/what types of drones did he have? What were his stats? What kind of adventure did you throw at him?

Although we really need more information to give you more useful answers, something to keep in mind when helping your players make their characters is that everyone should have some sort of secondary skill set to fall back upon if for whatever reason they aren't able to use their primary abilities.

Plus one of the reasons that using Drones is so powerful is that they are also by their very nature somewhat limited and have some rather large weaknesses to be exploited.


Still, you have to remember that I'm of the opinion that in a realisticaly ran campaign one-trick-ponies should usually die rather painful deaths sooner rather then later.

As for as hackers and things I would say try to be realistic and fun. And to me that means mix it up. Sometimes there won't be any hackers, sometimes their will be a sucky one that'll try stuff anyway (they might get a spoof through before getting into matrix combat), and sometimes the security reigger will be ready to rock!

Also don't forget about backup. A lot of people play a building in the middle of a freaking city like it's all alone on a island in the middle of the ocean.

If runners are raising hell and have tripped alarms there is almost certainly some kind of extra security inbound. If they're small it's probably be lonestar or a contract company like knight errant. If they're big they probably have their own forces at other sites.

Usually drones and spirits are what arrive in a timely manner. But so would matrix support. And that's where your rigger could get into trouble. But it won't feel like griefing if they understand it, and expect a spider to show up after the idiot troll sets off all the alarms.

Also by default most buildings worth breaking into will have RF paint. So either they need ot fly around outside with their drones or be their in the meat.

Finally if you find that your runs are best solved by a pack of steel lynxes and some rotodrones that may indicate you need to up the cloak and dagger factor a smidgen.

yeah, drones are great for nuking the crud outta stuff, but not so good at the subtle parts of shadowrunning...

basically, if your shadowruns include a lot of combat in places where drawing attention of the authorities is not a problem, drones will be awesome. if you're in a game where triggering alarms means that an HTR team is on it's way, well, drones get a little less awesome. in that sort of game, drones basically become a sort of scout/spy, and even then they are largely only very useful against targets that don't have detection systems that will spot drones...

I would think that most semi-secure installations would have wireless traffic detectors that would detect the high signature of drones. Even with some sort of relay system that bypassed anti-RF paint which allowed you entry into a location with a drone, the drone's wireless broadcasts would prompt an investigation by guards/drones/cameras.

If he has a wide range of drones then he should be able to use some of them on almost any situation. The Fly Spy and Shiawase Kanmushi "Bug Drone" should be able to go just about anywhere and are useful for gathering limited information.

The Lone Star iBall is good for rolling into a room and has a better sensor package than the previous two, although you could command a group of the bug drones that as a group has a higher sensor rating and wider array of sensors than the Iball. The Iball does have the option of having a flash-pak or smoke grenade. Or with our GM you can add any other grenade to the IBall but it destroys the IBall when it goes off. For greater mobility the Aztec Crawler is good. Our GM allows us to have one that is disguised as a cat or dog for twice the price.

Those are good for the subtle inside shadow stuff.

For Outside surveyance the Lockheed Optic-X, Stormcloud, and Roto Drones are good.

Now the Dalmatian, Doberman, and Steel Lynx tend to be noticed. As the last 2 are combat drones people are going to react to them in simular ways as they would to a big mean dog, or a gruff mercenary carrying large automatic weapons. As a result they can not go everywhere.

Now if the Rigger chose only Dobermans and Roto-Drones equipped with LMGs he shouldn't be able to take them very many places.

Oh ya forgot that they can get expensive. Thanks Sunnyside.

Bob inadvertently touched on another disadvantage of drones. They cost. Now again if he's running all over with Lynxes and heavily armed rotordrones that's a game issue.

But if he's got small pet drones he's using inside places and the like, like the iball, the bills tend to start mounting. As those drones don't hold up to small arms fire very well at all. And in general I don't consider them a problem since the tend to lead to interesting smart play. And it's not like the mage couldn't do something similar with a spell.

A physical manipulation spell with a Blast component doesnt need LOS from the casting mage to affect whats in the area. Cast Detect Drones (or better yet, Detect Sensors) then nuke an area that shows as 'hot'. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I always like for the defending mage to cast ball lightning at the entrance to their facility because of all those suspicious sensors. It's even better into the explosives magazine, but it's hard to find mages that stupid.