I just had a crazy idea. Would you allow an, um, unconventional rigger to modify their Doberman security drone with actual teeth, and give him a bite attack? How would you have that work, both in terms of the mod, and how would you have it work in-game? (Eg. what skill would it be?)

Uhm ... that's kinda stupid. A bitey mini tank. Uh. At least also give it legs instead of tracks. And besides, melee totally is unnescessary if you have ranged weapons. Or just install an arm with a mounted chainsaw or something.

Arsenal alters the Doberman to be a walker.

I'd have no problem with it, it can add flavor to a character. Especially because I see robotic dogs (not the ones mounted with machine guns) being something that could easily walk around with them. As to how to do it, it'd probably have to be a custom mod or treat it as a fixed external weapon mount, and assign it damage (related to cyber jaw... STR/2 P?), Weapons such as these have a reach of -1. Not too feasible, but perhaps the drone will have other uses besides hauling a gun (Expanded Sensor Suite guard dog?)

And as hermit said, switch it to walker drone.

EDIT: Did arsenal make the doberman a walker, I thought it was skipped.. I'll have to check when I get home.

Instead of jaws or something similar... what about installing a monofilament chainsaw on an articulated arm? Just a thought.

I think someone's already doing the chainsaw on an arm thing.

And yeah, wasn't the Doberman always a walker? I thought the Lynx was the tracked combat drone?

When I saw the Doberman, I just thought: Bite. It has to have a bite attack. I guess I could do mechanical arms, or something silly like that, but the idea of a mechanical attack dog biting something just makes me smile.

No, it wasn't, but it is now...

Arsenal p106, Walker Mod, External Fixed RC Weapon Mount, Clearsight 3, Targeting 3.

Maybe you could fit some sort of cyber-skull to that weapon mount?

WTF?! This is fucked up. Sorry, but do the devs really want to emphathise SR4 has nothing to do with previous Sr installations by retconning as much as they possibly can?


Nope ... the Doberman was wheeled (or tracked, at least some variants were). Steel Lynx had ... wel, legs with whells instead of feet. Like many GitS tanks. Only that it drives instead of really walking and uses trhe legs only to lift/level its silouette (there's a figure in ... FoF, I think ... that illustrates that mechanism).

Is there anything in the BBB that tells you what modes of movement the drones use? Or are all these from other books?

Arsenal overrides the BBB, as all expanded core books do.

not just previous versions. the BBB describes it as a crawler, iirc...

i dunno about you, but when i read crawler i sure as heck wasn't thinking they meant crawling around on it's hands and feet....

I'm aware, but I don't use books that I don't own, for the obvious reason of not having them.

So again, is there anything in the single book I own that tells me this, or do I have to BS it until I can afford Arsenal? Because I can find nothing, and it's been bugging me for a while.

It's years later and a new model. And probably, yeah. The old SR was all 1989 pink mowhawk Japanese sarariman neon chrome hockey-hair and pleather.

I'm pretty sure a crawler means a vehicle with tracks.

But well, it's not bad, it help differentiate the Doberman from the Steel Lynx.
In the BBB it only feel like a scaled down version of pretty much the same design...

there are garden tools right now thats a combo between a chainsaw and branch cutter...

now envision that as the "mouth" of the "dog"

messy messy messy...

btw, automated capitalism anyone?

Jaws of Life/Death.

Anyone remember Razor from Robot Wars?

Hm. So, no canon way to make this happen? I don't know if I can get custom workarounds to slip past the GM.

Guess I'm stuck with a mechanical arm then. Do you think an arm with a weapon needs to be an "articulating" arm, or would "grappling" work okay?

I have thought about having a drone with a bite. Not really for combat but for looks mainly a SMG is better then a bite. But you could use Special Equipment bite or jaw or whatever. I think they have a rule or make a comment drones use body for strenght or something.


I mean the Bust-a-move Drone has Special Equipment (cute looks) Not too hard to have a biting jaw.

Most biting critters deal their strength in bite damage. There are some that deviate from that (sharks, nagas, and vampires). However the cyberteeth mod gives str/2 damage. But that's just a set of fangs mounted on the rather piddly jaw musculature of the human head so I don't expect any worthwhile damage from the human mouth no matter what you mount on it without some serious rebuilding of the skull, but then I digress.

I'd put the damage of such a set of jaws at body, and perhaps cap it at body 4 in case some wiseass wants to mount jaws on a heavy duty vehicle down the road. Setting damage at a flat 3 or 4 is a safe move. Now in order to properly strike the jaws must be mounted on a rather articulated arm. If you ever dealt with a dog or cat you know they got a rather fair range of motion with their neck and they need it too in order to accurately clamp their teeth down on anything.

Of course there is absolutely no software out there that would deal with this sort of combat, this is a rather complicated action when you think about it. So custom made software is going to be in order as well.

So I guess it is an arm mount with some sort of unique weapon on the end. I'm glad I'm not th GM pricing that weapon but a DV of 3 or 4 seems a safe move. For pricing however consider the fact that while the arm it's mounted on is complicated, the jaws themselves are a rather simple thing but custom designed 300-1K might be a starting neighborhood. In either case pray the drone doesn't irrepairably trashed, it will be a pain to replace. Now to make things fun, apply the mimic mod to the drone and make it look like a doggie too.

Totally. Obviously, you know your SR3.

And changing the movement mechanism from something rugged, solid and easy to maintain to something highly complex, vulnerable and (in-game) new and comparatively untried sure is a smart decision. Arguably, this is yet another of those 'BS that slipped the devs when not proofreading Arsenal' moments.

Also, what good will the jaws do your stupid walker tanky drone when it's getting shot by some steel lynx' White Knight? Odds are the doberman will be dead long before it reaches biting range. The Medusa of Arcology fame had much the same problem, never mind it's tentacles and insane movement rate. That's why they threw in the Gorgon and it's plasma laser thingy in Brainscan.

It doesn't exactly bug me when stuff like this happens... I don't consider the name of a particular drone to be particularly important to my suspension of disbelief with SR, or my sense of continuity.

And when you've got a drone named "Doberman," having it resemble, somewhat, it's namesake is fairly intuitive.

Oh, so we can expect the Eagle vtol fighter jet to have claws then, and the Banshee vectored thrust tank to run on peoples' souls? Or maybe have the Wasp move into close combat with opposing air vehicles and sting them to death ... that'd also be fairly intuitive.

Hey, where's the huge foot razors on the F-22 raptor anyway (and does it have scales or feathers?)? Do they gut their pilots regularily? And when I summon a B2, does it count as a spirit of man or air?

Airplanes fly. So do eagles.

Having a drone named a Doberman happen to be something that moves like a dog doesn't seem like much of a stretch from that.

Sure. I guess General Creighton Abrams moved on tracks too, didn't he? Or roman officers. Or large feline predators.


And having a small walker frame mounting a machine doesn't make much sense, as it's not quite as stable as a tracked or wheeled vehicle would be.

Oh, do Banshees run on souls now, or don't they? And does the B2 spirit belong to the domains of air (airplane) or man (it is man-made after all) now? I demand answers!

Oh for crying out loud. You are going to jump all over me for trying to have a little fun with the rules, rather than treating everything as a pack of bare stats? Seriously?

No, I'm not saying a Doberman is required to have jaws to be called a Doberman. No, it's not "particularly important to my suspension of disbelief" that a drone have a "mouth" full of "teeth" rather than a monofilament chainsaw attached to an articulating arm. I thought it would be fun to implement a Doberman which could actually bite things like a real dog, and do it in a way as rules-legal and as close to the original flavor as possible. I thought it would be fun to do this, to try to make something interesting out of the rules, maybe using vehicle mods, augmentations, or weapon rules. You remember fun, right?

But I guess doing this makes some of you uncomfortable. That's fine; I didn't expect this idea to be controversial, but I guess everyone's bothered by something. So, for all of you people, there's the door behind you. Thanks for stopping by; please remember to pick up your verbal vomit on the way out.

Ugh. Never am I more reminded of the truth of Arethusa's quote. Definitely time for bed.

To the original topic...
Personally I'd use the rules for the cyber "hydraulic press" I'm not sure how'd you resolve combat but if the drone gets the hits to grab an arm or a leg, resists 10P! To the face! Er... leg. whatever, you know what I'm talking about.


To the growing controversy:
Am I the only one who likes the fact that things have changed in the 20 odd years of game time since SR1? No one uses this as a means to illustrate how very quickly the world of changes? Old street sam's pulling out their Ares Pred II's with worn fiberoptic cabling? No? Everyone's using the same shit they used back in 2056? My bust than.

I also don't think that walking drones will be an "untried" technology by 2070 *points at Big Dog video*.

Also I'm not seeing where it says that a Doberman walks around... the only description I can find is in the BBB and the stats haven't changed between BBB and Arsenal. Oop, no here it is, under standard upgrades. Ah here's a choice bit:

"The transport mechanism of the drone or vehicle is completely swapped out for one that turns into a walker, or at least provides it with multiple independent wheels or tracks so that it can handle most obstacles with the same ease as a human.

So the answer is... Whatever you feel like! Wow I'm glad we cleared that up.

Actually if you look at what real Dobi's are trained to do it makes sense for robotic Doberman to have jaws, capture. All the damage is incidental the dog is trained to go for the gun arm and bite and hold, it think that even a troll would have a hard time running and shooting with a drone clamped onto it's arm.

And yes, I know that if you wanted to capture people you could just load the gun with gel rounds. But give that drone a bite attack and a tazer charge and you have a great auxiliary weapon that lets it still have it's lethal loads.

Ooo.. Tazer bite!

*tucks that into his "Bag of Many (bad) Things"*

meh, bust-a-move with tazer skin

Aw... he's so cu-*Kzzzzzzzzt!*

To steal from another thread:
I see what your problem is, you got him set to "evil"...

Not neccesarily. I hear crawler and I thing one of the Spider Drones. That is a crawler and it has multiple legs. So the same thing to me applied to the Doberman.

yeah, but in shadowrun rules context crawler means tank tracks . . and walker means ANYTHING with stilts . . even if there are tracks or wheels or something like that attached to those stilts . . if the stilts can be moved to make steps, it'S a walker . .

They don't call him "hermit" because he likes making friends, you know.

While there's probably no good reason to make the Doberman "live up to its name" by adding teeth as a commercial product, it's definitely the sort of thing a slightly weird rigger might do. Also a modded "St Bernard" with Jaws of Life (and a brandy dispenser medkit?).

Now, THAT's awesome! How do we pull off that one? Possession Tradition spirits with Essence Drain?

now dont give those auzzies any ideas...

we already have enough trouble with the jarheads, now you want them to come up with a blood spirit in a can?!

That's a great idea!

Okay, so how would this work under the Arsenal rules? Probably a mechanical arm of some sort, plus a modified Shock Glove or taser weapon (does anyone else find it odd that tasers are unrestricted, but stun batons are?) Maybe with Pimped Ride level 1, to make the arm look more like a head and mouth.

So, total cost:

Grapple arm: 1,000 Y*
Special equipment: high-power stun weapon: 800 Y **
Pimped Ride I: 150 Y
Total: 1,950 Y, Availability 6R

*the 4,000 Y version would be useful if you wanted the "mouth" to do more than just grab and taser people, but that mod alone costs twice as much as the drone itself, so it's just not worth it. Ideally the arm mod would be a function of drone Body
** based on AZ-150 Stun Baton. Reach is exchanged for the ability to recharge from the drone's power plant.

How's that sound?

Wouldn't it need some upgrade that lets it do hth? Otherwise sounds like a pretty good deal for an unusual drone. Because who wants boring mini tanks with tazers?

Nothing says "I've really put time and effort into fucking up your day" like having a "stupid dog looking drone" drag you to the ground and taze your ass into submission.

Thanks, I needed that.

Oh yeah, you'll definitely need special autosofts for that to be good in any way.

Preferably one for sniffing the intruder out (Clearsight), one for running him down (Maneuver), and one for aiming the taser weapon (Targeting). The Targeting would have to be fairly unique, too, compared to the one that's pre-installed to deal with that sort of thing.

Also, personality software to growl and bark at intruders, and to roll over and pant when the true owner comes by.

And Empathy software to detect fear.

Fortune wins empathy software.

Wow... just fucking... wow. Give it a bit more empathy software so it can cycle through behaviors to find the one that trips your inner "Oh please be a good doggy!!!!!" reflex.

This concept may in fact make an appearance at my game. I like the idea of a drone scaring the failed composure test runner.

Dude, you got scared by a drone?
Dude I don't know! It just... pushed all the right buttons!

All we need to do now is build a SuperSquirt with pheromone markers into the thing so that it can "mark" offenders in case they get away in a crowd...

Uh-huh, and I suppose the drone lifts its hind legs before firing?

Yeah like the hound in Little Nicki with Adam Sandler. That what was it? A bulldog? It shot a Crossbow quarell and pissed acid if I remember correctly.

Robot dogs with bees in their mouths, so when they bark they shoot bees at you.

BEEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!

Thank you Something Awful for the phrase... thank you Bioshock for making it a reality for me.

actually, a reflavored drone launcher mod and a bunch of dragonfly drones, you could really have a dog with bees in it's mouth, and when it barks it shoots bees at you =P

Moo ho

ha ha

I can't wait to see their expressions...

"Oh My God! It's full of BEEEEEESSSS?!!!"

Heh, I'm just imagining a run on a mansion, owned by a guy who's really into dog races, with the entire security system carried on a dozen or more oddly kitted-out, heavily modified Dobermans.

"Release the hounds!"

Am I the only one having a Simpsons flashback - to when the show was still good?