I'm contemplating doing a possession style mage who functions as a rigger. I'm thinking of doing it with actual drones and vehicles, mainly so the spirits can have guns.

Has anyone done this sort of thing (with or without real drones)? Does it work? Does it work well? Any pitfalls to avoid? Any suggestions on really cool things to do with it?

the fix spell is your friend. arguably, great form plant spirits would also be your friend, but it's usually quite difficult to justify cramming plant spirits into a highly-processed machine...

anyways, the main thing to watch out for is going to be object resistance for when your drones need to be possessed. make all your drones prepared vessels (requires enchanting skill, iirc?) and that should help out a lot, but with the new OR table (which will probably become errata shortly) you're gonna have a hard time even then unless you have decent force spirits.

Preparing a drone as vessel can be quite expensive. We are talking 20k¥ / ton of of vehicle weight, plus tons of work, if memory serves. That can be still be worth it for the immunity to normal weapons alone, even if the spirit will be limited in using the drone.

There are two hybrid ways - you can either use the drone as a vessel, and have the drone pilot serve as exquisite control software for the sensor suite the spirit is kindly moving about, or put the spirit into a standard, non-moving object, and have the drone pilot move that around. The latter way looses you the immunity, but gains you the use of cheap vessels.
(Take a spirit with spellcasting, have a mobile "spell gun" and "spell shield" for your drones. *ducks*)

Oh, new object resistance rules. Ugh. I had discussed earlier, how prohibitive the costs of preparing a vehicle were, and the suggestion was to just use high force spirits.

It's not only the nuyen cost that makes it prohibitive.

Preparing an inanimate vessel requires a successful Enchanting
+ Magic (Object Resistance x 3, 1 day) Extended Test and two
refined or one radical reagent per 10 kilograms of the intended
vessel.

It's gone from 12 successes needed, to 18. Reagents could easily cost three or four times the cost of the vehicle.

And then there's

At the gamemaster’s
discretion, large or complex vessels—particularly those
with intricate mechanical parts or many components—may
require the magician to enchant multiple components separately,
rather than as a single Enchanting Test. An appropriate
Technical Skill Test may also be required to reassemble
the vessel.

So preparing a vehicle, or even a drone, as a vessel is probably not going to happen. So let's look at possession without preparation.

For inanimate vessels, the spirit makes a Force
x 2 (vessel’s Object Resistance) Test. Apply a +6 dice pool
bonus to the spirit if the vessel has been previously prepared
(see Vessel Preparation, p. 86).

My force six spirit needs to roll six successes on twelve dice. Tough. If I did prepare the drone as a vessel, It would have eighteen dice, and nearly even odds.

Have fun with not having fun, I guess.

Spirits raise all the vessel's attributes by their force. So a Steel Lynx possessed by a F6 spirit would have a body of 10 and an armor of 15. Incidentally, its immunity to normal weapons is pointless, because 12 is lower than 15.

But I've just discovered the real problem with this sort of thing. Every time I want the spirit to do something, it has to roll to possess. Which means I need to drive the drone around with me anyway.

Possession functions much like Materialization
with regards to a spirit’s owed services (see also
Spirit Services, p. 94); meaning that once the
spirit has completed its services it will return to
the astral or metaplanes, abandoning the vessel.

This is not unworkable with drones (except maybe for that high object resistance), but what do you do with a stone homonculus? You're not bringing it on runs. Or maybe I can convince my GM to use up a service on a standing order to remain in the vessel until I say it can go.

The test takes longer (about half a week maybe), and the cost is the aforementioned 20k¥/ton of vehicle weight in iron radicals. Using them will usually even make sense. You can enchant a medium combat drone for a few k¥, that should be worth it. More parts = takes longer. The weight stays the same, so the cost stays the same.

Incidentally, that does not really matter, since vehicles by default have "immunity to normal weapons". No stun track means you take no damage at all if DV is below your armor.
But than again, Armor is not an attribute, it would remain at 9. Until immunity kicks in and brings it to 12.

Digital Grimoire allows for a Possession spirit to remain in a vessel until next sunrise/sunset for the cost of one service.

Yeah, that's what I meant.



That's what I assumed until I read the sidebar on p.102

For instance, a corpse’s attributes would be appropriate,
as would a jar’s Barrier rating, or a vehicle’s
Body, Armor, and Speed—though not it’s
Handling.

Cool.

All right, I stand corrected.

You'll need enchanting.

As a workaround for mixing possession and rigging, consider enchanting low object resistance items that are then attached or carried by the drone to act as the vessel. This will make some uses of spirit powers cheaper to enable. e.g. using Movement on a Vehicle is more likely to be successful when the Spirit possesses the enchanted rock necklace on the vehicle rather then the vehicle itself.

I was thinking the possessed dashboard Jesus would be quite handy for many uses. But that would require me to actually drive.

*sigh* Too many skills to learn.