Hail great minds of Dumpshock, I seek your wisdom.

For an upcoming 4th ed RL game I'm trying to develop a character that is a Driver/Car Thief. I picture a runner that when the team gets a job he goes out and procures the appropriate vehicle/s for the job, making sure they will be usable for the length of the run and then dumped or if possible sold for a little extra cash on the side.

I thinkg the driver side should be fairly simple, as right now I'm looking at that being straight skill based, but I'm open to the rigging option (or others) if that works better with the Stealing part.

The part I really need help with is stealing side, making sure I have the required skills & equipment to deal with security systems, tracking and such. Would really suck to have the Star or Knights show up part way through a run wanting the car back.

This is a new runner so a 400 pt build, and I have access to all the books. I was thinking Human and was looking at the following as possible Qualities...
Black Market Pipeline (for selling after the run)
Gearhead (taking the higher 15 BP for "cars")
Jurryrigger ( to deal with unforeseen issues)

Any and all ideas welcome.

Thanks ahead of time for the help.

JD

Hacking skills to search for the car you need, possibly off the grid guide unless you're using a contact for that.

hardware related skills to hack the car. Also maybe some ranks in con with a speciality geared towards things like going into a airline parking garage and driveing out pretending the car is yours. Some ranks in forgery wouldn't hurt either,

An interesting thought, maybe with a control rig, would be to remotely steal cars from home, and drive them wirelessly from where they sit to wherever the buyer/fence is. You'd need the hacking skills then, and it would only work on newer vehicles, and non-skinlinked wireless enabled vehicles. For older, classic, and hotrod types (60's Cobra, type stuff) you'd need the old school pilot and locksmith skills. I imagine even for boosting new cars you'd need at least the hardware skill or hacking skill to bypass maglock issues. You'd also need some strong data search skills to find the cars you're looking for. Getting past collectors' security (rich folks protect their loot) will probably be achore too, though the hacking skills might do wonders there. Perhaps some con, or infiltration skill to get you past meat guards would come in handy too.

I imagine reaction modifying ware would go a long way to boost the driving abilities. So, Move-by-wire, wired reflexes, or somesuch is probably a necessity. I'd go with a control rig, personally, since the character will be pretty tied to vehicles, it feels quite right. Depending on whether you choose the con route or the infiltration route for evading meat security, you could benefit from tailored pheromones, or muscle toner, or even both depending on available $.

An interesting twist could be a seduction-based car thief, who seduces the owners, then drives away in their rides. A pornomancer-type build with some driving and theifly skills might do your build justice. It's not as flashy as hotwiring, and could get your face well known for the wrong reasons in the right circles, but might be fun to play.

You could do this with a technomancer as well. If you submerge you can get the touchlink echo. You walk up to the car, touch it, hack it, and keep walking. The car drives itself away after you have left, and you can control it remotely. That will not work straight out of character creation, so you would need hardware and driving skills early on.

Thanks for the suggestions.

The tecnomancer idea sounds cool, I just haven't done the technomancer before so it would be alot of work to figure out.

From what I was reading today I will need to focus on being able to hack past the security of the cars, but that should be it. Which will hopefully leave me with the points to get the skills / equipment I need for the driving aspect.

JD

Hardware wise you will need a decent commlink (with some rigger/hacker software), maglock sequencer, an auto-picker (or picks if you take that skill), tag scanner, couple tag erasers, couple of area jammers, couple packs of vehicle coded TAGs, vehicle tool kit, and electronics tool kit at the very least. Some spoof chips and shifting plates help a lot.
[Notice, you only need a decent commlink unless you are going to be trying to do combat or heavy duty hacking. Rating 3 or 4 in link and softs should be more than enough. The rest of the stuff is to get you in, get you out, and clean the vehicle.]

Skill wise, you will need good ratings in Pilot Ground, Electronics SG, Hacking, Dodge, and Automotive Mechanic. Need a decent rating in Perception, a gun skill (pistols works), Stealth SG and Con (or Influence SG). If you got points left at the end, any additional Pilot, Mechanic SG, and Athletics SG are nice.

Qualities you listed three good ones, though Juryrigger is the weakest. If you have points, consider something like Blandness (if stealth focused) or First Impression (if con focused)

Stealth focused should creep up and snatch parked vehicles, though some con is useful to talk your way in. Con focused works to talk someone into letting you use their car or to get close enough to them to pull a pistol, steal their commlink (very important step), and jack their car.

Stealing the commlink is important. With it gone, they have no easy way to contact anyone and most of their information is gone (if they don’t have a datajack). At the very least, this will give you enough time to get away without using a jammer and calling attention to yourself.

After stealing a car, drive it to somewhere with no signal and “clean it� before any but the shortest term use. This involves scanning the whole vehicle for tags and such, zapping them, replacing them with clean ones. Hack the cars computer and change its ID to match the clean tags. Don’t forget to check the cars Gridguide and zap any accounts! Change the plates. If you got the chip and plates that auto change life is easier.
[Describe this and ask the GM if you can just make a Hardware and Auto Mechanic roll. Dif and increments shouldn’t be that high. After the first time, most likely you’ll just be saying “I clean the car� and make the rolls. A place with no signal to work in is important to avoid the car being traced.]