Hey guys, I have a few questions I was hoping I could get a hand with.

In the near future I am going to be running my first shadowrun game with a group of freinds. One of my players brought a pretty cool idea to the table. His concept was a hacker/rigger who had worked for a corp. as a spider/programmer for the majority of his adult life who has been stricken with a disease that has not yet been identified. He is going to die, no if ands or buts about it. He retired, after 35 years or so with the company he had been working for. Cashed in all his stocks and bonds and did what any sensible dying person would do...he started running. However it wasn't long before his sickness caught up with him and he was bed ridden, determined to continue what had been a step away from doom and gloom for a night a time.

More or less what he is wanting to do is be 'jumped' into a humanoid drone, passing off as human and continue to shadowrun.....from all the way across north america (NY to Seattle). By the rules and numbers we have it figured out and it seems plausible, just running into a few issues.

First , we are all fairly new to the game and system, how does modifying a drone work? can I just buy a firewall program or a pilot program and throw it in there? what about putting cyberweapons into a drone? how does that work? keep in mind, this is a Otomo drone from Arsenal, and it can pass off as human for the most part. I mean, can i use standard cyberweapons and whatnot, considering its basically a body made completley of cyberware?

Ok, a cool idea, but there are a few issues. The critical drawback is that this is the maxed out "decker in his mothers basement" archetype. It allows the player to only spend points on things that he wants to deal with, which results in his character being vastly stronger in his area than any regular character. This is usually not a good thing. So I'd recommend against it unless you also are willing to allow the mage to be immune to bullets and the sammie to be immune to magic. It's that powerful an advantage.

In more detail:

It's harder to pull of the "pretend to be human" trick than you think. Any astral scan, weapon checkpoint, milimeter radar or cyberware scanner is going to recognize that this isn't a living person. I'm not sure there are any drones that can pass even a cursory look and not be recognized as a drone, but I may have missed one. What base model were you planning?

I don't believe you can install cyberware into a drone. You can pretty much achieve the same function directly by installing gear. Some basic options are in the base book, fancier stuff is in Arsenal.

In addition the character is hugely vulnerable to being tracked. Any jammer or other element that breaks communication will leave the team with a done running on it's dogbrain and the rigger character with dumpshock. Plus there is the option of an opposing rigger taking over the drone.

However the GM tends to be limited in what he can do, as any of the above either kills the character or ejects the player from the game session. So the player tends to get all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff. So again I'd recommend thinking very hard about this before going forward.

I appreciate the response and the input

I have thought out the problems of encouraging such focus in a character. However, working with the player I was able to get it to a point where I was happy with the result. He has low physical stats for the most part simply because hes rather sick atm, but he did allocate the points that he felt the character would still have despite his sickness, trying to stay away from min/maxing. The player is being very straightforward as far as everything hes doing and is one of the rare ones who isn't just looking for mech. bonuses.He took the quality (cant remember the name atm) that lets me roll for his remaining time alive which totals 4 months X_X.

And ya, I am aware about the astral scan, scanners, etc showing what he really is, as is he. I meant more of at a glance type situation.

Umm the base drone is : the Mitsuhami Otomo on pg.121 of arsenal. Its the one most often used by cyborgs because it is almost indistiguishable from a human.