I can only seem to find four humanoid drones: the Manservant and the three Mitsuhama ones with 24R Availability that are crazy expensive. Are there any others? Is there a way to get the Otomo without the crazy priced CCU? Ideally I want something with a better acceleration and top speed that can keep up with a group of humans.

I'm playing a Rigger and trying to find out if there's any more drones beyond the ones in the core and Arsenal, and the tiny few mentioned in Unwired and Runner's Companion.

Note: The Evo Orderly is not humanoid and has been errataed. I already saw that one.

The humanoid killer drones have been errata'ed to have the mimic modification, which is technically responsible for them actually looking human. The mod is really cheap and the "walker" transport mode does exist as a mod as well, so you can retrofit any drone you want to walk and look like a human.
I've no idea what's up with the prices of the stealth drones. If they do actually include the full CCU, they're way too cheap, but if they don't, then there's no reason why they cost as much as they do...

I'm a little confused here.

What exactly is wrong with the Manservant?

It has exactly the same acceleration as the Otomo which is all that matters in personal scale combat.

Probably the fact that the thing is engineered top to bottom, from the servos that power the joint to the core pilot software... to be non-violent. The Manservant could not lift and twist an arm in a manner that would allow it to block an overhead chop, or even punch with any force greater than a child. They are handy like that, in that they may be allowed into more places than more dangerous drones, but a ganger with a sledgehammer is going to tear it to little pieces.

Can't you mod it away from that limitation, and as a rigger don't you basically mod everything you use?

Honest not sarcastic questions by the way, I have not played a rigger in 4e yet.

There is certainly no reason you could not disconnect the kill switch. The only explicit crunchy limitation is the inability to kick.

With a Body of 3 it's not a combat drone but the OP never asked for a Terminator just a cheap humanoid.

Personally I'd slap Mimic level 3 on a Manservant and make do.

The primary thing I don't like about the Manservant is the speed and acceleration. It has a Top Speed of 15 and Acceleration of 5/15 because it has leg joints that are specifically designed to be dirt slow.



You can mod this to a degree by putting Engine Customization (Speed) to increase it to 18 instead of 15, but even that is slower than a dwarf's running speed of 20. Furthermore, if you add more than 3 points of Armor to the Manservant, it's Speed and Acceleration drop by 20% again.

I'm thinking about asking my GM if I can just strap together two cyberlegs, two cyberarms, a cybertorso, a cyberskull, two cybereyes and two cyberears and put together an entire cyberman for a drone. The problem with this is that it would cost nearly 100,000 nuyen as well as requiring all crazy kinds of house rules.

How is it that the Otomo has the base of a 5/15 acceleration but having cyberlegs doesn't slow your movement?

Sorry, getting a bit ranty now.

I have seen premade combat drones with body 3ish and decent armor like the doberman, can you mod things that far. Also if drone is humanoid and you put a gun in its hand how does that work, do you need a weapon mount or is the hand a built in weapon mount. If you can use the hands how does recoil work, recoil like vehicles rules or does it follow standard character recoil rules.

There's no specific rules for it, but I'd imagine that putting a weapon in the drone's hand gives usual recoil because it's not strapped and bolted in.

You can't really mod something to move in a way the chassis was enegneered from the ground up to prevent. It would be like modding a Toyota Corola to be a Baja racer (2+ feet of suspension travel at 100 MP over rocks). You could do it, but you'd be pretty much building from scratch and just making it look (sort of) the same.

There's two schools on riggers, IMO. One is the "Q" type who mods the hell out of everything. The other is the .... well, there's no good name, but the type who just uses cheap off the shelf (or stollen, or hacked) stuff and treats it as disposable. I prefer the latter, with just enough of the former thrown in to allow some MacGuyver type tricks.

Renraku got problem with drones in the Archology and designed non lethal drones in the following of those events.

MCT and Evo have simillar model. But I rules out the "builded for non violent purpose and the panic switch" but they are 5k instead of the regular 2.5k They have all the same stats and can be modified for combat.

Still, use 2nd hand cyberware to replace the mechanical arms and the same for the legs. You'll get a better machine that way. (from 5k to 80k tho)

Unfortunately the 'design' speed thing is pure fluff. If you want a faster humanoid drone you are flat out of luck, there ain't one.

Cyborgs are just as slow, which fits with the idiom for the most part, they ain't fast, they are relentless.

Basically what I was looking for. Thank you.

Technically, RAW, you could take a Thundercloud Contrail, add Walker to make it roughly humanoid, 2 Mechanical arms and Mimic 3 and still have 2 mod slots left to play with.

That would cost 31k all in and would have a accel/speed of 10/20/90.

For another 4800 you could fill your last 2 slots with turbo and get 20/40/90.

You couldn't get any other mod's but the arms can be fitted with cyberlimb accessories for shits and giggles.

I just noticed there's no price listing for the nutrient pack required for Mimic to be replaced every few days.

Ha!

At least there's a price for mimic now....

Although ironically, level 1 would be even more expensive because it needs to be replaced every day instead of 10 times a month.

Nutrient packs would be the same (very cheap) packs you put in your food synthesizer unit at home, I'd expect, or could be refilled from such a system. Tick your food costs up by 10% for each Mimic system you are "feeding" as a "guest" (5% if you figure the mimic is just skin, and not a full human body- brains and muscles use a LOT of calories), with the catch that you need a food sythesizer (middle lifestyle or approrpriate advanced lifestyle necessity level).

Food ... It cost like food. My otomo are house ruled has "eating" robots. They use the oils from seed to lubricate and the nutriment to have the mimic running.

This is really an issue for the GM. There's a huge gap in the official drones, but barring a 4th Ed Rigger sourcebook (Dear Santa, I have been a very good good honest mostly polite dwarf this year, and I'd like a...) this is an issue to be solved at the table.

If you're willing to wander away from RAW, your GM should have no trouble cooking up a Saeder-Krupp Butler-Bot, an Aztechnology Secretario, or even a mil-spec Ares Adjunct XC-105. A walker bot should have stats similar to a metahuman, with software and pilot that make it more or less 'smart' in different situations. We know that anthroform drones exist, we just need to agree on a feature set and price point for models between the manservant and the otomo.

The great thing about a GM issue like this is that it's open to interpretation. He might decide to make the Ares Adjunct a 10,000Y humanoid with stock 5 agility and 6-point hardened armor, or the Secretariat an 8,000 nuyen mimic model designed to sit a front desk smiling pleasently at guests and answering phones, which requires heavy modification to be combat effective but can pass as human in most situations. He might ask 10x that...but it doesn't cost you anything to ask.

Personally, I'd eyeball it as being similar to a full-suit cyborg upgrade, which starts at 90,000. You can point out that the drone doesn't need a nervous system connection or life support capabilities, and suggest you get the whole thing at 'secondhand cyberware' prices due to the less complex systems, closer to 45,000. If you can sell the GM on this basic idea, then you have a basis for adding armor and upgrades to the body as if it were cyberware, or you can play it as a stock 3-point body, strength and agility sidekick with a normal range of functions.

NONONONONONONO! Don't Custom Engine, use Turbocharger instead. Waaaay better benefits.

EDIT: Went through my archives.



I also have a couple other versions with some mean end results, as well as a list of Autosofts that make this thing a nasty kill-machine. Here's a hint: it involves Software Suits and Autosofts.

Surely any humanoid drone could be modified to have Cyberskates or Skimmer Discs in its feet for better ground speed?

Assuming that Walker Mode gives you legs that can be used like Full Arms are to cyberarms. The rules don't say they are, where it spells it out specifically for Full Mechanical Arms. (Just to clarify, in my games they are, but that's a houserule, not RAW)

How much space could you get in an otomo by ditching the 3 foot long cavity where the ccu connects, and just filling it with fun and potentially dangerous electronics, and stuff?

I guess it's more about the money and availability than the space...

given the SR4 "curse", that would signal the end of the 4th edition, and the beginning of the 5th...

The same amount of capacity that the mod itself takes, of course. IIRC, 1 or 2 slots.

I hope not, I just started to like 4th ...

What SR4 curse is this?

My Grandfather had a saying...it was kind of deep, and you have to ponder it a little, but I think it applies here. It went like this:

"...huh?"

looking back over SR publishing history, rigger black book, rigger 2 and rigger 3 where all published at or close to the end of SR1, SR2 and SR3.

This is confirmed.

- J.

Arsenal doesn't count as a Rigger book does it?

For SR3 wasn't it actually the revised Rigger 3, not the original that had come out a couple of years prior?

I asked the dev and they told me there is no rigger book in plan.

well rigger 3 was one of the last SR3 books that fasa published (if not the last), and rigger3 revised was one of the last from fanpro before going SR4. But thats all very much "iirc".

NO which kinda makes me think that was the point... if you make it Street Samurai Catalogue 2 + Rigger 4 + Fields of Fire 2 all in one, then it bypasses the curse.

- J.

i think the idea was to get as high density of updates to "old" gear out there as fast as possible. And they got that done by throwing in a maximum of stats and descriptions, and a minimum of art.

heck, i think the original release plan was arsenal, then augmentation. But thanks to the licensing issues between fanpro and wizkids, resulting in fanpro getting the license revoked while in the middle of doing arsenal and emergence.

And the best company got the licence. Catalyst !

i could probably be badly wrong here but here goes:

the way i have understood it is that when fasa dissolved, fanpro hired many of those that had worked on battletech and shadowrun, and created a US branch (fanpro llc, iirc) that did the actual product development.

when fanpro then lost the license, catalyst was formed by the same group of people to continue development of those games (and picked up some new ones as well).

There's still hope in the form of War...

currently, that one is so far off that its not even mentioned as upcoming on shadowrun4.com...

...and the absolute lack of information means that there is still room for wishful thinking

On the topic of adding additional drones to the 'official' catalog, I wonder if the long-awaited Dumpshock Data Haven 'Zine might eventually get the nod to include optional rules for new gear? I'm remembering another franchise with its' own magazine that went that way, and now includes those optional rules in official RAW. (Always with the caveat that the GM makes the final call, of course.) I mention it only because I really would like more info on the drones we already have and similar models, and if there was a way to get some of that info out to the players without having to develop/print/market a new book...well, low overhead.

Another alternative to Rigger 4 would be a quick & dirty PDF supplement, with some of the old fluff updated to SR4 rules. Maybe when I finish my MapTools project and I need something to do, I'll cook one up for kicks.

It'd be nice if in an upcoming book, soneone could stat out a Terminator style drone. I'd like to see what the t-800 looks like in Shadowrun stats.

Uh... that's an Otomo.

Maybe I should clarify: A high end version. The Akiyama and Otomo aren't particularly impressive in combat and would be shredded by your average combat runner.

You mean a Tomino? With armor 20 and a few other mods?

No, just an Otomo with Concealed Armor. It should look human, after all.