Ok, I just ran my first SR session last night and a few rules questions came up.

1) How do drones handle recoil? For example, what recoil compensation would a Doberman drone with an AK-97 firing either in burst or full auto have?

2) If a character purchases a program for a drone, can he load that copy into all of his drones or does he need to purchase individual copies for all of his drones? Not sure how copy protection works.

3) Do multiple doses of a drug stack? For example, can a player take two hits of Nitro and receive double the bonuses and suffer does the stun damage (with bleed over into physical)?

Depends, really.

Per the rules in the main rulebook, they handle recoil just like a person would; there is nothing in the main rulebook that says that vehicles/drones get any breaks on recoil. In the example you gave, it could (arguably) have 1 point of RC from the gun.

If you are using Arsenal, then the *assumption* (though, sadly, not specifically stated as a rule) is that weapons mounted on Weapon Mounts do not suffer from recoil (p.105). There is an guideline that the gamemaster can limit this "free" recoil compensation to the Body of the vehicle/drone (in cases where you have a bigass machine gun on a little drone or bicycle), but there's no specific rule either way. In the example you gave, it would either have 4 points of RC (1 from the gun, 3 from the Body of the drone) or not have to worry about recoil at all.



IIRC, there is nothing in the main rules about copy protection on software. I presume that they leave it up to the GM.

Unwired has a whole section on bypassing copy protection (and the consequences of using pirated software).

Personally, I feel that a lot of the rules in Unwired are kludgy and don't really do much to add to the game, but your mileage may vary. Some people like a bit of bookkeeping.



I don't know if there are rules one way or the other on this; no-one in any of the games that I play in has a character that uses them. My inclination is that they *wouldn't* stack, but I couldn't quote a rule one way or the other.

1) The Drone's Body ist its Recoilcomp.(Vehicles can ignore Recoil completely)
2) You should be able to make copies and use them on different Drones
3) nope, they don't stack only the highest Bonus counts

with a Dance to Billy Wilders 1-2-3
Medicineman

Drones are classed as vehicles for most purposes and vehicles ignore recoil normally. Arsenal gives an optional rule that the GM may invoke applying recoil, but keeping the vehicle or drone's body as recoil compensation (note this would be in addtion to any recoil mods built into the weapon itself). I'd normally only invoke this myself when things were obviously getting too extreme - an HMG on some compact (Body 3) drone which is the example it gives in Arsenal. Keep in mind that drones can be designed to be weapons platforms. Tall organic bipeds, not so much.

Programs may have copy protection. According to Unwired, legal programs are normally assumed to legitimately purchased and therefore have copy protection. Illegal programs are normally assumed to be illegitimate and to not have copy protection. I find this rather simplistic and by default I assume that any programs that you buy from someone else have copy protection - why sell a program once when you can sell it multiple times. Also, if programs lack copy protection, then communal buying and reproduction of software makes the listed prices almost nonsensical. Legal software doesn't degrade because you get updates (though it does make you easier to track in the Matrix). Illegal software degrades at 1 point per month for hacking software and malware, 1 point per 2 months for the rest. There are patching rules to counteract this in Unwired. SR4 had rules for cracking copy protection, SR4A doesn't for some reason. It was a Software + Logic Extended test. Unwired gives thresholds of around 11 + Rating depending on the type of software, interval 1 hour.

Drugs don't normally stack, however, SR4A pg. 257 recommends an extra box of body damage for every additional dose. Arsenal has some minor optional rules for mixing drugs, but it's basically increasing the addiction modifier rather than effects on damage. When it came up in my game, it was a character that had passed out from drain that they were keeping awake with an excess of Stim-patches. I ruled (because it was fun and made sense) that it worked, but it just resulted in more damage spilling over into Physical when they came down. Worked nicely. I wouldn't allow effects from the same drugs to stack normally. I will allow distinct effects of different drugs to both be in effect, I would normally take only the highest boost from any drugs as this is most inline with Shadowrun rules and seems best for game play. I'd allow durations to be extended normally, but the after effects will accumulate.

K.

Do you have a page source for this? This has been something of an ongoing discussion between myself and my group (we've always played it that way), but an actual citation eludes us.

EDIT for clarity

This shows that Arsenal considers drones as vehicles.

p. 131 Arsenal has an example.

"In the SR4 rules, drones are a subgroup of vehicles, so every
time the term “vehicle” is used, this includes drones."

I was wondering about the "vehicles ignore recoil" bit, not the (without question) "drones are classified as vehicles" bit. I'm not completely dense.

I've clarified my post accordingly.

forgarn has posted a relevant quote that shows vehicle mounted weapons don't suffer recoil. This is also stated somewhere else as well, but I don't recall where exactly at the moment, sorry. At any rate, you have your answer.

K.

"Theoretically, vehicle weapons mounted in a weapon mount (p. 146) do not suffer negative recoil modifiers"

I don't argue that this quote exists (I have referenced it quite often myself). My question (which is strictly to reinforce the way that my group has been playing vehicle weapons all along) is where, if anywhere, is there an actual rule that "Vechicle mounted weapons don't suffer recoil"?

I mean, without getting into the whole "Rules As WRITTEN" debate (which is becoming, to me, something of a Dumpshock version of Godwin's Law -- as soon as RAI vs RAW starts being debated, I feel comfortable in no longer following the thread in question), saying that something "theoretically" is a rule isn't even RAI. Saying "theoretically, a Yugo could travel under it's own power at 200+ mph" is not the same as saying that Yugos have a top speed of 200+ mph.

Lest this turn into some big argument, though, I personally am comfortable assuming that the "theoretical" statement in Arsenal means that vehicle-mounted weapons don't suffer from recoil -- not in an argument with Muspellsheimr, though.

1) covered

2) For most programs yes. For certain programs, like some Autosofts and all Pilots, they are specific to a certain weapon/vehicle type. So if you have identical vehicles, you should be able to clone programs across them, but you can't use the same Targeting Autosoft on your Steel Lynx to fire both the Ares MP-LMG and the ArmTec MGL-12. Likewise, a Doberman's Maneuver Autosoft won't work on your Lynx. Others, like Clearsight should clone without issue.

3) Not a RAW ruling, but generally, one hit of a drug generally represents the maximum effective dose. After that point, benefit drops off, but any detrimental effects stack. Otherwise, you could just overclock on Jazz to +X IPs and Reaction and only suffer +X sadness and disorientation. Ridiculous.

Thanks for the clarification guys. I made some initial rulings at the table on these issues to keep the game's momentum going but I wanted to get some advice on them before the next session. I still feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that drones suffer absolutely no recoil because they are considered vechicles. I can see a rigger outfitting four Dobermans with LMGs and having a field day with multiple IPs and bursts/full auto. It just seems a little unbalancing that's all considering the fire power that can be leveled from the drones with no loss of accuracy in terms of recoil penalties. I guess time will tell though.

I know what you mean; if it helps, in both of the SR games that I'm involved in (one as a player, one as the GM), we use the "drones get recoil compensation equal to their body" optional rule, and it seems to work out quite nicely. It's enough RC to factor in the benefit of having a weapon physically mounted to something (generally) more stable than a guy carrying it by hand, but it still requires the rigger to consider recoil when going full tilt with the LMG.

The first time that an enemy Spider sends a Spoof command to the teams drone to put an FA burst into their backs, they might have to reconsider their thoughts on using robots to do all the heavy chopping. Besides, if they roll around with a mass of assault drones on full display, a corp sec force can just as easily respond with bigger drones with bigger guns. No one likes to hear that GE Vindicator Minigun spinning up down the hallway. 21P narrow burst anyone?

True enough. I'll run the optional rule by my group and see what they want to do with the advisement that the same rule obviously applies to enemy drones.