What're the need to haves for a Technomancer rigger? I'm terrible at figuring out how to prioritize Technomancers as is, rigging is even more confusing. Does he need complex forms? is it better than a sprite in a bot? Help me help him rebuild. Also, Longbow if you'd be kind enough to share what you're playing this summer that'd be nice to ensure we aren't double riggered. I dunno what I'd do with those drones.

Well, first, god forbid you be suboptimal.

One method is threading your Command CF really high, and doing everything in Remote Control.
Good sprites can also be effective 'super-Pilots'.
Technomancers can slave drones to their bionode for hack-proof-ness (IIRC), and can (with GM approval) get a nice TacNet CF.

Standard hacker bonuses still work: PuSHeD, Sim Boosters, etc.

There are some previous threads on this, of course. Do a search for more extensive tips.

And you can have many guns flying around your head controlled by your murderthoughts.

It's not just about builds, people, it's also about Roles and "Rule Of Cool"!

So, The theme I'm getting is Sprites in bots is good, how high a rating should sprites have? The player is new to rigging, how do you play this?

Never summon anything bigger than your head.

That includes the Digital Magicians as well.

I was considering playing a hacker/technomancer so that you wouldn't need to artificially lower thresholds in the matrix anymore, but it sounds like you've got that covered. Instead, I'll go with my first idea:

I'm playing The Most Interesting Man in the World.
I'll seriously aim for the following using positive/negative qualities and my general build.
His blood smells like cologne.
He's a lover, not a fighter. But he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas.
The police often question him, just because they find him interesting.
He can speak French, in Russian.
At museums, he is allowed to touch the art.
On Careers: "Find out what it is in life that you do not do well, and then don't do that thing."

These might make it into the roleplay:
He is the life of parties he never attended.
He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it felt.
On Wingmen: "It doesn't take more than one man to talk to a woman."
On Rollerblading: "No."

His main two catchphrases will make it in there as roleplay or negative qualities.

All in all, I'm going to shoot for a character with about 20 dice in both shooting and social skills, with moderate stealth aspects.

You should decide three things first, because they are not covered by RAW
- How do sprites interact with drones
- How do sprites use autosofts, and how is their Autosoft power actually used?
- Can TMs get the bonus from a Control Rig?

Apart from that, high Willpower is obviously nice to have if the player wants to jump in frequently. For a starting drone loadout, I'd suggest an up-armoured Doberman with White Knight LMG, and a Fly-Spy with sensors raised to R6 (see the Arsenal errata on that) and various vision enhancements in the camera.

Or better yet, work-out some house-rules on a natural control-rig for technomancers, say a quality around 10 BP or so, to get the standard control-rig bonus without blowing any essence. If you're going to work-up houserules for Riggermancers, why not go all the way.

(Oh, and once you've done all that, write it up and publish it here!)

So...elven adept?

So, after reading through techno stuff again, how do you reccommend stats and skills for dronomancy?

Except the adept part. It's become part of my play style until all essence hugging awakened grovel before my mundane glory. (ugh, does the word have to be "mundane"? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. Even the word "mundane" basically implies that awakened are better)

Its just a perception thing, and perception does not always equal reality... Really, the Mundanes in the core character group that we play tend to be better than the Awakened, because they are useful in more situations, and carry less drawbacks. Of course, it is a play style thing, ans likely a Character Concept thing. When your Awakened spend every available point into making their magical natures more powerful/versatile, they tend to fall by the wayside for non-magical tasks. They are very good magically, but not so good non-magically.

If you are only comparing on the capabilities of unlimited advancement, then yes, Awakened/Emergent characters have unlimited potential. But it never really works out that way in game. Something always comes up.

Have resonance 6, thread to command 12. Use 1 drone remotely as the primary. Have a rating 6+ (hopefully 7 so your mage can heal the P fade) machine sprite to autonomously command another drone. I suggest Hussar's from WAR! but if you don't have a face, the 32F availability is rather hard to hit.

I would equip the Hussars with Lonestar Flash Flood Cannons, and cover them in grenades (unless you use the greande rules from WAR, in which case I would use a fully automatic grenade launcher as an option).

One of the things that usually gets me is that it's difficult for a mundane to max out an augmented skill, whereas if you're willing to play awakened, it's as easy as taking the adept quality for Improved Ability. There's more, but basically it's the fact that their selling feature is versatility, and they can still min-max better than a mundane on the side.

reflex recorders? reflex recorder(group) are both great add ons for physical skills

Athletics: Synthcardium, and some others can get you +6 to your dp's easily.
There are tons of +logic enhancers that will give you + to your tech skill pools.
Attention-Coprocessors, so cheap, everyone should have one. +3 to all physical perception tests.

Saying that Cyber can't rack up the augments to skill dp's is.. a mistake.

I'm pretty sure Fading can't be healed magically, no matter if it is S or P.

I should have been more specific: weapon skills.

You can get a reflex recorder... and synch gives you a situational bonus, but it's not reliable so I don't count it. Therefore adept gets a +2 bonus that I can't.

True, but I think that Longbowrocks is complaining that there are not a lot of SKILL Augmentations available to Mundane Characters. Outside of your Reflex Recorders and the MBW System (for Dodge) there are not any others I can think of off the top of my head. The issue he compares to is the Adepts ability to apply his Skill modifications to any Combat, Technical, Physical or vehicle skills. Hard to compete with that. Though I guess a Reflex Recorder will apply to the Combat and Physical Skills, but there is just not a lot of applicable tech to apply to skills.... It is a distinct lact of equality that he is seeing.

I agre that the vast amount of ware available will compensate the Dice Pools quite adequately, though, as most Adepts will not go in for much in the way of augmentation. In fact, I often see Strreet Sams outstripping Adepts abilities, except in a very few cases (Elemental Damage for one).

Anyways...

Look at p. 247 in SR4A. Chart has all the tests.

Pick the mode and style your dronomancer will specialize in, and maximize those related skills and attributes/programs/CF that you will be using.

Fading is treated just like Drain, as far as I know. First Aid can aid, magic cannot. But I have no Quotes for that. In fact, the thing keeping Drain from being healed magically is because it is self inflicted magical damage. Fading does not fall into that category, so I see no reason that it COULDN"T be healed by magic. *shrug*

It's because they cut and pasted the Drain rules for Fading and then did a search and replaced ^drain^fading

As they should have. It's magic, except it's Resonance.

Digital magic.

Well, it's not QUITE that simple. You still have to get your base skill up first to double whatever Improved Ability rating you want to get.



-k

Not like skill rating (augmented or otherwise) matters much more than attribute or DP mods. There are maybe 2 rare things it affects.

This is why God made grenade launchers. Sure you can't make a cold grenade, but fire is easy enough

An odd question, but one I'd like to have answered. When a sprite is in a drone, does it use Response or Command?

Depends: are they Remote Controlling or Jumped In? I assume if you have a sprite in the drone as a 'super-Pilot', it makes tests just like a Pilot. There's probably no reason they can't Remote Control, though. For most sprites, Response and Command should be nearly equal, right?

They Should be straight up equal, as far as I can tell. I haven't got uwired, though. Are there advantages to having the sprite in direct control? I'm away from Book and interested in how rigging works.

The difference isn't in the dicepool, it's in the action types. With remote control, whenever you want to do anything, be it a complex, simple, or free action, you need to spend a complex action to use Command. Jumped in, you take meatspace actions like a normal meatperson, so your free actions are free, you can do two simple actions in a pass, etc.

So I should always have the sprite "Jumped In?" That seemed like the best option, but I'm fuzzy on how sprites interact with drones.

There are the same tradeoffs that normal characters have, but the nature of sprites could alter them. For a normal player, it can be easier to get Command higher, and you never suffer dumpshock or anything; Jumped In can be faster (esp. for the reasons Emy mentioned), but there are drawbacks. Sprites still have a condition monitor.

I'm not actually *certain* sprites can Jump In at all, but it seems pretty reasonable. If they can't, they may be able to more literally replace the Pilot, which means they use Autosofts instead of 'people skills'. See the table on p247, SR4A. I don't think this latter idea is right, though.

It's a little problematic: sprites are basically agents, and Pilots are basically agents, but there are major differences between each of these three things that makes assumptions dangerous. :/ Sprites generally have 'people skills', not autosofts, and we can't necessarily assume they count as replacing the specialized vehicle-control systems of the Pilot… and they lack Piloting skills.

Machine Sprites have a Command CF, that would seem to make that the expected mode of control.

This does not preclude "jumping in" though.

From fluff you could argue a Sprite doesn't have a brain to do the fancy bionuerological feedback tricks that are what "Jumping in" does.

In practical terms I'd just let a player use whatever they think is best. Choices can be fun.

I'm inclined to go with Dire Radiant and just let sprites jump in, But I honestly have no idea how sprites can do anything drone related. Is there anything in Unwired that will help/clarify?

Question:
Is he underpowered compared to the rest of the group, or compared to longbowrocks character? O.o
This is an important distinction to make i guess ^^

The books also say that sprites barely know anything about the non-matrix world; machine sprites are the closes thing to an exception. So, they may not be any good at driving and combat.

Everyone is underpowered compared to Longbow. I fear he is broken to the point of non-functional by my lack of understanding how sprites interact with drones. The original sheet is lost to the nether, anyway, so I'm looking to rebuild him into something that works. I don't expect him to top Longbow, but aren't riggers the most terrifying archetype? He could be up there on the power scale. I also should really exert a bit more oversight on Longbow, just so I can keep track of what he's up to.

I'm now picturing the rigger as Patten training his sprites for combat with inspiring speeches.

Well, you should be careful with Mr. longbowrocks. All I see are repeated threads about his fundamentally misreading the rules. Good-naturedly, of course.

Oh, I'm watching him, alright.

i could probably give you some idea as to what he might be up to this/next time, but that's only because i seem to keep giving him ideas *snickers*
also: yes, riggers are potentially the most devastating force you can have around. a good rigger can take over a god damn batmancarrier after all...

Wait, what? I;m reading this:
"Improved Ability
Cost: .5 per level (Combat skills),
.25 per level (Physical, Social, Technical, and Vehicle skills)
This power increases the rating of a specific Active skill by 1 per
level. A skill’s maximum modified rating equals its base rating x 1.5.
Improved ability must be purchased for a specific skill, not a skill group."

Whoa, lets not forget that none of the characters I've put on paper have been illegal. The troll was pre-errata, but I feel like that's just being behind the times since none of our group knew (including me).

Except that Pilots also seem to basically be a System as well, because that simplifies things immensely . Per RAW, I don't think sprites can "jump in" a drone. Isn't there a AI Quality that allows them to jump into drones, which would indicate that sprites and agents can't (don't have RC in front of me)? Of course, RAW is kinda dumb on this stuff and I don't see anything broken about it, so why not allow it? It's simpler anyway.

And yeah, be careful with riggers, especially if they can also hack (and why wouldn't they). Everything is Matrix accessible and controllable: cars on the freeway, airplanes, your toaster, that building over there. Seriously, in the future everyone still ties their own ties, because if they didn't the riggers would have choked everyone to death long ago.

"base rating x 1.5"

Ergo, your base skill must be raised to double the Improved Ability rating.

If your base skill rating is 2, your maximum modified rating is 3. Which is base skill of 2 plus Improved Ability 1.

If your base skill rating is 4, your maximum modified rating is 6. Which is base skill of 4 plus Improved Ability 2.

And so on.

Note that this maximum modified rating also applies to any other direct skill boosts. (although other direct skill boosts are rare) So if you had Widget X that gave you a +2 skill modifier (as opposed to skill DICE POOL modifier), and your base skill was 4, getting Improved Ability on top of that would not actually help you any.



-k

Ah, I always thought skill ratings worked like attribute ratings (augmented max = 1.5 X natural max).

Nope, though that would simplify everything, wouldn't it?

PoliteMan, I fully agree: Pilot=System is the main reason I assume sprites *can't* replace them. You're also right about Piloting Origin. The quality is the only thing that lets a free AI 'jump in' or/and use autosofts. While 'sprites are special', that seems to be strong evidence that they can't do that.

If the question came up while GMing, I think I'd allow high-rating Sprites to take a Power equivalent to that as a bonus power; maybe just Machine Sprites?

In conclusion, it looks like Sprites use Command. They're still a good choice, because it means your drones are hack-proof, and you can control them (IIRC?) via the Resonance link (no wireless). If the existing Pilots are already great, you can also use cheap sprites to relay orders for you in the same way, but TacNets are tough without sensor feeds.

Runners Companion p. 91 for AI
"Piloting Origin
Cost: 5 or 10 BP
The AI’s origin is (or is related to) that of a drone or vehicle
pilot program. With the 5 BP version of this quality, the character
with this quality can interpret rigger signals and may “jump into”
rigged vehicles as would a rigger. The 10 BP version of this quality
is the same, except that the AI may load and directly use all autosoft
programs, using the program rating in place of its own skill."

Which would imply that' it's expected a Sprite/Agent/AI/Pilot(For a different vehicle) cannot normally "Jump in", otherwise why pay BP for the ability to do so?

So which drones are nice to have?