So, I have a player in my game who is playing a Naga Adept Rigger with the Scorched defect, so he absolutely REFUSES to go into VR or jump into drones. I've repeatedly tried to find any and all penalties for rigging in AR and the only things I can I can find are that he loses 2 dice from being in Hot Sim, the two extra IPs, and the increased sensory feedback. I seems to me that there should be a lot more downsides than than, but can't find them. Help please?

There's also the added time when probing for a hack, but that's pretty much it. I do think that 2 extra IPs (which can be upgraded with gear to a total of having 5 IPs) and two dice is a fair loss for not going full VR.

If the rules drawbacks for going by remote control vs. jumped in aren't enough, then maybe you should try another approach. If the team has to deal with any opposition, having a rigger with tricked out gear for jumping into a drone might be able to give your rigger player that "oh crap, he can do that?" kind of feeling to entice him/her to try jumping into a drone as well.

Sometimes what you see on paper and do in practice aren't the same.

On a completely different approach, and one that isn't exactly encouraged, what if something were to happen to the naga's Command program?

So he loses two dice and two IPs from a piddling 5-point flaw, and you think he should be suffering from more disadvantages!? Seriously, the PC is penalized enough.

Action Inefficiency is a MAJOR drawback to what you're doing.
Whats that?

Using a Command program to control a drone is ALWAYS a Complex Action, despite what the action type was previously. You want to do a simple action with a command program? Sorry, its complex now. Free action? Sorry, its complex.
Oh, you don't think that's fair? then maybe you should use VR.

That is penalty enough. But you need to enforce it.

But yeah, look up the Control Device action in the main book, matrix section.

Thanks Udoshi, that's what I was missing. I knew there needed to be another drawback somewhere. And Glyph, he took the 10 pt version, because the character was mostly a hacker originally and then branched out into rigging when it was obvious that is what the group was lacking. I'm not doing it to punish the character, I'm asking if I was being cheesed by one of my players. And yes, I am. He has 3 drones he uses while driving a car and still doing things (helping probe tacnets, shooting the autocannon on the car, etc). It's going to be put to a stop VERY quickly now.

Glad I could help.

Also, check if his drones have the right Autosofts to run autonomously.

Its entirely possible his drones are doing all the work with his Pilot program, and he's telling them what to do. Captain's Chair rigging is entirely acceptable(even GOOD with a Multitasking adept, but its more expensive to do so because autosofts are pricey.

But yeah. Remember that, without autosofts, drones CANT take the appropriate action.
No Maneuver? Tough
No Defense? can't dodge.
No Gunnery? Good luck trying to get your drone to shoot someone.
I think clearsight might be an exception, given that drones use Sensors, but don't quote me on that.

It all depends on how the drones are being controlled. Your rigger can only Control Device on one thing at a time, so between his 3 drones and the car, thats one of 4 things controlled at once. Just watch what he's doing, and don't be afraid to call him on his cheating.

Controlling 3 drones and driving at the same time? Sounds like there should be a lot of driving tests to avoid otherwise avoidable minor stuff (like driving up onto the sidewalk or into a building) as you must spend a Complex Action each turn to maintain control of the vehicle; if you miss a turn for controlling a vehicle, you must make a vehicle test the next turn or you crash (people seem to forget how much attention a driver must give to driving a vehicle). Now if he somehow had 4 IPs in meat space I could believe it, but it doesn't seem that the character is that fast.

Those lost IPs really stack up. It's still a valid character concept, for sure, but don't go looking to make the player regret taking the flaw. It's only 10 BP.

When you confront this player, keep in mind that he might be as ignorant of that rule as I was before Udoshi's post. You know him better than me (obviously), but he may just be someone not familiar with the pertinent rules, rather than a cheater.

VR reduced threshold for vehicle test by 1

If he changed roles to help out the group, I don't know that putting it to a stop is a good thing. Instead, find the legal way of doing things. If both the car and the drones have decent autosofts, after he's set them in motion he wouldn't necessarily have to devote all of his attention to them. Staying on top of things to tweak is great, but if he wants to spend a few IPs firing a gun or supporting the hacker, that's a reasonable trade-off, considering what he's giving up by not using VR. Two IPs is huge.

Sure, it may seem outlandishly powerful, but the way I understand it, that's a rigger in Shadowrun for you.

Of course, I'm kind of a Shadowrun rookie, but that's what I've picked up. Could be wrong though.

He has 4 IPs in the meat from Adept powers. I know he's not cheating, this SR game is a first for all of us and I was chosen to GM because I owned the books. I know he's bought all of the relevant autosofts (cost him a crap ton of nuyen and he had to wait a few missions before being be able to afford them all), so that's not an issue. As for what was happening, let me give a better example of one of his typical turns.

IP 1: Drive car.
IP 2: Tell Drone 1 to move into firing position. Order his Agent to hack-on-the-fly into the Ancients' tacnet.
IP 3: Have Drone 1 fire at first Ancient. Launch Drone 2 from open window in the car at speed.
IP 4: Have Drone 2 fire at second Ancient. Fire the autocannon on the car at the third Ancient on the motorbike next to him.

Now, this sounds okay IF he was running in full hot sim, but for someone who's only in AR it seemed a bit much. He agrees with me, but we couldn't find anything in the rules to say otherwise. Now I have and I'm fairly certain he'll be okay with the changes.

And for everyone saying that I shouldn't punish him to taking the defect, remember: It IS a defect, it's meant to make a character less capable. It's a 10 pt defect, which is actually quite fairly severe. Other 10 pt defects are Paraplegic, Cranial Bomb, Blind, Deaf and Illiterate. They're all livable, but VERY difficult to deal with, which is why I am making sure that all the applicable penalties are being applied.

Actually, I think he has the right of this. That post was very illuminating as to what's going on.

There's a few things to keep in mind.

Drones have their own Initiative. They DONT go on their riggers init unless they're Jumped in or being Remote Controlled via command.(control device).
What your rigger should be doing is using his Simple Actions to Issue Commands - this is the proper action to tell autonomous minions to do things under their own power.
Autosofts are running programs and cause your processor to lag if you're running too many of them. Make sure to look up the Response, System, and Processor limit(and pay attention to whether its equal to or greater than) of your players drones. Ditto for his agent - especially his agent - where its running from makes a big difference in Lag.
Pilots still have to spend a complex action to control themselves.

And, most of all, enforce Dogbrain Tests. (4a 245)

How many dice are his drones rolling on average?
Are you enforcing gunnery - the vehicle shooty skill - as a Complex Action, or letting each of his drones fire twice?

I've checked dice pools and whatnot, as well as his 'link and making sure that he's not overloading his systems. Yes, plural. He's got several low powered links in a cluster slaved to a master link (combined via the rules on pg 55 of Unwired) for the purposes for running a few agents and the AI "pet" the group has. That all checks out okay.



That's exactly what he's NOT doing. He's using Command tests since his Command is better than most of the cheap autosofts he bought. Basically, what I'm noticing is it's a really fine line and whether the penalty applies boils down to what skills he's using for the drones' test. Am I correct on that?

And you are remembering that a Command program action is a complex action, regardless, yes?

Apparently not, since his examples above tend to show two Simple Actions per IP, except for IP 1.
And Gunnery (in IP 4) should be the only action taken as well, since it should also be a Complex Action for the Driver.

Yeah, it's what I was missing beforehand. I mentioned that back in post #6. Now Udoshi is helping me hammer out when to apply it and when not to.

Awesome... Good Luck...

Yes.

You really need to have your player keep track of EXACTLY how each drone is being controlled at any given moment.

If its not remote controlled, its Autonomous(what are its orders?)
If it IS remote controlled, you can only remote control one thing at a time.
Be aware that it takes actions to switch between these.

Also, the faq MIGHT be of help.


Also, the faq is a bit wrong. Changed Link Device is a Free action while Issue Command is a complex.
But yeah. Drones are pretty dumb, and you should treat them like RTS soldier AIs. They do what their told, and they keep doing it, until they are told otherwise.

To some extent you can manipulate this with Node Scripts, but that is a cane of worms you do NOT want to touch until you are familiar with the system.



I would like to chip in and point out that Issue Command and Control Device are completely different control methods with different action types associated with them. they sound similiar, but they are not. One is always a complex that lets a rigger remote control a device, and issue command is yelling orders, and uses Autonomous dice pools.

Put simply:
Issue Command is a simple action, and any single command may be sent to multiple drones with the same action. Drones acting in this way use their own Initiative and abilities (pilot/autosoft/etc).

Remote Control is a Complex Action, and can only be used on a single drone at a time. Drones acting in this way use their controller's Initiative and abilities (command/skill/etc).

A nice little chart of exactly what is rolled and when can be found on SR4A p.247.



Oh, and while there is nothing wrong with finding out the correct way to do something, the character should not be 'punished' for Scorched more than loosing access to VR. Not being able to use VR hurts, a lot, for matrix characters. If he's not using VR at all, as you say, I would have come up with some bullshit reason for why he couldn't use VR instead of simply doesn't, and increased the quality to a 15 point negative.

How about being knocked out and stuffed in a box by his jealous older brother (since the brother was not Awakened, he was being passed over for inheriting his father's kingdom in favor of the PC), having said brother use a BTL beamed into his skull via 'trodes to keep him unconscious for a nearly two month trip by boat to a corp facility in Portland to be dissected for telesma? There are other defects to represent his trauma in game as well, specifically Flashbacks (5pt) and Sensitive Neural Structure (10pt). He has 30 of his 35 points of defects tied to this particular event (Lost Loved One being the last 5pts) and after much discussion with the player, we decided that he can use VR, but chooses not to because of the massive fear of losing it all again and the serious risk of any sort of IC literally killing him. At one point, he did have to go into VR to lead the group's TM back to her body and help her fight a feral AI that had forced her out of her body in an attempt to make the jump to the real world.

We had worked out how to handle the hacking thing just fine, but for some reason the fact that he could work essentially the same way as a normal rigger without any of the worry about bio-feedback bugged me a lot. It didn't matter much at first, since most of the time he was just rigging a single drone or acting as spider for the tacnet while the TM did heavy lifting on the hacking. However, some of what I have planned coming up is going to require careful use of drones and rigged vehicles to pull off a kidnapping, so I decided to look into the rules more and ask here for input as well (though I really should have been a lot more clear about the situation in the opening post). To be perfectly honest though, even if he didn't have any of the defects or anything, the fact he's choosing to use a less efficient means of controlling his drones means there should be penalties. I'm not looking for ways to screw my player, I'm looking for how what he's doing works according to the rules. It's as simple as that.

That said, I am really appreciative of the help you guys have been on this, it's helped a ton. Thank you!

Well, the Penalties to using a less effecient method of control is that it is LESS EFFECIENT. You really don't need to do anything else to punish.

Glad we could be of some help to you in this regard.

He could even postpone the drive car action till IP 4. You only have to use one such action in a turn to avoid crashing. The book does not specify in which action phase you have to do it.

As I see it the drones do not start shooting until IP 3. Don't your other characters have the ancients killed by then? How many Ancients are we talking about?

Yes.. as has been proven in our game on more then one occasion.. Grenade Launchers are mean nasty weapons.

Yes, drones carrying a White Knight with underbarrel GL-67 are mean, especially flying ones

I gave mine two extra extended clips.. 184 rounds of full auto leaded goodness.

If you are talking about the White Knight, it already gets a 250 round belt in a weapon mount, no mod needed. I can't see how you could get the grenade launcher to that capacity.

To approach this from another angle: the penalty is that he's had to spend tremendous character resources gaining initiative passes that would've been nearly free otherwise. He's got 4 IP from Adept powers, that's a BOATLOAD of Magic as compared to 100 nuyen for a hotsim commlink.