Ok, here's my idea. I just want to know if it would work, and preferably how to make it work well:
My group has been doing some fights against gangs lately, and my face has had enough of getting stabbed and shot at. I have decent combat skills, with 4 ranks in firearms group and 2 in the close combat group. Unfortunately, this skill with weapons does not extend to gunnery, so taking up a hobby as a conventional rigger is probably not going to work very well.

My idea is to take a manikin drone, armour it up, then hot-sim into it and have it act as my field stand-in, carrying an assault rifle and using my automatics skill and using my gymnastics skill to do fancy maneuvers.
Here's what I need to know:
1) Would this even work?
2) If I remember correctly most of my actions would use the drone's response as the relevant attribute. is this right?
3) what other skills would i need to pick up to make this drone-sam work?

Why jump into a drone? Just give it commands. All you need is a commlink, a Steel Lynx or Doberman drone (or maybe a rotodrone with an SMG), and some autosofts. Just be sure your commlink and the drone(s) both have a good firewall. Hardware and electronics warfare are both good skills to have, but not absolutely essential.

Making loads of money to pay for the drone repairs/replacements would be useful.

Bye
Thanee

Just get a vehicle with a high Armor rating (20 or so should do it, or whatever you feel comfortable with.)

Install a heavily-armored glass blister that can polarize/depolarize in an instant (if you have Glamour, the GM might decide it needs LOS to work like magic,) in the front/back/side, with microphones and speakers so you can hear what's outside and what's outside can hear you. If you have tailored pheremones, install a vent so those standing outside the truck can hear you.

And lastly, install a gun port. Heck, install two, on diagonals, so you can get a 180 degree firing arc.


Congratulations, you have a way to get some Face Time with the gangers, and they'll need a goddamned anti-tank rocket launcher to shoot you; but you can shoot them with a +4 RC bonus, so go ahead and load up an LMG with High-Powered Ex-EX.

Or Get a resonable resume, a good suit and head to the local corp office and apply for a job. Lets face it being a runner is a high risk job, that's why you get paid 5,000 for a night's work or a couple of night's. It's like proatheletes in RL, especially football players. They are going to get battered about and have only a few years of an active career before time asn injuries make them unable to perform at the A level any more. The idea is to make enough to retire with a level of comfort before you end up in a box.

Not every shadowrunner is a combat monkey. There are reasons that drawbacks like "Combat Paralysis" exist.

Just because you don't like getting shot right in the goddamn face doesn't mean you have to exit the Shadows.

True, but other than remote decking you're strill running a risk. as soon as someone else suggested a heavily armored truck...RPG?

Most gangs will not have access to rocket launchers. His problem was that he was tired of trying to Face at gangs who shot at him, which is why I suggested making a vehicle which would be utterly immune to virtually anything a gang could throw at him.

Well, maybe if he was a better Face, he would not get shot at.

Most gangs like to shoot at people to demonstrate the superiority of their bargaining position.

Having a sheet of glass between you and them strong enough to completely no-sell their demonstration of power, on the other hand, will turn their demonstration of strength into a demonstration of the actual weakness of their bargaining position, and give the Face more leverage. Especially when he aims an LMG at the guy who shot at him and says "My turn?"

I think the point is a good face is going to keep them happy and can interact without there having to be a show of force.

Not really. Shows of force are, to gangers, like the tea ceremony to Yaks/Japanacorps. It's standard operating procedure - part of Etiquette (Barrens).

If someone comes up to you to negotiate for anything and they're not strong enough to tolerate you waving some guns in their face/shooting at them a bit, you might as well just shoot them and take whatever they were going to offer you.


Exchanging gunfire is the Barrens hello, and I make it a point to have some random schmucks shoot at my players' trucks a few times on any trip through the Barrens. Since they drive around in a Citymaster, this means basically jack squat to them, but the gangers would lose face among themselves if they didn't. So far, my players have not seen fit to make examples of those who pointlessly shoot at them, so the gangers keep doing it.

All well and good, assuming you accept your Premise. If you do, however, then you also have to accept that the lowly wizganger will likely still turn the Face to goo with his Low to Moderate (or maybe even greateer) Magic when the glass goes clear, if that is the goal of the encounter. After all, not all gangs are incompetent no-bodies. The Spikes and The Ancients both have Military Grade weapons and Competent Magical support after all, and I am sure they are not the only ones. *shrug*

I have to agree with Snow_Fox on this one. *shrug*

I suspect the problem here may be that the OP is looking for a slightly more suit or trenchcoat game from a GM that sounds pretty mohawk.

See the second character mentioned in my sig.

It's pretty hard to be an effective face if you are obviously afraid to get out of your ride.

Indeed...

The GM and I are pretty trenchcoat... it's my fellow runners that are sporting huge mohawks. You can't really do 'face stuff' with people when the uncouth homicidal ex-soldier gun adept, power-armoured ninja and vindictive sociopath crossbow-woman are shouting at you to stop talking so they can go and kill the guys you're trying to negotiate with .
I'll put it this way: shortly after I made this character, one of the other players made what he called a 'social infiltrator' (Which was more or less what my character was supposed to be) who he sold as covering my weakness in intimidation and having a thing for knives. He has no intimidation or blades skills ("I don't need a blades skill to threaten people with a knife") and his version of subtle is a full auto tripod mounted shotgun.

Yeah, but I didn't get the impression he was talking about the Ancients or the Spikes. They're big enough and strong enough that they don't need to demonstrate the strength of their position by shooting at you. Either you're so weak that you know they can crush you like a bug if you piss them off that they don't need to show it (if, say, you're some barrens gangers,) or you're strong enough that you can crush them like a bug if they piss you off (if, say, you represent Ares Macrotechnology,) or you're both on mutual enough terms that a war would be something nobody wants, so everybody affords each other mutual levels of respect (if, say, you're representing the Mafia.)


Random barrens-gangers, though? They're very small fish in a huge ocean, dwelling in the cracks in the coral and they know it. They also know that if they don't snap at anyone and everyone who looks like they might be trying to take their crack in the coral, their crack will be taken.

Hence, shooting at people as a show of force.



As for not being a very effective Face inside an armored vehicle: that depends on whom you're trying to get Face time with. The Ancients or Spikes, no. The honorable Oyabun or Mr. Wise Guy? No.

With barrens gangers, though, it makes a great bargaining position. It says "I am so far above you that you literally couldn't hurt me if I stood here and let you try. On the other hand, I can annihiliate you where you stand. Now wouldn't you rather listen to what I have to say than continue to piss me off?"

Diplomacy is the art of using words instead of the big stick, but the stick is always there held behind your back in case people don't like what you said.

Having a big stick helps talking because people respect it. There's a difference between immediately jumping to violence as a second resort and ..... presenting an image that doesn't make you look like a pushover, and thus take you a little more seriously.

my best suggestion is to try to put your team to use, while you handle the face duties, put one of them on a rooftop "watching your back", another hiding in the shadows "Just in Case", then send the others to "scout the perimeter" that way they seem useful while the grown-ups talk.

Well. I like this topic, as I am currently planning something similar...
First of all: Is that drone meant to be your "armored jacket" in case things go awry (only for combat) or is it your physical representation in the Barrens altogether? Are you planning on doing face work through the drone? If yes, that may as well indicate some severe modifiers. Imagine the guy doing the negotiating looking like a literal mannequin, face and body language included (read: nonexistent). It is still possible, though

Anybody can jump into a drone with only a sim module. But to move a humanoid walker, you'd need the walker vehicle skill. Anything else is just the same as you would do it with your own two hands instead of a drone's mechanical arms.
A physical mask spell by the mage could help the "look like a doll" problem.


1) Yes, see above.
2) That is right.
3) I think you'd need the walker skill because that is how walkers are piloted and this skill allows no defaulting. Arguably a humanoid walker might just walk like any human does, thus no separate skill is needed. Ask your GM.

For further reference, see "Arsenal", p. 102, "Mechanical Arms and Legs".

I'm currently planning on combining my rigger/mage with the group's face in a way to have a face on demand by just switching drones and masking them. It also eliminates a lot of risks.

The MR.SMITH Routine.

1.Renraku Manservant
2.Mimic System 3 (looks like character)
3.Concealed Armor
4.Same clothing as character
5.Same equipment as character

Base Drone Cost: 20500

Add Autosofts and Gear and you have a clone army that SHOULD lower the odds the YOU get shot.

Also, add Autosofts for one of them to be your spokesperson through remote commands to confuse possible snipers.

My Missions character does that with the Manservants*, except she later was able to get an Otomo for her primary drone, using the Manservants as secondaries.

Only a handful of people have actually seen the character, most folks have only ever interacted with one of the human-looking drones.



-k

* - Well, SK Heimdrones, but same idea.

You know, I really, really hate the idea of people using Renraku Manservants for, well, anything.

They are, after all, explicitly designed to be mechanically feeble and unable to do much except lifting and moving and some minor majordomo stuff.


You should not under any circumstances be able to apply the Mimic system to a manservant and make it look like, well, anything but the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Well, the problem is that there isn't LITERALLY stated a humanoid drone that doesnt suck (Otomo) or is a version of TERMINATOR (with caps).

The Otomo is the only equivalent to a normal boring human. Heck, I'd settle for twice the cost to remove the 'feeble' part just to have a humanoid infiltrator drone.

The funny part is, I never actually used the Manservants in melee combat. Heck, not even much firearm combat - most of the time she was also accompanied by LMG-toting LEBDs or her battlevan.

I disguised the horrible movement speed by having them ride Segways around much of the time. People mostly didn't notice because they are all made to look like Tom Cruise. So the Segway is probably the least ridiculous thing about the situation.

The Otomo, on the other hand, is pretty much death on two legs.




-k

An Otomo generally is (or at least can be)...

After rethinking the description of the Otomo I would be ok if I had to use "similar models" and reduce an attribute in order to remove the "feeble" drawback.

Statswise the drone is good with two full mechanical arms but needs removal of the panic shutdown button and the 'shuffle' movement.

So, reduced armor and removed feeble: Fixed