Eyeless Blond::

Yes the Sam needs more cash and essense to get that. But the gear he has tends to be somewhat more general purpose. I went the easy to work out, but more expensive route of tweaking by just using wires. There are better ways to go about it that are near same.

As well the Sam has the flexibility of not being a limp dishrag while driving. So every vehicle he's in has onboard weapon he can use assuming he is packing and has an open (or non-bulletproof) window. He also gets to interact with passengers normally w/o the extra cyber/gear that the rigger requires to do that.

Like i said, i'm not sold. I don't find it repulsive, just 'wrong'. I think likely because there are other Pools associated with hardware and giving it here causes me to worry about those Pools too. Not particularly logical or thought out. It's just a feeling i have, warning me away. *shrug*

EDIT: Oh, and we play with having normal** Init/Reaction for drivers. Doesn't seem to be too much of an issue. The investment in driving skill alone seems to keep things in check. Of course we usually have games void of complicated cannon tactical vehicle combat. Either the rigger is droning, or we are just fleeing with guns blazing out the back window. For the first the rigger is of course the only way you can go. For that later if it is planned we leave the rigger sitting in the vehicle (kinda sucks for the player) otherwise the non-rigger has a definate edge of being seamless within the meat world. We don't drive many vehicles with weapons.

EDIT:: ** - Normal meaning including all bonuses for cyber, bio, etc.

@ blakkie

So does this mess the game up way bad against the riggers, or would your group of sam dirvers still get smoked by a proper Rigger? Inquiring minds (like mine) want to know.

I find it utterly preposterous to give anyone a contol pool without some semblance of interface gear. Deckers can act as pseudo riggers but they have to make expenditures to do so.

A possible answer would be 50,000 trode suit that gave you reaction/handling and allowed you to interact in a similar manner.

Otherwise, get a datajack and live with it.

Whoa, settle down. I don't think anyone has forgotten what has been stated 3 times thus far. Just because you type something doesn't mean people have to agree with it. This would be a pretty dull forum if that were the case.

I'm not very familiar with the driving rules, but perhaps I can add some unbiased insight. Driving with a datajack does give you a -1 TN, yes? That may not seem significant, but I can assure you it's a lot better than the nothing you claim it to be. Even that small change in difficulty will drastically affect your number of successes, especially if the driver is an adept rolling 12 dice.

As for pools, I think we should all look at what already exists in the game. What are the requirements for a character to get Hacking Pool? Spell Pool? Astral Pool? These requirements are pretty restricted, and generally only characters of a certain "class" get them. While saying riggers are the mages of vehicles isn't really accurate at all, I think you get where I'm going with this. These specialized pools usually have certain requirements to be met in order to utilize them, and I think having a VCR should (if it isn't already) be a requirement for getting Control Pool.

As for a non-rigger getting dice to soak damage... why should he? I don't see any reason, canon or otherwise, that a non-rigger character can affect the amount of damage his vehicle takes (other than dodging, which anyone can do).

Drivers getting full reaction / initiative dice behind the wheels makes a ton of sense to me, however. I don't think it would be game-breaking in the least. Riggers still own the road, period.

@ Bane:

Sorry, just felt the added color and size would help emphasize the important points here.

As to the Datajack bonus, yes it is there, but again I will state, put two characters with equal attributes and skills against one another, give one a laser sight and +1 reaction, and the other any level of wires and a smartlink and see who wins, and how much they win by. And statistically, unless the wired person botches like crazy (which is entirely possible, but extremely unlikely) he flat p0wnz th3 suxxorz n3wb over 95% of the time. To whit: while the laser sight guy certainly is getting a bonus, he might as well stay home for all the actual good it will do him.

As to the giving control pool to non riggers, I totally agree that it should be a benefit of having a VCR. (That means no VCR, no control pool.) I am also a proponent of giving people regular reactions behind the manual controls of vehicles.

So I think bascially we actually agree here Burn. Sorry to shout @ ya.

My point with the control pool (which I *thought* was the point you were trying to make) is that it's impossible for a non-rigger to attempt to dodge an attack. I'm really not sure why this is, other than they just wanted to give the rigger something extra but couldn't think of anything that made sense.

@ Eyeless Blond:

(This may actually be a house rule.) But can't you save an action and roll your vehicle skill to dodge? If not, I may have to seriously reconsider my position on the pool thing, and if so, it just gives riggers one more advantage, (Not having to save that action) and gives me one more point to our side. (Giving a non rigger extra actions at least alows him to attempt to dodge.)

But by and large the lot of ya seem to agree with me. (Which I take as a good thing.)

Speed, for some reason I originally thought you were complaining about the -1 TN modifier being too small. I now realize you were using that as an argument to say that it is not overpowering. Weird.

Also, I don't have R3, so bear with me... I didn't find anything in the BBB about +1 to Reaction while using a datajack, just the -1 driving TN. Wouldn't be surprised if I overlooked it, though.

Anyway, glad to see that some sort of understanding has been reached.

Seems ok is up by almost 4:1.