will look better without the extra [.

Please give a page cite that a sustaining foci lights you up like a Christmas Tree. Give you a hint: The only reference you're going to find is the one for when a spirit is astrally patrolling an area. Sphynx fought a lot of people over this point.

I'd be very intrigued to hear your examples of runs where a rigger would need to physically show up vs being 10 miles away.

When a magically active person is scanning the astral they can see active foci yes? It seems my brother has run off with my 3rd ed. book so I will have to site 2nd ed.

pg. 145 2nd paragraph under Astral Perception. It goes on to say a few paragraphs later:

So magical items have auras and auras glow, so a magical item is like a light on the astral plane when it is active. Now when my 3rd ed. book arrives I will check that and most likely find something simular there.

Umm... the rigger is within 10 miles of the run when they drop off or pick up the team. If the rigger is a security rigger type like was shown above in Birdy's post (very good ideas BTW) they are definitely within 10 miles of the run.

One thing you don't seem to understand that I'm saying is a rigger isn't always on a run. They have (hopefully) enough "character" to want to do things like catch a movie, concert, or celebrate a successful run with the rest of the team. Here's an example:

Say the rigger wants a part for his vehicle he meets an appropiate contact at a bar, and is in the process of negotiating said transaction. Suddenly *Dum, dum, dum* a group of heavies saunter up to the table to start trouble, maybe the contact screwed them on a deal or they were hired to get rid of some competion. Doesn't matter, what matters is your rigger is exposed and out of his precious death tank and without combat drones.

Granted that's not an everyday occurrence but wouldn't it be nice to be ready for something like that even if it is to just have enough of an initiative boost to run out the door after being shot 3 times instead of 6?

Wow, I really derailed this thread didn't I? My apologies to the starter.

They say you can assense magic items and they glow astrally. All astral forms glow astrally. They don't say foci make your own aura stand out even more. That's a rather important distinction. I can hold up this nifty litter light-up pen up by a lightbulb and, sure enough, it's going to be noticable. That doesn't mean it's going to make my lightbulb into a signal flare.

Vehicles with remote control interfaces?

If you really had to meet in a bar, is there any reason you couldn't ask your groups sammie "Hey dude, I'm going to a meeting with a contact. Would you please follow me and be quiet?" It's the entire point of 'Shadowrunner teams'. People fill in various roles so that other people can focus on their own thing with a smattering of diversification. He's probably a lot better at that than you anyway.

It's funny you use this as an example. See, your movement gets spread out over your init passes. If you have just one init pass, you'll get your entire movement in one pass. But if you have TWO passes, you get half of your movement in each pass. So it's in your best interests to have a low init if you expect to be up against high-init chars.

But I think your point was you beat half the people at init and leave.

Nah, we're still vaguely talking about rigger character design. It's NOTHING compared to some hijacks we have around here. The admins only start coming down on people who routinely hijack threads in the exact same way over and over. Threads only get closed if they erupt into violent, circular flame wars.

No apology necessary, Angelone. You and Modesitt seem to be the most passionate and are presenting a number of ideas, which is exactly what I wanted. Don't think that because the two of you disagree I won't get what I want from both of your posts.


Straw Man,
That is an awesome text only character sheet format. Where did it come from? I believe you have given me a new favorite format.

Would you say carrying a hamster in your pocket would attract the same amount of additional astral attention as an active Force 1 magical foci of identical physical size? If not, why? Both have an aura that is in addition to your own. Would your answer change if the hamster was dual-natured?

I don't believe the words 'limited range' have the same meaning to the two of us. In general, I disagree with the phrase 'limited range' being applied to any range that can have the curvature of the Earth be a major factor.

As for interference, it just doesn't happen often. I mean, sure someone CAN waste time interfering with your transmissions, but as Kage points out above, a lot of the time you can just daisy chain signal amplifiers to beat down jammers. Although since I'm a lazy, lazy man, I'm not motivated to the degree necessary to actually go untangle all of the bizzare rules for signal interference we have in Shadowrun to know if I'm really right or not, but it does sound right. Really, you should consider it a good thing a competent rigger is wasting time trying to jam your transmissions instead of doing something that might hurt your team mates, such as attacking the group with a steel lynx or some aerial monster.

...Unless he has read your advice and bought a hedgehog. Then you may just be screwed until someone else on the team can find the little bugger with a scanner.

---

When it comes to Stupid Rigger Tricks, you can't get much worse than pointing out the precendece of things with Autosofts that are Active Skills(The T-R Rescue Bot) besides Electronic Warfare and asking if that works for all skills. Coming up next, the new Ares Lovebot! It comes complete with a top-of-the-line Etiquette chip for when company comes over!

Which reminds me: Robots can actually be usable! Much like skillwires, the real reason you buy a robot is to try to add pool dice to things that can't otherwise have dice added to them, like a dedicated Biotech 'Bot that makes your groups doctor curl up in a ball and cry.

I agree

Nope, your movement gets spread out over all init passes, even those in which you have no action. If you're against high-init characters you're still screwed.

Doesn't mean you take fewer bullets either way, though.

~J

Well, looks like I found the next sig in my rotation.

Counterarguments as posted by Sphynx can be found here.