Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: Scud422 on <06-04-12/0609:58>
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Starting a new game soon and I need some help creating a character. The basic idea is the character is a quadriplegic technomancer who jumps into a surrogate via rigging like the movie/comic book Surrogates. I want the character to be mainly a street samurai who's allies don't know is actually a controlled drone. I was thinking of just building a cyborg by purchasing 4 cyberlimbs, cyber torso and skull, using it's physical stats and his mental stats and matrix IPs and otherwise just treating him like a standard street samurai with the additional rules for absorbing biofeedback.
Does that follow RAW? Is there a simpler/more efficient/cheaper way to do this? Is there anything essential I need to get other than the 5bp Technomancer quality? I've never played a technomancer before so any help or suggestions you guys can give would be great.
Current build: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlFwRzBgdn6GdF9LU1RFenZGUjk3UVBxVHUwcW5VZUE#gid=0
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Talk with your GM and see if they'll let you buy one of the Humanoid Drones from Arsenal at a big discount, since most of the expense is for Cyborg Adaptation and you want to Rig the thing rather than be a Brain-In-A-Jar inside it's chest cavity. That would be the most appropriate way to do it... and you might be able to get a few backups cheap enough to stick Machine Sprites in them. Machine Sprites are the key to success with a Riggermancer, since they're going to be one heck of a boost to any drone they take over.
Any way you have it set up, though, they're gonna figure you're artificial eventually. Cybernetics are just too common for people to not recognize them.
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Thanks for the drones idea, I wanted to take a look at those anyway because he'll need one just to help him get around his house (and with bathing and feeding).
He's not gonna hide the fact that he has cyberware, all the limbs except for head were going to be obvious. He's just hiding the fact that he's actually not physically there, although anyone looking at him with astral sight would figure it out immediately.
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Thanks for the drones idea, I wanted to take a look at those anyway because he'll need one just to help him get around his house (and with bathing and feeding).
He's not gonna hide the fact that he has cyberware, all the limbs except for head were going to be obvious. He's just hiding the fact that he's actually not physically there, although anyone looking at him with astral sight would figure it out immediately.
Then yeah, the Mitsuhama "Otomo" would be perfect for you. If the Mimic system failed, you could easily pass it off as using "Realistic" cyberlimbs.
For the personal-assistant drone, you want an Evo "Orderly", which is made specifically for the task. The picture in the book doesn't match the text all that well, but there's enough room for interpretation to go either way... a five-legged, walking "wheelchair" with arms, or a medically specialized version of the Renraku "Manservant".
Either way, though, the Orderly is exactly what you want... a caretaker drone for the disabled or elderly. If you decide you want the Orderly to be humanoid, add on a Transys "Steed" for a full-function drone wheelchair.
I'd also suggest throwing in a "First Aid" Autosoft and an Enhanced Rigger Cocoon on the Steed, if you go that route... just to be on the safe side. The Orderly already has a medkit built in, so you'd just need the Autosoft and a regular Rigger Cocoon.
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Talk with your GM and see if they'll let you buy one of the Humanoid Drones from Arsenal at a big discount, since most of the expense is for Cyborg Adaptation [...]
A drone's cyborg adaption costs 15k ¥ (10% of one otomo's price), it's the brain's jar that's really expensive.
And even without discount you need your GMs approval, as both humanoid walker drone have an availability of 24... :-\
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a drone will never pass as a human being when a mage assenses you...
you could however play a quadrupilegic mancer and use one of those personal mobility vehicles (PMV)
just a different idea about a quadrupilegic mancer
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While originally meant as an Avatar joke, the Bio-rigger character (2nd link in my sig) is a way to do this. You can do it as technomancer rather than a mundane rigger if you want; the key is basically to turn a clone into a biodrone and rig it.
The other way to do this is going to be using an Anthroform drone with mimic, but that's much harder to keep secret because there are about a million ways to bust it.
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Thanks for all your help.
After some mucking about, this is what I cam up with:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlFwRzBgdn6GdF9LU1RFenZGUjk3UVBxVHUwcW5VZUE
If you guys can take a gander and give me any pointers/tweaks, it would be greatly appreciated.
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Somethings I've noticed, the athletics skill group does nothing for the character since you have to use Pilot Anthroform for your other body. If he's paraplegic that means he can't run, would have a hard time using gymnastics, and would have a tough (though not impossible) time swimming. I would suggest dropping the skill group to 0, drop gunnery from a 6 to a 5 and add the pilot anthroform at a 5. If I remember correctly none of those skills actually carry over to drones, it's strictly a piloting test to do those things. Next I would drop the amount of ammo you have. Get rid of the standard rounds, the gel rounds, and cut in half the amount of stick n shock and ExEx rounds you have. That will save you 9600 nuyen. Next I'd drop your ECCM down to a 3. Yes the ECCM is a nice piece of program for a rigger, but with having a 6 system this means that only a maximum rating jammer will be able to cut you off from the drone. I would also drop the disarm program entirely. The reason is that with only a hacking rating 2 and no exploit program, you won't encounter them when hacking. With the high stealth rating you're not very likely to receive them wirelessly either. That's another 5000 nuyen saved. Since your drone is going to be the one carrying your battle rifle you don't need the recoil compensation on it, since drones don't suffer from weapons recoil. Drop the gas vent, personalized grip, and foregrip for another 600 nuyen saved. Now that you have saved that much, I'd buy the PuSHeD upgrade from Augmentation to add a +1 to your logic skill rolls.
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Wow, thanks for those tips Dragoon. That's a lot of rules that I didn't know. The one that surprises me most is the drones don't suffer recoil thing. Seems kinda broken considering HV full auto normally gives -11 recoil!
I'll make those changes.
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Seems kinda broken considering HV full auto normally gives -11 recoil!
Theoretically, vehicle weapons mounted in a weapon mount
(p. 146) do not suffer negative recoil modifiers, but this can lead
to strange results when a very large gun is mounted on a very small
vehicle. [...] In instances like this, it is perfectly all right for the gam-
emaster to apply negative modifiers equal to those a person shooting
the weapon would suffer from recoil, counting in the vehicle’s mass
(as a rule of thumb: its Body rating) as recoil compensation.
;)
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Careful there, that is for mounted weapons.
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While it may be true it's mounted weapons, if the GM decides to use that rule so that the drone will still suffer recoil penalties from not mounting the weapon, the drone has enough body to negate recoil for two long bursts in a round.
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Are there any rules for increasing the body of a drone or of the Otomo specifically? I went with the assumption that the Otomo can be treated as having full cyber limbs, torso and skull and modified accordingly. My GM pointed out that I can only assume it has cyber legs and arms for modification.
I also have a few questions about dice pools.
The rigger tests table says Attack is Sensor + Gunnery, while it says any tests made substitute response for agility. So is it Sensor + Gunnery or Sensor + Gunnery + Response (+handling maybe)? And in either case, would additional sensors increase the die pool, like vision enhancement or radar sensor?
Similarly, do I get to add my Intuition on perception checks or is it just sensor + perception skill? If the latter, is int at all useful to a rigger other than for street knowledge skills?
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There aren't any rules (as far as I know) for increasing the body of a drone. An attack made by the drone is Sensor+Gunnery. Handling only adds the dice to piloting checks. As for the other tests, you don't use agility for the test, instead you use the response as agility, but since it specifically tells you to make attacks with gunnery, you use that. As for using intuition, it is not used for the drone, but it is still used for the character, and intuition is still used for matrix initiative which is the initiative you use for taking actions with the drone. So intuition does have some uses, and is important if you want to act quickly with the drone.
The sensors on the drone can help with perception tests, if say you use vision enhancement on the camera or run a microphone with audio enhancement. However the sensors will rarely add bonuses to attack, the only case I can think of is if you put a smartlink in a camera.
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Can the sensor be upgrade at all for attack then? Or am I stuck with sensor 3 + gunnery skill 6 + hot sim + smart link?
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Really the only way you might be able to get an upgrade is to talk to your GM. If a higher grade sensor is installed in a sensor suite it can increase the rating. For example if you install a rating 6 camera, you might be able to use that sensor as your shooting sensor. Page 334 of SR4A shows that if you are using only a single sensor for something, you use the rating of that sensor. However if multiple sensors are included you use the package rating of the sensors. Additionally, you can raise the sensor rating by installing better rated sensors than what is on the drone. Since you use the average rating of all the sensors, you might be able to take an improved sensor package from arsenal and cram enough sensors into it to increase the rating of the sensor.
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Are there any rules for increasing the body of a drone or of the Otomo specifically?
Not really but, being a drone, a Body 6 Otomo can have Normal Armor 18 + Smart Armor 10. That gives it 28 points of Vehicle Armor, which is Hardened, and the Smart Armor nullifies 10 points of AP off the first 10 shots against it. Just gotta talk your GM into letting you over-mod the thing to bring its Speed and Acceleration back up to normal.
That means even with a Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle calling +4/-4, you'd have to get 7 Net Hits to do anything to it.
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Updated with 5 points floating for a contact that the group might need.
Changed a bunch of cyberware mods to drone mod counterparts which saved a bunch of money to increase the sensors to the max. Changed the signal to a nonstandard signal to bump the range to 6 and increase stealth. Dropped the pickup truck for a repeater drone.
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Why are you listing 'custom nexus' instead of a regular commlink? The processor limit is nice for running many programs but nexi got there own costs/availability table (UW, p. 198). Response(5) for a nexus alone costs 10000 ¥ with an availability of 20...
Dropped the pickup truck for a repeater drone.
You still have the Fake License (Truck)...
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Went with the custom nexus for the extra power and didn't need the portability. I used the rules on unwired to give it a base of 3, then used the upgrading rules in the core (pg 222, anniversary edition) to save on money and rating.