[Relic_Zero]

I was thinking about making a samurai who had a drone, possibly two,  to run support.  Is this something feasible?  Can a samurai function in their role while controlling a sniping drone (or something similar ).

[JustADude]

Rigging is mostly a matter of a few key skills and a lot of money. Unfortunately, so is being a Street Samurai.

You should be able to pull it off, but you'd get better bang for your buck (in a long-term game, at least) going with a Technomancer / Samurai hybrid, since Technomancers eat Karma, not Nuyen, and you'll be able to do some absolutely evil tricks with your Sprites. Not a "real" Samurai, but it's a primary combat role, and nothing says "happy" like coming home with more Drones than you left with, neh?

Plus, not having to buy Cyberware or a commlink leaves you with plenty of cash for upgrading your drones and making sure you have the best guns and armor money can buy.

You'll be a little slow at the start, of course, since you'll have to Submerge and get Echos to get your IPs up, but drugs will help some in the mean time, and burning one Essence for Muscle Toner 4 will get you the other half of the Shoot Good equation, with some change left  to get another 0.2 Essence of something or other, like Cerebral Booster 1. Swap Muscle Toner out for Deltaware, eventually, and you can upgrade to Cerebral Booster 3.

The up-side is that you'll get to 4 IPs quicker than a "true" Samurai, and your Machine Sprites are going to be hella-badass handling the drones for you.

[Glyph]

For a street samurai who uses drones for support, I would recommend a good commlink with the comparatively small number of programs that riggers use, combined with some autosofts, and controlling your drones rather than jumping into them.  That and a few good drones will set you back, but you can get the bare essentials for a street samurai and still afford that.

[Mithlas]

Just to throw in another two cents, I actually think that JustADude's option will probably enable you to step farther ahead. A shakier start than a focused-on-one-thing build, but drones and Street Sams generally cost money and Technomancy generally costs karma, so you can bolster both and get stronger fast. And, as has been said in another thread regarding Dronomancers: there's nothing quite like coming home with more drones than you started with.

[Ethan]

I like Sams with their own Drone support, played several mundanes that way. It's possible to upgrade them with their own autosofts and pilot programs so that they'll be useful in battles. Or in just keeping an eye out.

It does get expensive, especially if you bring in tacsofts into the mix. In fact, everyone should have drones! Faces should have mini and micro drones, and so on.

They're useful. You won't be great with them as would a Rigger that's jumped in, but for support purposes? Definitely. Have one or two rotodrones with a sniper rifle or battle rifle to lay down some unexpected fire. Or launch some grenades.

Just remember, you're going to need a car at least to drive them around.