[CrimsonY]

@ZombieAcePilot.            Thank you for the info, I've been told there are two ways to control drones, one simply with a controller of sort and the other one by "jumping inside" with your mind via an implant.

Now I assume the controller option is somewhat perhaps not as good or limited as far as drone control goes, but probably leaves the user much less vulnerable as leaving your body to put your consciousness inside a remote controlled machine means you aren't there to see that guy sneaking up on your with a knife xD. I'll explore both options with the other players to see what they think or what the campaign setup might need.

It leaves me to wonder why actual AI are not a thing (more than just the "programs" Decker run inside the matrix to help them.). Although I understand that with so many ways to hack anything even remotely related to computers, I would understand why the sixth world might have no love for Advanced, autonomous AIs.


@Whiskeyjack             Ah finally someone willing to defend the Gun nuts side! Between all the good points brought by this forum's users and my entire group of friends going for melee characters, I was beginning to think they were no use.

If guns use Reflex (or Quickness like in shadowrun returns, is it the same thing?) and according to ZombieAcePilot's importance order, I should have some room for it, again my character being a total black sheep to the group. I can already imagine some lines and role-play directions to take, being in opposition to all the common points of the group and the main source of healing could lead to some very fun interactions.

[Darzil]

It leaves me to wonder why actual AI are not a thing (more than just the "programs" Decker run inside the matrix to help them.). Although I understand that with so many ways to hack anything even remotely related to computers, I would understand why the sixth world might have no love for Advanced, autonomous AIs.

AI are a thing, with rules for playing them as characters in Data Trails.

[Whiskeyjack]

Your ability to hit with shooting (and Melee swinging) is tied to AGI. Initiative is tied to INT and REA. Defense tests are also tied to INT and REA. For a wheelman/rigger, drive and pilot are tied to REA.

It's also easy to boost AGI with ware to do even better and there are lots of special ammos that can be quite nasty.

You should really read the combat chapter if you haven't.

As an aside, drones are squishy. You should not be as worried about your body being stabbed if you're jumped in as you are of being killed by biofeedback and dumpshock when the drone you're jumped into is easy shot to bits. The best things to jump into are sniping rotodrones, because they'll be hanging in the sky out of range of many threats, and vehicles with weapon mounts, because they're much more durable to small arms fire.

Widespread AIs are not much of a thing because the last time corps really invested much into AIs, one of them (Deus) took over a megacorp arcology, killed all the inhabitants in terrible experiments, uploaded itself into the stock exchange after a major server upgrade to try and ascend to god good of the Matrix, and when a couple other AIs and hackers opposed it, it caused the Second Matrix Crash. So you could see why the corps wouldn't be all that interested in trying that again.

More limited AIs exist and can even be PCs for some reason but a lot of people fear and hate them due to the 2nd crash and all.

You should read the 4th ed setting chapter. It lays out the history of this world very well the 5th Ed chapter on setting and history is awful as it seems to presume all players are veterans who would carry setting knowledge forward which is, IMO, one of the worst possible assumptions RPG writers can ever make.

[Beta]

I am meeting my group next Sunday, tomorrow in fact I'm pretty hyped!

Seems like everyone has their character mostly set, during a discussion about what each person wanted to make certain roles were left and out of them it seems I'll end up making a Rigger as I liked the idea. Since it seems it is INT based and we also lack medicine skills and that also goes by INT it'll be a machine/people repair guy, let's just hope I don't get that oil can and blood pack mixed up... ah It'll be fine I'm sure, seems like half the group is gonna end up as cyborgs anyway xD.

Good luck tomorrow, I hope you all have a blast!

But to quickly point out, pretty sure that 1st aid and medicine use logic.   Not in front of my books, but almost positive.

One thing as a different -- got a vehicle for the team?  You need one for moving drones around, and a lot of other archetypes run real tight on resources.

Agility is the stat you use for hitting weapons in almost all situations, the exception being sometimes with riggers.  Basically you care about almost all stats if you are a rigger with melee skills. Using a fun lets you worry less about strength, at least.

[Whiskeyjack]

Going to point out that First Aid has specifically limiting and finicky rules tied to it. Most of the time you're better off with a really good medkit followed up by someone casting Heal.

[CrimsonY]

Again thank you all for your help.

After getting into the content, it's astounding how deep it goes, it's almost too much in fact, after an hour and a half we were about done creating the base structure of a character when a player pointed out we forgot to buy bullets for any guns, mine and drones...

They told me Riggers were probably one of the longest class to build, I can believe it.

Here's a idea of it so far: Body: 3, Agility: 5, Reflex: 5, Logic: 6, Strength: 1, Charisma: 1. Human
I know about the silliness of power playing, as in getting 5/1 over 4/2 because at creation a 5 cost the same as a 2, it's just +1 and later a 2 cost much less than a 5 to upgrade.
I understand min maxing is somewhat of a "scrub" thing to do, but when I make a deficient character I play it so, so the group help me built a mechanic that possibly can't use a wrench without his whole weight to move it, also forget about swimming, it'll be fine half the group has str 3+ anyway. Lastly Logic 6 cha 1 feels like I know exactly what to say in all situations but can't possibly formulate it in a manner that allows anyone to care until I'm done talking without punching me in the face.

Sounds like a fun character so far.

I've picked traits like "Jury rigger" for the sake of being a good mechanic, I've also taken most of the driving/piloting skills and all the mechanics one. I've also taken some medicine  and first aid, but as Whiskeyjack pointed out, it's not as interesting or good as I imagined.

Since there are about a hundred+ traits, feel free to suggest which ones you think are essential or just your favorites.

[ZombieAcePilot]

With STR 1 and CHA 1 you are weak and timid. You might have a great idea, but no one asked you and perhaps you just don't want to make somone else's idea look bad so you keep it to yourself. At least that is one way you might play it.

Don't forget intuition is important for a rigger for matrix actions, perception, and vehicle full defense.

[Glyph]

Remember, though, that an Attribute of 1 is only 10 Karma from an Attribute of 2, and another 15 Karma from an Attribute of 3 after that.  Unless you plan on never improving those Attributes, don't describe or play them too drastically.  Strength of 1 is a couch potato, not a wheezing asthmatic with a walker.  Charisma of 1 means someone who is a bit uncomfortable or unsure when interacting with other people (might be a wallflower, might be too blunt-spoken, etc.), not an obsessive-compulsive geek who wipes his nose with the tablecloth.

[ZombieAcePilot]

Remember, though, that an Attribute of 1 is only 10 Karma from an Attribute of 2, and another 15 Karma from an Attribute of 3 after that.  Unless you plan on never improving those Attributes, don't describe or play them too drastically.  Strength of 1 is a couch potato, not a wheezing asthmatic with a walker.  Charisma of 1 means someone who is a bit uncomfortable or unsure when interacting with other people (might be a wallflower, might be too blunt-spoken, etc.), not an obsessive-compulsive geek who wipes his nose with the tablecloth.

To rephrase this drek, ahem, "Don't play him to his stats, play him how he will resemble in 50 karma if you decide to spend it on nothing else."

Even at 5 karma a session, that is 2.5 months of weekly play to get that much karma. And that is assuming you get 5 per session. If you net 6 per mission and it took you 2 weeks, that's reducing you to 3 a session. Now you are waiting over four months with no spending on anything else.

Play it how you think it should be played. When you raise stats (if you do), than start beefing up and growing a spine.

[Whiskeyjack]

I understand min maxing is somewhat of a "scrub" thing to do

Not at all. Play what you wanna play.If you're happy with having two stats at 1, do that. Don't let people harping on tired memes make you think you're actually doing anything wrong.

[All4BigGuns]

Going to point out that First Aid has specifically limiting and finicky rules tied to it. Most of the time you're better off with a really good medkit followed up by someone casting Heal.

I think that people are applying the old SR4A rule to First Aid still. Page 205 states that the only limit is the Mental Limit. Further on page 208, it specifically states that a medkit adds it's rating in dice (with the wireless bonus, of course). On page 450 it further elaborates that the rating increases the limit. Nowhere does it say that healing is restricted by the skill ranks in SR5.

Example:
Logic 5 + First Aid 5 + Medkit 6 = a 16 dice pool to heal damage
This character has a Mental Limit of 6, so with the Rating 6 Medkit, the test's Limit is increased to 12.

Now let's do a test roll for the healing.
Rolls: 2 - 6 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 6 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 6 - 4 - 5 - 2 - 5 - 4

Not a very good roll, but it still healed a respectable 3 boxes of damage. If more was needed, you could spend an Edge to reroll failures.

Re-rolls: 6 - 2 - 6 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 4 - 2 - 5 - 4 - 5

So, here, we ended up with 4 more boxes of healing that could potentially end up with more depending on the table interpretation for the Edge reroll (whether 6 explodes or not on the reroll).

[Whiskeyjack]

Nowhere does it say that healing is restricted by the skill ranks in SR5.

Well that's a funny assertion, considering page 206 explicitly says: "The maximum damage healable with the First Aid skill is equal to the skill’s rating."

that could potentially end up with more depending on the table interpretation for the Edge reroll (whether 6 explodes or not on the reroll).

That would be somewhat broken, making post-Edging even better than pre-Edging. And post-Edging is already better on any reasonable dice pool than pre-Edging is.

[CrimsonY]

Realized I forgot to include Willpower and intuition, I think I picked 5 for both to be honest, the DM kept the character sheets since didn't want to damage them so I can't remember for sure, but I have taken attributes as priority A, I wonder if it's preferable to have higher body over willpower, since I have no magic whatsoever, but I will not be a front liner by any means, given I'll do these in order of priority: Drive or operate vehicles> operate drones> fight with guns.

I do plan on playing out those stats, even if I might use the first 20-40 Karma to up them a bit, I'd like it to remain somewhat a flaw at least unless it's called for too often, personally having a swimming dice pool of 1 [can default to 0] or whatever the program hero lab meant makes me laugh because my best means of fighting my mortal enemy (lakes/rivers pool or small ponds) will be to hold my breath and pray apparently =P
I really like the timid and pushover personally and will watch the latest spider-man movie again, Jamie Foxx was really good at that, regardless of general opinion about the Spider-Man movies.

[Glyph]

Remember, though, that an Attribute of 1 is only 10 Karma from an Attribute of 2, and another 15 Karma from an Attribute of 3 after that.  Unless you plan on never improving those Attributes, don't describe or play them too drastically.  Strength of 1 is a couch potato, not a wheezing asthmatic with a walker.  Charisma of 1 means someone who is a bit uncomfortable or unsure when interacting with other people (might be a wallflower, might be too blunt-spoken, etc.), not an obsessive-compulsive geek who wipes his nose with the tablecloth.

To rephrase this drek, ahem, "Don't play him to his stats, play him how he will resemble in 50 karma if you decide to spend it on nothing else."

Even at 5 karma a session, that is 2.5 months of weekly play to get that much karma. And that is assuming you get 5 per session. If you net 6 per mission and it took you 2 weeks, that's reducing you to 3 a session. Now you are waiting over four months with no spending on anything else.

Play it how you think it should be played. When you raise stats (if you do), than start beefing up and growing a spine.

Nowhere did I say anything resembling your "rephrase".  I said Strength of 1 is a couch potato, and a Charisma of 1 means someone who is a bit uncomfortable or unsure when interacting with other people.  I was pointing out that with Attributes being so easy to raise up to "average", it is good to not play them as if the character is permanently disabled, unless the player chooses to keep those Attributes low.

[CrimsonY]

@Glyph I'm sure there are actual negative "perk" or "traits" that would fit perfectly into great roleplay ideas, but so far I'm just gonna keep it to small allusions in certain situation, thank you for your suggestions.

I'd like a reason to start as a loser of sort, given I have almost max attributes in many things and just as many skills in very useful domains, from mechanic to medicine, as well as many Rigger talents.
I know what I want to roleplay and do in the group and was gonna do it during play, but seeing as there are SO MUCH dept to the rule book, there is probably an actual name and ruling for it, so far the character is really a good guy with great ideas who ended up living in a van and selling his drones for food (good reason I got to start with only 2-3 drones since we didn't want to spend 2 more hours on customizing more, since the group was waiting on me to start). If you want to suggest combinations of perks that match that, it's great.

I am perfectly fine with just playing it since I don't really need the extra Karma of negative abilities, and running will (hopefully) put a stop to the downstream of failures that put the character in such a predicament. ;3