[Black Bart]

I've never made a rigger before, so I'm giving it my best shot.

Name: Scrap
Race Elf
Sum to ten build: B,A,E,C,D

Bod 3       Agi 6
Rea 6      Str 3
Cha 4      Int 5
Log 5       Wil 5
Edg 6

Positive Qualities
Jack of all trades
Juryrigger
Low-Light Vision

Negative Qualities
SINner (Corporate) Saeder Krupp

Contacts

Lynn, London, Smuggler  (2/3)

Reif, Great Britain, Gambler  (1/3)

Sal, London, Dock Worker    (4/4)

Phy Cond 10      Stun Cond 11
Initiative   11+1d
Rigging Initiative   11+1d
Armor 17      Ess 5.44
Nuyen Remaining 35     Composure 9
Judge Intentions  9             Lift and Carry 6
Memory 10            Movement 12/24

Skills

Electronics 2                           Automatics 12(14)   Machine Pistols
Automotive Mechanics 6                     Electronic Warfare  6
Etiquette 6(    Corporate              Gunnery 7
Hacking 6( Devices                      Hardware 7
Negotiation 5                                 Pilot Aircraft  9
Pilot Groundcraft  7                    Sneaking 8(10) Urban
Unarmed 8

Knowledge Skills

Business 9(11)   Time management
French 9
Engineering 8(10)  Electrical
Sperethiel 8
Art 8(10)   Asia-Pacific

Cyberware

Cybereyes Basic (Rating 3) Alphaware
Image Link
Microscopic Lenses
Flare Compensation

Datajack                Smartlink

Lifestyle Low
The Dungeon (Cramped) (Obscure)


Armor/Weapons/Gear

Armor Jacket                                    Forearm Guards
Attachable Gear Access                Gel Packs
Gel Packs

Full Face Mask                                 Good Pants
Gas Mask                                          Good Shoes
Chem Protection (Rating 2)

Weapons

Ceska Black Scorpions                  Extendable Baton
Stock                                                   Melee Hardening
Concealed Quick-Draw Holster
Sound Suppressor
Smartgun System, Internal

Grapple Gun        Stealth Rope (100m)

Gear

Sony Emperor Commlink            Essy Motors Dronemaster
Browse                                            Camera (Rating 4)
Encryption
Siganal Scrub
Bug Scanner (Rating 1)
Tag Eraser

Backpack(Good)
Climbing gear                              Tool Kit (Repairs)
Roll of duct tape                           100 Regular Ammo (Machine Pistols)

Drones
GM-Nissan Doberman (Medium)
Weapon Mount
Krupp Arms Kriegfaust
Imaging Scope
Sound Suppressor
Sensor Array (Rating 3)


I spent twelve years working for a corporation. A wage slave, working for a Dragon. Well not just any Dragon. The great green wyrm Lowfyr. He owns Saeder-Krupp. I never actually saw him. Only got a correspondence from one of his assistants assistants. (Shudders) I'm quite happy I never met him. Rumors were that he never forgot you, once those eyes looked upon you.

I got burned though, just as any normal day I came to the cramped office cubicle I shared with four other individuals. But everybody looked at me strangely. I just finished my work out and thought maybe I smelled funny. But no that wasn't it. My hair wasn't disheveled and my clothes were in order. I left it alone, hoping it was one of those early morning frag ups on there part.
I worked my normal day, going through the motions of running time tests on the new drone start ups, drone command sequencing. Sometimes I got to actually test a drone in a wind chamber to see what wind speed velocity would knock a flyer to the ground.

I went to punch out after a eleven hour work day, but my time card was removed. A Knight's Errant security team was waiting for me. Guns at the ready, the leader screaming at me "Get on the ground. Hands above your head." They took me to an interrogation room, looking for a missing drone. They said it was S-K property that had been checked out with my credentials.
I told them "Somebody must've stolen them when I went for a Kaf." They didn't care. They brought in a mage to check my aura, a troll to beat the information out of me. But I couldn't give them what they wanted.

A week later they told me I was gonna be released. They took me down to the basement. A guard put a gun to my head. "Do you want a cigarette? Be the last one you'll ever get. They gave me one and lit it.

The lights went out and gun fire lit up the room. Yelling followed and more gunfire. I couldn't see past the tip of the cigarette. I dare not move. Then the lights came back on blinding me. All the guards were dead. Pools of crimson welling out of the four of them. A figure stepped out from a turbine.

"I am here to extract you. You will not speak, nor move when I don't tell you. You will follow my lead and I will get you out of here." The extractor walked behind me and sawed the zip ties holding my arms and feet together. I followed his directions and not soon after we were out of the building and into a van.

After that I don't remember much. They threw a bag over my head and zip tied me again. I lay in the back of the rumbling van, trying to listen. But the engine noise was all I heard.
I was released again on a dead end street and they threw a bag out after me. 
It held 50,000 Nuyen. They told me it was an Insurance policy and I had met the criteria.
The rest is history, I made my way to London, staying off the grid as much as was possible.
I don't like the idea of a Dragon with tabs on me.

[Whiskeyjack]

Honestly, it's really too much work for people to parse out what your skill ratings are when you list your entire dice pool instead.

No RCC and/or control rig, no vehicle, and only one drone...I'm not calling you a rigger, sorry.

[Csjarrat]

He's got an rcc, just a badly formatted post.

What whiskey is trying to say in a roundabout manner is that your character is missing most of the key things you see on rigger charsheet. Primarily, a control rig, multiple drones kitted for different roles (recon, combat etc) and a vehicle to get the team and kit in and out of the job. Nice backstory, but I think you've maybe overinvested in skills and attributes and not enough into the kit that makes your character fit it's role

[Whiskeyjack]

I thought I saw a commlink, because something said, "commlink."

Oh, I see it now I think. ok.

[Black Bart]

Just for a visual image. Is the RCC, like a deck. Portable or is it a clunky comp. And for the formatting I tried to make it a shorter post by breaking it up. Should I redo the Sum to ten? I messed up giving myself no money and tried to make the best of the situation.

[Whiskeyjack]

Yeah, riggers are an archetype that really need money. For drones, for vehicles, for ware. They probably want money at A or B. The RCC is deck-sized. This edition, decks are depicted as being about the size of iPads.

This character might work better as a human. I'd play with something like

Resources A/B
Attributes B/A
Skills C
Meta D
Magic E

Honestly I think Attributes is the better option for A, but I'm not totally sure. It depends if you want a control rig because those are very pricy.

[Csjarrat]

i'd go resources at A myself. even with a cheap rig, vehicles + drones plus all the software, vehicle mods etc and tools makes for a pricey archetype

[Whiskeyjack]

Yeah I honestly have not looked at riggers too closely. They're hard to play out of the core, and I haven't had time to read through Rigger5.

There are really 4 ways to do your combat drones with an RCC:

1. Same chassis and same weapons - you can share both Pilot and Targeting autosofts to all drones with the RCC. A little bland, but cost-effective
2. All the same chassis (share Pilot through RCC), but different weapons (cannot share Targeting)
3. Different chassis, but all the same weapons (to share Targeting)
4. Different chassis, different weapons - RCC is basically useless here

Even then chances are you will want some fly spies and other little things for scouting and sneaking into vents.

Jumping into a drone is dangerous. Drones are fragile. If your drone gets killed, you might get killed from biofeedback if jumped in. This is why the advice is to generally jump in to a sniping rotodrone that is hanging far above the combat. Enemies shooting at it with non-sniper weapons will be eating penalties and that helps it survive.

Or jump into a vehicle with hidden turrets. Vehicles are very durable.

[Csjarrat]

I'd add a number 5 to that list it you've got rigger 5,
Get four or five copies of the same combat drone and form a swarm of them from a really high rating RCC. They all get huge bonuses and can share the same Autosofts.
X10 noizquito drones launched from a microdrones rack can also be swarmed up and serve your recon needs and get huge bonuses from being in a swarm

[Darzil]

Jumping into a drone is dangerous. Drones are fragile. If your drone gets killed, you might get killed from biofeedback if jumped in.

Re-reading the rules I'm not actually sure it's that bad.

You have to resist half the boxes of damage that the drone took when hit. As drones don't have overflow, the most you would take is half the drone's condition. For the smallest drones you'd be resisting 3 biofeedback damage, and even for a steel lynx only 6. Depending which RCC you go for, you have 4-6 Firewall and 5 device rating. As the drone is slaved, then depending on your GM's take on PANs, you are defending with either Willpower + Drone device rating or higher of Willpower and RCC device rating + higher of RCC Firewall + Drone Firewall.

Though reading that, I realise that the interpretation of the rules for PAN when Persona is formed on the slave device is important. The difference between resisting 3-4 P with 5-7 dice or 9-11.

(ie, does the Persona get to use the stats the slave device would defend with just before the Persona was formed on it, but Persona means the slave device cannot be separately targetted, or does it mean the Persona has to use the stats of the slave device when not slaved.)

Edit - It's been up too long to change, imo, but I am wrong here. Slaving affects defense rolls, not damage resistance rolls. So you are always resisting the biofeedback damage with Willpower + Drone Firewall, regardless of PAN setup.

[Csjarrat]

Jumping into a drone is dangerous. Drones are fragile. If your drone gets killed, you might get killed from biofeedback if jumped in.

Re-reading the rules I'm not actually sure it's that bad.

You have to resist half the boxes of damage that the drone took when hit. As drones don't have overflow, the most you would take is half the drone's condition. For the smallest drones you'd be resisting 3 biofeedback damage, and even for a steel lynx only 6. Depending which RCC you go for, you have 4-6 Firewall and 5 device rating. As the drone is slaved, then depending on your GM's take on PANs, you are defending with either Willpower + Drone device rating or higher of Willpower and RCC device rating + higher of RCC Firewall + Drone Firewall.

Though reading that, I realise that the interpretation of the rules for PAN when Persona is formed on the slave device is important. The difference between resisting 3-4 P with 5-7 dice or 9-11.

(ie, does the Persona get to use the stats the slave device would defend with just before the Persona was formed on it, but Persona means the slave device cannot be separately targetted, or does it mean the Persona has to use the stats of the slave device when not slaved.)

Yeah, VR riggers should always get a liegelord or equivalent RCC and run encryption, biofeedback filter and shell. Gives a reasonable dicepool to cancel out any harmful dumpshock that makes it through.
Also worth noting that even a BOD 3 drone can take up to 9 armour without loss of handling/speed etc, so a lynx or bumblebee can take 18 armour for a total resist pool of 24 which is pretty respectable and higher than most non-combat-specialist PCs have, plus they ignore stun.

[adzling]

So can a Rigger just use a Cyberdeck to jump into a drone from and still get the program protection benefits of Shell etc from Biofeedback?

[Csjarrat]

Yeah, you just don't get the autosoft sharing, noise reducing, free action jump-in stuff the rcc does. A good rating comm does the same too, especially with a hotsim mod. Well worth sticking on a multidimensional coprocessor mod for the extra initiative

[adzling]

Yeah that's what I thought.
thanks

[RiggerBob]

You have to resist half the boxes of damage that the drone took when hit. As drones don't have overflow, the most you would take is half the drone's condition. For the smallest drones you'd be resisting 3 biofeedback damage, and even for a steel lynx only 6. Depending which RCC you go for, you have 4-6 Firewall and 5 device rating. As the drone is slaved, then depending on your GM's take on PANs, you are defending with either Willpower + Drone device rating or higher of Willpower and RCC device rating + higher of RCC Firewall + Drone Firewall.

Though reading that, I realise that the interpretation of the rules for PAN when Persona is formed on the slave device is important. The difference between resisting 3-4 P with 5-7 dice or 9-11.

(ie, does the Persona get to use the stats the slave device would defend with just before the Persona was formed on it, but Persona means the slave device cannot be separately targetted, or does it mean the Persona has to use the stats of the slave device when not slaved.)

Taking the Jump: [...] From the Matrix, your icon and the device icon merge into a single icon.

When you take Matrix damage, it goes to the first device you’re using for your persona, not the device you’re jumped into. If you used your commlink or rigger command console to enter VR before jumping in, your commlink or RCC (respectively) is the target of Matrix damage to your persona.

You form your Persona on your RCC (/Deck/Commlink). If you jump in your Persona icon and the drone's icon merge but it's basicly still your Persona with your RCC's stats, the drone can just no longer be targeted in matrix combat.

Whenever the vehicle or drone you’re jumped into takes boxes of damage, you must resist half (rounded up) of that damage as Biofeedback damage (p. 229).

If the vehicle, drone, or device you’re jumped into is destroyed while you’re jumped in, you suffer dumpshock (6 DV biofeedback damage, p. 229).

Dumpshock is biofeedback damage, so you resist it with Willpower + Firewall. [...] Remember that if you’re being dumped because your deck just got bricked, you don’t have a functional Firewall attribute any more, so only use your Willpower.

So... If your drone get destroyed by taking 10 damage you get 5 feedback damage resisted with Willpower + your RCC's Firewall, then another 6 feedback damage for being dump shocked, again resisted with the same stats. But that's only damage you get. Your RCC is still fully functional without any matrix damage.

If you and your drone (merged icon while jumped in) get attacked via cybercombat, it's of course another story. There the matrix damage goes directly to your RCC (the device your Persona is formed on) and if it gets bricked you have to resist the dumpshock with willpower alone, because there's no functional firewall left to help you. On the other hand your drone hasn't taken a single point of damage in this case. It's still running on autopilot but without your RRC's defensive matrix stats because it's no longer slaved (it's master being offline).

PS: Only if you use your Control Rig (via it's retractable cable) to directly connect to a vehicle you use the vehicles matrix stats while jumped in, because in this case the vehicle is the device you formed your Persona on too. If that vehicle gets destroyed you're really in trouble because you take the feedback damage and dump shock damage resisted only with willpower.