[baojin]

Hey everyone,

I'm sorry to post something empty like that but i'm kinda totally new at playing non ass kicking classes.
I created myself a killer ninja adpet for an upcoming campaign, but kinda got hooked at the technomancer description in "unwired".
As i'm like, always, playing the tank or the killer in the different games, i'm really not used to a "caster like" focused character, and i'm kinda lost atm with all the different options there is for the technomancer.

All i know is that we'll probably be as light as possible on the matrix side because it gets boring really quick for other players, so the char would be like oriented only on preparing breaking & entering (finding location of items, finding floorplans and the like, shutting down security) and then, ideally, either a combat hacker or a drone pilot (i like the drones idea, gives u some stuff to spend ur monies on).

As you guys are all very skilled in that game, maybe you could give me some heads up on what to do ?

I'm gonna play a human, and we start with 500 BP (yeeha), there'll be a combat mage for sure and a samurai (guns freak probably) 4th guy is unkown yet.

I'm putting my nose deep into the rules and trying to come up with something, but it's a little bit confusing atm.

[FastJack]

If it's your first time as a Matrix-user, I'd suggest sticking to the basics in the Core Rulebook. A lot of stuff in Unwired (and the other four of the Quints), is meant to be Advanced rules. If you're just starting with the 'trix for the first time, they might "get in the way" of your learning how to hack and enjoying the character.

[Dakka]

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=833.0 happens to also be a 500 point techomancer build thread for a combat techomancer.  I'll say the same thing here I said there, I can give as much or as little build advice as you want, but the minimums will be agility 4+, charisma 5, and resonance 5 or 6, few complex forms (including smartlink), and your weapon of choice.  Considering how useful charisma is to techomancers you could probably also double as the group Face with the Influence skill group.

Technomancers are very flexible, the can be built to fill almost any role with a side order of hacking. 

[baojin]

Yup stats wise i'd go for 4 in CHA, 5 in INT/LOG/WIL and 6 in resonnance, rest is between 2 and 4.

I've read a little here and there, and i think that a technomancer with daedalus as a paragon and using machine sprites could have a nice drones capacity no ?

On some char gen it seems that a character can start with registered sprites, each of them seems to be able to be up to their compiling skill.

So, with, say a compiling skill of 5 and the bonus from the paragon on machine sprites it's give a sprite of rating 6 ?
That kind of sprite put into a combat drone, say a lynx, would have targeting & defense at 6 so, pretty much 12 dices for shooting and full defense, along with a nice 12 dice for body + armor, could take a couple of those (large) drones for only 10k (then i believe there should be somewhere where u can upgrade em).
Could also take some spy drones for scouting and the like.

With the +2 in hardware, the char would be also quite good at breaking & entering everything eletronic (with, say a skill group of 4 in electronics).

I guess, how i see it, it would probably be a technomancer heavily relying on sprites, with a limited matrix access and his personal skills being more on the electronic warfare and B&E side. Dunno how it'd go.

[Dakka]

Starting with registered sprites is a build option for techomancers, they cost BPs = services owed.  I wouldn't recommend more than 1 tho, if any at all.  Registering only takes a couple hours of downtime and compiling sprites only costs fading.  The sprite has a rating = your resonance and owes however many tasks you pay BPs for. 

Body 3, Agilty 4, Reaction 2, Strength 2, Charisma 4, Intuition 4, Logic 4, Willpower 5 is 200 BPs and not a bad spread for a combat techomancer.  Not great for getting shot at tho.  With a 500 point build you could also probably go 6 edge on a human character for 50 BPs and resonance 6 for 65 BPs.   If you go straight Dronomancer you could possibly get away with Strength 1 to keep your Charisma at 5.

Dronomancers need a high Command CF and Gunnery skill.  To start out you need drones with rigger adaptation but there is an Echo in Unwired that lets you jump into ANY device, including cameras and the like with no rigger module.  Machine sprites are handy and Daedalus can be helpful to a rigger techomancer if thats the route you want to go.  In this case you would want Electronics 4 and some level of Cracking.

Starting with Compiling 5 and Registering 4 or 5 vs the Tasking skillgroup at rank 4 is a toss up, Decompiling isn't super useful unless you face a lot of enemy techomancers and free sprites, and even then you can decompile them with a Black Hammer almost as easily. 

Stick Athletics skill group or possibly just Gynmastics if you have strength 1 and the Stealth skill group and you have a decent B&E 'mancer, although you won't be scaling any buildings from the outside more than likely.

A rating 6 Machine Sprite can be given 2 option CFs which include drone autosofts so yes an R6 sprite would have R6 Targeting (weapon) and R6 Defense which you could stuff into a Lynx and have a 12 dice combat capable drone.  Gets expensive if your drones take a lot of damage but not that important since technomancers don't spend money on cyber/bioware.

[baojin]

Ok here is my current build, i will work on it later (500 pts build)

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to seek some advices for a dronomancer i'm building, because i am kinda new in this type of gameplay...

Note that we start at 500 points and that the GM allows us one stat at 5 and one at 6 (which is resonance for me as he considers it a stat).
We can also have one skill at 6 and one at 5 or 3 at 5.

Name : Pepper
Age : 17
Race : Human (still hesitating with elf but well).

Stats :
Body 3
Agi 2
Rea 2
Str 2
Cha 4
Int 4
Log 5
Will 4
Res 6
Edge 4

Skills
Cracking 4
Electronics 4
Compiling 5
Registering 5
gunnery 4
Pilot ground craft 3
Dodge 4

Qualities
Paragon (Daedalus) 5
Media junky Mild -5
Day job limited -5
Compulsive behavior : jumping into combat drones -10
Flashbacks (common) -10

1 contact 4/6 - mechanician (as i got no mecha skill)
1 contact 2/2 - Fixer

Knowledge skills :
Matrix security 6/6
Matrix games 4/6
Club music 4/6

English : N
Cantonese / Chinese / Japanese : 4
Korean : 3

Complex forms :
Scan / Browse / Armor / Stealth / Sniffer : 4
Exploit / ECCM : 5
Command / Spoof / Black Hammer : 6

Gear :
Docwagon standard 1 y
1 month middle class
1 form fitting full body suit
1 urban explorer jumpsuit
Fake SIN lvl 4
3x Fake licence lvl 4 (GMC truck, Combat drone, Police drone)

Vehicles (drones are rigged):
1 Wuxing crimson samurai with Ares LMG + Nade Launcher
1 Ford LEBD-1 with Ares Assault rifle (lvl 9 armor upgrade)
1 Aztechnology Armadillo

1 GMC bulldog stepvan
- Rigging
- Morphing plate
- Chameleon coating
- Drone rack large
- Drone rack small x2
- Spoof chip
- Medium amenities
- Signature masking lvl 3 (we are authorized of 1 item above 12).

Gear costs about 135k, if we include the 300 H-XP rounds and the few H XP nades.

I don't know if it's possible to smartlink guns attached to drones in case of jumping in.
I'd like to know also if it's possible to increase the sensor rating of 3 of the different drones as it contributes to firing.

Char will mostly throw machine sprites in the drones to fight for her and will also go in the wuxing for some fun.

As i'm totally new to S4R i don't know if i did any major mistake on that char

Thx !

Edit : updated the stats

[baojin]

I also have a question :

Let's say i put a camera sensor in a wuxing crimson samurai, can i equip it with a smartlink system ans couple it with another system on the weapon if my char jumps in, which would give a +2 ?

I'm reworking the skills to make something more decent at the moment.

Also it seems that shooting while being inside a drone is a little bit tedious, as the dices are sensor + gunnery; even with a wuxing which has 3 as sensor rating, with 4 gunnery and the +2 from hotsim it'd just make 9D to shoot with that cat, ain't nowhere close to a  good shooter. Is it possible to improve the sensor rating ? I saw a modification that is called "improved sensor array" but i am unsure about what it changes, is it supposed to make sensor go from say 3 to 4 ?

Thx !

[FastJack]

I can't find anything that says you can't put the Smartlink on the Samurai, but you'd have to have the Smartlink 'ware on your rigger, not on the drone. It's a link between the mind and the gun, and your brain is still in your meat bod.

[baojin]

Hm, but then how could that work ? Char having googles with a smartlink (or contact lenses with smartlink) on her and then that'd work when connecting to the smartgun on her drone ?

I got another question as well, all drones come equiped with sensors, but how could I know which sensors are installed by default ? Like on the Wuxing i wanna put ultrawidebandradar lvl 4 and 360° vision with low light and flare comp, along with a cam jammer. All fit in the 8 slots capacity on large drones, but i don't know if i should pay full price for those items or if i could retract the price of what could be considered as "default" package.

[FastJack]

Hmm... that makes an interesting point. I'd have to say that you'd be able to put Smartlink on the camera (since it qualifies as imaging device).

[voydangel]

To get the bonuses of smartlink you must have A) a smartlink system installed in your character (or Smartlink CF, etc.) and B) you must have smartlink installed on the individual weapon.
You can't install smartlink in a drone itself, as the drone is not specifically a weapon in and of itself. However, I think what you're going for here is a static +2 to weapons used by the drone regardless of what or who is operating it, in which case what you would be looking at is: each of the weapons on the drone need to have smartlink, the pilot program needs a smartlink autosoft installed (if such a thing exists - I don't recall off the top of my head), and you need to have the smartlink CF (again - if such a thing exists, I don't recall off the top of my head if it does).

Now on to answer your sensors question
There is no list specifying what each individual drone and vehicle come with in their sensors package. However, pg 105 of the arsenal book shows a sample of what a vehicle would have.
I think what most vehicles and drones would have can be extrapolated fairly easily from this with a little logic and common sense.

To address your specific example, I would think that yes, you could easily put those sensors in that drone, but then you would be loosing out on some of the basic sensors required by pilot programs, and human to be able to sense their surrounds accurately. Given only an ultra-wideband radar (4), 360° vision with low light and flare comp, and a camera negator, I would think that you (and any pilot program) would have a few (albeit minor) issues. What one would "see" through this drones "eyes" (imho) would be a 3d map of the area it was in, and one very "flat feeling", wide-and-distorted (fisheyed), and squished (to fit in a normal FoV single frame - view of your surroundings.

If it were my game, I would probably impose a small penalty for maneuvering and facing the drone correctly, maybe -1, and a larger penalty the more fine control you were trying to use, probably ranging from -2 to -4. Of course I would say that all of that would be offset by having an (extra) normal camera along with a motion sensor - both in a front facing position, and/or adding a normal radar to the mix which gives you much better visual/spatial relative bearings and distances about the stuff around you (one which could easily be done by getting the "improved sensor array" mod done to your drone/vehicle).

Just my 2 cents.

[FastJack]

Actually, the point he made is that you can now have Smartlink installed on goggles/glasses/contacts instead of having cyberware installed. That being said, I have to agree that you could have Smartlink installed on the sensors of the drone, but you'd only get the bonus when your riding the drone.

[Dakka]

Note that we start at 500 points and that the GM allows us one stat at 5 and one at 6 (which is resonance for me as he considers it a stat).
We can also have one skill at 6 and one at 5 or 3 at 5.

The stat limit is pretty harsh, especially to a technomancer.   I'd go with Intuition 5 instead of logic tho.  Intuition is the Dronomancer fading stat as well as your living commlink response so it will make your drone actions faster with better init.  You can only start the game with Logic x2 Complex Forms so 10 if you keep Logic 5, 8 if you switch to Intuition 5.  You could lose Browse and Sniffer and use those points to get Gunnery 5 and also perception 1 or con 1 or something else useful.  Also it would appear you forgot to spend 5 BPs on Technomancer quality.

Stats : 275
Skills: 161
Qualities  -25
Contacts: 14
Complex forms : 48
Gear : 27
----------------------------
= 500 (with adding Technomancer Quality).  I guess you didn't forget to buy it, but its not under Qualities on your build.

Gear costs about 135k, if we include the 300 H-XP rounds and the few H XP nades.

I don't know if it's possible to smartlink guns attached to drones in case of jumping in.
I'd like to know also if it's possible to increase the sensor rating of 3 of the different drones as it contributes to firing.

Char will mostly throw machine sprites in the drones to fight for her and will also go in the wuxing for some fun.

As i'm totally new to S4R i don't know if i did any major mistake on that char

Thx !

Edit : updated the stats

Upgrading sensors is totally what Riggers/Dronomancers are all about.  The sensor value of a vehicle/drone is the average rating of all sensors included in the sensor package.  Medium Drones can have 6 different sensors, large drones 8.  You can design your own using the gear listed under Sensors in the Street Gear chapter (as well as new sensors in Arsenal).  R6 cameras come with 6 capacity of their own for visual enhancements and I see no reason why one of those can't be smartlink, even if the drone is too dumb to use it without you being jumped in (although I'm not sure thats the case).  

[baojin]

Thx for the answers.

And yes, i'm looking only for bonuses when riding the drones (either the char, or a machine sprite).
The issue i got with sensors too (and i didn't find the answer yet) is that when u shoot, u use sensor + gunnery. Let's say the wuxing got 3 in sensor and char got 4 in gunnery that's 7D to shoot (+2D for hot sim), in "Arsenal" they say that one could enhance that lvl 3 sensor by adding enhancements to their sensors, would it work if, say, i put a  vision enhancer +3 ? Or how could i get that lvl 3 rating going up (improved sensors array only gives more space, not better sensors). ?  Because atm the sprites are much better riders than my dronomancer

Edit : it seems that we posted at the same time ^^.
So u mean that if i put a R6 camera on a drone, it'll bring its sensor rating to 6 ?

[baojin]

About sniffer i just have a question : it's just to analyze traffic and is totally useless to find nodes (like for example a drone) to jump into ? That's only a "scan" result right ?

Edit : about Intuition vs Logic, i don't know on that one, as Logic is used for, like, all skills but Intuition is used for response...