[ammulder]

Yeah, OK, this combo might not win the popularity contest, unless you like pizza.  But it's what my son picked so now it's up to me to make it work for the table.    Anyway, here, goes... any feedback would be appreciated, though he is pretty set on the particular drone models he picked.

Attributes A, Resources B, Skills C, Metatype D, Magic E

Human Rigger (secondary talent: Decker)
Body 4
Agility 3
Reaction 3
Strength 2
Willpower 5
Logic 5
Intuition 6
Charisma 4
Edge 5
Essence 1.27

Qualities: Impaired Strength 4, Extreme allergy to strawberries, Piloting Aptitude, Juryrigger, Analytical Mind

Skills:
Cracking 5 (Hacking 7)
Electronics 4 (Computer 6)
Engineering 5
Firearms 1 (Machine Pistols 3)
Influence 1 (Etiquette 3)
Perception 1 (Urban 3)
Piloting 7

Knowledge Skills: Drone models, Matrix locations, Matrix icons, Fast food joints
Languages: English (native), Japanese

Gear: Spinrad Falcon Cyberdeck, Horizon Overseer Rigger Command Console, Armor Jacket, Ceska Black Scorpion w/2 clips & concealable holster, microtransciever, Fake SIN 3 w/weapon & cyberware licenses, Low Lifestyle (1 mo)

Augmentations: Used Cyberjack 4, Used Vehicle Control Rig 2

Vehicles: Honda Spirit car w/Rigger interface

Drones:

• Cyberspace Designs Quadrotor (for recon) w/Vision Magnification & Thermographic (I'm assuming it comes with a camera with a rating equal to the drone's sensor rating, so it has some capacity and he bought the vision enhancements on it)
• MCT-Nissan Rotodrone #1 w/2 standard weapons mounts, 2 Yamaha Raidens each w/50 rounds, 2 Frag & 2 HE microgrenades, 10 shotgun shells
• MCT-Nissan Rotodrone #2 w/heavy weapon mount, Panther XXL w/30 rounds
• Note: all weapons have integration smartgun systems, but the drones don't have the operator-side modification to take advantage of them; in the future I assume this would require the 2000¥ vision modification for each drone

Autosofts: Maneuvering (Quadrotor) 3, Maneuvering (Rotodrone) 4, Targeting (Yamaha Raiden) 6, Targeting (Panther XXL) 6, Clearsight 6, Evasion 6

Programs for Cyberdeck: Edit Program, Signal Scrubber, Toolbox, Exploit, Overclock, Decryption, Armor (can't run all them at once)

Starting cash: 85¥ (that's why he's running the shadows, yo!)

Contacts: TBD (24 pts total connection + loyalty, none higher than 4)

Starting karma: 69 after qualities spent on 3 level 1 skills (15 pts), 5 skill specializations (25 pts), Electronics 3->4 (20 pts), 18,000¥ (9 pts)

He's planning to spend first 10 karma earned on Piloting & Engineering specializations

[Xenon]

Note that the intent by the original author here is that you either access the matrix via a cyberdeck (in which case you have access to attack and sleaze which mean you can brute force, probe and entering backdoors etc) or a RCC (in which case you have access to send the same instruction to multiple slaved drones, reduce noise within your PAN, share autosofts with your slaved drones etc). Not both at the same time.

But also note that you only need a cyberdeck for actions that are directly linked to attack or sleaze. Spoof command, for example, was specifically designed to be used by Riggers that were not using a cyberdeck (but was perhaps skilled in cracking).

Author also said that he intend to put more focus on riggers that want to do hacking and electronic warfare in the upcoming matrix supplement.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

This character does have the cyberjack though, so hacking and rigging is still viable on one character...  Just have to do one or the other at any given matrix session.

[ammulder]

I guess we're thinking this will be the person in the party responsible for aerial scouting, matrix legwork, team transportation, drone fire support, opening locks and removing/bypassing traps, spoofing cameras, decrypting data files when they're the goal of the run, and the like.  It could be one and a half or two full jobs, but we'll have to make it only one.

So, for instance, I'm OK if we handwave either the aerial scouting or matrix legwork (reduce it to a single roll or just say "you've got the equipment, you get it done") rather than playing out both in detail.  I'm OK if he has to set his drones to full autopilot ("standby and shoot anybody who's not us") while he hacks a maglock or camera.

I think we'll be fine if he can't use both RCC and deck in the same round, though I don't want a real extended switching process... If everyone else is in the flow of combat or a chase or whatever, I wouldn't want him to have to spend a round jacking out of the matrix and another round re-establishing connections to the drones so there's two rounds of dead time between using deck and using RCC.  But I'm OK if he can't maintain a backdoor or host access level in the matrix while controlling drones, and has to set the drones to autopilot while hacking around the matrix.  I think.  Having not actually tried to play it yet. 

So perhaps I'll be bending the rules a bit on the transitions (you stay in AR/VR and just move your persona so e.g. there's no dumpshock), but in the spirit of streamlining play and keeping the player involved.  And in my opinion it would not be better to either bore the table playing out an NPC taking one of those roles in detail, or to just handwave all elements of the matrix.

As far as options in a future supplement:

• It would be cool to cut down the raw number of expensive devices required for this (VCR, RCC, jack, deck)
• It would be nice to have one set of matrix/hacking defenses instead of having separate Firewall ratings, Armor programs, and etc. depending on whether you're primarily interacting with the RCC or the deck+jack at a given moment
• There are also some oddities like autosofts having a rating while RCC & deck programs don't that may or may not be able to be synced up.
• Initiative could be clarified.  The Rigging chapter says "Whether you are rigging with AR or VR, you’re using the Matrix, so all the aspects that come with the Matrix come with your experience." -- and on that basis I'm assuming you'd get the Cyberjack Matrix initiative bonus while rigging, though it would be nice if it explicitly said either initiative is the same across Rigging/Decking or otherwise what differs.
• It would be great if the "switching between RCC and deck" process was clarified, though if it's going to be too onerous I'd rather it go unsaid so I can ignore it more easily

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

There's no rule against daisychaining comm devices, and indeed... if you don't use the unofficial FAQ there's no way to even have a PAN that covers a single runners' gear (much less an entire team's worth of gear) without daisy-chaining.

So, technically, there's no rule against mating a cyberdeck with a RCC.  It's not the RAI, but it's not technically against the RAW to do so (assuming that even matters- your game,  your rules!).  So, there's potentially the cyberdeck+RCC option, if that's a route you want to take.  For a non-organized play game, at any rate!

Even if you do go with the no cyberdeck+RCC route, since your character has all 3 of cyberdeck, cyberjack, and RCC I don't see any reason you couldn't use cyberdeck + cyberjack, and just have the RCC as a daisychained device slaved to the cyberjack adding a sub-tier hierarchy to your PAN "tree".  You couldn't use the D/F stats of the RCC to protect your PAN, but so what.

[ammulder]

Hmm... I like the sound of this extended-PAN approach.  Can you help me work out the implications of the daisychaining?  If you use the cyberjack + cyberdeck with RCC slaved to that combo... and you have one PAN with all these devices active... what does that mean?

• Could you have one matrix session where you switch your attention back and forth between deck (hacking) and RCC (rigging) without leaving AR/VR or restarting your session or jacking out or anything?  (I'm still fine if you pick which device you're interacting with for a full round not action by action, though outside of this case I have the sense you can use different devices on your PAN for different actions within a round)
• It would indeed be fine to use the D/F of the cyberjack not the RCC (on the PC above, the cyberjack has better D/F stats anyway)
• I assume the RCC would run autosofts, and the deck would run your hacking tools as well as the relevant defense programs like Armor or Toolbox.  (Oddly, the Encryption programs are different across the two devices.)  What about Signal Scrubber?  Would one instance on the deck cover noise issues with drones too, or would you need one on the deck to cover noise between you and Matrix devices, while a separate one on the RCC would cover noise between you and your drones?  (Potentially less relevant in that the noise reduction built into the RCC seems pretty effective already, so maybe you'd just run Signal Scrubber on the deck to cover connection to matrix devices.)

Anyway, while this is non-organized play, the better I can support it with existing mechanics, the easier it will be to figure out any edge cases that come up on the fly. 

[Xenon]

So what you do is that you:

• Assume that the character is accessing the matrix via his RCC (to get access to all nifty RCC utility).
• Then you assume that the cyberjack and cyberdeck are both just part of the PAN.
• Then you "rotate all attributes through your persona, even if they originated from different devices"

That way, if he want to hack something, he just continue using his RCC persona for that as well since it will now have attack and sleaze ratings rotated in from his cyberdeck that is also part of the network.

All this can even be considered a fully rules legal approach strictly going by what is actually written (but as I said earlier, this was not the reading that the author intended when the rules were originally written).

This way you don't need to make up any rules of your own on how to resolve this "daisy chaining"-thingy you are discussing ;-)