This was written before Michael Chandra's last post, so as of posting I do not know how well it meshes with the blog posts I am about to read. Between Noise, the incredible Nuyen intensive Build and Repair rules, and the utter lackluster way drones tend to perform, all combine to make drones a side dish to be tacked onto Deckers to round them out.
Riggers can get more Noise reduction than you'll ever need. Frensal Fabric is 7 points right there.
You say that, but you don't understand how easy it is to ramp up Noise. The ambient Noise, plus up to 6 for a Jammer, plus hits on a Electronic Warfare + Logic [Attack] Jam Signals roll... That doesn't even count the unlikely possible addition from a Technomancer with the right Qualities.
It also doesn't touch on the possibility of two Jammers being able to stack or not.
And drones do underperform. At least singly. They sure aren't any Spirit. A Mook with a shotgun and an Underbarrel Directional Jammer can do a real number on them. Anyone who says a drone is just fine has only been playing with a GM who takes it easy on them.
Swarms are something else, as all "tack on" splat rules tend to be. But, the drones in a swarm need to communicate with each other directly, so they wouldn't get the benefit of any Noise Reduction.
Now, as for fixing riggers:
First, we need to know your concept for a Rigger. If you haven't figured out by now, it seems everyone has their own idea of what makes a Rigger a Rigger.
- Are they Bad Ass Wheelmen? Drone Bunnies? A little of both?
- Are they focused on one at a time? Or multiples? (In the case of vehicles I'm thinking more in line with do they have to spread their skills out to cover most vehicle types, or can they focus on only one.)
Once you have the concept in mind, you have to ask two important questions:
- What can the Rigger do that the Technomancer that takes the MMRI Submersion can't do?
If you can't come up with a respectable answer to those two questions, it has to be asked "Why even have Rigger in the first place?"
I can't answer those for you, so I will move on.
Fixing the Rigger, my 2 Nuyen ideas:These are "Rigger-centric," in that I haven't thought through how they might screw up other parts of the game.The VCR:The current VCR rules are not very cohesive, and as most things in SR5, spread out all over the place in Core Book.
Reducing Threshold is a nice perk, but it doesn't make the Rigger stand out to me.
All the other bonuses are questionable to me. Then again, with almost twenty years playing Shadowrun in various forms, I can count the number of vehicle tests that were called for - that the Rigger (usually me) didn't ask for - on one hand. So there is that.
Suggestion: The VCR grants "phantom" skill ranks in all Piloting skills equal to it's Rating. If the skill is
Trained Only, the VCR only grants 1 phantom rank. These ranks are not "real," and the Rigger most start from 0 when investing Karma in those skills.
This will free up some skill points, and give the Rigger a "Oh that? Yeah I can pilot it." vibe the Decker and Techno don't have.
Drones:Drones tend to be expensive popcorn. In the fact that a couple of hits usually scrap them. There is no real way to armor them (and there shouldn't be) so Riggers have to drop Nuyen hand over fist for their "shtick." If Mages had to drop ~4KĨ per spirit summoned, there would be a revolt - even though they tend to have the cash to spare...
Add to that there it is a firmly held belief that a Rigger must be
Jumped In to make a drone relevant - because base drone stats are pretty abysmal.
Suggestion: Allow the Rigger to be "Half
Jumped In" to a number of drones or vehicles for every two full points of Logic. For all defensive rolls, the "Rigger Critter" is counted as being
Jumped Into, but operates mostly on "dog-brain" for everything else. The Rigger can have limited awareness from these other drones and suffers a -2 penalty for receiving any information from them.
This will protect a small number of Rigger Critters from direct Override, allow the Rigger to actually see/sense in multiple places at once, and gives the expensive popcorn something of a harder shell in that they should get better defensive stats than drones left to their own devices.
Just to cut off objections at the pass, these "Half
Jumped In drones can't be part of a swarm, just like a regular
Jumped In drone can't be.
That only leaves the problematic Vehicle Speeds, I think. I have wondered if we really need Arbitrary Speed to Meters-Per-Second conversions in the first place? I get why the writers started with Arbitrary Speed values, it was a smart move. Then they killed that, and created quite the Frankensteins' Monster with the conversion chart in the Core Book. The alternative chart hidden in these forums somewhere makes things more complicated - while making them a bit more sane - so I'm not so sure that is any help. I do feel bad for that SR writer, s/he tried hard to make the current stats work...
I would think that any vehicle with a Speed greater than 0 should be able to outrun nearly everything on foot. And I only say "nearly" because there might be some Awakened Critters that should be able to move at Vehicle Speeds.
I would think that in Tactical Movement, a non-zero Speed drone should be able to go just about wherever the Rigger wants, but if they move more than the Riggers Reflexes (or the drones Pilot if not Half/
Jumped In) they are counted as Running for the round.
That is completely off the cuff though. That one should be taken with a heavy dash of salt.