[Ultra Violet]

Why is it, that drones in SR are so superior?

If you could rig your own body it would be better! But why?

- You get up to 5 IP and your Initiative up to (Response + INT +8 )
- Response is a Matrix attribute that can be upgraded or bought up to 10, and there are some additional upgrades (i.e. Reality Filter or AI Home Node)
- You get +2 to any test, if you have a Rigger Control and +4 if you running in hot sim VR
- VR lowers the threshold of tests by 1
- You are automatically ambidextrous, no matter how many limbs/arms you have
- You can perform every Combat Skill with Gunnery, from Unarmed to Laser Weapons (only one single skill is needed) or you use your own skill (like suggested in Cyborg rules) but with the "Jumped in" Attribute (i.e. Response)
- Gearhead, 5 BP would grand your drone body +1 to Handling and additionally +2 for difficult maneuvers and stunts
a.s.o.

Yes of course there are drawbacks but not as many as you think...
- doubled Damage if your drone body gets damage your rigger mind gets another hit on there own
- Sensory and there thresholds...

That is only one tiny example, the drone arsenal can be anything from a mirco drone to a tank or from a insect swarm to a paracritter.
Where is the balancing in here?
Don't let me even start at costs to get a super drone vs. costs to get a street samurai up to speed...

Has anybody a good balancing idea for that?


Yours faithfully,
UV

[Chaemera]

I don't have good answers to all of it, but some things to keep in mind...

- You get up to 5 IP and your Initiative up to (Response + INT +8 )

One of those IP is eaten by "controlling the vehicle" (drones being a sub-set of vehicles), pg 168 & 169 SR4A.

- VR lowers the threshold of tests by 1

where's that rule coming from? I'm not finding it.

- You can perform every Combat Skill with Gunnery, from Unarmed to Laser Weapons (only one single skill is needed) or you use your own skill (like suggested in Cyborg rules) but with the "Jumped in" Attribute (i.e. Response)

Actually, it's Gunnery + Sensor (SR4A, pg 247), not as easy to cheese out as Response is.

You did leave out one big cheese of drones: no recoil unless GM imposed.

As for countering drones:
{u]Jammers[/u]- A good facility's going to have them, Probably rating 5+ in many cases. These don't just affect your drone's Signal, they also affect its Sensors (Drone Sensors are Signal rating 4, I'm sure there are ways to raise that, but I haven't seen them).
Matrix Security- If you don't slave the drone (stupid call, I know), they can hack in as normal, and delete your account or shut the drone down at their leisure. If you did slave the drone, then when they attempt to access the drone, the drone forwards them to the node your persona is running on (Unwired, pg 55). Now, if you're not a technomancer (and if the spider's a 'mancer, even if you are), they can hack into your home-node. If they're stealthy about it, they can be inside and get your GPS data, send in a HRT team and then crash your commlink. Now you and your drone are hosed. Before you say "hidden node", I've found that that just slows them down, and not by much if they see a drone.
AV Rounds- -6 to your drone's armor makes your day pretty lousy. Smart armor works a maximum of 10 times (unless the drone comes with higher smart armor, the limit is 10, Arsenal, 132-133) before you've lost your 20,000 nuyen investment.
magnets- Really big ones.

For every hack, there is a counter-hack. Are drones balanced? No. Should they be? Not in my opinion, that's the fun of Shadowrun, you can't just go bullet-to-bullet or bullet-to-spell. If you run into a beast (and it might be a sammy with just the right combo of stuff to shut your team down as a drone or mage), you need to get smart, not get bigger guns. Balanced games simply turn into a race to higher modifiers (look at DnD4e), unbalanced games are a race to higher IQs. Why worry that you have such high armor when I can force a confrontation at a social event where armor is not allowed? Or a dark alley where I've had time to rig a vat of acid overhead?

[Rockopolis]

Hmm...It might be from 3e, but wasn't there a set of powered diving armor?  And can you rig yourself if you have skillwires/move by wire system?  And what is a drone compared to the hand that wields it?  Hah, now I want to play Conan the Rigger.

[raggedhalo]

There is no way in RAW to rig yourself.

[Kot]

- doubled Damage if your drone body gets damage your rigger mind gets another hit on there own

Wasn't that 1/2 of the damage in Stun to resist?

[Ultra Violet]

The self-rigging was a image to picture how many things a rigged drone gets, without pimping the drone. A metaphor to show it, nothing more.
If you have a problem with that we can change it to a dog or a crawler drone. The benefits will last.

@Chaemera
I know that you have to use one of the 5 Complex Actions, but you have 4 left without any drug, cyberware or magic boost, and if it is imported you could risk the crash test, and get your fifth action anyway and a sixth if you use Edge for it. I wanted to show that a mundane 1 IP being become a highly boosted Initiative Monster only through the fact it is rigged.
Okay the -1 in VR is not right I had it in my mind from the other discussion (see here), but there are enough benefits anyway.
The Gunnery is another thing, if you use the usual rule it is like you said (Gunnery + Sensor) or if you prefer the Cyborg anthroform (Skill + Sensor) but since YOU are no drone you have no Sensor rating, so that is a little gap in my example, if we use bio-drones as other way you would use (your Skill -1) + the drones Attribute. How I came up with Response, I looked at the other Agility tasks, like Infiltration, and see there "Response" is used, but you are right.
The AU on p. 159 says: "Use an appropriate Vehicle Skill (+ drone's Handling modifier) when an Agility attribute is required."
Now what should we use for an attack, (Gunnery + Sensor) or (Skill + Sensor; that we don't know) or [(Skill -1) + your (the drones) AGI rating] or (Skill + Vehicle Skill + Handling)?
In all cases the +4 for hot sim VR and Rigger Control is counting, too. And there are more little boni right up that alley...

My point is it is difficult to imagine how that rigging modifiers come into being when your base is a normal/unaugmented being or thing, like your body or a dog or kids toy.
I hope you get my point of view, right?!

Please help me understand why drones have to have be so damn superior. And please give me some additional reasons why the rigger shouldn't rig the Street Sam for the benefit of the Runner Team? Or why they shouldn't use drone clones (like they do in the "Surrogates" Movie)?

@Kot
It is not Damage x2, it is one time damage of this kind and at the same time damage of that kind, two different sorts of damage, but anyway a second possibility to cop it.

[raggedhalo]

Edge doesn't let you take a 6th IP.  Hell, Edge won't even give you the 5th IP you get from the simsense booster/simsense accelerator combo.

[Charybdis]

Edge doesn't let you take a 6th IP.  Hell, Edge won't even give you the 5th IP you get from the simsense booster/simsense accelerator combo.

I thought the hard SR4A ruling specified: No character can get more than 4 IP.

Is there a rule I've missed somewhere that trumps this?

[Ultra Violet]

@raggedhalo and Charybdis
Could you please give me the passage where it says: NO. Because I can't find it in both of my books (SR4 and SR4A).

Spending Edge
[...]
• You may gain 1 extra Initiative Pass for that Combat Turn only (see Initiative and Edge, p. 145).

Initiative and Edge
[...]
• Edge can be spent to get an extra Initiative Pass action. A character who only acts once a turn could, for example, spend 1 point of Edge to act during a second Initiative Pass as well. The character must declare this at the beginning of the Initiative Pass—it is not possible to buy an action in the middle of a pass. A character may only purchase 1 extra action this way in each Combat Turn.

This thread isn't about my the points I given it is about the rules of drones and rigging vs. the rules of a flesh and blood and chrome or magic character. And the explaining or justifying, why it is like it is and why it's good that way.
Chaemera done a first good step, but I would like to go deeper.

One of the reasons was a discussion with one of my players, he got the idea of a melee combat drone with as many arms he could install, and since the done is not anthroform, he can use Gunnery + Sensor for every weapon he will install or put the drone its hands. No, wrong hand modifier, and if you play with the cyberlimb modifications for mechanic arms, that drone would get +1 to the combat test for each arm or limb it has (see Optimized Cyberlimbs, AU, p. 44-45). Completed with the Arsenal rules (see Two Weapon Melee Combat, p. 163) and you have the perfect security or assassin drone for close combat. Imagine 20 Arms with stun-staffs or vibro-blades or mono-blades or mono-wipes, all heading your way... and a rigger behind it with 5 IP and +24 (or more) extra dices for every weapon arm it has.

[Charybdis]

@raggedhalo and Charybdis
Could you please give me the passage where it says: NO. Because I can't find it in both of my books (SR4 and SR4A).

Hmm, Interesting. I had the number wrong. Maximum Number is 5.

Some implants and magic may give a character extra actions to take in each Combat Turn. These are noted as extra Initiative Passes on the character’s record sheet. The maximum number of Initiative Passes a character can have is 5, but most character types can only ever achieve 4.

It might be worth investing in that Quickened metamagic for Increased reflexes after all .... Hmmmm 

[Ultra Violet]

Some implants and magic may give a character extra actions to take in each Combat Turn. These are noted as extra Initiative Passes on the character’s record sheet. The maximum number of Initiative Passes a character can have is 5, but most character types can only ever achieve 4.

Edge isn't one of them, it is another factor that isn't bound by this rule.
But please, let us return to the topic.

[CanRay]

You don't have to pay out death benefits to the family of drones that are all shot up.

...

Oh, wait, you don't have to do that for security guards either any more.  Never mind.   

[Chaemera]

UV, I definitely see your point and tend to agree that riggers can produce an enormous impact through their drones. However, you don't address the myriad ways I presented to counter drones via hackers and jamming.

Since these can be used to thoroughly shut the door on the massive bonuses of well-rigged drones, I would have to argue that we have there a large part of our answer.

Shadowrun and other table-tops shouldn't have their character's rated in one-to-one death matches. It should be about whether each character in the group has a role to fill a good chunk of the time.

I'd take that street sam over the rigger with combat drones if the team were headed into, say, a secure facility featuring layered matrix defenses (signal absorbant walls, area and directional jammers) where a number of the guards are carrying EMP grenades or HERF guns. Just like I'd take the drone over a street sam if I were fighting a cabal of blood mages. There's something nice about ignoring damage from electricity (and a faraday cage makes me laugh at their secondary effects, too, even if I temporarily lose comms), not to mention calling for 5+ hits for them to affect the man.

And I'll take a tricked out possession mage against street sams over either the street sam or the drone. It's all about choices, and drones are one of many, with numerous counters previously mentioned and more that I probably don't even know about.

[Morg]

If you add cyberware to make meat better and the meat limits the ware (i.e. augmented maximum) and the lower meat to metal ratio gets the greater the augmented maximum (see cyberzombies) if you have no meat and all metal then a drone should out strip meat the meat body I mean i would never try to out run a car on foot

[Ultra Violet]

A little additional note to skill tests and Response part:

MECHANICAL ARMS AND LEGS
[...]
If any skill tests with the limb are required, roll Pilot + autosoft +/– Handling (if the drone is operating on its own) or Response + skill +/– Handling (for jumped-in riggers).

@Chaemera
Have you an idea, how I could manage the extremes? What I'm trying to tell is you have the superior drone on play or you forbidding or jamming or destroy it, there is no middle way (only ON or OFF).
The main thing I'm missing here is a sentence like: A "Jumped in" rigger in a drone body follow the basic rules for man-to-man combat. Or something that says, that things like off-hand-use follows the riggers nature, in other words the rigger suffers the same modifier as his meat body would.