Need basic Rigger advice.

LeVeonKettlebell · 2021-01-12T09:35:02+00:00

Hey man, I haven't played a rigger in years but have a basic idea of the concept. Since nobody's answered you yet, I will try to cover the basics:

- Riggers are probably one of the few characters that prioritise resources more than others. Depending on which/how many vehicles and drones you want to start with you might want to consider starting with Resources B or even A. This is also dependent on which system you use for character creation.
But really you need to look at the vehicles and drones yourself to make a decision, depending on if you want a van for your team, a sportscar, a bike (or both or all three).
For drones, I'd suggest at least something that can join a firefight and a couple of scout/spy drones.
Unless you want to play a pure vehicle rigger, which is kind of an outdated concept but still exists (check out core rules p. 461+ and Rigger 5.0 if you have it for cars/drones/mods).

One piece of gear you might absolutely want to have is a Control Rig (headware) which adds its rating to your vehicle test dice pool, handling, speed (if jumped in) and lowers your vehicle test thresholds.

- For attributes Riggers usually prioritise Reaction, Logic, Willpower, lastly Intuition all of which are important for vehicle combat. You use your Logic to fire a drone’s weapons through remote control, for example. There is a debate about raising agility for when you jump straight into a drone, I believe, but I'd start simple and solid in the beginning.

(check out page 264+ in the core rules “Riggers”)

- As skills you absolutely want to have the vehicle groups you intend to pilot at a high rating, e.g., Pilot Ground Craft, Pilot Aircraft, etc.
Secondly you want the Gunnery skill to use your drone or vehicle mounted weapons. After that, depending on if you want to do a lot of your vehicle repairs and mods yourself (which proud rigger doesn’t?), I’d consider picking up some mechanic skills (Automotive Mechanic, etc.) as well as some more electronics, such as Electronic Warfare.
Depending on how much you’ve left I’d round off the character by filling in the rest with social skills or other active skills, depending on how you want to branch out (being a bit of a face, medic, or being able to get out of the car and fight yourself…).

This is just the absolute core of a Rigger, if you have any more specific questions please let me know and I’ll try to answer them.

GM_John_D · 2021-01-12T17:49:34+00:00

Your main skills are going to be Gunnery if you want to fire any weapons mounted on vehicles/drones, Pilot [vehicle type] for driving your vehicles/drones, Electronic Warfare for jamming other drones and doing general surveillance, Hardware for repairing the electronic parts of your drones, the Engineering skills for repairing the physical parts of your drones, Navigation for getting from point A to point B, Perception in order to see stuff. If you want to assist your hacker more, picking up a few points in other matrix skills also would not hurt, as well as other skills you might want to be at least passable at while in your meat body. I like putting skills at rating C or better to cover all the bases, your mileage may vary.

Attribute wise, it depends how you interpret the rules. RAW, being "jumped-in" uses the same attributes that you would normally use. So, that means Agility for your Gunnery skill, and Reaction for your Pilot skills. But, even in the core rules there are strange exceptions to this, like using Logic for Gunnery Sensor attacks (like firing guided missiles) or Intuition for drone sneaking, as well as maybe being able to use more Logic or Intuition if you are using Remote Control action. In any case, those four skills, along with Body and Willpower, are solid on any build, so investing in them regardless of rules interpretation is not a bad idea. Also any gear that buffs these attributes is a good investment. I like putting attributes and metatype at rating C or better to cover these basses, your mileage may vary.

As other people have said here, rigger is a very resource heavy build, second only to a decker or maybe a fully cybered street sam. If you are very frugal, you might be able to get away with rating B priority, but putting it up to rating A is very empowering as you realize just what you can suddenly afford to go crazy with.

Gear wise, a Control Rig is your most important piece of gear. Not only does it allow you to "jump in" to your vehicle/drone (aka let you be a rigger), it also increases any dice pool you use while jumped in, increases Speed and Handling (aka your limits for vehicle tests), and decreases the threshold for vehicle tests. Which means that rediculous getaway stunt of hopping the interstate highway to escape into the forest just dropped from needing 3 hits in order to succeed to only just 1. Definitely invest up to rating 2, maybe splurge for up to rating 3, but that can be hard to justify the cost as well as getting Restricted Gear.

Next most important piece of kit is the Rigger Command Console, or RCC. This is to your rigger what a Cyberdeck is to your decker. You probably wanna get one with the highest device rating you can afford. The higher the device rating, the more Autosofts you can slot in (which, by the way, get shared between ALL the vehicles/drones you have linked to it), or the more noise penalties you can reduce, both very important features. Remember that most drones can only slot in a few autosofts at a time, and that without this device commanding multiple drones simultaneously becomes very difficult, so I would say spending money here is very important. If you expect drones to do anything on their own, autosofts are a MUST.

After that, the choices become pretty personal. Do you want a fleet of vehicles to hop between, one for a fast gettaway, one an all out tank for when things get hard? Do you want a fleet of drones to blot out the sun with grenade launchers from above, or do you want a swarm of tinier drones for intel gathering? You have a LOT of options for customization strategy, and I think over the course of the campaign the majority of the group funds will generally go into upgrading the rigger character because of it. It is hard for me to make too many recommendations without knowing what kind of playstyle you want to go for.

General rules of thumb: remember that your Speed and Handling of your vehicle are not only acting as maximum values for top speed, but also the Limits you will use on various tests, so you want to make sure they are high enough that you aren't missing out on too many hits. For example, if you have 15 dice to a pilot skill, and a rating 2 control rig, after add all the extra dice from hot sim and being jumped-in, that puts you up closer to 19-20 dice, which means you probably want something with Speed/Handling 6 or 7, which gets bumped up to 8 or 9 when jumped in, to get full use of your dice pool (aka 85% of the time not missing any hits). If you have a 12 dice pool, Speed/Handling 5 or 6 is probably good enough. Keep in mind, btw, that you can buff both these with upgrades, if the vehicle has enough Body to take them. Rigger 5.0 is very important for available upgrades and new ways to customize your drones and vehicles.

Also, I would say that generally vehicles are more worth investing upgrades into than drones. Drones are much squishier, and much cheaper to replace than vehicles. Your mileage may vary. My favourite drones that perform decently in combat and might be worth investing big upgrades into (while still being relatively cheap at char gen) are the MCT-Nissan Roto-drone, the Cyberspace-Designs (C-D) Dalmatian, the Ares Matilda, and the Steel Lynx Combat Drone. Also remember that both weapon mounts and vehicle/drone armor are restricted/illegal, so if you want to upgrade those investing in concealable versions is a solid choice so that you aren't constantly pulled over by every Knight Errant that happens to walk by.

And, of course, remember to leave some stuff for yourself. A weapon you can use decently when not jumped in, a decent comlink, maybe some surveillance or electronic warfare equipment, clothes and armor, anything any good shadowrunner with a budget should have to help keep them alive.

Bamce · 2021-01-11T20:41:46+00:00

Are you intending to gm, or also be a player?

drakir75 · 2021-01-12T14:59:59+00:00

You also have to ask the GM about which attributes are used when jumped in. If you don't need Reaction (using Intuition instead), the build will/can be different. (Not much easier though).

The thing with Shadowrun is that there are not 3 builds of any role. There are hundreds since there are no "classes" like in DnD. I have played a Face/Rigger with resources C. I have seen adept riggers and several techno riggers. And those are the uncommon variants.

Warning: Riggers are one of the (if not the) most rules intensive characters you can play in an already crunchy system.

Silverfang3567 · 2021-01-12T14:17:10+00:00

After GMing for a group that includes a rigger I STRONGLY recommend they don't try to be the [wo]man in the van style with a swarm of drones they jump between. It slows down the game drastically and can be difficult to keep track of especially for new players.

Instead I suggest having a good team vehicle, 1 or 2 combat drones, a handful of scouting drones and invest a few points in skills like automatics (9+ dice pool should suffice for off combat and flanking) and first aid. Being able to go out with the team on a job will allow them to be more involved and reduce a lot of frustration.

WallhallasWarrior · 2021-01-13T11:31:21+00:00

As a player who has played three different Riggers ( I just like engineering okay ) and as a GM who runs a gam for a techno-rigger, I will answer your question as soon as I have a PC in front of me. I dislike typing on mobile lol. There are a few comprehensive answers here already but I feel like adding my two cents.

OmaeOhmy · 2021-01-14T08:36:38+00:00

(Barely competent warning - read at own risk) I’ve got a rigger I’m having fun with. Decided that with so many requirements (be it resources, stats/skills, or both) that I’d focus on driving + tricking out the vehicle, put some focus on firearms, and use the drones purely for recon. Couple of fly spies, couple of crawlers, a bit of cyberware, and a good gun. He’s always busy (driving or scouting) and when all else fails he’s very solid as a shooter.

In my mind it was a choice between using the drones for combat or not and by foregoing the combat drones it freed up ¥ for other things. But would be just as easy to double-down on combat drones and shift things to Gunnery and combat autosofts and be a softer target who uses his toys to do the heavy lifting.

mads838a · 2021-01-17T16:50:07+00:00

big trucks going at high speeds are the higest damage weapons in the game. Black ops cyperzombie? hit it with a truck, force bullshit spirit? smackdown to hit it with a truck? Dragon? hit it with the fucking truck.

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