Rigger : Conseils

The Rigger's Guide to Good Gaming

"They don't do anything but drive."
"They feel left out."
"They're too powerful."

Well, I'm here with the Rigger's Guide to Good Gaming (RGGG). Within this article, you will find some of the ways to play a rigger, and make it a fulfilling roleplaying character (while still being powerful).

First: As Dirty Harry once said "A man's got to know his limitations." Well, the same goes for a rigger. The trick to being a good rigger, is finding ways around those limitations. Your Nightsky won't traverse the broken ground off the highway? Use a drone. Your GMC 4201 won't fit down in the sewers? Use a drone. You can't get the Beachcraft into the building? (You see where I'm going with this?) As a rigger, you have the ability to control multiple bodies. Use this ability to your advantage. And remember, your drones are an extension of your body, but they're not your body. They can be (within reason) more easily replaced than flesh. I'm not saying that you should use them as shields for the rest of your group, but they are vehicles, and therefore use vehicle rules for damage. Oh, and outfit them with speakers. So you can talk with the low-tech members of the group, as well as scare the bejebers out of the baddies your Snooper just snuck up on.

Second: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't spend all your money buying that surplus Mobmaster and torquing it to the limit. Buy two or three vehicles, suitable for different terrains. Know when to use them, or when to use more than one of them. A good rigger with several vehicles and drones can trail someone for miles of city street without the target catching on.

Third: You don't have to have every skill in the book. Sure it helps, but with the rigging pool, and the vehicle's autopilot, you can make do with defaulting off of another skill. Also remember that vehicle (B/R) skills default off of the appropriate driving skill at +4 (bad, but not that bad), and weapons skills default off (B/R) skills at +2. And this is just another good reason that have that mechanic contact. Unless you plan on spending 200,000Y on a Vehicle Facility (which can't be moved) for when your vehicles take Serious or Deadly damage. Think about it.

Fourth: Take skills which make sense for the character. If you're specializing in ground vehicles, get skills to do with them. Get Street Etiquette, Lone Star Etiquette, Trucker Etiquette. These are the people you'd be most likely to deal with, and you should know how they'd react, how to get them to help you out of the jam, or how to get information from them. Take negotiation. Take engineering. You never know, and it makes you a bit more useful in those unique circumstances that come up in a shadowrunner's life. (Bring that thing over here by the sensor. Yep it looks kinda like the targeting system on an airborne drone. Hmmm, what's it doing attached to that guy's arm?)

Fifth: Contacts. A good rigger should max out on Nuyen, so spare the couple of K and get good contacts. I already mentioned the mechanic. And who's going to get you the ammo for the vehicular weaponry? A fixer could, but for a substantial markup. Go with an armorer or a dealer, it may be slower, but it'll be cheaper, and if you've got a good realtionship, you might get the exotic stuff too.

Sixth: Don't live in the car/boat/plane. Yeah it's tempting to be behind the vehicle armor 24/7. Don't do it. You kill opertunities to roleplay. Invest the Nuyen in a control deck. You can tell your autopilots to contact you if something's happening, and the deck will buzz you. You can jack in and control the vehicle from within the bar, just as easily as you can from within the vehicle itself. And that way you get to deal with people. Granted that can be good or bad, but you won't get either from within the vehicle.

Seventh: Use the right weapon for the right target. A bunch of squatters charging your vehicle doesn't warrant the use of the Vengance with the Explosive rounds. Be ready with some Gel-rounds in a SMG or even LMG. Hell, just carry a Defiance T-250 that you can stick out the window. Vehicle weaponry is meant for vehicles, reinforced walls, bugs, and those nasty cyberzombies. Not for normal shadowrunners, guards, gangs, or citizens.