Shadowrunnig a robot

>>48600102
1: what edition? There are five and many people still play 4E.
2: check the splatbooks for the AI rules. You can find them in the Shadowrun thread. Data Trails is the appropriate AI book for 5E, page 145 onwards.

>>48600136
5e
Thanks, will do

>>48600102
PS,buy pilot origins and spend money on a good bot, and prepare to die if someone sneezes on you.

>>48600102
Also, one good idea is to make an RCC your home, then be a WHOLE ARMY of drones instead of just one.

Much safer, and it's easier to armour a suitcase than it is a drone.

>>48600192
>>48600159
Not OP but interested, what other tips could you give?

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I've spent several hours trying to figure out how to do this best. It's more trouble than it's worth.

The AI rules inside Data Trails are utter shit. It does a lot of weird stuff mechanically that creates an end result of a functional but stupidly complex character.

For example, to the best of my interpretation, here's what you need to know:

Pilot Origins (3) AI (Type): What this means is your AI started as a pilot program for your chosen vehicle type. In this case, we'll use Walker.

So you can 'jump into' a walker in the same way a rigger can. This becomes your body. When you want to skill check, say, firing a gun? Well, this gets more complex, because AIs can learn advanced programs and commit them to themselves. All drone gun autosofts are on a per-gun basis. So you'd want to use an Ares alpha? You'd need an ares alpha autosoft loaded onto your AI itself, AS WELL AS THE DRONE PLATFORM. The end result would be as follows:

Depth Stat + Advanced Program Autosoft + Platform Loaded Autosoft. In a perfect world, this is 18 dice. Maybe you also add pilot origins, since it's basically your RCC? Maybe Hotsim bonuses too? I was never clear on this.

But I don't even know if that's right. Not to mention dodging is on a per-platform basis (Evasion Autosoft). And other skill checks become this weird amalgamation of either using the physical stats of the drone (Which, by the way, is just the drone's BOD score. Yes. A drone has 3 or 4 STR/AGI.)

This is not even getting into the absolutely ridiculous matrix rules they have created for AIs. You have to pay a huge amount to maintain where your "home node" is, and if that is your drone, and your drone gets fucked? Well. Then you better find a home quick, because you will disintegrate on the open matrix. If you make it your comlink, and you want to get a nice way? Prepare to pay 5k-10k PER MONTH.

Eventually I decided to go a different direction and abandon AI entirely. Unless you want to houserule from scratch, forget it.

>>48600102
Robot bodies suck, they're pretty frail unless you want to pay out the ass, and most of them canonically look like shit.

That being said, in one of my groups we had someone just make a normal runner and then fluffed it that they were actually a robot, no stats or anything like that. Made for good RPing, but didn't really add to combat at all.

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>>48603192

Oh, I forgot how I think damage is taken:

A drone can't take stun damage, but if it takes physical, you have to resist "bio feedback", and I say "bio feedback" because it's damage to you, but it's not biological. An AI only has one condition track.

>>48600192

Might have the best idea. Live on an RCC. Have that RCC in an armored briefcase or leave it in the runner's truck. Command an army of drones and jump into one of them. (NeoNet Juggernaut was going to be my robot of choice)

>>48603220

This was my end result as well. The idea I had was an AI loaded onto a synthetic brain and put into a basically 100% cyberware body. Insanely expensive, but also very powerful. Problem is at that point is you have absolutely zero social skills due to the essence cost. So I played around with the idea of not affecting essence and seeing how powerful it would be.

The character that came out of this had some decent shooting and face dice, but nowhere near a minmaxed adept. I'm stuck as the GM for my group though, so I don't get to play my cool concepts.

Playing as a AI in a robot can be difficult, the rules for Ai characters are fairly lacking and underpowered the matrix stuff is fairly shite and drones generally are easy to kill.

But there is a solution
I ran the numbers a while ago and if my memory serves me correctly it is possible at character creation. Your GM may ban it as a character though.

Firstly take pilot origins 3; this gives you a control rig rating 3 and allows you to load autosofts, and have a depth of 6.
Then buy a custom Neonet jugganought with increased armour and realistic features 3 (as a troll), throw out some of the weapon mounts and put a bigger one in there, possibly upgrade the agility on the arms. Then buy full armour for your now Neonet Troll (c) and volia. run maybe rootkit and eguchi smile, and what ever autosofts you can fit.

You are now a "troll" who has armour ~30, 15 of which is hardened, has a ground speed faster the usain bolt (with handeling to support it) an agility and strenght score to match a street sam and high mental stats to boot. Now you also weigh an arguably high ammount (depends on what shodowrun drones are made of really) ,and your medic may have some questions if you get shot but play your cards right, have good enough social/roleplaying (character and player) skills and you might just make the rest of your team redundant

>>48603586

I like it, but I'm not sure how mixing hardened/normal armor works. In fact, stacking armor is one of those unknown things since it states that drones can wear armor, but doesn't say what to do with it, rule wise. Stacking makes the most sense, but it can get a little insane. Look at your troll: 30 armor?

Additionally, at 6 Bod, the Juggernaut has 6 STR and 6 AGI. Which are solid in human scope, but when you consider it as a troll? Ehhh.. (This is one of the other problems I have with drones/mechs in SR. I feel like the body stats should be Drone Bod*2, but that would cause all sorts of problems.)

>you might just make the rest of your team redundant

This is actually a huge issue with AI as well. They seem to go from Uselessly Broken to Brokenly Overpowered depending on what rulings you decide to take.

Eh, you could hand-wave it away as "Meat-Suit with a Cyber-brain."

In fact, had an entire group like that once, it basically played out that we (The Players) were playing Ourselves (The AI running several priority one synapse emulation threads / Network of independent AI's ) playing whatever group of clone/cyborg bodies (The Characters) were optimal for the operation in question.

Our DM okay'd it because he sometimes has a difficult time grasping scenario's that aren't TPK's, and it was easier to layer another level of character interaction, events, and themes than it was to dumb down what he considered to be "An acceptable level of security for the Non-retarded in a world of corporate interest and magical espionage."

>>48603838
You can upgrade the strength and agility rating of the drone arms and legs as per cybernetics up to (I believe) twice the natural body rating, it means more money of course but you can pump the str and Agi to 12 each; also it may be that the Agility rating of antho drones is Pilot rating but I cant remeber where i saw that.

Ive mostly found Ai to be terrible, only with pilot rating can they be somewhat useful (or OP in this case), and like technomancer they are a less optimal decker