We got any Shadowrunners here? I'm very new to the game, and I'm trying to build a drone rigger who'll be taking on hacking responsibilities.

I've piled points into Reactions, Intuition, and Logic; and raised my Pilot Ground Craft skill to 7 points, using the Aptitude quality, and also put points into Pilot (Aircraft and Anthroform), Aeronautics and Automotive Mech, Perception, Armourer, Gunnery, and the Cracking and Electronics sets.

I'll deal with knowledge skills, etc. later, so now I'm onto choosing equipment, and I suddenly feel right out of my depth. I've been looking all over internet forums for advice, but much of it may as well be in another language. I've got a commlink and OS sorted out, and I'm picking up the Ares Roadmaster (which will have personal armour and anti-theft system, and an enhanced rigger cocoon built in, with a couple of White Knight LMGs on the weapon mounts), and a workshop.

In terms of drones, I'm looking at a Shiawase Kanmushi; a couple of Dragonflies; a GMC Sandal (which I want to kit out as a portable water cannon, although I'm not sure if it's big enough for that); a Knight Errant, on which I'll put an oil-slck sprayer, and maybe a pain inducer; a Doberman with Ares Desert Fox sniper rifle on; a Crashcart AutoDoc; and a Steel Lynx, kitted with Enfield AS-7 shotgun. I'm also considering the Aztechnology Armadillo, but it's pretty expensive, and I'm wondering how useful it is and what its primary uses are.

Other than that, I have autosofts (do I just have to buy them once, or do I have to buy copies for each drone/vehicle?), a simrig, sim module, control rig, cerebral booster, armour jacket, datajack, AR gloves, and ammo.

Does this all look like good equipment? Is there anything I need that I'm missing? Should I get that Armadillo, or is the money best spent elsewhere? Do I have all the drone programmes I need? What cool modifications should I look in to? I have the Restricted Gear quality - any suggestions for something awesome to get with that? What gear should a hacker have?

Please heeeelp!

I'm afraid my knowledge of shadowrun stopped at 3rd ed, but I'd imagine there's a decent overlap. Are you going to be both decking and rigging? as classically the two are kept separate, riggers handling the drone warfare side and deckers doing the matrix intrusion.

edit also http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthre ... g-a-Rigger seems to have some good advice.

Basically, I played a drone rigger for my first and, so far, only game about five years ago. There's been talk of me possibly GMing a game for a couple of friends. They both want to be pretty straight forward shooty gun-users, which I'm guessing is going to make them pretty limited, so I'm trying to rebuild the rigger with some hacking capabilities to use as a sort of extra utility member of the group who'll basically stay in the van and occasionally pop up, like John Tracy on Thunderbird 5, to do the stuff that the other two can't.

The problems I'm having are: firstly, that I'm not entirely sure I kitted my rigger out with everything that he really needed according to the rules last time; and secondly, that I'm struggling to figure out what the essential hacking gear would be.

Reading this makes me want to try out playing Shadowrun.

I had a lot of fun playing it. As I've said, I've only played the rigger, but the range of drones lets you fulfill a number of different roles - spy, pursuant, combatant... I was even allowed to rig one of my drones up as a mobile water cannon, although I'm not sure that it was entirely within the rules. I remember one classic moment when one of my group strapped a bomb to his motorbike and sent it careering into a room full of enemies. Probably a needlessly expensive and frivolous way to deploy a bomb, but, you know, motorbike bomb!

You'd be suprised as well, the street samurai sorts can be decent if not stellar with skills if they have a skillwire system (which given starting nuyen is normally a better investment in terms of costs and essence than wired reflexes, or even move-by-wire) a lot depends on the GM of course but I tend to find a bit more versatility beats out raw firepower, since you can almost always find force multipliers for fighting.