So I had this weird ass idea for a character yesterday which might've been inspired by a sugar rush induced by consuming two pints of ice cream at once. Basically, the concept is a pixie rigger who compensates for his craptastic physical stats by using an anthroform drone as a power armor to go on shadowruns, shoot people in the face, fight evil, etc. I had the character almost completely statted out before I realized that I couldn't find anything in the rules that indicates how natural vehicle armor interacts with worn armor for anthroform drones.


Assuming drones substitute Pilot/Sensor/Response for Agility and Reaction, the question becomes: does the encumbrance limit apply to total armor, or only to worn armor? Interpreted literally, it would be the former, but from my experience most GMs seem to rule it the second way. The problem with the second interpretation is that it allows anthroform drones to become essentially invincible. Combining concealed armor and worn armor along with the drone's ability to completely negate all attacks with a DV less than its armor rating, even a pansy ass Renraku Manservant has a good chance of bouncing AV rounds fired from an assault rifle. Once you get enough money to upgrade to an Otomo, you become an unstoppable beast of destruction.

I'm a shameless and unrepentant character twink, but this is too ridiculous even for me. It's no fun playing a game in God Mode. What do you guys think? How would you handle it?

If an anthroform drone wore armor, it wouldn't become hardened just because it's worn by a drone.  Only the drone's own armor would be hardened.  That's assuming drones can even wear armor...  I think they may be prohibited because the Armor modification states their maximum armor ratings.  You can't exceed those armor ratings by strapping a jacket onto your drone.  If you could do that, you could create a mega battle tank by slapping a modified suit of heavy security armor on a van or something.  An anthroform drone might be an exception, but it might not.  It's moot anyway, because you can't start with an anthroform in chargen, not even with Restricted Gear, and they cost way too much to be practical.  And let's not even get into the fact that there is no passenger compartment inside of any drone, and no canon modification that adds one.  The definition of drone is that you don't ride in it -- you'd have to custom create an anthroform vehicle that could carry a passenger, because nothing official from the books can do what you want.  God Mode is fine (i.e. possession mage) but it should be done within the existing rules in the book.  Creating new gear just to make yourself godly is just a tiny step above cheating.

The problem isn't that the drone's armor is hardened, the problem is that drones don't take stun damage, so any armor that they wear effectively duplicates the effects of hardened armor without actually being hardened, aka you don't take any damage if the modified DV doesn't exceed your armor rating. I would have no problem with saying that drones can't wear armor, except there's already a precedent that says that they can - see the entry for the Otomo. Keep in mind that the Otomo is not the only anthroform drone - anthroform is just a fancy way of saying a drone that walks on legs (SR4A 128), so any drone that's modded with Walker Mode and Mimic can pass for metahuman just as an Otomo can. Technically. Of course, it's kinda stupid to say that something like an Evo Orderly, which is basically a giant chair, can successfully disguise itself as a metahuman, but for stuff like the Renraku Manservant 3, which already has a humanoid form, it oughta be possible.

Re: riding inside a drone - a drone is just an autonomous or remote controlled vehicle. Your van is a drone if it's operating on a pilot program. After reading your post, I went back and checked on some of the rules on drones and passengers and they're all over the place and contradicting each other left and right. Some passages say drones can't carry passengers and then a few sentences later they reference drones that do carry passengers. Then there's the rigger cocoon, which is specifically designed to allow you to sit in it, and is a standard modification so you can put it in anything bigger than a minidrone. Bah. I'm really not sure what to do with this. Game balance wise it doesn't really matter because you can just make an AI and flat out inhabit a drone, which renders it a moot point, but it is an interesting conundrum. Like many things in SR4, it appears to be left up to individual GM discretion. Hmm...any more thoughts?

Well, the rigger cocoon doesn't say anything about creating a passenger space, I'd rule that there must already be a passenger space to install the cocoon into.  It's true that anything you can pilot remotely is a "drone," but what I meant is that the things actually listed in the "drone" category are by definition vehicles without passenger spaces.  The ones you can ride in are called "vehicles."  Obviously they're confusing categories because vehicles can be turned into drones with a Pilot program, and drones are themselves vehicles, but whatever.  The point is, drones like the otomo do not have space to ride inside of them, and there are no rules to give them that space. 

On creating a new anthroform vehicle, part of the problem is that the modification rules are so vague.  I wouldn't think that you could just add "walker" and "mimic" to any drone, and voila you have an android.  That just wouldn't make sense.  IMO, mimic could only be added to drones that were pre-built to look like a person.  Otherwise you could make a people drone out of a motorcycle for like 12k, which would just be bizarre.  There's a heavy element of GM discretion here.  And since you're GMing for yourself, I feel that you're obligated not to make iffy powergamey calls in favor of yourself.  If everyone did that, we'd have a very ugly time on our hands.

One of the components of a rigger cocoon is a seat, so yeah, if you install it, you can ride around on your drone. You might not be able to ride inside it, but it'll be able to carry you around.

The real issue was, and still is, whether or not natural armor counts for armor encumbrance, because if it doesn't, then certain characters become ridiculously overpowered mofos, one of which just happens to be an anthroform drone, regardless of whether you're riding on top of it or remote controlling it. I've always thought that it does, and the rules appear to support this, but other people seem to disagree.

Also, vehicles in the drone category not having passenger space is just a general guideline - there are drones where carrying someone is pretty much their primary function (Transys Steed, Crash Cart AutoDoc), so it's not universally true for all drones. Arsenal even says straight up that drones can carry people - Body 3s can carry children and small dwarves, Body 4s can carry anyone up to but not including trolls.


A motorcycle with Mimic just looks like a motorcycle with skin on it. However, if it had legs, it would still qualify as an anthroform. You would be able to drive it with Pilot Anthroform. There's no element of GM discretion here.

I still don't understand why you think you have to create a whole new drone in order to get one with a humanoid base  - the Renraku Manservant 3 already fulfills this capacity, and it has a low enough Availability to allow it to be picked up during chargen even without Restricted Gear.

Incidentally, I just realized pixies have a wingspan of a meter, so there's no way in hell they would be able to fit inside a human-sized drone. So much for the original concept, eh?

I don't think overpowered mofos are a big deal.  No matter who you are, there's a gun or a spell that can annihilate you if the GM wants to.  The only issue that such characters create is when they're playing with low-power characters, then either the mission has to be lethal to the weak people to challenge the strong one, or it has to be a non-challenge for the strong one.  As long as everyone's on the same page with powergaming though, the GM can scale the challenges to fit the team.


You're right that some drones are designed to carry people inside, and just about any drone could be used like a steed, riding around on its back (steel lynx = epic mount ).  You're also right that you could turn a motorcycle into a two legged walker and it would count as anthroform.  I assumed you were saying that just using Walker mod plus Mimic mod would create a realistic android or humaniform type drone.  I assumed that an implicit part of your plan was to walk around inside a realistic robot suit and thus avoid setting off alarms everywhere you went. 

I think the reason I assumed that is because it's not that great of an idea otherwise -- what value does a heavily armored walker suit have?  You can't wear it out and about in public without sending everyone running, and the authorities being called in places where the law reaches.  You could use it for no-stealth missions, but it's a lot of trouble to go through.  You would be safer hiding somewhere and just having the drone roll in by itself, that way if it dies you don't die with it.  It's the same as with possession mages -- sure they're powerful, but they're still easier to destroy than a mage who sends in spirits remotely, because you don't necessarily know where that guy is to kill him in the first place.

As for encumbrance, I think the most sensible way to do it is to allow humaniform drones to wear human armor, but apply normal armor and encumbrance rules based on their Body.  The penalty would apply to all rolls that would normally use agility and reaction, such as Gunnery, Pilot, and Initiative.  There aren't explicit rules one way or the other, but I don't think it makes sense to rule that an Otomo couldn't wear armor.  That ruling would also be a dreadful nerf to cyborgs, which are supposed to be the new big bad bugaboo.  But it also wouldn't make sense to say that something that moves like a human isn't encumbered like a human.  Their joints would still be restricted by huge thick layers of kevlar, and just because they're strong doesn't mean they could move around when packaged up like Marshmallow Man.

Yeah, that was part of the original plan, but it appears that there aren't any playable races that can actually fit inside a humanoid drone. Bummer. I think there are still advantages in riding around in a mecha suit though, the main one being that you can disable the wireless and control it completely through a fiberoptic link, making it basically unhackable. Plus it's cool.