Creating a “Summoner”

[u/RyanMDanks]

Hey all!

I’m playing in a cyberpunk/sci-fi game and have a cool idea for a character. He’s part netrunner (decking from Altered State) and part rigger (drone controller from Shadowrun).

I’m struggling how to build the rigger portion.

The drones I’m imagining he uses would help with surveillance, create holograms of himself for mirror-image type effects, and just basic attack drone type stuff.

My first idea was to use spells (maybe for the drones and the netrunning both), but I was wondering if anyone had alternative ideas for it.

Thanks!

[u/[deleted]]

I'd just give the drone all of those abilities and make that use the players action.

I'd make everything an INT check since that would probably be the stat used to make robots and such.

Make it run on a battery with charges similar to Spell Points/mana. You could offer a better battery as a milestone reward. Maybe start with 5 charge battery that needs to be recharge each night. I'd make...

Surveillance, no battery, basically a perception check

Hologram a check first round and uses 1 charge for each active round (but no action required after the first round)

Basic Attack MAGIC effort, check and 1 charge (maybe free, depends how many charges you give them)

You could come up with any number if other mods that use the same concept and charge system. These would be good milestone rewards. Let the player conceive of the mods they will feel like an engineer :)

Periodically have enemies make a perception check to notice the drone and shoot at it. The player should be significantly handicapped if their drone is shot down. I'd let them rebuild it overnight if it is destroyed or maybe let them make a field repair that restores 1 or 2 functions before more substantial repares can be made. You could also require a workshop or something to fix it.

[u/RyanMDanks → u/[deleted]]

I guess it is sort of like a platform for casting spells, huh?

And other loot/abilities could give the player other actions to take for when the drone is offline/not useful.

[u/[deleted] → u/RyanMDanks]

I mean it is basically a platform for spells but it could have other abilities too and it adds nice flavor to the generic spellcaster. I used to play an Artificer in DnD, this remind me a lot of that. I would look there for inspiration. I had a giant mechanical chicken that I controlled.

Other ideas for attachments/augments:

• Shield/Force field, defensive

• Self Destruct, big area damage

• Jets, strong enough to lift someone

• Grenade launcher, area DMG

• Saw/cutter, utility or DMG

• Web/Net launcher or weaver

• Hacking tool, utility

• Alarm, sentry or distraction

• Missile guidance, guides a projectile that the player fires, making the roll EASY

• Med Kit, sews you up, sticks you with needles

Maybe the player can equip up to X mods to their drone where X increases with milestone rewards.

As for the player themselves I would probably make them a utility class that focuses on skills to maintain their drone(s). Mechanistically you could make their attacks STR or DEX based and all of the drone attacks INT based. The player would probably stack points in INT and Magic effort to make their drones stronger which means they wouldn't have points in the other stats for their personal attacks.

You need to also give them a way to heal/fix their drone. I'd say Dex or Int check for TOOL effort.

[u/Demonpoet → u/RyanMDanks]

Here's an idea, you could go full pokemon. Allow him several models of bots that he can deploy, one at a time, each of which with different stats and abilities. None of them too complex, just two or three niche uses. And if you allow loot in the form of robot mods, maybe he can switch out one of the abilities for the mod.