On Riggers being Hackers: I understand why people would think that was a good idea, but it's pretty obviously not a good idea. Firstly, thematically there is really very little overlap. Hackers are, well,
Hackers, while Riggers are Mech Pilots. Consider all the pieces of fiction that have hackers, and all the pieces of fiction that have mech pilots. Now confine yourself to just the pieces of fiction that have
both hackers
and mech pilots. How many of them have all the mech pilots also be hackers or all the hackers also be mech pilots? Can you name
one piece of fiction where the overlap is total
even in one direction? Because
I can name like twenty five series that have non-pilot hackers and non-hacker pilots.
Hackers.
Riggers.
But beyond that, Riggers are already a complete breakfast and
do not need to be Hackers. Every character needs to contribute to the legwork, the stealth missions, and the action sequences. Does anyone seriously doubt that Riggers are able to pull their weight in those areas? Every infiltration begins with the Rigger inserting the team, and every escape ends with the Rigger driving away. Even if no one else has anything to do during a stealth mission, the Rigger still does. As long as physical scouting could be useful (and when could it not be?), camera drones are going to be awesome. Riggers also require hands-on technical skills to make and maintain their murder droids, which are useful both during legwork and on missions. And finally, Riggers have fleets of military murder robots, meaning that the question is not whether they can contribute to action sequences, but whether the
entire rest of the team can manage to not get outshined by them.
Riggers do legwork with subtlety.
Riggers simply don't need to be Hackers. Hackers have clear things to do during legwork and stealth missions, but Riggers don't need to do those things to pull their weight.
DSM wrote:But honestly, it's not that big of a deal if the magic toolbox actually is bigger than other toolboxes - it's much more important that you price individual tools correctly.
Very importantly this. Ultimately, in a cyberpunk game, there will always be things your character can't do, and there will always be power levels in the game your character won't have. No matter how good you get as a Cyborg Ninja, you're never going to be able to be able to meaningfully fight a carrier group. No matter how good you get in no matter how many fields, there are still going to be specialists in the world that missions revolve around. Brain surgeons, accountants, viral epidemiologists,
whatever. You're not going to be able to do all of it.
The overall potential breadth of your archetype is no more meaningful than the potential breadth of the Fighter
class is to an individual Fighter
character in D&D. The number of feats that you could have gotten instead of the ones you actually did get is pretty much meaningless. You play a single character, not an entire chapter.
Mages being overpowered compared to non-Mages is merely a math problem.
Even if Mages are role protected and the other archetypes are not.
-Username17