Ally NPC that acts through proxies.

[Almarck]

So, in a Pathfinder game I am DMing, I have decided that a few of the characters the players will run into have next to no combat ability of their own, but instead handle things from a distance.

Think Riggers and hackers from Shadowrun, so for the purposes of simplicity, I'll call them riggers. Now, this isn't a problem for the enemy riggers because as the GM I could just look at the monster manual and pick out any robots or constructs and adjust them to my purposes.

My main concern is that one of the allies is an NPC rigger.

I want to know if I should:
A. Brew up a personal "drone" and advance it using Construct HD as if it was a monster, let it use the controller's Skills or saves for tests. Treat the controller as an "Expert" that does nothing extra other than control that construct (and replace it for when it dies)
B. See if I can find a class that allows this sort of play. I know the 3rd party Tinker class allows building constructs in such a fashion, but I am hesitant on using it as it means controlling even more tokens to get the most out of it.
C. Just use published constructs from the PFSRD and rotated them out based on CR.

He and his bot is not going to be with the party constantly, but rather going to act as a back up for the odd mission or two.
I'm genuinely not worried about overshadowing the players or the fact that I am dealing with a construct because I have helped my players optimize very well.

I also don't know what role I should be dealing with here for this character or his machine, beyond that maybe opening doors and "hacking" should be a thing in some scenarios.

Edit: I feel like I might be explaining this poorly: my problem is not that what race or what method the character uses to control proxies. The question is what his proxy is and how do I mechanically represent it? What statistics should I use? What role should it accomplish? How do I treat its advancement for when the party levels up?

[Karl Aegis]

Have a Warforged or other construct use a Candle of Invocation (Neutral Evil) to gate in a Nightmare, have it use Astral Projection on you and then use a Wand of Alter Self on yourself so you appear differently. That should work in most cases.

[Almarck]

Uh what?

Not that I object to a warforged, but I think a sentient and aware construct is redundant. The NPC himself isn't a machine, he just operates one via remote control, literally.That's his whole point.

Also, how does a Nightmare help? And a candle of invocation?

Also. Using more familiar Pathfinder. So, I don't even know how half this stuff is from your perspective. From mine, it's completely bizarre and alien.

For starters, Pathfinder nightmares do not half alterself, unless what we're talking about is not a horse. It's especially round about because it doesn't even accomplish what I need, or if it does, I do not understand how it's supposed to.

[Forrestfire]

The closest thing I can think of is a Psion using his Psicrystal to channel powers (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/equipment/psicrystals#TOC-Channel-Power-Sp-). This will let him use his abilities as needed (including turning the psicrystal into something combat-ish by using Metamorphosis). Normally, this would likely be prohibitively high-level, but we have a fun trick with the Improved Psicrystal (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/feats/improved-psicrystal-psionic) feat. This feat, in addition to granting an extra personality to the pet rock, increases your level for your psicrystal by one. So, as a human Psion, you can take Psicrystal Affinity as your bonus feat from Psion, then Improved Psicrystal at 1st, again at 1st (human bonus feat), 3rd, 5th (psion bonus feat), 7th, and 9th. This gets you +6 to your effective level, granting the psion Channel Powers.

Sadly, this only works within the range of a mile, but it is, at least, precedent for this sort of thing. It's an NPC, so giving him a custom item to give the connection more range could be neat. The end result is a floating crystal that can dispense information as needed, shoot lasers or use other powers, or use Metamorphosis to turn into something more combat-ready or possessing of thumbs.


Regarding Karl's suggestion, he was referring to the ability of Nightmares in D&D 3.5 to use Astral Projection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/astralProjection.htm) as a supernatural for them and their rider. This would let the character send a copy of themselves, driven by their own mind, through the astral plane and back to the material plane, connected to the original by a silver cord. Alter Self was suggested as a method to make the fluff fit, as the "robot" being driven is different than the NPC himself. However, in Pathfinder, Nightmares lost that ability, so you'd need something higher level to get your hands on Astral Projection (also, it's probably not a can of worms you want to open).

[Karl Aegis]

The point was you didn't actually need a specialized class or race to get what you wanted. Back in 3.5 this would have gotten you remote control over any construct up to 5 HD that used your skills and abilities with no risk to yourself using only gold pieces and maybe a few points in Use Magic Device or an item that gave a competence bonus to Use Magic Device.

The Candle of Invocation and Nightmare wouldn't have ever come up in story because they could have gone away as soon as they fulfilled their purpose.

Why does it matter what race the controller is, anyways? Are you going to be meeting him in person for most of the story, making acting through proxies mostly pointless?

[Almarck]

Well, that part seems like an overly complicated and roundabout way just to have a character act differently, so I'm not going to do that.

Now, I do appreciate your suggestion. Energy powers for high tech weapons, using clairiscence for predictive algorithms, metacreativity for matter fabricators, ect. I have had president before for using psionics as "technology" (Another very minor NPC from the first mission is an AI that uses vitalist mechanics to simulate "nanohealing" with some rather unique caveats.)

Granted, I don't know how I feel about using a psionic psicrystal proxy. It's easily refluffed as high tech stuff, sure, but I feel like it would be too "magical". It's not that I dislike psionics, it's more that the scenario is that I have two NPC characters set up the PCs can choose to rely upon representing the two major different powers of the setting: magic and technology. The other NPC is very overly magical, so to make this one have a different feel, I don't want to rely on magic or "casting" powers.

This is why I was talking about using bestiary constructs or making my own and asking what people thought about it in the OP. To me, it was the simplest way to represent a "Tech" character without having to rely on refluffing or building up a completely custom class. I'm not talking specialized mechanics or getting a class (outside of taking one's mechanics as a basis); I want to know what was a good option to represent a guy's mechanical...whatever and what it should be like.

(And yes, the guy is actually someone the PCs meet and interact with. It's just most of his time, he's going to be doing things via remote control. There will be times where he's on the field, I just want to sort out what to do about his proxy and its capabilities to mechanically represent it)

[Forrestfire]

In that case, my suggestion is to just... Get a construct of some sort, change its intelligence, wisdom, and charisma score to that of the NPC, and say "he's remote-controlling it." He's an NPC, he's got pet robots, he has some unexplained item that lets him remote-control them. No more work needed than choosing which constructs/golems/etc to represent him (or just statting something up with class levels and giving it the construct type).

The short answer to this is "you're the DM, the idea is doable with existing mechanics, so you can let the details slide." If I were DMing, I'd just give them the remote drones as an ability. NPCs and monsters run on different rules than PCs, after all.

[Almarck]

Okay. So what constructs would be good for what roles then? I guess I'll just have to look the the beastiary, but that's a good idea. So, thanks.


Just take random things from the beasiary of the matching CR then? Keep feats on the constructs the same?

Or should I just pick one and advance it using Hit dice as the PCs gain levels?

[jjcrpntr]

Of you pick up the inner sea bestiary there's a bunch of constructs on there including androids that look humanoid and can even be pcs (making them easy to give a class level or two making a nice little "drone").

Could give him a clockwork soldier but fluff it to be a drone.

[Coidzor]

I want to know if I should:
A. Brew up a personal "drone" and advance it using Construct HD as if it was a monster, let it use the controller's Skills or saves for tests. Treat the controller as an "Expert" that does nothing extra other than control that construct (and replace it for when it dies)
B. See if I can find a class that allows this sort of play. I know the 3rd party Tinker class allows building constructs in such a fashion, but I am hesitant on using it as it means controlling even more tokens to get the most out of it.
C. Just use published constructs from the PFSRD and rotated them out based on CR.

The quickest way would be to take a published construct to use as a base template and build up from until it fulfills the particular role you want it to or, in some cases, file the serial numbers off of it first by tweaking special qualities/abilities. I think, anyway.

I suppose you could also have robots or automata or warforged with different builds to represent mechanically different purposes but have them ultimately controlled by the same entity.


Edit: I feel like I might be explaining this poorly: my problem is not that what race or what method the character uses to control proxies. The question is what his proxy is and how do I mechanically represent it? What statistics should I use? What role should it accomplish? How do I treat its advancement for when the party levels up?

What is the party composition? What are the intended goals of some of the missions you'll have them be providing support for? What roles the "rigger" would fill would depend upon both of these factors.

If you go with having automatons/robots/warforged then just leveling them up would take care of scaling them with the party.

If you want to scale straight construct RHD, then I'd suggest looking at the 3.5 feat Improved Homunculus from Magic of Eberron or the various astral (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/psionic-bestiary/astral-construct) construct (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/astralConstruct.htm) menu options, maybe even the expanded (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040625b) options (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/feats/advanced-constructs-psionic) for some ideas for little goodies or customizations to give 'em.

[Almarck]

Hm. No access to Warforged and Eberron materials at the moment, but I think I can probably find references to it in places.

The Astral Construct mechanics might work to make things simple, though I do not know how effective Astral Constructs are.

As for role. I've been wondering that much myself. The party is small and number but has very good access to magic and fighting power (everyone is atleast d8's with half-caster lists and more). But not so much on knowledge and other utility skills. Also, everyone in the party is quite big so Hm

We do need more ranged firepower and mobility, since everyone is melee oriented, except the gunslinger, so I'm actually thinking a sort of "flying gun drone" would be appropriate. Make it small to justify a couple of things, like crawling into vents and popping out to get doors unlocked when appropriate, which come to think of it, is very appropriate given that's what Shadowrun riggers are meant to do.

Thanks for helping me realize that conclusion. Thank you.