I believe a good example of how puppets would work is demonstrated by this game, mabinogi:

As you can see in the video, the person controlling the puppet has a specific string length. This would be able to be increased with the character's skills at using puppets and their chakra amounts. The character loosely follows the puppet in this example, but is protected due to the type of attacks that it can do (crowd control and slows). The skills, as others have said, would be used as if the player has become the puppet by this set up. The way that the puppets are implemented in Mabinogi have made them a popular method of combat, and I believe it is a worthy base line for what puppets should be in SLO.