Other possibilities include hitting their bargain bin cybereyes or cyberears with garbage data to overload their senses like a digital flashbang so you can actually escape, using nearby speakers to make them think that the cops are nearby, hacks their commlinks to make them think they have an urgent reason to be somewhere else... And more, depending on what sort of looted ware they happen to have.

A hacker's options will always diminish as the sophistication of their opponents diminishes, but that is not a reason not to let them have options.

Even if they have bargain bin ware, not even Halloweeners are likely to be stupid enough to leave it connected to the 'trix. Sure, hacking their 'links might work, assuming they take the time out of their busy schedule of bludgeoning you with an 18" black rubber dildo to check their "urgent notice." Hacking nearby speakers to play out gunshots or "This is Lone Star! Hands in the air!" might work, I'll agree, but it might now.

But you're still reaching.

The entire point, which you seem to be missing, is to make it so that it ISN'T strictly stupid to have wireless on so that it's an actual decision to make. What is missing from this conversation, then, is precisely what the risk actually is. For example, hacking someone's arm doesn't have to mean you can use it to strangle them.

No, but it's very likely you can make it shut down completely. If the arm holding your gun shuts down in the middle of combat, you are boned. Same goes if your chemsuit decides suddenly that everything is hunkey-dorey and that unsealing to let its owner get some fresh air is a good idea despite the fact that the chlorine gas outside is so thick you can see it. You're also boned if your vision gets completely replaced with spam or just blacked out, you're pretty boned if your gun decides it no longer feels like delivering hot lead downrange, you're pretty much completely boned if the gear your whole plan is depending on decides to suddenly stop working.

I think shutting it down requires something like 3 Marks, which from what I hear is a minimum of 3 Complex Actions? Those are possible actions a hacker could have access to, but that doesn't mean that they have it rapidly with permanent effect.

You do realise this was the whole point of his post?

What are these "Marks" and why do I get a creepy, nails-across-the-chalkboard feeling of D&D4 when I hear this word?

Matrix Authentication Rsomething Keys

They tell a device what a user is allowed to do, much like access levels did, but less complicated

Ok cool, thanks for that. On the surface I could get behind this idea, in that it keeps the essence of elevated security priviledges while divorcing it from real-world "security levels" that cause so many conceptual problems.

I have said it more than once... it is not the GM's responsibility to make sure that each and every character has something to do in a firefight, unique and different from everyone else. It is the Player's responsibility to ensure that he is useful in different situations. How many times did the Cyberlogician (Nexus) grab a gun and shoot while intercepting enemy transmissions, grabbing drones, and dinking with their tacnets, all teh while ensuring our own tacnet was protected? That was MY responsibility, not Yours. If a Player is bored, it is because he is allowing himself to be that way, especially in your games TeOdio. There is NEVER a lack of things to do. And your games are always engaging and entartaining. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

You do realize I was basically agreeing with him, right?

Doesn't exactly seem like that when you answer his rhetorical question with a long list of answers, it seems much more that you just missed his point entirly and then made the same point.

Well, now you know better. And knowing is half the battle.
(The other half is trog heavy-induced violence.)

And you're not boned if the jumped in hacker obliterates you with a sensor locked full narrow burst from a drone's machine gun sporting AV rounds? Please... It sounds like in 5th Ed I might have my own hacker providing some defense against tech attacks. Not many chummers are willing to step in front of the lead hose for me. Well maybe for me (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Okay, this was seemingly buried by a certain other issue, so could somebody enlighten us? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Summoning vs. Binding as in SR2050? Mages have to constantly expose themselves to astral attack if they want their stuff to work?

I don't disagree with that, but it helps if the system encourages it. Lets be real. In a 1 or 2 round fire fight, where most of the participants have multiple passes, how effective is hacking currently in the 4th edition in a 2 round scene? More so than previous editions I grant you. But then they introduce all sorts of things to "bone" the hacker. Hard encryption, skin link, running hidden, laser data transmission.... So while your cyber logician could do every thing else you still HAD to grab a gun (because you had multiple passes in the meat world and could BTW). The Yak boys that ran Nexus and Jet down were heavily cybered and one was basically the Yakuza version of Nexus. It might have been pretty cool if Nexus was duking it out over the matrix with them while Jet was laying down fire to dissuade pursuit. But I have not seen the rules, so for all I know these Matrix attacks are merely minor annoyances and it is still better to pick up a gun and start firing away. Very few players out there are willing to play a mage that casts blindness and not Stun Ball at force 10, lol. You sir, are a special player.

If you're not willing to pick up a gun and shoot a motherfragger right in the ghost-damned face, you don't belong on a Shadowrun, whether you're the hacker, the face, the mage, or whatever.

Exactly. This has been hammered on from all the way back to the first novels, when Twist was trying to get over his wageslave mindset to succeed as a runner.


You know, that said, I'm going to use that Halloweener example I wrote up as my new final step of character approval. Any character who can't deal (via combat/magic/social savvy/etc) with two utterly mundane guys with average stats and melee weapons is clearly mis-built, as it would not survive in the sprawl it is supposed to be from.

Go a step further: before the game starts, tell the group members you want to see them individually for a solo session, and pop that on them: you're alone in the barrens, none of your chummers are within quick contact range. You're just taking a quick walk down the street from your doss (or the doss of a friend who asked you to doss-sit his place while he was out of town,) to the Stuffer Shack to get yourself some Taco Hell-brand soy burritos, now with a guaranteed 10% actual meat content, when you find yourself surrounded by two gangers slinking out of the shadows in front of and behind you. One of them has a chain attached to a rusty pipe with several padlocks padlocked to the end as some sort of barrens flail, the other is wielding an 18" black rubber dildo. Yes, an 18" black rubber dildo.

To the sides are nothing but uninterrupted storefronts, mostly with collapsed, unnavigable interiors, and the few alleys you do see are dead ends. Wat do?


If they can't get out of this, have their character subdued and tell them that character suffers a fate most likely worse than death, please come up with something new.

You do have a point or two here...
All those things that they added to "Bone" the hacker, as you so eloquently put it, I was okay with (Old School Decker here), and would have used them myself if we had adopted those optional rules. Since we did not, I secured our systems as best as we could, which was no joke anyways). I have no problerm grabbing a gun for several rounds if that is required. I have no real interest in trying to Hack someone else's ware to feel useful. I thought the scene with Nexus and Jet against the Yaks was inspired, and my Hacking their Sam would have not been as interesting, or resulted in as great a storyline hook, as was generated by what occurred. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Blindness is so much cooler, though. Wait till I blind the Astra Perception of those annoying mages assensing things I don't want them to assense (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Thank you Sir, you are a Scholar and a Gentleman. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'm wondering how effective a single hacker can be in the new paradigm anyway. It's said you can hack 'ware, but what does that really mean? Even if you hyper-accelerate Matrix tests, would it look like this:

IP 1
1) Scan for enemy commlinks
2) Hack-on-the-Fly into to one enemy commlink
IP 2
1) Snip wireless bonus from one piece of gear (impose extra penalty?)
2) Snip wireless bonus from another piece of gear (impose extra penalty?)

Assuming zero failures, is that it? Even at those breakneck speeds, wouldn't it still be more efficient to dump 2 long bursts from your Ingram Smartgun into the target?

Was the sexual content and implied rape really necessary or appropriate? Do you really see raping a player's character as appropriate punishment for them making something you don't agree with? (I don't need an answer, I just want you to consider the implications of your statement)

Most hackers I've played with would use this opportunity to test one of their over watch drones and SnS those goons without breaking stride.

If your hacker subdues them with on-call Close Air Support drones, then the character has passed the test, crass as the wording may be.

Well, you're gonna get one: I'm not the one who originally came up with the "18" black rubber dildo wielded as a weapon."

That said, if a character can't pass that simple hurdle (2:1 confrontation with unaugmented gangers wielding improvised melee weapons,) then they're not Shadowrunners, they're what the street calls "meat." I leave it up to the imagination of the player to decide (or not to decide) what happens to the character who manages to get beaten unconscious by two sprawl gangers.

The phrase "torture buddy" comes to mind. So does "Thrown to the ghouls for entertainment," or "organlegged whilst alive." Could it be, like, all the rape? Sure, that's a possibility. However it goes, though, you're gonna wish you'd managed to buy it in the fight.



Congratulations! By virtue of having close air support to call upon to resolve your conflict with these unwholesome gentlemen, you have reaffirmed your status as "Not Meat", at least for tonight. Enjoy your Soy Burrito. You earned it.

Some of my more sociopath leaning characters would agree, but I can think of a lot of concepts out there where the thought of shooting someone in the face might make them vomit in the mouth a little. Like I said, I haven't seen the rules yet so I am merely speculating on what I think is a good idea in allowing VIABLE OPTIONS for deckers other than straight up murder and mayhem. In the end, if they are just ineffective annoyances then deckers once again become riggers with drones or street sammies in combat. There are always going to be silly fluff things I don't agree with and large logic plot holes in almost any entertainment I consume, but I'm not going to damn an entire product based on one idea that for all we know... MAY BE FUN. And if it isn't, well there are 4 and a half editions worth of rules to cobble together what you like and run with those. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)