No Direradiant. It has nothing to do with fear of change. It's the whole concept of one script kiddie trashing a 250k piece of 'ware which has a completely nonsensical 'matrix bonus' when it has no cause whatsoever to even be on the matrix. All for a contrived reason. And before you say, script kiddies are gone... you've mentioned agents... if an agent can remove tags... an agent can most likely put them on as well.

All this because some freelancers and the line dev have a hard on to rip off ghost in the shell to give hackers more to do in combat. When SR has NEVER been like GitS. (even a 'lightly cybered' brain is still a full cyborg brain in a box in that system. People don't 'hack' the cybereyes in that system they hack the info feed from the body going into the cyberbrain rigger box. You don't 'rig' a cyberarm... you simply control it using your normal thought processes. The dynamic is completely different and not really compatible with the history of the setting.

The reason many of us are against it is it is nothing but poor game design. It was completely unnecessary and renders one of the most classical cyberpunk tropes the street sam almost completely obsolete. I suspect we'll see a lot more bio-sammies since cyber-sammies are so easily F'ed up now.


Fatum hits the nail on the head... All of those require LOS and have defenses (sniper you can beat with great perception skills... plus good armor... edged soak rolls, etc.). It's the old problem of magic allowing a practically invulnerable astral mage to strike targets directly from the astral to the material with little to no fear of reprisal that commonly came up with grounding abuse.


I'm all for making 'ware have more consequences. But this is no different than earlier editions where the 'ware catalog was the GM's toybook because most of it was too damn expensive and had too many drawbacks to be usable as much more than one time NPC fun. (MbW is a prime example of this... you'd see it on NPC's who didn't need to worry about the TLEX).

Shadowrun is full of stuff that doesn't require LOS and doesn't allow for a strong defense. Just ask my players who stuck 5 kilos of C4 on the outside of a building where a security station was just on the other side.

To plant explosives, you need to be physically at the point of explosion. And that gives lots of methods to defend from, a few of them easy and unsurpassable.

I'm really confused as to how you think this is just going to automagically happen.

It's pretty easy to have decent defenses (DR 6 Commlink is pretty affordable), for one, and provides a solid defense. And even then, items can't just be intsantly, magically bricked. It's about as easy and as efficient to brick someone's cyber as it is to shoot them and kill them (or spell them and kill/stun them). It's on par with that.

Plus nothing stops them from having a counter-decker protecting them.

The whole idea of being able to hack gear and cyber is to provide some fun options to the decker, and we finally have solid rules for how that works (since, you know, this stuff's been around forever).

Also, I'll note Skinlink is not "retconned out of existence", it's just not in the core book. I personally hope to see it get some heavy modification, since it was basically just a nearly-free magical "ignore wireless" piece of bullshit. There should be some DNI connectivity or some subdermal implants or something involved there, IMO.

Bull

It makes sense that you need to actually worry about Matrix threats. We still have to worry about magic threats even if you're not an awaken character. So why do people have to suddenly ignore Matrix threats when it is suppose to be this all seeing advance network that connects everything every where. Everyone has to interact with it, so everyone should have to purchase at least some Matrix defense. Heaven forbid you have to allocate a few nuyen to IC at chargen.

And honestly, hacking cyberware is about as cyberpunk as it gets. The fear of having yourself become your own worst enemy because someone just hacked your gibson is a common theme in most cyberpunk. So why not have rules for it now? If its electronic, its online and has the potential to be hacked. Everything is online is the trope. Honestly, how is being immune to the Matrix cyberpunk at all? It might make sense if you're an awaken character, because magic and machine don't play well with each other, which is also another trope. But to be anyone else and be able to completely ignore the Matrix like its not there, that's absurd.

If anything this is just a correction because people have been able to ignore the Matrix for so long with no negative side effects. Well, now you have to play the game and actually consider Matrix threats.

I see three problems that seem to be generating the most concern and they seem to be too much of a good thing.
And I understand that reason behind a lot of the decisions.
I want less dice being thrown and I'd like there to be more things for the hacker to do, but they seemed forced (a bridge too far).

IMHO a decker shouldn't expect to be able to hack military grade cyberware or drones on the fly because the Military won't take the risk (which has long been a cyberpunk trope).
And in a high security area, a runner who is not a decker (not having a deck to hack the local systems) is going to be running off line except through his team decker because he doesn't want to tip off the Corp Security Spider or leave any traces of his activity (having a stray RFID tip off the Security Spyder about the runners in his building is also a Shadowrun trope).
So that is where I'm coming from.

The first is some of the Matrix bonuses don't make sense (like the smartgun link).
The second is some of the Matrix bonuses we used to be able to do with a DNI (like activating Bipod/Tripods) but can now only do with with a Matrix connection (while DNI (a cyberpunk staple) seems to be totally ignored by SR5).

Finally hacking cyber is cool, and I can see a decking hacking a beat cop or a ganger but not a Corporate High Threat Response Team or a SWAT team expecting trouble.
When the Pros come out to play, they are just not going to risk it happening and would have the hardware to prevent (paying the price of not being connected to the matrix), but all the hardware to protect a pro is gone or ignored.

We will have to agree to disagree on Skin Links but it is real life technology and just common sense.
However a Smartgun link induction pad or a fiberoptic cable would work just as well.
I've always ran Shadowrun as Hardware will always beat software if you are willing to pay the price but I'm not seeing that in SR5.

Finally no one will has commented on this, but the most basic fact is that a runner has to leave no trace.
If you are going to out committing crimes/doing a run/in the middle of a special op you are not going to want to be broadcasting any thing.

You will either tip them off that you are here, open your self up to being hacked, or leave digital fingerprints of all your activities.
Any of the above can get you dead if the stakes are high enough.

Yet no one has explained how a decker can back track his team and can scrub all trace of the activity of a bunch of highly illegal runner gear that has been meshing with other devices in the area and using the cloud.


So not having skin links in the core rules (or fiberoptic cables or Smartgun link induction pads) is like not having white noise generators, bug detectors or gas masks in the core book and saying they will be coming out in a later book.

Especially when SR5 has just introduced all these new fun things for a decker to do.

You can't get away scott free. You will always leave evidence that you were there. A foot print, some hair, blood, an astral signature, Matrix access ID, and your Johnson. By eliminating any ability for your characters to be traced, you've effectively eliminated any story telling possibilities for reprisal. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep it clean and reduce detection as much as possible, but its foolish to think you'll be able to avoid leaving evidence by 100%. And to think that cyberware is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back is ridiculous; because that's what's going to foil your master plan, right?

Its also a trope that some punk hackers can beat paramilitary/corporation/professional organizations. See Hackers, War Games, or any film ever with hacking as a plot.

Sure you can't be totally a ghost all the time, but you run silent and stay off the matrix (unless you are the decker) while you are in the high security area. And you don't leave a blazing trail for them to follow leading up to the site or after you leave. And hope they move on to other things before they can take advantage of any evidence you left. Also the more you leave the faster they can put it all together and find you.

Running with all your cyberware and gear connected to the matrix meshing with all the local devices is like presenting them with a holopic of your entire run.

The examples you gave were on hacking the military were usually where the technology was new.
The Six World Militaries are old hands in the SOTA race now (Technomacers not withstanding).

And I'm not saying Runners can't hack the military. I'm saying they can't hack the military on the fly.
It would just be the nature of the Military to use fiberoptic cables and laser links every where they could.
I'd also expect a lot of fail safes in the drones and for the cyberware to go into battle with the wireless connections off.

Security through obscurity. If everything is online, it will take them months to years, to never, to find your data trail in the see of data trails that are logged. But of course, also the wireless mesh network actually doesn't work that way in SR4, so I assume it won't work that way in SR5. Packets come and go without leaving any data on what those packets are or where they're going.

True for the run of the mill run.
But for a priceless prototype that a Mega Corp really wanted to find?
They would have deckers hacking in to every device in a 5 mile radius and then using parallel processing to find every needle in the haystack in a very sort time.
A Mega Corp can put an ENORMOUS amount of processing power in to an issue.

I guess they "can." But they wouldn't. A Mega would probably just claim the insurance money on their priceless prototype, and higher the same runners to steal another MacGuffin from the next corp. Its the price of doing business in Shadowrun.

And, I'd like to point out, that odds are your cyberware probably isn't going to leave a data trail, since packets don't leave a trail. Only logging on and accessing things on nodes do. So unless your cyberware is going to hack in to a node, you won't be leaving a data trail for the corp spiders to find.

What insurance?

And DireRadiant:Fear of change has jack shit to do with criticizing horribly written rules.

Or to put it another way the sort of outfits with the resources to insure megacorp research labs are going to have guys on call that make corpsec look like Girlscouts.

Sorry, but all this back and forth is just "I want the cake for later but I also want to eat it right now".

From the psychological point of view I guess it would have been better to just give the boni for cyber as it is and bring this "connect it to the matrix" and get those boni in a later rulebook. As for now a lot of people feel entitled to get at LEAST the same boni as in the last edition. Why this is silly and not even possible in a game ranging over more than 2 edition, should be obvious to anybody, and hostly I think it is.

Combat hacking is a prerequisite for "fun options"? Or to generalize that claim a bit, the only place where fun happens is in combat...

Well there is also hacking porn sites for fun, but that comes out in SR5.18+ sourcebook: DeviantRun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Then how does someone hack your cyber? Either they can find you with absurd ease so its hackable, or its secure by being obscure.

The SR5 is based on exact same mechanics as SR4, so no its not silly at all to except a feature called "wireless bonus" to actually give bonuses instead of stealing away basic functions.
Especially as in most cases the current bonuses are totall bullshit.

Yes but its now BS +3 Bull when wireless. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)


Basically though the best way to think of it is like a Movie Reboot. Japanese anime does it all the time and drives me crazy when suddenly character A never met character B before and so on. All the past is rewritten and you go with the new story from the new starting point.

Is it a tad annoying.. oh yes. But wracking your head trying to justify/argue the retroconversion is just going to give you a migraine.

If it is a priceless prototype that means a rival has ordered the run.
So if they don't get it back, they will lose their investment and research AND their rival will jump a head in the Market so they are losing twice.

Which is why they are usually under orders to destroy it if they can not recover it.

Also Corps will usually only put some much effort in to finding the runners.
And once the runners have turn the Paydata over to their Johnson the only thing in it for the Corp is making an example of the runners (unless the runners were particularly destructive).
But if you make it EASY for them.....

To find one very specific person's cyberware from the Matrix? Probably near impossible. To find the Street Sam who's clearly infront of you, and you are confident that you are in mutual signal range? Well, there are rules for that in SR4, so I assume that those rules have been translated to SR5.


SR4 bonuses are not equal to SR5 bonuses. So its impossible to compare how stats from gear effect a game with different rule sets.

That is a stretch.

Clearly if you used to be able to use an DNI link to deploy a Bipod as a free action in SR4 and in SR5 you can only do that if you have a wireless connection then you have lost some thing.
And it makes perfect sense that in 2050, if you lost the DNI connection you could use a matrix connection to issue the command.
Your bonus is not a carrot but a stick.

And I like the reduced dice pools and changing cyberware and equipment to increase the limit is a very neat solution (Bravo!).

But it is not the best solution in every case.
A perfect example is the smartgun link.
Right now unless you have some serious skills the base non matrix connected bonus from a smartgun link (+2 accuracy) does you NO good.
So it makes sense that in this case the smartgun link should still add dice to the firearm skill.

And the funny part about this is that the +2 dice to firearm skills is a lot more useful to a GM using Mooks than to a PC.

No its not, its quite simple.
And really the rules set barely qualifies as differend except for the bullshit caused by wireless bonuses.

Yes, thank you for putting words in my mouth, Sengir. I appreciate that. Mmm... They're a little chewy and bitter though, needs more salt.

I never said that was the only place fun happens. But combat is a large portion of the game, and takes up an inordinate amount of time, since Shadowrun has a more strategic style of combat rather than a fast and abstract style. In most 4 hour game sessions, at least a full hour of it will usually be spent in combat. WHich is fine, since that's where several characters really excel. But it means the more options, and the more ways for your character to get involved, the better. Otherwise, you end up with the inverse of the old "Decker is going into the matrix, everyone go get pizza" syndrome.

And they're not the only options. There's no reason the Decker couldn't also be a gun bunny, though he's likely not going to be on par with a Sammy early on. But it's possible he'll be able to hold his own. And hey, honestly, in combat a gun is still probably your better option than messing around trying to mark and brick peoples gear. But, it is now an option to do something the decker is actually specialized in rather than saying "Sit this out kid, I'll handle the rough stuff."

And again, it's all options. The decker doesn't have to mess with this stuff if he doesn't want to. And as someone else said above, you should probably talk with your GM and find out how pervasive he wants to make this stuff ahead of time. For some games it won't come up that much anyway. I know in Missions it won't come up too often. I'm not going to be writing in enemy deckers whose sole purpose is to damage runners 'ware. I'd rather put in more guards to shoot them (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bull

It does sort of bring back the concept of hack everything. Not just players but equipment in general. If the soda machine in the break room down the hall from where you are trying to break into the offices has sensors to let it know when people walk by and triggers a little sales jingle a decker could put a tap into it so when the next patrol comes by there he gets a head's up in case the patrol breaks pattern for any reason.



Or just give the decker a panther cannon... oh wait...