a cyberdeck isn't cheap, that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a much less expensive version that is orders of magnitude more bulky, for example. also, you don't necessarily need one set of equipment per shift. in fact, you most likely don't. each person will have their own configurater files, but that's pretty much all you need. take a minute between shifts to transfer ownership, and you just trade off decks as needed.

every building pretty much has the ability to detect whether someone belongs or not. even if they turn of wireless on some of their stuff, it's extremely likely they have dozens of RFIDs on them. and heck, odds are good that their work commlink being turned on is their key into the building anyways. there's nothing incredibly difficult. first off, *any* unknown hidden mode icon is suspect. it doesn't matter if it's a candy bar or a main battle tank. hidden mode isn't normally used, it's suspicious. period. secondly, any icon that is not within about a meter or so of a legitimate icon is likewise suspect. it doesn't take a lot to generate a very simple set of parameters for who belongs that will quickly single out a typical runner team for closer inspection.

if the corporation goes to the effort to disconnect some devices from the host, and leave others connected, you either have two hackers or you only cover half the devices. most likely the devices in the host will be hard to access physically, while the ones that are harder to secure will be not connected to the host. that said, i don't know what makes you think that not being slaved to the host somehow prevents them from ever communicating with the host. do you think that your commlink needs to slave or be a slave to another commlink in order for you to make a phone call or send a text message to another person? sending a message via the matrix is a thing that happens all the time on a regular basis. there's nothing special or difficult about it.

A device for which there is not a description or hint of in the book. It would make sense, but it's neither RAI or RAW.

I'd love to argue that an add-on module for commlinks can provide them with a Defense-Only Sleaze rating, such as an updated version of the Non-standard Wireless Signal systems of 4th edition, or maybe just what ever system they build into the Stealth RFID chips already in 5th edition, but it's not in the book either.

The same is true of some of the physical (the cost of a single deck could get you implants for 2-3 people, and guns could be issued via shift like the decks), and especially the astral HTR teams (Bound spirits are bound spirits). The fast response 5km team hypothesis either makes all shadowrunning near fatal as soon as the first alarm is tripped, or it doesn't, regardless if the team is wireless off or on.
I continue to agree it's a reasonable response to a big problem: like serious firepower on the shadowrunner side, or a break in at a high security facility, but unlikely for average runs.

The book doesn't clarify here. Either random icons showing up is a great way to run security and all of the wireless rules in the book are just things security gets to use against you most of the time, or they aren't. I suspect that's not the intention of the poorly written rules, and it depends greatly on how much information the signal scanner can pass along with Host, the Spider in it, and how/where decision making takes place to determine if something is a problem.

Signal scanners don't note or care if an icon is hidden or not. They either spot/trace an icon or they don't. They don't look for the number of hidden icons, and they don't look for details on that icon. Once it's spotted, its not longer hidden to them. If you want someone to look for hidden icons, you need something with a persona to make matrix perception checks. Security guards are bad at this, so either you spider has to do it or you need an Agent on a drone, which may not be RAI.

And what exactly is taking these actions and making these judgements? Signal scanners are dumb little $300 boxes. They have no physical or matrix actions of their own. If a device comes near them they either see it or don't. The exact extent this extends to the Spider in a Host is still unclear. You can choose to judge the system as being very good, so again wireless is useless and far too much of the book is devoted to it, or you don't. There aren't any rules in the book either way.

If you want to call it poorly written, I'll agree with you.

I still submit that should the alarm sound, one way or another, the response is unlikely to be a Hacker death squad instantly showing up so much as the spider, and he's still unlikely to leave the host to hack the samy because he'll be too worried about the decker probably in his host. Even if he does come attempt to hack the street sam, he's unlikey to brick anything before the sam can react.

Yes the Radio Signal Scanner setup is annoyingly vague, and can have a drastic effect on gameplay depending on interpretation.

This was a misreading on my part. I thought we were talking about devices that weren't online at all, such as hardline only devices setup inside matrix free zones where secret data even the Spider isn't supposed to have access to is kept. I've reread the post, and you're clearly talking about devices on the matrix but not in the host. My mistake.

Devices outside the host clearly can send messages to things inside the host, and the reverse. It's one of the handful of things icons in the matrix can do across the barrier of in/out of a Host. Message are about the limit of the interaction allowed, however.

Any devices outside the host can be hacked by the Decker before the team enters the building, preferably setting their alert criteria to something the team won't trip so marks on the devices won't need to be maintained, and you can reset your deck before the run instead of gathering more OS. Devices outside the host will either use their own poor ratings, or will need to be slaved to something else. Commlinks, RCCs, and Cyberdecks are the most obvious choices, and they typically have lower firewalls than hosts.

Ok, I feel like I'm getting less civil than I should be.

I'm sorry if I've gotten rude.

I'm calling it a night.

the radio signal scanner is *one* way of tracking wireless signals. for less than 10,000 nuyen (retail, you can be sure megas get it for themselves at a lower price), you can have a drone roaming the site with an agent that will run matrix perception checks on a regular basis. it's cheap, it works very well, and gives that brain you were saying would be needed to do the basic analysis of what gets flagged for immediate investigation by a human.

the detection gear can run in hidden mode as well, btw; if you don't know whatever vaguely defined threshold of information is required, you can't even make a matrix perception check on it from beyond 100 meters. at which point, if it's that relatively inexpensive drone i mentioned, it can also attempt to detect you.

and while not every situation calls for the hacker doom squad, most of the time when shadowrunner teams are involved, *if* there is anything wireless enabled by the shadowrunners, it is likely to be one of those situations. if nothing else, it is likely that the facility employs more than one spider/security hacker (probably at least 2, more likely 3 with possibly a 4th that is on-call as a substitute in case of serious illness etc).very

going wireless enabled is like going on a run where you wear clothing specifically designed to contrast with the dominant colours of the facility that looks absolutely nothing like any sort of uniform or regular clothing employees might be wearing.

sure, you can do it. but it's gonna make you a lot easier to spot.

there's a ton of stuff out there to hack. hackers don't need to be able to hack black ops personal equipment or cyberware that should have pretty much been exclusively designed for combat situations where you can expect to have your vulnerabilities targeted.

But it shouldn't be. That's like saying it should always be better to shoot someone than to throw a fireball. When often, throwing a fireball is actually way more effective than shooting them.

The Matrix needs to be a real threat. Or else it makes no sense on how Deus was able to take over the SCIRE if everyone worth their salt could simply just turn off all devices connected to the Matrix and effectively give Deus a whole lot of nothing to do.


The same thing that protects runners when off a Mega Corp site is the same thing that will protect them in the Matrix. Extraterritoriality can easily be assumed to cut both ways. A corp spider's jurisdiction ends at the corporation's Matrix space, which includes hosts and the AR locations of Corporation Matrix Space. If it didn't work that way, then why not just send spirits and HTR Teams to a runner's house and murder them all while they sleep? That'd be more effective than brinking their gear.



That is not RAI or RAW. There is a very clear list of what a rigger can run on Drones and RCCs on p269.

As for my opinion on it. I do think a runner will need to be mindful of the Matrix, but not irrationally paranoid of it.

No such thing as perfect security. Odds are radio scanners, won't pick up devices slaved to a decker's deck assuming he's half decent at his job. And if the decker wins, the radio scanner sees nothing. I don't see any indication that it should somehow magically know that there are devices running silent, so it should just be ignored. However, maybe we're doing a social call with our Face, and they need an RFID tag which he doesn't have. Well, then we'll need our decker to hack the scanner and hit it with an edit command or spoof to give the false positive for our Face's disguise to stay intact. That might require our deck to get access to a maglock or security cam, and hard line in to to mark the Host. And once the host is marked, the decker won't need to stay hardlined. He can still hack in AR and wirelessly connect to the host. nothing in the rules that say hosts can only be accessed through hard connections, and its not like your mark on the host is going to go anywhere unless the host reboots for some reason.

Umm...this "axe murder them in their sleep" thing doesn't already happen in your games? I'm sorry, but I have a very hard time imagining a mega security team simply pulling up to their property line with a "Aw-shucks! Those crazy Shadowrunners done got us again!?! Time to pack it in boys!" *shakes fist at the shrinking tail lights* "Curse you, Reed Richa, err...Shadowrunners!!"

No, the megas call their plainclothes HTR team once they find and fix the 'runners and axe murder those punkass little bitches. Mount their heads on spikes in the front lawn and then hit up all the 'runner boards with trideo footage of them being brutally prison-sexed before they get their heads chopped off with a strongish message like, "This was the last 'runner team that fucked with Ares. Fuck us? No, FUCK YOU! Will your head be in a spike next?" Runners in a deep, dark hole but you find who they were? Snipe their mother. Gang rape their lover to death. Frag their cat. Tear their whole fucking world down so that people that they contact will turn them in or their whole family is slaughtered and still wave some reward at them as a great carrot.

Congratulations, your game is unplayable.

A Mega Corp would never do that, because Mega Corps aren't idiots. If they kill every runner that is able to actually do their job, they wouldn't be able to hire them later to do the exact same thing that happened to them to their competitors. Its just business. Having runs happen against them is just par for the course. This isn't to say that an exec who's project just got defunded because the runner team stole his prototype McGuffin; wouldn't try to get some revenge by hiring some other Shadowrunners to kill the ones that cost him his bonus. But it does mean that Damien Knight or the Board of Executives aren't going to know or care who those runners are and won't waste corporate funds to simply get revenge.

Don't shoot the messenger. Or in this case, don't shoot the deniable assets.

When the Corps get hit, they don't really care about the Runners who did it (unless the Runners gave them a reason to - like playing golf with the heads of CorpSec guards and pissing on the executive carpet). They're far more interested in getting the guy who hired the Runners - which is why if you bother to track the Runners down at all, it's only so they can lead you to their Johnson and maybe even kill/capture the bugger for you.

Sure, you threaten them a little. You have a stronger bargaining position if you play a little "Good Corp, Bad Corp" first. You tie them to a chair, you have your thugs rough them up a bit, you rattle off their misdeeds, you tally up their crimes, you explain just how much Bad Trouble™ they are in, and finally you point a gun at their heads, then pause as if to consider. They sweat it out while you "make up your mind", and of course you show them "mercy" - not too much, of course, but you definitely make them an offer they can't refuse.

Now you've got the team who hit you doing you a favor. If they succeed, you win. If they die in the attempt, you lose nothing. But it's actually in your best interest to bankroll them a bit, increasing the odds of success. Sure, you could go shop around for other Runners, but these ones are already under your thumb, which means they'll work for a discount. Plus, you already know they are competant, because they proved as much against your own forces. Treat them well, let them do the job, and then give them the right mix of carrot and stick to keep them working for you in the future, and not working for the competition.

~Umi

No, it isn't. It's saying that taking the opportunity to permanently remove an opponent (killing him) is better than taking the opportunity to hamper the opponent's performance (hacking his smartlink).

My Saturday night game actually had a bit of combat this last night. It lasted all of one turn before three of the five runners in the team had incapacitated four Russian thugs. One thug was on the edge of life (1P remaining in his damage track) after taking a punch from a troll, another completely passed out (stunbolt spell, single shot), one nutted by an ork, and one completely intimidated into surrendering after glitching on a dodge and dropping his SMG while avoiding said troll and ork and watching his buddies get leveled like wheat by a scythe.

I welcome SR5 theorycrafting to what a hacker or technomancer (with no readied sprites), in AR, could do in a single combat turn before the fight is over.

deus took over SCIRE because the whole thing was hardwired to him. he was *designed* to run the system, and was hooked up to the whole archology. of *course* he was able to take it all over. there were even specific rules for having a cable to your drones if you wanted to go there, btw, so that *gasp* your drones couldn't be hacked wirelessly! (shock! horror!)

almost as if once upon a time, the assumption was that you weren't too stupid to take precautions when you enter a zone where you are at the mercy of a superior foe, and close off your damned vulnerabilities so you don't get wrecked.

the thing is, when dealing with shadowrunners, in the matrix at least, the amount of time between "nobody even knows i'm here" and "facing half a dozen security hackers/spiders" can be a couple of seconds or less. in the meatworld, they have to actually send in a physical team that takes time. sure, you can send in a spirit pretty quick (2 IPs to be in the area once sent, if they have a metaplanar shortcut - and if they don't, well, good luck with that because you gotta get them through all the wards and stuff you use to keep spirits out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ), but there's a reason security almost always incorporates humans, and that's because humans are better at doing what their corporate masters want them to do. for example, a fire elemental is very handy in a fight, but it's not likely to know that you absolutely do not risk taking a shot when your most important researcher is being used as a hostage, and likely isn't too worried about fighting next to that giant tank of flammable chemicals...)

Just an aside as I've seen several people mention it as their go to example.

Cybereyes.

Should never get bricked by a hacker.

The eyes have NO wireless functionality. There is no benefit to having them Wireless enabled. Not in a 'the risks outweigh the benefits' kind of way but in a 'it's all stick no carrot' kind of way.

Smartguns, your glasses with visual enhancement, earbuds with audio enhancement, Wired reflexes+Reaction enhancers are the things that you might actually have turned wireless enabled. Of those only the Wired+Reaction would be crippling to get bricked and their bonus isn't that useful in my eyes anyway - really expensive in both money and essence to make real use of.

Technically, cybereyes DO have wireless functionality.

Implanted Smartlinks. Unless you have a Datajack which is wired directly into your smartgun, the only way your eyes can communicate with your gun is via wireless. The same also applies to transmitting visual data to a standard cybereye Image Link.

Even with wired connections, if your Smartgun is wireless enabled, your eyes are vulnerable. Ditto for connecting to a commlink which is wireless enabled and sending a video feed to your eyes. If your cybereyes are receiving data from a device which is communicating with the Matrix, your eyes can be bricked.

Pretty friggin' stupid, neh?

So if you want to use a Wireless Enabled smartlink for that fancy Wireless bonus, don't stick the smartlink in your cybereyes - stick it in a pair of glasses or goggles or some other external device that you can just stop using if it gets bricked. Either that or learn to enjoy electrical fires inside your skull.

~Umi

Discussing Wireless bonuses is getting a bit off topic again. I was hoping to avoid making this yet another thread about how silly wireless bonuses are. For better or worse, they exist in 5th edition. I personally stand by my opinion that they were a good idea (risk for reward) that was poorly executed. My hope when starting this thread was to really nail down how much of a threat it is to have a few of them on, and what reasonable actions a Shadowrun team could take to allow their non-cyberdecked characters to keep some of them.

Back to wireless signal scanners: Having had a couple of days to dwell on it, I'm backing off on some of my rebuttals to Jaid and other's posts on the dangers of wireless devices on a run in terms of detection.

Before I go any further, I want stress that I'm not trying to make a rules as intended argument so much as a rules as written argument. I can't claim to know how the game developers expected this to play out, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's not how the rules imply it should work out. I guess I'm trying to find out if it's still reasonably playable.

A wireless signal scanner by itself is a fairly unintelligent bit of gear. It either spots & locates devices or doesn't. It's a helpful tool to carry around in a handheld sensor, but it has it's limits. What is clear is that a scanner that passes that information on to it's operator. If you use the device, you see the icons. That's it's primary purpose: to detect hidden or concealed devices for you.

If you integrate such a device into a Host system WAN, then it's therefore logically passing those spotted icons onto the Spider running the host. He can't "see" the icons directly from inside the host because the rules on interacting with icons outside a host from inside a host (and the reverse) are very clear.
BUT, it's also fairly clear that the device icon for the signal scanner itself, and therefore all the information the scanner is providing, is accessible because it's icon is in the host with the spider. In much the same way I expect all the security feeds from cameras can be integrated into a virtual bank of images, I suspect all the icon spotting information could be combined into a 3d display virtual display. Throw in a Mapsoft with a wireframe of the building, and it should be possible to map the movements of all detected device icons within the coverage of you scanners directly onto the a VR map of the building.

The sensor rules make Signal Scanners as cheap as any other sensor, as they all have the same price per rating, but still more expensive than a simple camera (which expressly includes a microphone as well.) A rating 1 camera $100, and doesn't need a housing. If all you want to do is look at images of a hallway to see who is there, a rating 1 works fine. An RFID housed rating 1 Signal Scanner isn't much more expensive at $140, but to get much quality out of your signal scanners you need higher ratings. An RFID sensor tag can hold a rating 2 sensor, but a $100 wall mounted sensor housing can hold rating 3 for $550 total. I suspect anything past this point is prohibitively expensive for full facility coverage, and would only be seen at security checkpoints, were smart runners will turn off their wireless if passing through, or simply avoid by breaking in somewhere else.

So the first question is how effective are these devices? The rules for sensors seem a little messy and I haven't found details for self-opperating/unattended sensors. (let me know if I missed them, things are scattered throughout the book after all.)
Signal Scanners are operated with Electronic Warfare + Logic [Sensor Rating] as per Bug Scanners on page 440. With their wireless on (which is assumed for this security setup) they can use the sensor rating instead of user's skill. While not expressly stated, I suspect you could leave this "autopilot" on continuously, but would doing so still provide you Logic or would the device only be throwing it's rating in dice? I'm not sure, but as this is an active dice pool, not a defensive one like firewalls, I lean toward no Logic unless you are using the device and interacting with it. In my opinion that means:
A character using the scanner throws his Electronics Warfare + Logic [Scanner Rating]
A character operating the device with it's "wireless bonus" throws Scanner Rating + Logic [Scanner Rating]
A device set to run by itself throws just Scanner Rating [Scanner Rating]

Would a network of a dozen or so of these things tied into the Host system count as being operated directly by the Spider? My opinion is no. They are separate devices. The spider could pick one and use his attributes & skills with it, in much the same way he could pick a camera feed and analyze the image, but I don't think you can argue that the spider is continuously using his abilities through the entire network at once. Agent programs lack the Electronics Warfare skill, so they aren't able to do so either.
That means, again in my opinion, unless there is an operator/spider actively suspicions enough to run a signal check through a specific sensor, the sensors are only throwing 3 dice each time a hidden device is brought near them.
It's also unclear if the device gets to keep throwing to detect an icon in it's radius, or if it gets the attempt only when the device enters it's radius. If the second, does it lose 1 die from it's pool on each subsequent attempts, thus making less likely? How often does it get to make an attempt considering it has no initiative? Again, the book seems to lack these details, but I'd go with one check per device each time the device is brought within 20m of the scanner.

This is resisted with Logic + Sleaze (if any). For the Decker, this isn't much of an issue. The Archtype Decker we are using for this example would have about 11 dice vs 3 to hide their deck and any gear slaved to the deck.

For the purposes of our example, the Sammy has slaved their wireless gear to a Rating 6 Commlink owned by the Decker as well. That means the street sam's gear gets 6 (decker's logic) dice vs the scanner's 3 if it's in hidden mode. Another reason to have a High Logic for deckers it seems.

You can further try to conceal issues with the Wrapper program, which is the software equivalent of putting on a disguise before walking in front of a security camera. If the device is spotted, it will look like and report back to the Spider what ever the icon is set to look like. There is sadly no dice roll associated with this, so it's not clear how good it is at fooling someone. As other posters have noted: Icon unexpectedly showing up in the building, and move around on their own, is suspicious, and at least worthy of sending a drone or guard to check out.

Another bad thing here is that there is no alert to the character that their icon has been spotted. You probably don't know that your smartgun (currently wrapped to look like a corp issued commlink) has been detected and that a drone or guard is on the way to check it out until that drone or guard shows up.

At this point, my opinion is that running with wireless gear is a risk (which I think it should be), but not a death sentence with a little planning. There is no reason to run with all of your gear's wireless bonuses turned on at all time, but it might be worth having a few things turned on, at least in short amounts of time while you need them. The B&E Expert might want the full bonus from their chameleon coat and may temporarily turn on their Autopicker's bonuses when dealing with the rare keylocked desk drawer, etc. The fewer icons you have running the fewer chances the signal scanners have to pick them up. A single candy bar wrapper showing up for a minute is less suspicious then a half dozen office chairs moving around the floor. If the entire team can limit their wireless devices to just a handful of icons, it might be possible to slave them to the Decker's deck. This would be particularly helpful to icons that you'd want on most of the time, like the B&E's chameleon suit, or the rigger's bug drone the team is using to scout and spot guards/drones/cameras/etc.

Unfortunately, the use of hidden icons has a draw back in the "detect number of hidden icons" matrix perception action. While the spider can't be checking these things himself unless he is on site and out of the host, it does appear possible to run an Agent program on a drone, and set it to continuously look for the number of hidden icon, then try to spot those icons if any are found. Hidden icons are inherently a problem and would raise alerts to the spider. Page 269: "A drone has a number of slots to use for autosofts and cyberprograms equal to half its Device Rating, rounded up." Page 269 also includes a side bar "list of handy programs for the savvy rigger and their basic function," but does not seem to explicitly limit riggers to using those cyberprograms. The list includes a number of both legal and illegal cyberprograms but leaves out obvious things like Browse or Edit, as it seems to specifically cover programs that can directly aid or defend riggers and their drones. In theory a rigger can run any cyberprogram they want, but they won't get much use out of many of them as their RCC or Drone lacks Attack and Sleaze ratings. Running Decryption on an RCC gives a +1 bonus to a stat the RCC doesn't have, is therefore wasted. Running an Agent on an RCC or drone limits the agent to only the legal matrix actions, but it's still enough to make matrix perception rolls. Intended or not, this setup seems RAW and as reasonable as anything else in a game with dragons and cyberspace. Note that while the agent can send a message to the Spider indicating it's detected hidden icons, or even reporting what icon's it's analyzed, it can't share this spotting information with the Spider/Host/IC. It's it's own persona operating outside the Host.

Countering the Drone/Agent combo requires hacking the drone. It's vulnerable because for the agent to do it's job of inspecting the grid-space representing the facility it has to be on the grid, and thus not in the Host. With a range of 100meters it may be possible to do this without getting to close to the 20m signal scanners, but if you know the agent is there, you could simply go looking for it from beyond that range. Hack it, and alter the agent's instructions so it stops looking for hidden icons, and leave it to go about it's rounds. You can even reboot your deck afterwords to clear your OS before the "real" part of the run gets going.

I think the number of threads which end up going back to the absurdity of wireless bonuses (at least in their current form) is indicative of just how much of a problem they really are for many, many people.


Except there're these things called Errata and Splat Books, and bad or broken rules are meant to be altered or even removed outright if they prove highly problematic and unpopular. It's not just a done deal and nothing can be done about it - people hate this rule, and they're going to keep complaining until it gets fixed. That doesn't necessarily mean remove the concept entirely, but it does mean make it actually make sense and actually perform the role it was intended to perform.

~Umi

Well this thread has gotten pretty off-topic with another 'wireless suckz0rz debate', but I'd like to try to address the original question.

Leaving aside the signal scanner / drone-agent / box of RFID tags debate (I don't think any of these RAI are actually supposed to be real security measures, though understand that RAW leaves all of these potentially open), I'd like to dive into what happens once a Street Sam is actually spotted. If a decker comes out on to the grid, I would first like to argue that identifying a Running Silent device without actually seeing it is more tricky than you're giving it credit for. For example, let's say there's 2 Street Sam's in the party and they're both carrying Ingram Smartguns and each have an Ingram Smartgun back-up in their pack. That's 4 Ingram Smartguns in a very close vicinity. I see no way by RAW for the decker to clarify which of those guns corresponds to which icon he's looking for. If he sees a camera image of them and knows their approximate physical location, I'd let him narrow his search to 'Ingram Smartguns Running Silent in the East Wing', and he could spot those 4 icons, but he'd have no idea which is which. I'd say he would have to choose randomly which to hack and might hack one of the back-up guns in someone's pack.

But that issue isn't too bad. Let's say he doesn't care about guns and he wants to hack some Wired Reflexes (no 'back-ups' there).



Let's assume this is the case. The decker also gains +2 for Hot-Sim, but that's cancelled out by -2 for the Sammy being on a public grid. That's a dice pool of 12 vs. 10 (the Decker's 4 Intuition and 6 Firewall from Commlink). You are correct that this is a tough battle for the decker, but that's a 53% chance of scoring at least 1 Net Hit. Let's say he's smart and hacks the Wired Reflexes once before attacking. If the Hack is successful, then a one-shot to the Wired Reflexes is very doable. Assume the corp decker has a pretty good deck with a high rating of 6. With Decryption (+1 Attack) and Hammer (+2 Damage), he's got a Base DV of 9. On top of that, if he's running Mugger, his 1 mark will add 3 more damage for a base dv of 12. If he gets just one Net Hit (a successful attack), that's 13 damage.

I don't believe slaving a device gives any benefits to Damage Resistance, only defense tests, which are expressly different from Damage Resistance tests. So the Reflexes don't get to use the Commlink's Device Rating/Firewall for Damage Resistance, only their Device Rating 2. This has no hope of preventing a one-shot against 13 damage. So, a one-shot is a very real threat IF the attacker gets a mark first and IF the attacker beats the defender in their attack with relatively close dice pools. Of course, once this happens, the Sammy will immediately flip all of his gear to Wireless OFF, so while there are some risks to running Wireless ON I don't think they remotely out-weight the benefit. Even with the potential for a one-shot hack of 1 of your devices, the ability to instantly flip all of your devices to Wireless OFF means you're foolish not to utilize their Wireless benefits.

double post

That's what you get for posting without wireless enabled (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

+1

~Umi

an extra 2 dice to your firearms pool is not worth the risk of getting blinded.
an extra 3 points to your reaction is slightly more worthwhile, but still not worth the risk of losing 5 points of reaction and 2 initiative dice (especially if your GM reads the bricking rules and doesn't interpret them to mean something different from what they say, which would likely make that also paralyze you and inflict a great deal of internal damage).

and actually, you can lose two devices at once, per hacker who's working you over. as i pointed out, it's very good odds that in case of emergency, the facility you're in can bring in at least two hackers in addition to the on-duty hacker (assuming that a shift is not 12+ hours... if that is the presumed shift duration, you're still looking at two hackers total, each of which can still fork to brick two devices at once).

it also gets a heck of a lot worse depending on how liberal your GM is with data bombs. i mean, realistically, you *should* be able to detonate them remotely, but there's nothing that says they are. if you can, then it's quite possible that a hacker could spend several IPs setting up, and then suddenly brick every device you had wireless enabled on all at once.

@Blackjaw

Ownership is next to undefined in the core rules. And the way I read it, you cannot slave things that you do not have ownership of. However, that's neither here nor there. So much about such critical rules is undefined. What a mess. Hardy's trademark handiwork.


So are corporate goons meant for threat response (elite CorpSec goon, p.284). You know, the people runners regularily kill (unlike deckers, who are unlikely to be killed, especially if they swoop in as a team, alpha the opposing decker's deck, and then go to town on anything wireless the taregts carry). Such an attack by a team of maybe 3 deckers (investing maybe 600 K in three decks, with a three-shift rotation of deckers and ownership transfer as per shift transfer) would cost as much as half a decent HTR team, and greatly increase any security operation's effectiveness. I cannot see why that's more expensive than throwing 250K per goon soldiers into the grinder.


Not really, all they need is a sitrep, which can be automated from agents or sensors in the facility.

@Deathstrobe

VEERYTHING in the arcology was WIRED to the SCIRE. With WIRES. that's how it worked. The thing was a CCSS nightmare. If it hadn't been, DEUS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED AS IT DID. Because, precisely, everybody could just wireless-off their stuff and the AI could sit in the Matrix and sulk.


Not by the way the piece on SecSpiders is worded. Note the use of "never". This means Exterritoriality means nothing for these guys. They can just go about their business wherever and ignore laws. Which is what I referenced and you should have read.


Because we're talking about two different things. I am talking about the "runners tgot macguffin, ambush!" encounter that's in every other published SR adventure, you are talking about ... I don't really know. In my scenario, they would not hit the runners because they want to pose off, but because the runners have the MacGuffin and they want it back. They could just attack perceived runners in the same vein the US military attacks possible terrorists, but they'd have to identify a target first, and the error margin, going by American operations, would be massive. Wanton killing in your own markets is bad for business in the long run, though, and since SR megacorps do not operate primarily on value based management, that's the view the SR megas take.


"Riggers can utilize a number of cyberprograms that deckers usually use. Programs purchased for use on an RCC cannot be used in a cyberdeck and vice versa. As with decks, RCCs cannot run more than one type of program of the same type, even if you rename it. Here’s a list of handy programs for the savvy rigger and their basic function."

You and I have a different idea of 'very clear'.


Costing him how many actions?


RAI or RAW?

That is an idea which you have invented yourself, not one which is contained anywhere in the rules. The rules do have their issues as written, but you cannot fault them for extra-textual things you're putting on top of them.



Competent deckers are also rare, and there's not a damn thing that can be done about that. And in SR5's Matrix, you can't get by hoping for good luck if you're not good enough; you've got to have the skill and you've got to have the brains.

I suppose you have a writeup of the definition of ownership to back this up?

I suppose you have some text linking slaving and ownership? Because absent that, I don't need that definition; you cannot provide evidence for your reading, because your reading is extra-textual.

The for the record, the example Spider I have been using is the "ELITE CORPORATE SECURITY LIEUTENANT" on page 384. Using both Decryption and Hammer his base damage could be as high as 11, but he lacks the mugger program. I think I quoted 8 before from someone else's post without verifying the math, and it probably lacked the software boosts. As an "Elite Rating 5 Lieutenant" his stats and gear may be a bit on the high end for the average facility, but there weren't any lower end spiders in the NPC section to use instead, and I wanted a set base of stats for this discussion.

As for the 12 dice pool, you're assuming that the off-site night shift Spider is within 1km of the facility. I suspect he's not that close, which means with only his Datajack for Noise Reduction, he's probably taking at least a -2 distance noise penalty, and possibly more, if he tried to do anything on the Gridspace instead of in the host. I figured 10 dice was a reasonable value, but it could be as high as 12, and is 14 if he's attacking a Decker in his host. This is why onsite deckers are more effective than remote ones, but it also means the shadowrun team can shoot them and steal their deck, which costs half a million dollars new. Honestly, if I was pulling a run a facility where the spider has such a nice bit of hardware, I'd be tempted to run a trace on him, and if he was just 1km away, he might be worth visiting later expressly to collect his nice deck.

As for marking the sam first, to get bonus damage on a dataspike, keep in mind that marking the Sam's gear for extra damage is also a dice pool of 8-12, depending on distance noise, vs 10 on defense. If he does so with a Brute force, he's alerting the sam to the attack if he succeeds. If he does so with Hack on the Fly, he risks being spotted and marked if he fails. Either way there is about a 50% chance that taking the time to mark the target will alert them to the hack attempt, giving them a chance to turn off their wireless.

I thought damage resistance tests were a kind of a defense test, but if what you say is true, it very much changes my mind about the safety of devices from enemy hackers/spiders, as it makes it much more likely that a device can be bricked in one average attack instead of two to three average attacks. What are the chances the book clarifies this?

Page 358, PANs & WANs says: "When configured in this way, every device uses the Rating of the Master instead of its own when doing any sort of test." This particular line is a bit of a mess, as it would mean that a Commlink slaved to a Deck suddenly gets to use Attack and Sleaze ratings... which shouldn't work. Page 233 says the benefits of a PAN are only for Defense Tests. Defense test are never explicitly defined any more than Damage Tests are. Is a Damage Test a Defense against Damage?


You and I have a different interpretations of how corp facilities handle their security. I've seen your argument that the average corp facility should have multiple spiders on hand at all times and the ability to call in more quickly at a moment's notice. I disagree.

First of all, the multiple Spider and rapid on call decker squads are not described or implied in the book, nor are budgets for facilities that gives anyone the authority to claim it's a reasonable expenditure.

To my view, which is to say my opinion, corps are not likely to spend that kind of resources on most of the facilities. A corp has thousands of facilities and if each of them is spending the kind of money you're talking about on matrix security, that's a MASSIVE outlay of cash on something that doesn't contribute to the bottom line. A good deck and someone trained to use is large expense, far more than a security guard, on par with an attack helicopter. Corporations exist to make money, not be secure. They won't throw any more money at an issue then they can justify, and often times far less than they probably should. If a facility isn't getting attacked regularly, I doubt the exec in charge of it or the his regional boss, or the accounting department, etc is going to justify laying out so much money just for matrix protection. It's the same reason why even the "elite" corporate security guards on page 384 have rating 4 commlinks instead of rating 6. Hell, even the elite special forces only have rating 5 commlinks.

I suspect your average corp facility, which I define as one not working on a highly advanced project, black book project, or military gear, might have 1 spider on duty during the business day, possibly even physically in the building. He'd be running matrix security during the hectic day as people come and go, files move around, and deliveries and visitors show up. He might possibly acting as a kind of system admin as well, helping to deal with file sharing issues, etc within the Host.
Outside standard business hours, the building and host is much less active. I suspect instead of paying a small army of people to sit around waiting for a possible shadowrunner incursion (which I don't think happen to a particular facility more than one every few years at the most), the corps have a single on-call spider assigned to a group of hosts in their region or division of their particular corporate subsidiary, spending a portion of his shift in each host, checking in on things and making sure there is no evidence of a hack or break in, but mostly relying on the system's impressive firewall, the active Patrol IC, and the physical security measures in the facility itself. A single spider maintaining the status quo in 6 sites is a lot cheaper than 1-2 in each site with 6 more on call at all times, and in my (real life) experience, most corporations pick cheaper over efficient 9 times out of 10, especially when dealing with divisions that don't directly contribute to the bottom line, and deal with risk of possible future bad things vs spending a lot of money now and maintaining a force of well paid people that do very little most of the time (as they are waiting to defend.) Security doesn't produce products or make sales, so most facilities would throw "enough" money at it to be reasonably secure, not as much money as it takes to be completely secure.
That means the Spider may not even be in the Host when the players arrive, and likely wouldn't show up unless an alert is trigger, although he could get their quickly. It also means he's basically alone, and that even if he did have a friend to call in, it's probably a spider from another series of facilities farther away, and thus racking up larger noise penalties... or he's got to wake up one of the day shift spiders, which means it may be minutes or longer before they show up.
Higher security facilities are much more likely to have on hand spiders, 24 hours a day, and possibly access to multiple hackers, even if some of them are just on-call backup.
I think this is basically how matrix security was defined in 4th edition, and it matches the security descriptions of Border crossing hosts in the 5th edition Coyotes book, where only Very Hard border crossing rate an active Spider in the system most of the time.