OK everyone, quick question for you: If you have a datajack do you need to have wireless on to get the +2 dice pool bonus? I mean it should be simple for the gun to be hooked up via a data cable, but reading it seems that you have to connect to the Matrix to get that +2.

Yes, you do, because smartlinks are worth shit without weather reports in SR5, apparently. #bestgamedesign

Can I say again that the wireless bonuses in SR 5 are some of the dumbest pieces of drek I have EVER heard of.

Not saying that there couldn't be improvements made, but at least some of that mechanic was designed to make it so that hacking has at least some purpose in the middle of a firefight. Giving some equipment extra bonuses that depend on wireless connectivity gives an extra mechanic for bonuses that comes with the inherent drawback of being vulnerable to hacking.

And the requirement for the wireless doesn't necessarily have to be just about up-to-date weather, it could also be factoring in the mesh-network computing that is available through the matrix. Environmental effects is just one feature related to that.

There are two problems with that though.

1) They made Hacking simple enough that many characters should probably run with Wireless Off all the time.

2) They made defense against Hacking difficult enough that many characters should probably run with Wireless Off all the time.

Think about it from a pen tester point of view: imagine your character (or choose someone elses' if you like) walking down the street. What defense does s/he really have against a "script kiddie" with a Radio Shack PCD-500 and a dice pool of 6ish? (Not to mention a more geared out and / or skilled hacker?)

Even my tech savvy (device rating 6 commlink with a Intuition of 4) character here can be pwned by said script kiddie. Fairly easily. Same character has sweet f- all he can do to improve that defense other than raise Intuition a couple of points, and buy a one rating higher commlink. And at that point, he is still fairly vulnerable to "random is random" results.

WRF? I mean that seriously, WTF? If I have a street sam with an Internal Router, I can get the 2 dice bonus without the "mesh-network computing" bovine exhaust. So if you don't need the network for that, then why does someone need the network if they DON'T have the router?

As it needs weather reports, smartlink does NOT convey bonuses via internal router (p. 421 Core, "Your Ares Alpha can’t auto-adjust for the wind direction and speed if it can’t download local up-to-the-second weather conditions").


The fun part is that shooting enemies, surprisingly enough, still makes more sense than hacking their stuff, even if you assume the team decker is not super busy trying to prevent security spiders from hacking team members (which is a logical consequence of making hacking sorta viable in a firefight, or, as Core, p. 421, puts it, "Even better, defending against threats from the Matrix is part of your team hacker’s job. If she’s not available, you might occasionally want to turn wireless off."). Neither team decker nor security spider need to be physically present for this; in fact, in either case, physical presence here is, given the boni full VR conveys, a seriously stupid idea. But yeah, the decker now has something viable to do in a firefight all right. Hopefully the combat characters have, too.

Small nitpick: *smartlink does NOT convey bonus dice...

You still get the accuracy bonus, because that isn't listed under Wireless Bonus.

Well yeah, that is so shitty I don't even count it as a bonus. Evidently, nobody in the rules writers' team had the slightest idea of stochastics - unless we're talking skills of 10+, maximized attributes, and for some reason super low-accuracy weapons, it's a one-in-100.000 roll where it actually helps. For all intents and purposes this is a non-bonus.

However, their explicit statement was to make a smartlink "less of a must-have". This speaks of not a failure to grasp the inherent uselessness of this "bonus", but intent. In that spirit, they designed Prototype Transhuman, especially with regards to Awakened characters ... #magerun

The worst is they could probably have rendered things hackable without them having to be connected to the wireless… They chose the lamest possible way here if they really wanted the hacker to be able to hack all the time…

Hilarious that smartguns need this, especially if you happen to be inside a warehouse or large garage where you can't get reports from someplace like weather.com. Like that site's gonna know what the local HVAC system's doing. Makes me wonder what happened to the minor atmospheric sensors smartguns used to have. You know, the one in the gun that actually let it know wind direction and speed as you aimed at your target? Maybe it was too powerful.
Sure, but you'll be preachin' to the choir and the powers that be are tone deaf.
I still find it hilarious that a wireless device Magically receives your Intuition attribute as a bonus to defense by the virtue of you having it in your pocket and doing nothing else. Not like a character would ever have a chance to do anything against a cyber attack as by the time you pull your poor commlink out of your pocket it'll already be a brick, and if it were really due to "user settings" then it should receive your Intuition at all times, even if you happen to be in Seattle and your commlink's down around in Cape Horn.

I guess that depends on your definition of shitty.

I just looked over the Run & Gun firearm tables and didn't see too many firearms with an accuracy higher then 5 without smartlink. Those that I did see were either Light Pistols, or Forbidden availability. At a Limit of 5, you should be reliably hitting that wall at about a pool of 15, and that isn't even a "good" pool for a starting character to some people.

I will grant you it is pretty cheap and easy to raise that accuracy through other means. But player characters should never be relying on a custom weapon 100% of the time. There are too many situations where "stock" should be expected.

EDITed to add:


That is something else I could rant about entirely.
I'll keep it short by saying that "you should realize that you made hacking too easy when you have to give a device a defense bonus you don't give a character in a firefight. Namely a defense against an unknown attack."

If I actually had to play in an SR5 game (presumably alcohol would be involved), I'd simply have no cyberware and no wireless devices outside of a purse full of cheap, disposable commlinks. Any wireless device is such a liability in SR5 that the only possible solution is to "Just Say No!" to all of them outside of an (easy to replace) commlink, as even that will probably get bricked a few times a day, so you'll need to budget for that.

In SR4, where things are more sane, my implant commlink and my smartlinked Ares Predator are both Signal 0; hacking is only possible in mutual Signal range, and if a hacker is actually within 3 meters of me I can simply slap them upside the head.

Having played Shadowrun 5 since it came out, I have NEVER had a character with Wireless active devices, EVER, on a run. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
Just asking to get yourself killed otherwise.

Of course it was. This nerf is a CGL writer getting his pet hates "fixed". And of course it doesn't make a bit of sense in-game. In-game logic should never stand in the way of superior game design, after all.


Because this is fun. Unless you are (quoting Devon Oraz here) retarded, you clearly have to see that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)


15 dice without smartlink boni? That's adept territory. Edgemonkeys using Edge operate without Limit anyway so they don't count. And even then, we're talking about one in about 30 rolls - not unlikely but isn't gonna help you too often. Not a must-have or even a worthwhile investment, considering the baggage it comes with. Just up your accuracy by other means that don't make you unable to operate silently.


Shadowrun 5 - the Cyberpunk RPG where playing a cyberpunk is asking to get yourself killed. #somuchwinning

(EDITed out some extraneous quoting that escaped my once over before posting.)

Not hardly.

6 Attribute, 6 Skill, 2 Specialization, 1 Take Aim (which you should probably be doing every IP anyway to break cumulative recoil).

15 Dice, no smartlink, no adept.



Careful. Your zealotry is showing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) SR4 has its mechanical issues as well*. I don't have the rules handy to look up which ones had me scratching my head, but they are there.

*To be fair, all editions have had mechanical issue big enough to drive quarry sized dump trucks through.

Hell, I wasn't aware I hiding it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

SR4 isn't perfect - this is why I'm in the midst of a major house rules document overhaul that has taken a long time to assemble (I'm about 2/3rds done now); it will be posted here when complete. But I regard it as at least being fixable, and this puts it light-years ahead of SR5, which is just completely FUBAR.

I'm waiting to see what Patrick Goodman and the Volunteers (sounds like a pop group) do with it after their errata sweeps. Of course, that still requires CGL to sign off on all of the fixes...

I'm just fearful that even if it gets finished before 6th edition, that it still won't be in my lifetime. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

All game systems do to an extent. SR5, though, is so all over the place and written with so little coherence and fitting so badly it does quite stand out.


And you should improve your firearm enough to boost accuracy to some 7 get some RC (to deal with cumulative recoil because in SR, who shoots first usually wins), and you'll probably use illegal firearms because guess what, if you shoot people the legality of the gun you shoot them with isn't your biggest problem. Your point being?

Look. It is a crappy bonus. It isn't gonna help you a lot, and a lot less than +2 dice will. Can we agree on that?

There's your problem right there.

In a gunfight that lasts seconds, a decker should be worrying about getting their head down or shooting back, not booting up their deck.

The issue is bad rules in service to bad game design.

Is it even worth having a smartlink anymore? I mean looking at the bonuses you gain for the liability of running wireless, you'd be stupid to have a smartlink.



Titan, you're saying that to get get 15 dice you have to have the max Agility a human can get without augmentation (simple to do I admit), max skill for the type of weapon (not so simple), and a specialization (expensive as frak). This is not a small investment.

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***EDIT***

Considering that there are still Sammies running around with the old induction pad smartguns, and how those smartguns don't need wireless or a data cable, how much Essence do you think it would to install one of those pads if you have a cybernetic smartlink installed in your eyes?

The German 2050 has old school SR 5 rules for non-wireless smartlink:

0,5 Esssence, 2500 ¥
That includes the subdermal induction pad. As effect you gain the +2 accuracy and the ability to use one aim action to both gain +1 dice and +1 accuracy

I'll confess something: I actually think it could be fun that your cyberware could get hacked, or at least heavily jammed. You can probably balance it out so that it's not that likely, but that you still have to be careful that you can deactivate it or protect it.

The problem with matrix bonus is suspension of disbelief for me. This is just too ridiculous to be believed, and they went with terrible arguments to justify it, making it less believable every time… Like your smartlink would fucking need to know weather conditions to help you out… I mean it's fucking linked to the brain of an actual shooter who can estimate those stuff in real time…

I remember reading that. The question I have is this: Everyone knows that 'Runners would never run with Wireless on and the data cables would be an absolute pain in the hoop. If you have the cyberware smartlink already installed in your eyes, how much do you think it would cost to have a just the induction pad installed in your hand?

I know I'm being a little bitch about this (and for that I apologize), but as written, Smartlinks are absolutely worthless. If you drop your gun (or worse it gets destroyed) it would take more than one action for you to plug in your other gun. I was thinking that an enterprising Street Doc would find a way to use the induction pad in conjuction with the cyberware in your eyes, bypassing the need for wireless to do things like switch fire modes, quick reload, etc, etc. It would be a way of having skinlink back in, but it would be a dedicated piece of cyberware to hook up to smartguns.

If you don't want to bother with connecting wires you can just use the mod rules from Datatrails and hardwire an Induction Receiver module to a cyberhand or a VR glove that you connect through a discreet wire up your sleeve with one of your data jacks.

It's a neat feature to have in any case - especially if you have an agent program on a cheap deck or other hack-enabled device: Just put your hand on the lock you want to have opened for a direct connection.

Oh, but in general play I don't have any problems with my gear being hacked: A comlink with an agent in your PAN + the Diagnostics app charged to search for MARKs and/or data spike attacks, enabled to shut wireless off for all your devices usually allows you to be quite secure in your everyday dealings. (One reason the Nixdorf Sekretär is such a great comlink to have in your PAN)