is this in chargen or something? if not, you're presumably a cyberadept (the only stream found in the main rulebook). which means you have access to crack, fault, data, machine, and courier sprites.

so then, depending on how you intend to play... you've indicated an intention to pretty much ditch cybercombat for now. to that end, you may wish to consider the fault sprite (your best choice for cybercombat, unless you've got the right echo chosen to have tank or paladin sprites). it also happens to be one of the two areas where CF rating (which is determined by sprite rating) is most important. the other area is controlling drones. sprite rating is good for replacing drone pilots(if you rule that machine sprites can do that, which makes sense but isn't explicitly indicated) and for using the command CF to remotely control a drone (which machine sprites explicitly can do). likewise, the rating of the sprite will also determine the machine sprite's autosofts. perhaps most importantly, unless you allow more than one controlling pilot (which makes sense for some setups, if you have one gunner to shoot and one pilot to drive), the rating of the machine sprite will determine how many autosofts it has. a rating 6 sprite sounds really good until you realise it only has 2 skills, and you probably want at least 3 or even 4 (targeting for appropriate gun type, maneuver for appropriate drone type, defense, and clearsight are all fairly important).

personally, because the specialisation is unlikely to make the difference between a rating 6 machine sprite and a rating 9 machine sprite, i'd be more inclined to go with fault (or, if you're planning on picking up new sprites later, you may wish to just wait). the specialisation is much more likely to allow a 1 point increase in sprite compiling/registering, and one more point is much more significant for the fault sprite. you're much more likely to want to compile any machine sprites if you can; when you're likely to need a rating 9 or 12 machine sprite with very specific CFs (targeting and maneuver are specific to a gun type and drone type), compiling it on the fly seems a better choice.

Drones are a second hand thing for me, I was playing a rigger before this and It was pretty fun..

So if I complile a level 7 machine sprite, that adds any other autosoft ratings to its pool? If so. thats cool...

Without taking on any of the streams, does that mean I can not summon a paladin or tank sprite?

My drain attributes are all equal so it didn't matter to me which drain stat I used. Other than the drain attribute, why do you take a stream?

Autosofts as used by sprites are poorly explained at best. I believe the intent is to enable a sprite to take over a drone and use its own judgement and autosofts in place of those of the Pilot, but I could be wrong.


Well, the assumption is that you have a stream; if not specifically selected, it's the cyberadept stream by default. If you explicitly decide that you don't have a stream at all, you're a wild technomancer. This is A Bad Thing. But yeah, you'll have to either take a listed stream that includes the sprites you want or ask if your GM will let you build your own custom stream. There's also an echo you can get that unlocks an additional sprite type for use, so there's that option later on if you submerge.


Sprite selection and roleplaying preferences, mainly.

On the "Threading with Icons" part, my table has always played that the Sprite must remain with an Icon, nut not necessarily the one you are percieving through. For one thing, if that was not the case how would it work with Echos like Multiprocessing that basically means the Technomancer has multiple Active Icons?

The reason we do play it like this is the following: When I Thread up my Complex Forms I am basically threading up my Personas Program Ratings. My Icons are simply representations of my Persona, so Complex Forms should be universal. If I have Stealth in one Node my Stealth shouldnt be any different in any other Node, there isn't any reason it should be. So I would say feel free to have your Sprites take up residence in your Brain Node, and have fun making them basically being immune to any attacks against them (Untill a sneaky little Technomancer gets a Trace on you. ) but it works just as well with RAW

One other thing to think about is how useless Response is for a Technomancer. It really doesn't do all that much for you at all, especially if you can get your Stealth Rating high enough that you are almost certainly never going to get into Cybercombat. Your Matrix Initiative is based entirely on your Intuition (Something I always found stupid, I think it should be Int + Resp personally) and is not affected by your Response. The only tests (that I can remember) that use Response are Reality Filter (That hardly anyone ever uses) and Combat Defence (Which hopefully you wont get engaged in very often, and if you do you have Paladin Sprites to save your ass. Get a Stream with Paladin Sprites, you will not regret it).

So you should also feel free to maybe use the Proxy Server rules from Unwired to make yourself even harder to Trace than normal. If you play with the -1 Dice every Roll on opposed tests, that extra +4 Threshold can save your life. My group uses a House Rule for Trace (We didn't like how universal it was. Having a Proxy Server up should make the Trace lead to that Proxy, not just increase the Threshold. Then you need to get access to the Proxies Access Log and run a Trace on that. Makes it slightly more Hollywood)

Oh, and I cannot remember if this is correct, but Black IC + Paladin using Castling is fun. I am fairly sure there is a dev quote that says this is OK, cant find it atm: You get engaged by Black IC with a Paladin using Castling. When that Black IC attacks you it gets redirected to the Paladin. As a Sprite the Paladin is not affected by Biofeedback. Look, now you are immune to most Black IC! Hurrah! And if you extrapolate that further, it should also mean that your connection is not jammed open, after all the entire attack was redirected to the Sprite and you took no Damage so I cant see why it would be.

EDIT: And Drones can be really, REALLY powerful in the hands of a good Technomancer. Rating 18 Command Program? Sure! Also, if you have magical healing support you might want to think about Compiling/Registering a few really high Rating Sprites. When you start running about with Rating 12 Sprites things really start to get broken. But look out for that Fading. It can, and will, kill you if you roll badly. Also fixed some spelling

Also, Sprites have an Edge attribute. Use it, abuse it! According to Unwired they also have a Resonance, cant really see why.

Technomancers worry me even more now that I have an inkling how far the rabbit-hole goes.
I can see why people are afraid of them and megacorps are paying handsomely for them.

Another little trick is having your Sprites run Drones when they are not Wireless. Sprites are at least semi-sapient, much more so than Agents are. That means that they can make decisions on the fly, without having any communication with the Technomancer.

So you take a drone and put your Machine Sprite in it. Then you give it whatever orders you want. "Follow me about and help me in Combat" is probably a good, encompassing order that only uses up one Task, maybe two on GM Fiat. Then you turn that Drones wireless off. Voila! You have an intelligent Drone that is impossible to hack/spoof. Also you might want to ask your GMs opinion on the Technomancer/Sprite connection. If you can get a Drone to be controlled by a Sprite you can have the Sprite operate the Drone, and have it be the one issueing all orders to the Drone. Normal Hackers cannot spoof commands to Sprites, so you now have a Wireless Enabled Un-Spoofable Drone. Hurrah! With a Slave connection to your Home Node it is also very, very difficult to hack the Drones Node itself.

Are not remote services more expensive? Still a good idea.
Machine sprite in EVERY medkit.
Tutor too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

BlueMax

Thats why you use Registered Sprites! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Oh yes. If you haven't figured out by now, Machine Sprites are a Technomancers best friend. They will make your friends love you so much its crazy. Rating 6 Machine Sprites sitting in a Smartlinked Gun makes Gunbunnies happy. In Vehicles makes any Rigger happy. You dont have a Medic? No worries! Machine Sprite sitting in a Medkit can do just fine.

Machine Sprite + Tutor Sprite ( to add half his rating in skill to the operator)

Ohh, my players have used Sprites plenty. With the healing rules as they are in Shadowrun, I wonder why you are registering such tiny sprites.


BlueMax

For my current table its GM enforced. I am playing in a fairly new group, and everyone else is no where near as optimized as I am. That means that if I want to have fun (without spoiling everyone elses) I have to limit myself in places. The GM herself is quite new to the system, needless to say she was worried at how far I can push my dice pools if I wanted too.

On any other table on of the first things I do is get a Mage on retainer, get a good Medkit and try and throw out a Rating 12 for my Stealth.

If someone makes a new character, have them roll a Medic. First Aid for 5 boxes THEN do Magic.

"I took 9 Fading... physical man, ZOMG help me!"
Doc yells "Shut up already" and slaps the Sprite assisted medkit rolling 26 dice and healing 5 boxes (skill limit) "Wizzer, you're up"
The mage heals 4 and suffers little to no drain.

All can be done in under 12 seconds....

BlueMax

Actually, a TM's Matrix Initiative is based on Response. TM Response = Intuition. So Matrix Initiative = Response+Intuition = Intuitionx2 (generally) for a TM.

Yes, but as written it is declared as Intuition * 2. That means artificially changing your Response (I.E through the use of Proxy Servers) should have no effect. Its silly, I personally dont like it, but that is how it is written by RAW. Remember there are ways for a Technomancer to push their Response up without changing their Intuition (Echos).

Enh, this seems like a case of RAW vs. RAI to me.


Exactly. Your reading makes Overclocking useless for boosting the Matrix Initiative stat; mine does not.

Believe me, I am much more inclined to play it as your interpretation, it is the same one I concluded. It seems more like an oversight than anything else.

no. if you compile a rating 7 machine sprite, it is entitled to 2 optional CFs from their list. in the case of a machine sprite, those should be autosofts. you cannot use normal autosofts on a sprite; that's why you need such high rating machine sprites to replace a decent pilot program. a rating 9 sprite will default to 8 dice on any test, which makes them somewhat respectable even in areas their 3 autosofts don't cover, though. but a rating 7 machine sprite will be throwing 14 dice in two areas, and 6 dice in the rest... which means you're sacrificing somewhere, because a rating 6 pilot cold be throwing 10 dice in 6 areas if you have the drone for it. (in all cases, dice pools are before modifiers such as handling, smartlink, etc. plausibly, your machine sprite can use diagnostics to improve it's own dice pool as well, iirc)

/me nods
Rating 9, good good.


BlueMax

From discussion in other threads today, I don't think sprites are allowed to default. Every action a sprite takes is a Matrix action, and...

So no applicable autosoft means no chance of success in terms of direct drone control. More generally, no applicable skill or 'soft means the sprite just can't do it.

Now since sprites directly controlling drones isn't explicitly addressed by RAW, it's possible that actions taken while doing so are not in fact Matrix actions and can be defaulted upon, but unless and until that's made explicit somewhere it looks like sprites can only take Matrix actions and thus cannot default on tests.

by that definition, a rigger can't control a drone by rigging without using a skillsoft; no program is involved in rigging a vehicle, for example.

See, that's the thing - we're assuming (and I include myself in this) that Machine sprites can do something analogous to rigging, but that's not really clarified in any published material. So saying that if a jumped-in rigger can do X, then a sprite displacing a drone's Pilot program can also do X seems like shaky logic to me, because there's no real rules basis for it. Sprites don't use the "Jumped-in Rigger Dice Pool" column for drone tests. What sprites do isn't rigging like riggers do it, and if they can do something similar the mechanics of it aren't clearly defined.

Can sprites default on skill checks while inhabiting drones? Maybe, but this isn't made clear anywhere. (The real question - are they taking Matrix actions or not?)

Can sprites default at any other time? No; all their actions are Matrix actions.

For the sake of consistency without a clear statement of intent from the devs, "sprites only take Matrix actions and thus can't default" seems like a decent rule of thumb for now.

no it doesn't, because rigging is a matrix action, and doesn't fit the definition of skill + program, thereby showing that the skill + program definition is non-valid.

in fact, we can just start going right down the list of things that are explicitly listed as matrix actions, and find plenty that don't have skill + program tests.

for example, all of the free actions listed. call/dismiss a sprite. deactivate program. encrypt. decrypt (if you have the key). issue command. jump into a drone. log off. log on. run program. set databomb. all of those are explicitly matrix actions. most of them don't have any test at all. by the "program + skill" definition, those actions are all impossible. so, we can either assume that nobody is even able to log on to a node, or we can assume that matrix actions need not all follow the "skill + program" pattern, and that not everything needs to follow that rule.

Enh. Maybe you're right; I don't really care enough to get any further into this.

Thanks for all the help and advice guys. Been very good.

A further question if I may, the sprites that come with powers and abilities like stealth, attack and what not.

If I compile a level 5 sprite, does all its abilities run at level 5 also? so for attack it would be sprite rating 5 + Attack 5?

yes, the sprite's CFs are at the same rating as the sprite itself.

I'm pretty new to the game as well. How are machine sprites able to add dice to medkits or firearms in a smartlink?