Technomancers and Initiative Passes, Totally shafted? Hmm, yep. Options

[Fortune]

[Buster]

You could just screw that "Resonance isn't magic" crap and create a "Mystic Technomancer" hybrid class like the Mystic Adept. Call your Resonance pool a Magic pool and split your Magic pool for technomancer + adept/magician goodness. One of my favorite changes in SR4 was the combination of Deckers and Riggers. Why shouldn't the Awakened classes be any different?

One of the books mentioned that the transhumanists were trying to create an Ascended Being, so that would be a nice name for the class. Heck let them split their magic between Technomancer, Adept, AND Magician if they want using the Mystic Adept rules, how game breaking could it be? You'd end up with a character who sucked at everything, but it'd be really cool. 200 karma later, you'd have Neo. At chargen, charge the same BP as Mystic Adept + Technomancer (10bp and 5 bp i think, so the Ascended Being positive quality would be 15 bp) and use the Mystic Adept rules for splitting the Magic points between the 3 classes. That sounds like fun and I don't think it would be particularly broken.

[farrenj]

Personally, I think there needs to be more a look at the flavor and less of a focus on mechanics. Any reasonable GM will work with it's players to make sure thier players will have thier moments to shine, regardless of whose characters are the most "effective." The complaint should not be about the mechanics of the character but about a GM who doesn't allow your character to shine just because the mechanics might be a little off.

[Whipstitch]

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean the rules should make the job of keeping everyone happy any harder than it has to be for the GM. I also must say that such an approach isn't appropriate for all groups either. My group doesn't really need a soccer mom approach from our gm; we're not there to make sure we all feel special because we tried our best even if the dice says we suck. I like rp best when it's about situations and consequences, not molding the game around people's preconceptions of what their character "should" be capable of. Creating a fluffy background isn't RP to me, but sucking it up and dealing (in character) with the bad consequences the dice just handed you is. Anyway, my group likes rp, but I think we like collaborative problem solving even more than we like collaborative storytelling. Quite simply, TMs require an awful lot of babying for how much they bring to the table. They're truly awesome in the right circumstances, but honestly, I'd like to see the sacrifice it takes to be a good one toned down a tiny bit.

[Particle_Beam]

Only if all that you want is to make the Technomancer a combat-focused character too, and your game is heavily sided on combat, does the Technomancer character need the 'soccer mom' approach. However, the Technomancer isn't meant as combat-focused character, and the rules for them are quite new.
Unwired will be the book about all Matrix things, and that means Technomancers and more Echoes, sprite abilities and such.

[Dender]

[Ol' Scratch]

Your issue is with Magicians and a belief that they are overpowered. All while still ignoring that they have a consequence to pay for that ability.

That has nothing -- nada, zip, zilch, nothing -- to do with Technomancers. The people in this thread are basically beginning to give Technomancers -- and only Technomancers -- a worry-free way to bolster their reflexes outside of the Matrix. The place where they're SUPPOSED to suck. And not just suck, but suck BADLY. Nevermind that they can have an entire fleet of super-fast, heavily armed, heavily-armored drones at their command in the meat world with neglibile perforamnce issues. Who cares about that little thing?

It's ridiculous.

I hate to break it to you, but if you want to be good at everything, you simply can't. In fact, the people in this thread are whining because if they do get Wired Reflexes or the like, their performance will be downgraded to being only slightly better than a Hacker in the Matrix as opposed to way beyond.

Forgive me if I don't cry a river over that. Doubly so since they try to make it sound as if they can't recover from it as the game progresses.

[Dender]

[Ol' Scratch]

I also don't see why people keep bringing up magicians in this thread.

Unlike Technomancers, magicians use the brunt of their abilities in the meat world. They need those extra actions to cast more spells and command more spirits. What unique abilities do Technomancers have in the meat world again? None whatsoever? Yeah, that's what I thought. Because the brunt of their abilities are Matrix related -- and what do you know, in the Matrix they have fantastic reflexes. Imagine that. And when they do need to do things solely in the meat world? They can have drones do it for them.

I'm just not seeing this glaring weakness people here are clamoring about.

[Dender]

The issue is that a streetsam can go and drop 20BP into programs on top of their cyber/bioware and BE awesome at everything. But that if a technomancer wants to not be the human backpack who dies from attack programs, they had no option but to go AR and suck. Our groups technomancer's way around this was to only focus on threading and compiling sprites. GM takes over, and tells us if it worked.

Completely streamlines matrix hacking rules, and gets around that pesky question of "well, if i can interact with the matrix with my mind, why can't i just skip through all the security layer hubs to get to the restricted areas?"

The street sam can't sneak, he has to shoot his way into a building. The infiltration expert can sneak in. Why should he need to fire 4 rounds into the door to get in when he spies an open window a few floors up?

Technomancer still has to breach the firewall, and how he "enters" is completely for descriptive purposes over the hacker. Its still the same soy flavored rules.

[Dender]

Anyone running VR has fantastic reflexes. Technomancers used to have the edge with that submersion technique, but with AUG, that edge is gone.

You're forgetting though, Mages can do astral as well. Noone else can do that without summoning. Astral perception is not to AR as projection is to VR though, because you can't drop 20BP on "magical programs" to handle barriers and astral combat.

The weakness is that a skill-based character can be well rounded and handle all aspects of meat-world well enough. An ultra speced character can be god at one thing, but still be alright at other things (max agi and max one skill is not that big of a deal)

Sure, Rounded might be able to do anything, but Speced can function and squeak by. Technomancer can only spec to matrix.

[odinson]

[Tarantula]

Funk, the problem with your drone analogy, is that anyone with some cash can have drones piloted with agents doing the exact same thing. Almost as good as the technomancer. And, they'd have more IPs to give their drones different commands, instead of the drones obliterating one guy, and sitting idle waiting for their next command.

Sprites are not all that much better at piloting a drone than an agent is. And, if you have so many sprites that you are, a mage could have that many bound spirits instead, and be much more effective at meat combat than the drones would be, while still having his 3-4IPs from increased reflexes.

[Cthulhudreams]

If you compare technomancers to the most closely related 'archetype' - hacker adepts - you actually get a pretty good comparison. Both have real problems getting boosted reflexes by cyberware because they need the BPs for other things (buying equipment and magic and buying resonance and complex forms respectively) and it is more expensive for an adept with magic 4 (3 points spent on being a hacker adept, and one lost to cyberware) to get the adept improved reflexes than it is to buy synaptic boosters so he's not going to get the adept power.

It just looks to me that the real difference is that you can be a pretty awesome hacker adept for ~350 ish BPs including gear, who's throwing down 4 dice of skill + 5 dice of program + hotsimming via a DNI on everything, with plenty (~50 bps) to slap down on skills and equipment for something else. Like being a mini face, or a rigger, or some stealth skills and so forth. Which our technomancer doesn't really get to do.

So the problem is not that a technomancers get the shaft from the IP rules, because they can totally buy a synaptic booster like anyone else. What they don;t have is the BPs to afford to buy that booster because their other abilities are seriously BP intensive.

[Tarantula]

And because losing resonance means losing a ton of potential in their specialty.

[Particle_Beam]

Which in the end only means that all that people care for is having an optimized character at character generation for a one-shot adventure, and nothing else.

[Cthulhudreams]

[Fortune]

[fistandantilus4....]

I agree with Fortune. (Weird, I know). I think it adds a bit of realism that not all PCs are created equal, even despite equal BP. There is a reason that it's common street wisdom to Geek the Mage First after all.

[Jaid]

what i don't get is that people are objecting to TMs getting multiple IPs in the meat (to handle AR hacking) because they think it will make TMs good in their meatbods.

news flash: attribute 2-3, skill 1 (with a specialisation) is not going to steal the street sam's thunder in any way, shape, or form. and that's about the most i've ever had with any technomancer in a combat skill, or in dodge.

what it does is give them some capability to move to cover and hack, rather than doing a faceplant and getting shot repeatedly until they die while they try to hack.

if the technomancer does somehow manage to scrap together enough BPs to get good combat skills, then he isn't going to be "slightly better than a hacker" in the matrix. he will suck in the matrix. because that's the only way he can develop the skills and physical attributes to be effective in physical combat. he's still completely reliant on drones for interacting with the meat world effectively, the only difference is that with multiple IPs he can try to hack while in the meatworld, and actually get anything accomplished. ie you don't need to hire an extra troll just to carry the technomancer's body.

[Cthulhudreams]

[Fortune]

[Cthulhudreams]

[Critias]

What's especially amusing about this conversation is it's the people that still refer to characters in Shadowrun as belonging to a certain "class," that keep insisting those same characters should innately all be very good at two or more wholly unrelated things. At the same time that they're so eager to shoehorn everyone in Shadowrun into a tidy, defining, confining, ridiculous term as fitting a character class, they're stamping their feet and insisting everyone should be (to keep the D&D terms flowing) a multiclassed character.

I am amused.

[KiwiTroll]

Only in so far as your wanting the matrix to revert to the hacking from the basement of older editions. At the moment a mundane hacker can be faster in AR than a technomancer without having to cripple his skills to do it. A technomancers resonance has a direct impact on his skills. Yes he can drop his resonance to get meat passes but meat passes just aren't the solution. Yes he can get sprites to hack for him but commanding them is still an action (which the TM is rapidly running short of if he's to do things like seek cover) If a TM is intended to excel in the matrix and it seems certain that he is, then this has to include the AR matrix as well. A TM in a wireless and mobile matrix should be able to employ the mobility of the matrix not just in the regular mundane environment but within the context of a run with bullets firing and IC pouring into their ears.

Perhaps a good analogy here would be if the Improved reflexes spell were only available to hermetics and not shamanics or if Hermetics could only astrally assence and not project. All other things being equal and wanting to enjoy the possibilities of the game wouldn't you choose the option that was more open than the option that was limited?

With all the discussion of cybered adepts and awakened with synaptic accelleration it seems that those who believe there is no issue would agree.