Awakened Technomancers Options

[KarmaInferno]

SR4A states that you can have a Magic rating or a Resonance rating but not both.

Does this mean none of the character-legal Awakened races can take Technomancer, since they start with a Magic Rating?

Or does it mean since they just lose their Magic Rating and gain a Resonance Rating?

My half-formed Pixie character for Missions would like to know.




-karma

[Wasabi]

The rules dont say you can't. They should.

[ Spoiler ]

The loophole is in the Awakened Paracritter section where they do not start with the Adept, Mystic Adept, or Magician Qualities.
The Technomancer quality says qualities cannot mix. It doesn't mention racial abilities.

This means that the only bar to being a Pixie Technomancer is that you can never have both Resonance and Magic. (p82, SR4A)

This then means that you either make a character that has:

A) Lost your magic rating prior to the big crash where TM's got introduced, or
B) Lost your magic rating and are a Latent Technomancer that has not gained Resonance yet

The second option requires GM approval so in an official game I'd expect the GM's to defer to your next GM in a never ending cycle of 'I wont approve it but try your next GM if you like.' If its a home game then whatever the GM says is blessed by Bull pretty much automatically but in official games "GM Discretion" usually means no.

Besides, Latent Technomancer is a trap. Its damned expensive to only start with a Resonance of 1, 3 Rating 1 complex forms and NO RESONANCE SKILLS and have to raise it all in play with Karma.

So that means the only legal loophole you can hope for is to be old enough to predate the second big crash and have ware or a cloned limb that dropped your essence prior to being in that big crash and becoming a TM. Sure, some 5 year old could have it nowadays because they were born with it but Pixies cant be born with the TM quality because of that big statement on p82 of SR4a: You can never have both a Magic Rating and a Resonance Rating.

Now that I've illustrated the loophole...

Bull please close this rules loophole in official SRM's.

_{And for the record I have almost 180 Karma on my SRM Technomancer so I am experienced enough to know why Pixies would make the finest TM's.}

[Yerameyahu]

Still, it's essentially a closed loophole anyway. Heh. Doesn't the book say that non-metahumans can't be Technomancers anyway?

[Wasabi]

Nope.

(Not on SR4A pg93 under the "Technomancer" quality and not on on pg85 of Runners Companion under "Sapient Critters")

Trevalier made a good point after this thread was posted here: "I was under the impression that burning out reduced your Magic rating to 0, not that it made it go away."

The relevant book part is on p177 of SR4A:
"If a character’s Magic is ever reduced to 0, she can no longer perform any kind of magic. The magician has "burned out,” losing all magical ability and becoming a mundane forever. She retains all magical skills and knowledge, but lacks the ability to use them. Active skills become Knowledge skills."

[LurkerOutThere]

Yea this always makes me kind of annoyed, I wanted to make a ghould technomancer ala Dark Father. He'd suck, but he'd be interesting to play.

[Yerameyahu]

In Running Wild p24, there's some verbiage to the effect of 'even after burning out, Magic and Resonance are incompatible, period.' Apparently there are Emergent (Resonance) Critters, which are utterly distinct from our more familiar Paranormal (Magic) Critters. They can never switch; presumably, this applies to metahumans, too, but definitely to Pixies (Sapient Paranormal Critters).

Obviously, the exception was mentioned that Infected can lose Resonance and gain Magic, but it's debatable if that means you could get Adept/Mage/MysAd Quality (because you already have Technomancer, though useless).

[KarmaInferno]

Baawwh.

I shall have to see how effective a Rigger Adept is, I guess.





-karma

[Yerameyahu]

The answer is 'stupid effective'. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[BobChuck]

Adepts play very well with technology; unlike mages, they don't have to pick up spellcasting and conjuring skills and purchase spells, so they have the build points to grab skills and gear.

Adepts don't get along with 'ware, but you don't need 'ware to hack and rig.

[KarmaInferno]

And now I see that Type O System would give me access to Bioware.

But most Bioware isn't particularly great for rigging.

Blarg again.



-np

[Yerameyahu]

You already get Pixie Reaction and Adept skill increases. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Get Synaptic Booster or Adept Wires. What do you *need*?

[KarmaInferno]

Heh, I suppose you're right.

Synaptic Boosters are so much more Attribute friendly than Improved Reflexes, especially with the Type O System, but jeebers the nuyen cost!

Thanks!




-karma

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah. But a Pixie Adept Rigger really *wants* more AR passes.

[KarmaInferno]

Well, it's probably blindingly obvious to the rest of ya'll, but after banging my head on my Mobile Suit Human project for a couple weeks, I'm finding that Pixies as rigger adepts isn't all that well supported by Shadowrun rules.

More than a quarter of the creation Build Points are already taken up just by race and buying off the Uneducated flaw.

The Type O System quality is a wash, because on careful reading, it only makes Basic bioware the equivalent of Delta grade. All the good neural stuff, that a Rigger might want, is Cultured. Some GMs might also question being able to stuff a gland or organ, sized for a human, into a pixie, even if it IS gene-compatible and protein matched.

Geneware and Nanoware is okay to use in a Pixie, but Geneware offers at most a +1 to some skills which I'm not sure is worth losing a Magic Point over, and Nanoware degrades without a Nanohive. I wish there was a non-implant version of a Nanohive, but alas. Plus, without a Control Rig, the best Nanoware for Riggers is useless anyway.

Pixies effectively can't use Skillwires or Reflex Recorders to supplement their skill sets, and rigger being one of the more multi-skill reliant archetypes, that's going to hurt. As stated above, she's already starved for Build Points. Overall the number of Active skills she's trained in is likely going to be VERY short. Adept Skill bonus are probably going towards increasing the effectiveness of what skills she has, not expanding the amount. At least she has a lot of language and knowledge skills.

And to top it all off, to get the "pixie driving a human suit" effect, I have to cheese-modify a Renraku Manservant into an equivalent of an Otomo, as the Otomo is Availability 24 so even the Restricted Gear quality won't help.

I'm probably going to be trying this character out at DragonCon, but if anyone has any tips or tricks in the meanwhile it'd be appreciated.


-karma

[UmaroVI]

My suspicion is that it just won't work well. The big things Pixies get are Concealment (which doesn't help you rig) and high stats (which also don't help you rig), since Rigging is about your gear and your skills much more than your stats. My best guess on how to make this character work:

Forget about ware entirely, and drop type O system. Either be a Mystic Adept and use a Sustaining Focus to keep Increase Reflexes up on yourself, or use the Adept version of Wired Reflexes. Either way, dump all your spare power points into jacking up your skills. Pixie gives you pretty good stats in everything but Body (I suggest either also sustaining a Increase Body, or using some of your power points to be less squishy), so don't sink too many points into them (just what you want for fluff purposes and if you went the Mystic Adept route, enough to eat drain) and instead focus on your skills. Then run drones using remote control in AR, instead of jumping in. This means you use your 3 meat-body IPs. You might want to use VR remote control sometimes, which trades an IP for -1 to vehicle test thresholds.

The Mystic Adept route is probably more efficient if you were already going to have good Willpower and good either Charisma, Logic, or Intuition, and worse if you weren't. You probably need about 9 total Willpower+other drain stat minimum for this to be a good plan.

I don't think this character is better than you could do as a metahuman, but its probably playable at least. The plus-side is that since you're using remote control, you don't take biofeedback or dump shock from your drones taking hits. Everything your drones do while you are RC-ing them is based on your Command program (6) plus your skill, whereas someone jumped in cares a great deal about the Sensor and Response of their drone. This means you can get good results with comparatively cheap vehicles and drones. The downside is that since you're not jumped in you miss out on the +2 to everything from hot simming, and you can't use any of the cool cyberware that makes you much better at sim-rigging. You also can't jack your skills up as cheaply as someone using cyberware.

That's my take on the best way to pull off a Pixie Rigger, FWIW. Someone else more experienced with such matters might be able to do better.

[Yerameyahu]

If you RC in VR, that's not meat-body any more, right?

[KarmaInferno]

I find it amusing that the Media Junkie negative quality meshes well with the Multi-Tasking Adept power.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)




-karma

[UmaroVI]

If you RC in VR, that's not meat-body any more, right?

My bad, should say "VR or AR." VR gives you -1 threshold to vehicle tests, and uses your Matrix initiative, but otherwise using RC in VR is the same as using RC in AR (ie, it is usually Command+Skill). So if you want to do stuff where you need to make hard vehicle tests but don't care too much about IPs, it's the way to go. I edited my post above; thanks for catching that.

[Yerameyahu]

No prob, I had to make sure I wasn't the one confused. Have some more questions:

How useful is that -1 Threshold, really?
Most tests have a threshold of 1, right?
Does this make that 0, giving an extra net hit?
Does it only do anything if the threshold is >1?
Finally, what normal tests have a threshold >1?

[Wasabi]

Q: How useful is that -1 Threshold, really?

A: Its equal to +3 to the Piloting skill of the Rigger since its an automatic hit. Better than +3 if you are at your skill cap.
Any time you need to infiltrate, dodge, or pursue in a vehicle its a Piloting test so -1 is pretty darn good.

[Yerameyahu]

So it simply counts as a free hit in all circumstances (Success Test, Threshold Test, Opposed Test)?

[Wasabi]

If you need 5 hits its threshold 5 to succeed.
At -1 threshold you only need 4 hits to succeed on that same task

Semantically its the same as just adding a hit which is how most CGL Demo Team GM's I play under prefer it to be done.

[Yerameyahu]

That's what I was asking, thanks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[UmaroVI]

I think the only difference is that by a literal interpretation, it won't help you on Opposed tests (because they don't have a threshold per se). "AR for shootin', VR for stunt driving" is a pretty good guideline for when you should do what.

[Wasabi]

Huh. Makes sense. Gotta remember that one.