Hacking Cyberware, Wargarbbbbbbl RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE Options

[Glyph]

I've been GMing Shadowrun for over a decade and I can count the number of deckers/hackers I've had on one hand. The mechanics were never all that great for them, and NPCs filled the role. Nobody wants to show up an hour early to run through the Matrix, and then sit on their hands for the rest of the run.

To me, I think that giving hackers something to do in combat is a good move, even if it imbalances the field for cyber sammies.

To me, decks are going a step back. Instead of obsessively keeping hackers as a core class, they should have made hacking more like GITS as a skill every runner has, like dodging (gymnastics in SR5) and infiltration. Have everyone with a commlink, connected to a tacnet, and have hacking be something that everyone participates in. Instead, they make it a specialized role with a ludicrously expensive barrier to entry in the form of clunky decks, and kept deckers as their own special "class". Hacking should have combat applications, sure, but not the way they have it written. Even in GITS, people could shut down their matrix access and run in "autistic mode", and it didn't make their cyberlimbs suddenly slow down when they did it.

[Epicedion]

To me, decks are going a step back. Instead of obsessively keeping hackers as a core class, they should have made hacking more like GITS as a skill every runner has, like dodging (gymnastics in SR5) and infiltration. Have everyone with a commlink, connected to a tacnet, and have hacking be something that everyone participates in. Instead, they make it a specialized role with a ludicrously expensive barrier to entry in the form of clunky decks, and kept deckers as their own special "class". Hacking should have combat applications, sure, but not the way they have it written. Even in GITS, people could shut down their matrix access and run in "autistic mode", and it didn't make their cyberlimbs suddenly slow down when they did it.

Well, Shadowrun sort of is the collection of mages, deckers, street samurai, faces, riggers, adepts, gangers, etc. You could certainly change things around so that everyone's always a hacker, but I think you'd end up with something new.

[binarywraith]

To me, decks are going a step back. Instead of obsessively keeping hackers as a core class, they should have made hacking more like GITS as a skill every runner has, like dodging (gymnastics in SR5) and infiltration. Have everyone with a commlink, connected to a tacnet, and have hacking be something that everyone participates in. Instead, they make it a specialized role with a ludicrously expensive barrier to entry in the form of clunky decks, and kept deckers as their own special "class". Hacking should have combat applications, sure, but not the way they have it written. Even in GITS, people could shut down their matrix access and run in "autistic mode", and it didn't make their cyberlimbs suddenly slow down when they did it.

A step back that was badly needed. The Matrix is such a vital and unique part of the SR setting, as compared to the rest of the RPGs on the market, that trying to turn it down into GiTS handwavium does it absolutely no justice and eliminates very interesting possibilities of the setting.

[Tanegar]

Except that 619,302 of them are in support of the system, and represents maybe 30 people. This is a semi-sarcastic and vastly estimated comment used to point out that not everyone here disagrees with the direction the rules went, and that most of us the comments come from a very small group posting a large number of times.

Don't mistake dissatisfaction with a single (dumb, poorly thought-out, extraordinarily dumb, wrongheaded, breathtakingly dumb, oh yes, did I mention dumb?) mechanic for dissatisfaction with the rules as a whole. I'm very much looking forward to SR5, even if I am going to take a monochainbeamvibrodaiklaive to the bits having to do with wireless boni.

[KCKitsune]

To me, decks are going a step back. Instead of obsessively keeping hackers as a core class, they should have made hacking more like GITS as a skill every runner has, like dodging (gymnastics in SR5) and infiltration. Have everyone with a commlink, connected to a tacnet, and have hacking be something that everyone participates in. Instead, they make it a specialized role with a ludicrously expensive barrier to entry in the form of clunky decks, and kept deckers as their own special "class". Hacking should have combat applications, sure, but not the way they have it written. Even in GITS, people could shut down their matrix access and run in "autistic mode", and it didn't make their cyberlimbs suddenly slow down when they did it.

A step back that was badly needed. The Matrix is such a vital and unique part of the SR setting, as compared to the rest of the RPGs on the market, that trying to turn it down into GiTS handwavium does it absolutely no justice and eliminates very interesting possibilities of the setting.

Glyph and binarywraith are both correct. To me there is an easy way to handle this. For squad level combat (which what a Runner team is) you can use the GiTS type hacking. You are using your skills to frak with the opposition.

Now once you've taken care of the mooks, then most of the team can go into VR and hack the system to get the paydata. It is at this point that the mages of the group can take on the role of sprites or Agents so their player isn't sitting with his thumb up his hoop. The reason I am saying this way is that you would really NOT want everyone on the team going into VR. You would need someone on overwatch.

[RHat]

So, what, hacking should just leave the conceptual space as a character's main focus? Because that's the consequence of what you suggest, and it means failing to support a lot of concepts. That is a Bad Thing.

[hermit]

So, what, hacking should just leave the conceptual space as a character's main focus? Because that's the consequence of what you suggest, and it means failing to support a lot of concepts. That is a Bad Thing.

There's hacking and there's magically destroying all cyberware in one to two actions. And the problem is not necessarily characters (who are balanced by GOD), but NPC security hackers who are not. I see little plausible defense against these aside from the team hacker babysitting all mundane/cybered characters all the time. THAT is (part of) the consequence of super-speed hacking, that makes the go-to, in-game plausible defense of a contracted security decker who patrols the corp grid zone unsurvivable for streetsams, and that is a BAD THING, too. Taking away cybered characters like 5E seems to do (combined with much higher essence costs and cyberware being next to worthless without Matrix access) is a VERY BAD THING, actually, since it does away with the very core of the game for an Urban Magic+Neo scenario where Hackers and Awakened reign surpreme over mere mortals. Not sure where Riggers fall in this, since they supposedly can do some decker stuff too. Maybe defense against enemy deckers is among those.

[RHat]

There's hacking and there's magically destroying all cyberware in one to two actions. And the problem is not necessarily characters (who are balanced by GOD), but NPC security hackers who are not. I see little plausible defense against these aside from the team hacker babysitting all mundane/cybered characters all the time.

And do you have to rulebook yet to actually be able to look?

[hermit]

Do you?

[RHat]

Do you?

Nope. Just saying that without the actual information, you simply cannot draw a conclusion with any degree of certainty.

[Umidori]

Available Evidence suggests Bad Stuff.
Available Evidence is not fully conclusive.
Therefor disregard entirely?

We can draw a conclusions with some degree of certainty. Not absolute certainty, but reasonable certainty. The overwhelming amount of evidence points toward Bad Stuff. There is little to no evidence pointing toward the opposite. Thus, we can say with a fair degree of certainty, Bad Stuff.

~Umi

[RHat]

Available evidence is completely insufficient to suggest that reasonable defense options do exist. To suggest that the claim of "no reasonable defense options" has any degree of certainly is completely ludicrous.

We DO know, incidentally, that Commlinks have the attribute needed for Matrix defense, and that the best one is a good deal cheaper than any deck.

[Epicedion]

Bad stuff? It looks like they've put together a solid system for once. I suppose that could itself be interpreted as terrifying, but this absolute batshit reactionary tendency to overblow the new systems into instant game-stopping total-party-kill inevitabilities is just getting absurd.

[hermit]

Available evidence is completely insufficient to suggest that reasonable defense options do exist. To suggest that the claim of "no reasonable defense options" has any degree of certainly is completely ludicrous.

Actually, some authors (Bull, Neurosis, Aaron) have provided a lot of information on defense options. It's just that those still put a PC on the bad end of hacking, very much so. 12 dice vs. 18 dice statistically equals 4 vs. 6 successes and a decent chance at a win for the larger pool. Unless other powerful options exist (such as this "full defense" thing, which so far did not come up), there is no good defense against hacking except opting out and vehemently gimping cyber-based streetsams. Hence, I suppose the 5E standard streetsam will rely on bioware whereever possible (unless it just gives gimpy boni, then it's been rendered useless too).

We DO know, incidentally, that Commlinks have the attribute needed for Matrix defense, and that the best one is a good deal cheaper than any deck.

And where do we know the best oen is good enough? Available evidence suggests otherwise.

[RHat]

Actually, some authors (Bull, Neurosis, Aaron) have provided a lot of information on defense options. It's just that those still put a PC on the bad end of hacking, very much so. 12 dice vs. 18 dice statistically equals 4 vs. 6 successes and a decent chance at a win for the larger pool. Unless other powerful options exist (such as this "full defense" thing, which so far did not come up), there is no good defense against hacking except opting out and vehemently gimping cyber-based streetsams. Hence, I suppose the 5E standard streetsam will rely on bioware whereever possible (unless it just gives gimpy boni, then it's been rendered useless too).

We don't, however, know with any certainty what the consequences something being bricked are (as the released information has been contradictory), I certainly haven't seen any certain information on the subject of how much damage you get from 2 net hits nor on specific damage track lengths... Now factor that your feared "remote GOD decker" has to deal with some unknown noise factor that is supposedly going to actively interfere with what he's trying to do... That may not be at all practical, in fact. There is also a "Full Martix Defense", though we have very little information on how that works. And that's excluding any possible defensive programs.

So... There's ample possibility that it's nowhere near as bad as you suggest.

And seeing as we KNOW that the best commlink has the same Device Rating as the best deck, A decker would have to dedicate his highest Attribute to Attack - carrying a significant cost to his ability to hide, to defend himself, and to do whatever it is he'd need Data Processing for.

[hermit]

May, if, would. The things we know point a different direction. You can choose to ignore this, and believe in some secret fix nobody bothered telling us. I, for one, prefer to go with what I know. In case there really is a fix in the rules, I'll mention that in my review.

[Elfenlied]

To me, decks are going a step back. Instead of obsessively keeping hackers as a core class, they should have made hacking more like GITS as a skill every runner has, like dodging (gymnastics in SR5) and infiltration. Have everyone with a commlink, connected to a tacnet, and have hacking be something that everyone participates in. Instead, they make it a specialized role with a ludicrously expensive barrier to entry in the form of clunky decks, and kept deckers as their own special "class". Hacking should have combat applications, sure, but not the way they have it written. Even in GITS, people could shut down their matrix access and run in "autistic mode", and it didn't make their cyberlimbs suddenly slow down when they did it.

I wholeheartedly agree. Bringing decking back was mostly to appease the grognards, with questionable gameplay value.

[Draco18s]

We don't, however, know with any certainty what the consequences something being bricked are (as the released information has been contradictory),

Actually we do. The device ceases to function in any electro or mechanical way. Guns stop shooting, gears stop rotating, generators don't gen, alternators don't alternate, and pistons don't work either. But you can still stab and bludgeon people.

[Neurosis]

I've been GMing Shadowrun for over a decade and I can count the number of deckers/hackers I've had on one hand. The mechanics were never all that great for them, and NPCs filled the role. Nobody wants to show up an hour early to run through the Matrix, and then sit on their hands for the rest of the run.

To me, I think that giving hackers something to do in combat is a good move.

I strongly agree with this post, it phrases (more succinctly) something I've been thinking about putting words to for a while now.

Basically, I think there's a conceptualization program going on. I see the chain of causality as looking something like this...

1. Hacker's in old editions of SR can't have nice things/do cool stuff.
2. No one really plays hackers in older editions of SR; they become extremely under-represented as PCs, i.e. "Hackers aren't PCs".
3. Newer edition of SR givess hackers nice things/the ability to do cool stuff.
4. Rather than re-orient perspective to the possibility of being able to do cool stuff as PC hackers, people see the above as stuff that can be done TO their PCs, not BY their PCs.

Actually, some authors (Bull, Neurosis, Aaron) have provided a lot of information on defense options. It's just that those still put a PC on the bad end of hacking, very much so. 12 dice vs. 18 dice statistically equals 4 vs. 6 successes and a decent chance at a win for the larger pool. Unless other powerful options exist (such as this "full defense" thing, which so far did not come up), there is no good defense against hacking except opting out and vehemently gimping cyber-based streetsams. Hence, I suppose the 5E standard streetsam will rely on bioware whereever possible (unless it just gives gimpy boni, then it's been rendered useless too).p

Alright brosely, you're really going totally nuts with the dicepool inflation here.

18 dice is a totally absurd assumption for an out-of-chargen hacker. Even with Exceptional Attribute Logic, Logic 7 (9) with two extra points from Cerebral Booster (Max available at chargen IIRC, AFB), and Cybercombat 6 with a specialization in Data Spiking or whatever, that's "only" 17 dice, and that assumes a colossally absurd and unlikely amount of minmaxing.

The reason it's so colossally absurd and unlikely is that attributes other than Logic and skills other than Cybercombat are immensely valuable to hackers, so an out-of-chargen hacker that squandered that many of their limited resources on Logic and Cybercombat is very unlikely to be a viable character, because they're unlikely to have the resources left for a good Intuition (used in hacking), other halfway-decent attributes to survive contact with the streets, other Electronics and Cracking group skills (such as the "Hacking" skill itself which is kind of a little important for hackers), other "basically everyone needs this at some level" skills like Perception and Pistols or whatever, and oh yeah, an HFS expensive deck good enough to have a Limit that makes having a dice pool of 17-18 even matter at all.

TLDR; basically, an out-of-chargen hacker with anything like 17-18 dice to bricking devices is about as likely as an out-of-chargen street samurai that somehow has 17-18 dice to resisting hacking: not, at all.

***

The reasonable dice pool range for a GOOD (i.e. well built) out-of-chargen hacker is 12-15. Because that hacker is also going to want 12-15 dice for actions that are based on Intuition + Hacking as well as actions that are based on Logic + Cybercombat, to say nothing of at-least-marginally-useful skills like Electronic Warfare, Hardware, Software, and so on.

So no, I'm sorry, as dedicated as you are to selling this 12 dice vs. 18 dice BS, the truth is an exceptionally good out-of-chargen hacker is rocking at best 12-16 dice. 12 Dice (Logic 5 (7) plus Cybercombat 5 would seriously not be unreasonable, particularly if the character wants a natural 6 or a 7 in Intuition (which can't be cybered up) and at least a 5 in Hacking. Generally speaking, the average net successes a really good hacker gets against anyone even moderately interested in investing in matrix protection is a whopping...one or so. And that's if they have a cyberdeck with limits good enough to support their dice pool: a DR3 Cyberdeck which costs about 4100% what a DR6 Commlink costs. This is not SR4 + Augmentation + Unwired where you could routinely build a character that threw 20 Dice hacking on the fly versus a DR5 system that had around 10 Dice to resist.

[Werewindlefr]

18 dice is a totally absurd assumption for an out-of-chargen hacker. Even with Exceptional Attribute Logic, Logic 7 (9) with two extra points from Cerebral Booster (Max available at chargen IIRC, AFB), and Cybercombat 6 with a specialization in Data Spiking or whatever, that's "only" 17 dice, and that assumes a colossally absurd and unlikely amount of minmaxing.

Cybercombat (Data Spiking) 7 (9), you can have "exceptional" skills too (don't remember the name and I'm at work, so I can't check in the book). Yes, granted, that's an extreme - although possible - example. But it's certainly NOT colossally absurd; it costs a fair amount of money and karma, but still allows for a fair set of secondary skills.

And 15-16 dice? No problem for the hacker's specialty (outside of it, it's more like 12-14); moderate-level minmaxing is endemic to Shadowrun. And following the same reasoning, the defense pool usually isn't 12 dice, it's closer to 10.

But frankly, it's not how easy cybercombat is that bothers me - although I don't like that "bricking" is the main consequence of cybercombat, instead of just causing a connection error. What bothers me is how easy it is to put marks on secure devices. Rating 6 is "top-secret prototype" level, and most chargen hackers can hack that sort of stuff with incredible ease in very short times (with 20 dice at chargen, thanks to the dedicated program that gives Hack on the Fly bonuses).

[binarywraith]

Who said anything about out-of-chargen?

I know you'll go to any lengths to try to make something look good, but if you're going to write a wall of text, you should probably address it to what's actually being discussed rather than a strawman.

[Epicedion]

Cybercombat (Data Spiking) 7 (9), you can have "exceptional" skills too (don't remember the name and I'm at work, so I can't check in the book). Yes, granted, that's an extreme - although possible - example. But it's certainly NOT colossally absurd; it costs a fair amount of money and karma, but still allows for a fair set of secondary skills.

And 15-16 dice? No problem for the hacker's specialty (outside of it, it's more like 12-14); moderate-level minmaxing is endemic to Shadowrun. And following the same reasoning, the defense pool usually isn't 12 dice, it's closer to 10.

But frankly, it's not how easy cybercombat is that bothers me - although I don't like that "bricking" is the main consequence of cybercombat, instead of just causing a connection error. What bothers me is how easy it is to put marks on secure devices. Rating 6 is "top-secret prototype" level, and most chargen hackers can hack that sort of stuff with incredible ease in very short times (with 20 dice at chargen, thanks to the dedicated program that gives Hack on the Fly bonuses).

Since when is rating 6 top secret prototype anything? Rating 6 is usually the high end of normally available. High end nonconsumer is 7 to 9, with 10+ being crazy prototypes.

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

TLDR; basically, an out-of-chargen hacker with anything like 17-18 dice to bricking devices is about as likely as an out-of-chargen street samurai that somehow has 17-18 dice to resisting hacking: not, at all.

Good to have some perspective on this. Having not had an opportunity to see SR 5 yet, firsthand, I was curious about where the numbers really wind up.

Seems like one thing I'd want to do, if I were a Samurai, is find a way to decentralize some of my device log storage, so that if I saw my 'Check Engine Light' going off on some of my stuff, I could at least freeze the access logs for further analysis at a later date. then provided that log analysis was fruitful, that later date would subsequently be followed by kicking some doors down.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS.

[Werewindlefr]

Since when is rating 6 top secret prototype anything? Rating 6 is usually the high end of normally available. High end nonconsumer is 7 to 9, with 10+ being crazy prototypes.

The book says something about ratings, and rating 6 being the level of very sensitive stuff like multi-billion nuyen prototypes.

Good to have some perspective on this. Having not had an opportunity to see SR 5 yet, firsthand, I was curious about where the numbers really wind up.

Well, they wind up to 17-18, as the post you quoted showed (you need both an exceptional attribute and "talented" -or whatever it's called, the book isn't right next to me (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) ). The claim that it requires ridiculous amounts of minmaxing is very subjective, at least for a dice pool of 17 (18 might be pushing it).

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

The book says something about ratings, and rating 6 being the level of very sensitive stuff like multi-billion nuyen prototypes.

Can't you walk out of Chargen with Rating:6 gear up the wazooo?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS