What complex forms would be vital for a techno to have. I am trying to make my first SR4 character, and the cost of complex forms adds up fast. There is threading of course, but that must be sustained. There is also sprites, a valuable and useful tool for many purposes....but a techno has to have some things ready and on the go.

I am thinking things you would use very commonly, and over and over (analyze, scan, exploit, stealth, maybe spoof), things you need to have instant access to, that you wouldn't want to spend a turn getting ready for (armour, maybe attack), maybe things that sprites can't do (no sprite has ECCM, and considering it can shut you down cold...), what complex forms would you *definitely* put on a starting techno.

Things like defuse, data bomb, edit, even encrypt...you will only do on rare occasions. Many programs can be ably satisfied with a helpful sprite, and even a force 4 sprite will probably be managed with no fading by many able technos. Browse is useful, but you are rarely under pressure while you do it. Same with decrypt. Sniffer and track would be handy...but I am not sure they are mandatory for starting rollout.

I am also not clear what the command program really does. When you do you bother actually rolling it? Once a drone is subscribed to you....well, they accept commands. I haven't found where you need to actually roll that.

i would say the first thing is to just make sure you have a few bound spirits. (ermm... uhh... i mean, subscribed sprites, which are a completely unique concept, and do not in any way just use the same rules with different names as spirits ).

then, whatever they can do, you don't need to worry about so much.

other than that, you seem to have the basic idea down... whatever you will use a lot, make sure you have that form, if you can. also, if you are at all a min/maxer, you will only want forms if you are buying it to 3 or higher. 1 or 2 costs the same in karma as BP, 3+ is more expensive when you pay karma for it

The starting technomancer I made had the following complex forms:

Analyze
Encrypt
Browse
Edit

Armor
ECCM
Spoof
Attack
Exploit
Stealth.

Of those, i figure I *could,* if I had to, loose spoof and Encrypt, but I wouldn't really want to. You can't get in the door without Exploit and Stealth; You're a sitting duck to anything with stealth unless you have analyze, and a sitting duck to everything else without attack and armor. Without ECCM, a jammer that costs less than a decent weapon can shut you down completely with no test. Without browse and edit, well.. just what ARE you going to do once you've hacked in? Look for something and change it, of course!

Things I don't have:

Command (not very useful; unless you're hijacking an assembly line to build custom equipment.)

Scan (And I'm not sure I shouldn't have this -- all commlinks come with scan 1... does this mean a technomancer without scan can't actually find and connect to a network?

Reality Filter (Not very useful at all to hackers; technomancers can use it well as they have no program limit, but it's an expense I couldn't afford.)

Blackout / Black Hammer (More limited than attack, though still useful they are programs I think I can do without)

Decrypt / Defuse (I think most times when these two utilities come up, there will be enough time to thread them.)

Data Bomb (Never saw the point of this one)

Medic (Can't use it on a technomancer)

Sniffer / Track (I'll miss these, but again I think I would probably have time to thread them if I had time to use them, especially track with its sky-high extended threshold of 10 + stealth)

This sounds a bit min/maxer, but technomancers really should buy all the complex forms they can at chargen, at as high of levels as possible. Compared to hacker programs, CF's are very, very expensive; and that expense only increases after chargen. So unless you want to be totally reliant on threading and sprites, it's a huge BP investment.