I haven't drawn up rules for this yet, but I'd like to mention it here to see what other people think.

Technomancers can command high-tech equipment with the mutant power of their mutant brains. If you can't understand how this works, I suggest you read Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny. You still won't understand how it works, but you'll have a very mystical non-understanding of how it works, and you'll have read a great book.

Also relevant to this conversation is the anime franchise Ghost in the Shell, and the implicit suggestion (haven't read the book, but saw it mentioned) in Crash or whichever adventure that PC AIs are possible. The main character of GitS, the Major, is essentially an AI inhabiting a rigged anthropomorphic drone. Also, she's apparently a sort of lesser Technomantic God, who can execute realtime hacks on remote systems, but hey, decryption in Shadowrun works in realtime too (dude wtf), so who's complaining?

These sundry inspiriations lead me to the concept of the Techno-Adept, a type of Technomancer who rigs their own body (and possibly a handful of nifty drones. Look, I know it's cheesy, and it might get me flamed off the board, but I did used to be a BattleTech fan, and, um... yeah. *cough*powerarmor*cough* I didn't say it!). Now, one of the big problems with this is Essence loss, which I understand in game terms but don't like. That's my real hurdle to developing this idea further.

It's already the case that Technomancers can be pretty good shots, since they don't need implants or gear to use smartlinked guns. In fact, a sufficiently reckless and skillful technomancer could probably control a battlefield by just taking over everybody else's smartlinked guns (you don't even need to fire them. One spoof will win the battle: Eject Clip. And dude, you WANT machine and cracking spirits).

But I'm talking about the self-rigged man, the technomancer who can operate as a collective body of triangulating, range-finding drones, cybernetic enhancements that work way better for him than anyone else (if you think having a cyber arm with a built in gun or cyber legs with hydraulic enhancements are good enough, I have one word for you: Autosoft) or even work independantly (give a registered machine sprite/autosoft control of your legs while you shoot?), and general technobadassery.

So. First, let's get the flames out of the way. This isn't really cyberpunk anymore, this is transhumanism. Yes, yes, I know. Technomancers suck. We don't need thinly-disguised magic to be good street samurai. Right. Anyway.

Moving on, does anyone have any further suggestions, or suggestions on how to deal with the inherent Essence problems with self-rigged technomancers? I actually think I could make a good argument for eliminating Essence loss for TMs, given that they don't need to actually link a cybernetic part to their neural network in order to operate it. But this is kind of a game balance issue... and of course, what about PC AI's? Can we see the Major in a game? Is Essence a relevant issue for that sort of character? Etc.

As for the essence thing, not the loss of resonance that is linked with essence, you lose essense when you lose part of yourself. It's not the full fact that you installed the cyber arm, its the fact that you lost your real arm in the first place, by choice or accident.

Now whether the loss of essence should result in a loss of resonance has already been decided by the powers that be, though... I can fully understand their stance on it, to use it as a limiter on an uncapable power source, but maybe they will have an echo that allows maybe 1e loss without 1r loss. You can do alot with just 1e.

Nope! Losing your arm doesn't cost you a thing, unless your medical treatment is improper. Not in the rules, and not from the fundamental basis of how and what Essence is.

I think that when the advanced drone/vehicles book comes out, we'll see a humanoid anthroform drone - there is even a picture of a crappy one in the BBB, but no stats to go with it. At that time, anyone could buy one, and put an agent/pilot/AI in the brain... in order to make it act human though, one would probably need to run virtual person, or something....

In any case, it sounds to me like you want to take a fleshy human and rig their body so that an AI could drive it around... which would be boring for the person inside, and a relativly weak home for the inhabiting AI. I think something more like the character you mentioned sounds more likely to fall under existing rules.

Rather than an AI taking over a human body, its an AI taking over a human-like machine.

Can't offer a great deal at the moment, but I thought I could at least toss out some rough ideas.

First, a concept that might help out is listed under the "beleagured cyborg" thread...It talks about how Agumentation will have rules for full conversion borgs. Sounds enough like the Major to me.

My second thought is, and this is just a very rough and vague one so far, is something along the lines of mabe like a machine sprite with inhabitation like powers. Or maybe some sort of bizarre echo that lets a technomancer physically inhabit hacked devices. Still working on it in my brain...get back with you later on this.

My suggestion: Look at and read Cybermancy that might give you an idea of how it might work. What would keep the Major inside the body? If I remember correctly the Ghost in the Shell the movie the leaves her AI body and merges with another AI. Since there no AI's left you have to create a new one. Also if you want it to be like the major what allegiance would it have and why would it not go all Dues on everyone?

Just some wuick things to think about

Just write the Major's personality into the ally spirit you have inhabit the uber-borg body you had custom-made with all the gadgets and the best (modular, natch) commlink around (see the recent ally inhabitation thread).

No more worry about essence, loyalty, keeping the spirit attached to the body with 'mancy, oh, and she can cast spells, too.

Or have a free sprite inhabit the body, gives everything minus the magic, which she didnt have anyways.

i disagree with your assessment of how a cyberarm works relative to hackers taking it over.

if you take over someone's cyberarm, via hacking, you can do all the things that someone could legitimately do remotely. for example, you could run a diagnostic. you could probably find out what kind of modifications the cyberarm has. heck, you may even be able to trigger a diagnostic which makes the arm move around in various weird movements to show that each servo is working properly (though i strongly expect shadow gear bought from even remotely competent, reliable sources will remove this function ASAP).

what you cannot do is rig the arm. now, if you installed a cybernetic rigger adaptation, then you could... but that would be a houseruled device. a perfectly reasonable one, imo, but still houseruled.

the regular commands to move the arm around come from someone's central nervous system, and while you could theoretically try to simulate those signals, i would have a few requirements... such as that rigger adaptation, which doesn't exist in non-houseruled form.

Hmm? Nervous system input duplication is a core function in the Matrix; read up on how Black IC works. Beyond that, though, the book makes quite a few references that lead me to believe they intend for cyberware to be hackable to the point of control.

First, we know that cyberware has System, Response, Signal and Firewall (pg 206). In other words, it's got an operating system which processes its commands. On pg 208 (under 'Other Hacker Tricks'), we're told that hackers can "[turn] that street samurai's own cyberarm against him." pg 224 reminds us again that cyberware is hackable, and while I can't seem to find it right now, I recall reading a section describing the possibility of a hacker opting not to take control of a 'rye's arm and instead nabbing embarassing personal details about him (something about a Stuffer Shack and the only reference to Nerps I recall reading in the book).

So, no. The book doesn't explicitly say that you can take over someone's arm and make the sound of one hand clapping. However, it's strongly enough implied that I think you would need to make more of a case against it than a case for it.

I've seen the idea of rigging your drone body before. I don't like the idea of mixing TMs with cyborgs. I think that would be too much power of more then one type in the same character. Maybe as a threat but not as a viable character type. Let TMs be super hackers but suck at combat. It gives them their niche. If you make them one man armies with all the superhacking on top of that then you will either make other PCs resent the Technoadepts or you or both for creating it.

Skillwires on a drone doesn't make sense noneuclid. What you need is an autosoft but the skillwires are designed to tell your body what it should do with muscle memory and such. No muscles no skillwire. I could see running a skillsoft on a commlink to use it as a knowsoft but the coding is going to be giving all the wrong signals.

Also all you would have to do is have pilot anthroform skill. Having legs and arms operating seperately would be comical but not useful.

It's a linked operation. Each operator of the body would be aware of the others; see mutant Voltron, above.

TMs are actually kinda sucky hackers, which is part of why I came up with the technoadept idea. Sure, they look good to start with, but have you looked at how expensive it is to upgrade their 'commlink'? Not to mention, if you hack their system, they're your zombie servants.

That's why I think that you should either house rule the hell out of them (see my Technomancers on my web site) or get rid of them entirely. The reaction I got was that my TMs were too powerful but then I don't use normal hackers as PCs. Once you use my version, there is no comparision.