A R6 Sprite will almost certainly be smarted than the technomancer and smarter than 99.9% of the population. So err, this would seem to be untrue.

No, this is completely wrong. Read the rules. Perception DOES NOT require an action. You make the check and you know this stuff.

Matrix perception DOES require an action. WITHOUT the action you DO NOT know what the various icons are. Even an agent still has to render all the icons.

This is stated in the rules. Why is it so hard? P228 - Heading "Matrix Perception" - Paragraph 2

No, it says that this test is needed to find out if an icon is what it appears to be (see the "Using Augmented and Virtual Reality" chapter in the main book). Seeing an icon does not require a test, neither does clicking on the glowing envelope to access your mailbox.

When you log onto a node, the only infomation you get is "You are in a node"

You need to do a test to find out how many Icons are on the node, and you need another test for each individual icon to find out what it is. This is explictly called out on P228 - Heading "Matrix Perception" - Paragraph 2

If you're trying to evaluate if a TM is the right tech support to bring, ask these sorts of questions:

* Am I ok with only fighting through drones
* Am I ok with getting skillwires and taking the time to patch cracked activesofts
* Am I ok with spending all of my karma on my tech support

If so then a TM may be for you.

Things to focus on mechanically that separate a TM from a Hacker in their tech support field:

* Using Mesh Reality (a second tier echo) a TM can be in full VR while walking around. This means more dice and the ability to hack things not present in AR.
* Using the Skinlink echo they can hack things just by touching them.
* Sprite Link is one of the best echoes but doesn't seem that good at first glance. It allows an additional single type of sprite to be compiled/registered that is outside your stream each time you get it.
. . . Machine Sprites being used to operate a drone. They can have an Autosoft rating higher than the software allows and since its resonance it can be used at the sprites rating of 6-ish even if the Response/System are a stock 3 or 4.
. . . Paladin Sprites have hardened armor and can take hits for you but can't hide so they are good brute force weapons.
. . . Code sprites can alter probability in a given node. This means they can buff yourself or a hacker. Put one in your bionode to aid your icon then have a second icon in the target node.
. . . Tutor Sprites can have any knowledge skill. Let me say that again: ANY KNOWLEDGE SKILL. Its a complex action to Compile one.
. . . Fault Sprites using the Electron Storm power get the benefits of locking an icon in combat and penalizing their rolls just like Black IC but can affect anything with Electron Storm
. . . A rating 9 Fault Sprite will eat a hacker in cybercombat especially if buffed with a Code Sprite using its probability power. Seriously. And if it gets lost its only an action away from being back in the fight. You could even be mean and have a Paladin Sprite protect the Code Sprite since the Fault Sprite will be awfully hard to hurt to begin with.


Earlier posters saying TM's cant fight well in their bodies are correct. Make up for it with Edge. If you can land a bullet on a target loaded with DMSO and Atropine then shoot a stick and shock the target WILL notice they are in a great deal of discomfort. (-2 for disorientation and double wound modifiers and they need a Body+Chemical resistance pool of 15 dice on average to take no damage.) Use technology and trickery to give you an edge but don't get the idea after 100 karma you'll be able to be in a bar fight and walk away unless maybe you're spending an edge to go first and suppressive fire buys you time to run.

So is a TM better? Totally depends on what you want to be doing on a run. If its trumping nodes and deploying drones then you can be a rock star and if its much else then yeah, hacker may be for you.

If you want to supplement a hacker then a TM is ideal but I understand this is not your situation.

About Perception/Matrix Perception:
1. "Obvious" things - do you need a test to see a large AR advertisement in a mall or find your own pants lying in the middle of the empty room? I think you don't. They are obvious. BUT if you are running from corpsec at the mall or trying to find these fraggin' pants under a suppressive fire, it's possible to miss even so obvious things - so GM may decide that you need to make a simple test to see them.
2. Perception in Matrix - if you are inside a node, you see other icons. And they probably are often shaped in some standard way - you know if you see a working Winamp, or Windows, or Linux etc.
BUT if you are entering a node node unknown to you, shaped in the form of fantasy castle, you are not sure what is what. Paydata could be shaped like books in wizard's library (in a corp's node, where wage slaves need aneasy way tofind what they need), or a flying faeries, or a goblins' poo (you know: hackers and their sense of humor...). The knight at the door may be a source of newsletter, another hacker, IC with Analyze Program only, or a deadly Black IC armed with rating 8 Black Hammer. You see it, but you can't be sure what they really are - so you need a Matrix Perception test to know.

Looks like you automaticallygain some basic data about icon that you are looking at - i don't think that wage slaves working in a node must Analyze EVERY SINGLE icon before using it - but need a test to learn anything more. Good idea, sometimes - everything in node can be disguised as a something else, use Stealth etc.

Besides:



(I'll check SR4A, of course, but I think these rules remain unchanged)

From the "using VR and AR chapter (4A):



From said chapter:

Sure, getting an up-to-date list of users in a node requires a test. If a player wanted to have a list of all people in a crowded place, he'd have to make a test, too.

Besides, use some common sense. The Matrix is part of everyday life, if everybody with Computer skill and all common programs on one would need several attempts to find his favourite shopping mall, people would return their commlinks and just go there physically.

Please note that you don't get the list until you take the action - which is in the last paragraph of the matrix perception header. I assume you just forgot to quote that bit. So yes, all you know when you log onto a node is:



Which is what I said yes.

So for serious your defence of the ruleset is this:

A) Quoting the parts of the rules that apply, specifically the ones that say 'to know what anything is, you have to spend a simple action'
B) then said 'well if you use common sense you wouldn't use the rules as written because they suck'
C) then are making out like the rules are okay.

Awesome.

Just quoting myself here:

Sure, getting an up-to-date list of users in a node requires a test. If a player wanted to have a list of all people in a crowded place, he'd have to make a test, too.

But a simple description like "you're in a fairly crowded node dominated by a huge red pyramid icon bearing the logo of X, close to you is high-res icon looking like Y that really sticks out among all the off-the-shelf personas" does not need a test.



Not to know what anything is, to know if something is what it seems to be, ie. if the glowing envelope symbol is indeed your mailbox or maybe the admin's porn stash.
But either way, it clearly disproves your assumption that simply rendering the icon requires a test.

The rules in Unwired suggest otherwise. Wasn't there a whole section on the limitations of mooks? And if that section only applied to Agents, then TMs would be laughing at Hackers all across the Matrix (doubly so if you applied every optional TM rule given in Unwired).

- J.

Sure, but that doesn't enable you do anything - it might just be my experince here, but in general I think players log onto nodes to do something - steal the pay data or fight the IC or open the door or whatever. Which does actually need a test by the rules.



The rules say that to find out what an Icon is you need to make a matrix perception test. So if you're looking for the Paydata or the door control, you have to go through every icon on the system looking for the thing. Also it means you don't know which one is the agent either. Or even if there is an agent.

note of course that you don't need to know what a node is to interact with it necessarily. (your attempt to interact may just fail.)

it does bother me a little bit that "observe in detail" doesn't also include all the things you would normally learn about unstealthed icons with a perception test - or at the very least a few of the major things.

mooks are, by definition agents. sprites are not agents, therefore sprites are not mooks.

that said, i would say in some ways, sprites are similar to mooks. if you create a machine sprite with a pilot aircraft autosoft, that sprite knows a lot about flying aircraft in the real world. but if you create a code sprite, it probably doesn't know much at all about flying aircraft in the real world. sprites are smart, but they are ignorant in many areas relating to the real world, as a general rule. but if you send a rating 6 crack sprite to hack a node, it is going to be pretty smart about hacking the node. just don't let it decide what should go on your grocery list or anything (although i'm sure whatever it orders would have excellent matrix security compared to normal )

Why is it so hard... Same Page, Same Heading... You can have the software do it for you and not worry about it at all (as long as you trust the GM to be fair about it)... No action on your part AT ALL...

And assuming that you are using a fairly high-end Reality Filter (especially if you programmed it yourself) the Reality Filter will render the node for you IN YOUR PARADIGM/ICONography (assuming the Reality Filter is in Control anyway), so you will already know what that icon is representing, Since you programmed it that way... the only time this may not work is if something is using Stealth to blend in (as that is what it does)...

Keep the Faith

All that means is your agent has to take the time to work out what the types are. It takes the same name of simple actions.

Well the rules say you can let your commlink crank on it itself (similarly to initiate cryptanalysis) no Agent needed.

it still takes the same amount of time though I believe it will prioritize things you're attempting to interact with.

Well yeah, you'd do that too if you were doing it directly. Just that when you log into the Fuchi Main Filing System, there are over a billion Icons and you have no idea which one is which.

I'll just note though that not one single Shadowrun Missions includes in the description of the nodes how many ICONs are loaded, which leads me to conclude that the developers do not actually use the rules they wrote down.

I think the assumption is the same as in the past - you can basically see and identify (more or less as fast as you can locate stuff you actually want to play with) everything in your immediate logical vicinity. this is handwavium of the 'your commlink is doing the work in the background' rule. since you rarely enter a system immediately in combat it's usually ok to assume this, since in a few minutes your 'link will be keeping up just fine with your data searches. -> iow - icons you haven't already processed through your background matrix perception checks aren't rendering *at all*.

the explicit matrix perception test exists for unstealthed icons to let you "get info" so to speak, which shows you stuff you wouldn't normally want up front in the visual metaphor.

when you do enter in combat (typically because you triggered an alert as you hacked in) I tend to enforce pretty strict rules concerning resolving icons, including not allowing you to immediately identify when new agents/sprites/IC have launched.

That would be nice if it didn't explictly say you had to check how many icons there were on the node when you log in. It's 100% weirdness 100% of the time.

Data Search action (SR4A, p. 230)?...

Jeez, just imagine:
I am a wage slave. I am in a Node1. I need data from Node2. With your interpretation of rules, I have to:
1) Analyze exit point of Node1, then I can use it to exit.
2) go to Node2,
3) Analyze a node/guarding IC, then I can give a passcode to it and enter.
4) Analyze EVERY icon in node to find the one I need. I know a file's name/number, but to find names/numbers of files in a node, or even to differ them from other icons, I have to Analyze EVERYTHING!!! In a big nexi that could mean few hours to get just one file .
Then I have to go back, Analyzing everything by the way again.

Oh, but if any IC or security hacker enters a node to attack my PC hacker, he has to Analyze every icon in a node, because he doesn't know which one is me!

Rules for Matrix Perception (from SR4A, p. 228) say that you are provided by a basic information about everything you interact with, and you have to Analyze it only if you want to know details, or to be sure that icon is not an IC in disguise.

If you had to render everything separately, wouldn't that also mean that iconography becomes irrelevant, as you're likely not rendering most of that?



It makes more sense to say that all non-hidden icon have an info field specifying their public type, and that you immediately render all those. Analyze is for checking specifics, and checking if it is what it says it is.

Data search action only tells you which node the file you are looking for is on, not which file is the one you need.

I know it is dumb.



This is exactly the same in outcome. Instead of decrypting just the one you want, you have to try and decrypt everything to work out which are files.



Yes it would make much more sense to say that, I agree entirely.

Could you quote this rule? In the "Data Search" action description i see "(Data Search + Browse) can be used on any large amount of data, such as a list of icons in a node (...)"
Is it impossible to click an icon's name on a list to highlight that icon and/or see an arrow leading to it? Or to let a local program to bring it to you, like "Search" option in RL Windows menu? If authors would try to say evetrything about such simple things, corebook would be a 1000-page brick - mind that every node can have another protocols for any request. A node's creator is a little god - he decides not just about how things in node look like, but also how they work.


If they are encrypted, yes. If they are not, you just poke them and see "hey, I'm a file!" "hey, I'm user John112009!" "hey, I'm IC!" And they are sculpted by users to simplify their work - example: all files' icons in my node look like books. Without such simplicity, Matrix would be totally useless.

My opinion is.....

None. If you need hacking legwork, get a hacker contact and work with your GM to minimize the necessity of a full fledged hacker character in the team. Use a rigger or another PC with -competent- hacking skills to break into system for data, but that's about it. I personally hate the Matrix rules, I hate creating multiple combat domains in a single combat situation, and I hate breaking characters into groups just because one character uses a different rule set.

Sadly, some people actually like playing hackers. Hacking doesn't have to dilute the entire game and break apart the team into separate groups. Just get good a quickly multi-tasking. If it's going to be something you feel could be quite involving for the hacker, then a suggestion would be to do it ahead of time or something.... Or streamline the hacking/cybercombat situation a bit... Or y'know, do it at the same time as other crap going on.

That still leaves Rigger, my personal favorite of the bunch.

I don't mind doing that but my gripe is players relying on NPCs to do everything when they damn well know they need a balanced party but nobody wants to take on THAT role - which is fine. I have several hackers they can draw in but I build in specific flaws/drawbacks into using them and the PCs need to decide who to use for what and when. But do not bitch about the quirks I build into those characters. If you're waiting on the perfect hacker NPC it ain't going to happen.

E.g.
One hacker (Glitch) is an ice cold pro. He has a Cracking skill group of 6, only does offsite jobs - never in the flesh and charges like a wounded bull. To call him for a job he has a call out rate starting at 600Y for the first hour and it goes up. He only works 9am-5pm (yes, there is a very good reason for this) on scheduled jobs and for anything outside those hours, his rate doubles and goes on from there. He goes out of his way to make it a pain in the ass to deal with him outside of business hours. He sounds impossible to deal with but then they realised that's only because they were calling him up every time they needed a random Data Search and with undefined/massively underscoped jobs.

They have other hackers they can also draw on - similarly to Glitch, one is an elven hacker who is an awesome rep for delivery but word has it she has a bit of a drug habit (read: known to be flakey at times). Another contact they have is an kid ork hacker new to the shadows and still learning the ropes but keen to impress (read: newbie).

The smart move would be to use the Newbie for Data Searches, distraction runs or when pressed to find anyone else. Glitch is intended for very tough jobs where you are relying on a fixed outcome, know the exact job you want him to complete and are willing to pay for it (even then he isn't perfect). The elf is for everything else, but be prepared to accept that thigns aren't always going to go smoothly for you.

I also have NPC riggers as well, but that's a separate discussion.

I will never make things easy on them with NPCs. If they want a perfect hacker, they can bloody well play one.

- J.

But what if one of the players believes hackers are cool?

I mean, they are. The rules aren't that great, but the idea of playing a hacker is cool.

The Jake: That's actually a really cool way of handling the hacker situation should the team not want to have one in their group! And... They don't just treat hiring a hacker as something easy and mindless to do. It has its repercussions.