I was always under the impression that Technomancers could hit ridiculously big dice pools when played right but one of my friends I was talking to was swearing I've been running Technomancers all wrong and that they have a hard limit but I can't find it anywhere... Except for the Threading Limit cap (which is 2 x Resonance) Lemme break down an example...

A Technomancer with Resonance 6, Command 6 (12 when Threaded), Gunnery 6, Rating 12 Sprite, +2 for Hot Sim VR, could Shoot with a Drone at a 32 Dice Pool when the Sprite boosts your Command Complex Form for the next 12 rounds.

Now his argument is you can accept ANY more bonuses (Threaded or otherwise) to your Complex Forms after you hit 2 x your Resonance in it's rating... Yet I'm not finding anything. Was their errata or something that was released that I'm not aware of since for quite a few years, this has been the reasoning I've been using with my Technomancers when using them.

I went over this in a thread ages ago.

When you Thread a complex form, its new limit is 2x resonance.
Sprite Assistance raises the rating of a complex form.
It does not remove the limit imposed by resonance.
If you Thread, you get the upsides AND the downsides.

I recommend looking at the relevant matrix section yourself, but:
4A 240: No threaded complex form can have a rating greater than twice the technomancer’s Resonance.
4A 241: Assist Operation: A registered sprite can add its rating to any single complex form used by the technomancer.
Note: NOT a dice pool modifier. BIG DIFFERENCE.
SO yeah. CF 6 + threading 6 + sprite assistance = 18, but its really only 12 because Resonance x2 is 12.

Note that you could get the same effect WITHOUT using threading by using a sufficiently high force sprite, but good luck surviving the fading for a force 12 sprite.

You can get around this somewhat with use of Diagnostics and Probability Distribution with the right sprite types, but yeah.

Also, this kind of situation is EXACTLY what my houserules for making technomancers more accessable and less cheesy are form. You should give em a look.

This sounds a bit word lawyery and leaving a ridiculously big loop hole in your statement...
"No THREADED Complex Form can have a rating greater then the Technomancers Resonance x 2" Ok.... So does that mean if you don't thread it, you can have metric ton of Sprites adding their Rating to your CF? I mean I always just used it as a good rule of thumb to NOT allow more then 1 Sprite to add it's rating, but if were putting heavy emphasis on the wording of the rules, technically you have no limits as long as you don't Thread your CF.... Which makes that rule in the book, for lack of a better term, stupid (Assuming that's what they meant)

Seriously, with your formula, your basically telling me there's no point to playing a Technomancer due to the fact I can go get a comlink, Response/System 6, program my own Command Software and Optimize it so I can have it at Rating 12 even though the system is Rating 6, get the Comlink Optimized to give a +1 to running Command software, and come out 1 dice ahead of the Technomancer by playing a regular vanilla Hacker that has the Freedom to take Cyber/Bioware, and doesn't need to worry about Fading, just cash and time?

Yyyyyyyeaaahhhh.... No. I mean don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate your help but I was looking for more hard rules clarifications or Errata I might have missed. What you described literally makes no sense in relation to the fluff, setting, or mechanics of how Technomancers should be portrayed to be better then regular hackers. And yes, I know we can get into the "With Karma and time, they will outpace the mundane Hacker" but at the same time, I can argue that the mundane hacker has been saving up and getting the group's Face or his own Fixer to pick up a Response 10 Module for his comlink so he could run a rating 10 System which sets him up to code a Rating 20 Optimized Command program....

If I need to wait till I'm Resonance 11 to begin inching my way past the best Hackers that money can buy, thaaaaatttt seems to not translate well with what is written in the fluff and the setting as a whole. (I don't think any game would even last long enough to LET you reach Resonance 11 to begin with)

STOP RIGHT THERE
Reality Check!
TWICE RESONANCE
TWICE

Your rant is appreciated but unfounded

Hackers are already really good. With the right bonuses to logic linked skills they can basically get +4 to all internet checks ever.
Threading is there to let technomancers catch UP to hackers with ware.

I'm also fairly sure that 1) most hackers aren't going to be able to make threshold 24 extended tests to make their hackware in anywear NEAR a campaign's duration. Oh sure, command is half as hard because its common use, but that's a one trick pony.
If your GM lets you fuck off and do nothing for 2 years without any sort of consequence at all, then he's doing it wrong.

Also, the techno with ware beats pretty much anyone out on the matrix, because they can still use all the ware hackers can, except maybe for a hacker adept.

Sorry about that, I meant Resonance x 2 .... The entire rant was assuming it was 2 x Resonance, sorry about the 1 typo lol So no, taking that 1 typo out of the equation, the problem I have accepting your interpretation of those rules seems pretty valid to me still.

As for Programming, you can Rush (Splits duration of the Extended Roll in Half) and also Program in a Nexus Programming Environment (Which also breaks down Software rolls into half again) So that basically comes down to 1/4th the time it'd take (Sure you spend edge to make sure you don't screw up the roll since your rushing the job, but you get it done) So.... It really doesn't take that long to Code it yourself.... Definitely not anywhere near the 2 years your talking about

Well. The fact is, the matrix breaks to little bitty pieces on the high end. No matter which archetype you are playing.

If you GM lets you use stuff from War!, then he's asking for it.
Most GM's I know refuse to use the book at all, and use the established guidelines in Unwired.

Which means a hacker is limited to 6, and a techno is limited to 12 or so short-term in terms of program bonuses.

It seems to me that you're overly fixating on high numbers and the broken end of balance. There is a huge difference between what you can pull off in a game, and what is possible in the system. Charop only gets you so far.
Frankly, in a standard game, Threading is the worst offender. None of the other archetypes can really compete against Stealth boosted to ridiculous levels.

Its a problem more with YOUR game, than with the system. If people are tossing around rating 10+ programs willy nilly, then you have a broken as shit game, and deserve to pick up the pieces.

incorrect dice pool calculation. A drone using gunnery uses its Pilot + autosoft rating to attack. So the machine sprite in question would use its rating for Pilot, and have a gunnery autosoft as one of its optional CFs at its rating. Which is 12 + 12 = 24 dice. Hardly underpowered, considering that most (if not all) mundane riggers will be commanding drones with much smaller dice pools (since drones tend to have Pilot ratings around 3 or so, and autosofts cap out at 4). So 24 dice vs. 7 dice. The technomancer is hardly underpowered here.



Response and program ratings were capped at 6 in the basic SR4 rules, and even that munchkin monstrosity, War!, only raised those ratings to 9 (I heard), and that is presumably for the hot milspec stuff. I don't think Response 10 Modules or rating: 20 optimized software (optimization is also capped at 6) is something you will really run into very often... or at all, if you have a sane GM.

Udoshi: The rules from Unwired allow you to double the Ratings of Software = to your System on your Comlink (which should be a 6 as long as you also have 6 Response) I mean, from what your saying, it sounds like you don't even use the Unwired book either It's a cross-GM game where some of the player base takes turns so it's been going on for a while, and all the characters have a TON of Karma on them, it's not like I'm trying to get this kinda high dice pool at character creation, I was using it as an example for the equation I was showing. So we've kinda moved away from the subtle and more reserved quiet aspects of early on Shadowrunning and have gone into the high-risk, overloaded octane stuff... So I should take it that since war was kinda voted in by all the GM's and players.... LOL I'll stop right there and say thanks for the information (Cause I get the feeling you probably loath the kinda game I'm involved in at the moment.)

Glyph: I'm not talking about the Drone doing stuff, I'm talking about the Technomancer Remote Controlling the Drone... Not a Sprite

As for War!, nope, it goes up to 10 (Hence an Optimized Command of 20 for Mundane Hackers if they can get their hands on the module.)

A technomancer who has "jumped into" a drone uses Agility plus Gunnery, with possible modifiers for sensors, a smartlink, and the target's signature. Technomancers can be super-riggers, but typically do so by using sprites.

For someone who has professed to read war, you're awfully keen on lacking important details, like the limit of program options ratings being six. War didn't increase that limit at all.

Go read the book before you insult my knowledge of it.(both of them)

+

LOOK UP CONTROL DEVICE
I swear I post 'How to control drones 101' in every goddamn thread.

Sorry if you thought I'm coming across as being condescending or belligerent... This is the internet so sometimes words can't really convey the sentiment, but hey, you might be changing my world in terms of how I ran and played in multiple campaigns for the past few years. Okay, I never realized that Optimization only goes up to 6 at max. So even with a Response and System 10, you can only go to a max of 16 in any program. I owe you an apology.

But still, that wording with Threading Complex Forms, if you don't Thread it, you can have your Rating 12 Sprite add all 12 to your Rating 6 CF? Cause under CF, it just states the max your Base CF can go up to is Resonance. I'm not saying the rules could have been written A LOT clearer, but still, I'm just trying to figure out what's the hardcap for a CF and bonuses you can put onto it. Cause yes it's clearly stated that a Threaded CF has a hardcap of Resonance x 2.... What's the cap if you don't Thread it?

Edit: Whups, tabbed browsing got the best of me. I put my reply to the explaining the genre thread in here by accident. Fixed now. A longer and more on topic reply may be forthcoming in the morning

To be fair, if you're running a game, you can do whatever the heck you want with it. As long as you're having fun, you're doing it right as far as I'm concerned. Even if that means letting the players have things that they shouldn't have, or that shouldn't exist. However, if you're going strictly by the book for a multi-gm environment, then yeah, you should probably follow the rules a little stricter just o maintain balance. Apology accepted, though!
That's a first for dumpshock, I think. Well done. I generally do NOT expect people to be remotely civil on this board.

As for the cap on complex forms?
There isn't one.
Note that there is no difference between this and how TM's usually get played.
Most GM's usually let sprite assistance and threading stack because they don't know any better.
Thus leading to the 'my technomancer has stealth at 18, what the hell do I do, TM's are so OP' problem I see fairly consistently around here.

RAW, you can use Assist Operation but not threading and break 2xResonance, I agree.

Stacking one Assist Operation with another Assist Operation is an iffier proposition. Technically, there aren't rules explicitly forbidding it...but that's true of a lot of "doesn't stack with itself" things in SR. Nowhere does it actually say that you can't get, for example, Muscle Toner twice (or for example, buy 4 copies of Muscle Toner 2 for +8 agility), that you can't Aid Sorcery on the same spell multiple times, or all sorts of other things like that.

Because of this, the general consensus is that stuff will not stack with itself unless it explicitly says it stacks with itself - but this isn't laid out in the rules anywhere.

a Jumped in rigger, techno or otherwise use sensor + Gunnery, not agility. SR4A 247.
When remote controlling a drone the rigger uses Command + Gunnery. SR4A 247

Now one thing to remember about Optimization of a program is that it doesn't increase the rating of the program, it increases the rating of the system for determination of whether the optimized program from run on that node or not.
So if you take a node with a system rating of 6, and have a rating 12 command with optimization 6 you could run that program.

Now to program that command 12 with optimization 6.
Software 6. Logic 6. Could have cerebral booster, PuSHeD to get extra bonuses, since this way is not the technomancer way.
Common use programs have a threshold of Rating and a 1 month interval. so, 12 and 1 month intervals.
Two ways you can do this.
Programing package rating 5 would add 5 dice to your pool.
so first interval gives you 5 or 6 successes. I figure this is done in 3 months.
If you have access to a nexus programming environment then you can cut this down to a month and half. If you rush then you cut it down to 3/4 of a month
Optimization 6 has a threshold of 6 and a interval of 1 month. done on average 2 months, again half that time for a nexus and half again if you rush.

I was going by JUMPING INTO DRONES, top of page 239, SR4, where it says "Any tests are made using the rigger's own skill and Attributes." I guess that's another rules change that didn't make it into the SR4A Changes document.

Obviously not, as it's not a new change in SR4A and thus has no place in that document.
From 1,8 errata(cant say from withc one this is originally as i haven't kept the older erratas)
p. 239 Jumping Into Drones [4]
 e  rst line of the  rst paragraph should read:
“Riggers may also take a Simple Action 􀀀”
 e last line of the second paragraph should read:
“Any tests are made using the rigger’s skills plus the
Matrix/vehicle attributes of the drone.”

That was uncalled for, the dude is just trying to save some face We all know those rules have been in since SR4.