It's a shame a lot of the nanowire is being redone because that had awesome hack potential if you hacked the hive.

Or imagine buildings that had nanosystems built & maintained right in the walls. Need to reconfigure a floor's layout, program it in for during midnight maintenance and the nanos could have it ready overnight....

Anyway....

I think a lot of stuff has been scale back so it has longer game potential and you can't cap out right away, but I also think some of the basic functions got booted up the tree a bit further than intended or wise.

I actually had a question about TMs - for most devices, if in use the device icon is subsumed by the persona icon (requiring a Matrix Perception check to see the device), but for TMs, they only have their persona. Meaning that a cop (or anyone, really) can take a Matrix Perception action at a TMs persona and go 'Waitaminute, this person isn't using a device...OH NOES TECHNOMANCER PROLLY CRIMINAL KILL IT KILL IT WITH FIRE'.

I'm hoping I read that wrong, so is that actually what TMs are expected to be? In addition to all the mechanical nerfs, they're also retardedly simple to discover? I mean, that's practically unplayable at that level.

I don't think you're reading it wrong. Kinda how I read it too. Technomancers are not recognized as devices (true in SR4 as well), but they don't automatically run in hidden mode anymore and cannot slave a commlink to hide behind like they used to. They can still run in silent mode like other things, and suffer the same dice pool penalty as well.

But the can remove an overwatch score and nobody can do that I think....

A technomancer/decker sounds real good.



Tymeaus Jalynsfein;

What do you mean when you say machine sprites can no longer interact with machines?

I did not say that, Shonen_Mask... Dantic Did... I think that Dantic believes that the Machine Sprit is a Sprite that has no actual control of Machines. It does not accomplish the task it is handed. At least, that is how I read it

I know in SR4A, they had some issues with such (though not much), and from what Dantic indicated, that apparently continues/has been exacerbated? Do not currently have access to confirm that information, though. I DO know that Technomancers have been the abused victim of the Nerf Bat, though. Sadly.

Everytime a Resonance Spike is threaded, a Sprite Decompiles.

Cleaner: A Software + Resonance [Level] test at a Fading of Level + 1 to remove net hits in OS.

A reboot is faster and easier. Yes you lose your MARKs, but your OS can drop from 39 to 0 in one combat turn.

Do your hack job and reboot right away. Matrix S.O.P.

It looks like a good complex since it can be used anytime not just when your in trouble. And other deckers can call it useful, particularly if they arent technomancers....

it's less bad than some of the other ones, mostly because using it is unlikely to leave you crumpled in a heap for a few hours as those other ones are.

but when the matrix is designed around fast resolution, well... if you're only making 4-6 checks to hack something, it's not that hard to just hack, reboot, and start fresh on whatever your next project is most of the time.

Forgot to mention, too, that as that Complex Form is Permanent it must be sustained for a number of Combat Turns equal to its Level before it actually takes effect.

Kinda makes me think Cleaner, and the reverse Tattletale, might've been better off as Instant instead...

Machine Sprites in SR4 got command as a complex form and the ability to use an autosoft CF as an optional ability. They still have the powers of Stability, Gremlins, and Diagnostics, but can no longer issue commands (a remote control action which requires data processing the sprite doesn't get). They also can no longer get the autosofts as a an optional CF (they get no optional abilities of any kind in relation to their level). So they can basically try and crash a machine, help prevent someone else from crashing a machine, or help someone who is using a machine to get a bonus, but they can no longer directly control machines through command nor "jumping in"


Edit: Machine Sprites do get the Hardware skill as a trade off. They have no physical form to use tools for B/R actions, but hey you can't have everything.

If your in a gird you hacked onto you risk getting dumped off. But with the 0 overwatch makes it very optional. I agree.

From a look at it, they're the victim of a mis-application of game theory, specifically regarding balance. In SR4, they were, in some regards, far too powerful an option compared to other hackers. Sprites were very powerful, and threading was, generally, an easy soak. Complex forms were expensive, but once you had them you didn't have to worry about swapping like a decker did. Beyond that, resonance realms were something exclusive to TM's alone, and provided great amounts of support.

In making SR5, not just for TMs but rather across the board, they looked at all the things that were deemed "too powerful" and "too weak," hereafter referred to as "broken," and swapped them. TM's were too adaptable and deckers weren't? Flipped. Fading for threading wasn't much of an issue, and didn't hold TMs back? Flipped. Sprites were a powerful resource and relatively easy to summon? Flipped. Cost of gear was accessible mid-to-late game, allowing most sams, riggers, and deckers to "cross class" with little trouble once they had the money? Flipped.

They didn't pay enough attention to the things they were rebalancing. If A, B, and C are broken in 4.0, but A and C affect the same part of gameplay, then you can't just flip A and C both and consider it fixed. While there was apparently playtesting, it doesn't seem like technomancers were promoted properly as a playtest option, or run alongside deckers to see if they could be a viable option in their own right. If they WERE, then somebody with a heavy bias against them was either unmonitored or in a position of unrivaled authority regarding their creation. Alternatively... perhaps it was really just horrible typos.

not sure why you think machine sprites don't get data processing. it's a matrix attribute, and they do have it. in fact, they have it at level +3, it is actually their highest matrix attribute.

you are right on the other stuff though... they don't have any way to access the skills they would need to use to do well with controlling things, with the exception of the hardware skill. well, and i guess jamming things.

I also don't see any way for a Machine Sprite to get a mark on an icon, so they wouldn't be able to be used offensively to control enemy drones or weapons (I guess this is where Gremlins is supposed to come in). You could invite marks on your own drones if you had them and let them Control Device, but again, no relevant skills.

We have not had a technomancer yet in our game, but to me it looks like they are a few dice worse but have some added tricks. Their drain is a bit bit too high and a couple of their initiation tricks I would have either left uncapped or with a higher cap but overall not as bad as people seem to be making out. What am I missing?

Lost abilities from SR4. Spoofing being a device to connect, flexibility, Slaving, being part of a PAN/WAN, and jumping into drones. That's all gone now, save the last but jumping into drones now requires an echo.

Gained was an obvious icon that anyone can now see unless the technomancer runs silent, and that cannot be hidden behind a commlink like before.

Biggest Remaining Issue (other than what Spellbinder covered) is that their Fading is too high for what it does. The Technomancer I made is not bad, Dice wise, but the Fading is a severe limit to their abilities. Even Mages do not get saddled with the atrocious Drain that Technomancers will face.

For Example:

Spells -
Control Actions: F-1
Mob Control: F+1
Control Thoughts: F-1
Mob Mind: F+1

Complex Form -
Puppeteer: L+4

Why the difference? They do roughtly the same thing in their respective fields, but Technomancers get right hosed, while the Mage does not.

There are several things that come to mind. I'm not an expert (built my first Technomancer the other day, thread here if you're curious) but reading through the forums has brought a few things to my attention:

1) Deckers improve their Decks with Nuyen, Technomancers have to use Karma.
2) Deckers can run overwatch on their group's devices through slaving into a PAN. Technomancers cannot be part of a PAN.
3) Deckers can be Riggers at character generation. Technomancers have to Submerge in order to have a RCC.
4) The Fading for Resonance Skills & threading Complex Forms is, generally speaking quite high. Many more knowledgeable souls then I believe it to be too high.
5) There is a belief that Sprites are much less powerful then in 4/4A. (I have 4A, but have never been inspired to compare.)

I'm sure there's more.

Still, I'd really, really like to play the TM I built above sometime. I think he'd be fun.

Because deep down all technomancy is really an altered form of magic and that extra 3 drain cost is the buffer cost for transistion into the virtual domain?

*ducks and runs*

Just kidding.

But yeah, I can't say why the costs are they way they be.

Maybe they didn't want to mirror magic too closely, oh look Mind control spell is X drain and Puppeteer is X Fading with X being the same.

I cry myself to sleep at night thinking about an Edgeless Resonance Spike.

Just to add a little:

1: And both also spend karma to improve their skills. Technomancers are now limited by their mental attributes while deckers are still theoretically open ended with the gear.
3: Technomancers can still be riggers at character generation. Even if a GM doesn't allow a submersion grade one can take a hit to their Resonance and have a Control Rig implanted in their brain, not that many will take this option.
5: With the requirement of a task just to re-register a sprite or to send it onto standby (surprised calling one from standby doesn't count), and then the automatic OS they generate, yes, using sprites has been gimped some. (Yes, I know summoners have to spend nuyen to bind spirits, but spirits also have a much wider direct application than many sprites which are limited largely to the matrix.)

And Sendaz, from a friend of mine who was at the last GenCon to witness this is the fourth line in my signature.

Oh, TJ, don't forget these...

Complex Forms:
Infusion Of [Matrix Attribute] - Level +1
Diffusion Of [Matrix Attribute] - Level +1

Spell:
Increase [Attribute] - Force -3

Those two complex forms are much more limited in scope than the spell, and as technomancers aren't devices they can't even target themselves (or each other) with those two complex forms to try and buff themselves.

With a lot of TLC, TMs can synergize modestly with drones. They can purchase an RCC and slave the drones to that to provide the Noise, Autosoft Sharing, and Firewall protection. They can stiill send orders to the drones using Send Message as the Owner of the drone. They can defend their drones from being marked in the matrix and fight off hostile deckers.

That's all the positive. Then it starts sucking immediately.

1) Why bother? Most drones explode into beautiful fireballs when they catch a stray round from a Streetline Special.

2) Since they are almost certainly in the Matrix as an LP, they presumably can't send messages through the RCC to multiple drones as once.

3) Want to Erase MARKs placed by an enemy decker? Go right ahead, but note that it is considered a Matrix Attack action and thus starts your OS count (one of the main reasons for being a TM in the first place).

I've built a TM. I'd love to try him out, but I can't help but think he is going to be unconcious within the first 15 minutes of the game.

just checked, and it turns out you can default on hacking tests in SR5. they may not be very *good* at getting marks on things, but if the target is weak enough (say, a DR 2 device that is not slaved to something better) then a decent rating machine sprite will actually have a roughly even chance of getting a mark. of course, a better way would be to spoof (or, if you're feeling optimistic about your ability to soak fading, use puppeteer) a mark on behalf of your machine sprite, then let it take over from there. or rather, it would be a better way if machine sprites didn't also suck at performing most tasks through a device.

i'm not saying machine sprites didn't get nerfed or anything... i'm just saying that they can still potentially control a device. poorly.




as it happens, "device" complex forms can also be used on personas; page 252, resonance library "A complex form with a Device target can also be used to target a persona". (and no, i don't have any idea why it would make more sense to put that absolutely critical piece of information into a paragraph that you're fairly likely to skip over reading than to just put that into the heading of each complex form, which as far as i can tell have plenty of room for it).

You know, I even made the effort to go to that part of the book in the PDF and then promptly forgot to check and presumed that Cybercombat and Hacking were No Default skills. LOL. Hmm.. so I wonder if not having any Pilot Skills would increase your sprite's chances of driving a Roto-Drone into the ground? "I'm going to attempt a loop-de-loop."

Indeed... Forgot about those.
Yes, not being able to buff themselves with the CF's is stupid in my opinion, but what can you do?

EDIT: Thanks, Jaid , for that information... At least the CF is now functional for a Technomancer, it is just that its Fading is still way too high to be really useful. *shrug*

Okay, so like I thought when I first went through the Matrix section (and yes, stupid; why not say "Target: Device or Persona"?). But still, using a complex form to now improve a limit while taking a -2 DP to all actions is worse than before when threading could actually improve your abilities in the matrix. Only advantage I can possibly see is Infusion Of Attack the turn before you perform a Data Spike.

The Improve [Mental Attribute] spell cast by a friendly (and trustworthy?) magician is still a lot better than the technomancer's reciprocal complex form.

I guess you could get a sprite to sustain it, but this is objectively worse than the spirit version (Registered Sprites sustain for the same length of time as Summoned Spirits. Compiled sprites can't even do it). Then there's the rather karma expensive Focused Concentration.

Focused concentration would work as well. I'll point out while I still think it is a bit too high the spell versions improve/decrease actual attributes not limits directly. Not that great for the increase side but decreasing a targets attack by 2-3 will cripple them in a fight.

I sill think that overall they are very playable. 90% of what the decker does will be handled by skill+attribute rolls with maybe a +2 for a program. The technomanver has all that except probably the program(and maybe another die) though chances are his limits will be a point or 2 worse and getting even worse as the decker beefs up his deck. Yeah they wont protect the teams devices and they can't rig until later(though with how much decks cost I don't think there will be that many starting decker/riggers in the game. And sure they lost some stuff from 4e, but big deal the comparison should stay in 5e vs deckers. Now complex forms need to drop in drain I agree because there extra tricks need to be useful to make up for the loss of a few dice. But they can erase overwatch with is pretty damn awesome and while sprites may not be as awesome as 4e they still look to be damn useful.

I mean were they supposed to be as good as deckers with some extras thrown on, or better than deckers with extras thrown on? They do have extras and to be balanced they have to be a bit worse than deckers in some areas. This isn't 4e where decking is easily done as aside job, it pretty much takes all of your resources to be ether a decker or technomancer so the technomancer can't be just flat out better at decking anymore. It might not be perfectly balanced, but deckers seem a bit better at the majority of tests they will encounter but the technomaner picks up a bag of tricks to try and balance it out.

Admittedly I;m looking at just the decking section as I have not built one yet and we don't have one in our game but while they seem to be a bit under powered compared to deckers I don't think they suck as hard as people seem to be making out.

Technomancers are interesting to be sure, Shinobi, and are pretty useful, depending upon build. But Yes, their Fading needs to come dow to allow them to actually use their abilities.

In SR4 I think they were supposed to be equal to hackers. While technomancers spent karma to improve their matrix abilities and could expand a little into other areas, hackers could write better programs for hacking and more easily expand into other avenues.

SR5... Well, again, my signature's 4th line.

And maybe if the Infusion had the added effect of bolstering a technomancer's actual attribute for the purposes of Matrix tests alone, maybe, just maybe, the drain might be worth it.

The amount of Karma sink the Living Persona can be is somewhat astonishing. Looking at my Dwarven Technomancer, I'm starting out with a pretty decent Living Persona "Deck": Firewall 7, Sleaze 5, Data Processing 5, Attack 5. It's roughly equivalent to a Sony CIY-720 although the Deck gets bonus points for Attribute reassigns & programs.

If I were to devote all my karma to nothing but Living Persona improvements right from the get go, it would cost me a grand total of 353 Karma:

90 Karma to raise Logic, Intuition & Charisma to 6 each.
75 Karma to raise Resonance to 8.
188 Karma to Initiate 8 times, taking the four LP improvement Submersions twice each.

At the end of it all, he'd have Firewall 9, Sleaze 8, Data Processing 8, Attack 8. And the Decker who started at the same time could use 285 of that Karma to raise the Hacking skill group from 6 to 12... and might have bought or built a Fairlight Excalibur that comes darn close to matching the LP.

(Naturally, driving all your Karma into one area like this is an extremely unlikely proposition. I myself will probably devote my first Submersion (if I ever get to play) to Overclocking. I think many (maybe most) TMs would do the same. It's a fun intellectual exercise though. )

as has been demonstrated in other threads on these forums, a well-built decking adept makes a technomancer look like a joke; it's more than a few dice ahead (just a regular decker isn't quite as far ahead at chargen, but is still probably noticeably better). and it's not just the dice pool increases for programs that are important... a decker can very easily boost their attack high enough to smash devices in a single shot (especially if the decker has a mark or two), or to just utterly wreck a person using either form of simsense... a technomancer cannot pull that off until they've submerged a time or two.

a decker can hit two things at once. a technomancer? not a chance, until they submerge.

and then there's the versatility. a decker can easily change a deck around with a single free action to suit whatever is needed (cost of 50 nuyen per configuration desired... until you just break the copy protection and then it's 50 nuyen once for as many as you want). a technomancer can't switch anything, and likely has lower deck attributes as well (7/5/5/5 isn't bad, but it's not really equivalent to the sony CIY-720, because you can easily swap the low matrix attributes to be whatever isn't important at the time).

not to mention the decker has a much easier time of it when it comes to spending attribute points. a decker needs high logic, and intuition and willpower are nice but not required to be huge. a technomancer needs all of those high because a 3 vs a 5 is not just a 2 die difference in dice pool, it's a 2 hit difference in limit, and it's likely going to cause some really major problems if they have it that low.

then, on top of that, augmentations. a decker can get them without giving up much. if you manage to get your hands on a used set of wired reflexes or a nice cyberlimb, go ahead and have them installed. for a technomancer, that's cutting into their already limited ability to function in the matrix.

technomancers needed to be toned down as compared to where they were in 4th edition, it is true. but it wasn't even remotely a good idea to scale them down to below deckers in almost every area, and then leave them with all the drawbacks as well.

what it really feels like is that technomancers were not so much deliberately targeted, as that they got caught in the crossfire and nobody was checking in on them constantly to see how they were doing as compared to other archetypes... more like someone nerfed them, and was thinking "we'll playtest and then come back and check later" and then they just never got around to the "come back and check later" portion of the plan, and then when the book was released deckers had gotten buffed to be useful, but technomancers are... well, they can be made to work, but nowhere near as well as a decker, basically.

We should rename this thread as the Technomancer Support Group.

TMA (Technomancer Anonymous)- Hi, I'm Bob, & I'm a technomancer, & I feel like my role has been usurped by these damnable Decker's "They took er jerbs"

"Hi, I went by the name 'Twitch' in the shadows, and I'm a technomancer. Now my job's been outsourced to a decker in New Delhi at a tenth the nuyen I used to be paid."

Hi, my name is PANic. Well... just Nic, now. I was a street urchin with a bit of extra oomph, that let me survive off of vending machines. I started to think I had a chance to work my way up to something better than scaving, but... well... I guess there's still the vending machines...

heh. let's not get quite so overdramatic

there's a world of difference between "not as good as the best" and "not good enough to function".

honestly, with a few key changes, they get to be not bad at all. no oversight on complex forms may not be worth a huge amount, but if the fading on them wasn't so bloody ridiculous, it would still be a pretty nice benefit. and sprites may not do as much as they once did, but they're also free (once you have the skills, i suppose), which can't be said for much else in this edition.

but yeah, they really should have taken more time to look at technomancers. fix the fading values, and imo introduce a new complex form that lets you emulate programs, 1 per level of the CF, with a fading value high enough to realistically keep starting technomancers at about 3-4 complex forms (i'd say +1 or maybe +2 would do the job), and while i would certainly hesitate to say that technomancers would be strong, that *would* go a long ways towards making them pretty close.

Well here is a question, is the amount of Fading hike roughly the same across the board for the various abilities?

I mean would dropping the Fading by 2-3 bring them pretty close to their magical equivalents to serve as a baseline adjustment?

Well, they range from (F-3) for Transcendent Grid to (F+4) for Puppeteer.

Transcendent Grid's FV seems more like bookkeeping than anything else. It's pretty much urging you to thread it at a minimum level of 5 since you're facing the same FV from 1 to 5 (all assuming you have a Resonance of 6). Net hits results in a longer duration and there isn't really any reason not to just thread it again when the time is up.

Then there's Static Veil. It's (F-1), but there is very little reason to thread it highter than Level 1 or 2 as the CF is based on hitting a threshold of 1 or 2. Really, the only reason to thread it at a higher Level is to get net hits to resist someone trying to Kill your CF. Does that happen often in games? It seems like it would be on the same frequency as decompiling sprites. I guess if you're playing a heavy TM or Resonance based game you might see it.

Resonance Veil seems far more powerful than Resonance Spike, but has a lower FV.

In the end, I think you have to look at them individually and adjust.

Back on topic,
Hi, my name is Maximillion, but you can call me Max. I was once referred to as "The" preeminent Dronomancer from the CAS, in a Shadowfacts™ Blogisode . Now I get a headache if I even think about touching the Resonance and my Doberman is a rusted heap, leaking oil in the corner of my squat.