So can the technos run agents? How about write them or write other hacking programs?

I know the book says the techno skills are different from the actual skills as the technos are all not magic magic and they just get the computers to do what they want but can the end effects be the same? So can your techno make some extra nuyen writing code for hackers using the techno skills?

I was thinking for a group of runners, could the techno help code firewalls or programs for the rest of the group?

The agents I was just wondering about cause the techno's can subscribe drones or things like that and that is basically what an agent is. It would help augment his army of sprites and wouldn't waste services on things like tapping a node or something like that.

Personally I would allow Technomancers to do anything that a Decker could do with their skills, except teach another Decker.

Also as long as they have a commlink they can use any program that a Decker could, including Agents, but they have to command them just like a Decker would.

seriously, do you people rule that non-technomancers can't use stuff the TM builds with their hardware skill, too?

i wouldn't even say it's necessarily impossible to understand for a normal hacker... though many hackers would build it differently, the code would indeed work normally, as the program is just a normal program, and runs just fine on normal devices.

True. The 'how it works' part gets silly when having deterministic systems... so basically, the only thing remaining is indeed the 'how he did it' part.

A TM has no storage capabilities himself, and the Living Persona originates from himself.
So he can't load anything into it...

Buy the TM a few RFID tags. Then they have a place to store data.

RFID tags are preitty much WORM media.

On the other hand, the poor TM owns clothes, doesn't he?

Also, the TM doesn't need to store the agents or any other data on his person. He should have a datastash somewhere on the net where he hides that kind of stuff. He would just pull it off the net when he needs it.

Page 381 says "RFID Tag data is often fixed, but in some cases is reprogrammable." I've always read that as allowing some tags that are rewritable. The GM may decide they are more expensive (double perhaps), but they still seem to be available. Having a commlink to store things on would work just as well for storing the agents or programs.

You know, I guess I don't really understand what the big deal is, a Technomancer who doesn't want to be found swinging from the nearest lightpole is going to want to have a working commlink anyways, so why not spend some of that cred that they really don't have another use for on a kickass commlink?

As I understand it an Agent doesn't have to be loaded into your persona living or otherwise. You CAN, such as if you want to go hacking with it and don't want it to have to crack in on its own, but you don't have to. For example maybe the TM doesn't want to spend time searching for something, and they don't want to waste fading/sprite services either, so instead they just send out an agent that runs off a seperate comlink.

This also gives TMs a reason to want nuyen, and greed is always good (in SR )


As for coding and all that I really really wish they had done things differently, so that would be more clear (and less BP intensive ideally). As a GM I think my solution would be "your time would be better spent building up sprite taskes and training your skills. Where do you think you have time for coding? Just buy they stuff after your next run or two."

If the agent's in a secure node, all the techno needs to do is have the agent drop an icon into the target node. You don't need to upload it (though you can of course).

Agents don't have to live in your persona, they can run in any node. They can even run in your datajack.

Come to think of it, if you stored your agent on your commlink persona, does it gain automatic access to your current node via your existing datastream? If so, maybe your external agent can do the same thing and piggyback on your datastream from outside the secure node. All it would need is access to your datastream which you can grant access.

Agents are a SEVERE resource hog, even if you try to load them on the node you are on, which is possible if you have access to it. I'd let you sneak in agents, but you pay for their use in response as per usual. If you look at the official shadowrun FAQ, it notes specifically that each agent counts as a seperate program instance AND each program it runs counts as ANOTHER program instance seperate from any copies your persona is running. So, if you have an agent running with attack, and you are running attack, that's 3 programs RAW. Your attack, your agent, your agent's attack. You and the agent can load attack from the same program source, but for purposes of impact on response, the agent's programs count seperately.

Consider the example encounter in the PDF with the two agents. That's 2 agents with 3 programs, that's 8 programs total. With that systems reponse of 4 and system of 4 it would have been brought down to a response of 2 with all those programs running and those IC would be running at severely hampered effectiveness, since their pilot would be effectively 2, and all their programs would be effectively 2. This is why it's a good idea to script your agents. I currently play a chaos mage with a few ranks in some computer skills. When he's not actively doing anything in the matrix (the dedicated hacker sometimes calls on him for support, a slightly trained non-dedicated hacker in SR4 actually makes for good backup in this game.) I load a rating 4 agent, I give it general analysis tools. Its orders are if it picks up anyone who isn't on my team logged on to my commlink, it is to sound an alarm, unload it's scanning tools and load up attack and armor. In fact, I've been known to load a copy on the nodes of my runner teammates using the resources of their nodes. Makes it a little harder for an opposing hacker to get inside your team's pans and reak havoc.

Thing is still, loading just ONE agent with programs will cripple your effectiveness if you are trying to run programs too. Loading one on a node can give you an extra helper, but loading more and more will quickly cripple the node and the effectiveness of the agents you loaded. It would be an odd way to drop the response of a node to 0 if you managed to hack yourself enough access to a node to load agents on it and eat up resources, but such activity would probably attract the attention of security rather fast IMHO. Also note it takes an action to load a program, including agents, and agents specifically cannot load agents as noted in the FAQ

That being said, you just can't zerg with agents, the computer would go win98 on you rather quickly.