Toning down hackers and upping technomancers

We’ve been trying to un-nerf technomancers so that they become descent starting characters instead of having to gain hundreds of karma to get into the same league of a normal hacker. We tried different solutions until we realized that it was easier to tone down the hacker.

As a 2nd and 3rd edition player I’ve had some problems adjusting to the speed of the timeline. Between 2063 and 2070 we’ve had some interesting leaps in technology.

The SOTA grade cyberdeck Fairlight Excalibur dropped in price from 2+ mil into a commlink no larger than a cellphone for 20K+.

Now, I’m all for a drop in computer prices as time moves on but the thing is that the tech itself hasn’t moved on that much. The computing power is still optical, memory is still abundant and trideo is still the same. The only clear difference is wireless matrix and the AR. Now, slapping on an add-on to a cybedeck that allows wireless access and AR glasses would do it at the beginning and miniaturization is all well and fine – but the pricedrop?

The hackers wet dream drops from 2mil+ to 20K – that’s a drop at 100 times the original price – not counting programs that could cost millions.

The second part that also is a bit annoying (and not just for min-maxers) is that a hacker can start with all hardware and software at rating 5 at the get-go. The hacker no longer have to look to the stars and wish for that SOTA grade commlink that almost only exists within corporate laboratories because he can basically get all of it within a few runs by upgrading his programs and hardware for a paltry sum.

A hacker no longer have long-time “hacker� goal so to speak as it was in earlier editions, heck- the commlinks in SR4 don’t even have an availability (which is odd)

In the opposite end we have the technomancer that CAN be something impressive but is so nerfed from the beginning that they MUST (almost) use sprites as crutches to even function as low rating hacker instead of BEING a good hacker and using the sprites as assistants (instead of caretakers).

Also, in order to separate the wired 4 sam from the hacker is to make things scarser and slightly upping the technomancer.

Also, a PROFFESSIONAL rating is usually 3 which means that average joe would be around rating 2 on their comms and regular corps 3. Security firms around 4 and military and corps at 5. Then we have the SOTA tech commlinks at 6.

Solution: Not too extreme.

Hardware upgrades (commlink only)
Response: 1-3: X5 cost
Response: 4-6: X10 cost

Upgrades must be bought in levels 4-5 and then 5-6 for example representing the cost of upgrading different components needed. All upgrades availability is +4 and cannot be used at chargen.

Software Change
Common Software: As per SR4
Hacking Software: Availability Rating X3 (max rating 4 at chargen then…)

Commlink table in SR4
Commlinks availability equals Response X3
New cost is based upon the Response of the commlink
Response rating 1-3: Prices X5
Response rating 4-6: Prices X10

Technomancers
Common programs equal to charisma or resonance (whichever is lower)
(reason for this was because charisma isn’t used that much for them.)
They gain Logic+Intuition X3 free complex form points either for upgrades or hacking complex forms.
Logic cap is removed.

Yes, some of you will probably draw up some extreme examples in how abusive this can be, but let us make a comparison on the points difference:

Technomancer:
Attributes, resonance, complex forms at rating 3: cost 219BP
181BP for the following:
Contacts, other qualities, skills, resources

Hacker:
Attributes, Commlink, software rating 3: 177BP
Cost of commlink and software around 30-40K around 7-8BP
Around 220BP for the following
Contacts, qualities, skills and more resources

A caliban commlink at chargen would cost 80K upgraded to response 5 would be +40K and the final Response 6 would be 80K topping 200K for a top of the line commlink – which is 1/10 of the fairlight Excalibur.

Yes, it’s expensive but being able to get such hardware SHOULD be expensive. At the same time it levels the playing field between hackers and technomancers who now BOTH have something to reach for instead of the hacker always branching out into a new field. It also makes sure that the hacker-sam is slightly removed as the hacker will be a dedicated hacker and the technomancer will be equal/superior with different fields of expertise as most OTHER runners would at most get a rating 3 commlink with defenses.

EDIT: Forgot Commlink Availability.

You're falling into a trap you outline in the first paragraph.

You need to look at a sort of same game test. Is a Street Sammie == Hacker == Magician == Technomancer?

And if they arn't, you need to fix that - now, clearly you think Hacker >> Technomancer, but do you think Hacker >> Street Sammie?

If not, nerfing hackers hardcore (what you are doing) is not going to have the desired effect, it's just going to make matrix guys gimp in your game.

What I might suggest is buffing technomancers instead.

Making technomancers better was one way but I did find that far harder and still keeping it balanced as characters would very, very soon reach rating 5+ programs and commlinks within one or two runs.

I don’t think Hacker=Streetsam or Technomancer=mage but the second part holds some truth as they start with the same kind of costs (Resonance/Magic) but the problem arises when you limit their complex forms to logic and make them pay 5K per point of complex form rating.

I also find it rather wrong that there is such easy and affordable gear with no availability from start for hackers. A hacker can start with all rating 4 programs and response 4 commlink at a cost of less than 60K and a commlink for 80K with these rules. Instead of a paltry less than 70K for the same gear…

Now, that’s 140K or 28BP compared to the much more expensive technomancer (who very seldom can start with more thana handful rating 4 programs).

Hackers and Technomancers are both “hackers� and should be able to start on an equal footing but technomancers should cost somewhat more due to their abilitiers – this is what is being done with these rules

It also keeps “hi-grade� commlinks and programs into the hands of dedicated hackers as it would be dirt cheap for cybered people or adepts to just buy the best common program defenses and a maxed out commlinks for less than 5 build points.

This would make a streetsam for example to take a rating 3 commlink at best as they would likely rather buy ware for the resources.

One has to remember that rating 4 isnt “nerfing� a hacker as that is GOOD gear, it just isn’t top of the line – and no-one SHOULD begin the game with such high gear (rating 5-6 that is), it’s like dealing out Delta grade like candy to cybered individuals.

It also keeps hackers from using X amount of agents until later in the game when they can justify having X amount of agents and multiple commlinks.

A rating 5 commlink can run 9 rating 4 programs with -1 to their response, that’s DAMN good as you can keep your entire program arsenal needed for hacking.

You are 100% wrong about needing to nerf hackers. Technomancer vs. Hacker is the same as Mage vs. Samurai - Mages and Technomancers start out low, advance fairly slowly, but in the long run are much much more powerful. Hackers and Samurai start out really good, but also close to as good as they'll ever get. This is an intentional result of the SR4 system. It is not a system flaw. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The vast majority of houserules are based on misconceptions of the system and what it is supposed to accomplish.

They lowered the price of hacking so you wouldn't have as many weenie-boys with cyberdecks, programs, and nothing else who would waste the whole game session running the net. Now, Hackers can afford to do more than one thing and accompany the team on jobs. It would be unwise to bulldoze this change, it will not improve the quality of your game. If you want to make technomancers better to start... Make them better! Give your technomancers some extra BP so they can keep up more easily, or something. You're wasting your time trying to rewrite a perfectly good system by using arbitrary cost multipliers, the true costs of which you cannot predict.

Also, making cyberdecks more expensive is vivisecting theme and smacking around any notion of reality. Guess what hackers use IRL - 2 million dollar supermega computers of doom? Nope. They use regular PCs. The high cost of cyberdecks was a stupid idea based on 80's cyberpunk theme which fundamentally misunderstood what the future of computing would look like. It's only a step beyond the prediction of "computers will fill entire buildings and only huge corporations will be able to afford them." Normal personal computers can hack now, and normal people can afford them, and there is no logical reason why this would be different in the 2070s. It would be one thing if cyberdecks were still new technology, but they're not. Not only is your idea thus fixing a system which doesn't need it, it's introducing a strange and inexplicable schism into the theme.

I have to pipe in with an agreement that nerfing hackers is a really bad idea. If you want to un-nerf technomancers, then you should do that. The days of the basement bunker-geek are gone. These days hackers have to be more like tech-savvy special ops units. You have to get into the building and hack the system from there. You can't afford to pour all your resources into hacking abilities, you need to be able to fight and run too.

I suggest a new thread on how to un-nerf the technomancer.

Lots of misconceptions in that last statement.

First, since a mundane hacker's entire ability spawns from his commlink, by increasing the costs of commlinks, yes you are nerfing hackers.

Second, the prices listed in the Shadowrun book are the best computing power available to shadowrunners, not necessarily to everyone.

Third, you might want to do some more research on Moore's Law in regards to processor power and spin-off Moore's Laws that correlate to total processing power of machines. In my opinion, the authors might actually have actually been a little conservative with their estimates of computing power and prices in 2070.

Fourth, the days of the basement bunker hacker are gone. You'd have to change the whole game world to make hackers bunker babies again. You can't increase the cost of commlinks to the point where they can't buy other gear to defend themselves.

Hey Jopp, when CPUs are made smaller, they can make more per wafer which in turns drives down the production cost on a per unit basis.

This allows for newer CPUs to be sold at a lower price and still make a healthy profit.

Now replace CPU with chip and you have the basis behind the semiconductor industry.

Smaller **IS** cheaper.

But I agree in spirit with the OP. Hackers are too powerful in comparison to TMs. Whether that means hackers need toning down or TMs needing Toning up, I'll leave to more knowledgeable parties.

I'm going to disagree that there is a need for this, but accept that some folks' games may need it. I like that the costs for computers are more reasonable.

I still think software costs exist primarily for game balance anyway, as most of the people I know who qualify as "hackers" are big on open source and/or custom built apps (quick and dirty, and not requiring months of coding time) which cost them nothing.

I'll likely never see the problem though as Technomancers, much like their Otaku predecessors, will likely be little more than urban legend in my own games.

I have the perfect solution for you, Jopp: Technomancers don't exist.

Crash was 64, surely? And the Wireless Matrix Initiative had been around for a while before that, the Crash just gave it the kick up the backside it needed to roll out worldwide.

Perhaps the "cost" of the Fairlight Excalibur was like a 1,000% markup, which they realised was no longer sustainable in the post-Crash marketplace.

There wasn't really a lot of crunchy details about the WMI. More like a few little hints and teasers spread through various books.

This thread (ignore the title) has a bit of discussion about the Wireless Matrix Initiative.

nerfing leads to suffering
suffering leads to hate
hate leads to Combat Upgrades
Combat Upgrades lead to Account Deletions

oh sorry, swg flashbacks

yeah nerfing bad
unless a "class" is fundamentally broken, never ever yank their toys/leash whatever

teh main problem with SR has always been, its too near future to be believable
heck, how many "events" in the game history have we passed already

I did think it was odd the way 1st and 2nd weren't far apart but then 3rd was '60 then 4th jumped 10 years. It helped the tech jump somewhat, but well i dunno. Is there some kind of bridge book between whatever was the last 3rd edition book and 4th edition?
I mean think about this, according to most stories in SR a standard runner is what early 20's? 30's is middle aged. So 20 years, your character was born at the beginning of the game. My SR 1&2 characters are in their 40's (assuming they are alive)

sorry tangent

heh you have a point

Just a point of interest, the fairlight excalibur in 2nd ed. 1 mil. 3rd. edition, 2 mil, 4th ed. 9.5 K including OS.

Moore's law (every 18 months, the transistors on a processor will double, in theory this doubles computer power). Assuming game time starts 11 November 2070,that's four doubles of processing power. as an excercise to let you have an idea of how this is, today, AMD's dual core processor contains 233 million transistors. Starting from today and ending 10/8/2070 That's 42 units of 18 months.

technomancers don't need nearly as much of a boost as you people seem to think.

you just don't play a technomancer like you do a hacker, any more than you play a street sammy the same way you play an adept... sure, the adept *can* get attribute boosts and IPs from his adept powers, but it's not a very good use... rather, the adept should be choosing more efficient powers, especially powers that allow things cyber can't (and possibly supplementing with some light cyber/bio).

similarly, if you try and force your technomancers to be exactly like a regular hacker, then sure they won't do so well. if, on the other hand, you hack into a node by threading your exploit to 12+ (with help from a sprite) and then once in have a sprite boost your stealth up to 10+ while you take care of hacking, and you keep a rating 6 fault sprite around to take care of enemies, you will find that technomancers can hack systems that the hacker can only dream of. and that the technomancer, while somewhat reliant on sprites, can do surprisingly well in a surprisingly wide range of activities.

imo, if you want to make TMs more competitive with hackers as far as usefulness goes, toning down the hacker in the matrix is not the solution: beefing up the TM in the meat world, otoh, is far more likely to make TMs a stronger character type imo. there's nothing wrong with the technomancer that a few attribute boosts and some skillwires won't fix (once you remove that pesky resonance loss, that is) =P

I've never played a technomancer but it seems like most people complain about the TM's lack of IP and general survivability in the meat world. Has anyone tried putting their TM in a mobile bunker? It seems that with their constant fading damage, they should be riding around in an autodoc 24/7. Your character becomes less Neo and more Stephen Hawking, but it seems like it would do the trick.

@Jopp: I'll stick to attacking the core mechanic you point to: availability, which I think is your most important and most erroneous assumption.

Here is my rolling on the floor, laughing. Are you telling me that 100% legal personal computers in 2070 are supposed to be hard to get? Are you kidding me? It is legal computer software, which everybody uses every day. The choice between a rating 1 through 5 is like choosing whether to get Windows 98 or Windows Vista Ultimate. Like choosing whether to get an eMachine, or a custom built monster rig. Maybe the very top end takes a while to track down because not many people are making it (think about water or dry ice cooled dual motherboard type computers) but it's not exactly out of reach. Why should it be different in 2070?

I think your problem is that you're having a hard time breaking out of SR3 thinking. In SR3, a rating 5 MPCP was top of the line civilian, a rating 6+ was security grade, and a rating 10+ was omgwtf black miltech. WHICH WAS STUPID. Do security companies have mega uber operating systems or program suites that nobody else has? Duh... no. They use Windows, or UNIX, or LINUX. They might have beefy hardware and expensive, top-end software, but aside from price there is nothing stopping regular people from getting what they use. The military might have secret tech, but except for the odd supercomputer it's not usually better than civilian tech, they just don't want civvies to have it to let them probe it for vulnerabilities, but aside from that it's substantially the same. Why would this be different in 2070? Sure, in the 60's we had the various strata of OS's because cyberdecks were still in development, the top end was still essentially prototypical. But in the net 2.0, the commlink is tried and true, no longer experimental, no longer requiring millions of dollars to buy, and no longer difficult to obtain, or illegal in any way.

The fundamental thing I think you're trying to do is to prevent your hackers from immediately, ASAP, getting their hands on the best software available. Well I'll let you in on a secret: rating 6 is not the best software in the world. It's just the best software that the core book contains. There is no rule that nothing goes beyond 6 ever, that is simply the most powerful that the players have access to. I guarantee you that there are still prototype and black tech level commlinks and programs out there which can make rating 6 look like toys, especially when it comes to AIs and SK's, etc.

And having rating 6 isn't really a bad thing either - if your players can hack anything that moves, just get a little creative with vanishing/teleporting SANs, non-wireless systems, UV hosts, etc. And regardless, the system intends for hackers to be able to hack quickly and easily right out of chargen - it provides simple, streamlined rules that let the hacker run a passive exploit, cracking the system and letting the team into the building WITHOUT six hours of rolling. That's a GOOD thing. Your hackers starting out powerful is a GOOD thing, for you and for them. You are taking a good thing, and you're recklessly terminating it. Players tend not to like it when GMs respond to their ingenuity in building good sheets by changing the rules. I just hope for your sake that yours do.

That's great for the hacker... but what about the TM?

TM's are forced to be Sprite-wielding hackers stuck in the team's van's Autodoc. In that one role they are super duper kick**s. If you want them to do anything else then they need to spend less build on their hacking stuff.

A decent TM played decently is a fearsome thing. As someone before me said, play a hacker to do a lot of things... play a TM to get double handfuls of dice.

TM's are stereotypes but darn powerful as-is. You just don't play one and be on a swat team or soldierly type.

Personally, I don't see a problem with making things a bit more expensive for hackers at the start. Right now, as I understand it, you can get all rating 6 programs (7 common use and 13 hacking, no agent/softs), rating 6 Firewall and System, and a 5/5 Commlink (yes software and System are limited to 5 until you up Response) for 19 BP of gear, and 11000 of upgrades after you can start playing. To me, that seems a bit overpowered, or at least reduces my enjoyment in playing hackers. I want some goal, the joy of new tech, to shoot for. I can make a pretty well geared and cybered/bio'ed hacker for 32 BP, only 8 of which goes to my 'link and programs.

I remember building my first PC on my own in the mid 90's, it cost me roughly $2400 for something a little behind (a Pentium 3 or 4 steps below the fastest). I spent $2000 on parts for a desktop at about the same spot on the tech curve just 3 months ago. Miniaturization lowers cost for reproduced designs, not always on the new ones. Moore's law can be interpreted to state that computing power will roughly double every 2 years for the same production costs. If you're not going for more power, you can cut the cost by half every two years.

I don't see any problem with doubling the cost of 'links, programs, and hardware upgrades. I could even go as far as requiring all hardware (Response and Signal) to pay each step of upgrade cost, so going from 5 to 6 Response is still 8000 (16000 if doubled), but from 3 to 6 is 14000 instead of 8000, for other hardware modifications and replacements necessary to make it work as such an increased ability. It would keep folks from getting the equivalent of a Fairlight Caliban at about two thirds the cost (a modified Metalink would be 5100 at 4/5). Yes, this is a bit of a nerf, but it's at worst 25 BP if you have everything maxed out. On average, it's likely 12 BP, a bad allergy or 3 skill points.

If you don't want to modify the rules beyond chargen, the simplest way I see to make Technomancers less of a paper target is either allow 1 point of free bio OR cyberware before essence/resonance loss, but only during generation, or up their BP to 450 for chargen, allowing for 225 in stats. Most of my runners don't survive to get more than 100 karma, and of the 3 'mancer's I've tried to bring on runs, only 1 has ever survived past a second fight during a run.