I'm an old time SR player, and recently started playing in a 4th edition game. I'm currently playing a very bullet resistant troll. But I'm contemplating a back up character.

The idea is somewhat hinted to in the book, but never actually addressed. A technomancer can interact with the matrix by will alone, but can he rig with out a VCR?

Its an interesting proposition, at least to me. After all, a technomancer controls a computer with their mind and controlling a car in the 2070's is done by controlling the car's central control computer.

Technomancers make great riggers, you don't need anything special to rig, you just need to be in full-VR, and the vehicle needs to have a rigger adaptation. No ware involved.

That said, there is the control rig ware that gives a +2 bonus on all checks make while jumped into a vehicle, very tasty indeed.

The most terrifying technomancer riggers that I've seen don't actually rig in the classical sense. They don't need to "jump in" when they can thread their control complex form to ridiculous levels and then have a sprite aid on top of that for boost mode. Same trick works for remote gunnery. Can be considered broken.

Which brings up a pretty important point, a good rigger will more then likely remote control their drones more often then they will jump in. I personally find jumping into drones to work best for people who have good combat skills, but not all that great of a command prog.

So what your all saying is that this character will actually work and its buy no means original nor innovative?

Oh well, at least my GM has never seen it before.

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Any tips on how to go about building it? I love shadow run, but damn, I'm terrible at building characters. The troll was a GM hand over.

Also, because of the machine sprite, a Technomancer functioning as a rigger does not need the skills of gunnery. As he can just send the machine sprite in to do this. This also works on anthromorphic drones such as a Busta Move, which could then use pistols or other smalle firearm (no I am not letting him shoot a HMG from a busta move).

Pixie HMG?

actually, this has been discussed before a few times, and there are some very good reasons to actually rig from time to time.

first of all, control device (that is, using the command program) is a complex action. always. rigging may or may not be. (this particular reason is huge).

secondly, the threshold reduction from being in full VR only applies to rigging, iirc.

that being said, the command program has it's advantages... in particular, the truly ridiculous dice pool you can get.

quick version, start off with command at 5 (or 6) thread it up by as much as you can, improve the CF rating with a registered sprite (i'll just assume 4 each on those) and right there, in hotsim, you've got 15 dice before skills. add in codeslinger (control device) for +2 to any of your dice pools to control the vehicle. also, don't forget to specialise your vehicle skills in remote operation, if you're gonna use the control device route. so if we assume skill 5 in, say, pilot groundcraft and gunnery, with specialisations in remote operation and ballistics, respectively, you get a very nice dice pool of 24 for driving and shooting. before adding in handling and positive modifiers to your attack roll such as those from smartlink etc. not too shabby at all.

Not to forget aptitudes, the affinity to machines edge for switching to full-rig in a free action, and machine sprites optimising the vehicle. With aptitude and it's higher max skill, and the sprite, you can pretty quickly get 30+ dice.

And if you're willing to sacrifice 1Resonance for a bit of genetech and a beta or delta VCR, you're truely rocking everybody's boxes with your overpowered technomancer character. And mind you, that's before you initiate and get even more ridiculously overpowered echoes.

Drugs also work good in boosting your character even frther. And with decent mental attributes, you can just buy off the addiction test.

note: so far as i can tell, the control rig does in fact stack with the technomancer echoes that give +1 to all vehicle tests (and can be taken twice). and would allow you to pick up control rig booster nanites, to improve all your skill ratings in vehicle skills.

you could make a pretty scary technomancer character in karmagen that way

(note: normally control rig boosters are not compatible with simsense boosters, for some reason. you don't have this problem).

Actually, they're supposed to become compatible in the errata, propably because the devs realised how much non-mancer riggers sucked compared to the technomancer after unwired. Not that that really changes anything.

With Karmagen, you can have Neo the Ubermancer out of the box.

That's all well and good, but even if I can Compile a Sprite with a higher Rating than my gunnery skill I still want to have it at at least a rating of 3 in it.

So I can take the Bing of one Resonance and get the VCR and maybe some other incidentals and get the best of both worlds. I need to read more on Threading, and Coding Sprites.

OK, so I'll take a look at that.

Head starting to swim... What book is that from?

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Suggestions on what books to give a look through? I'm assuming Augmentation and Unwired, but are there any other books I should be looking at?

The Boosters are from Augmentation.

and the technomancer echoes are from unwired.

that said, you may find it more tempting to go for other echoes well before the ones that give +1 to vehicle tests...

So is it just Unwired and Augmented? No other books with Technomanery goodiyness?

well, arsenal has drones, vehicle modification rules, etc. they aren't explicitly technomancer goodies, but since you apparently want to be a rigger type technomancer, you may want to look into that