Okay, so I'm used to playing the magical end of the spectrum and I'm thinking about rolling out a character that is more cyberized. Since I've played mostly combat character, I decided to go for more of a support role. I really enjoy the fact that you can do so much with hacking and computers in shadowrun that I want to give it a try.

So my question is, from a support role, whats the real difference, advantage versus disadvantage of a non-technomancer hacker versus a technomancer?

Alternatively, I know very little about cyber implants and the matrix, I'm starting to read up on it now, but its slow going. Can anyone provide any tips/things to know when building my first hacker character?

Hacker:

Pro:
- really good right at the beginning
- all rounder: can make all the matrix stuff relative good
- less Karma expensive, most upgrades are 'ware, programs and hardware.
- low BP cost, works well with a secondary concept, like a combat hacker or a hacker/housebreaker

Contra:
- is maxed out really quick, if you put all Karma and money in hacking skills and gear.
- is capped so you can't get better at some point.


Technomancer:

Pro:
- the sky is the limit. no caps, if you have tons of karma
- specialist, he is a specialist in a small field of the matrix at which he is good, in the rest a hacker is likely better.
- Sprites
- there are some cool Echos, if you have the karma

Contra:
- everything is karma related: Technomancer are a big huge karma hole.
- with 400BP your are really weak at start
- you even will have problems to build the technomancer, if you don't concentrate only on the hacking stuff (which means low physical attr, barely skills for outside the matrix
- yust to get rid of you lack of physical Attr and useful non matrix skills, you need around 50-100Karma. A Hacker with this much karma has probably maxed out his Matrix skills at this karma level.


Conclusion:
If you playing more often, and you like to play a character very long and like to sie a long character development, you should use a Technomancer, but in the start he will not be able to do the same stuff like a hacker. At some point (after lots of karma) he will be better than a hacker can be anyway. If you don't play that often, and you don't want to stick entirely to the matrix, take a hacker. Because they are good from the start and don't need much karma to get better, you can take other skills and your hacker can also be a face, a fighter, a housebreaker, a doctor or whatever you like him to be to support you teammates even outside the matrix.

cya
Tycho

If You're used to Mages, try the Technomancer.
Sprites are interesting and Cool
everything else,like Tycho said

with a short Dance
Medicineman

I'll echo that. If you like playing the Awakened, play an Emergent. You can do amazing things in the Matrix with sprites, and the types of echos you can get can really make a unique character. I'll disagree that a beginning TM isn't as good in the Matrix as a beginning hacker, simply because even at the beginning, you have sprites and can thread. With Assist Operation and threading, you can hack anything. Your base dicepools will likely be smaller, but you can use your TM abilities and sprites to boost them up for short periods of time beyond what a hacker can do.

Outside the Matrix, though, the hacker will be more well rounded. (Just like the Street Sam will be more well rounded than the Mage, generally--having to buy a entire different group of skills really kills your "well roundedness") If you want a character that is more than a Matrix God to start, then a hacker is probably the way to go.

Also, if you want to play someone with cyberware, play a hacker. Cyberware is worse to TMs than to mages, IMO.

Oh, and I forgot. If you are really just a support person, the benefits of using Machine Sprites + Diagnostics for the rest of your team cannot be overstated. My fellow players would revolt if I suddenly decided to play anything but a TM; they've gotten addicted to Machine Sprites. Even without a first aid skill, you can be a great medic with a Medkit rating 6 + a rating 6 Machine sprite and a high logic, for example.

yeah, the main difference between hackers and TMs at chargen (assuming a well-designed TM) is that the TM will be very squishy in the meat, whereas a hacker doesn't necessarily have to be (but may still be, if for some reason you feel like it).

You don't have be squishy in the meat because you can get 'Ware. Sure it reduces your Resonance, but hey it's worth it in the long run. Just have be VERY careful on what 'ware you get.

Threading is overrated. Even with a supposed errata I heard of, the sustaining penalty hurts you. Yes, you can get up to one or two really huge dice pools; but every other one is going to suffer in comparison to a good decker.

The best use I've seen is a dedicated sprite summoner. Sprites are in many ways more powerful than their summoners, so it's often better to summon a horde of them and have them do the heavy work for you.

How does Adept/Cyber-Hackers fit in with this? They seem to be the best of both worlds....

Cyber for the easy upgrades, Magic for the situations where is no equivalent, Initiate to get increased Hacking dicepools?

- J.

no, it isn't. resonance is all-important for a technomancer. it limits what your sprites can be, it limits what your CFs can be, it affects your fading, it affects your threading, it affects your compiling and registering. losing resonance sucks, big time. you really do need your resonance to be as high as you can possibly get it as a TM. it's one of the few things it's actually worth it to max out in chargen rather than soft-maxing for reasons other than "it fits the concept"

a mage with magic 4 can still be powerful. a TM with resonance 4 is going to be barely able to outperform a hacker in the TM's current area of specialty on a good day, never mind being a truly effective TM. it is true that eventually, in the really long term (ie as karma approaches infinity) the cybered technomancer is a viable (and indeed, probably the best) choice. but that isn't really applicable to most games i've ever seen.

I am curious about the adept hacker, because our group's current hacker is one, but at the same time I would want to do something different because of this.

So, one of the thing that frustrated me as an adept was how difficult it was to come across more adept powers. I suppose I should have broken down at some point and gotten some cyberware, but the original concept (he was a 3rd edition convert) had bio-rejection.

So does a hacker really plateau that early? Or is that just in comparison with overpowered technomancers? I want to be able to do some pretty trick/crazy things. Our AI just recently hacked Tokyo's orbiting satellite, and while I wouldn't necessarily go that crazy, we did have a need to hack the tokyo traffic navigation grid to rescue one of our guys from a police prison transport.

I guess my question now is: Is it impossible for a hacker to, down the road, keep up with technomancers, or does it just become difficult? I feel like i've hit a wall with my adept where I can't get more powerful without cyberware and the magical boosts are just flubbing expensive.

Cyber+Adept decker eats normal decker for breakfast, unless normal decker gets a simsense accelerator. Five IP's evens things out quite a bit.


Pre-Unwired, someone (I want to say Frank Trollman) calculated the karma point at which an otaku would beat a decker. IIRC, they pulled ahead somewhere around 500 karma. Now, Unwired changes this equasion dramatically, but the point is that it takes a disgusting amount of karma for an otaku to exceed a decker. Maybe more than you'll see in the course of a normal campaign.

Hacks tend to Top of quickly. Once you have your Rating 6 programs, your 6-7 ranks in a skill, hot-sim, a Response Enhancer, Optimization, a Simsense booster,a simsense accelerator, Rating 2 Encphalon, PuSHeD, and Neocortical Neural Amplifier Nanites, the Mundane hacked has reached the maximum possible die pool, of about 21-22.

A starting Technomancer, with the same skills, can thread up rating 12 programs, and sling about 20 dice, if only for a few turns. They are horribly dependent on sprites to maintain this, though.

A TM can beat the best possible hacker after 400 BP chargen. Any TM should beat the actually likely hacker builds of equal BP/karma level. Despite the rather central role Stealth plays for hacking, you still don´t assign enough value to double-digit stealth ratings.

I very much doubt the karma math is from Frank, unless he was counting from 0 karma and therefore pulled it off with the equivalent of less than 400 BP.

An otaku can get *one* dice pool to disgusting levels. That super-high stealth does you no good when you don't have a decent Exploit CF ready to go, and threading won't cut it. OTOH, the decker will have good all-round dice pools, allowing them to be good at using the Matrix, while the otaku is only good at not getting noticed.

Being invisible is fine and dandy, but unless you can actually do something, you're just going to be sitting there.

And that's not including many of the decker-only tricks, such as a botnet swarm. A decker can field more Agent Smiths than an otaku can field spirites; a few dozen Agent Smiths will mow over just about any sprite you care to name.

Incorrect again. A TM can get one dicepool at a time to competent hacker levels, even while boosting stealth. I have given you the math in the past, multiple times. A TM can also use botnets just fine.

In the short term, a well build Adept/Hacker is the way to go. Techies will outperform them in the passive rating (things passed on just Program rating) area and their specialty. However, for all around goodness without the risk of making your head go *POOF*, the A/H works.

Each has their own unique feel in play. Go with what style feels best to you.

the karma math is from frank, but it did not take into account either threading or using sprites to boost your CFs.

or, in other words, it basically ignored two of the most important parts of being a TM, and therefore wasn't a very valid point.

IMO, a hacker shouldn't "try" to keep up with a technomancer. That's like saying a street sam should "try" to keep up with the combat mage. What I've seen in my games, and from my own experience, is that a starting hacker is likely to be as good a hacker as they ever really need to be. Buy up all your programs to 6 and your commlink to 6 as soon as you have the nuyen. Then diversify, learn some new skills, buff up your attributes, learn to knit, something. The TM is going to be dumping all their karma (and begging for more) into submerging and getting new echos. A hacker can become a multi-use character. An adept can get some awesome adept abilities to make them more useful.

Chances are, if you've hit the "wall" you're probably one of the best hackers out there, elite, running circles around those GOD hackers and terrifying your enemies. Do you really need a few more dice in that dice pool?

(In my current game, the happiest person is the mundane street sam. While everyone else is hoarding karma trying to initiate or submerge once again, she's saying, "hmm, what new skill should I learn this week? Only 4 karma to learn how to fly a plane? Great!")

So, you can get one huge dice pool, and one competent one. I don't see where this contradicts anything I've said. If anything, it highlights the fact that the otaku's Matrix dice pools are going to be a lot smaller.

One thing to do is to ask your GM if they are using the "Using Attributes" optional rule, Unwired Page 39. If they are, don't bother with a TM if you want to be the dice pool twinker of twink'twink land. With that rule, TMs are about even in dice with Hackers (a little behind if the Hacker takes some good bio and cyber).

But TM don't use attributes They use resonance.

Only for Threading, Compiling Sprites, etc.

For hacking test, they roll Skill + Pro... Complex Form, the same as a Hacker. So for those test with that optional rule they get changed to Logic + Skill (Cap: Complex Form). They can get a monster high cap compared to a Hacker, but not really any more dice. Sprite "Assist Operation" just adds to the Complex Forms rating.

I like this optional rule. It gives TM a lower dice pool in the long run compared to Hackers, but with a higher Max Hit Cap. It also prevents the 'Idiot Savant Hacker' with a Logic of 1 (try it, you can get his pools just as high as a Logic 6 hacker for Matrix task).

TMs still get twinkishly high Matrix Perception and passive totals (Complex Form: Stealth at 12?!).

Thanks! Yeah, that wouldn´t be valid at all.

The other way around. You are then capped at (program/CF rating hits), large pools loose any meaning with a program cap of 6.

If you use that rule, you play a TM. Extended program caps are the win. Thread stealth and the used CF for +3, move your cap on hits to 8, increase both pools by 1. Add Assist Operation to make the cap on hits meaningless, and to move your expected hits above the hackers cap.

(It is actually the same trick that works without the optional rule, it just works much better.)

Ryu, you fail to realize that with that optional rule, TM won't be getting the crazy large dice pools. 18 dice averages out to 6 hits. It takes almost everything to get 18+ dice from Logic + Skill + Modifiers. TM will have a harder time getting to that number then Hackers because Hackers can take Cyber/Bio ware that boost their pools and Logic. So, on average the Hacker will be rolling more dice then the TM (potentially 3 or more dice, increasing that to 6 or more with a Adept/Hacker).

The net effect will be that really good hackers tend to come out with ~6 hits (without spending Edge) on most rolls. TM on the other hand, will have a slightly lower average number of hits, but will be all over the board with actual hits per roll.

Ooops. Yep, not as much dice for the TM. Still, hackers loose out due to needing two tests to gain even security access on relevant nodes, while the TM can push Stealth to 13.

Yep. I did HR that spending Edge on a capped roll increases the cap by Edge.

Also, I see a whole lot less "On the Fly" hacking against powerful Nodes, which is a good thing. I don't care how good a hacker you are, you shouldn't be able to walk up to a Rating 6 Node running Analyze 6 and make it cry "Your my DADDY!" in less than 3 seconds.

Augmented TM, Resonance 6 (5), Cerebral Booster 3, Trauma Damper, Sourceror.

Threading for +4 (buying three hits against fading) on Stealth and Exploit, adding a rating 3 Assist Operation (Stealth) service. Stealth 13, your rating 6 node will need three tests.

Logic 5[8] + Hacking 6 (Exploit +2) + Hot-Sim + Black hat - Threading mod = 18 dice for the TM, with a hit cap of 9, times two. Damn good odds of gaining admin on such a node, and without risk. Add a rating 7 Probability Distribution service, for enhancing your own dp, and you are set.

Just remember that there is nothing stopping a Hacker from writing a program up to rating 12 (with Optimization) except the GM telling them they can't and time. Unwired list no caps for rating. If my players wanted to spend all their downtime working on this I would let them.

Hell, military hardware goes up to 10. With a max Optimized program, that could be a rating 16. I wouldn't let my players get a hold of this level, but it is possible.

I do not consider hackers underpowered.

True dat. Last time I played, I was a Street Sammy who built himself up into a decent hacker over the course of the game. He was never as good as a pure starting hacker, but he could pull some nasty stuff. Operated mostly in AR, using his 3IP passes to shoot with the odd hacking action thrown in when needed. Lotta fun actually.

actually, it is an interesting question what the rules ought to be for writing / getting programs above rating 6. With the Programming Environment halving time, the software tools adding dice, and the rules clarifications that slef-written software does not degrade, writing programs becomes a half-way reasonable option.

With optimization, it does seem that one could have programs (other than firewall, which was already defined to be unlimitted) at ratings higher than 6.
The seem to indicate that you can only buy things up to six.

Hence, I can understand a GM introducing special rules for going past 6. Otherwise, 7 is really not much harder than 6 to develop, and one is left to ask why the corps don't use higher rated software on most of their systems.
Also, if it is the same difficulty to write, it should not be super-linearly more expensive to get a rating 7, optimize 3 than a rating 6 optimize 3 program. (The costs have a jump at 4, so maybe there are jumps at 7 and 10?) But the book seems to not allow such purchases.

Would folks allow players to write their own? Would they allow purchase?
The question of getting at programs in the higher ratings range is clearly important if the hackers are to be competitive with the TMs and AIs. (Granted, as an earlier poster said, maybe they are not supposed to be competitive, but ...)

Yours,
Joel Halpern

PS: At the high end, stealth trumps analyze, since each pt of stealth needs at least two points of analyze/stealth to have a small chance of detecting the hacker, and more points to maintain a good chance. A TM with an effective stealth of 12 is effectively undetectable by a computer / IC during a slow breaking or thereafter, since 18 dice (analyze 6, firewall 12) has a tiny chance of 12 successes (3 standard deviations, actually < 0.4%)

Hey were are the rules for going above six in hacking programs? I always thought that rating 6 was the top of the line.....just going by the ratings descriptions in the BBB.

The other point I would make is that I am using the program rating limiting the number of successes rater than adding dice (unwired alternate rules). Is anybody else using it/tried it?

I think it's a house rule. I personally allow hacks to program up to their Skill in programs, so it takes a real prodigy to get rating 7 programs

According to page 240, there's no upper limit to the rating of a program. However, Response chips are restricted to 6, so anything above a 7 is just going to be a waste. Firewall is the only exception.

Optimization Program option, from Unwired.

[img]http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/hackingMath.png[/img]

Do the math:
Sum the area under the curves.

(Edit: images disabled? Bugger, have a link)

I can't. There is no scale on the X- Axis

That doesn't seem to take into account sprites. Assist Operation for the Win.

What's the sprite doing? In my (very) short stint with a technomancer and helping another player with his (very) short stint with one I never figured out exactly how to use sprites most effectively. Of course, my character's concept was such that he didn't yet know he could make them, plus a few other concept based CF choices for flavor that ended up inadvertently making the character less than useless. Interestingly the game died before the character did. To be fair, the concept was much more suited to a different game (a space opera game where AIs were taking over) and as such the idea of "running pell mell from the AIs" meant that he didn't bother with Stealth. Which is more than essential in a normal game. Character was also more of a e-Ghost than a technomancer, but because of the concept the GM knew exactly what had happened to the meat bod, so I was using TM rules and not awakened AI rules.

And the X-scale doesn't matter. "Max programs available in the book" just occurs somewhere to the right of where the TM has 0 dice, at which point the area under the line with always be smaller than the Hacker's.

This is How you use spites

Assist Operation: A registered sprite can add its rating to any single complex form used by the technomancer. Th is assistance lasts for a maximum number of Combat Turns equal to the sprite’s rating; a Rating 3 sprite, for example, can add 3 dice to the technomancer’s Armor complex form for a maximum of 3 Combat Turns.

Then you can run multiple programs at 9-12.

Alright, I will alter the graph then. How many programs at 9-12? How many above? How many below?

It still doesn't matter, as the Hacker line sits at 21, so unless the TM can either use far more total programs (impossible as there are a limited number of them, of which all are available to the hacker) than the hacker or can use a significant number over 21 dice (one at 30 for every one at 12, one at 39 for two at 12, one at 33 for one at 9, one at 45 for two at 9) then there's simply no way he could ever have the same average use as a hacker.

Edit: new image, to show my point:

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mmj29/temp/hackingMath2.png

It doesn't matter how much you screw with the line that's below the average threshold needed to out-do a hacker, you're turning an area of 40 into an area of 60 when you're up against an area of 200. Pocket change.

Am I missing something again?

There is a limited number of programs where the dicepool is critical, and the TM will boost whatever is currently needed.

Thanks for the input everyone! I think I'm gonna go with a straight up hacker once I get through the hugel amount of reading I need to do to even understand how to play one. My adept has pretty much stayed out of cyber shit since 4th edition came out. I understand what to tell the hackers to do to get the job done, but not how they do it, what stats to raise, and skills to take, and what cyberware to use.

I think this will be more fun, cause I hate being constantly constricted by karma, I wanna be along the lines of the "oooh, 4 karma to learn to fly a plane? sweet!"

And the hacking stuff just seems fun.

I wanna be along the lines of the "oooh, 4 karma to learn to fly a plane? sweet!"

than get Yourself Skillwire and its also "oohhh, 9.000 ¥ now I can Fly a Heli "

HeyaHeyaHeya
Medicineman

Need any more canonical information?





There exist no rules that state that Hackers are limited to Rating 6 in Programs. Enforcing such a limit despite your players coming up with a good plan is like slapping a cripple and telling them to get back in the wheelchair where they belong, cyberlimbs are too good for their kind. If <%Deity%> wanted them to walk they'd have given them legs that work.

One could maybe give defending nodes a flat +2 for running Analyse, instead of +(rating). That would result in rating 1-6 nodes having defense pools of 1-8 instead of 1-12. Both hackers and TMs could work without being munched, and nodes of rating 4-6 would still have a shot at detecting hackers. Should go well with the attribute+skill optional rule.

Munched TM stealth would work even better, so I would suggest to change Assist Operation to "dp +sprite rating".

Yes you are:

there are 3 kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics.

(or, in other words, you are absolutely right. it doesn't matter how many programs you can run, it matters how many significant programs you can run, and that is limited by what programs you need in a given sitatuation, not just what you have available to you)

As already covered, there is no actual limit to program rating. A hacker who takes the (really long) time and (hugely high) effort to write a Stealth [Rating: 12, Optimized: 6] program can run it just fine on a Response/System 6/6 Commlink.


As I stated several times in this thread, I use the optional rule "Useing Attributes" (Unwired, P: 39) which is most likely what you are referring too. It greatly cuts a TMs dicepool down, often to lower then what a hacker can get. I find this balances out the TMs crazy high program rating (good for passive effects, since a crazy high Cap isn't any good without enough dice to hit it) fairly nicely.

Plus as stated, a Hacker can always code up a higher rating program. I checked my PCs downtime log last night after my last post, the team Hacker is up to Stealth [R: 8, Optimizied: 3, Crashguard, Ergonomic] source code. (He increases Optimizied by a point before Rating)

Start listing them then. Then look at the BP cost of getting the important ones high enough (it's fucking huge).

Once you've built you "this is as good as it can get" technomancer, build a hacker. He'll get to the same level in half the BP (1 BP -> $5000 -> 2 rating 5 programs vs. 1 BP -> +1 complex form rating). Plus, you can dump half the stats. Body, Strength, Logic, Charisma, Agility, Reaction, Intuition, all of those can be 2 without being detrimental (which leaves Willpower as a critical attribute for being able to take the stun damage). TMs actually need some of those stats, Charisma, Intuition, and Logic specifically, plus their special stat of Resonance.

Oh, you say, what about sprites? There's a limited number of those you can conceivably have at any given moment (1) unless you spend more BP/Karma registering them. And there's threading. Threading allows a technomancer to either not-spend BP to be as good as a hacker (say by only getting his CFs to rating 4) or to slightly exceed the hacker. Provided that he's willing to take a -2 to all other actions, which in some cases may not be advisable (cough, cybercombat, cough).

So lets compare:

TM:
Needs 5 stats soft-capped
Needs to spend 6 BP per program

Hacker:
Needs 1 stat soft-capped (Body is a good second)
Needs to spend 0.55 BP per program

Characters aren't just stats and programs.

There are a lot of other things to take into account, such as abilities or bonuses unique Resonance|Magic attributes. The TM has plenty a hacker cannot possibly get.