I despise the direction that has been taken with Technomancers, Resonance and certain aspects of AIs. Obviously my feelings are personal to me and there will be others that disagree and I am fine with agreeing to disagree. Matters of taste are exactly that. I'll explain my feelings though so that people can understand where I'm coming from.
I banned Technomancers from the moment I got my 4th Edition rulebook. Edited them right out existence. I had two main problems with them and one minor one. Emergence introduced a third major problem that I'll get to.
The first main problem is that they severely break a long-standing and useful flavour tradition of Shadowrun which is that of Technology vs. Magic. That Tech v. Magic is a long-standing staple of Shadowrun I wont go into - it's something that anyone playing earlier editions (especially 1st or 2nd) is aware of. That is is a useful tradition, I reason as follows: If magic is capable of doing everything that tech can do, or vice versa, then there is little point to the two approaches. It would make magic an irrelevancy if tech could duplicate in capability and cost and the whole Awakening would be an event that changed nothing. Or if magic can do everything tech can do then tech and those without magic are obsolete. And this would have a profoundly negative effect on the tech both in the flavour of the setting and in the balance of the satisfaction in game for any player that wasn't running a magic character. That's why it is bad to break the Magic vs. Tech theme of Shadowrun by narrowing the differences between what each can do.
And technomancers narrow that difference badly by granting Matrix mastery to the side of Magic.
And this is where I address those people who have read the above and been saying to themselves: "But TM's aren't magic."
Almost everything about them makes us think "magic". Now if Synner were still around he'd leap in and say they weren't. But you can call an elephant a mouse and it's still going to look like an elephant. "But it's called a mouse," will say the defender. "It's got a trunk! It's grey with a little tail and ears like table cloths. It sat on my car and crushed the roof in!" "Yeah," will say the defender, "but it's not
called an elephant". Everyone will think it is, though. Consider the following list of crimes:
- Their name implies magic.
- The way they functionally mechanically is a direct rip off of the magic rules.
- We cannot explain what they do scientifically. Not even in a fluff way of saying that the scientists of 2070 have explanations because it's stated very clearly that they don't. Refences are made to "mysterious energies" and "mystics". This excludes them from the category of mankind applying its scientific knowledge.
- They summon strange beings.
- They go to mystical places where no-one else can follow.
Furthermore they are inextricably linked to newer aspects of the Matrix that are similarly magical, such as Resonance realms, Resonance wells, feral AIs, sprites, etc. Things that are not merely unexplained by the people that build and program the Matrix, but sometimes invisible to them.
So yes, to me and clearly many others, techomancers represent Magic superceding technology and upsetting the long and useful tradition of Magic v. Tech in favour of Magic.
And very much in favour of magic too, because even if Hackers make good generalists, with lower costs and broader skills than starting TMs, we know both from the rules and more perhaps importantly from the fluff that is repeatedly drummed into us, that TMs are the best. No-one really cared if Muhammed Ali wasn't as good all round academically as, say some other person, or if someone else wasn't as good a boxer as him but had also learnt French. Nobody cares if someone can run the 100m in 11 seconds but is also a qualified mechanic. What matters, and I find it staggering that the devs either didn't realize or didn't care about this, is that TM's both in fluff and rules, supercede Hackers at anything they choose to do. Hackers make fine, viable PCs, but if you want to be the best, or even just really special, this is reserved for the spooky TM characters. They even make the best riggers letting them pump out rounds more consistently and better than any Sammie ever could.
The archetype of the skilled hacker who has studied programming, spent many a late night honing his knowledge and skills, is no longer cool in any way because after a decade of mastering the inner workings of computer software, hardware and networking, some thirteen year old is going to appear and say "nah, I'm one with the Matrix. I can do things you can't even understand". TMs kill the hacker as an archetype of anything other than "hey - I'm not bad at quite a few things."
Those are the two major reasons that I disliked TMs and the "magical Matrix" from the start (the two things are pretty much inseperable so I discuss them together). The minor reason is that they can be quite hard to design opposition for. A properly optimised TM can blast through any system that isn't contrived. Threading or Assisting sprites lets TMs reach horrible heights of specialisation. Echos can make it even worse. What do you do with a TM that has an effective Stealth "program" of 8 and a "Firewall" of 9? Both considerable beyond what a hacker could hope to achieve and that most nodes or IC could expect to beat. So another run against a target that has average physical security but, for some reason, Matrix software knocked off from Damian Knight's bank account, then? I pity any group that has a Hacker and a TM in it, both.
This is a side issue, but Emergence introduced a third problem I have with TMs. It came out a year after SR4 and suddenly, any group that had a TM suddenly found that all this time, their TM was this big secret that the whole world was scared of and that megacorps would pay big bounties for. Who knew? Yep - suddenly the Technomancer "class" had built in role-playing background. They were the persecuted X-Men of the Shadowrun setting. I dislike that, too.
So that's my take on it. A magical Matrix is something I have cut from my campaign with
great prejudice. Occasional hints from devs have suggested to me that they are, or at least were, going somewhere with this. There was a reference to a magical "hard drive" in India somewhere - a kind of Matrix made of floating rocks and magic, I think. Ancient History would probably know. There were suggestions that the Matrix of today is a re-emergence of some previous incarnation of something from a prior age. I dislike the notion intently and hope that it has been dropped.
Other than that and the lifting rules, really like 4th Edition.
My 0.02
, anyway.
K.