I am new to a technomancer, I understand pretty well what I am doing as far as threading and hacking stuff.

One thing I am not 100% comfortable with is playing with a sprite.

From what I've read, Tank and paladin sprites will be very handy for me given that I don't intent on cyber combat at this stage.

I would like to thread my stealth and exploits up high before I have to get into a node. Is it best to let the sprite carry my complex form sustain or take it myself? Im not entirely sure what to even do with them..

Can you give me an example of when I sprite has really come through and rocked for you.

In combat, hacking, hiding. Making people piss...

I seem to be coming across alot of building stuff, big groups of people and nodes in areas....

Sprites for Technomancers are really good for alot of things. One of those is pushing your Stealth Rating so high that, basically, no one can ever find you never mind attack you. I always try and keep a few Rating 6 (Or higher) Sprites registered with as many tasks as possible in my stable. With those I have one of them Sustain Threading on Stealth, and I have another use Assist Operation to push it even further. With that you should be able to have a Passive Stealth Rating of 18. If your Sprites have enough registered tasks attached (Or you use Linking on them to keep it at 18 for 256 days at a time) you can almost certainly keep it up for the entire run. Remember, it costs nothing but time to register Sprite Tasks, during downtime use a fair bit of it to get more tasks.

Doing this basically makes you a Matrix Ninja. That is a good thing.

One of the other things I like to do is use Nuke on Nodes. Sprites are not affected by such things, so any IC loaded onto that Node is going to take a serious hit to its abilities. A small note, there is an inconsistancy in the Nuke rules.

A sprite’s Matrix attributes are independent of the attributes of any node in which it is running;
it runs on other, inexplicable resources. (Page 240 of SR4A)

Due to the unique and organic nature of the living persona,
technomancers are immune to Nuke attacks, while sprites and
other autonomous entities that depend on the resources of the
node they are on (rather than the technomancer), are not. (Page 111 of Unwired)

My group uses the SR4A part (As it is specifically in a section about Technomancers, and so we play it with precedant), but your GM might disagree.

Thats interesting, my GM mentioned the sustaining complex form through a sprite for X amount of combat turns.

What is this linking? The idea of rolling around with level 18 stealth rocks...That in combination of throwing the disarm program on the nodes analzye will make me invisable. But To keep the sustaining on me for that amount of time. How?

A compiling technomancer can semi-permanently script
a registered sprite to a task or set of tasks (so called linking) by
paying Karma equal to its rating. Once linked with Karma, the
sprite no longer counts against the technomancer’s limit for
registered sprites, and any remaining services are lost. The linked
sprite will remain at its final service 256 days, unless decompiled
or disrupted, in which case it will return to its duties after 16 days
minus its rating (see Crashing Sprites, p. 154).

Note that a rating 1 sprite can sustain any level of threading. This is actually obscene. A TM can, at any time, make any threading of his (either improving a program or creating a new one) last 8+ months by spending 1 karma. Holy exploitable, batman!

EDIT: re-read registering rules. So it takes an hour before the TM can register the sprite, at which points thread + link = win.

That is really really cool. I've got 15 karma. So I could link a sprite to give me increased stealth and exploit? So I can molest any node I find.

I have currently 4 hacking, 5 Resonance and 5 exploit/stealth..

Was very tight on BP given Im doing the face role too..

with home ground and other such things i've got about 13 to roll to thread, If I dont like my roll can I just reroll and elect to take 0. So then I resist 0 fading.

What book and page can I find out more about linking?

Unwired, 154.

The reroll idea is despicable in a moral sense, but there's nothing wrong with it from a game perspective, so I hope your GM agrees.

Why combine the face and the TM? Charisma is Biofeedback filter and the number of sprite you can register, but I don't think it does anything else for you unless you want it to resist drain with. If I were you, I'd thread up a rating 5 Empathy program (arsenal page 60 or so) and link that for 1 karma, it'll help your social dice rolls a lot (and since its software, you can thread it).

To avoid wasting time with my Three technomancers taking 0 successes and rerolling, I let them chose how many they were looking for, and resist the fading.

even better is that since Threading isn't even a free action, a TM can literally appraoch the threading infinite times......................

Wee.

BlueMax

Working the face job because the rest of my team are uncouth gun slingers or bi-polar wizzers.....

Naturally the charisma is high and so for the sake of about 60 bp, I was able to roll about 13 die for social tests.

With the programs you mentioned, a level 5 empathy program, what would that actually do? What does that allow me to roll?

On another note, once I have an incredible stealth rating, I would hit the node with Disarm to kill its analyze against me so I have free reign for awhile.. If I take a sprite with me into a node. The sprite has its own independant stealth rating doesnt it? It would be caught where I would not be? how do you over come this? Can I sprite sustain my complex forms from outside the node im hacking?

If I am not mistaken, the sprite must remain with you. So thread up a sprite with a good stealth.

BlueMax

So, If I take a rating 1 sprite in with me sustaining my rating 7 complex form, the sprites own stealth will only be rating one.. and he would be detected almost straight away. Does a sprite have the ability to thread its own stealth up?

But does it have to be with your currently active icon, or just any icon you have in any node at the time? Can it sustain its linked CF from your biological node (which should have a copy of your icon in it)?

Are you sure this is right? I thought when they were referring to Programs, they meant stuff like Armor, Stealth and such. How would you thread Empathy sensor software? Would it be treated like a skillsoft, so it's equivalent to having Etiquette skillsoft and so you will need Biowire?

Your question about Biological Nodes is one which members of my group have asked here and not gotten an answer. I too would like to know.

From what I recall, the sprite must be with your active icon.

BlueMax

There's a sidebar in Unwired that allows you to use things like sensor software and tacsofts as CFs if you have appropriate sensor feeds/databases/whatever available, subject to GM veto. A bit of fiction in one of the books (Unwired? maybe Arsenal) has an infiltrator's TM teammate scan him with a facial recognition CF to test his disguise.

Even though you can have multiple icons in multiple nodes, you can only have one "acting" icon (SR4A, 225). And the Sprite must remain with the TM or can be dismissed (SR4A, 241), so you figure they are always with the "acting" icon when they are around. Or at minimum, you would think the Sprite has to be present to hold your CF or to do an Assist Operation for your "acting" icon while you do the hack.

I guess the question is whether threaded CF ratings carry over to all your icons in various nodes or not. I've never seen an answer to this one way or the other. I mean, your reading makes sense, but I'm not sure if it makes more sense than mine or not.

Okay found it, Unwired, p136. So it's like the emulation rules, you basically can thread up as CFs from the original programs, but you still need the actual equipment. That'll teach me to ignore the sidebars


I think threaded CF, like regular programs, is part of all your icon. But the question is, is the sprite with you to use its powers or perhaps they have multiple icons too.

It's even better than that. Remember that a TM has the equivalent of a sim module for free (it's how they use VR). It's possible to thread a simrig CF in the same way as a smartlink, so your physical senses can act as sensors in a lot of cases. Anything requiring standard video/trideo should work with just your eyes and a threaded/learned simrig CF, f'rex. You'll notice that much of the sensor software, including empathy, works fine with visual feeds, so in a lot of cases you really only need to see your target.

Im not sure that answered my question, There must be a way to get this to work.

What good is me having like a level 18 stealth rating if my sprite is going to be seen anyway?

well, if i were to wander into your non-active persona, and hit it with a rating 12 attack CF, would you get damaged? (the answer is yes, incidentally).

how about if i disarmed your non-active persona? would it get disarmed? (the answer is also yes)

how about if i do *anything* to your non-active persona? does that same "anything" happen to your main persona? (the answer is also yes)

so if i sustain threading on your non-active persona... why would it magically work differently from everything else in the entire game?

Right, that's my thinking. I can see why something like Assist Operation might need to be used in the same node as the TM's active icon, but sustaining threading feels like it should work anywhere within the TM's online presence (i.e., in a node with any of his icons).

Alright then, so I can go in thinking that I have sustained on me while being away from the Sprite


I guess its the same as a spirit. Spirits can sustain invis on a person while they leave and head away, and other such spells. sprites are spirits....


One last question. I have Compiling (By sprite type) Whats the sprite thats most used? Im not often in combat at all and I've never actually used a sprite yet. Not sure which I'd wanna summon first.

I need to chose my specialization for compiling and registering. What do you all think?

That's really situational. Machine and Tutor sprites are great if you want to moonlight as a riggermancer, Paladin sprites are hax for node raiding, Code, Courier and Data sprites make legwork trivial, etc. What do you want to do?

and of course, i'm not sure you've mentioned yet what stream you are... regular cyberadept? technoshaman? really, it does depend a lot on what you want to do.

I have no stream yet...

Just a regularmancer at this stage, a bit more reading for me.

is this in chargen or something? if not, you're presumably a cyberadept (the only stream found in the main rulebook). which means you have access to crack, fault, data, machine, and courier sprites.

so then, depending on how you intend to play... you've indicated an intention to pretty much ditch cybercombat for now. to that end, you may wish to consider the fault sprite (your best choice for cybercombat, unless you've got the right echo chosen to have tank or paladin sprites). it also happens to be one of the two areas where CF rating (which is determined by sprite rating) is most important. the other area is controlling drones. sprite rating is good for replacing drone pilots(if you rule that machine sprites can do that, which makes sense but isn't explicitly indicated) and for using the command CF to remotely control a drone (which machine sprites explicitly can do). likewise, the rating of the sprite will also determine the machine sprite's autosofts. perhaps most importantly, unless you allow more than one controlling pilot (which makes sense for some setups, if you have one gunner to shoot and one pilot to drive), the rating of the machine sprite will determine how many autosofts it has. a rating 6 sprite sounds really good until you realise it only has 2 skills, and you probably want at least 3 or even 4 (targeting for appropriate gun type, maneuver for appropriate drone type, defense, and clearsight are all fairly important).

personally, because the specialisation is unlikely to make the difference between a rating 6 machine sprite and a rating 9 machine sprite, i'd be more inclined to go with fault (or, if you're planning on picking up new sprites later, you may wish to just wait). the specialisation is much more likely to allow a 1 point increase in sprite compiling/registering, and one more point is much more significant for the fault sprite. you're much more likely to want to compile any machine sprites if you can; when you're likely to need a rating 9 or 12 machine sprite with very specific CFs (targeting and maneuver are specific to a gun type and drone type), compiling it on the fly seems a better choice.

Drones are a second hand thing for me, I was playing a rigger before this and It was pretty fun..

So if I complile a level 7 machine sprite, that adds any other autosoft ratings to its pool? If so. thats cool...

Without taking on any of the streams, does that mean I can not summon a paladin or tank sprite?

My drain attributes are all equal so it didn't matter to me which drain stat I used. Other than the drain attribute, why do you take a stream?

Autosofts as used by sprites are poorly explained at best. I believe the intent is to enable a sprite to take over a drone and use its own judgement and autosofts in place of those of the Pilot, but I could be wrong.


Well, the assumption is that you have a stream; if not specifically selected, it's the cyberadept stream by default. If you explicitly decide that you don't have a stream at all, you're a wild technomancer. This is A Bad Thing. But yeah, you'll have to either take a listed stream that includes the sprites you want or ask if your GM will let you build your own custom stream. There's also an echo you can get that unlocks an additional sprite type for use, so there's that option later on if you submerge.


Sprite selection and roleplaying preferences, mainly.

On the "Threading with Icons" part, my table has always played that the Sprite must remain with an Icon, nut not necessarily the one you are percieving through. For one thing, if that was not the case how would it work with Echos like Multiprocessing that basically means the Technomancer has multiple Active Icons?

The reason we do play it like this is the following: When I Thread up my Complex Forms I am basically threading up my Personas Program Ratings. My Icons are simply representations of my Persona, so Complex Forms should be universal. If I have Stealth in one Node my Stealth shouldnt be any different in any other Node, there isn't any reason it should be. So I would say feel free to have your Sprites take up residence in your Brain Node, and have fun making them basically being immune to any attacks against them (Untill a sneaky little Technomancer gets a Trace on you. ) but it works just as well with RAW

One other thing to think about is how useless Response is for a Technomancer. It really doesn't do all that much for you at all, especially if you can get your Stealth Rating high enough that you are almost certainly never going to get into Cybercombat. Your Matrix Initiative is based entirely on your Intuition (Something I always found stupid, I think it should be Int + Resp personally) and is not affected by your Response. The only tests (that I can remember) that use Response are Reality Filter (That hardly anyone ever uses) and Combat Defence (Which hopefully you wont get engaged in very often, and if you do you have Paladin Sprites to save your ass. Get a Stream with Paladin Sprites, you will not regret it).

So you should also feel free to maybe use the Proxy Server rules from Unwired to make yourself even harder to Trace than normal. If you play with the -1 Dice every Roll on opposed tests, that extra +4 Threshold can save your life. My group uses a House Rule for Trace (We didn't like how universal it was. Having a Proxy Server up should make the Trace lead to that Proxy, not just increase the Threshold. Then you need to get access to the Proxies Access Log and run a Trace on that. Makes it slightly more Hollywood)

Oh, and I cannot remember if this is correct, but Black IC + Paladin using Castling is fun. I am fairly sure there is a dev quote that says this is OK, cant find it atm: You get engaged by Black IC with a Paladin using Castling. When that Black IC attacks you it gets redirected to the Paladin. As a Sprite the Paladin is not affected by Biofeedback. Look, now you are immune to most Black IC! Hurrah! And if you extrapolate that further, it should also mean that your connection is not jammed open, after all the entire attack was redirected to the Sprite and you took no Damage so I cant see why it would be.

EDIT: And Drones can be really, REALLY powerful in the hands of a good Technomancer. Rating 18 Command Program? Sure! Also, if you have magical healing support you might want to think about Compiling/Registering a few really high Rating Sprites. When you start running about with Rating 12 Sprites things really start to get broken. But look out for that Fading. It can, and will, kill you if you roll badly. Also fixed some spelling

Also, Sprites have an Edge attribute. Use it, abuse it! According to Unwired they also have a Resonance, cant really see why.

Technomancers worry me even more now that I have an inkling how far the rabbit-hole goes.
I can see why people are afraid of them and megacorps are paying handsomely for them.

Another little trick is having your Sprites run Drones when they are not Wireless. Sprites are at least semi-sapient, much more so than Agents are. That means that they can make decisions on the fly, without having any communication with the Technomancer.

So you take a drone and put your Machine Sprite in it. Then you give it whatever orders you want. "Follow me about and help me in Combat" is probably a good, encompassing order that only uses up one Task, maybe two on GM Fiat. Then you turn that Drones wireless off. Voila! You have an intelligent Drone that is impossible to hack/spoof. Also you might want to ask your GMs opinion on the Technomancer/Sprite connection. If you can get a Drone to be controlled by a Sprite you can have the Sprite operate the Drone, and have it be the one issueing all orders to the Drone. Normal Hackers cannot spoof commands to Sprites, so you now have a Wireless Enabled Un-Spoofable Drone. Hurrah! With a Slave connection to your Home Node it is also very, very difficult to hack the Drones Node itself.

Are not remote services more expensive? Still a good idea.
Machine sprite in EVERY medkit.
Tutor too

BlueMax

Thats why you use Registered Sprites!

Oh yes. If you haven't figured out by now, Machine Sprites are a Technomancers best friend. They will make your friends love you so much its crazy. Rating 6 Machine Sprites sitting in a Smartlinked Gun makes Gunbunnies happy. In Vehicles makes any Rigger happy. You dont have a Medic? No worries! Machine Sprite sitting in a Medkit can do just fine.

Machine Sprite + Tutor Sprite ( to add half his rating in skill to the operator)

Ohh, my players have used Sprites plenty. With the healing rules as they are in Shadowrun, I wonder why you are registering such tiny sprites.


BlueMax

For my current table its GM enforced. I am playing in a fairly new group, and everyone else is no where near as optimized as I am. That means that if I want to have fun (without spoiling everyone elses) I have to limit myself in places. The GM herself is quite new to the system, needless to say she was worried at how far I can push my dice pools if I wanted too.

On any other table on of the first things I do is get a Mage on retainer, get a good Medkit and try and throw out a Rating 12 for my Stealth.

If someone makes a new character, have them roll a Medic. First Aid for 5 boxes THEN do Magic.

"I took 9 Fading... physical man, ZOMG help me!"
Doc yells "Shut up already" and slaps the Sprite assisted medkit rolling 26 dice and healing 5 boxes (skill limit) "Wizzer, you're up"
The mage heals 4 and suffers little to no drain.

All can be done in under 12 seconds....

BlueMax

Actually, a TM's Matrix Initiative is based on Response. TM Response = Intuition. So Matrix Initiative = Response+Intuition = Intuitionx2 (generally) for a TM.

Yes, but as written it is declared as Intuition * 2. That means artificially changing your Response (I.E through the use of Proxy Servers) should have no effect. Its silly, I personally dont like it, but that is how it is written by RAW. Remember there are ways for a Technomancer to push their Response up without changing their Intuition (Echos).

Enh, this seems like a case of RAW vs. RAI to me.


Exactly. Your reading makes Overclocking useless for boosting the Matrix Initiative stat; mine does not.

Believe me, I am much more inclined to play it as your interpretation, it is the same one I concluded. It seems more like an oversight than anything else.

no. if you compile a rating 7 machine sprite, it is entitled to 2 optional CFs from their list. in the case of a machine sprite, those should be autosofts. you cannot use normal autosofts on a sprite; that's why you need such high rating machine sprites to replace a decent pilot program. a rating 9 sprite will default to 8 dice on any test, which makes them somewhat respectable even in areas their 3 autosofts don't cover, though. but a rating 7 machine sprite will be throwing 14 dice in two areas, and 6 dice in the rest... which means you're sacrificing somewhere, because a rating 6 pilot cold be throwing 10 dice in 6 areas if you have the drone for it. (in all cases, dice pools are before modifiers such as handling, smartlink, etc. plausibly, your machine sprite can use diagnostics to improve it's own dice pool as well, iirc)

/me nods
Rating 9, good good.


BlueMax

From discussion in other threads today, I don't think sprites are allowed to default. Every action a sprite takes is a Matrix action, and...

So no applicable autosoft means no chance of success in terms of direct drone control. More generally, no applicable skill or 'soft means the sprite just can't do it.

Now since sprites directly controlling drones isn't explicitly addressed by RAW, it's possible that actions taken while doing so are not in fact Matrix actions and can be defaulted upon, but unless and until that's made explicit somewhere it looks like sprites can only take Matrix actions and thus cannot default on tests.

by that definition, a rigger can't control a drone by rigging without using a skillsoft; no program is involved in rigging a vehicle, for example.

See, that's the thing - we're assuming (and I include myself in this) that Machine sprites can do something analogous to rigging, but that's not really clarified in any published material. So saying that if a jumped-in rigger can do X, then a sprite displacing a drone's Pilot program can also do X seems like shaky logic to me, because there's no real rules basis for it. Sprites don't use the "Jumped-in Rigger Dice Pool" column for drone tests. What sprites do isn't rigging like riggers do it, and if they can do something similar the mechanics of it aren't clearly defined.

Can sprites default on skill checks while inhabiting drones? Maybe, but this isn't made clear anywhere. (The real question - are they taking Matrix actions or not?)

Can sprites default at any other time? No; all their actions are Matrix actions.

For the sake of consistency without a clear statement of intent from the devs, "sprites only take Matrix actions and thus can't default" seems like a decent rule of thumb for now.

no it doesn't, because rigging is a matrix action, and doesn't fit the definition of skill + program, thereby showing that the skill + program definition is non-valid.

in fact, we can just start going right down the list of things that are explicitly listed as matrix actions, and find plenty that don't have skill + program tests.

for example, all of the free actions listed. call/dismiss a sprite. deactivate program. encrypt. decrypt (if you have the key). issue command. jump into a drone. log off. log on. run program. set databomb. all of those are explicitly matrix actions. most of them don't have any test at all. by the "program + skill" definition, those actions are all impossible. so, we can either assume that nobody is even able to log on to a node, or we can assume that matrix actions need not all follow the "skill + program" pattern, and that not everything needs to follow that rule.

Enh. Maybe you're right; I don't really care enough to get any further into this.

Thanks for all the help and advice guys. Been very good.

A further question if I may, the sprites that come with powers and abilities like stealth, attack and what not.

If I compile a level 5 sprite, does all its abilities run at level 5 also? so for attack it would be sprite rating 5 + Attack 5?

yes, the sprite's CFs are at the same rating as the sprite itself.

I'm pretty new to the game as well. How are machine sprites able to add dice to medkits or firearms in a smartlink?