So I'm trying to figure out ways to play with a technomancer other than being a hacker or dronomancer of some sort. My current main idea is really just half baked at the moment, but I feel there could be some small level of promise.

The Stream really wouldn't matter -too- much, but the idea I have would most likely require someone to have a Machine Sprite as I think Diagnostics will come into play here.

I'm thinking of either making a face or some sort of Techno gunslinger with Smartlink as one of my CFs. Toss in a Machine Sprite and have it run diagnostics on my Smartlinked weapon and viola, plenty of dice to throw at a target. Or lets say I have some sort of chameleon suit. If it doesn't have wireless capabilities, a little fine tuning could make it so. Toss in that Machine Sprite and assist you on your stealthy operations. Same thing with vision mag, targetting, etc. A friend of mine has also been doing something quite interesting (and something I'm sure has been done for quite some time now): a Technomancer Medic/Doc type. High First Aid etc skills and a Machine Sprite to boost her dice rolling to epic proportions.

For your hacking abilities, you'd only really need to have Compiling and Registering at first, I'd guess. Maybe add a few light hacking abilities into the mix. If you go Cyber/Bioware, it'd probably be a good idea to keep things lite if anything to ensure a decent Resonance (at about 4 or 5, I'd guess). As you submerge, getting Biowires and Acceleration become that much more important and useful.

I guess you could say I'm trying to think up a good support character with the Technomancer template as my core design. Trying to think outside the TM = Hacker box, with options to still expand back to hacking, of course. If anyone could lend me a hand in hashing out this and hopefully other ideas, I'd be very grateful.

It's not something you could use out of the gate without karma build but I have a technomancer NPC somewhere around similar lines. He's a psychologist and amatuer martial artist who touch link pulls people into VR to whack them with psychotropic gray ice. He's also got good medicinal skills and uses machine sprites to augment his medical gear.

Hah. I never imagined doing that! I've just now begun wrapping my head around using Psychotropic as a Threaded up Blackhammer attack option. A psychiatrist martial artist sounds pretty nifty. How does that touch link work exactly? I'm guessing he has skinlink as a submersion and as an attack uses it to for someone into full VR?


Okay. I'm trying to hash out a TM Covert Ops Specialist. He's not exceptional, but he's getting there. Right now I have all the stats, none of the gear, and none of the Knowledge Skills.

Attributes:

Body 2
Agility 5
Reaction 4
Strength 3
Charisma 4
Intuition 4
Logic 4
Willpower 4
Edge 1
Magic 0
Resonance 4

Skills:

Blades..............2
Pistols..............4
Infiltration........4
Compiling........5
Registering......5
Etiquette.........2
Hacking..........3
Athletics(SG)..2
Electronics.....4

Complex Forms:

Analyze.........3
Browse.........3
Exploit.........4
Stealth........4
Smartlink....1

Qualities:
Technomancer + 5
-30 in negative Qualities (I'm thinking In Debt as I like being indebted to people like the Yakuza or the Mafia, good RP hook)

Again, he's not the most super bad ass guy in the group, but he can hold his own in physical combat and can quite possibly assist the hacker in the matrix. More likely, he'll use a Sprite to do that work, but that's still some sort of assistance. Things that he could develop more on for B&E: Submerging to grab skinlink as a top priority, raising the Electronics skill group higher as well as hacking and eventually begin to grow more into his Complex Forms.

With this Covert Ops/B&E Specialist, I think I'm going to try and got the Purist approach when it comes to cyber/bio. It should go without saying that it's mainly because of my already low Resonance attribute (4), but I think if I developed a background and personality for him, he'd be more of a purist when it comes to that stuff anyhow.

4 is actually pretty good, not even soft max but still good, the purist approach to cyber and bio is a good idea anyways though. I might drop charisma and athletics a point apeach and put that into electronics since with the type of security you'r likely to encounter it's likely to be more central to your skill set and still leaves you with good abilities in those areas.

I am mentally throwing around a Troll TM build around martial arts and using the biofeedback ability. Numerically it just doesn't stack up however.

- J.

Ah. Quite an interesting idea to both replies. I'll edit the Covert Ops character a little later on tonight to see what it looks like. I was trying to figure out how to put more into Electronics.

On the Troll Martial Artist TM, I'll even try and work that angle to see how I could do it.

Your build seems fairly good, you'll need time to grow into your roll. If you intend to do a lot with sprite I would recommend a paragon of one you like with your character additionally I would remove the points from Etiquite and put them in Con or split them 50/50 so you have the ability to hopefully fast talk your way out of situations. Additionally I would try and find some points to raise edge as it's good for helping you out of the Jam of a bad infiltration roll or the like situations where discovery will make your day much worse. Also similar lines I would remove a point from blades and put it into hand to hand as it gives you options for when your caught without a weapon but it and shock gloves give you a non lethal close quarters option.

As to your question there's an advanced echo called resonance trodes that builds on skin link that allows you to pull people into VR against their will if you can get ahold of them and then beat them on a resonance + will vs their intuation + will I think.

Mechanically I don't think there is a resistance roll given by RAW.

Give the troll Martial Arts (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu/Wrestling) to get +2 to submissions or takedowns would make for very interesting possibilities.

- J.

Yeah there isa resistance. I found it in Unwired under the Trodes section where it actually talks about using this tactic. This right here sorta tells me that Technomancers can be OH SO MUCH MORE than just stupid awesome at hacking. I'm very excited and will be making a few minor changes to the above sheet idea while beginning work on the troll martial artist idea. Only problem is that we need to submerge our troll friend twice so that he can take full advantage of skinlink and trodes.... Unless we can do the suggested attack with normal trodes?

technically it should be possible with normal trodes* hooked up to a simsense module, but it's nowhere near as easy to force someone to wear trodes as it is to just touch them. in fact, if you're able to force them to wear trodes, you've probably already beaten them up subdued them anyways.

* and by normal trodes, i mean modified normal trodes that don't let the operator control stuff attached to them.

that said, there's nothing preventing you from murdering/brainhacking people while they're enjoying simsense recordings or BTLs. (note: if you're not abusing the threading rules to choose whatever psychotropic option is most appealing for your black IC at any given time, you're doing it wrong; remember, the less common something is, the worse the phobia/mania you can attach to it. so for example, as ridiculous as it may be, you can give someone a worse phobia of "telling anyone what a technomancer named mike who broke into the Ares facility around 11:00 PM on a saturday night did" than you can of "admitting failure to your supervisors". that said, you might wanna tone that down a little... your GM is liable to smack you over the head with unwired if you're that obvious about it).

Just theoretically, couldn´t you custom-build a glove that has skinlinks on both sides (as 2.5 x times the cost, perhaps)? This way, your Troll TM could acess the people's minds just by touching them on any skin-exposed area. (i remember a NPC on Ghost Cartels that has Skinlink on commlink Watch...) This way, the TM can wirelessly comunicate with the glove and through it, connect to the target and black-ice that person in VR?

Only if their skinlink connects to a DNI. Because a skinlink in itself is not a DNI, and you need a DNI to pull people into VR.

Hmm, maybe scary VR-inducing nanite injections... do it right, and people won't realise they're "hallucinating",

Skinlink is not a DNI, it just uses the skin's conductivity to transmit data between devices.
There's actually something like this in RL, although just prototypes: http://gadgetopia.com/post/3573

@Golgoth: If your GM allows learning Echoes outside Submersions, you could get away with just one Submersion.

Hmmm...nanites which establish a DNI and then play a preprogrammed Simsense sequence which puts the victim into coma or worse...I like it!