This isn't a straight up comparison on which is better. Just curious which do you prefer to play and why?

I'll go first. I love TMs but I find the cost too exorbitant to play and more ineffectual in combat than almost any starting magicians. That and the fact I love to create malware means Hackers get my vote.

- J.

TMs. They are just more fun to me.

I used to played Mages in AD&D, so I am used to the slow ramp up to ULTIMATE COSMIC POWER concept, and have no trouble with it.

I think the optional rules in Unwired for Complex Forms emulating spells should be the standard, however.

Hacker. Because then I can have other hobbies. My last hacker had 20 dice for automatics.

I tend to prefer characters with lots of development potential. Within their field.
So, all other things being equal, I prefer to run TMs. The most interesting Hacker, in the abstract, would be one with lots of logic, who likes to write his own programs. However, that means what I am interested in is the down-time. I want to play a character I want to play.

Yours,
Joel

TMs. I can't get enough of them. They are extremely BP/Karma dependent through out their life cycle, but they are a joy to play.

Decker... i mean Hacker... i can't stand Technomancers... Otakus were cool though.

Depends on my mood.

If i make an infiltrator odds are it will also be a hacker.

TMs I use if I'm going straight digital with hacking/rigging. I tend to get an Agent for each drone and then put a sprite to defend it from hackers.

Hackers. I can still be a supporting combat role as one, and have skillpoints left over for Build and repair.

TM's are cool as hell, but, ouch on the BP.

No Preference
I like 'em both
but I've got more experience with Hackers
(Though I'm Itching to Blay "Black Jack" my Hobbit TM and Prince (Purple Rain) Wannabee)

Hough!
Medicineman

I've agonized over the decision, but I prefer hackers. High science is kinda like magic, and I wanted a character with both lots of useful gear, and who also sees his body as a tool to be hacked and improved. Resonance dependent on Essence stood in the way. It keeps me from seeing TMs as a kind of progress; their "evolution" clashes with body/brain augmentations.

If your signatures weren't enough to make me lose it, that character concept is simply !

I would love to play Technomancers, but as already stated, they cost way more than mages to play. I do enjoy playing hackers, as I can be a mage at the same time.

By the by, whoever said you can't use magic to affect the Matrix has obviously never used Magic Fingers to interact with AR Gloves and a holo projector...

Hacker with an emphasis on Full VR. What can I say....I started as a Decker. AR is silly.

Hacker. Having to preserve your essence AND sink tons of BP into mental stats and such is serious handicap. Although a drone-based TM has its attractions, given what sprites can do.

I reduce the BP costs for Complex Forms for our groups Technomancer and it balanced itself out quite well. He ended up with a good set of rating six Complex Forms

Or just use the optional rules in Unwired that treats them like spells. That worked out just fine for me.

the BP cost is fine. it's the karma cost that's bad.

I love the Hacker vs TM game, especially the multiplayer version.

If it weren't for Serial Experiments Lain I don't know that I would give technomancers the time of day.
They are interesting in that both mechanically and in lore they can break they matrix in half.
I think that in most normal level games they have no place. A higher level or high powered game seems more their niche.
On the other hand, Hackers (Deckers) are the defining element of cyberpunk for me. If they weren't there being the zany, flexible and essential characters that they are, we might not have much of a world.

Where else could my troll hacker find an escape from his clumsy, over-sized meat body than to relax on the matrix in his armored fridge being whatever he wants to be.

Hackers. Technos and Otaku leave a really bad taste in my mouth. Being too close to the metal in the real world makes me retch at all the "deeper undestanding" fluff.

A mage can break things just as easily. It's about an understanding between the player and GM on what's ok or not. The scariest thing is a TM and a mage working together. One rules the meat and the other the matrix. It got ridiculous insanely fast in our game even with the GM throwing extra trouble our way (I was the TM) like Sprites/Spirits that actually use their edge to stop us from binding them and fighting others of our kind. In the end we had a talk about it and scaled back on what we were doing so everyone could have fun instead of me and Ms. Magic ending everything in our way.

A reply I saw more than once is that technos are fun but they can't do anything but hack. QFT. If my party has all the other bases covered, I love to play technomancers, but I usually end up playing a hacker/"something."

Yeah, I hate that cyber/bio hits resonance. I don't see that it's necessary.

I understand where the writers where going with having cyber/bio affect resonance.

Be that as it may... I disagree with the logic of it. TM's are supposed to be one with the machine world. It stands to figure that their bodies would be more receptive to the mechanical (cyber at least) changes that that technology entails. So even if the writers did go with essence loss from cyber/bio affecting resonance they should have balanced it out with having cyber be counted as beta or better grade. Such a change would allow TM's to be good at other areas without to much of a sacrifice to hacking. Or maybe have an echo that can reduce the impact cyber has.

Magic = anti-technology (object resistance anyone?)
TM's = anti-technology? How does that make sense? Their entire being revolves around technology being at the level it is.

All that aside... From a strictly hacking standpoint I would go with TM's any day of the week. The ability to thread stealth past 6 is a HUGE advantage over Hackers. Having a stealth past 6 makes hacking on-the-fly a much better choice to pull off. And something that TM's are (by fluff) supposed to be better at.

However, if you bring the rest of the game world into play TM's are vastly underpowered due to karma restraints so Hackers are a better choice for a more balanced character. Even more so if you give yourself the time to only do long-hacks.

If I had to use BP-gen I´d play hackers; with karmagen I prefer augmented TMs. Build with lowish effective resonance and low CFs they are IMO one of the most powerful types of character.

perhaps something like:

Resonance Attuning: The technomancer can attune cyberware to the resonance, by expending 1 karma and 8 hours per 0.1 essence so imbued. Cyberware attuned to the resonance in this manner still costs essence, but will not cause resonance to be lost as a result of the essence lost (treat it as if they did not lose the essence for those purposes; if a technomancer gets a datajack in this manner, for resonance purposes they still have an essence of 6. if the same technomancer then received an ordinary simrig, the technomancer would then lose a point of essence because for resonance purposes the technomancer has just gone to less than 6). The technomancer can only have 0.1 essence worth of this attuned cyberware in their body per submersion grade (technomancers without this echo do not benefit from having resonance attuned cyberware implanted into them, but a technomancer could buy attuned cyberware from another technomancer with this echo and receive the benefits provided it does not exceed their allowed amount of attuned cyberware)

it would probably be a more rare technique, and the exact amounts might need tweaking, but i don't think technomancers should be looking at getting wired reflexes 2 because of the echo (after all, if we make it *too* good, we'll end up with nobody wanting the echoes that actually grant extra IPs, for example).

I like this.



I don't think it is a big deal if a TM wants to "bond" to more expensive cyber. Not only are they paying for it in Nuyen costs but they are paying karma for it as well. Wired 1 is going to cost 20 karma and 11,000 . I don't think that that is unreasonable compared to the echo. Even delta grade wired 1 is running 10 karma and 110,000 . That is cheaper than submersion but your paying nuyen also. (110,000 = 22 karma in a way)

Perhaps a better limit is using an attribute. Resonance is a good one because it follows the same pattern for mages bonding foci. Charisma is also acceptable because of Attune (object) metamagic.

TM, I don't like cyberwares ! If I want to play a street sam I would prefer playing an AI in a combat anthroform (MCT Housekeeper modified to fight)

as i said, for your campaign you can tweak it however you like. the problem is that as i've written it, the technomancer who receives the cyberware may not be the technomancer that pays the karma cost. if you want you could change that as well, i suppose.

but either way, if you particularly want TMs to use heavy cyber, it's just a matter of tweaking the rule. i tend to feel that most people are likely to have less of a problem with it if it's low essence, is all.

IF you want TM's wtih heavy cyber, what's the reason to play street sam's or Hacker's again?

I love me some TM's, but I like being able to upgrade my weak flesh body so I don't have to worry nearly as much about getting jumped on the way to the stuffer shack.

In character, being a Technomancer is not exactly a choice. It's usually foisted onto you through (un)happy circumstance. You can't "will" yourself into becoming a Technomancer. I'm currently playing a career street sam who is also a Technomancer. In his character background, he gained his abilities after he already had a pair of Cyberarms and basic Reaction/Initiative enhancers. He started out pretty gimped in his Technomancer abilities, but they are an added curse to him (some would say it is a bonus, but my character doesn't look at it that way). It's interesting to play an atypical Technomancer, in some ways, because my priorities for selecting echoes, seeking out other TMs for submersion, and complex forms are all skewed in favor of things that are more useful to a gimpy Technomancer rather than a TM who might as well be a Hacker in everything but name and resource allocation. E-sensing, for example, is a great Echo for my character, as it allows me to have an "enhanced" perception test that no one else has.

No...


Playing a TM is explicitly a choice your character background might bend on that but you chose to play a TM, with cyberware. By the system/universe/whatever TM's have amazing almost paranormal abilities but at a downside of not playing well with cyberware. Now folks can work around that or convince their GM's to do so but it becomes a scenario where it becomes pointless to play "mundane" characters.

The player CHOOSES be a technomancer. The character does not. This is an important distinction. I chose to play a street samurai who has awful Technomancer abilities. By all accounts, I am worse than a normal Street Samurai AND I'm far worse than a normal Technomancer because I have lowered my Essence down to a 4 with a pair of cyberarms and some reflex enhancement. There was no "workaround" for it. In my character's mind, at character creation for the campaign, he is a street samurai, but now his head is filled with annoying buzzing whenever he walks into a wireless enabled zone (i.e. everywhere). It's a lot like playing a Burnout Mage archetype, except with TM abilities and the opposite situational events occurring ("I had cyberware first, and then I found out I was a Technomancer. It sucks, but that's life.").

At some point, I can choose to destroy my Technomancer abilities forever by implanting more toys. It may very well be something that my character will invite, and happily do so.

A character does not choose to be a Technomancer any more than they can choose to be a mage. Most people forget that it is a gift that is not contingent on social status, money, or genetics. You are special (in both good and bad ways) through no fault or effort of your own.

I prefer Tms over hackers...its a challenge and there are just alot of character concepts I have that just fall flat with hackers. That said. I haven't really had a chance to play a Tm. had one ready for the Skype game that Zendead got started and then schedule changed and I couldn't play.

It's not about becoming Invulnerable Cyborg Hulk Boy, it's about the crazy combination of TM vs. tech - they can't stand each other. How can you claim to be the cutting edge ™, when your abilities suffer when you use cutting edge tech to enhance yourself? Resonance loss through essence loss makes TMs a sort of Luddite fifth column instead of the symbol of man-machine integration.

I believe you have misunderstood me.
I like the idea of a TM Echo that allows them to bond to their cyberware. It would not be something they start with or something they have to get. Just something they could get if they wanted to.
However, if we are going to create a new Echo I believe it should follow a rules set that is already in place. Like Attune (Object). I like the idea of having it cost 1 karma per .1 essence but I believe the maximum essence should be based off an attribute like Attune (Object) is.

And that is a good Idea...

Keep the Faith

Why would it not be a good idea? I do not understand your complaint.
Do you think that TM's should be not be allowed to get an echo that could reduce the impact of cyberware to their resonance?
or...
That it should be based off an already existing rule...

TM

i think you're getting a little defensive. he just told you he thinks it's a good idea, not that he thinks it's a bad idea

Sorry.
I tend to read ... as a thought process that has not fully been written or as a drawn out question. I see (hear) it in my mind as having a monotone inflection. Neutral biased.
At least that is how I tend to use it so I apologize if that was not its intended purpose.

on a side note, you are really confusing me... every time i see one of your posts with that avatar next to it, i get confused for a moment as i think "huh... i don't remember writing that"

lol
changed, always confused me too.

Would you (or someone) post an example build and explain your playstyle?

No, Apparently you misunderstood the "Good Idea" part... I am not knocking your post, nor complaining... it is just not somethign that I had thought of before......

It is a GOOD IDEA...

Keep the Faith

The basic idea is that a TM does not nearly have to be maxed in order to compete with a hacker. If you know a few basics of playing TMs, you can hack rating 6 nodes with resonance 4. It is not very hard to build a resonance 4 technomancer, it is only very inefficient if you use BP-gen.

Now if you need a little extra oomph, either for hacking or other activities, you have two points of essence you can toy with, more if your table allows for submersion at chargen.

My playstyle allows me to do a ton of different things, instead of starting an arms race that leads to me not having karma to spare for cool or simply new stuff.

I'm not too familiar with karmagen but the usual way it works is if you have six points of Essence, and only bought up your Resonance to 4, then you spent 2 points of Essence on 'ware, that would reduce your Resonance of 4 to a 2.

- J.

Pretty much how I have always seen it as working....

Keep the Faith

He is saying that he uses two points of essence and then maxs out what resonace he has which would be four.

Possible, But not how I really read the post...

Null Perspiration though...

Keep the Faith

I can buy a resonance of 6 and only need a resonance of 4 -> I can afford to loose two points. I pay for those, no worries.

You're thinking of Essence loss as a purely "I'm putting tech in my body" standpoint. Essence loss comes from all kinds of things.... drug abuse, losing an arm, etc. It's not just the putting something in, it's the taking something out. Heck, even getting a sex change costs Essence (per Augmentation). And I think they did a good job in Emergence showing that part of what allows a Technomancer to be the way they are is physical, an enhanced nervous system. Start messing with that and it becomes harder for them to access the Matrix without a link.