I'm seriously thinking about retiring a long-running (no pun intended) character, and creating a Technomancer.

I've got quite a lot of Karma to spend on a new character, enough for a few grades of submersion, and was thinking of going the Biowire/Acceleration route.

I'm not necessarily trying to create a Techno-Samurai, but since I'm retiring the team's primary tank, I at least want to be fairly decent in a fight. With a fairly decent Agility, a personalized Pistols (for instance) skill with DIMAP, and a smartlink CF, that's a DP of ~12, which isn't bad but isn't all that good either. Unarmed would be even worse, since there isn't a smartlink for unarmed or armed combat.

Any thoughts? Like I said, the main purpose of the character isn't to be the team tank, but I'd like to at least be somewhat useful when the initiative dice get thrown.

If you want to be somewhat useful in a fight I would advise getting a couple of drones. You as a TM will not be that useful in combat, you fight through proxy. One thing I did was create a troll sized drone with a heavily armored rigger pod, get the skinlink echo, along with over clock/advanced over clock and with a few Skill wire CFs along with a couple of natural skills I became a tank. Since I was rigging I had 5 IPs instead of everyone else who had 4, I was using the massive drones stats instead of my weak physical ones, and with all that armor I was more protected then anyone else. Automatics is your go to skill though that character already had it so I got a Heavy Weps CF and had a machine gun installed so it could never be disarmed. Outside of the armor I was still squishy though so watch those down times where your GM might try to go after you. This is where security is important. This took a bit of karma so the quicker path is just get skin link echo and a decent drone that a pod can fit in/on. There are of course other ways to do it, that's just how I did.

Was this a pink mowhawk or ice cold pro style campaign?

Either way, I like it.

- J.

While we had some mowhawk moments it was closer to ice cold pro style hence why I mentioned downtime security being important. My GM utterly hated that character because I covered the one weakness TMs had and to make sure it couldn't be used against me I didn't install any wireless capabilities, datajack ports, or manual controls. If I wanted to control it remotely I had a machine sprite inside of it at all times with a basic radio. If I needed him I called him, simple as that. When I got enough money I disguised it as a troll so to everyone else it wasn't a massive combat drone, it was a Troll who got a full body replacement. Still scary but not as scary as them knowing it was actually a massive drone with an elf hiding inside. I'm glad you like it. Even though that character is retired now, he set up a school for TMs and no longer needs to run to support it, every once and a while our GM brings him back as an NPC and I'm glad. One of the best moments I remember is him emergency ejecting from the drone while holding off a squad of top tier Samurai and having the drone self destruct.

"Did that Troll just shit out an Elf?"