a)Technomancer is a poor choice for a min/maxer, adept hacker probably is a lot more powerful. b) Latent techno is even worse. You pay 5 BP at CharGen for nothing, if and when you emerge you still can do nothing with your technomancer status. You will have a huge karmasink to bcome the OMG L33T <y83R H4XX0R
All the latent qualities do not work for power gamers, so any GM should be in the clear.

Random would be fair, or at least screwing everyone equally, but letting the player decide which stream to get and if he wants a paragon, will make everyone happy without making the character overpowered.

That's true, Dakka Dakka: I wasn't saying you actually could 'abuse' the Latents, unless the GM is somehow giving you hundreds of karma immediately. That's kind of my point: I can't see a reason for these to exist (as written). It's not for powergamers, so you might as well let the player pick; but they might as well also just start as a Techno and ignore it, unless they're really augmenting to hell and back.

The part in red should read "(not below 1)"

If you're Latent, and reduce your essence to 0.9999 ... you will never awaken, because that reduces your maximum Magic or Resonance to 0.

Otherwise, you are absolutely correct.

Pax, you do that in every thread: respond with the same answer given three times already. I know we all do it occasionally, on accident…

Technomancers are just a bad example using BP-Gen and later on Karma.
The issue here beeing the complex forms. 10 complex forms at 5 at chargen translates into 50 BP. Not really nothing, but also not the world.
10 complex forms at 5 for Karma is 150 Karma or upgrade to 60BP to 210 Karma.

So yeah, having this possibility, to save a enormous amount of Karma right at the start, makes the latent technomancer a bit silly.
Here again it begs the question what happens, if your Ressonance drops below the raiting of your complex forms. Do you have to rebuy them?
If this is the case, it might still be a good idea to go the latend route.
If not, well rebuying ressonance 5 from 1 up costs 70 Karma. Still, 80 Karma for 50 BP are a good deal...

The opposite side is the adept. The honey badger adept just does not care...

Answer, Irion... the learned rating of a complex form can NEVER exceed your resonance. So yes if you lose resonance... your complex forms also degrade and need to be rebought. So yes... you do need to look at buying up resonance before buying augments.


I still don't see latent techno as a bad powergamer choice... especially if you follow the track I just mentioned. ONLY focus on things which self-buff... which don't require tons of complex forms... or where the complex forms are cheaper ways to do things than otherwise. (the echoes are pretty very useful... and immersions/echos can be had for reasonable karma prices).

Example... biowires... rediculously cheap. Why buy a skill when you can just pay 1 karma per rank to learn it permanently and thread it higher as necessary! Toss in that cyber which helps skillwires and you're set.

Street sam with an army of sprites...

Adept is NOT guaranteed... and I disagree strongly with dakka that someone should necessarily get what they wanted. The entire point of the quality is it's unpredictable and they should not be able to plan. And the GM is supposed to do what he thinks will work best IN HIS GAME (not necessarily for the character). Adept is by far the easiest to work around... but that does not mean it should be selected. Quite frankly... I see latent adept as the MOST powergamed possibility... (adepts don't need new magical skills, they simply start augmenting what they already have! magicians on the other hand need a whole new skillset and arsenal of spells...)

If you guys can't see ways to powergame this, you're simply not trying hard enough.

In both cases, the character gains new ways to spend karma to enhance things in ways not always available or potentially cheaper than they can do them with cyber/bio or merely buying up skills/attributes.

It is an infinite progression on Paper, but never so in practice.

The only real reason for the latent qualities is so that the GM can (as the campaign is being put together) say something along the lines of "no one can start with magic or resonance." That's how our most recent campaign started; everyone took latent "something". We have since all awakened and are all in about the same boat as far as skills and attributes. The game has been very fun.

Of course this is only my opinion.

-D

I'd have just played an AI.

An AI is not a Latent Character; Some people like the challenge of a Latent Character.

To me, it's an opportunity to roleplay out the awakening years of the technomancer, something that normally happens in the character's backstory.

Particularly good for games where the runners are just starting out.




-k

This could be achieved with denying the players access to some of their characters' skills as well.

AI wouldn't have been a good fit. We've done a lot of "off the grid" work where we actually had to worry about batteries going dead and no matrix access. Our hacker has other skills which were useful so no one got left out.

-D

That's so you, Neraph. A normal person would assume that 'no Awakened/Resonance' *probably* also was correlated with 'no AIs', but not you: after all, he didn't specifically say you couldn't.

Exactly