I'm about to play through the Denver missions for the first time (first time playing Shadowrun at all in fact and I'm trying to decide if it's better to start with four ranks of the tasking skill group or five ranks in both compiling and registering.
I have no other skills that I would be raising above four anyway due to me either wanting the entire group or not really worried about it.

Any advice from more experienced runners out there about both the usefulness of the skill and/or the prevalence of enemy Technomancers among the printed opposition?

(The DM is only allowing the core book because he both doesn't want to learn more rules than he has to and the missions enemies being statted with only the core book, I'm trying to convince him otherwise, but no luck yet)

Really Matrix based PCs are gimped and also massively broken in different respects with out unwired. Your TMs suck a lot and all you need is nuyen to hack well.

While that really doesn't much answer my question, it does intrigue me, could you elaborate?

Well to answer your question first. As far as I recall TMs are rare in prunted works but I don't have them all on hand.

Elabirating on my other post. Unwired puts the brakes on agent smithing. The practise of cloning an agent and it's programs and useing your army of agents to overwhelm any thing. TMs don't have access to echos as well as new sprites and CF opertunitys all so unwired adds more programs to the mix. TMs with out unwired have a limited protentisl in advancement but with it huge doors are opened.

Forgive my ignorance, but how do you clone agents and how does unwired stop it?

I think what he's trying to say is that Technomancers aren't very strong at all without unwired due to their lack of agents, but are much more easy to break with unwired. While unwired does have lots of nifty things regarding echoes, submersion and new sprite types, technomancers can still be rather powerful without use of the unwired source book. They just won't be as customized (Or cool, I love unwired).

Regarding decompiling, it may be useful depending on the GM. My GM has never thrown another technomancer or a sprite of any kind at me ever, so so far it's four BP (Decompiling 1) I have never used. But seeing as my TM has terrible cybercombat skills, this four BP may just save me one day.

That being said, it depends on what type of sprite you're facing. If it's a big bad paladin rating 6 paladin sprite with a shield complex form up, an attack program may do nothing for you, while it may only take a single decompiling action to get rid of the thing. Same thing goes for tank sprites.

So it's sort of a gamble. If you think you'll be facing sprites sometimes, it may be a good idea to take the skill. If you are 99% sure you will never encounter them, you may want to forgo it altogether.

Unwired does not stop you from cloning agents, in fact it allows you to.

Agents can have a program which allows them to copy themselves onto another node. The copy, in turn, copies itself again, until you have a botnet of code zombies. This can be a terribly nasty form of matrix attack (DDOS, etc.), but will probably also get you traced, shot, or blue lightening'd. Almost all of the worms (Infectious malacious agents) in Unwired have this ability.

Hmm, sounds like the skill is even less useful without unwired, since the sprites that would make it more necessary are in unwired.

This ability only functions if the Agent's Copy Protections is broken, AKA Cracked. Then it suffers from Degredation, losing a rating point per month. Unless its a worm, i think.

Unwired is -WELL- worth looking into.

Honestly Dumori is talking out of his hat and not addressing your question. I will attempt to redress, the issue of agents doesn't have anything to do with technomancers as they use sprites.

I do not beleive decompiling will be a useful expenditure of points, you will really only face a handful of technomancer enemies, a point or two might be a worthy investment but as with it's sister skill banishing your usually better off attacking a sprite with an attack program then you are trying to decompile it.

Five ranks in compiling and registering would serve you better in all likely hood. Before you go investing that heavily however what level is your hacking, electronic warfare, and software skills at? Those are perhaps your three most important skills as a technomancer outside of registering and compiling. A final one for matrix types of any shade is Data Search, which is important for digging up vital information on your targets and your employers and anything else you care to look up.

A note on technomancers in general and in Denver in particular: Shadowrun Missions are designed specifically so that a certain optimal table formation isn't necissary and in fact encourages people to play dual specialists or generalists. Furthermore the denver missions seem to have more then a few missions where there is little or nothing for a hacker or techno to do, because Denver is written from the standpoint that you are low class scum working for low class scum and medium scum. Now having said that in quite a few mods a skilled hacker or technomancer on the team can make life MUCH MUCH easier, but there are also at least two mods that come to mind where they are no use at all and a few where hacking skills are of minimal gain unless you get creative (which as hacker you should be as creative as possible). What i'm trying to get at in a round about way is technomancers, even a non minmaxed technomancer is a hacker par excellence, but they pay for that overspecialization. I am not trying to disuade you from playing one merely prepare you for the road your going to walk if you do.

Again and this bears repeating, the issues with agents have fuck all to do with technomancers. Unwired is a great book if you can convince your GM to let you take it or have him just allow you to take some of the alernate technomancer streams so you can broaden your role a little bit. Especially if the aprty doesn't have a face or medic.

Technomancers only use Decompiling when dealing with other technomancer's sprites. This depends on the game being played, but in most cases it is very reasonable to think this is rare.

Now for a hint about Denver Missions. They are designed for all player archetypes to be able to perform the job. So no single archetype is required to accomplish the Mission. At a convention the odds of getting a specific archetype out of a random group is not good. So the chance of a Mission requiring a TM and the TM Decompile for the Mission to succeed is very unlikely.

In my opinion TM and Hackers are strong parts of the game, and TMs in particular can easily break things.

Thread stealth to 10 much?

Stealth aside, when it comes to sprites anyone can use an Attack program against them (the Cybercombat skill defaults to Logic). Most sprites can't even fight back.

You actually can't default on the matrix. You -need- a program at the very least to do anything. Sprites can fight back. In a defensive role, they have a decent chance to manally convince a node to Terminate Connection on people, dial the wireless range down to drop subscriptions, triggering alerts, or other various tricks. You may think that shitty lame rating nine crack sprite can't fight back(Oh no! its -only- got decrypt scan and spoof!) until it breaks out its 18 dice pool and crashes your analyzer, spoofs your agent to attack you, while calling its technomancer for help.

Being effective on the matrix isn't about the size of your program. Its more about knowing what options you have in any given situation.

Um, I did mention an Attack program (never said it could always be done without one), and to attack any icon with a condition modifier (such as a sprite) it's a Cybercombat + Attack/Black Hammer/Blackout program rating vs. Response + Firewall (SR4a, page 236-237). The Cybercombat skill does allow you to default to your Logic attribute at -1 (SR4a, page 126), as do the Computer, Data Search, and Hacking skills that are also used in many Matrix related actions. Obviously you need the required program, but skill is not a must (look at most real world computer users).

On top of that, sending a rating 9 [military grade] sprite against a team that has no decent hacker is like sending a force 9 spirit against a team without a mage. Those previously mentioned teams that don't back off from said "shitty lame" rating/force 9 whatever deserve the death that's coming to them. Besides, whatever force spirits your mages conjure will likely be the rating of the sprites your technomancers with the same relevant stats will be compiling.

Besides, only a few sprites actually have an Attack form, optional or otherwise, which is what most GMs are going to look for first, and either might not consider or will forget about what can be done with Exploit or Spoof.

Well, his official role in the group is as a rigger (I spent 15,000 nuyen on drones, 2/3rds of which was for a doberman with a LMG) so even against enemies without any matrix support to destroy, he should have something to do.

http://www.shadowrun4.com/resources/faq.shtml

Is ten a magic number or are you just saying that having it high is really good?

Just high is really good.

10 is the max a resonance 5 TM can pull off, and resonance 5 is easy to do right out of chargen. It's also nearly double what any mundane hacker is capable of.

Just my guess.

6 is the hard cap even the best mundane hacker will hit outside of mil-spec without going into optional rules and the like. The higher your initial stealth is the better chance you have of slipping into a node undetected on either a brute force attempt or a probing.

Lets compare my character: Dr. Rattler to your standard technomancer. Rattler started his career with a rank 6 stealth program and the comlink to run it comfortably which if your curious required he take restricted gear to accommodate. This particular portion of his character by the rules can't get any better. What that means hacking on the fly against most systems with anything above user access the system is more then likely to catch him as it only needs 6 hits total. Top of the line systems (6 firewall, 6 analyze) have a 50 percent shot of getting him in the first go and triggering an alert even if he succeeds on his login.

A technomancer on the other hand by threading up stealth before attempting to log in can increase their safety margin by almost double no problem considerably reducing their likelyhood of being caught on a lucky roll by the system and all the fun that brings.

DireRadiant, thanks but I've seen others advise against the FAQ and for errata.

Even so, in this case it makes sense and fits the rest of the Matrix mechanics. Defaulting to meatbody attributes for Matrix tests can lead to some serious discrepencies:

Character A: Hacking-1 Logic-5 Exploit-5
Character B: Hacking-0 Logic-5 Exploit-5

In the same test, A is rolling 6 dice (Skill + Program) whilst B is rolling 9 dice (Attribute - 1 + Program), meaning that B is a better hacker because he has no experience or training ...

Why would you use stat + program?
Unless I'm mistaken, the programs take the place of attributes on matrix actions, so if you were default ant only use attribute on a matrix action, you would use program -1.

Except you can't default on matrix programs. If you don't have an attack program, you can't attack.

Unless you have that one unwired quality.

Don't have my book handy, but why not? You default to skill.

Unwired, page 36



Exception: Positive quality intuitive hacking. Allows you to do a single type of matrix action without the program, using only your skill dicepool.