As was already stated, they are not always in VR, they move about in AR seamlessly and are able to delve into VR as they please. It does specifically mention, however, that it is removal of the wireless signal that causes the withdrawl like symptoms (which are on a very low scale). Becoming irritable, withdrawn, and getting headaches is more akin to a caffiene "addict" (which is not a real addiction, mind you, at least not medically speaking).

Also, you cannot compare a watered down chemical entering the body to a signal being sent to your brain. It is very specifically the high level waves that are being limited in cold sim that are likely causing a dopamine release that is getting you addicted. So yes, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that level. Now, if you want to argue on the pure psychological side of dependance you have a point, I'll admit.

Sorry, but you obviously have no idea what an addict on cold withdrawal looks like. Calling that state "grumpy and agitated" is like describing a hug from a great form fire elemental as a minor sunburn.


@X-Calibur: You know that the brain uses chemicals as "signals"?

Yes, the brain uses catecholamines as neural transmitters. However, you cannot compare chemical addiction to psychological dependence.

...among half a gazillion others, yes. So how are chemicals and electrical stimulation different, again?

I don't see the problem with a model where sim signals above a threshold (hot) behave in a categorically different way from those below (cold). Not everything follows a smooth continual curve. Given the rules, sim follows a disjoint curve. While the 'real-world' hypotheticals are fun, they don't really make sense in the world of SR4.

Because when you are referring to addiction and dependence, you are strictly speaking of Dopamine and Dopanergic receptors. The difference is that if "peak" levels are being cut off, you never experience the sensation that hot sim provides, which means you do not get the dopamine release, the dependence cannot occur. In the case of addiction, you need an actual chemical entering your body. Dependence is characterized as a complusive disorder, more exactly, an impulse control disorder. Whereas addiction is a PHYSICAL dependence where the body actively needs/craves the chemical in its system.

People like to throw around the word "addiction" when referring to things such as pornography, computers/the internet, videogames, because they understand (or think they understand) that term better than compulsion.

Since you have absolutely no clue about my past, that is a very arrogant thing to say... and you would be completely wrong...
Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

This is off-topic of the OP, but seems to be highly discussed in this thread.

Technomancers using AR for hacking isn’t very smart. The whole point of AR hacking is to isolate your brain from the harmful effects of IC more specifically Black IC. The only way a Technomancer can isolate his brain from the matrix is to use a com unit. His brain is his connection to the matrix after all.

If a Technomancer is using AR he still has a direct neural connection to the matrix so he will still suffer stun damage from normal IC and he’ll still suffer the full effects of Black IC. A kind GM might not have him suffer the psychotropic effects of psychotropic Black IC, but that would be a judgment call. Consider this the trade-off for being immune to hot-sim addiction.

The reason AR hacking works for normal hackers is that they can isolate their brain from their com unit by using display link and AR gloves. With a Technomancer their brain is their com unit, no way to isolate it from the connection. With a com unit, if Black IC locks open the connection (assuming AR hacking), the hacker can just pull the battery/power off the device. A Technomancer can reboot, but it is much more difficult for them and they can’t just pull the battery on their head (though I’m sure a sammy friend could try).

Technomancers are very powerful; they need to have some limiting factors beside the karma costs (that any magic character has to deal with). The Unwired references “other issues” for Technomancers, consider this one of them and it’s a biggy.

If an AR hacker is attacked by IC his com unit resists the damage with System + Armor. If a Technomancer is attacked by IC in AR, he resists with System + Armor. Of course System is based on Logic and according to RAW ALL matrix damage for a Technomancer is Stun Damage, so even in AR the Technomancer is taking stun damage from normal IC. If they are not protected from normal IC why would they be protected from Black IC?

Dave

Are you sure about that statement? I believe a TM will still take physical track damage from Black Hammer (or one of the blacks). The normal attack program, however, which normally does matrix track damage will cause stun damage to a TM though.

I do believe that both types of Black IC do stun damage, just one of them can over flow into physical.

But really that's waht I'm saying, even using AR a TM still needs to worry about being attacked as his link to the matrix is his meat body (brain).

Dave

Hmm I was going to be really certain in my comment here, as I'm one of those players who absolutely love the technomancer for their roleplaying potential, but I got some doubt.


But the way I've always seen it, is that unless the Technomancer subscribes to a comm-link and pretends to be a normal AR user, he is actually using his biological node to do all the AR operations, and that makes him mostly immune to anything that isn't based on Technomancer tricks. Of course, this also gives them a slight problem in areas that spam AR a lot, or use experimental AR that affects the other senses.

****

As for the original topic. I agree with some of the previous posters that Technomancers are not addicted to Hot-Sim, nor will they ever be. Their irritability when removed from wireless signals comes not from withdrawal, but from a psychological source. That said, they can get addicted just as anyone else to aspects of the Matrix.

As for the irritability, there are several non-addictive situations that can cause a person to be irritable when they are removed or disturbed.

As a very simple (and personal example) I can bring up the disturbance to the routine of someone with a bad case of an Autism Spectrum Disorder. I don't like unsuspected changes to my routines. I'm not compulsive about them and I can adapt myself to change fairly quick, but especially if a person disrupts my routines that can cause quite some irritability. The response to that has lessened with age, but it's still there.

Black Hammer inflicts physical damage to hot sim users. Against cold sim users it only inflicts stun damage, but doesn't say anything about overflow (presumably it does).

Blackout inflicts stun damage only, regardless of a hot or cold sim. It also explicitly states it cannot overflow into physical damage.

Both programs are explicitly stated to be useless against AR users (source: SR4a, page 233 for those programs). I'd say this also applies to a TM that is not in VR.

And X-Kalibur is right. SR4a, page 239: "Matrix damage is treated as Stun damage to a technomancer." And don't forget that a TM can willingly sever all connections to the Matrix (Unwired, page 135).

Thank you SpellBinder, you've proven my point.

SR4a, page 239: "Matrix damage is treated as Stun damage to a technomancer."

In AR your PAN can receive matrix damage if you are attacked. For a TM this will be stun damage as they do not have a normal matrix condition monitor. Then logically Black IC should also be able to attack the TM PAN. It's really the only draw-back of the all-mighty TM.

Dave

First of all, the terms are far less clean cut than you make it look like. For example ICD-10 lists physical addictions like alcohol or benzos as "Dependence syndrome" (F[10-19].2).

Secondly the description of simsense signals in UW makes it quite clear that hot sim addiction is a physical affair. Simsense does not just mean sensory information, you also get emotions and everything else straight via stimulation of the relevant brain sections. Yes, even in cold sim or in AR - UW has a subsection on sublimal advertising via AR and the difficulties of proving your case against it in court. If that is not the same effect as a psychoactive substance crossing your blood-brain-barrier and manipulating the brain chemistry, what else is?
Note again that we are still talking about the nice and legal vanilla simsense. Without peak controllers all bets are off, except for your feedback filter there is no control over which brain regions are stimulated, how often they are stimulated, and how strong the stimulation is...which is the reason black IC can flatline you, it can screw around with brain sections controlling your heartbeat just as easily as a BTL chip can stimulate those regions responsible for sexual arousal.

what people seem to forget is that Hackers get addicted to the artificial Hot sim waves pumped in to the brain. The technomancer is not having artificial hot sim waves pumped into his brain. It is a state of being for him, a natural tool for him. A comlink hacker with DNI is wrapping his brain around the sim module with a squeeze of lemon just to get on the the matrix in hot sim.

While the ICD-10 is nice, I think it would be more useful to consult a DSMIV-TR (Or are they up to V now?)
For emotions and the like I believe you very specifically need to be hot-simming (or chipping BTLs, which have the same effect). Again, I'm not denying that you can't become psycologically dependent on the sensation, I simply would not classify it as a chemical addiction, there is no chemical being removed from the body that would cause withdrawl. I'd even argue that hackers who hot-sim only for their hacking, as opposed to ones who just go hot because they think they are hotter-than-drek, would never have to worry about the addiction because they are not using it for pleasure.

<small edit>
Most of us still use the ICD-9, not relevant, just point it out.

It depends on what 'only for hacking' means in terms of time. Their motivation doesn't matter, only their exposure.

Actually, motivation plays a very large part in addiction and dependence.

Not in Shadowrun. I should have specified.

I'll have to disagree there, as your GM determines if you become an addict or not, not the RAW.

SR4A, p226: "Hot sim can be as addictive as BTL use (Substance Abuse, p. 256). If the gamemaster feels a character is using hot sim too much, she can call for an Addiction Test."

'Too much' sounds like frequency or intensity to me, not motivation.

The whole point of simsense is that you can actually become Euphoria, even in cold sim. And again, UW even talks about sublimal emotion tracks in AR.



Sure, it's no chemical that influences your brain chemistry, but an electric or (in case of trode nets) ultrasound signal. No big difference IMO

Not that I don't enjoy a good debate, but at this point everything (mechanics wise) pertaining to the original purpose of this thread as been covered. We could go over addiction until we're red in the face as no one is really entirely sure of how it works. We've got postulates that say addiction is a choice (mostly using rats as examples, admittedly), those that believe it to be purely chemically related, and those that believe any dependence on any sort of substance, be it chemical or otherwise, should be labelled and treated as an addiction. I am not a doctor, hell, I don't even have a Bachelor's in Psych, I'm just a nurse who enjoyed taking extra psych classes.

So, as much as I've enjoyed the discussion thus far, I'm going to stop before I go into "armchair expert" mode. Your points, Sengir, are good and perfectly valid.

Agreed *nods*

Matrix Damage does not equate to damage from Black IC-- Attack and Black IC are two different types of software that function in distinctly different ways. Attack Programs are designed to destabilize software; Black IC is specifically crafted to create biofeedback.

The reason 'Mancers take Matrix damage as Stun is because their Persona "software" is based in, and is a manifestation of, their own mental processes. When they're in AR, they're not subjecting themselves to the sort of full-sensory neural immersion signals VR uses to "fool" your brain into thinking you're in the virtual world, and so they aren't vulnerable to any attacks that require that "level of access" to your brain.

Okay Drats. I concede that point, however would you agree that a TM would take stun damage from normal IC attacking them in AR?

Dave
P.S.
Sorry for partially hijacking this thread.

I can see how, intuitively, it would seem to make sense, so I wouldn't protest it too hard if my GM decided to run things that way. In the game I'm running, though, no, unless I missed something in the RAW.

I'm a big fan of imperfect metaphors, so to understand why this is, we're going to defer to our old friend Ray Stevens: imagine a person as being connected to the wireless matrix through a series of tubes. When a person is accessing AR, they're using the smaller tube, which carries a relatively limited amount of information to very particular areas of the brain. Biofeedback simply can't fit through this tube (and even if it could, they wouldn't route it to anyplace that would be vulnerable to its attacks-- it'd be like trying to electrocute somebody by pumping current into their rubber gloves). Until they switch into VR and open the floodgates on that larger pipe, the user is safe.

A Technomancer's brain may connect to the matrix in a radically different fashion than a commlink, but it's still connecting to the same matrix, and it's still interpreting the same signals, which means it'd have to be running them through the same pipes. As long as you keep the VR pipes closed, there's no way for biofeedback to get in and/or no way for it to interact with those sections or processes of the brain that are vulnerable to it.

You do, as a TM, take stun damage during AR as well, from any IC/Pilot/Sprite/Hacker loaded with an attack program. Your persona still has a matrix condition monitor and, therefore, a TM in AR would be subject to stun track damage.

Heh... my mistake. He said "normal" IC. For some reason, I saw "Black IC." *self-induced facepalm*

Yes. Yes, a TM in AR takes stun damage from normal attack programs and thus from any IC that happens to be using them. Mea culpa, and sorry to hit you with so many useless words

You may also want to keep in mind that Black IC may still have an attack program in addition to Black(out)/(hammer). That way it keeps out both hackers and agents.