As we all know, there is the distinction between Stun damage and Physcial damamge.

There is also a third form of damage and that's Matrix damage. Matrix damage goes to your matrix condition monitor. On page 237 SR4A it says the following:

1.) Now, do 3 boxes of matrix damage also result a -1 DP modifier for matrix tests?
It isn't stated in the text, but the name "Matrix Condition Monitor" seems to imply that it should behave similar to the other condition monitors.

2.) If the answer is yes, than, what actions are affected by this DP modifier? Obviously only Matrix actions, but which?

3.) As you can have multiple subscriptions open, you can have multiple matrix icons. Does each icon have its own matrix condition monitor? Does one damaged icon hinder the actions of another icon in another node?

-CJ

1) Yes
2) Matrix Actions and all actions using the commlink
3) No; they all have the same condition monitor.

Don

Don't get confused by "Icons" and "Personas". The persona is taking the damage. The icon just represents the persona (like a windows/mac icon represents a program on the desktop).

by my reading of the matrix condition, if i run an agent on my commlink then the Agent program and the Persona icon(the hacker) have separate matrix condition tracks. crash the agent and the agent is offline. crash the persona and the commlink crashes, agent and all.

so, this means a spyder defending his network will know to attack the persona first, but i could see a use to having an agent specifically to draw fire in combat against IC.

Ah, thanks, I missed that one. That clarifies a lot...

But here's another question:
If matrix damage causes a DP modifier, it will also affect matrix initiative. If you go VR (either cold or hot sim), I can see, why that's the case. But what about AR hacking. That's done with your meat initiative.
So, matrix damage slows you down considerably when using VR but doesn't hinder you at all when using AR. Is that correct?

But you still use your commlink and programs, which get bogged down by the matrix damage

See, that's exactly the point where I'm having problems with...
I can totally see, that a damaged persona makes matrix actions harder due to unexpected bugs in your persona program or some such. This is represented in the DP modifier.

Also matrix damage should slow down the speed with which I can act in the matrix. If I go VR this could be represented by a reduction of the matrix initiative similar to how physical injuries reduce the physical initiative. So far, I'm fine. But I can also hack using my physical initiative (by going the AR route), which shouldn't be connected to the state of my persona at all.

Here's an example:

Let's say I'm a hacker and I'm in the middle of a gunfight. I can't use VR because just lying around motionless when someone is firing at you is a very bad idea. But I need to hack that drone that is following us right now, so I use AR hacking while running. Unfortunately, there is a security spider present, who attacks my Icon and my Persona gets 4 boxes of damage.
Than comes the next combat turn. I roll my physical initiative.

Do you really think, I should reduce my initiaitve dicepool, because my persona is damaged, because i might use a matrix action this turn? Remember, I only need to declare an action after the Ini roll. So the moment I roll initiative, it's completely unresolved, wether I will use a matrix or a real life action. Additionally, what if my hacker has more than one initiative pass? I could then use my first action to engage the spider in cybercombat and the second pass to fire my gun.

Non Matrix DV affects your AR Initiative. But the Matrix actions you perform via AR are affected by the Matrix Condition monitor.

The key is that the Initiative roll is a physical Initiative roll versus a matrix initiative roll. After that point any Matrix actions use Matrix attributes and are affected by the respective matrix Condition Monitors.

What he's saying is that no, Matrix damage does not affect your AR initiative. AR Initiative is based solely on your physical initiative.

Some fluff/reasoning for this could be:

In VR, you can issue commands more quickly (at the speed of thought), hence the usually higher initiative. However, there's machine overhead to render the VR world/interpret brain waves.

AR initiative uses meat speed, but doesn't require the overhead of VR. So if you can bring your meat speed up, the computer can keep up.

At least, that's how I see it.

OK, I didn't think of it that way...looks like you just found a scenario where the matrix rules actually are better defined for TMs (since they just take damage to their normal monitors)

That is what i said, i just used a double negative so it may be unclear.

SR4A p. 236
"Augmented Initiative
In augmented reality, you’re acting at regular meat-body speeds. Use
your physical Initiative and Initiative Passes as normal (Initiative,
p. 144). You can choose to interact either with the physical world or
the augmented world (the Matrix) with each action, or split Simple or
Free Actions between the two."

However, actions performed in the Matrix still suffer from the Persona Matrix Condition Monitor boxes.

So it is your Persona that performs the CyberCombat + Attack Program and suffers the negative to that dice pool for that action.