In that situation though, the thugs are touching the TM, which means that the TM can drag them into her head (with a non-action) and proceed to thread up an Area option on her massive Black Hammer attack (another non-action) and finally nuke them both with said massive black hammer attack. Brains all running out of ears.

Just wait until you get to the hallway or are otherwise unobserved, then it's time for the boogyman contingency echo.

Does this TM stuff work on awakened characters, as Resonance and Magic are mutually exclusive?

Well you not giving a resonance attribute just puting some one in VR with out a comlink and that place in VR happens to be your bio-node. So yeah this would work on any critter.

I'm not sure if a mage can access a bio-node. The magus factor might prevent this.

It's not even clear that's where their 'mind' *is*.

I actually see it as a "Touch" requirement smiliar to the Mage's "Touch" required to deliver a spell... physical contact, but not skin-to-skin...

That is just me though...

They don't mention if you can just touch their hand or leg, either. I agree that, based on the *zero* information the book gives us, it's just a generic 'Touch'. I'm not thrilled about it, but again, this will never, ever come up in a game anyway.

Yeah, I have yet to see it actually come into play, but our Technomancer is almost there... I think that he will be buying it as his next Echo purchased *He had other things he wanted first)... we will see how it plays out at that point.

Unlike metamagics echos are a tough lot to pick over-clock is up there as a starter but the rest its a close match in a lot of cases.

Yep, there are a lot of very useful options...

With all the things that the echo does *not* tell us. One thing is *does* tell us outright is the challenge necessary to initiate the power. "A touch based unarmed attack" not a targeted one, but the easiest of unarmed attacks, touch based.

Well, normally a hacker can't access a bionode either. This is actually really similar to that spirit power... what is it called, astral gateway? The one that forces everyone in the area into the astral. AFAIK it doesn't mention anything about excluding TMs, so no reason that this power should exclude awakened. It should however exclude spirits since they don't have a real brain to make this work on and they specifically can't access VR or even see computer screens.

hmmm... i'm not sure i'd allow the person to be dragged into a living node if they're otherwise unable to go to one. i would allow them to be dragged to the location of any one of the technomancer's personas which is pretty nearly as bad, ultimately (worse, in many cases... you could log them into a prepared glacial node, for example) since they still wouldn't have any programs they could use unless that node provided them with some (and even those aren't likely to be much... most of the programs a node might provide will be things like scan, browse, edit, and analyse... you're not likely to be able to get the biofeedback filter you're most likely to actually need very shortly)

now, i suppose some might argue that being able to drag someone into a node full of IC that you've prepped to smack the person senseless as soon as you touch them might be considered overpowered. let's not forget that this requires 2 echoes to be known, the technomancer must beat the target in a melee touch attack (agi + unarmed + 2 vs rea + unarmed/dodge/weapon skill base) and then also beat the target in a res + wil vs wil + int test. a magician can do worse than that simply by *looking* at the person. and anyone who's likely to willingly get into melee range with the technomancer is not likely to get hit by the unarmed attack to begin with. then add in the fact that the technomancer will have to spend resources on the hardware and software to create this glacial node (money which isn't being spent on malware and drone hardware/software), and ultimately it isn't really any worse than what any other melee specialist can do.

Seems to me that is the entire point of this Echo.
To give entry to someone who normally would be unable to enter a TM's bionode (and the Realms of Resonance accessible through said node.) The combat potential of something like this is naturally a large draw for the SR crowd, but, like trodes themselves, this is essentially an Echo which is about utility. Utility in eating another person's brain with your boogyman powers.

I'm just saying that real trodes can't be on your foot (that's the only benefit of datajacks). *shrug* Mind melds are cool.

Ok gave it so more thought, for the record the two characters in my game, well to be more accurate the same character just reformulated for two very different campaigns. Need to touch the head of the victim. The power is called resonance trodes, not resonance skinlink. As I said elsewhere the power does require a complex action to use to pull in and then another to begin the attack.

i dunno. i think the shared perception would allow you to *see* their living node, or the resonance realms, but i don't think the separate access point version should allow them to enter one that they normally couldn't.

See, trodes are just input/output. Trodes are for AR, VR, imagelink, smartlink. Being 'in the Matrix' is just VR info from the commlink. So, there are several non-Matrix uses for Resonance Trodes.

We don't care *too* much about that, though, because we're interested in 'drag mind into VR and hammer it', which definitely implies more than just 'sharing' senses, right? Or, does it? Maybe it's just a hot-BTL thing, and the (short, almost useless) description in the book is just describing it wrong. So… Resonance Trodes as harmful simsense delivery, but not necessarily bionode entry (which is impossible/problematic for all the reasons discussed so far).

That still leaves the problem of 'what are their stats' against the Blackhammer/whatever attack method, unless the Technomancer is running attack BTL CFs.