And my implanted link is as much a part of my mind as the technomancers bionode.

No, it's not. It's functionally identical to a worn commlink connected to trodes. You didn't even necessarily pay Essence for it.

Time to break out the old Cranial Cyberdecks, then!

I have this funny thought that folks with Move By Wire should be more resistant to this sort of attack, as their brain and body are sorta disconnected, the standard connections being re-routed through the MBW system.

I have no idea how I'd represent this rules-wise, though.




-karma

Well, this attack doesn't really care about the rest of the body, so why would MBW matter? It's just 'grab brain, smash'.

But if it's disconnected from the body, how do you "grab the brain"?

Short of surgically opening his head and sticking your fingers in.

His skin is part of his body after all.

Now I'm remembering some story I read somewhere, some group of cyber-mercs were attacked by a neurological attack, and they switched over to "autistic mode", which isolated their brain and switched all mental traffic through an internal router of some sort, including traffic to and from the body.


-karma

Um. Metaphorically. I meant that we don't care about anything MBW could affect, because it doesn't apply to a VR situation, see? Maybe I misunderstood you, but AFAIK there's nothing in the resonance trode scenario that involves the meat body, right? Touch attack, and boom, VR.

Dunno, but 'autistic mode' is from GITS, no?

Except we don't really know how the resonance trode works, it's tech magic, and if it's tech magic and you have a piece of tech cybernetically connected to you you sohuld get that benefit.

See, that makes no sense. You're saying, 'we have no idea, so I'm right'. You should be saying, 'we have no idea, so maybe it's either way'.

What benefit do you see MBW (or anything) providing, exactly?

More or less an additional buffering layer of some sort.

Since fluff-wise, it's routing data through an alternate path. (on top of the whole seizure thing)

I dunno, I'm just speculating.

Come to think of it, what WOULD an invading TM see in a brain that's under constant seizure?



-karma

I'd guess nothing special. The TM doesn't actually see the brain at all, and there is nothing about mental disorders affecting your living persona or anything. And it doesn't alternate data through an alternate path where it maters, which is the brain itself. The resonance trodes effect the brain directly, so it doesn't matter how you rewire where your brain's signals go, so long as the brain is still making signals. Even if you cut the brain off from the rest of your body somehow (while leaving it in the skull) you wouldn't be immune, though it might be possible for something else to control your body while your brain is getting smacked around by blackhammers.

Oh, and a hacker's icon cannot exist in a technomancer's bionode, so even a hacker with an implanted commlink wouldn't be able to make use of their commlink. This also implies that the person becomes a living persona, because only living persona and sprites can exist in a TMs bionode.

Should mention something - the Otaku used to utilize a datajack when they accessed the matrix pre-crash, meaning there is a connection between DNI interfaces and the bionode. If, when a technomancer share his vision of the matrix with a foreign brain, should the visitor be unable to utilize his own DNI connections?

Sure, I figure the victim could use their DNI connections, they just wouldn't do them any good. If they are in (and supposedly trapped in) the TMs bionode, then it doesn't matter what other stuff they can access, they're still there. So yeah, it is totally possible that the hacker with an internal commlink could use the commlink, she just couldn't use it to help with anything in the TMs bionode. It would basically be the same as using two commlinks at the same time (Though I seem to recall reading something about that really screwing with your brain).

You could have an interesting situation where the hacker is hacking some kind of high security node, and then gets grabbed by the TM and forced into a resoance trode. Then the Hacker would have both their commlink on the high security node, and they would have their living persona on the TMs bionode, but they would have separate stats, but both be susceptible to damage.

Similar if a hacker gets hit with resonance trodes, he could perhaps access his commlink through his DNI, but the commlink's persona would be somewhere outside the TMs bionode, so once again not of much help.

So what was all that about "don't let the TM touch you"?

Hmm...

We've been discussing a hostile intrusion by a TM.

What about a helpful one? Could a TM get access to someone's mind and install improvements? Maybe some defenses or even a sprite or two?


-karma

I don't really see what the point of that would be if it was possible at all, which I doubt.

If a TM was to theoretically install a sprite onto someone else's bio-node, it would do no good to a non-TM as they can't use it. Except in the case of another TM with resonance trodes.

Not that it matters though, as I don't think anyone without a resonance stat even has a bio node to begin with, so anything "installed" would disappear immediately once out of the TM's node.

Don't really think so. You aren't accessing another person's Bionode, you are just giving them a Living Persona. If you could get into a person's 'Bionode' then there still wouldn't be a ton that you could do. Bionodes lack memory, so you couldn't install programs, and it isn't exactly the 'brain' so you couldn't mess with memories or implant suggestions or really do anything useful.

Now, this could be used to communicate with someone by simply giving them trodes (without dragging them into VR), even transfer files and such very secretly. I suppose you could also use it to bring someone along to another node if you wanted, but I don't see why you would.

I'm sure there are other potential uses out there besides attacking people. It would be perhaps single most secure form of communication possible.

Ah, i am a bit late to the discussion. But oh well, to go back to the first question:

That is a totally stupid power... just like MANY technomancer powers. I mean touching people to get them into the matrix? JUST ANYWHERE. Just like touching a machine and connecting to it? That is all pretty much idiotic. I am hereby stating: 1. I HATE technomancers. 2.They need to be revised.

First: NO POWERS in the real world or over other people/ machines /themselves (except reprogramming of their own minds)
Second: As "Creatures" of technology and data they NEED SOME INTERNAL LOGIC and consistancy in their powers:

I am very fine with some "strange" metahumans who create programs and "agents" in their head and understand the matrix without any translation. The wireless pushes that... but hell: Ok let them have some brainchemistry-organ-electro stuff in their brain... But make it MEASURABLE and ACCESSABLE.

Also you could think that many of them beginning some shamanistic process... Thinking that the matrix or SOMETHING in it talks to him and helps him, sure. But stop giving them MAGICAL powers.

(Also it would be nice to balance AI's, Hackers and Technomancers out. DO NOT MAKE them the same. But think it all over)

We don't even *know* if you're giving them something like a Living Persona. We don't know anything, because they didn't tell us. Ugh.

OK here's a thought, your commlink might or might not help you, but if you have Agents, they might just be able to lay the smack down from the outside.

It would even be "easy" to create the script for it. If someone touches you and your brainwave pattern changes dramatically, attack the icon of the person that touched you.

Use Blackhammer and the TM is going to have to divert attention away from you to defend himself. This might give you the edge in logging out and then ass-raping him/her with your heavy pistol. 12 mm suppository solves a lot problems.

Assuming they can find their icon, right? 'The icon of the person who touched you' isn't exactly a straightforward command. Assuming logging out is possible. Wherever it is that you're even logged in to.

Hence the reason I put "easy" in quotes. As for logging out we can assume the poor slot can do SOMETHING otherwise the TM becomes a perfect "I Win" button.

That's not going to work very well for two reasons. The first is that if you are dragged into the TM's bionode, it is impossible for agents to help you in any way at all because they cannot access a bionode which means that they cannot get into the right node to attack the 'icon of the person that attacked you'.

Also, finding 'the icon of the person that attacked you' is an absurdly complex task that would take a long time. First the agent would have to find the person's commlinks (TMs will generally have one as a diversion and for normal stuff, and their bionode is going to be hidden generally), then they have to figure out which one is actually responsible for attacking you, then they have to get the access ID (Don't remember the exact rules for this) and then they have to track down the actual icon (Once again, not sure how this is done off the top of my head), and there could be multiple icons.

So yeah, if you can hold out for a couple dozen combat turns an agent might be able to come to your rescue, providing you aren't on a bionode, in which case they can't do a darn thing for you.

Also, even if they do manage to find you and the TM, TMs are exceedingly difficult to injure in cybercombat with something like an agent (Max dice: 12, Dice a TM can get without too much trouble: 17). They'd most likely just finish you off and then log off to evade the Agent(s).

I think the biggest problem with using resonance trodes in combat is that they leave the TM fairly open to getting smacked around in the physical world.

Well, only if you let them touch you. And let's be real, you'd never let those freaks touch you *anyway*.

But, yeah, the problem is that the book explains only two things: you can share sense data, and you can 'pull someone's mind into VR and attack it', whatever that means. The only resistance is the initial test.

Good thing TMs are impossible to pick out of a crowd, and difficult to pick out of a runner group.

Exactly, they're so devious! >.>

1) Don't let them touch you. You die if they touch you.

2) Let them touch your friends. You can kill them while they're touching your friends.


Anyway, as has been pointed out, multiple times, this is the only fatal thing that a TM can do in direct combat. Every other archetype has plenty of room to be just as murderous, and at range. If a TM wants to do this rather than mow everyone down, drone-style, by throwing 32 dice on a 15-round minigun burst, why are you complaining?

I just think it could be cool, because there's no good way to detect whether someone is a TM. Five hits on an Assensing test is really the only way.

Yeah, I can see a high end TM in a meeting with some mob boss or something "Take her out of here." the mob boss says, the two goons grab her shoulders, and they suddenly fall over unconscious.

Honestly this ability would make it fairly difficult to detain a TM without knocking them out, since touching them is an invite for being mind nuked. Especially since (As I recall) SR handcuffs use electronic locks, which a TM can access and break with Skinlink which is required for the ability anyway. Then you get her into the prison and she starts messing with everything (Not right away, only in an attempt to escape so as not to arouse suspicion). It would be possible to put her in a cell with a physical lock and insulated from the Matrix, but they would have to know she was a TM in the first place, which as has been stated, is really hard.

We also don't know if skin-to-skin is required, which is kind of relevant.

Which is why I was asking if disconnecting the mind from the body would help, since they apparently need to physically contact you.

If they don't need to go through the body to get to your mind, why the physical contact requirement?



-karma

I guess, but there's nothing that does that. Certainly not MBW.

Skinlink is an Echo requirement, so a wired 'disconnect' wouldn't help either. I guess if you were a jarhead? Whole different situation, then.

What I meant is that, AFAIK, gloves, clothes, a hat, etc. should keep the resonance trodes from working… unless it's that (lame) 'not quite skin' skinlink that we have now. If it's the 'works through clothes' skinlink, then crap.

Well, as far as I remember, the skinlink echo, works like the skinlink mod, which means it works through clothing. Something about working on the bio-electric field I think or something (Technomancers version of "aura" I guess (See E-Sensing))

Yep. TM skinlink works through clothing just as well as regular skinlink.


Like I said in the other thread, just because it is called skinlink doesn't mean it actually has to involve the skin. Microwaves do not involve small waves, (American) football does not involve the foot (or a ball).

Except it totally should be skin-to-skin, especially given how it's fluffed. Anyway, my point is regarding Resonance Trodes, which require a touch, but don't mention if it's skin-to-skin touch.

Microwaves are much smaller than radio waves, and football definitely involves a ball.

Since it requires the skinlink echo, I'd imagine it requires the same thing it would to skinlink to the person, which is not skin to skin contact. And skinlink is fluffed to say 'operates on the magnetic field that extends a couple inches from the body' so don't see why that would require direct skin to skin contact.

Yeah, but they're still large compared to most other waves, and balls are, by definition, spherical.

What is 'most other waves'? And clearly the definition includes footballs and rugby balls. Don't be mad your examples are silly.

Lets see... x-rays, visible light, UV, IR, Gamma rays... so basically everything except radio. Micro is also a spesific prefix (like mili or kilo) which in no way relates to microwaves.



The fact that a football is a ball is simply because that is what it is called, not because it actually fits the definition of a ball. Kind of like microwaves have nothing to do with micro, except that is what they are called.

They're micro because they're smaller than radio; micro means small (quite literally), and radio was what they compared it to. The fact that you found a definition of ball that doesn't include the *ball* used for football hardly means that it's not defined as a ball. It means that definition is lacking. That's what 'because that is what it is called' means; that's how all definitions exist.

Presumably the power still requires a complex action to initiate and then another complex action to actually make your attacks. Even with Mesh reality that signifigantly ties up the TM's actions. If i was the theoretical mob boss i'd presume mage and go for the side arm. It's a neat trick but I wouldn't build a defensive or offensive strategy around it. Especially since without some form of augs the TM is still stuck with one pass in the meat.

Micro is a prefix that means x10^-6 actually, as far as science is concerned. It is a case of news media getting a hold of it and creating the name for it, which just happened to stick.

Right, which is kind of my point. "Ball" originally only refered to spherical things, but then someone called something that wasn't a ball, a ball, and thus the definition of ball eventually got expanded to include things that weren't actually balls.

Similarly, skinlink is what skinlink got called, despite it not actually having anything to do with the skin, and thus skinlink means 'something that uses the magnetic field around the body' even though that has nothing to do with the actual definition of skin.

So yeah, if you don't have a problem with a football being called a ball despite not fitting into the original definition of ball, you shouldn't have problems with a skinlink being called a skinlink, which doesn't fit into the definition of skin.

Well, it never says that it requires an action to use, and thus requires only a non-action (like walking). It does however generally take a complex action to touch someone in a combat situation.

Yeah, the mob boss is likely to just suspect a mage, and may well start shooting. And yeah, not the sort of thing to build offensive/defensive around unless you're going with a physical TM (Go go acceleration), but that is way down the line.

Aha, not quite: micro meant 'small' before it ever meant 10^-6. For literally thousands of years. Tough to blame the 'news media' for that one.

Right, so a football is undoubtedly a ball. Done.

I didn't say it should be skin based on the name, but on the fluff. I quoted it for you already. There's no 'magnetic field around the body', it's 'electric field on the surface of the skin'. That application exists today, as well, and it requires skin-to-skin contact.

Presumably the fact that you don't have to do a called shot to ignore armor means that it extends enough to pass through armor as well.

Edit: And yes, I know micro meant 'small' before it meant 'x10^-6', but in scientific applications it has always meant 'x10^-6' as opposed to being a word that simply means 'small'. Microwaves were discovered by scientists, so it is unlikely that they would have named them that purposefully.

Edit2: I'm sure the conversation went something like this:
"We've discovered waves that are much smaller than radio waves."
"So that would make them microwave?"
"No."
Next day:
SCIENTISTS DISCOVER "MICRO"WAVES

Again, I know what the RAW is. My point has always been that skinlink *should* be surface-only, skin-only, not that the RAW is that.

Odds are that I'll never see anyone use Resonance Trodes in a game, so I'm only curious here. I don't think it's clear whether or not this power works through clothes, armor, etc. I do understand the point that it requires Skinlink echo, so there's some logic that it works exactly as a skinlinked device. Given that trodes have to be placed around the scalp, I also assume the Technomancer has to touch *there*. So, two questions, in a thread *about* how the book answers no questions about this.

Why should it be skin contact only?

Yeah, it isn't something that is likely to come up super often, since it requires two echos to get to.

Main reason I infer that you can touch the person anywhere and that it works through armor is that you only require a touch attack to activate it, which is the same as a touch spell. Seems to indicate that you don't have to go to the head specifically, and since it doesn't mention anything about having to take a DP penalty to negate armor, that seems to indicate that it operates just fine through armor.

It really is a shame that they didn't go into more detail on this, as it has the potential to be a very cool echo.

Because of the fluff I quoted. Again.

Which is simply expanded upon by what I quoted. It doesn't change the original fluff. It is still done by the electric field on the skin, it just specifies that the electric field is more than a couple nanometers wide. And it doesn't change touch either, since it doesn't say 'touch with bare skin.' You still need to be touching something skinlinked, just not with your bare skin.

Yes, that is the RAW. However, the fluff and the reality of *surface* conduction on human skin mean that it's bare skin-to-skin. Which *isn't* RAW, as I said. For this reason, I did and will continue to call it "that (lame) 'not quite skin' skinlink".

Where did you see that we have this now? Not doubting you, just curious to read up on it myself.

Sure. At least as early as 2004.

http://www.i4u.com/article1876.html
http://pinktentacle.com/2008/04/ntt-firmo-...a-through-skin/
http://www.mail-archive.com/brin-l@mccmedi...m/msg23424.html
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archiv...3/20/2003247076

Now, if *anyone* could get away with 'magic' no-touch skinlink, it's Technomancers. I'm not arguing that they can't, I just (a) wish the book said so, (b) would prefer if they could only emulate in-game tech instead of being so magical.

The fact that it is carried in a pocket, and not directly touching the skin seems to indicate that real world 'skinlinks' just like SR skinlinks can operate through clothing.

More support, even going through shoes, which tend to be fairly thick.

Ah, this: "But RedTacton is arguably the first practical system because, unlike IBM's or Microsoft's, it doesn't need transmitters to be in direct contact with the skin". I was familiar with the older systems.

That just leaves, 'can trodes be trodes without touching the scalp?' Again, if anyone can get away with it, technomancers would be the ones, but I'd prefer that emulating a piece of technology acted more like it. If the technomancer had to grab their head all Spock-style, that'd be much cooler.