What in everyone's opinion is the best sprite for a TM to have? Which is the worst? Same goes for spirits for mages.

For me, the worst sprite has to be the courier sprite. The ONLY thing it has going for it is the hash power, which has very limited use. The data sprite (which every stream gets) can do pretty much everything else it can, and what it can't, the sleuth sprite can do, and can generally do better, but still every stream except for dronomancers and technoshamans gets the courier as well. As for best sprite, data just barely beats out machine because, as I said, every stream gets it, and it's generally going to be better than the TM at the number one use of the Matrix..... information gathering. The machine sprite gets a lot of points though for being so versatile, and practically a must have for submersion/resonance realm searches. To put into an Evo Orderly with the command to keep you alive until you come back

As for spirits, I'd have to say best for me is the guardian spirit, simply because there's so many spells to choose from nd so few you can start with, that unless you're specializing in combat magic, it's really nice to have a spirit cover the combat for you while you handle the support magic. Worst would have to be tsk, I guess, simply because unless you want one to build you a house or something (or maybe are a possession trad and want one for something like playing an instrument), there's really not much use for them at all. It's not even a matter of redundancy like with the courier sprite, there's just nothing that the task spirit brings to the table aside from that one skill.

I'll just cover mage spirits for now.

Best:
Air - huge versatility in spirit powers makes it one of the best spirits to have on standby.
Guardian - depends a lot on whether your DM allows your spirits to pick up weapons (by RAW, they can). If yes, it's hands down the best combat spirit, since it gets two attacks while using ranged firearms. They also get Magical Guard, which can provide your mundanes with Counterspelling while they're away from you.
Task - Not great for combat, but they can do pretty much everything else. Need a lock picked? Summon a task spirit. Need some explosives planted? Summon a task spirit. Need to repair/mod your gear/vehicles? You know the drill
Man - They can cast spells. Need I say more?

Mediocre:
Beast - Like Guardian spirits, they get Natural weapon, but they lack the Guardians versatility IMO
Fire - Kinda like Air. They're also one of the best damage dealing spirits, but Allergy (severe, water) just sucks major balls, since many corporate buildings are likely to have fire sprinkler systems.
Plant - they have silence and magical guard, but are very slow. If you're playing a possession tradition, and you have access to invoke, these spirits become awesome, since they get regeneration.

Worst:
Earth - Really lackluster, with nothing special they can do.

Spirits:
Best:
Beast - The stats for this spirit places it in a league of its own which the Guardian spirit was later added to it. Combine Natural Weapon and Venom and very little can survive an encounter with it.

Guardian - Better combat bonuses than the Beast Spirit, and with a great amount of versatility with Powers.

It should be noted that all spirits are very dangerous. The Guidance spirit is by and far the worst, simply because it has so little to make it particularly dangerous - it's mainly a support spirit.


Sprites:
Best:
Crack - This is an amazing replacement for a hacker.

Most sprites are fairly useful for their specific purpose. However, the Paladin Sprite is particularly bad. You need at least a R3 for it to do anything useful aside from damage redirection, and it does not have any Stealth CF. That means that if you walk into a node with one following you and you're trying to evade detection, they'll see him with only 1 success needed and the system is on alert even if your Stealth CF is 12. Granted the node won't see you, but there'd already be an alert going.

Well, the same can be said for any of the combat sprites. They should only be compiled or called when combat actually occurs, otherwise their lack of a Stealth CF will trip alarms.

It should be noted, however, that what it does have does partially make up in quality for the lack in quantity. A Guidance spirit's Engulf power completely ignores armor. IIRC, the only other spirit that imitates this is the Air spirit, and only if the target is not wearing armor that protects against inhalation-vector attacks. So, for example, an Air spirit is usually more versatile than a Guidance spirit, but the guidance spirit can function equally well underwater, in artificial vacuums located on Earth, and in Tenochtitlan. Not the case with air spirits.

AND i have to add: The Divining power, if correctly (and often) used can be a gamebreaker too. It is perfect to confirm suspicions, avoid useless work, find people, safeguard yourself from ambushes. Totally insane if you can ask the right questions (and have a part in that future).

Also: Yeah, best engulf EVER. No possible defense.

I really like paladin sprites personally .... Casteling is an Amazing ability


Guardians are amazing for a materialization tradition

Plant are Godly for a possession tradition .... (assuming you include Channeling and Invoking meta) Regeneration anyone ?

My prefered line-up on spirits, playing a Possession tradition Mystic Adept is:
Guardian (Access to any weapon skills)
Task (Access to any Tech skills)
Guidance (Access to Astral Projection and metaplanar travel, Divination, Engulf)
Air (Most versatile)
Man (Access to Innate Spell and Influence)

Playing possession tradition, however, shuts down what is one of my favorite combat strategies in a low to mid power level game. This is the use of materialization fire spirits. Using a high charisma character and an excess of bound level 1 spirits can be incredibly useful for a miniscule cost. At 500Y a binding, where you can easily get 8+ services, you gain access to the ability to call from the metaplanes, as a simple action, a whole pack of flying spirits that can engulf with strength 6 or 7 (I forget which) due to elemental aura. Throw them on one target, where they'll get the friends in melee benefit and after a few goes one of them is bound to light your enemy on fire and incapacitate them for the round, all potentially from safety. Ofcourse, don't use this strategy anywhere near water.

I have contemplated a similar strategy for possession tradition using force 3, invoked air spirits and some sort of projectile weapon, prepared vessel. Haven't gotten around to trying it yet tho.

Taking a look back comparing all sprites, I take it back. Courier sprites aren't useless, it's just that sleuth sprites can do everything they can and more, except for hash and a lower response (courier gets R+1, sleuth gets R-1), but unless you're gonna use one to pilot a drone in combat (bad idea since neither gets autosofts) that's not really an issue.

As for the paladin sprite thing, unless you're making a TM who is intentionally crappy at their TM stuff and has low resonance, a rating 3 is pretty much guaranteed, and most will start with compiling rating 5 or 6 sprites while still only taking stun from compiling. Also, while they can't attack, they don't really need to. Every rating they have adds 3 dice to their defense rolls, and 2 die to their soak rolls. And once you hit rating 6 (or 3 if you don't want to give them attack then), they gain an additional die to defense (up to 3) for every other rating level. A rating 6 paladin is nigh untouchable with 21 die to defense and 12 die to soak, add 2 to both if your GM considers them as being allowed the hot sim +2. That's their entire purpose, is to be damage soakers and protectors.

And a fault sprite is a combat sprite that starts with stealth, with an amazing power. Hands down fault sprites are my favorite combat sprite for actually fighting, paladin for those moments when I've sounded the alarm and I just want to rush and get out of there and not worry about taking damage.

Guardian is definitely the best combat-type. Then spirits of man followed directly by animal (natural weapon and venom) and then earth elemental (optional power "energy aura" in comparison with strenght+4...bad melee damage). The most sucking spirits are...everything else a hermetic can summon...^^

Actually...

The worst spirit is a Watcher spirit. They have a ridiculous chance to Crit Glitch Assensing/Track Tests.

Useless.

Aye, that is why i have fixed them with houserules in my game. (No one would ever use them... i mean really: Force 1? They CANNOT even exists? Background count 1 is damn everywhere)

My watchers are:
Maximum force= half of that of the summoner.
Have a specialization in their only power, Search.
Cost no more drain than normal.

Otherwise nobody uses them. (So now they have 8 dice to search , when the magician has 6 magic)

Watchers....yeah...never used them. Useless stupid stuff. Right.

I honestly can't remember seeing anyone use a watcher spirit, ever.

My Favorite sprites definately have to be code, data and fault sprites. Unfortunately I never have all three, paladins are a good second tier one as well.

I do like the code sprite, if only for Info Sortilage, but the more I look at the sleuth sprite, the more I grow to love it.

sleuth is right there at the top of my second tier with paladin, though that doesn't say as much as it might, my first 4 echoes are biowire and accel...

I think first echoes for me depend on what I'm playing. If I can be pure hacker, then overclockingx2 and swapx2 will prolly be my first 4, but if I'm also the face or something and want access to meatspace, yeah biowire and accel are good, both for AR hacking, and more importantly for threading linguasofts.

Guidance does get magical guard and guard (IIRC) which is very useful if you need to split the party or want some extra counterspelling. That and the engulf power as someone else mentioned makes them very useful for those who do not have access to Guardian.

As for sprites, there's machine sprites and then there's everything else. The Diagnostic and Gremlin powers have so many applications to help your friends and hinder your enemies. Sleuth and Data are both good for doing datasearches you can't be bothered for. I agree with your assesment of Paladin but my Technos with access to them still keep one one registered as an "In case of emergency" button.

See, I tend to play in groups that are.... somewhat light on combat types, the current one doesn't even have a "true" sam, just a sam/face combo and a sniper, both good inside their limited combat roles but having a "combat hacker" technomancer has saved the group's bacon more than once. it's a matter of how generalized the group is though. I love the pure hacker but if everyone else is spread out you by necessity have to spread your skills out a bit to help cover everything.

Get a troll...... even a troll face or infil specialist

Face/sam is a troll. he is just light on combat ware and no heavy weapons. Every bit of metal going down range counts drasticaly.

Get a good drone then and make the troll cry.

You mean build, I am working on a hovering spherical drone with some.... interesting options, I will call it a [dr evil voice]"death star"[/dr evil coice].

*loads her trusty Fichetti security 600 with her patent pending Luke Skywalker ammo*

Hey, we're all running the same shadows, just put that down and I'll share the blueprints with you...

What do you take me for, some kind of dronomancer? Technoshaman all the way, my friend. One with the Matrix, and possessing some of the better sprites, only really lacking code and fault for the best ones of all. 2 submersion grades and that's fixed.

Infosavant with World Tree as Paragon here, definately not a dronomancer, but having a few purpose built drones just adds so much cheesey goodness to technos as you pointed out, especially when you have machine sprites...

Which adds another good tie in question for this thread: what are the best and worst mentor spirits and paragons?

The TM I'm currently working on is also the face for the group, so I went with Idoru, but in her previous incarnation she followed Intrusion Countermeasure. I'm not too fond of 01 (having to spend 2 edge to overcome a critical glitch, EVERY time you critical glitch is kinda harsh), nor Alias (spoofing your lifestyle can take up a LOT of time at the higher levels, and there's always the up in the air question about provided quarters per your job/team, having to work for it could be construed as a form of payment).

As for mentor spirits, I'm very fond of the Dark Goddess. And I forget which one it is, but the one that has the same ban as 01 I hate too. Although, they ALL suck for adepts despite adepts being able to take a mentor spirit.

Cryptome and Probe both have fairly good benefits for fairly light disadvantages but World Tree is my current favorite, providing a bonus to all analyze tests and code or data sprites, and the need to analyze and acquire information they come across is both not that difficult to resist and not that harsh of a penalty. Though I will admit to taking paragons more for purpose of fluff and to shape the personality of my technomancers than for hard benefits

Sure, if you're not taking them for fluff and instead just for the mechanics, you're doing it wrong, but the mechanics play a major part of it. That's why I picked Idoru this time around, it fits how I changed the character. She's no longer the vengeful defender (previously she had a vendetta against a humanis member), and now is all about trying to be the center of attention.

Well, yes, but there is a certain point where you need to pay attention to the mechanics, not that Paragon is it, a properly constructed TM can work around those flaws. I like World Tree because the idea of a technomancer who believes, utterly and irrevocably in the disseminaton of information to everyone kina strikes a note with me, and with my characters charisma being just above average and having a high will, he rarely is going to fail the save for his disadvantage.

Yeah, that applies to most of them that allow for a roll, like Idoru's need to change information to benefit you. Same with mentor spirits for mages, though they're less likely to have a high charisma unless they're a charisma tradition and/or an elf. High for all 4 mentals is essential for a TM, mages only need high willpower and their trad attribute.

The big advantage of watchers is that they are for free. You can have a number of them equal to your charisma, additional to all other "real"spirits. And the drain is negligible.
They may be idiots, but that makes them still suited for idiot jobs.
Whenever you can't use a real gost for some reason, (e.g. because the one you can summon is occupied otherwise,) and the task is simple, you can use watchers. Just make sure to keep the orders simple.

For example:

Watchers can be good sentries.
Seeing the glowing aura of a living being from the astral plan is so easy, that it doesnt require a test. If a watcher dies, you will know immediate. Tell a watcher to inform you, when a living being bigger than a cat, or an astral being enters a room.

Watcher can deliver messages.

Watchers can manifest and get on mundane peoples nerves, and they can't do much against it. If you don't like someone. Have a watcher yell into his ear for 2 hours.

Watchers count RAW as friends in meele for astral combat. Even if the GM reduces that, a few bonus dice should still be granted if you have enough watchers.



The chance to glitch for watchers is ridiculous, since the glitch rules are bad, because of 2 problems.
First Problem is: The Chance for a glitch increases as the number of dice decrease, which is ok, but when the dicepool goes to the minimun the glitch chance increases too strong to be plausible.
The second problem is: When you have an even dicepool the chance for a glitch is higher, than when you have an odd dicepool. This means if you have an Odd dicepool for a skilltest, but then raise your skill by 1, your dicepool becomes even, and your chance to glitch increases. Although you should have become better in the thing you do!

And when you have a dicepool of 2, both problems combine to an ultimate ridiculous glitch chance of ca. 30 percent.

What I wanna say with this is: You shouldn't use the standard glitch rules as a GM, if someone has only 2 dice. The rules are broken in that case, it will give you stupid results.

And unfortunately 2 dice is the standart pool of an average guy who defaults in a skill. And its the standard dicepool for watchers.

If your GM still refuses to adapt the glitchrules for watchers, just send more watchers for a task. Like I said, they are for free, and its unlikely that all glitch.

And backgroud count 1 isnt everywhere in SR4. You probably confuse this with SR3.

Best Mentor spirits/paragons:
Daedalus: Good for rigging, and the drawback is a joke.

Sun: Both Fire and Guardian spirits are among the heavy hitters, and the drawback can be negated by Guard (which, incidently, Guardian spirits have).
Raven: Maybe it's just me, but I like mindraping people. And Air spirits are really versatile.

Best mentor/paragon depents heavily on your role in the team, but for a combat mage it's pretty hard to say no to +2 dice for combat and health spells offered by Dark Goddess, just pick a charisma tradition if your worried about the disadvantage.