I'm playing a TM in a campaign, so I know what sprites are worth. They can basically do my job.
What are your opinions on a TM
a) with Incompetence (Compiling, Registering)
b) very low levels in Compiling and Registering

He has to use Mooks as normal hackers do and otherwise do the job himself. It's (only) two skills he dowsn't need to buy, but a TM can use every bit of karma.

I was considering a build, where the TM has a Resonance Bond, with a high loyalty Free Sprite, which he can feed with R1 registered sprites. Basically an Ally Sprite, although really karma expensive: 10 karma / Edge i.e. power.

PS: On a side note. Any good ideas/hooks on how to meet a Free Sprite and befriend it beyond offering reassembling?

Depends on your definition of "doable." (a) will suck, quite hard. (b) will suck less hard. If your question is "is the points you save worth it" the answer is "not in the slightest."

Bear in mind that free sprites are much more interested in sprites of a higher rating than themselves. Rating 1 sprites are of very limited use for reassembling.

This seems tough. A mage with no spirits can still have good spells that affect the physical and astral worlds. A TM with no sprites seems like a hacker who paid way too much for his abilities and can't get any good cyber/bio to supplement him.

BUT it could be fun, I guess. Maybe go for chargen submersions and some of the more "physical" echoes if possible, Mesh Reality, E-Sensing,Acceleration, Biowires and so on.

Well, that still leaves threading, which is not exactly the weakest ability...

Though, I think it's definitely a bigger sacrifice than a mage without spirits.

On that note, I've always wished SR4 did more to encourage aspected mages/technomancers. The way the awakened qualities are set up makes this a lot harder than in SR3, but I still wish it.

True, true. Good point


I'm with you on this, it would be great if there were a better way to "aspect" a mage or TM. The aspected mage qualities in street magic are horrible.

Sprites are really, IMO, the reason to play a technomancer. A technomancer without sprites is really just a bad hacker. A hacker is actually able to exceed a technomancer in hacking ability early in their career(hackers get 5 IP much easier than technomancers), and a hacker can get every program in the book at a high rating for a fraction of the cost of what a technomancer spends for their complex forms(1 BP for a rating 5 program vs 5 BP for the same complex form). In theory, given enough time and karma, a technomancer will exceed a hackers abilities with threading and complex forms, but by that time the hacker has been a master hacker for ages, and is doubling as the second street samurai.

If you want magical hacking abilities without sprites, play an adept. Adepts make great hackers, and honestly the only thing that can beat a hacker adept in the matrix is an army of sprites(or I suppose like a 600 karma technomancer, but how likely is that to come up).

Sure, but for hacking nodes you don't really need 5 IPs and a TM can easily thread up from Rating 1 to 5...which is enough to root every system with probing.

I think that's overstating the case, Sengir. It's pretty well-accepted that a hacker can start with much greater breadth, Ratings, and Matrix stats than the techno, especially if you're taking away sprites, and you need whatever you need. It all depends on the GM; however, if he's softballing the Matrix, that doesn't hurt the hacker, and he could always redirect his resources elsewhere.

That doesn't mean no one can have fun or anything. *shrug*

I've always been more partial to a TM with nearly no CFs but with Sprites. It would end up going for more physical skills, take the Smartlink CF, and head immediately for Biowire and Accelerate - essentially creating a TM version of a street samurai. The one I have written up is streetnamed "Livewire" (as opposed to the cyber-rout version of the same streetnamed "Hardwire").

This is an intriguing idea which I have yet to pursue. How does he actually work out?

would be more of an Adept then, but even less detactable, because Assensing won't reveal his powers.

In terms of breadth the TM always wins, he can thread whatever he needs. Buying programs at decent Ratings eats a crapload of karma, but that is true for every TM build.

That's not breadth, that's flexibility. *Having* to thread everything sucks. Depending on the rules, the hacker simply has all those programs at the ready, no Fading, sustaining, etc.