Can you offer a reason for that beyond "it makes fluff sense" or "I don't like wireless"?

Nvm the fact that the blog post makes it sound like that it doesn't matter if you use a hard-wired datajack or a wireless trode; if you try to route through other wireless devices and/or Nodes, you'll still get the noise penalty.

Otherwise, having a datajack not incur Noise penalties makes datajacks all sorts of broken.

Plus: ...don't nerf TMs and leave it at that. If you're going to just de-power TMs but leave deckers alone as they are, then we're no better off than before of having TMs be OP'd in comparison to hackers/deckers.

So I say: rebalance BOTH TMs and deckers.

If it is going to continue to be the case, however, that Technomancers are less able to be able to do non-Matrix stuff while Deckers can easily corss-specialize, Technomancers have to be more powerful in the Matrix. Sort of a generalist/specialist style of balance.

That said, the use of attributes in Matrix tests will change the dynamic substantially.

Well then, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what changes they'll be making to TMs when the time comes.

Yeah. It's one of the big things that's still worrying me about the new edition - technomancers, if they're not changed quite properly, could wind up screwed

I've been looking through the core rules, and it seems I've been doing a few tests wrong. They say Matrix Perception is Analyze + Computer, but that's only to get information about an icon. It seems in order to find the icon in the first place its Analyze + Data Search. So in order to see what's around you in the Matrix, you need to spend a complex action (Data Search test), and then to understand what you are looking at you need to spend a simple action (Matrix Perception test). This just slows down the game so much. Normal perception tests aren't even free action unless the character is actively perceiving, and then its a simple action.

Anyway, I hope they can streamline this stuff, so its really only a free action, just combine tests so we don't have to roll all the time, and/or make them work a lot more like similar tests in the other 2 worlds of the game so we don't need to look up rules all the time. That'd be great...and that sounds like the goals of the new Matrix rules too.

Or the reverse (technos specializing in doing meat + matrix, as for them, the matrix is Always On, same as dual natured is Always On astral perception and doesn't interfere with meat actions, unlike for mages).

But yes.

Because in cyberpunk, implants should be better than no implant. Also, wireless matrix, fine whatever, but why should I ever accept that a naked brain just sends out and receives radio waves? What was the point of removing the interface need from otaku basically? It was a radical change from the genre and really was pointless on top of that.

Also, we have organizations paranoid NOW about wireless access and that's with encryption that takes years or decades to theoretically break, not 9-12 seconds. Enough reason to dislike the idea of wireless secure matrix systems.

Have wireless in the public/lower end stuff, and move into wired for choke points and that seems much more realistic. If encryption is a joke, at least require physical access and a data line tap to get at it.

SR4 is more than just cyberpunk, though (and that's a good thing; cyberpunk is great but pure cyberpunk is lacking a certain level of modern relevance) - and things like the transhumanist elements aren't likely going anywhere. Besides, it makes sense that as the Matrix changed, the pseudo-magical Matrix specialists changed too - and old-school otaku would really be kind of weird to shoehorn into the 2070's.

Also: Trodes are in Neuromancer. Is Neuromancer not cyberpunk enough for you?

I don't disagree that wireless-secure systems should exist, however (but let's not forget wireless adapters, and things like the Skinlink echo). Doesn't mean that they should retcon technomancers. "It used to be this way" fails to be a compelling justification for a retcon.

It's easy... it just no longer works... they have an obsolete echo... it can go along with their LP & cassette collection along with all their obsolete CF's.


There should be an advantage for paying essence for a direct link... and if that is reducing noise a step that's a good one.

Besides it's too late for any changes now... we're just waiting to see what's unveiled.

There already is an advantage: datajacks have a hard-wired link that cannot be disrupted directly, unless if you physically snapped the thing in half while the decker is using it.

Trodes, while having no essence cost, are a wireless device, so they should be susceptible to jamming. (and if it isn't already, this could be what they could do on equalizing datajacks vs trodes)

Using skinlink is no different from plugging a wire from the commlink into a datajack, either.

In fact, many pf my characters, when they DO have a datajack? The 'jack is modified for Skinlink, anyway.

Surely a TM if he needed to jack in could just do it with Trodes which are wired. Think over the top headphones the trodes themselves are not wireless

Get a mage with influence and some suitcases full of explosives.

And of course nobody would just plug a cable into his trode net...

That would just be silly....

... or spring for the 50¥ "Skinlink" upgrade ...

I think skinlink is pretty lame too, but I guess it's one of those things here to stay also.

I think skinlink is in-progress IRL. But it works differently than it does in-game. In-game it makes you Just Touch Stuff and make a connection.

Unless you are thinking of the Echo (which IMO needs to be killed with fire), you touch two skinlink-adapted devices and they make a connection through your skin.

That may be, I haven't looked at the rules in forever.

Personally, I'd be perfectly happy if TMs all fucked off and died, with the fluff explanation being 'Psychotropic Black IC is a bitch when it's impossible to jack out'.

Personally I would not be upset if they went, but some people have a ranging hardon over the setting never having a ret-con.
(Which, it actually has several, I mean, what did you think happened to Anchoring?)

And I personally think that retconning an entire category of character out of the game just because some people have a raging hate-on for them, is about the most asinine thing possible.

What happens to someone who's favorite character is a TM, when the Edition shifts out from under them? Everyone in their group thinks "yeah, new edition, awesome, let's change over" ... only for that one player to discover that "TMs all fucked off and died [...] [because] Psychotropic Black IC is a bitch when it's impossible to jack out" ...?

Yeah, nice job. Either the group stays with SR4, or that one player's character is murdered off.

All to satisfy your hate for TMs. And despite the fact that any of you could have said, for your games specifically, "no TMs".

It's far easier to have a set of rules, and decree "we don't use these" ... than to have no rules at all, for something that someone wants to play.





Anchoring, one single technique, is not the same as an entire archetype.

Retconning TMs out of the setting would be like saying "whoops, all that Magic stuff doesn't work for us, we hate it, so it's gone".

Or saying "Elves and dwarves and stuff? Feck that, there's only Humans. We hate those trog-and-keebler types."

Removing Anchoring removes a single option (and perhaps rolls it into somethign else). It does not remove entire character types.

The same cannot be said for retconning TMs out of the game.

*Cough*
It's not entire archetypes I've seen people bitch about. Hell, no one seems to be in favor of distinctifying mages and shamans because of UMT.

It's like every "single technique" is someone's sacred cow. Can't kill skinlink, can't kill UMT, can't kill wireless, can't reblend technos with otaku....

Not suire what the problem with Anchoring is... It exists in 4A, Just as it did in Previous Editions.

I'm sorry, but I literally have zero sympathy. TMs, like several other things mentioned, were a bad idea in the first place and the game would only be improved by every last one of them tripping, falling, and drowning in half of an inch of water in the bathtub.

Shadowrun isn't a collection of pick-and-choose house rules, the rules are intended to reflect the worldbuilding, and bad worldbuilding needs to go away.

Interesting how opinion is being presented as fact.

Uh. Anchoring--the ability to cast spells into the physical world from the astral, effecting material targets,* DOES NOT in fact exist in 4E.

*"That's a shiny focus you have there. Fireball. Hooray, killed your rigger!"

That would be grounding, then.

Yeah, only not so much.

Technomancers, given the way they work, can only function in the confines of the very specific 'all wireless everywhere' worldbuilding imposed by 4e. That makes them an albatross around the neck of anyone assigned to try and rewrite the Matrix in a manner that reflects the things we knew about network security twenty years ago, much less in the modern day.

A TM who can't work wirelessly is, as you may recall, an Otaku.


Speaking of archtypes that can't be played anymore after an edition change.

...yyyeeeaa, Anchoring is the thing that allows Initiates to essentially make spell traps.

And you can't do Grounding in 4A unless if you were playing in the 2050 setting.

Derp. I haven't played in so long. ;_;

Or you ignore the little explanation given for it going away and rule that it's still around using the information from that book on how it works.

....and then it would bring us into the realm of house-ruling.

Or if you felt like playing a mage that was a bit more suicidal on wanting to risk dying from Physical drain.

Aaaanyway. Point is, grounding was bad for gameplay, so it went away. But somehow folks round these parts can't accept that idea for other things.

Doesn't change the fact that this is based on your opinion that TMs are stupid and worldbuilding is stupid and everything having to do with them is stupid.
So, yeah. I'm not entirely disagreeing, but it's still only an opinion that you present as fact.

Otaku were a fringe concept. I happened to like them better than current TM mechanics, but Technomancers are a rather popular, and in the end a more valid archetype, even if they're only available since the beginning of 4th edition. And this is a good thing, no matter how much the naysayers hate them.


Yes. Get rid of things that are bad for gameplay. I agree in full. Where I don't agree is that TMs are bad for gameplay.

I don't particularly care for Technomancers, myself, but that's more that for one to be really good at their own thing, it seems like they have to be so over-specialized toward that as to exclude practically everything else.

Depends upon what you mean by "being really good."
We have seen a few TM's and I have created a few of my own. I think they have all worked really well, without being overspecialized (though I will admit that there was ONE who was pretty uber. But you get that with 300+ Karma, regardless).

Like I said... merge the two... encourage light cyber to make a good TM/otaku and heavy cyber to make an old school decker.


I just don't think trodes fit shadowrun... I don't care if they're in other cyberpunk... SR is not the superset of everyone elses cyberpunk ideas. And it's not a matter of plugging fibre straight into trodes... trodes plugged into a sim module, and the sim module then went into a commlink. There should be some latency for going through all that compared to having the datajack installed into you.

Datajacks have always provided a benefit to hacking and even used to have higher grades. Their cost in terms of resources and essence is minimal... but should provide a solid benefit. Because that leaves a bit of essence then to build out and customize the character.

I am of the opinions that Technos can be made viable for gameplay. I just wish they didn't exist at all, as they're too wonky and weird.

Fair enough

Funny... I think that they are viable now. *shrug*

*cough*, yourself. Technomancers are an entire archetype - no less so than Adepts, or Riggers, or whatever else.






So, you prefer a big "fuck you" to anyone who enjoys the game in a different way to you ... rather than simply saying "not in my game, thanks" ...?

Yeah. Real nice, buddy. Real nice.


Every roleplaying game ever written, is a collection of pick-and-choose house rules.

Rule 0.

Or, to drag out the very very old page-and-paragraph citation of my youth: "THE DUNGEON MASTER IS THE FINAL ARBITER OF ALL AFFAIRS IN HIS OR HER MILIEU." First edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players' Handbook; Page 6, Paragraph 8, Sentence 2, caps-lock original. Yes, I can and have and am citing it that precisely. No, it's not a Shadowrun book. But, it is (a very early edition of) the first major RPG ever to exist, and thus supports exactly the opposite of your contention: RPGs are a pick-and-choose affair and always have been..

If you dislike something, houserule it out of your game - but do not dare to try and rule it out of MY game!! You lack the faintest sliver of any right to do so.

Mock outrage there Pax... you already go nuts with house rules.

No one is stating you can't do as you like....


Just because you and some people have managed to make TM's work here and there... doesn't mean they're not disruptive to many others. On the whole, they've been more disruptive than not post unwired. (without unwired most of their lunacy is contained).

Many of us are simply stating that they should be corraled a little more. Hence why I state the common misconception that otaku and TM's are the same thing... would be a good way to go... it merges the two concepts into a singular new archetype to go along with SR5's entirely new matrix system.

"Go nuts", to you, is "more than zero". Talk about mock-anything, eh?


It is easier to subtract than to add, with houserules.

It is easier to say "we do not use X", than to create something that did not exist before.

And with the significant mechanics changes supposedly coming to the Matrix in 5E, re-adding technomancers would be a nontrivial undertaking. Whereas, just saying "not in my game" takes no more effort than drawing breath.


And that's fine; changing and adjusting is part of a new edition. But some folks are actually calling for them to be excised from the rules and setting altogether.

You are conflating what my personal opinion is and what I'd like to see done. Stop doing that.

Personal opinion: that technos go die in a fire
What I'd like to see done: balance technos against traditional hackers so that both are viable choices

I'm not entirely following. How are technomancers broken? That they are better or are they worse then deckers? Or that they have to hyper specialize? How is that different from a mage, hacker, rigger, face, or any other archetype?

I suggest a look at the official conversion guide...Otaku are TMs now

The rules for Complex Forms are inherintly flawed. For one, there are something like a dozen programs that a hacker NEEDS to have in order to be baseline functional.* For hackers, a lot of these are trivial to get, Edit, Browse, Data Search...for a Technomancer, that is not so. It costs a hacker 3/5ths of a BP to get all of the common use programs at 6. It costs a TM 60.

Secondly, a TM's matrix attributes are based on their mental attributes. There's like four of them that are needed (3 required + 1 secondary). Compare to a mage (2 required + 2 secondary**), street sam (2 required + 0 secondary), or hacker (0 required + 0 secondary).

Third, TMs are inherently more vulnerable in the matrix than Hackers are. Matrix icon damage to a hacker: log off, log back in, it's cleared. TMs? Actual, real, bleeding-wounds that is not reduced by biofeedback filters (specifically).

*I don't recall the exact list, but "Analyze, Browse, Edit, Data Search, Scan, Stealth, Exploit, Decrypt" is a reasonable list. Which is still 8, and cybercombat isn't covered.
**This is based on Magic + 2 Drain attributes + one other stat that any given player finds most relevant. Generally one drain attribute will be considered "primary" with the other closer to "secondary."