Greetings!

It's been a long time since I posted a project of any length or significant magnitude on here. I've been working on a series of house rules to make technomancers a little less crap than they are currently. The rules are in a very early state, and I'm open to suggestions or comments on them. I've attempted to rebalance technomancer capabilities so that they have a shot in the arm, can keep up with deckers, and have a little more flexibility than they do currently (such a was being hinted at by developments in Unwired.) Some of my rules may be a little off-the-wall or not to the taste of certain posters on here, and that's okay! Some of the changes include new treatment of Echoes, new metamagic analogs called Enhancements, Fading DV changes to Complex Forms, among other things. I hope you'll find some surprises within, maybe even things you will use in your games to make technomancers cool again.

I was personally very heart-broken and took it rather hard to see what had been done to technomancers in SR5. This is my attempt to fix what I find a horrible, nearly game-ruining (at least for me) oversight on the part of the developers, as well as putting in my suggestions for a couple of missed opportunities (such as Decompiling.) This document is the start of a project where I try to make technomancers fun again, for myself... and maybe for one or two of you as well.

Please leave feedback! If you love my changes or hate them, I want to know why! I can't promise I'll make every suggested change, but I will definitely take all comments into consideration.

You can find my Technomancer Redux here.

Thank you all in advance.

-Abschalten

it looks pretty awesome. Great job on investing so much time on this. Have you playtested? It could be, that TM are a little bit too strong, due all the fairly cheap Resonance Pointpowers. But that's just a matter of balancing. I'd try it, if I had the group to do. What I suggest is two test runs. Build two technomancers and deckers. One focused on unnoticed datasteal and the other on taking over security systems and drones. Then run first the TMs, then the deckers. Compare.

I especially love the cyberware thing. There was a thread about a year ago, about a Submersion, that lets TMs get Cyberware installed and ignore up to something points of essence loss...

I've been sort of pulling together a list of technomancer powers similar to adepts to be able to make a techno-adept kind of character. Biowires / touchlink / etc

One thing I keep trying to cram into the concept is the idea that you gain more techno powers with more cyberware in your body, as your character becomes more and more "attuned" to the machines (I think I'm getting some of this idea from the book Desolation Road, a great read). But it all seems too overpowered, to give cyber + powers in one fell swoop...

I'll playtest this in the next few days and put my results up.

Thank you for the feedback so far!

I crossposted this over to the official forums, where the reception hasn't been quite as rosy. But I've still pulled some reasonable feedback from the back-and-forth and will put them in the new rules.

One criticism was about the Cyberware Emulation enhancement and the ability to take virtual cyberware. I wanted to make that not broken, hence the limitations on rating and the rather limited list of cyber that could be taken. I explicitly ruled out stuff like muscle replacement or cyberarms, bone density, etc. I stuck to things that had precedent and made logical sense. Also, you can't just save up your RPs at chargen, initiate once, and jump straight into Wired Reflexes 3, though you could save two points and go to Wired 1 at initiation. I tried to keep the advancement for pieces of copied 'ware (and that one is the biggest piece, by far) to something akin to how it was in Unwired. In fact, Wired 3 would cost you alot more karma in this model than it did in Unwired, where all you had to do is submerge a few times.

I can't put more real time into updating rules and testing them until I get done working this stretch of nights (12-hour shifts leave little time for gaming and such.) I do, however, want to playtest these rules myself to see how well they work.

I think the rules will be reasonably effective and even slightly powerful without breaking the game. I believe that they'd only be approaching OP if you were well into triple-digit karma levels and sank every point into Resonance and/or Submersions. But hell, I think that ought to be the case for all emerged or awakened. Power level advancement for technomancers as of right now is relatively flat, and that's part of what I wanted to fix.

That is a good idea, and I will try that method when I get the time to do so. The only issue is that I would have to run each of those tests twice, to represent advancement. The starting, chargen technomancer and one with a hundred karma are two different animals. Ditto the decker. What I'm thinking is that for each trial, I try them at chargen-only, and then I try again after I advance them with 500k nuyen and around 150-200ish karma. This would let me see if they keep up with each other after chargen has ended and they really get into the game.



I don't think technomancers should have no reason whatsoever to take cyberware and not lose Resonance. But I do think that they ought to be able to use some things -- things that have precedent and make logical sense -- by having their bodies copy the effects. Most of the pieces I chose were in some shape or form already in Unwired.

Thank you very much for making this!

Upon reading SR5, I was tremendously disappointed that technomancers became basically unplayable due to their inability to form partake in PANs and obscene Fading values. But your take finds a rather sweet balance between power and flavour.

If I might make a suggestion: to bring technomancers more in line with mystic adepts in terms of flavour, consider replacing the 4 matrix attribute upgrades with echoes that boost the mental score instead (like the adept power Improved Physical Attribute). This would get rid of the possibility of having high matrix attribute technomancers becoming monstrous through mage support (or bioware implants, in the case of Cerebral Boosters), while making technomancers interesting in their own right.
Obviously this would need to be curbed somewhat. The relevant resonance programs shouldn't stack with it IMO and for the sake of flavour, it should be a Wireless bonus as with gear (reason being, you'd normally only benefit from the upgrades when using the matrix anyway) fluffed as offloading some of the processing from your brain to the Resonance cloud.

Shame the official matrix book won't be out until next year and won't have anything as cool as your rules (too much deviation from core mechanics)

Rock on! Hope to see more of this!

Thanks for the reply!

I'm a bit hesitant to change how the Echoes work as of now. Partially this is because deep down I was hoping some devs would take a look at my ideas, and I was leaving them a little room to backtrack in case they were into that sort of thing.

As for the Matrix attributes being tied to mental attributes, nothing prevented these same abuses in SR4. You could also still get Cerebral Boosters to pump up Logic (which my Singularitarian would have done had the campaign gone on long enough.) However, in SR5, a high Logic just pumps Data Processing, which is sort of useful but not as gamebreaking as something like Sleaze (Intuition) or Attack (Charisma), neither of which I can think of 'ware that increases it directly.

A magician could still sustain a spell on the technomancer and then send the technomancer into the Matrix. Doing so, however, puts the magician at a disadvantage to fulfilling other tasks. And even if this does increase a technomancer's effectiveness, it takes teamwork to do this, and teamwork is a big part of the game. If two acting in concert towards a goal makes a job easier, that's just part of the game.

Just for the sake of pushing things to their limits, I was considering a max Charisma elf ( 8 ) with max bonuses (+4) and two ranks in Attack Upgrade. That's an effective Attack rating of 14. That's pretty high. But it's one Matrix attribute out of 4, all of which are necessary in their own ways. It would be more important to raise Willpower for a higher Firewall, since that protects against the vast majority of Matrix actions.

Keep in mind that even with these rules, these are numbers perfectly obtainable right now in vanilla SR5, just with higher karma costs. For 29 karma, you could submerge your max Charisma elf twice, get your magician buddy involved, and still go into the Matrix with 14 Attack.

But as for improving mental attributes directly, I think that goes against the spirit of what technomancers are capable of. They are not imbuing themselves with Magic in the same way as adepts, and so should not really be able to raise their attributes in that way. But I have no problem with them using Resonance to increase their abilities inside of the Matrix, as these abilities are a very well-established precedent in SR4 and SR4.

The Resonance programs do raise the Matrix Attributes, but they are a little less-protected than hard-wired, permanent bonuses. If another technomancer or sprite opts to crash the Resonance Programs, those effects can be lost. I thought about those Matrix attributes getting out of hand even in chargen due to the programs, but decided that if a technomancer wanted to hyperspecialize in a Matrix attribute at the expense of others, that should be a viable build idea. I made a technomancer in chargen who had a Sleaze of 9 (including his Resonance Program), which is only a point shy of what a starting decker can get -- without the same flexibility of Matrix attributes.

What I have done, though, for balance and flavor reasons, is increased the RP cost of Attack and Sleaze upgrades to 1.5 RP. These are more powerful and useful in hacking situations, and these represent the bigger Resonance investment into allowing the technomancers to subvert the new system. This would even make my own starting, Sleaze-oriented technomancer more pinched for points, and probably bring him back down to the 8 a starting decker would be able to walk out of chargen with.