Hi, i think that a technomancer cannot be a good rigger because it seems that he can't protect his drones, cause he can't be a master in a WAN.

Plus because the lack of cyberware he might be dificult to him without submertion to be good at anything.

The last thing he how a technomancer can plug a data cable without a hole in the brain?

Actually the cable plugs in the other end.


But there are more than a few technos here so they should be able to help with this.

Some of the things about the SR5 change that I don't like. In SR4 a technomancer could be the center of a WAN, Master to Slaves, jump into drones right out of the box, and though not detectable as a device was naturally able to fake the actions of a device and actually function as one. SR5, yeah, pretty much as you posted.

Still, a technomancer can still take cyberware, but obviously takes a hit to their Resonance in doing so. At character creation you might not have the funds available when you've got to allocate a priority to Magic/Resonance of at least C and need high stats and many high skills.

With all four of the Mental stats even more important now than compared to SR4, I have the impression at the moment that a good technomancer might actually make a better Face first, and decker as a backup. Considering sprites, if you don't find usefulness in them, going Magic/Resonance C and aiming for a Face build might be better than going Magic/Resonance B or A and focusing on being a decker.

- a technomancer can invest in a good RCC and use that, or can invest in a good commlink, and use that, to slave everything to (although the RCC offers more usefulness in other areas). they are also actually quite good at protecting their drones actively, because unlike a regular rigger a technomancer will have full access to all hacking actions; a regular rigger won't be able to, for example, remove marks, or attack a hacker that attempts to steal their drones. a technomancer can do that no problem, as far as i can tell...

- you are correct, without cyberware, you are very limited at first. until you submerge, at least, and realistically until you have submerged twice you won't be the equal of a starting rigger. depending on whether they decided to opt for a used VCR, you may even need to submerge a third time before you've caught up. on the plus side, sprites can help quite a bit here as well... being able to reduce the effects of glitches or grant bonuses to using the device is pretty strong, for example.

- if you want a direct wired connection, but don't want to get cyberware, use trodes (page 439).

One of my SR4 technos was a pokemancer who rarely jumped in, but used sprites to jump in for him. Is this still viable in SR5?

Changes to sprites makes it seem to be no. I really miss the idea of technorigging.

But using a deck or RCC means your Resonance abilities cannot be used, so why take a TM at all?

The simple truth is that dronomancers are one of two character concepts (along with the former corporate [something]) which got completely shafted.

no it doesn't.

you can't use them to make a persona at the same time as using your technomancer abilities. but you don't have to make a persona from them. you can, as far as i am aware, use essentially anything in AR unless it specifies otherwise. nothing that i know of specifies you can't use an RCC from AR. so it can be controlled without using it to form your persona, because you don't need a persona to control things via AR.

you can't slave the RCC to your persona, but you can still designate yourself as the owner, which is sufficient for most things.

So ... if a rigger used a deck to generate their persona and slaved their RCC to their deck, would they be able to rig the vehicles slaved to the RCC?

hmmm... theoretically. actually having the resources to be both a rigger and a decker is incredibly improbable though. especially with the absolutely awful payouts, if you use them

also, i'm not sure if you can use the benefits of the RCC (or at least, the noise reduction) without running your persona from it (but technomancers have other ways of dealing with noise anyways).

that said, according to page 266 (Matrix Damage)
"If you used your commlink or rigger command
console to enter VR before jumping in, your commlink
or RCC (respectively) is the target of Matrix damage
to your persona."

(this is just a specific example, the rule applies for whatever you used in VR).

but i suppose if your GM ignores the official payouts (and significantly boosts it), or if you actually manage to get into a situation where you could legitimately claim a better piece of hardware as your own and run with it rather than said piece of hardware going to a more focused character (ie if there is a focused decker, you're probably going to get their hand-me-down at best) or even potentially being considered to belong to the group.* i suppose it could work. you'd still have to start off rather severely weakened in both areas of specialization though, while a technomancer could in theory start off using one priority for hacking, and a second for rigging. an actual tech-based version will have to split between the two, and will need an RCC, a cyberdeck, *and* a VCR.

i would also generally consider opportunities to lay your hands on an opponent's tech to be few and far between... cyberdecks should mostly only happen if you've taken out an opposing shadowrunner team or maybe an HTR team (i would expect most corporate deckers actually have their decks physically built into the facility they're to be used in so that there's less temptation to walk away with half a million nuyen worth of hardware, and likewise for most on-site riggers, especially since they have easy access to noise reduction; you'd have to be going up against someone who has a legitimate need for a mobile version as opposed to a stationary one, defeat them soundly, actually be in a position to get your hands on the device, and then escape... not impossible or unheard of, but certainly not as simple as, say, taking an enemy's gun or something like that. in fact, i would say that riggers and deckers are the two archetypes most likely to be sitting someplace secure but nearby, adding an extra layer of complication to getting your hands on their equipment.

* i can somewhat see both ways on the "group loot" thing. yes, you can use that device far more effectively than anyone else. on the other hand, the rest of the group can definitely use the money they'd get from selling it, and you probably didn't manage to get your hands on that shiny new cyberdeck without a lot of help from everyone else... how this works is something that individual groups will have to decide, but over all this isn't exactly a game like D&D where everyone has expensive pieces of loot to obtain so it all balances out; in a magic-heavy group, for example, selling a high-end cyberdeck could mean that everyone else in the group can afford a very nice focus, since those are relatively inexpensive. and it's not like you as a rigger would be left out in the cold either; you'd be able to afford a few drones, or maybe an upgrade to your main vehicle, for example.

but yeah, short version: it looks like potentially you could be able to run a rigger/decker combination, but you'll run into resource limitations far more readily than a technomancer will. the technomancer, of course, suffers from a lack of a VCR until 6 karma can be obtained (assuming 7 are saved at chargen).

A quick and dirty corp strategy for preventing decks from walking off or falling into the wrong hands: implanted decks with kink or micro bombs designed to destroy the implanted deck/user's head on the death of the user or by remote command.

as i said, in most cases it's much simpler and effective to just make them part of the building. when your deck is installed into a full-sized desk which is welded to the floor and runs off of cheaper components that are drastically less space-efficient, the practicality of stealing it is significantly reduced (and honestly, i would expect the value is also much lower if it's actually unable to be compressed down to the size of the portable version).

only a select few people actually need to have portable models; the on-site security decker is not one of those people.

No way. Whoever wrote these can't ever have actually played Shadowrun, or plays a game vastly different from everything I have ever seen. It's a dungeon crawl rewards table. It requires the Johnson knowing everything the team did, and the team trusting the Johnson to pay up after the run ... I don't know where to begin, it's that bad. What the hell, CGL. What were you thinking, if you think at all?

And hm. I think the mundane DeckerRigger would not need the best deck - just *a* deck to be able to deal with marks on drones. A MA 200 (at some 110K) is still quite pricey, but no more than a decently tricked out vehicle. And given how entirely defenseless a rigger is otherwise, it's probably a good investment. All you really need is something with an attack attribute - because that's a prerequisite for removing a Mark. Keeping your sleaze on 5 will make you a lot better hidden than the average rigger, which givey you a significant edge. If you have a decent WP, you can also boost your PAN's firewall better than with *the BEST* commlink at rating 7. Given how dependent a rigger is on their PAN, PAN security should be worth a lot to you.

For noise, you can always use a sattelite dish if necessary, or other noise-reduction equipment. Though I don't really see why the noise reduction in the RCC should not carry over (if there is a rule that at least hints at that, please tell; so far, daisy chaining is a blank slate in the rules).

A mancer would probably not need the deck, since a mancer is their own deck. However, they really might want to get a VCR to be able to properly rig. Is it still possible to immerse in chargen?

A technomancer may very well want to invest in a cyberdeck of some kind. If said technomancer is known to do hacking, then they've got a prop. Otherwise it's quite clear that they're not "normal" and there are group/organizations that'll pay bounties on technomancers.

Accessing the Matrix via AR also generates a persona. "When a person uses a device to connect to the Matrix, the device’s icon is subsumed by the persona’s icon..." (p. 235).

It's not 100% clear when you generate a Persona. Simply accessing Augmented Reality may not be enough to make one as it isn't necessarily the same as connecting the user to the matrix. It's possible that in order to access "The Matrix" instead of simple Augmented Reality you need to actively bring up a Matrix Display. Page 229: "As we’ve described, AR is normal living in physical space with an AR heads-up display. You can see the Matrix if you like, either by creating a virtual window or display screen and viewing it like a camera, or by overlaying device and host information on your normal vision. " More over, the Matrix is a world of Device Icons and Hosts, where as Augmented Reality is full of Augmented Reality Objects (AROs), and the two are not necessarily the same. AROs are interactive objects and interfaces, as well as body overlays and billboards, etc. Device icon on the other hand are restricted to smaller than persona objects floating in blank space based on distance.

More on topic: Nothing stops a Technomancer from owning and carrying around an RCC and slaving their drones to it. They probably do not want to directly use the RCC for generating a persona as their own living persona is better (and has Attack and Sleaze). As the owner of the RCC they effective have 4 marks on it. When they are in the matrix via their living persona, they can see its device icon and issue it commands. Similarly they can do the same to their drones regardless of what they are slaved to. The RCC could still have autosofts running on it, which it would share with the drones slaved to it normally. The drones would also benefit from the PAN feature of letting them use the RCC's attributes on defense checks.

What the technomancer misses out on is the ability to jump directly from one drone slaved to the RCC to another, instead of having to jump out before jumping into a new one. They might also miss out on the ability issue the same command to various subsets of their drones, although the Control Device matrix action seems to imply you can issue the same command to multiple targets normally as long as you own all them. Page 238: "If you are the owner of all devices being commanded and they are all being commanded to do exactly the same thing, taking this action costs nothing extra." Lastly, while they can set the RCC to have noise reduction, it would not help their persona as it is separate from the RCC.

About Jumping in:
Let's also not forget that there are no current rules in the book against submerging at character creation, although much like Initiating, that may be a mistake that will be altered in errata. In theory, right now at least, you could start with a Grade 1 Technomancer that has taken Mind Over Machine and thus could jump into vehicles via a emulated Control Rig 1. It would cost 30 karma.

Why would it cost 30 Karma? Should only cost 13 Karma for the Initiation.

page 257: "Each grade has a Karma cost equal to 10 x (Grade x 3) Karma"

EDIT:
page 325: "The cost to initiate is 10 + (Grade x 3) Karma."

Ok, I think the submersion cost is an error.

Yeah, that's the old question of the "internet of things AR" vs "Matrix AR" and how they interact.


...but since none of their TM abilities help with that, he will be just another dude with an RCC.

Indeed... Submersion costs the same as Initiation...

that's debatable.

first of all, sprites. it's a bit unclear whether you can loan sprite services to a persona that isn't present. if you can, then the technomancer could simply transfer services to his/her other persona. if not, well, that's a pretty big deal.

secondly, the technomancer's living persona has attack and sleaze. that makes a number of matrix actions *substantially* more effective.

third, some complex forms can apply to their drones. for example, you can reduce noise penalties even further than the RCC alone (or let the RCC run autosofts to be shared). and you can improve their matrix attributes.

but mostly, it's the simple fact that a technomancer can spend two priorities on being a rigger (resonance for the attack and sleaze attributes needed to protect your drones, resources for drones, RCC, and cyberware if any), while a conventional rigger is limited to using only one (just resources for everything).

I don't see why you need to transfer anything to an inactive persona.
It's not a separate "other" persona that has the drones, as your are the owner of the drones and RCC. You can only have one persona at a time, and if the Technomancer is using his living persona, and thus able to use resonance abilities like summoning sprites or complex forms, he can still work with his drones. All of them, RCC included, will have a Device Icon on the matrix, which you can interact with via basic matrix actions that target devices, like Remote Control or Jump in. Those drones can still be slaved to an RCC forming a PAN and sharing autosofts. You are just not on the PAN yourself, despite you being the owner of all the devices. Basically, none of the matrix actions you'd use with a drone require it to be on a PAN with you, they just require you to be the owner or have enough marks. As the owner, you can still remote control them or even jump into them if you have the ability through the Mind Over Machine Echo. Because all those icons belong to you and are probably within 100 meters of your, there shouldn't be an issues using complex forms on them or having any of your sprites interact with them either.

An excellent point. You can provide much better support to your drones in the matrix, including activities like erasing marks placed on them. Better yet, if you can jump into a drone via the Mind Over Machine Echo, your sleaze would apply to that drone, making it much better at running hidden: Something not so normal for a Decker.

Exactly. Use the Complex Form Infusion Firewall on your RCC and it's firewall, and thus the firewall of all your slaved drones, goes up. It's a valid target because it's a separate Device Icon, not a Persona Icon, thanks to the fact your are using a seperate Living Persona.

hmmm... you're right.. i think i was at some point having an internal discussion with myself before realizing that you could just run the device without running your persona from it, and that spilled over into the post.

i think the point i was initially trying to make, before a random rant started and i revised the paragraph to not include the original point, was that sprites are still quite good for a rigger (for example, i think we can all agree that protection from glitching is a rather handy thing to have)

Now y'all have done it. The dev's worked long and hard to nerf TM's out of viability to appease the grognards and you had to provide an viable return of the dronomancer. This kind of thinking must be errata'd out of existence.

only viable once you initiate a few times, really. before then, you're not really a rigger at all, just some random dude who orders drones around.

besides, i feel pretty confident that they'll never openly admit that technomancers are a problem (the freelancers probably aren't allowed to, and the staffers will never say it anyways), but that they'll overreact by putting all kinds of stupid powerful stuff in as echoes when they get around to the matrix book because they know perfectly well that technomancers are bloody awful with only the core book, with the one exception that they can more readily afford to combine hacker and rigger.

mind you, they'll pay for it somewhere else... no free lunch after all, if you set both technomancy and resources to a high level, you're also going to need good skills, and you can no longer completely ignore attributes for hacking and rigging either, so you need decent attributes to go with that... which means you're probably going to be an edge 2 human, unless you give up even more somewhere else. and you're probably starting without a VCR (although i suppose you could start with a cybernetic one, and replace it when you initiate with 1 essence worth of other good cyber/bioware).

Fortunatly for you, CGL doesn't believe in publishing errata.

1.) Good question, though you could always share Sprites tit-for-tat with another TM. But since the ambiguities of how Machine Sprites interact with drones were "solved" by excising any way for them to interact with drones, what's the point in that?
4.) TMs are not exactly the character type with too many resources (in the general sense, not just the "resources" priority) to spare. So as usual, you would be better off making a good TM for supporting a good rigger. Which also is my answer to 2+3: A TM makes a fine support/bodyguard for riggers, just like a mage does. But he will not make a good rigger himself.

In fact technomancer can have the benefit of the CR but not of the RCC and i think that this is the lack for them...

If a technomancer can build a complex form of a RCC there is no more problem with that...

This is the same as for smartgun i guess..

A Technomancer can still buy an RCC and slave all their drones to it. It's actually a good idea, as the drones can't be slaved to the Technomancer's living persona. As long as the Technomancer doesn't use the RCC to make a Persona (something he can't do if he's already got a living persona active) then he can at least benefit from the added protection (Firewall) an RCC might give his drones, as well as the ability to share autosofts.

The requirements for jumping into drone, as listed for the Jump Into Rigged Device matrix action, do not in anyway interact with the Master/Slaving rules, so even though the drones are slaved to the RCC, the Technomancer (assuming he has the Mind over Machine Echo) can still jump into any drone he owns.

The only major feature of the RCC the Technomancer completely looses out on is the ability to jump directly from one drone to another. The noise reduction feature still works for the RCC, but it doesn't help the Technomancer's living persona.

Something that I am curious about with this discussion, is how exactly does an augmented rigger interact with an RCC.
It would seem to me that an RCC is mostly a gateway to tie all of your drones together, being that it doesn't have the full persona attributes of a cyberdeck. That being the case, I would say that an RCC is rigger enabled, allowing anyone with a Control Rig (or Mind over Machine) to utilize one.
This would also explain why a decker can't just grab an RCC and start bossing drones around without a control rig.

anyone can use an RCC. the only unique functions are the shared drone autosofts (which you could run on most drones directly anyways, and which cannot be combined with running autosofts on the drones, making it mostly useful only if you have a bunch of the same drone with the same weapon that would be unable to run it on their own), the noise reduction (which is only unique in terms of how much you can get), and the ability to jump directly from one drone to another (which is only useful if you have a control rig).

so, in short, anyone who doesn't have a control rig is probably just throwing a lot of money at noise reduction. and honestly, i don't really feel that's a problem.

As I understand it, anyone can take an RCC and start bossing drones around as it apparently functions a lot like a commlink, but with a slew of extra features. In fact, Control Device is a Data Processing limited action, so even a commlink can still command anything with a Pilot rating.

It stands to reason that anyone with a commlink can still order vehicles and drones around. That way the common wage slave can still remotely turn their car on to have it pull up and turn on the heater for them while they're still in the home, or order their Renraku Manservent-3 to clean the toilet.

The main advantage of the Control Rig is that the person can become the drone.

Edited: Correcting a mistake on my part.

You need a Control Rig (CR or VCR) to jump into a drone. You can do so without an Rigger Control Console (RCC). In fact the book describes the how jacking directly into a vehicle works (as apposed to using an RCC, Commlink, or Deck in between) in the rigger sections. Additionally, you can slave drones to a Deck or Commlink, that isn't a unique feature of an RCC. It's just that RCCs provide extras to the drones slaved to them that neither links or decks provide.

An RCC has no requirements for basic use. Anyone can own one and use it to manipulate drones, including the noise reduction and autosoft sharing features. In most ways it functions like a Commlink. When you use it to interact wit the matrix, including but not limited to rigging and controlling drones, your persona forms based on the RCC, and replaces it on the Matrix. To put it another way: an RCC does not have all the full matrix attributes of a Cyberdeck, but it does have the attributes of a Commlink. RCCs are not rigged devices. You can't jump into the RCC, nor do you need a Control Rig to use it. Note, however, that without a control rig implanted in your skull, you still can't jump into a drone, even if you own an RCC. In that case the RCC is just a useful tool for remote controlling drones, including autosoft sharing.

A technomancer that owns an RCC, however, probably does not want to use it to form their persona, because in that case it is not a living persona (it's based on the RCC, not the technomancer's unique abilities) and therefore does not allow access to the technomancer's matrix attributes or resonance abilities.

That's about how I have it figured as well.

Because I saw it mentioned earlier in the thread, I did want to point out that the required action to give a drone an order (rather than remote controlling it) is Send Message as described in the long rigger exemplar. To control a drone as if you were using remote control is accomplished through the Control Device action.

To do either, you basically only need a commlink.

Ok, so here is a different question.

Does this mean that only if you are connected to the vehicle by a cable, does the vehicle take the damage? So again TMs are unable to avoid direct damage without a datajack?

well, that should be pretty much expected. it's one of the drawbacks of being a technomancer. now if only there were enough advantages to make those drawbacks worthwhile...

Sadly it is not always a Data Processing action, because: "If there is no test associated with the action you want the device to perform (such as unlocking a maglock or ejecting a clip from a pistol), you must succeed in an Electronic Warfare + Intuition [Sleaze] v. Intuition + Firewall test to perform the action." Yep, your garage door opener needs a Sleaze chip, and using a commlink for ordering the Manservant to clean the toilet is only possible when it's so clogged that cleaning it requires a test

That's an extreme example. First of all, Control Device is what you use to remote control a device, so if you really want to remote control your drone to clean a toilet, that's a sign you either need a better drone or a better hobby. Personally, I'd go with "Send Message" to inform the drone it needs to clean the toilet, and let it's pilot & autosofts handle the actual task.

Second, yes the rules sadly assume hacking is involved in many of their uses. I understand the designers wanted to ensure that a hacker would need to make a hacking skill check of some kind to force an enemy's clip to eject, even if they have the marks, but they forgot to write in a caveat about legal/permission like they did for Jumping into a Rigged Device's write up (IE: you don't need to make an illegal matrix action to jump into a device you own the device, or have three marks on and permission to use.) Of course "permission" is a poorly defined term as well.

Until this gets sorted out with errata/matrix splat book, you'll probably want some house rules to handle it. Here are mine, with 9 & 10 being the applicable ones.

For most people, in order to get onto the matrix you have to connect to it via a device, typically a Commlink, RCC, or Deck. When you do so, that device is changed into your Persona, and it's that device that takes matrix damage, even if you later jump into a drone/vehicle it's the persona enabling device that takes the damage. If a Rigger connects directly to a vehicle, with no device in between, then that vehicle becomes the device they are using so it would take the matrix damage.

Technomancers, however, typically form their persona from their mind alone, which means that if they were rigging a vehicle via Mind Over Machine, the matrix damage is hitting them right between the eyes. Their brain is their commlink. If a technomancer happened to have a datajack and used it to directly link to a vehicle, and then used that vehicle to access the matrix instead of their living persona, then they too would have matrix damage hitting their vehicle instead of them... but they also wouldn't have any of the features of their living persona, including attack & sleaze and the ability to use complex forms. You could even argue that without access to their resonance abilities they don't have their Mind of Machine echo, so they couldn't rig the vehicle without a real Control Rig implant.

Sure, but it shows the flaw clearer than others