What is required to play a viable Decker/Rigger?
They need a Cyberdeck to hack and likely want an RCC to rig.

What steps do you have to take to switch between controlling your drones and hacking?
How is initiative calculated if you're plugged in to an RCC, but using a slaved cyberdeck?

you might also want a control rig. that being kinda the thing that makes you a rigger as opposed to just some guy that owns some robots and orders them around.

as far hacking, i don't think there's anything restricting you from doing it while rigging, but i would suspect it shouldn't work when you're jumped in (but i have no rules whatsoever to back that up).

just run your persona from your deck. the RCC is actually more or less optional, although pretty handy if you want multiple drones.

If you're using a Deck, you have Sleaze and Attack and therefore should be able to hack. Jumping in actually makes your Persona replace the device icon of the drone you're rigging (in addition to the device used to get online), so you have a Persona on the Matrix too. The question is can you see the Matrix in order to target icons or do you only see what the drone's sensors see? Maybe if you have an Image Link in the drone's sensor systems you can open a Matrix Window or overlay matrix data into AR?

At the very least you can Run Silent much better, and you can Erase Marks/Hide and otherwise take illegal/hacker Matrix Actions that involve your own persona.

DeckeRiggers are probably the most vuiable type of SR5 Rigger. They may not have the nice vehicles from the get-go, but they will survive to get them, unlike ofther riggers who'll just get bricked/hacked/matrixattacked out of existence.

oh, you should still be able to get a pretty decent vehicle. a rating 3 VCR (used) and a novatech navigator cyberdeck will run about 360k nuyen, which still leaves 90k before karma if you go with resources A. as i mentioned, an RCC is optional (though not a bad idea), but can be had for a pretty low price if you really want. you may not have *as many* vehicles, or possibly you'll be investing A into resources instead of putting it at B, but you can still start with a pretty respectable vehicle and still cover your other basic requirements with 90k nuyen (potentially up to 110k if you want to spend some karma on it).

Hey, what do you guys think about these questions? I couldn't get anyone to talk about it before.

For convenience, here they are again:

dunno about whether you get the RCC's noise reduction (i could see arguments both ways) if you run everything from your deck, but i'm fairly sure you need to run your persona from your cyberdeck if you want your persona to have attack and sleaze attributes. you'll still be able to use attack and sleaze for defence only if your RCC is slaved to your cyberdeck, but i'm guessing you wanted to also be able to perform matrix attributes that are limited by attack and sleaze.

but yeah, as far as the noise reduction... i don't know. my best guess... yes, but you'd need to make sure the cyberdeck can communicate with your RCC. so for example, if you have a rating 4 cyberdeck, and there are 5 points of noise in the area, your cyberdeck can't communicate with the RCC via wireless... this is fairly trivial to fix by simply taping the two together and attaching them with a wire, or something along those lines, however but ultimately, that's just a guess. it may be the noise reduction is only intended to work between the RCC and the drones (in much the same way that the RCC can share autosofts with drones slaved to it). it may be that the noise reduction is only intended to work if your persona is running from the RCC (although there's nothing that actually says it is, that might have been the intention). i don't really know.

If your Persona is being run through the RCC then it gains no benefit from having the Deck Slaved to the RCC. The deck is there, as a device icon, and it gets the higher of it's matrix attributes or the RCC's attributes for it's defense rolls. Your persona, however, is operating via the RCC, so it doesn't have Attack or Sleaze. No rules in the book allow a Master (your RCC) to use the feature of a slaved device.

Now you can run cyberprograms on the deck, but they won't effect your persona becuase it's a seperate device. For example, running the Encryption program would enhance the deck's Firewall, but it still won't do a thing for your RCC based Persona.


You can slave your RCC to your deck and it will gain the standard benefits of slaving (IE: it can use the deck's attributes for defensive rolls.) It can also run it's own cyberprograms, but they won't affect your Persona as they running on a separate device. Again, running encryption is a good idea as it boosts the RCC's Firewall, which in turn helps with any Drones salved to the RCC. It does not, however, help your Deck.

Noise reduction likewise works but only effects the RCC. It's a separate device and nothing in the Slaving rules say that the features of a Slaved device apply to the Master device.

You do, however, get some benefits from running autosofts on the RCC. Any drones slaved to the RCC will be able to gain the benefits of the shared autosofts normally because that is a unique feature of the RCC, and it's unrelated to weather or not the RCC is currently a Persona or Device Icon. If drones are slaved to it, and it has autosofts, it shares them with the drones (assuming the drones aren't running autosofts on their own.)

Mind you, because you are not generating your Persona through the RCC you also don't get the added advantage of being able to hop directly from one slaved drone to another. You will need to hop out of a drone as an action and then hop into a new drone as another action. Thankfully, the requirements for jumping into a drone have to do with ownership/marks not master/salve relationships so even though you are online through your Deck you can still jump into any drones you own (assuming you have a Control Rig) even those slaved to the RCC.

EDIT

I'm not sure Noise Reduction on an RCC applies to the drones slaved to it. I figured it just applied to the RCC.

My understanding is that the noise penalties you take on matrix actions, including just about everything a Rigger does while jumped into a drone, are calculated by taking the local noise for the rigger (static zone/spam zone) and applying a distance noise penalty for the distance from the rigger to the Drone. Local noise on the drone doesn't apply directly. However, for this to work the drone must be on the matrix. If the local noise at the drone is greater than it's pilot rating (device rating) than the drone is not on the matrix and thus can't be rigged into. I interpreted the RCC's noise reduction as aiding the rigger in dealing with noise that applies to him, but I didn't see anything about the noise reduction also applying to the drones. For that reason I recommend loading up drones with the Signal Scrubber cyberprogram, which reduces noise by 2 at their end... making them more resistant to Jamming/spam/static/etc. This is especially effective because running any autosofts on a drone keeps them from getting shared autosofts from the RCC, but cyberprograms are not autosofts, so they are fair game.

Or did I miss a line in the book that says noise reduction at the RCC applies to the drones too?

OK, Blackjaw, let me see if I can build a case for why a rigdecker or deckrigger would work.

First, there's matrix attributes. From p. 226: "Electronic devices run a lot of different applications, utilities, and code libraries to keep things working smoothly. Rather than list every single program running on a computer individually, the total effectiveness of these programs are described as Matrix attributes. ... There are four Matrix attributes: Attack, Sleaze, Data Processing, and Firewall (abbreviated ASDF). Most devices (including commlinks) have only two Matrix attributes: Data Processing and Firewall. Decks and hosts have all four, including Attack and Sleaze."

So, a matrix attribute is trait that belongs to a device, and it represents software running on that device. Though it isn't explicitly mentioned in SR5 that I can find, I assume that while running a persona on a device, your persona inherits the matrix attributes of the device. But the important part is that a deck has Attack and Sleaze even when a persona is not running on it.

Next, in the DNI sidebar on page 222, it says, "A direct neural interface, or DNI, connects your brain to electronic devices." Note the plural devices. Later in the same sidebar: "You get DNI by wearing trodes, or having an implanted datajack, commlink, or cyberdeck." You can also get DNI from a control rig (p. 452).

But which devices does your brain connect to through DNI? In the description of the Change Linked Device Mode action on page 163, it says, "A character may use a Free Action to activate, deactivate, or switch the mode on any device that he is linked to by a direct neural interface through either a wired or wireless link." So we can link to any device without having it be slaved (previously, I thought slaving and linking were one and the same). When I said "slaved" in my original questions above, I should have said, "linked," so as not to confuse the issue with the benefits of a master-slave relationship.

So, consider a rigdecker who's running his persona on his RCC (which is plugged into his control rig via data cable) with a data cable going from RCC to a cyberdeck. We've established that:
1) He has a DNI from his control rig.
2) He is linked to the deck.
3) By virtue of 1 and 2, he can control the deck with his mind.
4) The deck has Attack and Sleaze attributes (which really represent software running on the deck).

The way I see it, given these 4 things, using your mind to order the deck to Data Spike someone is basically the same as using your mind to order a smartgun to fire at someone or eject a clip. If there were some statement in the rules like, "You can't perform Attack or Sleaze actions unless the device your persona is running on has those attributes," then that would negate the possibility, but I haven't seen anything like that. I will admit that there's nothing in the rules that explicitly states you can do this either, but to me, it seems logical enough.

Deckrigger would be a similar situation. Datajack connects to deck connects to RCC, persona running on deck, deck and drones slaved to RCC. Drones can only receive autosofts via Sharing when slaved to the RCC (p. 267), which is why you make the RCC the master of your PAN instead of your deck. Your deck's device rating is probably lower than your RCC's, so it's beneficial to do that for matrix defense anyway.


The noise reduction text seems to indicate you add up all sources of noise reduction, subtract it from the noise, and if noise is still positive, apply it as a penalty (p. 230). The rules talk about "you" in this case, so it seems to me you don't need to consider noise affecting the drones separately, only the distance between you and the drone when figuring "your" noise. Your interpretation sounds reasonable too, I could go either way.

what would be the point in noise reduction if it doesn't reduce noise on the other end? you need two-way communication for it to be of value.

anyways, as far as ordering your cyberdeck to do something, you can't. it's just an object. it has no pilot rating. you need an agent if you want it to be able to take actions without you directly controlling it, otherwise it can only defend.

I agree that the hypothetical character has a direct connection to his Deck, and therefore can control it with his mind. The part I don't agree with is that the character can take Matrix Actions through the deck while his Persona is on the matrix through his RCC.

I think the rules were designed to specifically prevent the kind of multi device setups you describe, based on my reading of these two sections of the book:
Page 229: "When you interact with the Matrix, you can do it in one of three modes." [AR, Cold VR, or Hot VR] "You can perform Matrix actions in any of the three modes."
Page 235: "When a person uses a device to connect to the Matrix, the device’s icon is subsumed by the persona’s icon, so it’s basically gone from the Matrix until the persona jacks out. You can only run one persona at a time; switching requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona."

I see the setup you describe as a Character on the matrix through their RCC with a DNI (Direct physical connection) to a Device Icon for their Cyberdeck. In the Matrix that's a Persona of the rigger via RCC and a separate Device Icon for the deck. The Rigger could control the deck, essentially using the Control Device matrix action on the deck, but they can't take matrix actions through the deck unless they reboot both the deck and their RCC to reform their persona in the Deck instead of the RCC.


Running an Agent on the cyberdeck would convert the deck into a persona, "Agents running alone on a device replace the device icon the same way a living user does" (page 235) that you could then order to take actions, including hacker actions if the device it's on has Attack and Sleaze. However, the agent would be taking the actions using it's stats, not your skills and attributes. (see page 246 for details.) The highest rating Agent you can start with is 4, which would have the equivalent of 4 in it's mental attributes and 4 in the "Computer, Hacking, and Cybercombat skills" (page 246.)

You would be controlling it via DNI, as illustrated above. It just wouldn't be generating your persona.

If the intent of the game developers is that they don't want people doing decker stuff and rigger stuff at the same time, then we needn't carry the argument any further. The only reason I considered it at all is because (non-TM) riggers are completely helpless when a decker starts messing with them.

page 241: "There’s a list of things you need to have in order to jump into a device: you have to have three marks on the device you want to jump into, you have to be in VR, the device you want to jump into has to have a rigger adaptation, and you have to have a control rig. "

Nothing is stopping you from Rigging while using a Deck. You'd have to have a Control Rig implanted, but if you have, and plug it into your Deck, you can generate a Persona that has Attack and Sleaze, and can still jump into a vehicle. You could even hack enemy drones and jump into them (if they aren't occupied by rigger already.) The Jump Into Rigged Device matrix action even has rules for jumping into a drone you don't own without permission.

I think Bull has even mentioned that his 5th edition character is a Decker that does some Rigging.

Additionally, you can still have all your drones slaved to the RCC, so they can share autosofts. The requirements for jumping into a drone or vehicle has nothing to do with if it's slaved to an RCC or not. Similarly the rules for a PAN don't require your persona to be involved either.

exactly what blackjaw said. also exactly what i said in my first post in this thread. you have to be running your persona from your cyberdeck to take matrix actions using your cyberdeck's attributes.

you don't need to be running your persona from an RCC to operate drones, or to issue orders to them; in fact, you don't even need an RCC at all; it's just quite useful in certain situations. you do need a control rig, but you can run your persona from anything you feel like while doing so (a non-decker rigger may wish to run their persona from a high-end commlink, for example; a rating 7 commlink can be had after chargen for a relatively low price).

Does it actually say that in the rules? I can't find it.

If you are taking matrix actions through a device, then you are forming a persona through that device. You can only have one persona at a time, and the rules specifically say to use another you need to reboot into that new device:

Page 235: "When a person uses a device to connect to the Matrix, the device’s icon is subsumed by the persona’s icon, so it’s basically gone from the Matrix until the persona jacks out. You can only run one persona at a time; switching requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona."

In your scheme, the rigger already has a Persona through his RCC. It looks clear to me that the intention is that for him to use the Deck, he must first stop using his RCC.

Find me any example in the book of a device icon, or any non-persona icon, taking matrix actions. IC, Agents, Sprites, and users are all Personas. Hosts respond to actions by generating IC and informing Riggers: which are Persona.

Even if you could send commands through the Deck to take matrix actions without forming a persona on it, you want to be aware that as a Device Icon it can't move around the matrix or enter a host. Device icons remain on the matrix in a location corresponding to their distance from other icons in the real world. Depending on how you read the rules, you'd only be able to interact with devices that are within 100 meters of the deck.

Why would you think that? At least for Hosts, They are ALL within 100 Meters, since they have no physical distance. For anything else, you can see and interact with things beyond 100 Meters, they just take effort, since they incur range penalties.

A drone, which as far as I can tell is not a persona, can perform Full Matrix Defense per the example on page 271.

I don't have my book handy right now, so I'll lack page references, my apologies.

I was basing this off the section which describes the "on grid" section of the matrix as being illuminated by a collection device icons based on their distance from you. A persona zooms around to interact with icons, and therefore isn't necessarily present where the device hosting the user is. All the other icons, which are devices (or files on devices, etc) are placed based on distance. The exception being Hosts which are described as floating in the sky. The only time a device icon is described as being inside a host is when it's slaved to that host, in which case it is no longer in the "on grid" part of the matrix. No where is anything described as having two icons at once.

You do raise a valid point however. If a device icon can be used to interact with the matrix without forming a persona, then nothing in the rules would stop it from moving around to interact with other icons, including entering hosts. That would mean the smart thing to do would be to get online using a nice high Firewall commlink and then remote controlling your Deck on hacking run without risking your persona nor loosing out on your Vr enhanced initative or dice pools: which is to say not the rules as I think they were intended.

Well, if the persona is generated by the commlink, there would still be an icon for the deck, it'd just be a device icon instead of a persona icon. It would have a separate matrix condition monitor, and could be attacked like any other icon, so there would still be a risk.

In matrix iconography terms, I imagine it like holding something in your hand that you use to perform Attack and Sleaze actions. Like, if your icon is a digital wizard, maybe the deck would be a neon crystal orb crackling with eldritch power, or whatever.

Anyway, setting rigdecker aside for a moment, deckrigger still works, right? Persona on deck, deck and drones slaved to RCC (like you pointed out, no jumping directly from drone to drone in this configuration). If that works, and provides pretty much the same benefits, it doesn't seem like a huge dealbreaker to me to have the persona running on the RCC. Well, I guess for certain combinations of deck and RCC, you could get better Data Processing in a rigdecker configuration.

Meh, anyway, not a huge deal. If I really wanna do both, I'd probably just play a TM even with their apparent flaws.

So I feel like I've drifted into being "that guy" on the internet that's telling you that the thing you're doing is wrong, even though it works for you. I don't want to be that guy. I'll state my opinion one last time, but without new information coming to the surface, I think we may need to agree to disagree.

So here we go: You haven't convinced me that your scheme of using a deck while having your Persona through an RCC is viable under the rules. Bits like page 218's "The fact that the device has a user overrides the device’s normal icon status, turning it into a persona," and page 235's "When a person uses a device to connect to the Matrix, the device’s icon is subsumed by the persona’s icon, so it’s basically gone from the Matrix until the persona jacks out. You can only run one persona at a time; switching requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona" make me think the concept is against at least the intention of the rules. But I'm not the guy who wrote them so I can't claim that knowledge. Moreover, I'm not finding a section of the rules that outright says you can't do what you propose, and more importantly: just because I don't think it's right doesn't mean it's wrong for you and your game group. If your interpretation of the rules makes the game more fun for your concept and it works for your table, I have no right to tell you can't play that way. Even if you intend to take this character concept to a Missions game at a convention I'm not in any sort of a position approve or disapprove of the concept. Have fun, and I'm sorry if I frustrated you.

Well now I'm intrigued. I agree Drones are clearly not a persona, but a device icon. Full Matrix Defense is a matrix action. This makes me wonder: what exactly can a drone do, matrix wise? In fact, if they have matrix capabilities, does that help the argument about what a rigger using a deck for his persona can do matrix wise while jumped into a drone? This would be even more interesting if drones had Attack and/or Sleaze attributes. (And once a gear/matrix/rigger book comes out, they might get that as an option.)

Looking into it some more: According to page 269, a drone's pilot program stands in for any mental attribute they might need. Skills wise, they tend to use autosofts instead of their pilot rating, which is unlike Agents which have a listed set of matrix related skills at a rank equal to their rating. One of the autosofts a drone can possess is Electronic Warfare, which directly provides them with that skill. Looking over the Matrix Actions, there are a number that use Electronic Warfare, but all but one of them use Attack or Sleaze, which under current rules no Drone has. Moreover, the only legal electronic warfare action left is "jump into drone" and clearly drones are not users with control rigs. If this was a character I'd argue that it could still take any number of untrained actions using just it's pilot rating, but pilots are less adaptable that real characters, so I don't think that's really an option here

Odd concept: Drones are clearly listed as devices, not personas, and have program capacity equal to half their pilot rating. Agents use up 1 program capacity, and if installed into device without a user, form a persona out of that device. An interesting trick for a rigger would be to install an agent into all his drones. That agent would be a persona, but not jumped into the drone as it doesn't meet the requirements... it could spend it's matrix initiative taking "Full Matrix Defense" to defend the drone/agent icon from matrix attacks. It could even enter a friendly host system, making it inaccessible on the normal "on grid" matrix. A decker attempting to mess with the drone on the matrix would have to track the agent/drone down across matrix into a host, where he might have to deal with IC. Downsides: as a persona icon instead of a device icon, the drone may or may not be still applicable for slaving to an RCC. Additionally, if the drone is in a host and you are not; remote controlling it or jumping into is probably not possible. I think the only option you could use to communicate with it is "send message" which is probably enough to give it instructions. Actually, considering the drone would be occupied by a persona already, I'm not sure you could jump into it anyway.

Overall, I think the two control programs: Pilot and Agent would essentially be two entities, one matrix and one real world, each with their own initiative and set of actions, but sharing the same device and matrix condition monitor box. If the agent gets hacked or bricked, so is the drone.

I'm not sure you can "move" device icons around with your Persona. If your decker forms a persona and goes romping about a host, does his smartgun icon come with him? I'm by no means sure, but I don't think it does. I think device icons (not slaved to a host) remain in the "on grid" section of the matrix more or less related to where they are in the physical space. I could be wrong here. It's possible that PAN icons fold into your persona and come with you. It's not overly clear nor spelled out in the examples. If you play it as the the devices icons going with your persona, IE: the rigger wizard with a deck for a wand iconography, that actually makes this idea a lot more viable in some ways, as it's clear which icon is taking the actions and getting the outcomes. You're not sending the deck off to hack while safely remaining behind.

Looks valid to me. There are some open questions about slaving a deck to anything while it's hosting a persona (IE: Slaving a deck to a commlink for the better firewall so you can focus on attack and sleaze), but it's not needed for "Deckrigging" anyway. The deck can exist separate from from PAN of drones & RCC without hindering rigging because jumping into a drone has to do with ownership/marks not master/slave status. Things don't need to be slaved to be useable by you, they just need to be owned (or marked) by you. Incidentally, this is also true for Technomancers with the Mind over Machine echo as their living persona can not be in a PAN as it isn't related to a device, but it doesn't stop them from rigging.

Null sheen, chummer! We're just talkin'! I appreciate you being my sounding board.