So I finally read the matrix rules for SR5 to see why everyone hates technomancers in this version and I don't get it. Here is a modest build proposal that makes them very useful.

Obviously the correct thing to do is build an elven technomancer with Exceptional Attribute Charisma, put 9 points in it, pay a mage to quicken a Force 9 Increase Charisma spell as soon as you can to boost that to 13, then start Submerging and take as Echos: Attack Upgrade (2), Resonance Decryption program, Resonance Biofeedback program, Resonance Hammer program, and Resonance Lockdown program.

Your matrix DV will be 18(!!), or 24 if you bother to max out your marks first, and with lockdown and biofeedback you'll be sure to kill pretty much all spiders you can hit in 1-2 combat rounds. Even cold sim users will go down to the lock and stun overflow. The rare person who managed to jack out and not go into overflow after soaking the dumpshock will live as the rarest of matrix legends for surviving your wrath.

Put all the rest of your karma into Cybercombat skill buy a Cerebral Booster 3 and a Pain Editor. After you've maxed out Cybercombat skill and have 21 attack dice you can start putting some karma into Firewall echos and Willpower. You pansy.

This is clearly a well balanced and reasonably achievable character who proves that contrary to the erroneous fantasies of Dumpshockers, deckers are actually quite obsolete compared to technomancers.

So you're saying after putting (literally) hundreds of karma and thousands of nuyen into your one-trick pony he'll be AWESOME at that one thing he's focused on? Color me surprised!

People get so hung up on the "potentially limitless" advancement potential of Resonance and Magic after submersions that they put blinders on to how much karma is required to get up there. Do you really think that HUNDREDS OF KARMA is a reasonable timeline for advancement, to be good at a single thing? I ran a campaign for almost two years and the players got 150 total karma earned. Your character is advancing at a nearly glacial pace.

Just a hint: if your character concept requires hundreds of karma to become good at one thing, then chances are it probably isn't all that smart a build. Technomancers are still crap, plain and simple.

I am giving SlitheryD the benefit of the Doubt here... My guess is that he was being sarcastic, while pointing out that Technomancers were overly penalized in the transition to SR5. Could be wrong, though...

Consider me suitably trolled, then, if that is the case. Technomancers are still a bit of a sore spot for me in regards to the new edition.

i read that as being sarcastic as well.

perhaps if he were to spend a paragraph or two ranting about how obviously versatile this build is, that would help

I thought it was pretty obvious I was joking. I do find it ironic, however, that the best way to be a technomancer is to largely ignore Resonance abilities and focus on magically boosted Attributes to have better Matrix Attributes than you can get with a cyberdeck.

After discussion on here I was prepared for high drain codes on threaded complex forms, but I didn't know they were going to be so...useless. What does Static Bomb do that a normal matrix Hide action doesn't, other than damage you in the process? Ditto for Editor CF vs. Edit File action.

Resonance Spike is hilariously bad compared to a Data Spike action. Who would use this garbage even if the Fading cost was L-99?

Static Bomb doesn't generate OS, and affects multiple targets at once.

Editor has the advantage of not requiring a MARK.

Resonance Spike... Yeah, Data Spike is likely gonna be better.

Meh, I'd rather just spam Cleaner at low level or permasustain Static Veil during long waiting periods to manage OS. I suppose I can see the use of multiple targets if you're being swarmed, but not at that Fading code.

For Editor, at that Fading code a single mark doesn't seem like much of an additional burden.

Yeah, and if you don't need MARKs of your own there's an even easier way to hide yourself: Reboot, which not only cleans you of all marks but also resets your OS to zero.

editor also edits things a heck of a lot faster than edit actions, because it gives you your net hits in edit actions.

Editor also takes [Level] Combat Turns before it becomes permanent.

sure, but it starts working immediately.

plus, that could actually be an advantage sometimes... you can make your edits disappear.

(and remember: copying a program is an edit action).

Well, actually the elven Attackomancer is the first specialist approach to a viable TM I have seen so far. You start with 9 or more probably 8 DV out of the box, which is actually a possible way to brick something reliably within just one action. With just Cybercombat and Computer, and none of the other skills you still can get marks, crash programs and devices, get the data, assist the actual decker, ...

Your primary focus would be Face, of course.

Lowest TM prio is C, then either Elf B to get a lot of Edge, Attributes A, Skills D, Ressources E, which makes you a lucky amateur or Elf D, Attr A/B, Skills B/A, Ress. E again, which makes you an unlucky pro. There is also a lot of potential, spend your Karma on Face skills or submersions and your Nuyen on wares, as you don't actually need your Resonance.

Still, a lot of investmest to be able to one-shot brick someone, which is not my favourite attack anyway.

I still find the best way to deal with TM changes for SR5 is to gently weep myself to sleep at night.

Sounds about right.

After the epic fuck-up that is the technomancer rules for SR5, among other massive fails, I really have no faith or confidence in the current leadership and development of the Shadowrun line. If that sounds like a strong statement, well, yeah. It's meant to be. It's how I've felt ever since I digested the massive turd that is the SR5 rules.

I agree. There are some things they did that worked well.

And then there's everything else.

Other than the grenade/AOE defense fiasco, what else are you pissed about? I like most of the changes but no doubt haven't though through all of the implications enough to figure how they're secretly screwing some people.

Technomancers.

Mysterious nanite-melting nonsense.

Stupid economy.

Half-assed Matrix rules with even more loop-holes than SR4's.

Half-baked wireless bonus rules.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of at the present moment, and I really don't want to derail the topic any more than it is already (let's get back to our Swiftian-style epic troll.)

If you consider that they seem to cling to the edition that is the least like all the other editions, I think you can come to the conclusion that Shadowrun just isn't a game they like. Nanite hives and technomancers and wi-fis are a pretty brief blip in the overall scheme of things.

This is some pretty presumptuous shit, here. I got into Shadowrun back in in Third Edition, ten years ago. I got into the game for the setting, not the rules (which had issues, but I worked through them.)

SR4 was a huge step forward in many ways. I like the advancement of the setting, the metaplot, and the rules changes. I thought as a whole they worked rather well. Over time I even came to like the SR4 Matrix rules.

But because I don't like the overall package of SR5, I must not like Shadowrun in general? To me, SR5 seems regressing, not moving forward. YMMV, of course, but overall I'll only play it if I don't have any other choice, and I sure as shit don't have to give CGL any more of my money.

You're repeating what I said, just all angry and contrary.

We could be having the same conversation about how D&D5 elves can't teleport like D&D4 elves and how that's a regression, but how you view it entirely depends on whether or not you thing it was a good progression in the first place.

The SR4 setting changes are ultimately a spin-off of Shadowrun -- there's a lot in there that completely changes the game and the way you could expect the game to play going forward, but a whole lot of it has been pulled back for the new edition to bring it more in line with expectations from SR2 and SR3. SR4 is comparatively way out in left field at this point.

RPGs are funny things, in that you can put the genie back in the bottle, and that's what they've done. If you think they shouldn't have, it means you didn't think it was too a shitty genie to begin with, and there's not much to say to you about it except that you like the spin-off more than the base game.

There's no immutable law of the universe that says that anything that they said happened in a particular edition actually happened and they just have to forever work from those established premises like an undergrad trying to get his GPA back up after flunking calculus.

Spin-off is completely inaccurate - it was a progression, and one without which I very much doubt Shadowrun could have survived. Now you might think that the progression took away too much of the old, but destroying the new just to bring that back more of the old is a horrible choice.

And besides that, your particular point of comparison is HILARIOUSLY irrelevant, because it represents a completely different thing.

Nah. SR4 is the AfterMASH to SR3's movie and SR5's TV show.

Or maybe W*A*L*T*E*R.

Seriously, that was almost a thing? Wow. Not sorry I missed that one.

Why? What makes that the case?

The speed ratings suck, hard, and a couple of things are half baked, but overall I like 5th.

Well, it's got some familiar players in familiar parts, but it's overall a completely different thing.

I can keep carrying the comparison if that's what you're after. Bottom line is, though, all the HATEHATEHATE on the new edition for not being as way out there as the old edition is a little tiresome.

huh. i got some bad news for you. a chargen hacker can get a deck with 4/5/6/7 for stats. by placing the 7 as attack, choosing decryption (which the technomancer can't pick up without submerging) and thereby get 8 (matching what the technomancer can have at chargen). then, choosing another program (same situation as decryption), hammer will boost your damage by 2. meaning you're ahead of the technomancer on bricking already, and have made no sacrifices whatsoever in your build to do so. and, with the right programs, a hacker can also hit two targets at once. and make it link-lock. if they're willing to risk some more matrix damage, the hacker can also deal non-matrix damage to an actual person, not just a device.

in short, the technomancer assassin is a joke. literally. it was presented as a "hey look how much it takes to get a technomancer to look scary" joke.

You're completely missing the actual complaints people are having. Technomancers, as they stand, are as horribly underpowered that they may as well not have been included. The structure of the Matrix changed in a way that notably nerfed them indirectly, and then the nerf bat was brutally taken to them in a way that makes them worse than deckers as Matrix specialists AND much less flexible.

Now, it's fair to say that SR4 moved (at first) more towards a transhumanist feel, and that SR5 is moving things more to the cyberpunk angle, but that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with this discussion. It's as irrelevant as it can get - the problem here is mechanical. I happen to think you're wrong about the differences, but I'm only willing to get into that distraction for so long. Hell, technomancers find their conceptual roots in SR3 to begin with, making this even less relevant (and, incidentally, it comes off as "I like SR3 better and if you like SR4 that's BadWrongRun!").

The question was:



And then of course there was all the generic blah blah hate hate hate. What thread were you reading?

Yes, and as far as technomancers go, the serious problems people are having are mechanical in nature. They've basically been nerfed into oblivion and lost huge swathes of capability.

In point of fact, most of the major points of contention I can think of are generally mechanical or elements that are truly new to SR5 (as in, seen in none of SR1-4, such as wireless bonuses).

Not seeing it. The techno might not stand up persona vs persona, at least against 400,000 nuyen worth of gear, but you don't actually need the bitchinest persona for hacking, and sprites and complex forms are useful.

What's the over-under on a decker versus a techno with a small horde of attack sprites anyway?

Whoever's done the math, don't forget to factor in Agent programs.

Most problems stem from the higher Fading costs & lower utility of the CF's making most CF's either too undesirable or too high a possible fading penalty over traditional methods of doing similar things.

Honestly, if I were going to play a matrix character I would consider a technomancer only if my GM was INFAMOUSLY stingy with the nuyen handouts.

Decker gets better dice pools over all, generally better limits, fewer skills and attributes to worry about, has leftovers from their primary priority that allow them to be an awesome decker and have a splash of something else, can afford Essence loss and thus get initiative boosters... The decker gets a bit of an edge in-Matrix while getting to be more flexible out of the matrix, making them strictly superior. Sprites can be good, but also took a SERIOUS hit for the most part (in fact, they're effectively harder to get than spirits and cause the same damage to you, but they're far less powerful). Technomancers don't stack up well against any comparable. Add to that the fact that Fading and Matrix damage are going to the same track for them and all the extra ways you get hit with Matrix damage, and it only gets worse. Then there's the completely out of line Fading codes on Complex Forms. Also, do keep in mind the various limitations on sprites.

You wouldn't call it balanced if street sams could get the dice pools to operate but were flat out worse than an adept built for the same job, would you?

Doubtful, and too general a statement. Dice still come from skill + attribute, and programs might give one or two dice on defensive actions but nothing offensively.



Doubtful, also largely irrelevant. If mimicking the Sony CIY-720's persona is your goal as a techno, you can do it. And just like the decker, you'll spend 75% of your priority A (resources for decker, attributes for techno) on doing it. Generally speaking, though, limits in the 6-8 range are things you grow into, and not a major concern for a starting character.



Skills come with new abilities, and your priority sets you up for 2 of the 3 Resonance skills. Deckers still need Logic, Willpower, and Intuition at high levels.



Just a splash money-wise. Being a technomancer sets you up pretty handily to pick up a support role in any of the mental or social skills.



Oddly, low Resonance doesn't interfere with your hacking. Cerebral Boosters are pretty sweet for Technos, especially at the minimal cost of one die on Resonance rolls.



That's a stretch. If everything is a smash-and-grab, deckers might do better because they can configure for it. Technomancers can handle subtle things way better, like snooping a comm line for 17 straight hours, or tracking a user in a host throughout his workday, which are things a decker would have a hard time with.



And technomancers/otaku used to permanently fade by young adulthood. Not really interested in what they used to be, rather more interested in what they are.

Fact is, a cheap-as-free Level 3 Crack Sprite can keep IC off the techno's back for 2 combat turns (~6 complex actions) , where a decker would have to fight/evade/flee. Fault sprites are monsters at higher levels -- Level 6 sprite with sustained Electron Storm for 6DV per action phase plus punching at Attack 9, while causing 2 extra Noise. You should probably register one during your downtime to call out in an emergency, it's probably worth the headache.



Still don't see it. I keep hearing it, but most of the complaints aren't centered around being completely shown up at the table by the decker, and strikes me just as unimaginative bitching.



It must suck to be a rigger, taking biofeedback while getting shot at, all on the same track.



Depending on which day of the week it is, by some complaints, everything is better and/or worse than everything else at the same things.

Deckers will have an extra 2 dice from Cerebral Boosters, which is generally out of reach for technomancers, and makes them worse at what is supposed to make up for what they lose.



And as the decker grows, his limit advantage gets even larger. Plus he gets all the benefits of PAN/WAN functionality with those same attributes.



And a technomancer needs all three of those in addition to Charisma and Resonance.



Having run the numbers, it's a very significant portion. Having the leftover skills for that is difficult for a technomancer. If you go A/B for Resonance and Attributes (in either combination), you're looking at 28/2 or 22/0 skills (probably). If you ignore Decompiling, you'll still want to spend the lion's share of that on Hacking, Electronic Warfare, Cybercombat, Computer, Software, and Hardware (Rating 4 of each being 24 points).



So... To match up in terms of dice pool alone, you have to diminish your Fading resistance and your facility with the abilities that are supposed to make up for everything you lose?



Yeah, long run hacking like that isn't really in the core book (slated for Data Trails, called Deep Runs if I remember Bull's post right). Technomancers might be able to get around this in rare cases, but that sort of thing isn't really meant to be coming up for the moment - and really isn't making much of a difference on a run directly, other than perhaps starting you off with some extra damage that now cannot be healed by anything other than natural healing.



And how do those compare against the most direct comparable (spirits whose Force is equal to the sprite's Level)? Very, very, very poorly. There's edge case usefulness for some sprites, Fault sprites can be used for basically one thing. They're not worth the Fading. Plus, that Level 3 sprite? You probably only get 2 services out of it due to the introduction of Limits to Compiling.



Then you're not bothering to read at all closely.



If the Rigger's eating biofeedback, he's jumped in and thus his meat shouldn't be in a position to be getting shot at.



That's not an answer.

Because obviously I love SR4 in the area of my complaints as well.

I think the main reason we do it is that bitching and moaning is so therapeutic. It makes us feel a bit less of the hollow void inside that haunts our sleep and makes us hunger for the souls of the living...

I stand corrected. Indeed, I haven't looked into optimized Deckers that hard yet. Thank you for clearing it up

Since I was already unmasked as having not much experience in this, maybe you can help me:

One of my players wants to play a TM, because he likes them. But he is worried about balance, a feeling I share. One major issue seem to be the programs, so he suggested to buy programs as complex forms. I don't like that, because having all relevant programs active at the same time, seems to me like SR4 all over. I therefore offered the following three houserules:

1) TM have as many programs slots as resonance, under the same ruling as the Decker. Free choice from all programs, but not agents. The Resonance [Program] echo gives you an extra slot. Can be taken up to 3 times.
2) TMs are allowed to have WAN/PAN, just like a device.
3) TM are allowed one submersion at chargen at normal Karma costs.

And, of course, they follow the same house rule as mages: 4) The limit for compiling is the social limit, not the Level of the sprite.

From the list of grieviences compiled in this thread that should about cover it. The intent of the house rules is to make the game more fun for the TM, mostly in terms of meaningful gameplay options. I am okay with starter TM being somewhat weaker than starter Decker or Rigger, but the gap should not be as glaring. Same as a starter mage will probably not do as much damage as easily as a Sam. Still, as a rule of thumb, a specialist TM should be able to beat a normal Decker in his area of expertise and/or have some meaningful gameplay options, the other does not have access to.

I am contemplating adding an equivalent to the Aid Sorcery service as a task, kind of like the old complex forms.

5) Costing a task and the next complex action from any normal un-registered sprite, it adds its Level to one matrix action's DP and limit, as long as they have the necessary skill.

But that might be overdoing it.

I feel compelled to make a lot of minor changes concerning this Drain code or that meaningless Sprite power, but I like my houserules to fit on one page for easier reference.

Brilliant change!
Somewhere in my sleep last night I pondered a better solution than [Force] for spirit summoning and never came to a conclusion (likely because the ponderances lasted about 3 minutes) but I definitely did not hit on that one.

I wrote some house rules a while back where I gave technos a new limit on various tasks, being either the higher of their social or mental inherent limits (sorta like astral limits are to magicians.) It has the benefit of being more directly tied to the character, but it does make it harder in the long run to achieve the higher levels of certain tasks due to the difficulty of raising those limits. Fix one thing, break another. That said I prefer using the new limit to pulling Level out of your ass and breaking certain mathematical probabilities over your knee.

Quite, sir, quite. *Monocle*

Marginally worse, to get better at what you're complaining they're not good at. Considering the number of arguments around here for putting 'ware in your mage or adept, why's it weird that you might want to do that to the techno?



If you're not using most 'ware, you don't need to run a PAN/WAN. Also, the cost of a decker's upgrade is astronomical, as the next upgrade from best-out-of-chargen is over 500,000 nuyen. Technos can upgrade incrementally.



And Street Samurai need Body, Strength, Reaction, Agility, Willpower, and Intuition to excel at their roles. What's your point?



Deckers run into the same issue of needing Resources A/B and probably attributes up there, leaving them in the same boat for skills.



Yes. If you want to be as good as the decker where the skillset overlaps with the decker's, you'd have to diminish your ability to do the things the decker can't do. I think that's the overall point of 'balance' in a game -- you can't be the best at everything. If the technomancer could out-hack the decker off of pure persona and skill, there wouldn't be much point to the decker.



Archive hacking's not in the core book, but you're implying that it's not useful to spy on people or sites for extended periods, which is really a great strength of the technomancer. While everyone else is calling their contacts and bribing the cops, the technomancer can sit adjacent to a target's commlink and record all their phone calls, or track them with a Cookie to see what their matrix activities are.

Hackers are brutal. Technos are insidious.



Sprites aren't spirits. Sprites are immensely better Agents. You can't directly compare two things that literally can't interact.



It's all coming back down to "technos can't out-hack deckers" and ignoring all the extra things technos bring to the table. "Complex forms aren't good enough" and "sprites aren't good enough" and so on, which apparently means they're totally worthless. You yourself just wrote a paragraph on how sprites are terrible and primarily useless, etc.

Because when it comes down to it, with people arguing about this damned game here, if there's no "I Win" button that comes with a character's abilities, it's trash.



Oh, right, because riggers only ever jump in from the safety of their fortresses of rigger solitude.



It's the only answer.

Oh cool, well, actually it is supposed to make high level sprites and spirits harder and harder to control. That was a result of the Angel Summoner thread a while back. It is, technically, a nerf, because it lowers the abusability. It also makes things more coherent on the low side as a side effect, but for house rules, I am usually worried about the high aspect. So what if Force 2 does not scale.

those look like reasonable changes except that i would consider resonance in programs to be too much (a technomancer could start with 7 running when the best a decker could hope for is 4... i'd make it resonance divided by 2, round up, giving the same starting limit of 4 programs although the technomancer would need a quality for that), but i'd also consider lowering the fading on some of the complex forms too. puppeteer is level +4, most matrix actions are complex actions, so you're looking at 7 points of fading there (which can only be healed by natural healing), assuming you don't leave *any* room for the target to roll a single hit on defence. maybe take a look at some of the other complex forms, too, although puppeteer is certainly the worst offender. for comparison, 7 points of drain on a mind control spell will generally result in controlling average targets indefinitely (those with higher magic resistance will at least get to roll something, but if you're not throwing at least 7 dice on the test, it will never wear off, and that's for the multiple target version... if you make it single target, like puppeteer, you need more than 8 dice on magic resistance to ever break free of mind control, although for most magicians that will mean physical drain as opposed to stun).

Of course Puppeteer can be used to do things like force a Decker to data spike his own persona. Which sucks if he's running in hot-sim with 7 Attack with Hammer and Biofeedback, since his automatic 4 marks on himself would have him doing 17DV to his deck and 17P to his brain (followed by an extra 6P of dumpshock when the deck crashes), which is probably a death sentence.

It would be very, very wrong for that to be the only way to play an effective technomancer. Just like it would be very, very wrong for that to be the only way to play an effective mage or adept.



And to get the same upgrade, a Technomancer would have to submerge 4 times. Meaning that they have to spend 70 Karma and advance in no other way in that time. The decker, meanwhile, gets to add a bunch of stuff with Karma - because unlike the technomancer the decker can advance with both nuyen and Karma. Technomancers actually have even less use for nuyen now than they did in SR4.



That the difference in needed attributes between deckers and technomancers contributes to the fact that technomancers have to spend more to be a technomancer. A street sam isn't really relevant to that point.



Actually, a decker has far less need for Attributes A/B. Attributes C is more workable for them than for technomancers due to needing fewer attributes - putting Skills A/B far more in reach.



Actually, you're still not as good as the decker, then - you're just sorta catching up in terms of dice pools. The decker still has several advantages.



The point your missing is that the system sort of pretends this activity just doesn't happen for now. And even if then, what you're actually saying is that in exchange for being worse on the run, you can have a bit of a boon to legwork - you can't tell me that doesn't sound like a bad deal to you. Add to that the completely out of line damage codes you're taking to do this sort of thing, and it just gets worse.



Actually, they ARE directly comparable because they use pretty much the exact same basic system, but spirits just have a whole bunch of extras added on that make them more useful. If sprites aren't meant to be comparable to spirits, they shouldn't use the same system and inflict the same damage to the character. The structure of the system makes it very clear that they're meant to be comparable to spirits.



Actually, it's "technomancers can't hack as well as deckers, while simultaneously being less versatile/powerful outside of the Matrix". If technomancers are going to be less versatile/powerful outside of the Matrix (which they very much are), then for the system to be balanced they actually HAVE to be more powerful in the Matrix (the other way to create a balanced environment would be for both types to be equally powerful/versatile in both the Matrix and the meat). Instead, they're worse in both.



Ragdolling in the middle of a firefight is a pretty damn foolish thing to do if you don't take SOME kind of precautions.



No, actually, it's not an answer at all. I posed a hypothetical scenario, and asked if you would call that scenario balanced. You chose to ignore the hypothetical scenario, and thus did not in any way answer the question.

On this one, I've been rolling around the idea of a Complex Form that lets you emulate a number of programs based on your hits. For example, you could emulate Fork, Decryption, Armor, and Biofeedback when going into a Matrix fight - but as a result, you suffer the sustaining modifier to all your actions.

the other thing you'll want to take a look at is Fading codes - they're generally completely out of line.