While waylaid by sickness this week, I had a simple thought to fix the technomancer. What if the priority for resonance was just shifted a single category downwards. E would still be non-technomancer, but otherwise it seems to match the same priority for a mage much better than the current location.

Sadly, I do not have access to my book currently, but I intend to run the numbers when I can get it tomorrow.

Chargen is among the issues with technomancers, but far from the only issue.

Still not enough for me.

Just toyed with the thought of making a technomancer character, and if I ever got serious and actually made one it'd be Resonance C & Resources B at least so I could buy the character a cyberdeck to use instead.

just so long as your GM doesn't decide that "using sprite services" counts as a resonance action (it shouldn't... i mean, you can give services to other people even if they aren't technomancers, so long as it's a registered sprite. the only unclear part is whether the "person" (in this case your non-resonance persona) must be present to have those services reassigned).

well, that and it's a bit sketchy whether you can keep sustaining complex forms when your living persona is offline.

I considered making a technomancer gunslinger, with the sole purpose of his technomancy being to summon machine sprites to make his enemy's guns malfunction.

Still a work in progress, and I'm not sure if it'll ever be finished at this rate.

Why would you want/need a cyberdeck? That's insane.

Is it PAN related? Just use a rating 6 Commlink. That's a 6 FW rating + your Willpower for defense. Bonus points for boosting it with CF Increase Matrix Attribute: FW and having Focused Concentration (to avoid negs). That could get you as much as an 18 dicepool for defense against attacks to anything slaved to your commlink without taking Physical Fading damage. Deckers usually only see, what? 12-15 out of the box? Without a billion $$$'s invested in the top tier deck you'll never see a better defense pool. Yeah, you can't slave as many items, but you can slave 18 i think (device rating x3). Or is it device rating x2 for 12 items?

Either way, a technomancer can still protect his team's gear. Arguably better if CF increase FW is running. And for way cheaper.

Although, I wouldn't mind it if Technmancers droped from A to B. I think that would help a LOT. I'd be able to take resources higher.

And if you're talking about using the deck for nonwireless systems....buy a data tap and run it through the commlink. The archetype has a few for a reason. Or, worse case, get yourself a datajack, eat the essence/resonance loss and you're done. Hell, tons of the flavor text and explanations for technomancers revolve around the Otaku being the first technomancers, and how a bunch of them became technos after the crash, and they HAD to have a datajack (or trodes) to connect to systems, just not a deck. It's thematic for a technomancer to have cyber.

I have been toying with the idea of having a cyberarm with a datajack in the arm (don't see why you couldn't put it there, it's capacity after all, and the arm works from a DNI just like the jack does). Nothing that I know of says that a datajack HAS to be in your head....though....putting one in a "Mr. Stud" implant might be kinda....skeevy....funny....but ugh.

Plus if you put a jack in an arm, eat 1 point of Res/Ess loss, you can boost up the agil and be a good hacker + have decent shooting abilities...

I'm still playing around with the point spread to make it work. But after 50 karma or so, you'd probably be able to outmatch most deckers in both shooting and in hacking (especially given that technos are inherently more stealthy). 50 Karma is pretty easy to get to if you play Missions (Get 5 karma per run, do Man of the People every other week for 5 karma by spending $10k, that's only 5 games and you're at 50 karma). With 50 karma, you could submerge and boost your Res up to 6 again, and buy a needed active skill at 1. and that's without using ordeals or groups. The Decker would most likely start looking to upgrade his deck or his programs or whatever, and spend his off weeks doing "working for the Man" to trade in 5 Karma for $10k. OR, he'd buy some other needed skills.

Except for the part where you can't use the comlink and willpower and your living persona to use a CF to boost anything. If you slave everything to your comlink, then it's the comlink's stats that get used, not yours.
You can slave everything to the comlink and use it's device rating for defense and use a CF and/or Sprite to assist the com with defense, but then you are basically gearing you entire build (level x4 Karma for Focused Concentration) to "building a better firewall"

While annoying, the comlink plan is usable. The Matrix section mentions that a device gets to defend with its owner's Willpower even if it's not actively being used by its owner at the time. So power up the comlink, slave the devices and then use your Living Persona as normal. Technomancers really should be able to slave a PAN though. My dwarf Technomancer has Willpower 7, which would give an extra die if things were slaved to his Living Persona. Not to mention that the disparity grows if you want to use submersions that way...

I assume that it's because many complex forms are good at buffing matrix stats on devices, allowing you to simply pump points into willpower/logic and then use complex forms to buff up your deck's stats. It's actually a good (if expensive) combo: you get a deck with good matrix attributes, and can still summon up Sprites when needed.

Actually, was thinking of pitching the sprites entirely and dumpstatting Charisma and have the technomancer abilities as the last ditch, after the shit's hit the fan, backup for a decent cyberdeck since the cyberdeck will likely have higher matrix stats & limits on average.

Just remember that Charisma is also your LP's attack attribute.

That also works. My only real problem with running like this would be that technomancer price tag is a bit high at priority C if you're not going to get much out of them.

What do you think the cyberdeck's for? Even the Renraku Tsurugi or Novatech Navigator have more Matrix damage potential with Decryption & Hammer than any technomancer save an elf with Exceptional Attribute and everything dumped into Charisma.

Maybe a whole on drop of the priority for technomancers may not be such a bad idea. Might make it less enticing to use that section as toilet paper.

I thought about that as a way to build a Technomancer, but I don't think it works. Say you're online as your LP and buff your deck. Now you switch your persona to the deck, which means your LP has to drop offline. At that point, don't all your sustained complex forms go away?

Sadly, I think Technomancers are great at buffing other people's decks but not their own.

ok, first of all, you're going to need a level 6 complex form for that. non-trivial, since you don't have any such thing as a sustaining focus equivalent (so when you go to sleep, it stops), which means that you're doing it every single day, and the only recovery method is to rest. which probably means "not sustaining a very distracting complex form". it is made even *more* non-trivial by the fact that you would need rating 6 focused concentration to pull this off.



eh, not so much. no stealth attribute is a pretty big deal when you're trying to hide.

[snip]



ummm... maybe you hadn't noticed, but... a resonance 6 technomancer is noticeably worse than a decker. not superior. getting up to resonance 6 does not make you equal to the decker, it just means you're back to your starting point... ie inflexible, lower dice pools, more things you need to spend karma on, no way to advance in your specialty using cash without also harming your specialty, matrix damage is real damage (and thus inflicts penalties, while matrix damage has no effect until you've lost everything), no way to get augmentations without harming your speciality, no programs (well, ok... after 1 submersion, you *can* choose a single program to run all day every day. 3 more submersions, and you'll finally be able to run as many programs as the decker can... except that he can switch his programs at a moment's notice, and you've always got the same 4 programs). the decker can get the same combat augmentations as your technomancer, only *without* suffering an extra penalty, and since the decker needs to spend fewer skill points on his area of specialty, the decker can *also* afford to have the skills to back up said augmentations.

after 50 karma, your technomancer will have gained 6 resonance and 1 grade of submersion (depressingly, he can't really afford to ignore the resonance either... he absolutely needs to have resonance as high as possible, because taking physical fading on a regular basis is a good way to spend your week off lying in bed and trying not to bleed too much instead of turning cash into karma using an optional rewards system that is not remotely canon). and in fact, you'll probably need to raise your resonance again the next time you submerge, because you're likely to need to use rating 7 complex forms all too often.

that said, shifting priority down would indeed help... being able to take priority D for technomancer is much stronger than priority C. it means your first three priorities can be attributes, skills, and race (use it to boost your edge, and raise the middle finger to the technomancer's complex form limits by spending edge all over the place). being able to use priority D as "hacking resources" would actually, imo, justify being so much worse than a decker at hacking.

in fact, the number of people who are already trying to cram technomancer into the lowest priority possible and finding it *still* too expensive to fit in other things says something about just how far off the actual value of technomancy is from where SR5 thinks it is.

Which is what I was thinking with it. Priorty B would give full access to all technomancer stuff, allowing them to go priority A for attributes, which is sorely needed if they want to focus on being a technomancer. With C in skills, this gives a pretty well rounded human or elf technomancer, that is not worthless in everything but the matrix, which is the problem technomancers usually have.

Ya know? I'm kinda wondering now why things weren't set higher for technomancers.

Look at it this way. The best cyberdeck a decker can hope to buy at creation is the Sony CIY-720, which has a Device Rating of 4. At the same point a technomancer can have Resonance A, which means a Resonance attribute of 6 and thus has a Device Rating of 6 for the Living Persona.

Deckers the world around should be up in arms about this!

The overall uselessness of device ratings is one of the bigger oddities of the matrix rules.

eh, device rating isn't useless.

it's just useless for technomancers.

for everything else, it determines the maximum number of things you can slave to it, matrix condition monitor, and for most devices it determines their other matrix attributes (or at least appears to have a very close correlation... for example, almost every cyberdeck has a stat line of DR/DR+1/DR+2/DR+3, max programs DR. there's a couple that are a bit off, but that's basically the pattern).

Speaking of which, I bet there's enough data there to model the cost of a one point increase to an array attribute. I'll run it in a bit.

"The determines other attributes" thing, at least, is BS - what you care about is the actual matrix attributes. They don't have to have a shadow "device rating" in the background, you could just give them matrix attributes.

The slave thing is useful, but an extra box of condition monitor is somewhat marginal. I guess it also helps you soak matrix damage, making it as useful as Body. Somewhat, but not very.

You could, and in SR4 if a device were modified it would have its own matrix attributes.

But for expediency it's a lot easier to have a Device Rating and a lump group of devices. Like how every handgun in SR5 has a Device Rating of 2; means that every handgun in the game has a Firewall of 2 and can take 9 points of Matrix damage before it's bricked. No need to outline the exact same info for every single handgun there is. It'd be a nightmare in the next guns splat book(s).

That said, it would be kinda cool if certain weapons had higher Firewalls than other weapons in class to account for their being designed to a different standard.

sure. here's how you do it.

step 1: purchase thing with a higher device rating. ideally the thing will be small. even more ideally, your GM actually considers stealth tags to be a legitimate choice for slaving something to it, and you will also gain a stealth attribute (only works for very low device ratings though).

step 2: use an almost zero-length cable to connect your upgrade directly via the only jack to the device you want upgraded.

step 3: slave the device you wanted to upgrade to the device you're upgrading with.

it now no longer has a cable port available to get direct access without removing the upgrade piece. the only way the slave's attributes can be targeted is to make that direct connection. therefore, for all intents and purposes, you have upgraded your device's stats for the low, low cost of not being able to directly wire anything else to it.

But that stops the decker from being worthwhile in combat.

I'm more talking about if the manufacturer had hardened it more against matrix attacks.

Which would be interesting, but perhaps too big a step at once. Adding an additional attribute, accuracy, to most weapons already increases the number of factors involved with them.

Though it would be an intriguing way to get more companies into arms manufacturing. Sure Neonet may not make the most accurate pistol, but it sure is hard to hack!

Which was something possible in SR4, but apparently not done very frequently. Of course, there was never a need for a gun to have a Firewall attribute anyway, unless it was a smartgun and wasn't skinlinked or wired (like was done 20 years ago), or you were a ganger and said gun also doubled for your iPod.

Now, with every gun manufactured on and after 2075/01/01 being wirelessly enabled it's pretty much mandatory that it have a Firewall attribute so deckers can actually have something to do in combat.

Smartgun for an iPod! I never thought of that. I have to incorporate it into a character now. Though it might suck for my allies if I glitch while changing my music...

It would be difficult to get more Hardened than by having no Wireless mode.

Which is Stupid in the extreme. Remove the Wireless capabilities and you now have an Infinite Firewall. *shrug*

Actually, that creates a vulnerability - people who want wireless will add it on the cheap, and then hacking the gun is very, very easy. Security is always counterbalanced by usability, and it's a simple fact that if you compromise usability too much your security WILL be compromised by users seeking greater usability.

and G.O.D. knows we must do everything possible to make sure the Decker feels worthwhile and special.

It is a good point that if you want a entire system of products to be running wirelessly you should & would be building more defences right into the devices at the manufacturer level.

However as it stands right now, such uneven distribution of wireless utility versus maintaining operational status while wireless simply means most runners will just shut it down, removing a vulnerability and sadly a facet of the gameplay.

Stronger wireless bonuses would be a good thing - but I was making a more general point, given that runners aren't typically the market these things are designed for in-setting.

That is true, but then that just forces runners to look for gear that is designed for folk in that sort of work and that would be military grade stuff and then you get into the whole power creep.

But some of the items are sort of built for us. How many average joes seriously need to use a mono whip? Just how hard IS that synthcheese?


I actually am not asking so much for bigger bonuses but better defense on the items themselves.

Wireless already exists, though. I am commenting on the fact that it is trivially easy, however, to gain an infinite Firewall that is totally unassailable. You just remove wireless entirely from the weapon (or cyber, or whatever). Done.

Nothing sad about that at all. And it will not be just Runners doing it, but would include anyone wanting to maintain ironclad security.

Problem is that better defenses (secured behind a PAN, etc) would screw with the basic assumption (and mandate from JH) that Hackers need more things to do IN COMBAT. As long as that premise exists, then Security measures will pale in comparison. Remove the stupid security risks implemented in SR5, and then Hackers who cannot "contribute" (because they apparently cannot conceive of doing anything else except screwing with others through the Matrix in combat) will complain because they are no longer special snowflakes.

Simple for me. Just run Dark in SR5 (design characters so that they do not need to have any wireless bonuses - easy enough to do, even in SR4A), and watch the Hackers weep for their inability to actually do anything to me. *shrug*

I know, but still still keep hoping that maybe some tweaking from on high may occur.


In the meantime, still working out the bugs in our magical formula for a tac-net like sustainable spell.

Now if we could just keep the heads from exploding as well as better buffer against persona overlaps....

I still love the SR5 game a friend of mine is running. From the stories I've heard the team decker has done one round of general data mining (legwork), one round of hacking, one round of almost being hacked, and several rounds of firing a shotgun loaded with APDS on burst fire (not necessarily all in that exact order). And all of this is the exact same shit that hackers/deckers were quite capable of doing in SR4. And have done in past games of mine.

Hell, that decker isn't even the best combatant in that party, and he has done more damage than the two street sams in the same party.

And as for technomancer heads exploding, they can always try something like this: http://www.addamsfamily.com/addams/f_headache.jpg (tried looking for one where he's got a c-clamp on his head, but failed)

*blinks* Actually the spell is magical for awakened and mundanes to get a tac net like benefit from the shared linking spell, sharing information between them, but maybe I am missing a trick here since the current formula explodes heads due to neural overload and personality blending, the more minds linked making it all the more unstable...

I am seeing this as a bug, when maybe I need to look at it as a feature.

Slip it into a preparation with contact trigger and leave for the opposition to find......

Magical and Mundane to share information...

Like a "Mindnet" spell?

Street Magic, page 168. Quick conversion to SR5 would be Drain at F+3

Impossible! The only thing in SR5 that is allowed a value such as that higher than +1 is a Complex Form!

There is no Double Post

Pretty much, though there are some arguments about targeting via the shared images so while it could negate blind fire penalties so long as one person can see the target, but am working on better sharing for concentraing firepower we are trying to hammer out

also the tac version would allow one to get a sense of direction of each other as well as overall health, so an injured/unconscious member could be homed in on if needed.

no, you've got that all wrong.

only things that reduce the usefulness of deckers (specifically deckers only, technomancers and any other form of hacker can go screw themselves) can have high drain/fading values.

clearly a magical tacnet is infringing on the decker's territory, therefore it must be nerfed into complete and utter uselessness followed immediately by making it cost so much that even if it was really good, it would still be a bad idea to ever use it.