Grades of effectiveness? Sure. There's a difference between a Yugo and a Cadillac.

Out of curiosity, what devices would those be? The only connected devices I use are a cell phone and a PC, and I wouldn't say that the PC works better just because it has an Internet connection.



FWIW, I thought midichlorians were stupid, too. Personally, I always thought the solution to deckers being weak in combat was an SMG and a few points in the skill or devious tricks like the ones listed above.

This I agree with. Wireless everything makes sense for the "every Joe" who believes GOD when they tell him/her that they can just leave their wireless on all their stuff and GOD will protect.

It does not make sense for any profession/lifestyle that deals regularily with high security or technologically advanced criminals... .i.e. everything that Shadowrun PCs are about.

In 3rd ed. that's pretty much what all my deckers did. Didn't take all that much extra nuyen to toss Wired 1 and Muscle Replacement 2 and grab a skill of 4 or 5 in SMGs. I never had problems cracking systems or popping security myself. 4th seemed to have made it easier even still to get good combat skills mixed with decking skills.

5th its a little trickier to get the correct priorities to make it work, so far, however.

Yeah, you can't actually disagree with that because it isn't a premise. A statement like that defines the space for the argument, and in this case, that space is an environment where that thing is true. Any ideas that you have on what the actual truth value is or should be are not relevant. The question is, in the environment where that is true, what does it take for that to make sense? You've implied a partial answer already - a sufficient reason for being accessible remotely would have to exist for each piece of gear. That then leads to the question "What is a sufficient reason?", hence the question of whether the bonuses need to be better.



Really? A lot of the software I use loses a lot of functionality without internet access, and attempting to program without an internet connection would be a horribly frustrating task (not being able to access non-local documentation would suuuuuuck). For most tasks, the ability to jump over to Google and look something up is a very useful thing.

Heh, I remember those days. It did suck.

... I will admit that I have some books sitting on the shelf for that dark and terrible day when I have no choice. Which I am absolutely certain will not cover all the libraries I'll need.

Mine all vanished long ago. Then again I haven't had or tried to write code in .. well, it looks like at least ten years now. Crap, where'd that time go?

I have not one piece of software that requires me to be online. I do visit some online sites, to be sure (Dumpshock being one of them), but nothing requires me to do so.

And there is absolutley no need to go online to program, either (though it might indeed be a handy tool). If you need to access that [programming] information on any sort of consistent basis, why is it not Local (or in a printed format of some sort)? I would agree that being able to perform a data search on a whim is handy, but hardly a requirement or a necessity. I get along just fine with no online access other than a PC (yes, that means I do not have any type of phone that is cellular/wireless, nor any other device that would require such connections - no nook, no kindle, not even a laptop that is wireless). People can survive, work, and even play without having to have wireless communications shoved into their faces 24/7/365.

Halon (or the various "clean agent" replacements) are not seriously harmful to people in the space. A CO2 total flooding system can be horribly lethal, particularly if the pre-discharge alarms don't go off. For example, the CO2 discharge also fills the room with opaque clouds due to condensation, which makes it hard to find your way out and the C02 concentration rapids reaches lethal levels. After the Idaho National Lab accident it's generally arranged so that CO2 gas discharge drive sirens so there is always some sort of alarm. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Halon gas itself isnt particularly harmful to people, but it displaces oxygen. The occupants would die of suffocation.

I see an interesting contradiction here. I mean, how come the Matrix was "one of the most important aspects of the game" if it was "glossed over"?

SR authors maybe wanted the Matrix to be one the most important aspects of the game, because it was a staple of the cyberpunk genre they wanted for the game. But they failed to make it so. Sure, they made it an important aspect of the setting. They made it an important aspect of some adventures' narrative structure. But the map is not the territory and the book is not the game. Because of the rules, GM and players avoided making the Matrix a too much important aspect of their game, even when they were fans of the cyberpunk genre as well.

The difference with the 5th edition is that it was first decided what was wanted for the game, then the setting and the genre were altered to match. Having every object connected to the network wasn't the point in itself (even if it fits within our expectations for the future). It was merely a mean to achieve the goal of giving deckers things to do.

No, it is an effective extinguishing agent at rather low concentrations. You probably don't want to do an aerobics class in there, but you can breath fine. If you actually have a fire there are some nasty compounds that get created by heat on the gas, but fires themselves do lots of those too.

CO2 both displaces air and is a poison at the kind of concentrations used for a total flooding system.

It's really damn hard to write decent computer rules. We've seen people try it in multiple version of SR and multiple other games and they pretty much all suck. Part of it is that the rules we see tend to be written by worshipers of Mr Mechanical Typewriter, but part of it is that it's just hard.

As it would be the Deckers goal to either kill or incapacitate the occupants, I imagine they would continue flooding the room until the necessary concentration is achieved., assuming the necessary amount of gas is available.

It's glossed over by the players, not the writers. Almost all Shadowruns realistically require a Decker but for the most part I'd say the majority of groups tend to just handwave the mechanics so no-one has to play one. That may not be true for say your or my table (although I've witnessed it at plenty of others), but it's pretty clear that that's a sentiment shared by a large proportion of players.



4th Ed certainly had every toaster and shower-curtain being wireless, so that isn't a change specific to 5th Ed.

Tymeaus, I'm not sure that you can classify the behaviour of the masses based on the fact that you personally have not embraced the 21st century. Yes, the Shadowrun universe will include paranoid people but the exceptions don't prove the rule.

There are probably plenty of behaviours you do that are not safety/security best practice. Yes, you are not online all the time, this makes you more secure, but do you:

Lock all your windows and doors at night or when you leave the house
Lock away your valuables in a safe if you go away for a few days
Use bank or credit cards at exposed ATMs
Use Any forms of social media
Use gmail/hotmail/yahoo mail
Shred all correspondence that include your name and address
Only put your garbage out the morning of collection
Heed all travel warnings before travelling overseas
Look up social no-nos before going overseas
Use life jackets everytime you look at the water
Have grippy things in your shower to stop slippage
get on a plane is it anything besides QANTAS?
wear a seatbelt and helmet in the car
Ride a motorcycle (helmet or not)

and that list is hardly exhaustive, but depending on how you answer each one of those you maybe taking risk that can be easily mitigated. The fact is that you either subconsciously do a risk assessment and decide that the risk is worth taking or you are simply unaware of said risk.

Shadowrun should be exactly the same. At different times you should want to do all of:

1) Have your wireless on for the bonuses
2) Have it on with Matrix overwatch
3) Have it off for the security purposes.

Campain wise option 3 should only really be necessary with prior knowledge of an elite Decker, Technomancer or AI. Otherwise you should be relatively safe using options 1 or 2.

The opposition are in exactly the same boat. The don't come accross shadowrunners every day. More often then not they are suppressing riots, kicking disgruntled employees off their premises, prevent petty theft/vandalism by go-gangers, etc. They benefit in all these scenarios from having their wireless on.

Toaster

Wireless bonus: +3 to all CHA tests with NetCat


Shower Curtain

Wireless Bonus: Can change opacity at most inconvenient time, especially for NetCat.

Except that I am not alone... I know a LOT of people who feel the same way. I also know a lot of people who would be effectively crippled without their everpresent WiFi too... *shrug*

You are right that the 2070's are/will be different, but in the Small Demographic that makes up the shadowrunner community, embracing the wireless idiocy (especially with regards to Cyberware) will get you killed... Who cares what the rest of humanity does, it is that small demographic that we are playing. And if the professionals in that demographic have no cares about Cyberware being online, well, then they are stupid. No other way to really say that...

"I'd buy that for a dollar... "

Have you seen how much decks cost now?

.. less than they cost in SR3? Especially considering programs.

The difference I was pointing at is the way it was designed.

I am under the impression that in the 4th edition, the fundamental idea was that we were having a growing number of wireless devices in Real Life, so they put wireless device all over the Matrix, and then wrote rules that accounted for them, which you were supposed to use. Basically, it was setting -> rules -> game. And the rules were really just accounting for the existence of wireless devices, through the Electronic Warfare skill and a handful of program and Matrix actions. The 3rd edition actually already had wireless devices, but it simply changed your I/O speed and it did not allow for proximity hacking. It's not wireless devices that made SR4 Matrix different, it's meshed networks and proximity access (though you might argue that mesh performance is sub-par without large numbers of wireless devices).

In the 5th edition, the fundamental idea was that hackers/deckers needed things to hack, then rules were written in a way that make sure or at least strongly enticed to have things to be online and hackable, and the setting will possibly be adjusted to account for it. So hackers will be a rarer breed and the common people will feel safe on the Matrix (*). So it goes the other way, game -> rules -> setting.

( * BTW, the 2064 is far from being the most recent issue people might have with the Matrix ; even if some dislike it, canon has it that the focus for the entire year 2070 was the technomancer and AI threat -with 500 deaths in a single night in Hong Kong, and a two-months long hostage situation in space with the threat of a global biological attack triggered by an AI- and in the following years technomancers sent Geneva back to the 20th Century and sparked riots in Las Vegas).

Exactly why I said "trickier". In 2nd or 3rd edtion, using priorities I was absolutely gonna grab the million since my tricked out deck/progs were gonna cost more than the priority B (my memory is foggy but I feel like I'd usually spend at least 600,000 of my 1,000,000 on Decking stuff). So that was settled, but I usually had enough left for enough ware to go combat and still have decent enough skills.

In 5th priority A for nuyen isn't so much of a no-brainer. You can make a pretty decent decker with B or even C and still have some left over for ware, but for what I'd want on a quasi combat Decker (around 90,000 give or take) I need to decide which, A or B will fit for skills.

I take it, then, that you're not aware of how completely impractical that is? Am I supposed to have every single library for the language I'm working in and all of their dependencies installed, every last piece of documentation, every last piece of information on every last error, and so on locally? Even if I try to do that, the information I'll have on hand WILL be incomplete, and given my luck it will usually be missing the exact thing that I need.

Remember, TJ, the question isn't whether or not stuff can work at all without access. It's whether things can work better with access, and in this case there is absolutely no possible room to argue the point that it does.



You are not currently alone. In 2075 you would be alone. People would have to decide whether or not the benefit is sufficient to the risk, and part of that decision would be the vanishingly low incidence rate, even for runners. At that point, "reasonable precautions" does not usually mean "shut it all down", it means "defend and hide it as best as you can, just in case" - because part of determining what precaution is reasonable is considering what that precaution costs you. There might be times where you choose to go dark, as well, and depending on the reasons that might be for an entire run or it might just be until you go loud. You can have more than one footing on this - just like choosing not to use a silencer once doesn't mean you never use one in your entire career from then on.



Yes - 73% of your possible resources at Priority A or B. Leaves you with a pretty good chunk of cash. You CAN use that to build a decent pseudo-sam - but you shouldn't have to any more than the mage or rigger should have to.

Why not? If the mage wants to be useful in combat, he learns Combat spells, or any number of handy buffs. If the rigger wants to be useful in combat, he buys a combat drone. If the face wants to be useful in combat, he buys a gun and learns to use it. Why does the decker need to be able to hack in the middle of a firefight? What, precisely, is wrong with telling a decker who wants to fight to pick up a gun?

Huh? You're not telling the mage or the Rigger to pick up a gun. You're telling them to use their archetype specific skillsets in combat. Deckers now have one of these too. A Mage using powerbolt is the equivalent of a decker attacking your cyberware.

It really isn't. It goes back to self-consistency: mages casting Powerbolt and riggers using combat drones make sense within the established rules of the setting. A decker suddenly being able to brick your leg doesn't.

Except it does, as was less than clearly introduced in SR4. It was just really hard,had a terrible mechanic, and was laughably easy to prevent.

It still is all that.

I think the problem is that Mages were the Gods in 4a, & so to even the balance, the design team asked how they could make Deckers more like mages, & this is what we get.

Frank's Brainhacking does it better if you want that.

The mage gets mage stuff, the rigger gets rigger stuff, the face actually does have face stuff (Leadership is actually pretty awesome), so why shouldn't the decker get decker stuff?

Because like the face stuff, the decker stuff isn't generally directly combat effective.

(And why on Earth would someone link their cyberleg to the Matrix? I'm not seeing a purpose there.)

Then combat effective stuff must be added, same as the addition of concrete and directly combat effective function to Leadership. That said, the greater minimum investment does mean that the decker stuff needs to be more substantial.

Except the Decker *still* has to pick up a gun and shoot things. Cant hack a Hellhound and most people dont have cyber. When a Decker tries it, most of the time itll probably make them *less* useful in combat.

Even mages have should have a shooting skill, to slow their magical drain.

Combat effective stuff ONLY must (or actually should) be added, if there is a reasonable explanation WHY that wireless access is giving a bonus. Reasonable as in not achievable by any other means than matrix access.

Game->rules->setting might be ONE step in the EARLY design process, but then the setting absolutely needs to be checked for consistencies, modified where necessary and for the final product, setting->rules->game must apply.

Basically what happened is: they took that early game design concept, completely omitted the quality control part and finalized their product. (Same with limits, btw.)
In effect, SR5 as a product is actually in a pre-alpha state, but was published as final version.

Why? Why does absolutely every archetype need to be able to contribute directly and concretely to combat? The whole point of being a face is to resolve conflicts without fighting. The whole point of being a decker is to subvert the infrastructure to avoid combat. You're falling into a trap that I fell into myself, not that long ago. Yes, Shadowrun involves combat, but that does not mean that every character has to be about combat.

So.. no hacking nearby turrets, because that would be contributing directly and concretely to combat? No attacking drones, because that would be contributing directly and concretely to combat?

Be honest. You're really only complaining about one option here: the brute force attack on individual pieces of gear.

--

Put another way:

Street Samurai: "I use my axe to intimidate the guard!"
GM: "I'm sorry, but axes and street samurai are for combat. You're not allowed to contribute directly and concretely to social situations."

I admit, I hadn't thought of that. On the other hand, you've also successfully invalidated RHat's argument by demonstrating that even without the (stupid, setting-breaking, badly written) ability to brick gear, deckers still have plenty of "decking stuff" to use in combat.

What you're advocating is that specific archetypes should suck at combat unless they approach combat in a way that's to your liking which is then ok? Why is it that as a Decker I should have to approach combat effectively in the same way as a Samurai? If the end result is they spend actions to neutralise the enemy then why does it have to be down the barrel of a gun?

If I'm in a combat situation where there's a cyber-troll with a grenade launcher and I can either shoot at him, turn some environmental system on him (which is totally at the whim of your GM putting these things in place) or I can brick the launcher, turn off his cyber-eyes, etc, what's the harm in having those extra options? It's hardly an instant success. I need to get past his comlink defences which can be quite good for minimal investment.

Then as has been pointed out, they still can't really affect critters or Mages (although bricking their optical magnification might be useful?), so the Combat goons in the group are hardly redundant.

The result of this opposition to Deckers getting these extra abilities is essentially pushing to put them back in the box to never be used. This might be fine at your tables but I'm personally sick of Deckers being the clerics of shadowrun (i.e. Completely necessary, but not that fun to play).

Actually, no. If no sufficient explanation presently exists for the bonus, the explanation and/or the bonus needs to change until that sufficiency exists. Setting is no excuse for bad design, and it does not have primacy over having good mechanics. Fortunately, changes can happen within a setting - in this case, massive changes occurred with the Matrix that alter a lot of security considerations.

And if you think this is pre-alpha, you don't know what pre-alpha looks like.



I've explained before, at length, why environmentals aren't sufficient. The short version is that that works only while those things are there, and in a wide variety of cases they wouldn't be - and certainly hacking a turret is a superior option than going after someone's 'ware, when the option is available. Environmentals modifying your options is a good ting to have, but if you need those to have options than that is not sufficient.

Which has been the contention from the start. There was never a lack of things for the Hacker to do. Adding in the ability to "brick" hardware and cyberware was just ludicrous.

Im still not getting it. Its a choice, but... its almost a non-choice.

Its going to take 2 or 3 turns to hack and brick just about any piece of equipment. By that point, the Decker has no doubt already been shot, stabbed, blown up, shoved in a locker, given a wedgie, whatever.

And if they do manage to brick something, its not anything important. Anything worth bricking (eyes, limbs) have no reason to have their wireless on because they have no bonus.

And lets not forget, they can just turn their wireless off and on as a free action, setting the Decker back to square one.

So yeah, you have the choice, but... why would you? Still just seems better to shoot enemies.

Do try not to put words in my mouth. I'm advocating that everyone should suck at combat unless they approach combat in a way that makes sense. If you go into combat with your grenade launcher and cybereyes broadcasting to everyone within a block's radius, you are an idiot and you deserve to have those things bricked. That is a feature of the setting. Any approach to combat which disregards that feature will and should get you killed.

The wireless bonuses, not merely the specific bonuses listed but the very concept of the bonuses, rests on an assumption that is patently absurd; namely, that teams of engineers with multi-billion-nuyen R&D budgets could not find a way to replicate the "bonus" functionality without exposing the device to Matrix attack. This is what I mean when I say that it breaks the Sixth World's self-consistency: the world has been established as populated by people who are smart and good at their jobs, and this mechanic assumes that the world is populated by people who are stupid and suck at their jobs.

That is not at all absurd.

The problem is with the definitions being used and the ludicrous assumption that someone would even HAVE their cyber on the Matrix.

Go back and read the Author's actual descriptions of what Bricking does (along with the Definition and effects thereof, as well as the examples)... Then try to reconcile that with having the effect happen inside of someone's body (1/2 Million Nuyen cyberware is a valid target after all). And then, when the ignorance of what was actually written was pointed out, the response was "well, we did not really mean that." Which is tripe. It is exactly what they meant, because that is exactly what they describe in the setting. And then, somehow, with all that melted metal and plastic within the body, they say that all it takes is an hour and waving your hands about, and viola, you are repaired (because you do not have to go to a specialist to have your body cracked open to remove all the burned and damaged hardware, along with all the cooked steak/hamburger surrounding it). Which is again tripe. The issue is with a Line Developer who forced something into the system, with absolutely no idea how that would affect the verisimilitude of the world (I don't even think he really cares, honestly). It was done solely to patch a hole ("Hackers have nothing to do in Combat") that never even existed in the first place.

The result of this opposition to Deckers and the addition of the ludicrous Wireless bonuses is that a large group of players are pointing out that that those rules as they stand are idiotic, and that no sane professional [shadowrunner or professional Security/Military] would EVER operate the way, even while the Developers are still insisting that they do. And then, turning off any of the stupid things that were added because they were "Cool" (in the writers own words and with no thought to actual usefulness or technology limitations - since there is still no explanation that you (generic) can give to explain how a direct wire of 3-4 meters or less is less efficient than some trumped up wireless remote mass computing two-way communication is). The verisimilitude of any such explanations falls flat (even though some have tried). And a lot of people are simply disgusted with it.

Simple and easy fix... Go dark (that is what my characters will do in SR5 - no need to ever put Cyber on the grid, or even 99% of one's electronics), or Just play SR4A, where that insanity never got a foothold.

It is ENTIRELY absurd...

As far as the rules go, the street samurai would still need to roll Intimidation+Charisma, which are specifically social skill and attribute, only adding some modifier for the axe (though the Face could get the same modifier with a pocket knife) and possibly for being more physically imposing than other characters. And that merely allows him to contribute to specific social situation in which intimidation can be used.

In this regard, a cyberdeck is equally useful in close-quarter combat as an improvised club, allowing the hacker to deal more damage than he would with his bare hands. This may require the hacker to spend points in Agility and the Clubs skill that are not part of his core abilities, just like the example above may require the street samurai to spend points in Charisma and Intimidation to work.

The relationship between combat archetype and the other archetype fields is asymmetrical. To contribute to social situations, you need Charisma and social skills, or mental manipulation spells. To contribute to astral recon, you need to be a projection-capable awakened character. To contribute to Matrix action, you need a cyberdeck or being a technomancer. To contribute to combat on the other hand, you may use weapons, or combat spells, or spirits, or drones, or cyberdeck, or Leadership (even though how someone could enjoy making the same exact roll every combat turn is beyond my understanding of the game).
The rules are intended to allow all archetypes to contribute to combat. But the other aspect of the game remain more or less exclusive (the price of cyberdecks typically makes the Matrix more exclusive than it previously was).

Now, the issue people may have with wireless hacking of individual equipment is that it's not different in their mind from allowing street samurai to use their wired reflexes for fast-talking, rigger to tail mage in an astral quest with a drone, or hacker to use their cyberdeck as an improved throwing weapon accurate up to 300 meters that return to their hand, in that they view it as something silly that makes no sense.
There really are two different problems here. I mean, maybe allowing riggers to fly drones inside the astral planes (because mana level rise or new technology or whatever) would make the game experience better, entice people to play more riggers, balance things out and allow for quicker resolution. That's a different question from knowing if it makes sense.

Sorry, do you have an actual argument to make? I mean, apart from sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling, "Nuh-uh nuh-uh nuh-uh!" at the top of your lungs?

Do you? Saying that it is absurd does not make it so. If doing some particular thing depends on something as insanely powerful as the Matrix, it's entirely conceivable that it could not be replicated without it, or at the very least not replicated within the constraints of something that can actually be produced, sold, and used. Throwning R&D money and engineers at a problem doesn't automatically mean it can be solved.