QUOTE (Jaid @ Feb 13 2014, 12:51 PM)
ok, so you remember how we covered the fact that a technomancer needs:
- high priority for attributes since each mental attribute is rather important
- high priority for technomancy since otherwise you can't be a technomancer
- high priority for skills to cover the full set of skills that a regular decker needs (two skill groups, or 8 skills), plus either another skill group or two more skills. all of which need to be at high values.
and then you remember how we also covered that they can't effectively compensate for their low physical attributes with augmentations or magic, right?
and at this point, they also have to be human or elf, with at best moderately good edge.
none of this is sounding new to you, i hope?
so then, they need 8 skills *just to have basic levels of proficiency* in their specialized area.
now, in addition to this, i'm going to posit that in order to function on a basic level as a shadowrunner, they're also going to need a defensive skill, at least one offensive skill (general purpose), and at least 1-2 social skills, all at a moderately decent level. plus perception. more is better, of course; our current theoretical technomancer likely won't have any melee capability at all, for example, and stealth is a very useful skill to have as well.
so then... you tell me. what priority is going to skills that you expect them to have *any* room at all for heavy weapons which are unsuitable for general use? bearing in mind that even with priority A in attributes, the best they're going to be able to put into their mental attributes is a total of 16 points above baseline (so they could have 1/1/1/1/5/5/5/5, for example. of course, realistically, this individual will be useless in attacking others, useless in defending himself, and useless in any other sort of physical activity such as being stealthy or climbing a wall (both of which are examples of fairly common requirements in a shadowrun) unless you really max out the related skills as well.
or, maybe you could put attributes to B so you can put skills in A, and have only C for resonance. [sarcasm]i'm sure your 3 points of resonance and 1 complex form are going to make the average decker green with envy.[/sarcasm].
so then, maybe we put attributes to C, skills to A, and resonance to B? oh wait, now we only have *16* attributes to spread around. that's enough for 1/1/1/1/3/3/3/3 in the attribute line. yeah, i'm sure that decker, with only needing to max log and have a decent willpower for most tests (and being able to use augmentations to boost his lackluster physical stats and increase his log even further), is just *quaking* in his boots in terror that he might meet this guy in a dark (matrix) alley. plus, that still leaves us with only 2 complex forms. which isn't all that bad, really, since the most we can start off with given our trash stats is 3 anyways. also not that bad since most of the complex forms suck royally. too bad our fading resistance stat sucks unless we go human and dump edge. (elf isn't even an option if we want higher than 3 resonance from priorities).
so please, do tell... how is this competitive with a decker that needs two fewer skills, can spend priority A on resources and B on skills (C can go to race, there's not a *huge* difference between C attributes and D or E, and our decker doesn't need incredible attributes like our technomancer), gets to use a deck that swaps attributes and programs around at will, gets to use programs *at all*, doesn't need to spend karma or priority on an extra special attribute, and can upgrade both his core and secondary skill sets with augmentations? heck, if we *really* want to drive the point home, we *could* choose adept in priority D since we only really need 1-2 points of essence in augmentations, and now we've got even more bonuses (increase our limits, add to our hacking dice pools, etc) plus the ability to use qi focuses to adjust our abilities as needed.
I'm not sure your math with attributes is right. You start with attribute 1 and buy up from there, so Attributes C for example would allow you 1/1/1/1/5/5/5/5 if you were suicidal enough to dump all your physical stats.