Ownership is on page 236, and includes security guards using guns owned by a corporation where they are not the owner. Spiders acting as owners of their hosts and corporate gear is on page 360.

PANs (devices slaved to a master) are described on page 238 purely as a way to protect a weaker device with a more powerful one. It does not note any control being given by the Master over the Slaved device.
PANs are again described on page 356 as existing only for providing protection to a device. No mention of Ownership or control is given or implied.

The first example on page 233 ("Tesseract wants to protect Crunch’s HK-227...") expressly shows a Decker using his Cyberdeck to protect the Street Sam's gun.


page 421: "Toggling an individual device’s wireless functionality off is a Free Action, as is toggling all of your wireless devices to “wireless off.” "


Sensors have no initiative, (generally no) skills, or attributes. How are they doing sitrep?

As for having an agent doing sitrep: "Agents also have the Computer, Hacking, and Cybercombat skills at a rating equal to their own." None of those skills are any good are reading sensors, or making judgment calls. "An agent is about as smart as a pilot program of the same rating (Pilot Programs, p. 269)." "Pilots (the programs, not the people) are not bright. They’re called “dog-brains” by those who have to work with them, much the same way a particularly thick per- son might be called a “drone-head” by those who work with him." also: "This rating is used in place of any Mental attribute needed for a test, but it hardly makes up for a metahuman brain. When faced with something novel or unexpected, or a complicated command, a Pilot program must make a Device Rating x 2 Test against a thresh- old set by the gamemaster based on how confusing the situation is. If it fails this test, it blithely continues doing what it was doing before, or simply stops en- tirely and asks for instructions."

So why does that make sense? If no military, shadowrunner, or corpsec would run with wireless on, because the Matrix is such a huge liability, why would it make sense for Renraku to wired their entire Arcology to the Matrix? I mean, any decker in 3rd ed, could just hack in to the Arcology and do exactly what Deus did, right?



No, that is not what it says. It says they ignore OverWatch. That does not mean they're immune to laws. Runner's cannot exist in a world where there isn't some level of bureaucracy to protect them. Even G-men aren't allowed to operate with impunity, and they're power comes from the Corporate Court.

p221
Their operatives, called G-men (complete with 1930s-era FBI persona icons), technically only have jurisdiction over their assigned grid




CorpSec can't follow runners off Corporation grounds. Exterritoriality is what protects runners. Its the foundation of why runners aren't all murdered by Red Samurai while they sleep. If a corp is going to kill a runner off of Corp grounds, they'll hire other Shadowrunners.



The entire game breaks down if a drone and RCC can literally run every cyberprogram and are able to turn in to cheap decks.

Look at it this way. Why can commlinks no longer run agents and IC? Because the whole point of the new Matrix was to remove automation and from being able to create pocket hackers. Does it sound reasonable that a program on a Drone that is able to be able to outperform devices that are specifically designed to detect wireless signal? There is no way, that's RAI or RAW.

I'll admit, they leave it open for an RCC to run more programs than is on that list, but I assume that was done for when they add more programs in Data Trails, not because RAW allows drones and Agents to exist in the same device.

How about we go about this another way. Are Agents Cyberprograms? Since, they're not listed under cyber programs, I guess the answer is NO! They are not under the program list, they are their own separate class of program.

Unless the next adventure has a drone with an Agent on it, or Data Trails says otherwise. I'm very sure that agents on drones is not RAW.

Interesting point. They are always listed as a separate program type "Agents and cyberprograms: These are used in cyberdecks and are explained in Programs, p. 243.", and their description calls them software not a cyberprogram.

RAW, it would seem that only Cyberdecks can run Agents.

I would still argue that RCCs and Drones can run other cyberprograms than those on the list, however.

once again, deus was specifically designed to run the entire place. he didn't even have to hack anything. he started off with the ultimate backdoor, legitimate permission to rule everything with an iron fist.

but seriously, you're asking about the difference between worrying that your pet AI might turn out to have near godlike powers in the matrix to the point where nothing else could ever even dream of being able to compete with it except for another AI (and even the other AIs were generally not a concern) to worrying about a regular hacker?

that's like saying that a facility which is being threatened by a thor shot would be equally threatened if a kid with a slingshot was attacking.

even if a hacker *could* hack everything in the SCIRE (which would have taken a very very long time) without being noticed, they simply don't have remotely the same capacity to operate in hundreds or even thousands of different places at once like those earlier edition AIs could. the only way a hacker could take it over on even remotely the same level would be if they basically programmed an AI to run the place for them.

OK, my stupid Matrix Trick for the night:

In the following quotes, the Bold text is my doing...

Page 233: "Only devices can be slaves, masters, or part of a PAN."
Also 233: "For example, if your slaved smartgun is the target of a hacker’s Brute Force action, it would use your Willpower or its Device Rating, and its Firewall or your commlink’s, whichever is higher in each instance."
Page 440: "A stealth tag always runs silent (p. 235) and has a Sleaze rating equal to its Device Rating."

Stealth Tags are Device Rating (AKA: Sleaze Rating) 3.

So in theory you can slave a device (well device rating x3: which is 9 devices in this case) to a Stealth Tag, and suddenly it has a Sleaze rating for the purposes of defense ratings. Stealth Tags cost $10 for 10. Using this trick of course prevents you from slaving a device to a commlink with a high firewall, however for the purposes of avoiding detection, It's Owner's Logic + Sleaze, and that's for both Matrix Perception and Signal Scanners. Device rating 3 is also 1 better than your average implant or smartlink (rating 2.)

Doesn't work.

Page 233:
If you want extra protection for some of your devices,
you can slave them to your commlink or deck.

So, for a PAN, the master has to be a commlink or deck, not just any device.

Same page:
In a WAN, the slaves must be devices, and the master
must be a host.

So for a WAN, the master has to be a host, and not just any device.

For a WAN, you mean. WAN != PAN. WANs can have any number of devices slaved to them, the the master must be a Host. PANs can have a number of devices equal to 3x rating of the master device slaved to them.

What it doesn't explain anywhere, of course, is how chaining devices works. Does that 3 x rating include everything below the master, or is it just for devices directly slaved?

I assume the intent was for it to be all devices beneath the master device in the network, but I can't find anywhere that is made explicit. Hell off a loophole, that, as a literalist reading would allow every piece of electronics in all Seattle to be slaved to a single commlink, given enough intermediary devices.

Yes - sorry, typo - fixed it in the original post.

I've seen people argue that you can't chain - i.e. if a smartgun is slaved to a commlink, that commlink cannot be slaved to a deck.

I've seen people also argue that you can chain, but you only get the benefits of what you are chained to. So, for example, a smartgun owned by a sammy is slaved to a commlink owned by the sammy which is slaved to a deck owned by the team decker.

Any attack against the smartgun directly uses the ratings of the commlink and stats of the sammy, while any attacks on the commlink use the rating of the deck and the stats of the decker.

Personally, in my games, I don't allow chaining. If I have a rating 6 commlink I can slave 18 devices - that's it. It doesn't mean I can slave 18 devices who then in turn have 18 devices each slaved to them, and so on.

We hit the Mitsuhama Towers in Hong Kong 7 Times in about 5 Months (one of which my Character set up as a Replacement Spider from the Home Office for several weeks). So it DOES happen, from time to time.

Completely false. They can follow the 'runners anywhere they want, they just don't have guaranteed extraterritorial protections. It's still a (semi) free country and saying that anyone that works for CorpSec can't ever go to a Urban Brawl game or somesuch, let alone cross their property line in the interest of investigating a recent shadowrtunner incident, is complete horseshit.

If the CorpSec asset breaks laws outside of their jurisdiction (ie the corp property), then they have to deal with local law enforcement...if they get caught. And if they get caught, then they have the corp deciding if their transgression is enough to not spring that person. Typical bonds for say, manslaughter or kidnapping, can run around 100K , give or take. If a CorpSec asset got caught after a firefight with Shadowrunners off Corp property then the Corp drops the cash on their bond, the asset takes a ride to Corp property, and OOPS! they got nothin'! Transfer the asset to a new juris-my-diction and rinse/repeat as necessary or until the asset earns a black card for fucking up too often and suddenly finds themselves in the shit.

Life sucks for LE in the twenty and seventies.

Of course, this also all depends on how local LE feels about things as well. How upset are they going to get over some dirtbag shadowrunners catching it in the neck if there isn't any collateral damage? Corp says, "So sorry about the mess! Here's the number to our cleanup and repair company..." for the occasional bloodstain and/or bullethole and it's all in the good. It saves the locals from blowing gas chasing the 'runners, bullets shooting at the 'runners, and hospital bills for the responding officers because the 'runners are typically pretty good shots.

Good. That seemed to cheesy to be valid.


This is my reading of RAW, although I suspect the authors didn't think that far out. It says that a master slave relationship is unique between that particular master and slave. The protection doesn't jump up to the top most master, but just to the device it is directly slaved to. Page 233, emphasis mine:
"Your commlink (or deck) can handle up to (Device Rating x 3) slaved devices, becoming the master device in that particular relationship. "
"Whenever a slaved device is called on to make a defense test, it uses either its own or its master’s rating for each rating in the test. "
Nothing prevents you from daisy chaining master-slave connections, but the "bottom" slaves don't get to use the stats of the top master, only the stats of the device directly above them. Because the device making the defense test is the one targeted, the rules explicitly say it gets to use the matrix attributes of it's "particular" master. That master may in turn get to benefit from it's master, but only when it is the target.

This setup is actually dangerous to anyone concerned about being hacked, however, because a mark placed on a slave also goes onto the master (but not the reverse.) If you have a chain of slave/masters, then a mark placed on the lowest object should shoot all the way to the top of the stack as well as each slave transfers the mark to its own master which in turn is a slave to another master.

In short: It's no way to get more devices slaved to a Cyberdeck, and while chains might technically be valid, they aren't a good idea.


In that case I would expect security to be increased, assuming they noticed the hits. I don't think your average subsidiary facility in a research park has several hits happen too often.

On a more humorous side note, rumour has it that the runners were in and out of there so often that toward the end they were even bringing in and dropping off some takeaway favorites for security and a few of the department's late night staff in the break rooms while they were there, while a certain someone was even so brazen as to leave flowers for the ladies of the secretarial pool on those evenings.

It certainly made for an interesting investigation afterwards.

Note that in Seattle, at least, the local LE is Knight Errant... a whollly owned subsidiary of Ares Macrotech.

Indeed.. They did increase security. In the end, we had to blow a hole in the 43 Floor of the building and base jump out because they were really gunning for us (it was a trap) at that point.
There was a serious Love-Hate relationship going on there. It was during the Emergence storyline, and it was all sorts of FUBAR. But it was fun.

Of course, it was also during this time that 3 of the team were compromised; 2 becoming Moles for MCT (One unwittingly, and one knowingly) and one apparently going to Prison (though he managed to divert and extract, undergoing surgical procedures to change his appearance, etc. and then eventually rejoining the team a couple months later as a new runner). .

Doublepost.

Wow... you must have found some of the Video Footage... Thought I got it all.