i doubt you're familiar with him if you think his technomancer has 20 dice in anything.

frankly, i'd be fairly surprised if his technomancer had 12 dice in his main area of focus (which may be difficult to discern... he tends to favour being able to do a lot of things moderately well, rather than focusing on any one thing. as i recall from when he posted his initial build, "technomancer" is probably a somewhat deceptive name... the character *is* a technomancer, and is capable of hacking, but the original concept might have been better defined as, say, "information gatherer" (basically, he was a corporate spy for someone, then his contact burned him iirc...)

furthermore, his group tends to be rather atypical... i get the impression that having a massive dice pool is not only not required, but to some extent discouraged unless you've got a story reason to explain why you're one of the top 0.1% in your field in the entire world.

of course, that's just based on my initial viewing of his character and the general impression i have of his group... i expect by now his character has a bit more karma and has most likely spent some of that karma on acknowledging that he needs certain skills to run the shadows effectively. so, for example, he may have submerged once or twice, or decided that his initial skill levels in infiltration or athletics were not going to cut it.

That's a lot of words there based on missing the point of what I was saying. Tymeaus and I just had that discussion in another thread, bemoaning the difficulty of scaling in Shadowrun given that the base character creation can swing so heavily as to easily generate characters with dice pools in their primary abilities that are so good that anything which is even moderately challenging for them has a good chance of accidentally killing someone else in the group.

It's only "best of the best" if you go with the stats as presented in Core, and subscribe to the notion that "Rating 6 is a world-class professional".
As correctly pointed a bit above, if you want to challenge your characters who are actually combat-capable, your "best of the best" becomes "pretty average at best". Same as, you know, a hacker is unlikely to hack Rating 3 hosts too much.

The team's hacker also died on Turn1 IP2 to the fire returned. How is that a sustainable tactic, again?

Or with precisely no additional investment whatsoever you can stay out of the line of fire and do your job while the specialists in combat do theirs (and if you're doing your job right, you could even potentially avoid a firefight altogether!)
As a side dish, you can hack people's stuff in peace and comfort because that doesn't require them noticing you, unlike, you know, firing guns in their direction.

Are you seriously trying to say there's a significant difference between a ganger as a goon, and a corpsec goon?

The decker staying in the van has always been a problem. SR3 dealt with it the best, by simply making offline storage a big deal. For some reason, it doesn't seem to exist in SR4.5 or 5e. SR3 also made combat deckers viable, so they could participate in combat. Why do you assume that all a decker can do is punch deck? It's not that hard to make a decker who's a decent shot as well as great in the Matrix.

Yep. For instance, a HTR team goon will have IP boosters implanted, automatic weaponry and decent armour (not to mention a lieutenant providing magical support, as well as corp spiders and riggers covering the matrix and controlling drones).

In 4e, it's called "wireless-negating paint" or "Faraday cages". The only problem is hardly anybody seriously expects hackers to be infiltrators, too.

Did you just try and redefine "goon"? Because I'm pretty sure you started by calling them 1IP goons. You're shifting the goalposts.

You're kidding. First of all, wifi-negating paint is easily bypassed, and I have never encountered either in a published Shadowrun adventure.

Second, you're still assuming that all a decker can do is punch deck. You can make a combat decker fairly easily, and a Covert Ops decker isn't too hard. Why do you assume that deckers must be useless outside the Matrix?

How did a thread which OP is asking for help getting started in SR turn into another thread about Hacking Wireless Ware and Gear? Again? Can we not dump all that stuff in one thread and actually get back to posting about other stuff? All the How Woud You Do X, House Rule discussion and setting discussion were pretty cool, but it's always coming down to this same grind of Combat Hacking.

Except that you are making assumptions here, Binarywraith. The technomancer I mentioned has 10 Dice in Pistols... That is a pretty far cry from you assumption of 20 dice.

Burned Corporate Spy with Technomantic Abilities is the most correct description. Jaid...

Technomancer Primary Hacking is 14-16 (Hot Mod) Dice. And yes, I do favor a more generalized capability. More skills in the mostly competent range over 2 skills at maxed efficiency. Works out best.
Character has 50 Karma under the belt at this point. No submergences as of yet (Still waiting for follow up Matrix book to see what will be worth it and what won't), though I am working on my first. She is an interesting character.

Not sure about your games, but offline storage was HUGE in our games in SR4A. There is absolutely no reason that would disappear. *shrug*

Infiltration was the BEST way to be a Hacker in SR4A. All this hoopla of Hackers staying miles away was something that I NEVER experienced in the many years of SR4/A.

We're talking past each other again. I was poking fun at Fatum's apparent implication that being 'combat capable' requires such dice pools along with heavy augmentation and high-end gear.

Ahhh... *There you go, whizzing past me again...* [Waves]
Sorry.

Do you really fell that trying to misquote me (for the second time in a row) contributes to productive discussion? What is a goon is defined pretty definitely in the Core, btw: a nameless character with no Edge score of their own.

Well, it's not like offline systems are bypassed by some other methods (like infiltrating the facility and plugging a wire in). And nothing's stopping you from having wireless completely off on the secure systems, if you so wish - after all, in 4e the Matrix still works according to something resembling RL logic, instead of being powered by handwavium like in 5e.
As for published Shadowrun adventures, yeah, these have a bunch of oversights, are you going to form your understanding of the ruleset based on how it's used in these instead of based on what it actually allows you to do? If so, do you drop Force... what was it, 12?.. spirits on your characters at the high point of the module?

Right, you just spend a bunch of already scarce resources on becoming a half-decent fighter and a half-decent infiltrator, which leaves you a half-decent hacker, instead of being good at what you're actually supposed to be doing. So instead of getting, say, 4 or 5 IP in the Matrix, you'll be getting more than 1 IP in meatspace which is not your area of expertise to begin with.


When the characters built for combat are like that, that's what being "combat-capable" becomes. Or are you suggesting that the sammies should not encounter adequate challenges? Or actually, it's the same for any other archetype, dicepools in teens are the norm, not an exception.
And before you argue that this is not how Shadowrun is supposed to be played, I'll counter with the mages' capabilities, spirits with their immunities, and the stats for paraanimals, all of which define what the rest of the runners should be on the level with.

I misquoted you? Are you saying that you *didn't* start talking about "1IP goons"? Oh, wait a minute....


You were talking about all goons, not just deckers, who can have more than one action *and* be good in combat. You keep missing that fact.


When using AR, you use your meatspace init. So it's not that hard to get a good Matrix and physical initiative. Being a decent shooter is easy in SR5: Quickness 4, Skill 4 with spec. That's 10 dice, which is greater than the typical Lieutenant in SR5. It's really not that hard.


Looking over the SR4.5 Master Index, I see no reference to Offline Storage, or Storage memory in general. "Memory" only gives you Memory tests. Rules for it simply don't exist.

so how is it that the decker is automatically dead in IP 1? are all your NPCs gleefully taking bullets to the face just so they can shoot the guy who is, as you claim, not a major threat? are they just ignoring the street samurai and any spirits in the group?

furthermore, the only way you're getting 4-5 IPs in the matrix is... actually, scratch that. you aren't. that was doable in 4th, but it is literally not possible in 5th to get 5, and if you get 4 it's because you got extremely lucky and have obscenely good stats.

not just that, but you shouldn't even be using anything other than AR to access the matrix if a firefight is going on. you need to be mobile, or you are going to be dead as soon as the other side gets even the faintest idea of where you are (read: as soon as you fail a single sleaze test, or shortly after you make a successful attack test). the *last* thing I want to be when the lead (and especially AOE attacks like grenades and indirect spells) start flying is barely able to perceive the meat world or act in it.

so more realistically, it's your standard meat body speed hacking vs your standard meat body speed shooting. and shooting will almost always have more impact, sooner, than hacking (the exceptions are when you hack the environment, which is not in any way dependent on anyone putting their spinal column or eyeballs on the internet).

:eyeroll:

Let me rephrase that incredibly obvious sentence for you: by spending "a few points" on combat abilities for your hacker, as previously suggested, you're turning him into a 1 IP goon with an attack pool too small to matter. Which is suboptimal.
I frankly fail to see how can this be misunderstood or twisted into "talking about all goons not just deckers" etc.

Enjoy your permanent -2 penalty to Matrix actions compared to the normal hackers, as well as never being able to get the fifth IP (and likely not having the Essence for hacking implants if getting the fourth).
That's not a handicap at all, right?

Could there be no reference to memory because all forms of storage are supposed to have nigh infinite memory space available? Wireless negation is in that index, btw.


On IP 2, not 1: his opponent spends IP1 on full defense and in cover, while the rest of the turn is purely his dominion to do what he wants with the hacker.

My NPCs try to minimize the damage they receive, and thus, maximize the damage they do to their opposition to get the number of damage sources down as quickly as possible.
That involves incapacitating the targets who are visibly more likely to suffer from their attacks and then piling on the remaining ones.

It's ridiculously easy to get 5 IPs in the Matrix in the Fourth if you set your mind to it, and in the Fifth the Matrix is beyond salvaging.

Dunno, as for me, the last place I want to be when the lead starts flying is anywhere near.

So, you're saying 5e Matrix is broken and the changes made to it do not achieve the design goals? Way to prove my point that a new GM should not be using 5e.

No, seriously, go re-read the books. Look at the NPCs as built, and the sample characters. Dice pools of that size are not 'normal', no matter how you'd like to justify cheesing the system. Even in SR5, with higher skill caps. it takes a lot of min-maxing to get a combat dice pool above 12 or so at creation using the standard priorities.

- the 5th edition matrix is no worse than the 4th edition matrix. it's probably actually mostly better, unless you're a technomancer in which case you just got screwed.

- i don't think you understand how suppressing fire works. i spend *one action*. until i take my next action (which, for a 1 IP character, is next turn) anyone in the suppressed area can get shot. not "anyone can get shot on their first action, but is afterwards safe", but simply "everyone". if you are in the area, you risk getting hit if you move out from cover at all. period. you can go full defense on your first action if you want, that's fine. on the second action, when you pop out to do something to me, you deal with suppression, risk getting shot, and take a penalty to your actions. that happens every time you take an action. period. it doesn't matter how many times you go on full defense, when you stop doing anything other than hiding behind hard cover, you risk getting shot. it doesn't matter how many actions you take, on each one you risk getting shot. suppressing fire is the poor man's IP booster, and it is a powerful tool for leveling the playing field.

whether you are in 4th edition or 5th edition, you have better things to do with your time than try to hack someone's gear. that remains true whether there are stupid wireless bonuses in play, or not. in either edition, a minimal investment in being able to use a gun will net you more benefit than hacking, and the benefit comes earlier than hacking. this is slightly less true in 5th edition, but still remains true; i can put a bullet into you on action 1, while it will take 2-3 actions minimum to hack anything (comparatively, in 4th edition it's more likely a question of how many combat turns before i can have any hope of hacking anything, so really, if you think 5th edition sucks, i don't know how you can be convinced the 4th edition matrix encouraged hacking combat gear, particularly since in 4th edition there was never any need to have gear wireless for anyone in the first place; if you're up against the tir ghosts, you probably didn't have any wireless gear to target in the first place).

also, just because the players (or rather, some of them) are close to as good as elite corporate HTR teams in combat doesn't mean it's appropriate to make all their opposition into corporate HTR teams. quantity has a quality of its own, after all.

As demonstrated by several people, it's trivial to make a decker with multiple actions in Sr5, who also has a decent dice pool for attacking.


You know, I think I see the problem. You keep using "IP", but those don't exist in SR5. You're cherrypicking the worst rules from both editions.

Yeah, the stat blocks for the sample characters are absolutely helpless, no doubt. That's a commonly encountered issue with SR. I have to remind you in the fifth a few of the sample characters contradict the RAW, so taking these as indicatory of anything can be a bit naive.
Now look at the stats for paraanimals - it takes a single Gabriel hound or barghest to down even an optimized street sam.
Putting your skill points into the skills fit for your archetype, getting a specialization and a few implants fit for it already easily propels you into the teens. Say, for firearms: skill 5, specialization +2, agility 5 (which can easily get much higher with implants), smartgun +2. Blam 14. That's not "min-maxing", that's kindergarten child play.


Haha, oh wow. I'll just direct you to the topic discussing the Fifth. It has what, a couple thousand posts decrying the failings of that subsystem? Should we rediscuss them all anew?

First, you're hit once at most per a suppressive fire burst laid down, at base DV - which after soak is never life-threatening. Second, if you're in full cover or drop prone, you're not hit under any circumstances. Third, going on full defense allows you to waltz into and out of the suppressive fire zone - not quite as comfy as your own bedroom, but hardly any more threatening. Simply put, suppressive fire is a non-issue.

It's just that one edition twists your hands to make your gear hackable is all.
Oh, and in whatever editions hackers have better things to do with their lives than get into a firefight.

It also puts you into significantly more danger than hacking, while not providing any tangible benefit to the party.

First, hacking on the fly in SR4AE is an extended test with a period of 1 Complex Action, and a hacker has 3 to 5 IP in the Matrix.
Second, never have I claimed that 4e encourages hacking gear, please try to keep track; just that unlike the fifth, its matrix is workable and makes a modicum of sense.

I doubt the players are; their characters might be. As for quantity vs quality: dropping two 1 IP goons upon a character usually produces much more problems for him than dropping one 2 IP goon (more health, potentially more damage per turn, etc). So for the scenario with a hacker discussed above, fighting against two opponents is even worse.


And will be permanently crippled for that?

I might be using "IP" because I'm firmly competent only in 4e; but it's news for me that these do not exist in SR5, please tell me more. What's on page 158 of the Core, then?
Oh, and it'd be very interesting to see where I appeal to "the worst rules" from 5e other than pointing out that it's entirely made up of "the worst rules", which haven't been edited even to the point of not contradicting each other.

Where will you be permanently crippled? You haven't shown that. Please, using the SR5 rules, cite page numbers that state wired reflexes "permanently cripples" you in the matrix.


Not IP. That's a failed mechanic from SR4.5. They went back to SR3 style initiative, where you subtract 10 from your score after you go. So, in order to get multiple actions, you need a higher initiative score and more dice. Since the max you can have is 5d6, I believe that 5 actions per turn is impossible.

Except that your Decker needs to be competent at other things, or he is a liability. And it is NOT hard to be competent (though it IS hard to be top .001% in the world and still be competent in other things). My Cyberlogician (SR4/A) had 3 IP physical and 4 IP Matrix AT START, expanded to 5 IP Matrix by the end of his career (not to mention that 95% of the time he hacked form AR rather than VR). It is NOT that hard to do.

I believe that someone actually posted a character for 5th that was potentially capable of 5 IP. All you need is a minimum Initiative score of 11 and 5D6 (Maxed out) to receive 5 IP (11+30=41=5 Actions). I have seen higher Initiative scores than 11.

Page 230, the second paragraph.
The tables on pages 65, 439 (the one on the right), 246 and 456.

>"Combat Turns are broken up into a series of Initiative Passes"
>IP do not exist
Okay, got ya.


Sure, he needs to be. In things like Electronic Warfare, Hardware, or, if there's no dedicated specialist, rigging. Decker has a large sphere of responsibility as an archetype, so there is always stuff that's part of this sphere to sink points into instead of trying to be a jack of all trades.

And one of the things he needs to be competent in is combat. Even if it is just with a Pistol. There WILL be times where his firearms expertise will be tested to keep him alive. If he is not up to the task, he will be a Dead Decker/Hacker. *shrug*

Page 230: Nothing about wired reflexes or "permanently crippled".
Page 65: Character creation. No mention of matrix attributes at all in that table.
Page 439 (right table):Cyberdeck costs. No mention of wired reflexes or permanently crippling a character.
Page 246: Program costs. No mention of Wired reflexes or permanently crippling a character.
Page 439: Wired Reflexes cost chart. No mention of them crippling you in the matrix.

So, there is no mention in any of your citations that wired reflexes cripple you in the matrix. You're making a huge assumption that having wires prevents you from using Hot Sim. You're very, very wrong on that one.

4.5-style IP do not exist. The term changed meaning. Quit playing semantics.


Riggers are optional in every edition. Electronic Warfare is likewise optional, it depends on rather or not the GM is using a lot of drones against you. Anyone can have Hardware.

But you know what'll be in every game? Shooting. Every shadowrunner needs to be competent in combat, or they're a serious liability to the team.

i presume the "crippling" he's referring to is not having the absolute best deck possible in character creation.

of course, this completely ignores that the second best chargen deck is very nearly as good (since the attributes mostly effect limits, the real loss is from running one less program), and is quite a bit less expensive. or that being able to select it in the first place inherently requires priority A in resources, which in turn means you have about 100,000 nuyen left to buy stuff other than a cyberdeck... and that programs are dirt cheap, and there isn't exactly a huge amount of 'ware needed to boost your hacking effectiveness if that is your goal. you should still have easily 30k nuyen left to buy extras, which can go a long way when you're not looking for the best of the best equipment.

also, we're still operating under the crazy assumption that not having cerebral enhance 2 and the sony CIY-720 are absolute requirements for a hacker to be at all effective in 5th edition, which is utter nonsense. they're nice, of course, but we're typically looking at adding maybe 1-2 dice onto your skills, which will have pretty minimal effect, vs adding substantial amounts to your combat effectiveness elsewhere.

also, i've looked again in the rules for suppressing fire in SR5. i have seen absolutely nothing that says you can only be shot once. there's stuff that says moving into or out of the area risks getting hit, and other stuff indicating that you can dodge, or drop prone, and stuff indicating that if you get back out of cover you might get hit, and stuff indicating that if you aren't in cover you might get hit, but absolutely nothing whatsoever which says that once you've risked being hit once that's the end of it and you don't have to worry about suppressing fire for the rest of the round.

Actually, what he's implying is that Wired Reflexes somehow prevent you from using Hot Sim. Which, in addition to being totally wrong, is only a +2 bonus to full VR. Hardly "crippling", especially when you can make up for that in other ways.

I haven't crunched the numbers fully, but it also looks like the best chargen deck is something of a trap option. You get more benefit buying other gear/ware than you get out of the absolute best deck.

well, yes and no.

the money can do more elsewhere, it's true.

but quite frankly, if you don't buy it at chargen, when are you ever likely to have enough money to afford it?

now, i'm not suggesting that you're just going to find the cash for rating 1 wired reflexes lying on the ground one day or anything like that (although, you might very well find used rating 1 wired reflexes lying on the ground inconveniently trapped inside the corpse of someone who got in the way of your team). but the simple fact is, saving up the ~40k nuyen to buy wired reflexes later is much much much more plausible than saving up the ~350,000 nuyen to buy a better cyberdeck. in essence, whatever deck you start with is likely to be the deck you use indefinitely, so in that sense it does make sense to buy the best one.

i do agree, however, that it's a bit ridiculous to focus on having the absolute best to the exclusion of all else. while i can see some logic in wanting the best cyberdeck, i can also see logic in having another ~100k nuyen to spend on not being completely useless in any situation that doesn't call for hacking.

Looking at it, the difference between the absolute best chargen deck, and the second-best, is about 130,000 nuyen. That's almost enough for Wired 2 right there. The stat differences aren't that huge, so the question becomes: is the small gain worth the opportunity cost? I'm not at all certain that it is, although it's a difficult comparison. I do agree that cheap decks are a trap option, especially since better decks cost so much.

However, it does look like the difference between Fatum's theoretical uberl337 hacker, and an actual, functioning decker/shadowrunner, is not very large. In fact, it might not exist at all, since there's other ways to make up the difference with the cash saved. I'm definitely thinking that you can create a decker who's among the best in the matrix, and not absolutely helpless everywhere else.

Funny how in that topic losing 1 die from your non-essential pools is "crippling yourself", but in this topic losing at least three dice to hacking in AR and getting worse gear is a-ok, nothing to fret about.

That's because you're discussing the wrong system, at the wrong points. In SR4,5 losing one point off an attribute is really expensive to raise back up, and it doesn't hurt just one dice pool, it hurts every one linked to it. In SR5, you don't actually lose those 3 dice you claim, since wired reflexes doesn't prevent you from using hot sim. You're trying to cherrypick examples by combining both systems, except it doesn't actually work like you claim. Remember, I went through every single example you pulled up: nowhere does it say wired reflexes cost you dice when you deck, and it actually helps in many cases.

Losing a point of an attribute that does not affect your primary pools is non-consequental, especially if that attribute is low.
Wired reflexes, as shown in the materials referenced, cost you quite a bit of money which you need on the equipment that is actually related to what a hacker is supposed to do, potentially forcing you to up the priority spent on resources. In the fourth, it also costs you a bunch of Essence which you could instead spent on implants actually useful for hacking - these are not yet around in the fifth, at a glance.
As for VR, I seem to remember suggestions to hack stuff in AR only now that you have wires coming up earlier in this topic.

It does depend on the attribute, but under SR4.5, if you're going to dump a stat, you'll do it at the beginning, when you assign attributes. When you come back later to fix a shortfall elsewhere, your dump stats are already as low as they can safely go, so you now need to sacrifice off your needed stats.

Wired reflexes cost 40,000 in SR5. You can easily afford that and a good cyberdeck.

And where did I say "AR only"? You're misquoting me. You're the one who stated that wired reflexes would "permanently cripple" a decker, supposedly because they prevent them from using hot sim... which they don't. A good decker should be able to operate in all modes.

That's some hardcore optimization you have going there. My players like to leave their Cha or Int higher than at the 1 they need.

At which priority? Oh, and are these the only two things a hacker needs now?

Right around where you brought AR hacking up at all. Why optimize for VR if you intend to hack in AR as you suggest?

Surprisingly enough, spending resources on junk unrelated to your area of expertise leaves you with less resources to spend on it. Who would've thought.
As for your "supposedly because", you are quick enough to suppose nonsense, smells strongly of straw.

A good decker should be good in his area of expertise, not try to be a bit of a sam, a bit of a shadow, and a bit of everything, which requires attributes completely different from the ones hacking needs.

You do realize, Fatum, that Spec Ops operatives are trained in a lot more than just Firearms, right? Following your logic, there should never be any reason to do so, but since they do have other tasks they must complete (you know, to stay alive and functional so that they can stay on mission) other than shooting, it is highly beneficial that they be trained to perform those tasks.

there's a world of difference between "you can and should be able to hack in AR" and "you absolutely must hack in AR all the time without exception".

hacking in VR is nice. sometimes it isn't possible. not getting into a gunfight is nice. sometimes that isn't possible either.

shadowrunners who prepare for those eventualities tend to have a better survival rate than those who don't, because if you keep running they will happen.

At least in my games, Shadowrunners who don't have skills other than shooty tend to be very short lived, because they can't even get around the neighborhood they live in without constantly pissing off the local gangs or cops.

RL spec ops operatives are trained in their area of expertise. Even the deep-behind-the-lines GRU sabotage teams that the USSR trained had specialization: the gunner was the only one with a machinegun, the comm officer was the only one who was trained to use the satcomm (or indeed had the cypher keys to do so), etcetera. Real-life specialists specialize.


I'm hard-pressed to offer a scenario where all of the troupe necessarily has to participate in a firefight if it includes competent face and hacker.


So if your runners have Middle or higher lifestyles, they are still constantly harassed (with deadly violence no less!) in their neighborhood? Man, I heard living in them gated communities was drek, but I never thought it was that drek!

off the top of my head, there's an on-site hack required, and after being fast-talked into letting them pass the security mook decided to dig a little deeper after the fact.

frankly, this shouldn't be all that rare... if you're so high up on the totem pole that using the best of the best gear for hacking is a necessity to avoid being completely crippled, you're also high enough on the totem pole that your targets can be expected to take some pretty impressive security measures. after all, if you've managed to get tir ghosts sent after you, it's unlikely that you're hacking the local stuffer shack. more likely you're hacking an extremely secure location controlled heavily by the tir tairngire government and/or military, digging for secrets that are worth protecting with the best of the best that they have.

of course, if you *are* hacking a stuffer shack, odds are good that in a firefight likely to break out there, you can participate just fine with a few points in pistols skill, not completely crap agility, an armour jacket, and an ares predator. if you're in a nice enough part of town to worry about police response, you might also want to have some smoke grenades and non-lethal weapons (you don't want to make the police mad enough to make an example of you).

And yet, real life teams are also capable of taking over any other team members duties if/when needed. I know, I was trained in far to many Secondary MOS's on the off chance that there was need of the training. Yes, I was primarily a Rifleman, but I could step into any other position needed, whether it was for Company Level support (Rockets, Machineguns, Demolitions, Mortars) or Battalion level support (STA, FO, Mortars, Missiles, Heavy Weapons Platforms of various types), as well as interim corpsman, tank/hog driver, radioman, and a few other job descriptions. Just because one has a specialty (which does not have to be the best level in the world to be an actual specialty) does not mean that you do not have other areas of expertise that are required for you to fill your position. Now, I will admit that some of that was likely due to the Branch of service I served in (USMC), and some of that had to do with my desire to learn all that stuff, so the training was afforded to me. But I was far from unique in my Unit; we were the go to Company in our Regiment for special operations outside of an official Spec Ops Unit Designation. The fact that any of us could perform the others jobs made us a very efficient and highly trained unit. We rarely needed any outside reinforcement, since we all had the training. Hell, about 20% were fully Jump Qualified, and about 10% were SCUBA qualified. And the funny thing is that I would STILL not give myself a Ranking of 5 in any of the relevant skills in Shadowrun because I feel that my training puts me at veteran level, not elite. I know others might contest that, but it is how I feel. Which is why I am such a proponent of the Skill Description table in SR4A. It works for how I see things. Even the Description Table in SR5 works, even if they did shift things up a bit. I did not feel it was all that necessary, but it works.



Not everything always goes to plan (and in fact most things do not), even with a Competent Face and Hacker. And your assumptions that all it takes is a pretty face and some technical competence to avoid combat are pretty laughable. You have apparently never been in a real combat situation then. I can guarantee you that when lead starts flying, EVERYONE shoots back.



Not constantly, No, but you do not stay in the gated community as a Shadowrunner, do you? You go place where they shoot you in the face just for looking sideways at them. You go to Zero-Zone level Corporate Research facilities where they shoot you just for being on the premises. I can go on. Any Shadowrunner who is incapable of throwing lead when it hits the fan is generally a dead Shadowrunner.

Ever deal with an HOA? If you don't have the self restraint and the social skills to deal with your neighbor bitching about the color you painted your house, the length of your grass, or how loud you listen to your music without resorting to shooting him in the face, you're not going to last long there.

If an on-site hack is required, only the shadow has to go in, bringing retranslators or an optic fiber cable with him. Or a drone could do that, if you don't expect much in the ways of opposition. Or a face could pretend to be the tech support. Or the mage can walk in unseen. Or... you get the idea.


If your runners find themselves in the frontlines as grunts (or, perhaps even worse, doing spec-ops work for the military against actual military regiments), sure, all bets are off. But then again, they also enjoy a noticeable chance of dying to a random 50P artillery shell scattering on their head, so I'm not sure why go there at all.

Shadowrunners tend to go to the places where they are shot in the face on sight in the company of people who can either prevent that from happening at all or at least keep them alive through the ordeal (themselves included). But binarywraith's statement specifically applied to staying in the neighborhood.
As for getting dead, in my experience, shooting is not the skill that keeps a runner alive in a firefight. Dodge and the Athletics group are much more useful for that.


So you need well-developed skills to stay alive during the engagements with HOA representatives? A few shadowrunners I've seen just got a lot more believable as characters.

Nah, just common everyday optimization. Typical for Sr4.5, really. I take it you can't optimize to this standard?

A or B suffices, and you're not only misquoting, you're trying a straw man,.

Please show me where I said "AR Only". And show, with page references, where in SR5 is says that optimizing for AR prevents you from optimizing in VR as well. You can be good at both, you know.

Wow, so spending money on armor or lifestyle must "permanently cripple" you as a decker, because it's unrelated to your area of expertise. Or weapons. Or anything tht makes a character a *character*, and not a one trick pony.

You're assuming those come at the expense of one another. They don't, not in any system of Shadowrun.

You don't know many military folk, do you?

I know a few special ops people. I've even trained with a couple, in my younger days. (They kicked my ass, for the record.) Here's the deal: even though they have specialties, they're all trained to cover for one another. In order to even make the team, you have to be expert or better in every weapon the team fields. So, if the machine gunner goes down, the sniper can pick it up and keep shooting. The riflemen all can operate the comms. The medic knows hot to use the sniper rifle proficiently. And so on.

By the way: you're "hard pressed" to think of a Shadowrun scenario that requires everyone to fight? What about Food Fight? Not only does that draw every member of the team into the fight, it's the oldest Shadowrun scenario there is-- it was originally published in the Sr1 core book. So, safe to say, getting the decker involved in firefights has been part of the game since the beginning.

No, because having characters with ones in some attributes and nines in others is riduculous and not justifiable by the background.

So you're spending your highest priorities to get that. Surely that comes without alternative costs, eh?
Also, >demonstratingly misquote >accuse the interlocutor of misquoting.

You can be good at anything you set your mind to, it just costs you resources which you don't have to spare.

If your decker is capable of being a perfectly good professional without paying for a lifestyle, of course.

So they don't cost the same BPs to acquire, either one or the other? Or they don't compete for the same priorities, with either one or the other getting the higher ones and the points coming with them? That's good to know, but are you sure you're using the same chargen rules as everyone else?

Actually, I do, both in my family and among my colleagues. Dunno how you do things that side of the globe, but I haven't encountered frogmen who'd also be trained in paradrops (other than maybe to an equivalent of skill rating 1), nor assault team members trained to be vehicle mechanics, nor anyone other than the comm officer having anywhere near professional skills in Hardware, nor military firmware coders trained to perform sabotage and CQC.

Not really. Considering you need A or B in SR5 to just afford a decent deck, the rest is up to you. If you can manage those resources efficiently, you can get quite a bit for it.

So, I didn't actually say it, and you don't actually have examples. How about you build a few deckers in SR5, and then demonstrate it?


Wow, look at that goalpost move! Now we're talking *professionals*! Of course, professional also means a standard of behavior... which, in Shadowrun, is represented by social skills. You know, the same ones you said made a decker less effective at his main role? But now, since you say they're professionals, you're conceding that they need to do more than just punch deck!


In Priorities, it's not a tradeoff. You get X for attributes, Y for skills, etc. How you spend those is up to you, but if you're good at it, you can be solid in any number of categories.

BP is a tradeoff, but as evidenced by a ton of characters in the Dumpshock archive, you can have excellent secondary skill sets.

The term you're looking for is "opportunity costs". You are assuming that the opportunity cost of being the very best is sacrificing everything else. That's not the case, and has never been the case, and I'd like to see you produce some characters proving your point.


My roommate is an ex communications specialist. He wasn't even close to special ops, but he can handle multiple firearms well beyond basic requirements, can do emergency repairs to a Humvee, knows basic hand to hand, and can handle a field medical pack with ease. And he just went through basic. Every marine I know can do paradrops, operate comm equipment, do emergency repairs on vehicles, can act as a field medic, and is trained in the US Marine force martial art, which includes weapons and unarmed. Every special ops guy I've met or read ab out can do a lot more than that.

Combat is unpredictable. You can't rely on everything going right, such as the samurai handling all the enemies for you. So, smart groups have multiple redundancies, so if the specialist goes down, they can cover. In Shadowrun, if the sammie gets nailed by a spell, everyone else can still fight off the opposition... assuming they were built proficiently.

By the way: I was flipping through SR1, and I was reminded of something. Not only are the deckers there as skilled in firearms as the average security guard, the first ever decker in Shadowrun fiction, Dodger. Dodger was not only competent in a fight (he didn't fight very often in the first trilogy, but he was trained in Carromeleg), but he was such a skilled decker, he could run with Ai's with only his naked persona. So, no, you don't have to sacrifice combat effectiveness to be a great decker, and from the very beginning, you were never supposed to.

Yeah, we've determined above that everything a hacker needs to spend his money on is his deck, essentially. Because really, what else could he possibly need (now that the system does not even yet have the encephalon).

How about I don't spend my time on a shitty system with whole subsystems unworkable and/or absolutely retarded, its rules contradicting each other, and a large chunk of it built around twisting my hands into cooperating with a game mechanics that still doesn't work?

Runners are by definition professionals. Well, or dead.

Professional means being competent in the chosen profession and nothing else.
And no, standards of behaviour are represented by player roleplaying, not character social skills.

They also need to breathe and eat, what an amazing surprise.

This is again out there completely. If you spend the skill/stat/whatever points on something, you don't have these points to spend them on something else. It is by its very nature always a tradeoff.

Out of the chargen you're lucky if your skillset covers the skills essential for your archetype half-decently.

Given that you have half a dozen pools at the very least for every archetype to spend your resources on, yes, naturally, the cost of increasing the non-essential ones is being sub-par in the essential ones.

Let me just spend a dozen days (by your own estimations of chargen times) to prove that alternative costs exist.

Are "emergency repairs on a Humvee" replacing a blown tire or piecing it together after its motive system has been destroyed by a mine? Similarly, is the mentioned "ability to paradrop" experience in jumps from every common height under any weather, with additional equipment and the rest of the regiment coming down, or stealth drops, etcetera? Cause bandaging a bleeding wound and replacing a wheel with the spare is not having a skill, it's defaulting on the attribute.

Ahaha, and if the hacker goes down to IC, is the rest of the team finishing his hack? If the sammie, with his teen-plus-sized dicepools in attack and defense, and three-plus IPs, goes down just like that, what's the hacker doing to the ones who downed him, even if you waste your resources on getting him the second IP and an attack pool somewhere below 10?