First off I just want to say thanks to the people who'll help me, this is nooooot my element at all! Secondly, I'm sorry I'm going to type all I'm going to type but I feel it can help explain what I'm looking for. My friend and I were talking about things we liked that weren't broadcasted to everyone out in the world, and she said she liked D&D when she was younger, and I was all "Whaaat? I would have loved to get in on that but nobody thought I'd be into that!"

We ended up planning a weekly thing for Saturdays where we would get together with more of our friends and start tabletop gaming as a way to get to know each other better and have a good time; but we ended up having to pick between D&D, Shadowrun, and Cyberpunk, and we settled on Shadowrun! I learned about Shadowrun because I played SR:R and loved the setting and the plot of both campaigns -- but Dragonfall especially.

Anyways with that background out of the way, I have absolutely no knowledge when it comes to table-tops and none of us (save the girl that started this idea for us, but that was a one off thing) have ever played a PnP game. Beyond SR:R I have zero knowledge about the setting, the plot, how it's played. Learning about that isn't a big deal because I feel learning it from the ground up with my friends will be a really, really, really fun experience! We do know we're going to get the 5th edition but what I'm wondering is what books we need (if any at all).

We were hoping to start asap but when I checked on Amazon for a beginners set I found out it's not released yet and comes out the 24th this month. If there is any place you know we should start than please let me know! I'd really appreciate it. Also I have no idea if we need more than dice and paper to play (let alone what kind of dice), I really have no clue when it come to this. At all.

Another thing is I don't know if characters can transfer between different campaigns or not, so if there's a run we can get that would last us several weeks would be awesome. My one problem is I have a budget I have to get and getting the game has become my responsibility, so if there's anyway to get all of that within a $60 price range, or if you can shape whats suggested around that, I would really, really, really appreciate it!

TLDR; group is new to PnP, need good runs/rulesets for 5th edition, $60 price cap

Thanks again for everyone willing to help!

The only things that you absolutely MUST HAVE, is the Core Book, which contains all the rules that you really need, as well as some setting description, and a boatload of regular 6-sided dice. I'd suggest getting a box of 36 from your local hobby store or similar. You won't usually need quite that many, but your dice pools add up.

You'll need to note down your character on something. Paper works OK, but personally I prefer to have my characters in Excel on a laptop. It's a flexible program, and you can add notes to the cells, in which you can note down the rules for the individual peaces of gear etc. Doing it this way will make your life easier. The SR rules are not always the most user friendly in their layout, so hunting for a rule during the game can be a bit annoying at times.

You don't really need to buy "adventures", in order to get started, but I suppose that they can help you get to grips with the game. I've never played any though, so no recommendations on that from me. There are some officiel "Shadowrun: Missions" that are available for purchase though. Otherwise, just look online for ideas and inspiration, and cook up your own runs.

Characters can transfer between campaigns, but it is down to the GM to allow it, and it will usually depend on both how much Karma/XP a character has racked up during its previous campaign, but also a boatload of other potential factors, like whether the character concept will fit into the campaign and the rest of the group. At the end of the day, the GM decides if a character can be used in their game.

If you can "make due" with en electronic copy, visit www.drivethroughrpg.com and see what you can find. The 5th ed Core Book is available at 19.99USD. http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1159...rs=0_0_1700_0_0

Good luck and have fun. Wellcome to the shadows

As a side note, I wouldn't recommend buying a hard copy of SR5. All editions of it so far printed have major misprints, typos, and just plain wrong references which have only seen some minor correction via errata. The errata have been, IIRC, applied to the PDF version, but not to any print run yet done.

Not that 6-sided dice are particularly expensive or hard to find, but if you have smartphones, there are free apps that can handle all the rolling and interpretation for you.

Are we really going to let a newbie walk right into the fifth edition as it is now without even challenging the idea?

are you suggesting that we tell them to buy 10 books so that they can have a complete game that mostly works with only minor tweaks required, or that they should use the incomplete and not entirely flawless SR4A only, which they can't get in dead tree format these days?

As much as I love Shadowrun, it is perhaps not exactly the best game system for a group with no PnP experience to be learning "how to RPG". So many damn moving parts.



-k

You most certainly don't need 10 books to run a 4e game. The core rulebook is enough to get a group started, and the rest of the core set handles the vast majority of whatever they might need otherwise. At least the fourth (while of course not being perfect) makes more intuitive sense with its character creation system, Matrix, and gear that does not have wireless slapped onto it for no reason.
Oh, and you can buy 4e books on amazon, if you're so inclined. New ones, even. I'm not sure why a group that is not certain to gather for a second game would want to, but still.

Leaving the edition wars by the wayside (Full disclosure: I am not a fan of 5th edition, but I respect your right to make your own determination on that issue)...

Welcome to the hobby! Leave your fears at the door, because roleplaying is way easier than most people seem to think.

What you will need

• Either the Shadowrun 5th Ed. Quick-Start or the Shadowrun core rulebook
• 15-20 six-sided dice
• Several friends

How to play
Your first step is to select a gamemaster, or GM, from among your group. One person may volunteer, or the group can vote, draw straws, etc. Whatever method works for you. The gamemaster is part storyteller and part referee. He or she tells the players about the scene, plays the non-player characters (NPCs) where necessary, and adjudicates the rules.

Once you have a GM, each player needs a character. The rulebook contains a number of pregenerated characters; any or all of the players may pick from one of these, or use the provided character-creation rules to create their own.

Once all the characters have been selected and/or created, you're ready for your first shadowrun! As novices, you and your friends will probably be relying on published modules to start off. "Module" is a generic term, originating with D&D (I think), referring to prewritten adventures that the gamemaster, or GM, can offer to the player characters. The quick-start document contains at least one module, and should suffice to get your feet wet. There are many others, and of course you can always write your own!

On the subject of characters switching from one campaign to another: of course they can! They're your characters, and your campaigns.

Feel free to reply with additional questions.

Seconding. There's a lot of bookkeeping and accountancy that goes into playing Shadowrun RAW. As a first system for an entire group, it's a little intimidating. But then, the quick start rules are available for free and the sample characters aren't that bad. So, yeah, OP. Go get the quick start along with the core book.

stupid wireless gear alone is not a compelling reason to ignore 5e. it *is* a compelling reason to ignore the stupid wireless bonuses, but that's about it.

Unfortunately as currently presented, that means cutting out huge chunks of the entire Maxtrix part of the system, and working around the consequences of that isn't something I'd wish on someone without previous edition knowledge to kludge together a work around out of.

Honest opinion, the starter box is a waste of money. What you get are:
- The Quickstart rules, which are also available for free on the SR homepage
- The world description chapter from the core rules
- Five pre-generated characters, four of which are also included in the quickstart booklet linked above
- Dice. You'll need a few, but it's not like there's a lack of sources


Shadowrun in a nutshell:

• The gamemaster describes the scene: Your team moves down the corridor to the next intersection. Peering around the corner, you see a troll in uniform guarding the door at the end of the corridor.
• The players decide what to do next, sneak past the guard, shoot him, or maybe just convince him you're the surprise inspection from HQ. Whatever your approach, the actual mechanics remain the same: Add up the level of your character's appropriate skill and the linked attribute (like in SR:R, though the list of attributes is a bit different), roll a number of six-sided dice (D6) equal to that sum, and count how many fives and sixes ("hits") you rolled. Depending on whether your hits reached the threshold set by the rules for that action, you succeed or fail at the task
• The GM describes what happens next, based on what the players did (or tried...)

You'll need

• The quickstart rules (free, bare-bones) or the SR5 core rulebook (intimidating amount of stuff, $19.99 for the PDF version)
• 20-ish D6. If you don't have enough, get the 36-pack from Chessex and you're set
• If you want to build your own characters, I'd suggest doing it with this tool https://code.google.com/p/chummer5/
• Friends, Snacks, the eponymous pens and paper.

As you might also have fathomed from this thread, 5th edition did not get an overly warm welcome from fans. For people who have played the previous edition and learned to live with its flaws, there is no benefit to be seen in moving to a new edition which doesn't really present an improvement. But for somebody who has never played, it won't really make a difference. 20th Anniversary Edition is maybe a bit more mature, but 5th will be the way forward, as much as we hate it...

I have to agree with this. Any edition of Shadowrun is fairly involved.

That said, I will agree that the Quick Start rules isn't a bad place to begin, if you have your heart set on it. The 5e corebook is just too expensive for a casual player to pick up. But since the quickstart is free, there's no harm in giving it a look-over.

There is some excellent advice around here. Read it all, take what you like.

I would also advise a couple of other steps, if you're willing:

• Whoever is running the game might want to come back and give us updates on how it's going, challenges, good stuff and so on. That way many of us who are more experienced GMs can offer advice on what to do more or less of, what to try and how to solve problems. It's harder (more intellectually involved) to run a game rather than to play one, and there are tricks and tips which can be passed on to make it a better experience for all concerned.
• Set up a few throwaway mini-campaigns, with throwaway characters. Consequence free, no shame, no blame. That way everyone gets a chance to make silly mistakes without worrying too much about long term effects.
• If you are running the game and want advice crafting your own campaigns, come ask for tips. It's a deep creative field, and a few of us have a little experience with that. We can recommend a few tips.

You will probably find that different players have different styles, and so do GMs. You may even learn a lot about each other.

I'll pitch in a couple of additional things, which the books never cover, and which in my view are pretty vital, in order to run successful RPG games.

1) The very first rule of any RPG, is that the aim of the game is to have fun. The moment something isn't fun anymore, something needs to be adjusted. Unhappy participants make for a bad game.

2) Communication between the players and the GM is vital. Everybody need to be on the same page with regards to the kind of game that is going to be played. It relates to both 1) and to the character creation.

3) In terms of characters, Anti-social Lone Wolf characters are cool concepts for movies, but they suck in RPG games. RPG games revolves around a group of characters acting as a group, in order to accomplish various things. No matter what, every character MUST be able to cooperate with the other characters in the group. This also interacts with 2). In character arguments are fine, but don't let it spill over into the real world. If two characters don't get along, something need to change, and it's often a good idea to work it out outside of the game, between the players and the GM.

4) Be very careful about allowing player characters to kill other player characters, to let them steal from each other, or to screw each other in any way. Endless numbers of gaming groups have split up because one player had his character kill another player's character, leading the other player to get pissed, which end up leading to a messy circle of players screwing each other over in the game. Very mature groups can get something like this to work, but far more can not handle PC (Player Character) vs. PC kills.

Have fun and enjoy the game B)

+1. All of these are excellent points.

I will frankly say that I do not understand how the 5e Matrix is supposed to operate, and I don't wish the trouble of wading through that upon newbie GMs. What will he answer to a question like "why can't the corpsec detect the wireless connection enabled on the chameleon suit in their secure installation"? See, there are already suggestions to simply write wireless off - but that's basically offering a new GM to do an unordinate amount of work for a doubtful benefit.
4E has a bunch of flaws, and being a "finished" edition not last of them - but it's playable from the get go, only with the Core, and it's intuitively understandable.

pretending like wireless bonuses don't exist for most things is not a lot of work. it's very easy.

also, based on how many times people came to these forums asking for help with understanding how the 4e matrix works, including something like a 30+ page thread devoted entirely to explaining the subject, i'm going to have to say that you have a very different intuition than many or perhaps even most people when it comes to the 4e matrix.

Don't worry, the guys who got tasked with writing the 5e matrix (and the wireless bonuses) didn't know how the hell it was supposed to work either.

Which is apparently a bonus... possibly even wireless...

I would also recommend reading some of the PbP adventures going on in the "Welcome to the shadows" subsection. My favorite (from a story/able to follow standpoint) is "Nothing's free in the free zone".

All I'll say is, I don't have more than the vaguest idea how to make the 5e Matrix work.

'Luckily for the OP, the Matrix remains one of the easiest parts to handwave. If I were you, I'd discourage anyone from playing a Decker or Technomancer, at least to start. Just give them an NPC decker contact; anything they need done via computers, their decker just does for them. That frees everyone to focus on the physical side of things.

To a lesser degree, this is true of Astral Space: try to discourage a lot of solo missions via Astral Projection. But since it's easier to make the Astral interact with the physical, a little can work out. Still, if you can keep things to just Astral Perception, you might find that the game runs better.

And what then? Everyone just gets the wireless bonus, even with wireless off?
What about the whole mess with hosts and marks and networks and direct connections and Resonance only knows what else? Is a newbie GM to handwave all that as well?

The basic mechanic burns down to two possible Extended Tests. Difficulties starts once you get into details; which you certainly don't need as a new group.

Look, again, I'm not saying that 4e is flawless, and 5e is drek on a plate. But the whole sentiment that "old players hate it because of the changes, and that won't matter for the new players" is simply nonsensical. The flaws of the new edition are objective, and the new players will face them just like the old ones.

whether to just hand out the wireless bonus always, or never, is something individual groups will have to decide. those of us who are familiar with what those implants and pieces of equipment have done for the past 25+ years likely give it out for free, i suspect, but either way is fine.

as to the rest, that has absolutely nothing to do with wireless bonuses. wireless bonuses exist to entice you into connecting to the matrix with all of your stuff. you don't need to know anything about hosts, marks, networks, direct connections, or resonance only knows what else. all you need to know as far as wireless bonuses are concerned is whether you have your spinal cord hooked up to the internet, or not. if you remove wireless bonuses from the game, the only impact you've had on the matrix rules is that for even remotely security-minded individuals, the answer will always be "not".

I understood the 4e Matrix, I just could never get it to work decently. Hacking an opponents cyberware, while theoretically possible in 4e, was so impractical as to not exist. My best guess was that it would take 3 Extended tests; if you got them in one IP each, you still have the problem that the sam could have shot them in the face six times by the time you pull it off.

5e claims that it's now practical, but I don't understand the rules well enough to actually try. Granted, I haven't played a Decker yet, just an adept.

A gamesystem is not limited to wireless bonuses alone, neither is Matrix as its subsystem. 5e Matrix is beyond horrible.
Oh, and let me remind you if you remove wireless bonuses you now have a decker with his high-priority advances significantly reduced in usefulness.


Well, in 4e it isn't practical to do it when you're face to face with a sammy who's aware of what you're doing. You can still probe him silently from afar, if you so wish.
That said, I don't think hacking implants is all that crucial for a new group. Unlike hacking hosts, which is a much more intuitive and straightforward process (until you start getting into advanced details) in 4e.

It's practical, to a silly point if you're willing to burn edge on it, if you hit a situation where it's a better option than just shooting them. Given how the 5e Edge rules interact with hacking, it is literally impossible to have anything connected to the Matrix and be assured it is secure, no matter how good the thing you have it slaved to is. The only real workaround is to essentially have a bag full of a couple hundred Matrix-connected and silent running NERPS in your back pocket, so that the opposing hacker's random attempts to find the right silent running icon delay him enough that he gets bored of rolling.

do you feel that rules are necessary to allow a street samurai to con with the pistols skill or hack into a host using automatics?

if not, then why is it so important that a hacker be able to fight using hacking skills?

the only archetype that uses the same core skills and attributes for just about every situation (ie mages) are generally considered the most overpowered and unbalanced of all the archetypes in the system.

so far as i'm concerned, requiring different skills and attributes in different situations is far better for system design.

otherwise, the setting has far too much granularity with no real gain; you may as well just have couple of skills ("do stuff" and "resist stuff") and/or attributes ("offence" and "defence") and just use those to resolve every conflict. otherwise, anyone who isn't of the archetype(s) that gets to do everything with their narrow skill set is basically being punished for wanting to play an archetype that is not favoured by the system's mechanics.

The point is, in 4e most Decking tasks were Extended tests, which meant doing anything in the same timeframe as the rest of the party was problematical. Even simple hacking runs could take hours and hours, more than long enough for everyone else to get bored and decide to do something. Even on-the-fly hacking often took more than one roll, so decking in the middle of a firefight (a great old tool for building tension) was a serious problem.


Yeah, I remember the discussion here about a thousand active stealth tags. I actually came up with a non-cheesy version of that: my adept carries three external smartlink systems, active but not connected to a gun. If a decker goes after my gun, there's a very good chance that he'll hack the wrong smartlink.

Yeah, it's a cheesy workaround that shouldn't be necessary. The whole cyberware/weapon hacking in combat mechanic doesn't add any fun to the game. Heck, it didn't add anything in 4e either, unless you count making skinlink on the list of items everyone owned like FFBA.

Because the system is balanced to only allow him to use these skills effectively when he comes from character creation because it assumes that he will be able to use them as written in the core book. Or do you think a new GM should be rebalancing the gamesystem to account for its failures?


Decking during a firefight, given that on the fly hacking takes but a few turns, is perfectly possible, if not reasonable, to do in 4e. But anyhow I'm picking a system that I can understand to the point of being able to answer my players' questions over one I can't, even if the former features the dreaded Extended Tests.

and yet the general consensus is that you'd do better to just put a few points into a firearm skill and shoot people during a firefight, whether or not you have any sort of combat augmentation, than to spend your time trying to hack into anything at all.

if the system is balanced so that the hacker absolutely needs those abilities in order to be viable, then why is it that the general consensus of the more effective way to spend your actions is to not hack, even assuming your enemies are dumb enough to leave their gear online for you in the first place?

if hacking was supposed to replace shooting people in combat for the hacker characters, they failed miserably at that. the enemies not leaving their spinal cord and eyeballs connected to the matrix has no meaningful impact on how useful a hacker can be in combat the vast majority of the time, because the vast majority of the time your hacker should be pulling out a gun and shooting people. the only time it's a better action is if you can't shoot, which mostly means you're not there, and one of the explicitly mentioned goals of the edition was to avoid situations where the hacker is sitting in a van someplace far away.

AMEN TO THAT...

The general consensus among whom, exactly, and how have you pinpointed it? Putting a few points into a firearm skill doesn't work at all simply for making you a 1 IP goon with an attack pool smaller than that for dodging on other goons.

The system is balanced taking these abilities into account (how well it is balanced is quite another question). It is not a sane idea to make a new GM to rebalance a system.

Oh, so implants without wireless bonuses? Just great!

The character I currently play in SR5 totally eschews Wireless bonuses completely, since they are a sure way to give yourself away. Nothing like transmitting your location in a highly secure facility. *shakes head*

And they (the way wireless bonuses were implemented) are stupid to boot... *shrugs*

It's not just consensus, it's fact.

Let's say the decker wants to hack a ganger's pistol and eject the clip in SR4.5, It takes three extended tests to do so. Even if he manages to do them all in one roll each, that's three IP he spent doing it. So, while he's busy trying to hack the guy's gun, the sam can walk up and shoot the ganger six times.

Quite simply, it's more efficient to shoot people than try and combat-hack their equipment. You can shoot twice per pass, as opposed to make one roll towards an Extended test. The action economy is better-- much better, if you assume it takes more than one roll to beat the test, sometimes Extended tests take a lot of riolls.

even in 5th, it's still better to just shoot. even if all you can do is lay down suppressing fire, if your objective is to attack an enemy and remove them from the fight, you want to use a gun. you still need to spend at least 1-2 actions to mark your target before you can even try to do anything at all. even if it takes you 2 actions to put someone down with shooting (although if you combine your shooting with someone else's, not so hard; note that hacking does not combine well with anyone else's actions at all), you're still ahead of the game by shooting because you reduced their dice pool on action 1, instead of reducing their dice pool 2-3 actions later.

(hacking still remains useful for, say, hacking a security door to make it open or close, however, which has absolutely zero reliance on whether someone's cybereyes run on the cloud or not).

and if the system is balanced on having the ability to hack cyberware, but is so poorly done that it's almost never a good idea (unless you're a corporate team of hackers launching an en masse cyberattack from a central location so that you can send your top talent to protect any of a number of possible locations), nothing is lost by preventing that hacking from occurring. if anything, by making it clear that such hacking will not work well, you remove a noob trap from the game. so far as I'm concerned, that's a beneficial effect on the system, not a problem that needs fixing.

Unless it's something that can be directly observed, it still requires proof.

First, the hacker does not need LoS to do his thing, and need not be seen doing it.
Second, please note we're discussing hacking in combat only in what pertains to 5e, which specifically makes it its goal to the point of making major changes to the Matrix and equipment to allow for it.


Ehm, are you seriously saying that your hacker stands a solid chance to hit anyone remotely combat-capable by Sixth World measures (that is, with the best IP- and thus Reaction-boosting implants available)?

Perhaps it's a better idea not to use such a poorly balanced system at all until you know what you're doing and are prepared to rebalance it to work the way you like? Why struggle through a broken system when you can get a working one out of the box?

The problem is, it still takes three actions to combat hack cyberware or equipment in SR5. If the idea was to give deckers something to do in combat, they failed, since shooting three times is better.

By the way, nice shifting of the goalposts. First you talked about shooting gangers, now you bring up prime runners. But even then, shooting is better: you can reduce their dodge pool, so the primary shooters have an easier target.

And yet, if you're playing a hacker in 5e, all your high-priority choices go into hacking.

How interesting, can I see where I mentioned gangers?
And no, it doesn't take a prime runner to have a dodge pool higher than a tertiary skill on a hacker, any goon will go.

You can also eat a long burst you're unable to dodge and die.

Excuse me, "goon".



And shooting them three times is *still* more effective than trying a combat hack.


That, too. Deckers don't need a lot of skill to do that, and if they suppress an area, the gun bunnies can finish off the rest.

Nameless corpsec HTR goons are goons still.

It just puts a hacker in clear and immediate danger of dying in a single IP when operating out of their element is all.
After all, the fifth tried to flush hackers from their vans not because of the excessive number of hackers participating in firefights.

see, that's the funny thing... with minimal investment, a decker can indeed hit most HTR goons.

3-4 skillpoints plus a specialization gives them 6 dice. having an agility of only 3 (so we're not even assuming a cyberlimb of doom) makes for 9 dice.

for suppressive fire, this will be opposed by reaction + edge. for targeted fire, it will be opposed by reaction + intuition... minus any reductions due to burst rules, potentially up to -9. 9 dice vs either of those dice pools is frankly a pretty solid chance to hit.

for example, against a tir ghost (professional rating 6 elite special forces), you can expect them to have 14 dice on regular defense. which is really quite good give them -9 to that dice pool, and now they're only enjoying 5 dice vs your 9.

interestingly enough, it's actually slightly worse for suppressing fire to hit them, since they'll actually get their full reaction of 8 (but no edge). on the other hand, on an average roll you are inflicting -3 to all of their actions. if you manage to hit them as well (which you get a chance to do based on how many times they take actions that expose them to fire... such as trying to shoot back), potential for even more penalties.

now, again, this is with very minimal investment into it. for ~50k nuyen you can get a cyberlimb kitted out to give you an exceptionally good chance to hit with relative ease. even simply investing in a bit more agility or improving your skill by a few points is going to increase your chances fairly well.

what's more, if we drop even one point of professional rating, to those elite corporate security forces you mentioned, they have a reaction + int of only 12. so that's 9 dice vs 3, which again i would consider to be a very good chance of landing a hit (9 vs 7 for suppression, not quite as good but still good). and even with them, "their presence at a facility generally means the shadowrunners are not getting paid nearly enough" (in other words, they're rather rare, not at all standard fare for runners). professional rating 4 goons don't even get to roll *one* die to dodge a full auto burst.

full auto fire is definitely your friend against hard-to-hit targets.

of course, you may wish to argue that recoil prevents that from being a valid strategy (it does absolutely nothing against suppressive fire, mind you). so, every second action will need to be a simple action long burst of only 6 rounds, inflicting a -5 penalty to dodge. looking at the numbers above... why yes, i do still think there's a very realistic chance of hitting a target with 9 dice, so long as the target is at -5 to dodge. especially if you're finishing off targets the street sam already wounded and they're down a couple of dice.

Full Defense is a valid tactic against someone who has 1 IP, and spending 50k on a cyberlimb and/or a bunch on IP boosters makes you get this much less for your hacking, while you're not exactly floating in extra funds as it is.

Hacking is good for a lot of things, but screwing/taking down an opponent during combat by messing with their gear or 'ware, is typically not one of them. Keep the team up to speed on enemy movements in the area. Lock down or open doors into the area the team is in. Hack enemy comlinks for information. Plenty of options, all of which can contribute to the group's actions. But honestly, if you want to take down an enemy, have the hacker pick up a weapon and shoot at said enemy. And honestly, if you make a hacker character that is incapable of taking care of him-/her-/itself during a fight, I will call you foolish. Actually, that last part goes for any kind of character IMO.

One huge nerf bat besides the time and effort it takes to hack is the Overwatch Score.

So far in Missions play every decker I have run into has had an uncomfortably short operating time when hacking before they have to jack out, as the damn Overwatch accumulates way too fast.

Once when we were in the middle of a facility infiltration, which meant suddenly all their suppressed cameras and security systems came back online. Things got loud really fast. Fortunately I was playing Viktor. He does loud well.

The only decker I ran into that didn't have such issues was an odd technomancer/decker hybrid, but even then he took that much longer to do things because he was doing both Matrix and Resonance stuff.


-k

ok, so at this point you're suggesting that trading one action from the hacker for one action from essentially the best-of-the-best in the entire world is a *bad* trade?

if the team's hacker just forced an elite special forces enemy to sit on his butt and do nothing for a turn immediately, that is massively more effective than being somewhat annoying 3 turns from now could ever hope to accomplish.

alternately, as I've noted several times, suppressing fire is a thing. it lasts until you get another action, so for a person with 1 IP, that's until the next combat turn during which time you're inflicting penalties and potentially damaging the enemy (with a very reasonable chance of success) unless they just spend the whole CT in cover.

with a gun and nearly no investment whatsoever, I can inflict meaningful penalties in a single action. with hacking, I can spend 2-3 turns or more (what, you think tir ghosts have crap matrix security?) to eventually maybe cause some minor inconvenience.

it isn't even a close competition. pick up a freaking gun. if you want to hack and be useful, the gear on or in an enemy is not the right thing to target.

Sure... My Technomancer in SR5 can, and actually has, shot people in the course of a run, rather than hacking stuff. In combat, it is far superior to shoot a gun than it is to try and hack something. *shrug*

Once again we've run into my favorite pet peeve, the one where 'combat capable' is defined as 'can generate a dice pool approaching twenty'. Ignore it.