The Face in my game is thinking about becoming a light-duty decker as well. We can probably rearrange things (he has nearly 500k in contacts) for that purpose.

He obviously won't be doing hardcore decking, so what would be a good way to spend that nuyen?

I never got to read the newest set of decker rules, so this may have changed, but in general, get high computers skill, perhaps a spec. in coding and a high computers b/r skill.

as i remember it, the rules to upgrade a deck and to write your own utilities made it very beneficial to DIY then buy already done, but to build your own deck was insanely off balance (to put the MPCP in was something like a 2 year project so buy a middle-of-the-road deck and have deckmeister contacts that can hook you up with upgrade parts when possible and take downtime to write your own utils; or have a logical GM that is willing to let you add a little time to the overall required coding/upgrading time to say you code at night when you aren't working/running [like we do IRL] instead of requiring a solid block of downtime [vacation] to do it in.

If he's only got 200k, and is looking for a quick fix, I'd go for a Novatech Hyperdeck-6. They're only 125k, very easy to get hold of, and that's about the bare minimum MPCP I'd want to use, even for light decking and the like.

Spend the remaining money on utils if time is short, or if not get a Math SPU implanted for the extra hacking pool.

Then, of course, put up that good old Computer skill as far as you like.

A face character with only 200K you say?

Spend it on 'ware (Math SPU etc) and gear (Microtronics kit, chip burners) etc and max out computer and BR skills, with a good emphasis on programing.

Then go and con some hapless technoweenie™ out of their prized Cyberdeck

Agreed, even on a million starting resources don't start with your own Deck, steal the bastard. Spend the 200k on Math SPU and programs. You can buy some offline storage to store them in for 50+(5*MP). That let's you buy enough programs that when you do find your Deck, you can stock it up.

Sphynx

programs are what you really need to deck. since they directly modify the hosts Acess Control Index Files Slave ratings for what you are doing. the stock cyber decks lack adequate active & storage memory to run a decent amount of programs, so you may want to increase that.

for programs anything under rating 6 really isn't going to help you much on anything but the easy systems.

remember to buy VALIDATE at the highest rating you can. then all you need to do is succeed on your control test to get a super-user account and the host is yours.

Yours for a while, anyways. Read "The Cuckoo's Egg", by Cliff Stoll... it's a bit dated, but still an interesting parallel to decking.

And, respectfully, if any "decker" was dumb enough not to buy a starting deck, I'd make him work damned hard to get his hands on one. Getting one in your first run just ain't gonna happen... unless, of course, you want the latest from Radio Shack that your impressive programs are too large to run on.

Dumb enough not to buy a starting deck.... ???

Dude, have you ever even played a Decker? Seriously? The best you can get at CharGen is a Rating 6 which wouldn't get through anything short of a Blue field... Of COURSE you wait to steal a Deck, gotta have at LEAST an MPCP of 8. The dummy is the one buying it at Char Gen since he's gonna have to steal one anyways to do any real decking.

Sphynx

Oh, I agree that any decker worth his salt is going to want something better than the Novatech Hyperdeck-6. (A small aside -- since the CMT Avatar is Availability 6, does that fall under the category of "available to starting characters", or does the MPCP rating of 7 disqualify it?) But my point is that a starting decker without any manner of deck is practically a non-entity, and that as a GM I wouldn't just have the character just stumble across a nice deck on his first run because the player wanted to save . Cyberdecks, unlike Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbits, aren't everywhere... and unless you kill the poor shmoe you snagged the deck from, chances are he's going to go to a great deal of effort to get his 400,000+ investment back.

Additionally, if you'd expect to get a deck that way, I as a GM would occasionally roll to see whether some outside party decides that your deck is a valid target, and breaks in to either (a) steal it while you're out at the Stuffer Shack or (b) Narcoject you while you're jacked in, steal your deck, and leave you tied up naked in the Redmond Barrens.

Unless you've taken good precautions against that, turnabout is fair play.

the rest of this debate set aside, a decker who doesn't diversify as a part-time sammy, especially if they didn't buy a starting deck, is a miserable creature. always make a character that is a combat decker if you are playing a decker. someone that can hold their own in a gun fight (or close combat if you prefer) at the very least since there will always be runs that don't need a decker. a full-on decker would be left home, a decker with some combat skill is at least that many more pieces of lead to pin the targets with.... so to say a decker without a starting deck is a non-entity would imply that you are playing with some rather weak deckers or your players aren't too logical

Actualy K, not starting with a Deck usually insures you have a character that interacts better with the team, since he's got to be really good at something other than just Decking. It's the ones that do start with a Deck that I actually worry about cause that tends to imply they're gonna be the type of character which goes off on his own to do Decking RPing while the non-deckers sit waiting.

Sphynx

I must have missed something when I read the decking rules (and even ran a game or two)...what's wrong with an MPCP 6 deck? WIth a program rated at 6, maxed computer skill, high intelligence, and a math SPU, you're likely to blow through any system you'd run into in an opening run. Hell, most of the matrix is your oyster, so long as you aren't trying to hack into Renraku or something.

I take it you haven't decked much JonathanC? I suggest you check out the Walkthrough we did for a starting decker's run on an Orange system (not even a particularly hard one) to see how many ways even the most basic decking run can get screwed up as compared to someone using a serious deck (starting on page 4 of the same thread) facing a Red-10.

I've always been a big fan of the clunky wall-mounted deck; 10% of the price, yet utterly non-portable. Good if you can build it yourself and don't intend on taking it anywhere.

Beyond that, steal a deck. I've had and seen deckers get their ware shot up, stolen, fried, etc by a wide variety of ridiculous circumstances. The decker wants a new deck? Have 'em go on a run specifically for that purpose. If they need a deck, why should they 'stumble' upon one? One of my players specifically went looking for a guy to roll for his deck. Got him drunk, cracked his safe, stole the deck, killed him silently and then burned his house down and made it look like an electrical fire gone wrong.

Sure, it isn't nice, people will look at you funny and call you names, but it *does* get you what you want - a new deck.

Yeah, but if you go by the archtypes, then you can get things up to an availability of 13, like the Vehicle Rigger and his Hughes WK-2 Stallion.

Personally we House Rule that you can start with a rating 8 cyberdeck, but the 'team' encourages any wannabe Decker to let us steal one instead. However, our current Decker built his own Deck. Paid 15,000 for all the parts needed to build a Deck, 15,000 for a Shop, 5,550 for 1,100 MP of storage and 266,400 for his programs. Took a few weeks to build, but him and our Electronics/Computer expert built it.

Sphynx

Has anyone tried to buy his programs as object code and then cracking them ?

just out of curiosity, how do all you steal-a-deck deckers justify your Computers 6 skills with coding specialization at chargen if you don't even own a deck?

Stole, yes, or maybe (and more likely) the Deck you always used wasn't yours, but the Corp you used it for. If you're a basement hacker as your background, then valid point, but even the book says to build the background around the character, so don't have that kinda background.

Sphynx

It would all depend on the background. i hate making a background to fit a character, i always try to have a good idea of the background then make the stats that work. maybe they went to college to get the skill? regular at a net-cafe? had to ditch it after the previous (botched) run [assuming playing a character that isn't new to running]? maybe ran away and just couldn't take it for any of several reasons? there are a lot of reasons.

hell, i'd say I have the equivalent of rating 4, 2 years ago i would definitely have said 5 or 6, but i didn't at the time, and still don't, have my own computer. haven't for a few years now. I learned the skills then had to leave the computer behind when i moved. It happened to me, it can't be terribly uncommon.

Another question:

How does the program list from the Combat decker rate from a light duty decker standpoint?

How might I make it better?

Put another way, the char can free up roughly 120k for software. What would be a good lineup?

I have him lined up for a Novatech hyperdeck-6, would it be worth it to drop him to a 5-class deck with more software?

Well, let's see... the Combat Decker listed in the book has:

Analyze 4
Armor 6
Attack 6D
Browse 6
Camo 4
Commlink 5
Deception 6
Decrypt 6
Killjoy 5
Medic 6
Read/Write 5
Relocate 5
Scanner 4
Sleaze 6
Spoof 4

First off, Analyze should be at 6. Always at 6, minimum. It's used in so many different operations, you need it to be as high as it can. If possible, buy it with some program options like Sneak -- those make you infinitely more likely to get through runs without getting detected.

As for the other software... most of it's useful to some degree, though I'd probably ignore the Killjoy. Medic doesn't have to be at 6, and you can get along with less. Sleaze, if you've got your Masking chip at an even number, is actually better at an odd Program rating than even, since DF rounds up.

Anyone else got some suggestions?

A last one for me, though -- check out the Guide to the Matrix thread for numerous good ideas on what utilities work best.

I'd hold onto the Hyperdeck if I were you. The extra money you save getting an MPCP 5 deck is worth another couple of utilities, but even the Hyperdeck is struggling to fit a decent amount into its active memory anyway.

As was suggested getting a custom deck made or just plain killing someone and stealing his are decent enough ideas. Both take some time and effort though, so assuming you are buying a deck at creation, try staying with the Hyperdeck and get utilities something like this (memory cost is given after the rating):


Analyse 6 108
Browse 6 36
Deception 6 72
Decrypt 4 16
Defuse 4 32
Read/Write 6 72
Validate 6 144
Sleaze 6
Armour 5 75
Attack 6M 108

Total nuyen cost: 153,000Y
Total memory: 765 Mp

Okay, a little over budget. If you're feeling real crazy you could get those all as object code only for a 25% reduction in cost. It pains me for you to do this nearly as much as it does to see anyone deck with a Hyperdeck, but you need those utilities bad!

You should also technically pay an extra +10% to have the utils pre-burned onto OCCs, but I won't tell anyone if you don't...

Anyway, that little lot costs you 114,750Y at creation in that case, and doesn't all fit into the active memory of your Hyperdeck! So leave Validate, Decrypt, Defuse and maybe Read/Write in storage memory until you need them. Agian, swaping memory while decking is a dubious idea, but hey there you go.

That's what I'd run with, if I just *had* to go decking on a shoestring. Please don't go running any serious hosts with that outfit though!

There are several very useful utilities missing from there, but that's my absolute must have list. You might want to try (read: risk) dropping a few of the higher rated utilities for slightly lower ones and buy a few things you're missing at really low ratings (i.e. 3 is optimal). Why? Well, a rating 3 multiplier 2 utility costs only 900Y and 9 Mp of space! So you can buy loads of them and fill up any remaining memory with those. There's a reason why they're so cheap of course! But hey, target number 5 is still much nicer than 8, or whatever.



As far as an MPCP 6 deck being useless goes... I disagree. This character is interested in "light" decking, which I would class as mostly Green-Anything up to about Orange-Medium or Hard at the hightest. So maybe that Orange-9/12/12/9/9/9 host that Synner mentions would be near the high end of the scale. With rating 6 utilities, well... you'd struggle, but it could be done. Anyway that's the upper limit, against easier Orange systems and almost any Green host, you should be okay(ish).

You'll probably need to switch modes and dump some hacking pool into it to get your detection factor respectable (and you want it HIGH, as I'm sure everyone will tell you. I think you can manage about 10 with this setup), which would leave you pretty vulnerable (to hopefully nothing more than some nasty blasters and sparky IC on the majority those kinds of hosts) in another department. Then just read everything in SR3 and Matrix so you know what you're doing, and you're all set!

Edit: Okay I'm missing Spoof off that list for one important utility, and I'm sure there are others that other people would consider absolutely essential. Jus fiddle the numbers a bit til you have them all.

Um... I don't think you can't use your Hacking Pool to increase your DF. Could you provide a reference for that? DF, as far as I'm aware, is just your Masking rating plus your Sleaze utility, divided by 2, rounding up. The most a Hyperdeck could achieve would be DF 8 -- Masking mode makes the Masking jump from 6 to 9, plus 6 from a max-size Sleaze makes 15, and 15 / 2 rounding up is 8.

To clarify some, this guy has several decker buddies to do serious decking for him.

I imagine he would be mainly decking for investigation purposes, and decking systems from the inside.

Perhaps he could deck in from inside to "open a port" for a real decker outside?

Does this help clarify his needs more?

Sphynx:

I mean that Orange system is the high end of this decker's "light" decking capability. Is that what you thought I meant?

I'd agree that MPCP 8 is really needed for any serious or semi-serious decker, but for whatever light duty this character would need it for I think, with a lot of ingenuity, you could get away with MPCP 6.

Kurukami:

p26 Matrix.

Aha... now I see where you're going. I had completely missed that little tidbit, despite the fact that my group always uses the "Hacking Pool and IC suppression" optional rule immediately before it.

That would definitely be a tough decision -- Hacking Pool allows you so much flexibility in attempting difficult tasks that I'd be more apt to spend a few thousand more nuyen and get a program with the Sneak option. Thanks for the point, though!

Im not sure what people have against the mpcp-6 decks. Yes, Ive done decking. Yes, something higher is better. But I have to disagree that using anything less than high-end will get you trounced. Youll see a far greater change in decking by doing it smart, minimizing the number of tests you take, and having high programs in the right places than any change from raw mpcp. Just like other areas of SR, experience and knowing how to go about something is worth more than the gear youre trying it with (to a point, hold outs are too wimpy to storm the hardened megacorp facility...).

For a guy using decker abilites on the side or as a secondary facet, Id suggest going with a novatech deck or a babel. Then buy the important programs at rating 3, since the cost is less via the smaller multiplier, or higher if you can afford it. Get the really important ones like Sleaze at 6, no questions asked. Do invest in a math spu, and perhaps a knowledge "Familiarity" skill with the area he plans to be in the most. Be sure you have the contacts or skills to either aquire or make your own programs as you play, its definatly not something youll wanna pay full price for all the time. Do some thinking into how hes going to operate before hand; if hes doing lots of searches youll want different things that if you plan on tapping phone calls, or evading ic rather than fighting it. Plan ahead and youll be fine with a smaller budget.

And lastly I feel compelled to give my 2 cents on the theft thing. Im not going to go into the right/wrong side, everyone plays their own way, but if someone who works in the shadows and has the skill to deck *didnt have a deck* Id have to seriously question wtf they were thinking in terms of character history and how they managed to get work (sure MrJ, i can crack that system... btw you have a cyberdeck I can rent?). Im not saying its impossible, it could have been lost or destroyed right before gameplay starts for instance, but such a history has aspects of "munchy" no matter how you look at it. If a player doesnt want to sink 500k into the best starting deck they can, because its something theyll try to upgrade asap I can understand, thats reasonable planning. But if they flat out didnt have one Id have to make a serious double check on whether or not to smack him upside the head. They should have something at least reasonably passable to use, if the GM lets them get a deck the first run all the time then characters could be stealing them left and right, heck why do runs when you can make more cash fencing decks. Just the angle on the situation from where I stand.

Just as a reference, I agree with Zeel on his evaluation of the Office Host (9/12/12/9/9/9), it was intended to be a tough cookie for the newbie decker to run against (note the run goes into a nosedive and he hasn't even been challenged by some of the nastier stuff on the Security Sheaf).

Comparatively we're now going through what I believe is a typical overwatch run. Since Kurukami is obviously more experienced a decker than Satcong (just compare initial loadouts and tricks), he's running through what I would consider a standard corporate PLTG with all the tricks. An open public Host, a Red chokepoint Host and an Orange target host for the high security lab that's the team's target (compared to the Orange host in the previous walkthrough this is only slightly tougher, but the chokepoint pushes the decker's Security Tally up before he even gets there). He's just arrived in the target Host and he's already carrying a Security Tally of 10, a newbie with Zeel's setup above would have racked up at least 15 or more under the same conditions.

We allow Deckers a MPCP-7 Deck at start (availability 6). This gives you the opportunity to get Mask 7. If you improve to Sleaze 7 as fast as possible, you get a DC of 9 [(7+1/2*7+7)/2] in Masking Mode. This is okay for the starting hosts.

I don't like the Steal-your-deck-Option... What if the Sammy decided to wait for the first dead enemy to get his Reflex Booster 2 or Smart Link? The Rigger would steal his Cars and Drones after the first Runs. So a starting group would just have Mages and Adepts at start.
If i would be GM it would be very hard to get steal a deck. Normally you don't find many deckers walking around and Corps will place them into a security room. The Guardian 6 Programm will make it very hard to use a stolen deck too.

You want to be a decker, so buy a deck and improve it. Has anybody considered to allow a starting character to build his own deck and programm? You could use the 100 per hour rule to calculate the cost...

I've been toying with the idea of letting a decker pay lifestyle for the time it takes him to code the programs... but that's way too cheap, since most deckers would go with low lifestyle (1000 for 240 hours of programing or two rating 3, muliplier 3 programs). I did seriously consider allowing it for deck construction, though... but I think I've finally decided it's a bad idea and not balanceable.

100 bucks an hour will hire you a good contract programmer. For legal stuff that is. I'd double that for illegal stuff that most deckers want.

I'm thinking that if you have a solid fake SIN, a shop, and a physical location to put it, you can hire techs for 10K a month (for rating 6 in everything that matters). So, you do the design, and turn it over to your employees to do the actual coding and cooking, 3 shifts a day so you get 24 hours a day build time, while you make sure you've got the cash to pay them
And really, what decker worthy of the title can't come up with 30K per month?