[Marcus Gideon]

You're mixing up some of the concepts...

When you link several devices together in a Master / Slave PAN relationship (which has nothing to do with Personas)... you can opt to have their Icons merged with the Master device's Icon. That's just for viewing clarity though, like filtering search results. You haven't literally absorbed those Icons into your own. If a cop wants to look you over and see if you have any illegal devices or weapons, you can't "hide" them inside of your Commlink's Icon.

The Persona however, specifically says it can only operate on one device at a time. In order to move it to another, you have to reboot both devices.

[CitizenJoe]

That's not what the rules say.  They say if you want to change persona you need to reboot.

[Herr Brackhaus]

CitizenJoe
Page 235:

When a person uses a device to connect to the Matrix, the device’s icon is subsumed by the persona’s icon, so it’s basically gone from the Matrix until the persona jacks out. You can only run one persona at a time; switching requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona.

Notice how the text mentions "a device", and if you want to shift your persona to another you have to reboot both devices. You can have other devices slaved to your PAN, or just operating wirelessly and filtered with the rest of your PAN.

[Malevolence]

Oddly enough, CitizenJoe's interpretation of that passage as allowing a persona to use multiple devices could make sense. It says you can only have one persona, but it never expressly mentions that you can't have two devices be a part of the persona - just that adding or removing a device from the persona requires rebooting the devices in question. The word "shift" strongly implies a one to one correlation, but does not require it  - if your persona were formed on devices A and B and you decided you wanted to shift it from B to C, you would remain on A but reboot B and C in order to vacate B and subsume C. It's not the way I would interpret it, but it works after a fashion.


However, other parts are clear, most particularly p. 228 on Matrix Damage where it states (emphasis mine) "When a persona is hit for damage, the device it is running on takes that damage". The "the" makes the device hosting the persona unique, and even if it did  not, there are no rules presented for distributing the damage among multiple devices forming a persona, which would be pretty critical.

[Rooks]

so in other words you can run a commlink with decent firewall but be spotted almost instantly by an attacking hacker or you can make your devices owner your teams decker and have the option of running silent but probably have crap firewall but not be instantly spotted by an enemy hacker or you can when you think are being hacked turn off you commlink lose your wireless bonuses

[Herr Brackhaus]

Rooks
Or, you can add a Sleaze Dongle and hardware mod a program carrier so you can run Smoke and Mirrors for a total of 6 Sleaze and run silently on your own...

[CitizenJoe]

Again, changing persona requires rebooting.  It doesn't say shifting devices or adding devices requires rebooting.

Let's say I've got the persona 1337Haxorz69 but I've also got the persona Tony the Legitimate Businessman.  I log in with commlink 1 as 1337Haxorz69.  I cannot then have Tony come in on commlink 1 without first rebooting.  I could have Tony come in on commlink 2 though.  I could also access Tony through my car, which gets subsumed under the Tony persona.  Now I activate the wireless on my fashion armor as Tony and it too gets subsumed under the Tony persona.  Not wanting my smartgun to be attached to Tony, I activate it without attaching it to a persona, in fact, I have it running silent. 

I now have two persona running on two different devices, with one persona running with multiple devices and a third device icon running independently.   Meanwhile, I haven't even activated my underwear yet.

[Herr Brackhaus]

The problem with that, Joe, is that the current rules don't support it. Go read the persona section again, in particular where it says the persona is part you. Nowhere in the books are multiple personae mentioned, and if you asked this question of Catalyst I'm relatively confident what the answer would be. And with that I'm out, because all that needs to be said on this topic already has.

[Marcus Gideon]

Again, changing persona requires rebooting.  It doesn't say shifting devices or adding devices requires rebooting.

Let's say I've got the persona 1337Haxorz69 but I've also got the persona Tony the Legitimate Businessman.  I log in with commlink 1 as 1337Haxorz69.  I cannot then have Tony come in on commlink 1 without first rebooting.  I could have Tony come in on commlink 2 though.  I could also access Tony through my car, which gets subsumed under the Tony persona.  Now I activate the wireless on my fashion armor as Tony and it too gets subsumed under the Tony persona.  Not wanting my smartgun to be attached to Tony, I activate it without attaching it to a persona, in fact, I have it running silent. 

I now have two persona running on two different devices, with one persona running with multiple devices and a third device icon running independently.   Meanwhile, I haven't even activated my underwear yet.

Nowhere does it refer to changing Persona, anywhere in the book. Because as far as the book is concerned, you can only have YOUR Persona. Singular. As in Mages can only have THEIR Astral Form, THEIR Astral Signature. It's not multiple choice.

Nowhere in the book are Persona associated with SINs, or fake identities, in any way, shape, or form. When you, whoever you are, whatever you call yourself, log into a device... it's your Persona that appears. Whatever that Persona looks like, whatever AOL screen name you choose to call yourself. It's the same Persona, always and forever.

The rules do state that if you want to operate your singular and unique Persona on a different device, since it can only operate on one at a time, then you have to reboot both devices in order to complete the migration. Which means, that you cannot log into the Matrix with multiple devices at once. Multiple devices can be online, but only one of them will be represented by your Persona. The rest will be represented by their own Device Icons.

so in other words you can run a commlink with decent firewall but be spotted almost instantly by an attacking hacker or you can make your devices owner your teams decker and have the option of running silent but probably have crap firewall but not be instantly spotted by an enemy hacker or you can when you think are being hacked turn off you commlink lose your wireless bonuses

You don't need to give Ownership to the Decker. You just need to Slave to their PAN.

If you Slave your Commlink to the team Decker, you gain access to their Sleaze rating which means your Comm can hide that much better. But you are not forced to use their Firewall rating, if your Commlink's Firewall rating is better. Master / Slave gives you the option to choose the better stat, it doesn't mean you're required to use the Master's ratings.

[CitizenJoe]

I think I see the issue.  I'm reading this:

You can only run one persona at a time; switching [personas] requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona.

And you are reading:

You can only run one persona at a time; switching [devices] requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona.

[Marcus Gideon]

I think I see the issue.  I'm reading this:

You can only run one persona at a time; switching [personas] requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona.

And you are reading:

You can only run one persona at a time; switching [devices] requires you to reboot both the device you’re currently on and the device to which you want to shift your persona.

Very true. And this whole discussion only serves to highlight the fact that the writers did a poor job at explaining their intentions. Persona are painfully vague and nebulous. And what's worse, is the transitional sentence between paragraphs, which makes everyone think that logging into a device magically polymorphs it into something other than a device.

[CitizenJoe]

I'm willing to table the discussion on the grounds of bad grammar.

[Kincaid]

The core book was pretty vague when it comes to issues like ownership and personae.  Ownership is defined (and I'm away from my books right now, so I'm paraphrasing) as a relationship between devices and grids.  Fast forward to Data Trails.  One of the things I wanted to do was hammer out the questions about ownership, SINs, and the Matrix.  Tying ownership to a SIN (real or fake) would create a pretty disastrous situation for a game in which criminal activity is the norm.  Losing a few licenses when a SIN gets burned is manageable.  Losing your cyberdeck, less so.  This is also why being able to deduce a device's owner simply by looking at it is a no-go.  So DT makes a clearer distinction between avatars and persona, a distinction that wasn't quite as clearly defined in other books.  If we accept, a priori, that ownership is a relationship between devices and grids, then devices must be able to distinguish between avatars (in the event that two people are using the same stock avatar) and not be fooled by changes to your SIN.  First off, I still assume the majority of shadowrunners are SINless, so having a key mechanic hinge off of a SIN is bad design, but people swap fake SINs , get assigned criminal SINs, or just generally find ways of screwing around with SINs.  SINs are fluid (for characters) whereas ownership, while not entirely static, is pretty rigid and there's plenty of incentive to create a world in which the players' cool toys don't automatically rat them out in the second session.

The exact mechanic is left deliberately vague, but when you use a device to create a persona, the ones and zeros of the Matrix assemble something that is undeniably you at some level.  Your gun knows you, even if you change your clothes.  Right now, this element of personae isn't very well understood by the Powers That Be and it can only really be used as a benefit (it makes it harder to steal your stuff or track you down) and not as a weakness.  In a very pedantic way, you can't change persona--you can change your avatar and you can change the device you're using to generate your persona (which will make your persona weaker or stronger), but the digital thumbprint of your persona is fixed.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Man, I liked the Matrix so much better when it was solidly  based on actual, real computing tech and not this quasi-mystical, "no one really knows how it works"... thing... it has evolved to. Heck, even Astral space and Magic makes more sense to me, and that is not a good thing.

Anyone know if efforts have been made to rewrite the 5th Edition Matrix rules into something that actually makes sense and works without some serious handwaving? If not, that's one more thing on the list of things to houserule for a home game in the making.

[CitizenJoe]

So, regardless of how many fake IDs you have, you will immediately be recognized if you ever log on to the matrix?

How about instead your persona is a husk created by the matrix when you log on which you then fill with the data you want.  When you log out, that husk disappears.  When you log on again, a new husk is created and you repeat the process.  In order to facilitate things, normal people store their persona data on their commlink and have it populate the datafields automatically.