I have a few questions regarding permanent sprites and sprite symbiosis (described in Hack & Slash, p. 77-79). Any insight you can provide would be appreciated.
- The section on sprite symbiosis states that a technomancer gains half his ally sprite’s level as bonus dice on skill tests for which the sprite has a matching skill (p. 79). Does this apply to non-matrix-related skills (such as firearms, athletics, con, outdoors, etc.)?
- Can you bring back an ally sprite that crashed (due to matrix damage) or would you be left with creating a new ally sprite and pay the karma costs again?
- Upgrading a permanent sprite (p. 68) seems to bypass most of the difficulties involved in creating permanent sprites. The extended test for an upgrade has a far lower threshold than the extended test for creating the source code. More importantly, no registration seems to be required, whereas registrations (in step 2 and 3) appear to be a major challenge in the sprite creation. Why would a technomancer not simply create a level 1 sprite and upgrade it to the desired level?
- Upgrading doubles the karma cost of new upgrades. Regarding ally sprites, does this reference the base karma cost (calculated in step 1)? Or does it refer to the (effectively doubled) karma cost a technomancer would pay by the time he binds an ally sprite (thus quadrupling costs)?
- What happens if the permanent registration (step 3) fails after the normal registration (step 2) succeeds? Would the sprite vanish, or would it be available to a technomancer?
Edit: minor correction.
