[Agonar]

Theft is not Impossible, you just need to steal the right things.

Policing ammunition from the fallen is perfectly acceptable.  Going after Foci, Assault Cannons, Cyberdecks, RPKs, Ranger Arms SM-5s.  You don't waste your time trying to boost a 700¥ Predator, or a 1000¥ Renraku Sensei.  Specially not a 250¥ R1 Medkit. 

I also go with the ruling that the device has to be "on" the whole time you work on it.  It does state, afterall, that ownership is more than just a "this is mine" sticker on an item.  I wouldn't let anyone Spoof a command, because "The owner of an icon can intentionally transfer ownership to another persona in a process that takes about a minute."  That sounds like there might be passwords, and other protocols involved.  Also, because Spoof requires a Mark on the Device that will be sending the commands, and in this case, an actual person is sending the commands to a device to transfer the ownership.  Now, an Influence, or Control Thoughts spell... maybe.

Back to the Hardware test.

When you steal a car, take it to a contact with a shop, and assistants.  A Teamwork Test between a mechanic and 6 assistants can make short work of a 24 threshold Hardware test.  Figure maybe 12 dice for the head mechanic, each of the others adds 3 dice or so.. 30 dice for the first roll.  Taking averages, it might be done in 2-3 hours.  Charge your runners an appropriate fee for this service, say 20-30% of the vehicle's base cost?

Anyway.  Just to reiterate, the PCs in my game still successfully steal stuff.  They just don't waste their time on things that are higher on the risk, and lower on the reward factor.

[Namikaze]

*snipped for ease of reading*

The part that makes it optional is that as a GM, you can choose to apply that rule or not.  But really it boils down to logical deduction.  When someone can take as long as they want to complete a task, they can buy hits.  When someone can take a large interval of time between tests on an extended test, there's no good reason to always require someone to remove a die from their pool.

[LordGrizzle]

*snipped for ease of reading*

The part that makes it optional is that as a GM, you can choose to apply that rule or not.  But really it boils down to logical deduction.  When someone can take as long as they want to complete a task, they can buy hits.  When someone can take a large interval of time between tests on an extended test, there's no good reason to always require someone to remove a die from their pool.

Well that makes perfect sense, thank you .

The gamemaster can also limit the number of rolls under the assumption that if the character can’t finish it with a certain amount of effort, she simply doesn’t have the skills to complete it. The suggested way to do this is to apply a cumulative –1 dice modifier to each test after the first (so a character with a Skill 3 + Attribute 3 would roll 6 dice in their first test, 5 in their second, 4 on their third, etc). Note that a character can also fail an Extended Test by glitching (see below).

Prefered that version of the text.

[Xenon]

You can take pause between the dice rolls of an extended test, but the test will fail if you eventually run out of dice...

There are different levels of stealing.

1) permanently stealing an item with the intention to [legally] use it as your own and/or selling it as if it would be your own.

2) temporally stealing an item with the intention to just use it for a shorter period of time before the item is dumped or sold on the black market to someone that specialize in stolen goods  (a fence).


1) is very hard and time consuming to pull off without an organization to back you up, as it should be. You are simply not supposed to earn 10x as much as mr J pay you just because you manage to salvage the spiders deck....

2) is how you treat most stolen loot in SR. If you need a medkit then you might steal one from a corpse and use it. If you run out of bullets during a firefight you loot one from your fallen enemies, turn wireless off and use it for the remaining fight. You don't steal it and carry it with you for weeks. If it is valuable and you are short of founds then maybe its wroth risking to try to fence it (but GM might very well use the sale as a plot hook where the corporation you just stole from tries to even the score).

[Namikaze]

Prefered that version of the text.

I did too!    Some of what I do in 5th edition is still a holdover from 4th edition, simply because some of the rules in 4th edition were a little looser and more open to interpretation.  In general though, I tend to house rule a lot of stuff at my table.  Combined with my Missions stuff, it can make for a lot of rules floating around in my head.  Sometimes this can spill over into the forums and I make mistakes.  So please keep correcting me. 

[Darzil]

How could this not be a matrix action, if even the hardware test needs matrix access for a successful transfer?

You are changing how something works in the matrix, which is not necessarily a matrix action. Switching wireless on or off isn't, for example. Nor are Technomancy resonance actions.

At the end of the day, we're discussing something (spoofing transfer) that isn't in the rules, and is potentially much easier for transferring ownership (given an owner active in the matrix). How any GM handles it is up to them, unless Data Trails gives us other options.

[Jack_Spade]

How could this not be a matrix action, if even the hardware test needs matrix access for a successful transfer?

You are changing how something works in the matrix, which is not necessarily a matrix action. Switching wireless on or off isn't, for example. Nor are Technomancy resonance actions.

At the end of the day, we're discussing something (spoofing transfer) that isn't in the rules, and is potentially much easier for transferring ownership (given an owner active in the matrix). How any GM handles it is up to them, unless Data Trails gives us other options.

Yeah, I guess it's just another ambiguity of the rules. Although the "You spoof a device’s owner’s identity, making the
device think that your command is a legitimate one from its owner." in the English rules is amended in my German copy with (roughly translated): "If the character does this, he can command a device to do something it can do normally autonomously or semi-autonomously. [...] Most devices cannot (differently from agents, where spoof command also works) perform matrix actions themselves like invite mark, change interface mode or jack out, but most can reboot themselves or transmit messages. If the game master isn't sure if a device is able to perform a command, he can do a test with device rating x2 (with a threshold depending on situation) to find out if the device understands the character's command."

All that the transfer ownership text says is: "The owner of an icon can intentionally transfer ownership to another persona in a process that takes about a minute.

I'd guess therefore that every device must have a standard option for the owner to command the item to be transfered to someone else. (I'd imagine the process to be something like your computer asking you if you are sure you want to reformat your hard drive and then taking a minute to do it.)

[Darzil]

Hmm, as it says transfer to persona rather than new owner, that sounds like a (undocumented) matrix action.

So you could spoof it, but it takes a minute, and the owner has to be an active persona that you have marked to do so. I'd have to think of some rules for it, but given a minute is 20 combat turns, maybe it is an extended matrix action rather than just a complex one. I like the idea of that, but it'd be clearly a new rule.

Maybe extended Hacking + Logic [Sleaze] (24, 1 combat turn), requires mark on active persona. A glitch sends a report to the authorities.

Not entirely happy with that, as I feel there should be some defence, and/or that it should generate overwatch.

As the active persona will be aware of the device, as they are considered to have marks on it, how to stop them interfering will be a challenge, especially as rebooting the device that there persona is part of is all they need to do in order to remove the mark you are using to spoof! Lure them into a host that link locks them ?

[isidro]

1) is very hard and time consuming to pull off without an organization to back you up, as it should be. You are simply not supposed to earn 10x as much as mr J pay you just because you manage to salvage the spiders deck....

This is the issue, right here.

It doesn't make sense to have millions in expendable assets protecting something being stolen for a few 10's of a thousand nuyen. A security guard team each with 200K of cyberware/gear on him isn't cheap enough to protect something worth 100K.

On the flip side, don't take your 200K Cyberdeck on your 20K nuyen run.

Having a world where just because everything is tagged nothing is stolen is like believing there is no internet crime...

I can just imagine a stolen gun transmiting itself to the web as flashlight and asking the matrix for weather information while posing as a weather APP on someone's commlink.

[Fedifensor]

It seems to be intended that certain items are easy to steal (anything that doesn't lose functionality with wireless turned off), while other items are nearly impossible to steal (cyberdecks, commlinks).  In the middle ground are items that don't work well or draw attention with wireless off (vehicles, medpacks, smartlinked weapons). 

I would imagine that any large haul from a corporation will cause the items stolen to be placed on a high-priority list, with corporate deckers tracking down the corp-owned items the instant they appear on the Matrix.  So, don't steal anything from a corp unless you plan to turn it into a throwback device, because the item will be way too hot to ever use in Wireless mode.

When you steal a car, take it to a contact with a shop, and assistants.  A Teamwork Test between a mechanic and 6 assistants can make short work of a 24 threshold Hardware test.  Figure maybe 12 dice for the head mechanic, each of the others adds 3 dice or so.. 30 dice for the first roll.  Taking averages, it might be done in 2-3 hours.  Charge your runners an appropriate fee for this service, say 20-30% of the vehicle's base cost?

I think you can't get more dice from Teamwork than the head mechanic's skill.  So, if he's got a 6 Hardware, then he would get a maximum of +6 dice with the help of 2 or 3 assistants.  That's still around 20 dice if the head mechanic is specialized for this sort of task, which would allow him to buy hits and finish in 6 hours, or roll and finish in an average of 4 hours.

By the rules, the easy solution is to get a Loyalty 6 contact to take the device off your hands at 30% of cost.  That won't let you keep a really nice piece of gear (cyberdeck, drone, etc), but you don't have the network of people that most contacts have.  Presumably, the contact has access to multiple people making Teamwork tests to get the necessary 24 successes, along with a decker ready to turn wireless off should a trace occur.  They're probably working in an abandoned warehouse in the Barrens, and have a van inside the warehouse to evac quickly should a trace be successful.  The contact should be able to sell restricted and forbidden items at a large profit (buy for 30%, sell for 100%).  Even with the cost of multiple workers and a decker, that should be enough profit to make the operation viable.

I'm working on a character that has the skills to transfer ownership in Missions.  With some advancements, he'll have a 10 Logic (Exceptional Attribute + Cerebral Booster 3) and a 5 Hardware.  Buying hits, he can transfer ownership in 12 hours (9 hours if he takes Hardware to 6).  He's also a decker, so he (or his Agent) can watch for an incoming trace and take the device offline at a moment's notice should the owner come looking.  Fortunately, since this is done between adventures and you buy hits, there's no chance of discovery - you just take 1 day per item (7 items per Missions week).

EDIT: Transfer Ownership via buying hits (Chart)

Code: [Select]

Dice   Hours Needed
34     3 hours (8+8+8)
27     4 hours (6+6+6+6)
23     5 hours (5+5+5+5+4)
20     6 hours (5+4+4+4+4+3)
18     7 hours (4+4+4+3+3+3+3)
17     8 hours (4+4+3+3+3+3+2+2)
16     9 hours (4+3+3+3+3+2+2+2+2)
15     12 hours (3+3+3+3+2+2+2+2+1+1+1+1)

[DWC]

The easy answer is still to just hack the owner's commlink, and then do a legit transfer of ownership of the device in question.

[8-bit]

The easy answer is still to just hack the owner's commlink, and then do a legit transfer of ownership of the device in question.

Nowhere in the rules does it allow you to do that. The only possible way would be Spoof Command. Whether that works is dubious, to say the least.

[DWC]

At what point do you have enough control of a commlink to be allowed to issue a transfer of ownership?

[8-bit]

At what point do you have enough control of a commlink to be allowed to issue a transfer of ownership?

Owner status. Meaning, 4 Marks. These cannot be obtained by ordinary means.

You can put multiple marks on a single icon, up to a maximum of three (unless you’re an owner; see below). Different Matrix actions require different numbers of marks on your target.

Every device, persona, host, and file has an owner. This is a special relationship that offers special privileges. Each Matrix object can only have one owner, but you can own as many Matrix objects as you like. The owner of a device, host, persona, or file can always spot it in the Matrix. For all intents and purposes, owning an icon is the same as having four marks on it.

Owning a device and being its owner aren’t necessarily the same thing, although they usually go together. Ownership, at least in the Matrix, is something that is registered with both the device (or other icons) and the grids, so it’s a bit more involved than just putting a “Property of [blank]” sticker on it. When a commlink is at the store or in a warehouse, the commlink’s owner is its manufacturer (although sometimes stores get ownership of their goods before the buyer does). When you buy that commlink, the store or manufacturer transfers ownership to you.

Corporations and governments use this registration system to keep track of their equipment. A security guard’s weapon might be in her holster, but its owner is the corp that employs her. This makes it relatively simple to track down thieves, deserters, and looters—at least, the ones who can’t hack what they steal.

The owner of an icon can intentionally transfer ownership to another persona in a process that takes about a minute. If you steal a smartgun without transferring the ownership, the gun will still behave as though its owner is the guy you stole it from (which can lead to complications if the owner comes looking for it). That means changing ownership is a high-priority action any time you steal a wireless-enabled item. You can illegally change a device’s owner with a Hardware toolkit and an Extended Hardware + Logic [Mental] (24, 1 hour) test. A glitch on that test results in the item sending a report to the authorities.

Changing ownership of a file is somewhat easier. Your best bet is to use Edit File to copy it (the copy’s owner is you) and then delete the original, again with the Edit File action. Note that you can’t change the owner of a persona or a host. So sorry, chummer—you can’t steal an entire Stuffer Shack with a quick hack.

[jim1701]

I doubt that Spoof Command would be sufficient to transfer ownership nor would I think it would be a simple command by the owner.  I would think it would be a third party agent involved with the transfer or else robbery would have a rate of 101%.  All you would have to do is stick a gun to a guy's head and tell him to transfer all his stuff you a fake SIN and then kill him after he did so.  Legitimate owner transfer has to have some kind of safeguards in place or else it redefines trivial.