[vinnmun]

Alright, my players are a bit crafty. They bought 200 stealth tags that are silent and the hacker is running silent and carries a these tags with him. How would you get around that if i wanted an npc to find the hacker. I don't like hand waving that my npc finds yah instantly.

[Michael Chandra]

Stealth tags cannot be found by an npc, since they only respond to their own codes. If the hacker himself is running silent, there are rules for Matrix Perception checks vs people that run silent.

[Tzeentch]

Stealth tags cannot be found by an npc, since they only respond to their own codes. If the hacker himself is running silent, there are rules for Matrix Perception checks vs people that run silent.

-- Not sure I follow. What do you mean by "own codes," especially if their owner is set to "nobody" (SR5, p. 440). I don't see anything in Running Silent (SR5, pp. 235-236) that would avoid the "hall of mirrors" RFID trick.

[Michael Chandra]

Ah, my bad, I read over the part where their functionality has been changed slightly.

A tag could get spotted with opposed Matrix Perception and then traced to a physical location with Trace Icon.

[Crunch]

Assuming that the players are talking about this rule

Once you know a silent running icon is in the vicinity,
the next step is to actually find it. This is done through
an Opposed Computer + Intuition [Data Processing] v.
Logic + Sleaze Test. If you get more hits, you perceive
the icon as normal; on a tie or more hits by the defender,
it stays hidden and out of reach.
Note that if there are multiple silent running icons in
the vicinity, you have to pick randomly which one you’re
going to look at through the Opposed Test.

The counter argument is this from the sidebar on the previous page (235).

If you know at least one feature of an icon running silent,
you can spot the icon (Running Silent, below).

So if you know one feature of the decker, for instance that it is a persona rather than a device like the 100 RFID tags, you can bypass that part of the Running silent rules. Players should be glad of this since otherwise the decker would be SOL when it was his turn to find anything.

[Csjarrat]

the difficulty comes when the decker uses wrapper to make hundreds of rfids that look like personas or files or whatever he has disguised himself as. you just see 300 of {whatever he sculpts} and have to pick one at random to look at.

[Michael Chandra]

At which point a hacker realizes something's wrong due to the things showing up at the wrong location, spots one of the RFIDs (which are not slaved so piece of cake), Traces the User and knows what physical location a suspicious person is at. Bam, hacker located.

[SoulGambit]

I'm not sure "looking like a persona" is the same quality as "being a persona."

[Csjarrat]

I'm not sure "looking like a persona" is the same quality as "being a persona."

it is when you've got 300 of them to check through. that takes time, and time is the hacker's ally

[Crunch]

Maybe. I would think that running silent and projecting a false icon would be contradictory actions. The wrapper could only apply once the icon was percieved so wouldn't be useful for this sort of "forest for the trees" hiding. RAW is silent on that so it's up to your table I suppose.

[SoulGambit]

It's how I'd run it. Otherwise the One True Matrix Defense is to fill every building with 200+ Stealth tags slaved through your WAN. Which you can totally do if he refuses to be reasonable.

[vinnmun]

Nothing in the rules about a general matrix perception. You make the first against a run silent you see 301 nodes that were not there before. As the page states, the npc decker has to go through each one, matrix perception wise. It seems it would take a couple of minutes, but that is long enough in shadowrun to high tail out of there.

[ZeConster]

Wouldn't any NPC decker who sees 301 nodes go either "we've got a decker who thinks he's smart in the building - send in the dogs" or "WE'VE GOT OVER 300 INVADERS SEND IN THE CANNONS"?

[Crunch]

If you know at least one feature of an icon running silent,
you can spot the icon (Running Silent, below).

So if you know one feature, ie that you are looking for a persona not a device, you do not have to wade through the 300 RFID chips. Now you might still have to randomly determine which persona you detected if the Decker, the Rigger and the TM are standing near each other, but the RFID spam trick won't work. Which frankly PC Deckers should be glad of once they think about how many devices are in the average corporate office.

[Silence]

Wouldn't any NPC decker who sees 301 nodes go either "we've got a decker who thinks he's smart in the building - send in the dogs" or "WE'VE GOT OVER 300 INVADERS SEND IN THE CANNONS"?

If he was clever, he would seed them through the building to scatter security, not keep them on him to concentrate it when they notice him.  Just my opinion.