Commenting on Technomancers and the disappointment with them.....
As this Shadowrun is not a class based game for the most part. Overpowering specifically to compare with a existing popular skillset, the matrix developers/exploiters.....
Is pointless. I'll remind you that deckers are not actually a character class as anyone can have some skill in it if they want.......
Their powers, Technomancers are developing to replace the matrix itself yet they exist as a byproduct of it.
No justification for the cowboyish decker/hacker as a rival.
They are a person to envy and pity at the same time. I think their skills narrate that.
i think youre kind of missing the point; no one would be moaning if they had loads of flavourful and unique abilities that were useful to the team that also set them aside from deckers, plus were well balanced and the cost/benefit of using those skills was right.
As it is now, they're nigh-on impossible to build flexibly under standard or sum-to-ten because they're dependent on having high stats, skills and resonance to be useful.
Once you've got through chargen, you're then faced with a situation of having dicepools way behind the equivalent decker and punishingly high fading codes to dissuade you from using your only unique abilities.
In tabletop wargaming, we call that poor internal balance, ie, the balance of TMs is such that if you're playing with "winning" in mind, they're a subpar choice compared to their decker rivals (on the proviso of certain measures, like attempting to hack a host etc).
Immediately, the counter argument is that "you should play characters, not classes" and yeah i respect that. plenty of people play that way. Plenty don't though, and want to be able to walk upto a new table and know that they can deal with the matrix without having to have a GM handwaive, houserule or dumb-down matrix opposition just to make their char choice work.
My argument is that the chargen system basically forces you into being a human (d) with resources (e), leaving attributes at A-B and skills/resonance at B-C.
Thats fine if that's what your "character" is, but the second you want to make an Ork Techno, or god forbid, a Troll techno, you're essentially shit out of luck if you want to be half decent at covering the team in the matrix.
Having an entire "class" (yeah i know, we're classless technically, but for TMs and mages, not so much) basically work best as a prop to make a decker better isn't great for motivating people to play them, especially if they're also forced into being humans that start the game pretty much skint and with bare-bones equipment, poor physical stats, low meat-world skill pools and who then take a stack of stun damage everytime they use their powers.
they really need a lick of paint imho, which is a shame because they've got so much potential and such interesting fluff