[Kincaid]

I think one of the major problems is no one knows what Technomancers are and are suppose to do.  We keep hearing that they are not Deckers so what do they do in the Net?  We keep hearing that they are not Riggers so why can they control drones?  I guess the real questions is what and how are they suppose to help a group of Shadowrunners if they are not suppose to run Overwatch and Datasteals from the Net and are not supposed to drive vehicles or controls a group of drones what are they supposed to be good at straight out of the box.  I other words what role in the group is my brand new Technomancer suppose to fill according to the Developers?

TMs need some love, I won't deny that, but in the meantime, here's a thread that addressed some of these issues.

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=21487.0

[Dyndrilliac]

@Marcus Gideon: Call it being an entitled brat if you want, but when customers are expected to drop hundreds of dollars on an entire line of $40-$50 expansion books, the customers have a right to be entitled brats. If I'm going to buy these books, I expect them to have material I want. Whether or not the devs include it depends entirely upon how badly they want me to buy their books. The first rule of commerce is the customer is always right. The second rule is give the people what they want.

I think 3 simple demands are pretty reasonable compared to a 23 page thread of folks trying to do some ridiculous logical gymnastics trying to figure out a way to fix things that the customers already know how to fix but the devs don't want to do it that way because it would contradict core. But hey, that's my opinion. You're welcome to your own interpretation.

Here's the dilemma...

You aren't spending hundreds of dollars to buy YOUR product. You're buying THEIR product. They may be nice enough to keep your suggestions in mind when they make revisions. But unless you make your own company and publish your own game, you aren't entitled to as much as you think.

Right, and if they want to actually sell their product and make any money, they need to make it attractive to their intended audience (in this case, people playing Technomancers in SR5). No one is going to buy a Technomancer book that doesn't solve the many problems of playing a Technomancer no matter how good the art may be. That's why I didn't buy Data Trails; it was supposed to be the core matrix expansion and yet didn't fix Technomancers, therefore it wasn't worth my money. There are hundreds of good tabletop systems out there, some of them free. Catalyst can rest on its laurels and hope hardcore fanboys can purchase enough of their product no matter how bad the quality is, or they can be proactive and listen to the people playing the game and give them what they want. It's entirely their choice. I'm just here to let them know that any Technomancer book that doesn't fix the 3 things I mentioned, is a non-starter for me and won't be purchased for my table. You can defend them all you want; it doesn't change the fact that I won't buy any material that I don't think is worth the money. And if enough other folks feel the same way, that's a serious dent in their bottom line. Making books isn't cheap, even with their piss-poor editing. If a company makes a book that doesn't sell, that puts them in a bad spot.

[Sandorian]

I think one of the major problems is no one knows what Technomancers are and are suppose to do.  We keep hearing that they are not Deckers so what do they do in the Net?  We keep hearing that they are not Riggers so why can they control drones?  I guess the real questions is what and how are they suppose to help a group of Shadowrunners if they are not suppose to run Overwatch and Datasteals from the Net and are not supposed to drive vehicles or controls a group of drones what are they supposed to be good at straight out of the box.  I other words what role in the group is my brand new Technomancer suppose to fill according to the Developers?

I think that's the central question to be answered in the (hopefully) upcoming Technomancer PDF. If a technomancer can't steal some files or control drones they are quite useless to a team of shadowrunners most of the time.


I wrote a bunch of house rules to make the technomancer character more attractive:

1) Changes to boost their hacking ability and make some echos more attractive:
http://www.foren.pegasus.de/foren/topic/24707-technomancer-hausregel-sammlung/?p=459624

2) A number of resonance-based equipment:
http://www.foren.pegasus.de/foren/topic/24644-gadgets-neue-spielzeuge-fuer-technomancer/?p=452454

The bad news: It's in German, maybe someone wants to translate it. 

[Dinendae]

Would making what are complex actions with a decker into simple actions help technomancers? Going by what they are, being naturally able to hack or control machines, it seems to make some sense that technomancers would be faster at most tasks than the average decker.

[falar]

Would making what are complex actions with a decker into simple actions help technomancers? Going by what they are, being naturally able to hack or control machines, it seems to make some sense that technomancers would be faster at most tasks than the average decker.

This would be too good. Like. Immensely too good.

However, if that was a deck benefit and a technomancer benefit, this would return decks to their rightful place of "you use a deck to hack" instead of all the people who hack with commlinks and RCCs.

[Marcus Gideon]

I like the idea of making TMs better, since some of the fluff describes TMs as a squid casually swimming through the Matrix ocean, while Deckers are scuba divers who kinda plop in through the surface for a short time entirely dependent on their equipment to survive.

I don't think Decks should have all the same benefits, or it takes away the highlight to TMs. But in general, I would like to see more Simple Matrix actions, instead of every single thing being Complex.

An easy start to fixing TMs is to reduce the Fading on all their Forms. NONE of the spells Mages could cast, either from the Core or any of the supplements, are as tiring and outright dangerous to cast, as some of the Forms can be. Puppeteer is the most useful, which explains why it should be more costly. But every TM I know either avoids using it for fear of dying... or Edge through it. Which completely negates the point of giving it lethal levels of Fading, when you pretend to call it "Level 1" and re-roll 6's for a pile of successes in the end.

[Kincaid]

Fixing action economy and making TMs beefier should be separate things.  Combining them leaves deckers out in the cold, which isn't a very satisfying solution.  I'm all for differentiation, but it can't be "strictly better."

[Dinendae]

Fixing action economy and making TMs beefier should be separate things.  Combining them leaves deckers out in the cold, which isn't a very satisfying solution.  I'm all for differentiation, but it can't be "strictly better."

It comes under that "everything has a price" tagline this edition has embraced. Deckers have versatility in both the matrix and meatspace. Technomancers were supposed to be tiny matrix gods, but would be lacking outside of the matrix. Unfortunately technomancers are far behind in both areas, and I doubt they'll ever be improved for real world actions.

Dropping matrix tasks for technomancers to simple actions allows them to better aid things such as firefights, where they would have a better chance of monkeying around with enemy equipment. The decker will still have greater versatility in the sheer choice of programs they can use, being able to swap matrix attributes fairly easily, or can better participate directly in combat by using some of their more combat oriented cyberware.

[HiddenBoss]

I was Looking back on how complex forms worked in 4e to 5e.

4e matrix  complex forms work as a matrix skill+ complex form lv for that matrix action
if you need a higher dice pool or a matrix action/complex forms you do not have you could just do threading to give your self some more dice at the cost of taking some fade and a -2 to any action that not the threaded  complex form

5e has complex forms as spells and they no longer have any way to give the tm any more dice to action,only def tests and limits and you take a -2 to thing you want to use it for anyway....

All i can think of at this point is the give the tm some thing like adept power points, i like the idea of tm's but it getting to be a pain now in planing my one.

[dragrubis]

I don't want Technomancer better than Decker but want them can have chances will facing a Decker or a spider.

And i want them capable of using drones as well... Without using machine sprite swarm (that don't exist for the moment...)

[Lorebane24]

It's probably far, far too late to change this, but my biggest gripe with technomancers is that their living persona is shackled to their mental attributes.  Because of this, they seem to have exactly one build.  They seem to be far less flexible than any other archtype in regards to what race you can play, where you place your priorities, and what you are good at.  I've seen combat deckers that have a bit of cyberware and who can do a passable job with a shotgun, or stealthy deckers who can also sneak into places, pick a few locks, tinker with some hardware, and generally be good at being hard to spot.  Technomancers have to invest heavily into their attributes and their resonance priorities, leaving little left for strong skills, non-human races, or resources to get some cool gear, and in most situations I feel like they're still outperformed by deckers - technomancers just have a couple of little niches they fill well and tricks they can pull off that deckers can't, but, at least to me, the jury is still out on whether or not that trade off is worth it.

Ultimately, it seems impossible to build an effective technomancer hybrid.  They have to go all in with their matrix stuff, and they typically aren't that diverse in how they approach it.

[FST_Gemstar]

I think it's been noted somewhere that perhaps technomancers should use their mental limit for matrix action limits. I think this may be overpowered but on the right track.  Perhaps some kind of derived or extra-derived Resonance limit, an analog to an Astral limit, can be calculated. Like a Resonance Limit = (Mental Limit + Resonance Attribute)/2. Perhaps this simulates that technomancer ease in the matrix is based on their connection to the Resonance and most of their Mental Attributes (as the Mental Limit is derived from). Or perhaps a Resonance Limit = (Mental Limit + Social Limit + Resonance)/3. This seems overly complicated and allows for lower Resonance technomancers to still have a high limit,  but it is a way to incorporate Charisma and Essence into this Resonance Limit as well.  Either way, a Technomancer with heavy investment in mental attributes and Resonance is going to have a high across the board limit on matrix tests. However, they still use their stats (primarily Intuition and Logic) and skills like usual to do matrix actions.

As the priority system seems to want to balance Deckers and technomancers as a Resources vs. Resonance issue but somehow the rules seem to fail at this, this Resonance limit idea may better simulate this more efficiently. Deckers are mundanes who invest resources to buy decks/programs to "scuba dive" in the matrix with variable but boostable Matrix action limits , while technomancers invest in Resonance to hack without a deck and to have a consistent, high limit in the Matrix (like a "squid" would in the ocean). Deckers may be able to get limits higher than technomancers, but it's going to cost money and free actions to change cyberdeck arrays. Technomancers don't have to worry about that.

Everything else about deckers/technomancers can stay the same. They both need lots of skills of to do matrix actions, and technomancers will still need to Tasking and Software skills to do their Resonance actions. 

I think this gives technomancers a rules functional way to explain their fluff capabilities. It gives some choices in how attributes are divided to better subspecialize or hybridize. Technomancers would still need Logic/Intuition to hack, Willpower would still be used to Resist Fade. I guess Charisma gets less of a focus in this change, but perhaps Charisma can be used for Registered sprite limit again. In this regard, attributes are still going to be important to Technomancers, but they can choose which they want to emphasize and why without losing their feeling of home in the Matrix (limit to matrix actions), regardless of how skilled they are.

[firebug]

Technomancers have to invest heavily into their attributes and their resonance priorities, leaving little left for strong skills, non-human races, or resources to get some cool gear, and in most situations I feel like they're still outperformed by deckers - technomancers just have a couple of little niches they fill well and tricks they can pull off that deckers can't, but, at least to me, the jury is still out on whether or not that trade off is worth it.

Ultimately, it seems impossible to build an effective technomancer hybrid.  They have to go all in with their matrix stuff, and they typically aren't that diverse in how they approach it.

That's how it is for TMs--  See, the rules for the matrix were written for deckers.  TMs came after, if them literally coming after with like five pages in the core book isn't obvious enough.  So everything that TMs can do that deckers can't are things not in the rules directly, because deckers can't do them, and therefore they will never come up or be required unless the GM tailors the adventure to one player.

I had one barely decent hybrid TM build, based around having mediocre (instead of absolute shit) physical attributes, R4 skillwires, and using Diagnostics.  This way I ended up with a dice pool of 11 for whatever I put into the wires.  However, they recently increased the Essence cost of skillwires for no reason, so that build got worse...  See, it needed to preserve RES in order to be able to get a good enough sprite to make the most of Diagnostics.

The build was a trainwreck though; I had 11-12 dice for matrix stuff at best, poor initiative (had to use cram all the time), and I am pretty sure I picked E for Skills, in order to afford everything else...  It, alltogether, had a "desperately cobbled together" vibe.  Rat shamans in the barrens would think I was overdoing it.

[Black Mamba]

It's been more than 8 months since this thread was started. Any chance we're actually going to see a publication before SR6 is announced?

[Marcus Gideon]

It's been more than 8 months since this thread was started. Any chance we're actually going to see a publication before SR6 is announced?

You're not supposed to ask for practical products released on a regular basis. You're supposed to be pacified by the pretty pictures they release on Tumblr every once in a while about the latest fluff book coming down the pipe. =)