I dunno, I think having a stupid agent being boosted up and using a deck to obliterate a trained decker with the aid of a sprite or two would count as "devising and summoning tools"
Sounds more like "start with gear", to me. But, again, don't pretend for a second that that line is all that's there.
I can't say anything about 4th, nor have I. Maybe it is because I don't have rose tinted glasses that I just see technomancers as they are now and see the potential power that they hold.
The ASDF stats are NOT just limits. As you pointed out yourself, firewall for one is used in defense all the time. Sleaze is used as an opposition to Matrix Perception. How do you expect to successfully run silent against a competent security spider with a sleaze of 3 and an agent of 6 rolling 9 dice vs the spiders Intuition plus Computer of at least 10+? The security spider is going to see your clunky agent coming. Also running silent is -2 to everything, so your agent loses 2 dice.
Fine, they aren't just limits. but the key is you don't care about them except for one stat. lets use my earlier example of teaming up against the spider, You use improved concentration to boost the attack stat to 8; leave firewall and sleaze at 3 and DP at 1. You use your pre-registered machine sprite to boost the agent to 16 -2=14 dice running silent. you have a fault sprite out, also running silent, it rolls 10. let's say you are only rolling 10 as well after staying silent. Initial volley has the agent hitting with at least 9 (attack + 1) damage, either the fault sprite hits for another 10 or you will for similar damage, the other will take a few hit of damage. lets say spider is still alive is still, it has to spend and action to spot the devices; which means all three get a second volley off. end result? spider is toast before it can do much. you could instead just diffuse the firewall and instead of boosting the agent., if you want to go for the one-hit, you do both. if you set it up that way the agent and the sprite take OS and you can sit back and look like an innocent bystander or use a low-level resonance spike to jsut chip at it since they can't detect where it comes from.
The Decker ALSO buys one new deck every Device Rating, but with his Priority A resources he started at DR 4, so he buys the 5 and the 6 only.
The decker is reliant on the most bleeding edge tech. The Technomancer is not. What this means is that when you and your team take out enemy deckers, you can use thier junk decks. Even if they get busted, just start repairing and stuff.
If you think a Decker can't Trace Icon his own deck you are crazy. It's not even an attack or sleaze action so it can be done with a Commlink. The second he gets the ability he is tracking down his stolen tech and attempting to murder anyone who has it. Running around with someone else's Cyberdeck is not wise.
Except the rules have written methods to change ownership, and a decker is more likely than most to be able to do it, plus cyberdecks are one of the few things worth doing it to. It will also take time for the decker to get a new device to track you down with, if you left him alive (not sure why you would if you are going to be stealing his deck) If you do it in an equipped van parked someone and have your team guarding you, you can change ownership and then your team would skedaddle before the decker can arrive, and they end up being SOL.
Change ownership of it. I thought at least that would have been obvious.
And also dead deckers have a really really hard time doing trace icon.
beat me to it, I wouldn't rely on this aspect of them myself though, I think there are enough other fun ways to play the,
