[voydangel]

Can't seem to remember - or find it in the books...

Can anyone tell me, or point me to a book/page#, where it says whether Technomancers are limited to threading a certain number of CFs at once, or can they thread an unlimited number of things simultaneously?

And while we're at it - can anyone think a a reason why a  technomancer couldn't specialize in Software (threading) ?

[Qemuel]

All I see on p. 240, SR4A, is that threading must be sustained... and each sustained thread is a cumulative -2 DP modifier.  I'll keep looking and see if I find anything else...

[Dakka]

Sustaining a threaded Complex From results in -2 dice pool in all actions that DON'T utilize the CF.  So multiple threadings will suffer -2 dice until it becomes pretty pointless to even atempt.  More to the point however, since threading takes no action, why would you want to thread something you weren't just about to attempt?  Then drop the thread after the task is complete and you'll find the multiple sustained threading doesn't come up very often.

I see no reason why (threading) would be an invalid specialization.  You could say its like taking (coding) for non technomancers and too general for a specialization maybe, sticking with the specialization listed under the skill but then you get into arguments about what's a masking utility with your GM.

[voydangel]

Yea, in this case it's an oddity.

Usually I'm the GM, but I've been personally invited to play another table, and decided it would be fun to play a mancer. Only issue is that I don't know the GM yet, and only have a baseline house rules list to work with for character creation, so I figured I'd just ask the collective knowledge of our own personal little matrix.

The character concept is that of a data/info-mancer who is really young and really green and so doesn't have any hacking CFs, so I'll need to thread everything except my general use CF's while doing the hacking and whatnot. So, I'm expecting to see the need for a higher than average amount of sustaining. To compensate, I'm going nuts with my threading pool, and will be taking the Swap echo asap, assuming I can't already start with a few grades of immersion.

Any tips?

[Dakka]

Sprite compiling/registering skills?  You MAY want to summon R6 sprites to hack the nodes for you instead of trying to sustain exploit and stealth all at once for hacking on the fly, or just accept that alerts are going to be a way of life for you.

Probing uses exploit without giving a roll on your stealth until first log in.  So, presumably you could find the entry account, dismiss exploit, thread stealth, log on, and do your data searching and things with your general CFs with the -2 (-1 after Swap) penalty.

Swap was errata'd at some point to lose the ability to take it twice, so -1 per CF is as good as it gets.

If you wanted to REALLY play up the "I don't know jack about hacking" angle you could actually take codeblock as a NQ and do all your hacking nodes via sprite actions.  That would be an interesting concept to try and play.  Certain hacking programs will become nessasary as you move up in the world.  ECCM, and Stealth being primary among them.

[Chaemera]

Swap was errata'd at some point to lose the ability to take it twice, so -1 per CF is as good as it gets.

Errata for Unwired, downloaded from www.shadowrun4.com today, says

change the first sentence to read:
"Swap reduces the sustaining modifier when threading a Complex Form by one."

Doesn't say anything about affecting the second sentence, which says:

This echo can be taken twice, cumulatively.

-Unwired, pg. 147

Looks like you can still take it twice to me. I miss the old wording, myself (emphasis added):

Reduce the overall sustaining modifier for threading one or more Complex Forms by one.

-Unwired, pg. 147

That told me that if you take it once, when threading two Complex Forms, you got a -3 overall sustaining modifier (if the action doesn't involve either Thread).
Now, it pretty clearly takes the penalty off each sustaining modifier. So, to use the same example, it's -2 overall sustaining modifier for actions unrelated to the threads. And -0 once you swap twice.

If you can find an errata that trumps the errata published by Catalyst for Swap, I could live with the re-write better, as currently written, after spending 90 Karma (no small feat, to be fair) on submersion a techno could infinite-thread with no penalty, if they so chose.

(Modified to correct book reference caught by wife.)