Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: 忍 on <09-02-17/1641:38>
-
I don't know how I missed this, but dissonant TMs got streams before normal TMs did. DT 164
@.@ wow *golf clap*
-
>:(
-
Aight, as someone who normally plays Samurai (And once or twice an adept) what am I missing? I admit my knowledge about Technomancers is minimal here.
(As in, I know what they are, mostly what they can do, and that I usually ICly don't trust 'em. And the bare bones of their history.)
-
Streams are for Technomancers as Traditions are for Mages. In 4th TMs gained a handful of option in the matrix book. 5th's matrix book gave dissonant TM (think toxic mages) streams while regular TMs got next to nothing.
-
Yes, TM are screwed in 5th. This is news to no one. The good news is an interview from gen-con reported that the techno book has been folded into the hacker expansion book scheduled for 2018 release.
So that some kind of progress.
There is one way to look at this, never in the history of SR, and that includes rigger who got kinda screwed for two whole editions has an archetype been so thoroughly abandoned, nerfed, even errata nerfed.
The TM book could very possible be as off the hinges as the TM 4th book, and that one resulted in TMs breaking the power curve of the whole game.
-
Except that TMs never broke the power curve of the game. It is the time honored comparison between someone who was adaptable, but fragile, against someone who was reliable, but less reactive. TMs had good burst potential, but if they ever got caught in a fight (in the Matrix or the Meat) they were hosed. And how many runs go by without any fighting? People only looked at "OMG THEY CAN GET RATING 12 PROGRAMS", and promptly pissed themselves in either terror or minmaxing glee, without looking at the whole picture. It is as bad as looking at a D&D character by their effectiveness in a single arena battle, instead of what they do in a dungeon crawl.
-
Lol rocks fall, you die.
-
Except that TMs never broke the power curve of the game. It is the time honored comparison between someone who was adaptable, but fragile, against someone who was reliable, but less reactive. TMs had good burst potential, but if they ever got caught in a fight (in the Matrix or the Meat) they were hosed. And how many runs go by without any fighting? People only looked at "OMG THEY CAN GET RATING 12 PROGRAMS", and promptly pissed themselves in either terror or minmaxing glee, without looking at the whole picture. It is as bad as looking at a D&D character by their effectiveness in a single arena battle, instead of what they do in a dungeon crawl.
Eh in our 4e game the technomancer broke things. Probably not more than a min maxed mage but he still did. It needed some correction but no where near the correction they got in 5e which made them fairly useless.
-
Except that TMs never broke the power curve of the game. It is the time honored comparison between someone who was adaptable, but fragile, against someone who was reliable, but less reactive. TMs had good burst potential, but if they ever got caught in a fight (in the Matrix or the Meat) they were hosed. And how many runs go by without any fighting? People only looked at "OMG THEY CAN GET RATING 12 PROGRAMS", and promptly pissed themselves in either terror or minmaxing glee, without looking at the whole picture. It is as bad as looking at a D&D character by their effectiveness in a single arena battle, instead of what they do in a dungeon crawl.
Eh in our 4e game the technomancer broke things. Probably not more than a min maxed mage but he still did. It needed some correction but no where near the correction they got in 5e which made them fairly useless.
That was likely an artifact of the way your campaign was set up. I encountered similar arguments with Warlocks in 3.5 D&D. A Warlock had a few spell-like abilities that they could use at will, including a magic blast that capped out at 9d6 by level 20. Absolutely nothing compared to what a Wiz or Sorc can do at that level, but still consistent damage. There were people who freaked out about that, calling it overpowered. But when we discussed what their campaigns were like, they all said things like 'staying at low levels' or 'long, gauntlet-style dungeon crawls', which was basically like facing a power hitter, and then hanging a fastball belt-high over the middle of the plate. Don't be surprised when they go yard with it.
Without knowing anything about your game, I'd guess that you only had one, maybe two serious hacking 'events' per run, where the TM would need to sneak into the system without alerting spiders, or needed to brute force something when shit got real in the meat, and spent a lot of time on overwatch, editing feeds and blocking calls? And they usually stayed in the van? That kind of thing is right in the 4E TM's wheelhouse, maximizing their burst potential while limiting their combat exposure as much as possible, so it wouldn't be surprising if it felt game-breaking in that case.
Sometimes a thing can be balanced overall, but overpowered in your game, because of the things you emphasize or tend to ignore. So that makes it a good thing to look at before getting out the nerf bat.
-
Sometimes a thing can be massively over powered but people will say it is balanced because it is their favorite thing, or they just personally don't know how to break it.
-
Except that TMs never broke the power curve of the game. It is the time honored comparison between someone who was adaptable, but fragile, against someone who was reliable, but less reactive. TMs had good burst potential, but if they ever got caught in a fight (in the Matrix or the Meat) they were hosed. And how many runs go by without any fighting? People only looked at "OMG THEY CAN GET RATING 12 PROGRAMS", and promptly pissed themselves in either terror or minmaxing glee, without looking at the whole picture. It is as bad as looking at a D&D character by their effectiveness in a single arena battle, instead of what they do in a dungeon crawl.
Did you recall that book in question? They were amazing combatants able to generating very large pools for any skill on demand. Threading + Skillwires go look it up.
But I agree that amount of nerf we are seeing in 5th is way overboard. They made a lot of low level fixes for them (Like the smartlink complex form), and those should have been kept around, or at-least re-instated by now for love of the game.
-
Which was basically like facing a power hitter, and then hanging a fastball belt-high over the middle of the plate. Don't be surprised when they go yard with it.
Sounds like analogy Slamm-O would make :p
-
Except that TMs never broke the power curve of the game. It is the time honored comparison between someone who was adaptable, but fragile, against someone who was reliable, but less reactive. TMs had good burst potential, but if they ever got caught in a fight (in the Matrix or the Meat) they were hosed. And how many runs go by without any fighting? People only looked at "OMG THEY CAN GET RATING 12 PROGRAMS", and promptly pissed themselves in either terror or minmaxing glee, without looking at the whole picture. It is as bad as looking at a D&D character by their effectiveness in a single arena battle, instead of what they do in a dungeon crawl.
Did you recall that book in question? They were amazing combatants able to generating very large pools for any skill on demand. Threading + Skillwires go look it up.
But I agree that amount of nerf we are seeing in 5th is way overboard. They made a lot of low level fixes for them (Like the smartlink complex form), and those should have been kept around, or at-least re-instated by now for love of the game.
Threading and Skillwires was a decent combo, but one that took multiple submersions to be any use, since the rating of your biowires were equal to your Submersion rating. You're talking about something you can't do out of the gate, and requires a shit ton of Karma to set up. That's like complaining that a Mage with four Initiations all geared to one thing is more powerful than a straight out of chargen character. After more than a couple dozen karma, you're expected to be more powerful.
But even that is part of what I'm talking about with their burst potential. You could boost things with Threading, but you had to resist Fading, and the higher the new rating, the higher the Fading, which you took directly to your brain. A single bad roll on that could fuck you up for the whole run, much like what happens when a mage overcasts their spells. You can get kick-ass results, if it works. It wasn't reliable or safe, and was basically getting on both knees and begging Murphy to come down and screw with you.
Like I said, it is the difference between a glass cannon and swiss watch. The glass cannon can do a lot of damage, but it is easy to take them out. The watch, on the other hand, is more limited in what it can do, but it can do it all day long, and will take a licking and keep on ticking.
Adaptability vs. Reliability.
-
Oh I agree it took a boat load of karma, you needed the initiative enhancements (overclock), the bioskill wires, and I think it was centering, and netfoci widgets maybe it was something like that; like 6ish submersions. But we got one at the end of 4th. When a character died and the player started their new character with group karma average. Yeah it was lot of Karma, but it was effective even vs fairly deep initiated mages. Part of the issue was the lack an real sort of non-TM hacking opposition at the time, and as i recall deep submersion just wasn't as deadly as astral questing. But combined with the sort of thing you could work up with basically near perfect information from deep submersion, or just being the unspeakable god of googling stuff, a small army of sprites and the super skill build it just crashed stuff. I accept your point that it's adaptive, but it was way strong and certainly on the same scale of game breaking as several things we got out FA.
-
I liked the idea of streams and Paragons, but I was kind of hoping they'd diverge technomancy from magic a bit more. Like magical traditions are organized (or disorganized if it's Chaos Magic) and define themselves by what they believe, but streams are more like categories TMs fall into without even trying. Any TM can believe resonance is the "Great Carrier Signal" for example. If he reads data on the signal he's a Sourceror, if he prays to it he's a Technoshaman, and if he puts it on his friends list he's a Networker. If he believes the Great Carrier Signal isn't possible, and Resonance is the One True Protocol, he can still be any of those streams.
If you want to look at it that way in 5e, you don't pick a stream at character creation, you decide how you deal with Resonance and the stream finds you. You don't need as much in the way of rules, like lists of sprites you can compile, but reaching out to your stream could have karmic benefits.
-
Sometimes a thing can be massively over powered but people will say it is balanced because it is their favorite thing, or they just personally don't know how to break it.
I'm not even sure our guy was really trying to break it. He broke decking without trying and got by everywhere else. He didn't stay in the van or anything. He stayed behind cover and used drones and when necessary used his pistol with edge. Yeah with tons of karma etc the technomancer broke everything. But breaking decking on its own is broken.
-
Oh I agree it took a boat load of karma, you needed the initiative enhancements (overclock), the bioskill wires, and I think it was centering, and netfoci widgets maybe it was something like that; like 6ish submersions. But we got one at the end of 4th. When a character died and the player started their new character with group karma average. Yeah it was lot of Karma, but it was effective even vs fairly deep initiated mages. Part of the issue was the lack an real sort of non-TM hacking opposition at the time, and as i recall deep submersion just wasn't as deadly as astral questing. But combined with the sort of thing you could work up with basically near perfect information from deep submersion, or just being the unspeakable god of googling stuff, a small army of sprites and the super skill build it just crashed stuff. I accept your point that it's adaptive, but it was way strong and certainly on the same scale of game breaking as several things we got out FA.
Then yeah, it sounds like your experience was an artifact of the way your campaign was structured. Less the TM being overpowered, and more the GM not being able to use the tools available to deliver an adequate challenge. I expect you would have had similar problems with any high-level hacker who had started in such a situation. Again, going back to my baseball analogy, your GM hung a curve ball high and over the middle of the plate, and the TM player took him for a ride. I remember one time I, for fun, did up a mage character (possession tradition) in 4e starting at 300 karma after chargen. To say he was able to stomp most 'street-level' challenges without trying would be a tad bit of an understatement. Immunity to Normal Weapons when you have a F12 Spirit riding your body, Channeling, and other joys made him able to ignore anything lighter than machine guns, pretty much, and even then he was able to shrug off a lot of damage with his worn armor and an Armor spell sustained on a focus. And... well, I could go on.
Actually, what you had is a common issue when players start a new character at high levels. To switch to a D&D analogy for a second, yes, a Fighter that has started at Level 1 and risen to level 15 through the campaign should be about as powerful as a Fighter that starts at Level 15, the truth is that the older character will not be as focused as the new character. Their skills will be based on what they needed as they fought through various dungeons. They may have feats that seemed good at level 6, but haven't proven to be too useful later on. Their gear will be based on what they found as loot, or were able to buy in shops.
The new character, on the other hand, will be a master of their craft. Their feats and skills will all be honed towards a certain goal, even if those choices would have been less than useful at low levels. Their gear will be just what they needed, rather than what they could find. In other words, a character starting at level 15 will likely feel stronger and more focused than one that has fought their way up.
To return to SR 4E as an analogy, someone starting at, say, 200 karma, with whatever the GM feels is a reasonable amount of nuyen to give them, is going to be in a much better situation than characters who worked their way up, regardless of archetype. A Sammy starting that high will have more Betaware, higher grade wired reflexes, and so on, stuff that, yeah, they could have gotten in a long campaign, but they would have had to save up for and then had a couple months of downtime to recover from, even after they tracked down someone willing to do the work. A mage will have more initiations, more spells, more foci. A Hacker will have a better link, more programs, more agents. A Face will have more contacts, more fake SINs, and so on.
-
This is a major reason behind why I as DM allow Sum to 12 generation for "late" characters. It makes for an overall more powerful and rounded character, without me saying use x karma, and still has that more general feel of a Sum to 10 character that players started with, last year or two when we started this campaign. It works well for me, but of course YMMV.