Technomancers have had some degree of control over the way their abilities manifest at least since Unwired, and so I continued that trend. I assume that you don't roll dice to randomly determine what powers your characters develop; awakened and emerged characters can work towards that end as well. The Resonance is more than just some mystical force behind wireless signals. It has to deal with the Matrix in general, including devices that can only be connected to via a datajack. Indeed, the precursors to the technomancers, the otaku, had to get datajacks in order to use their abilities. Datajacks that, I might add, lower a technomancer's Resonance now, and thus harms their abilities. So I give them a way -- at a cost -- to avoid losing their Essence and their Resonance, but still be able to interface with wired devices.
That's why I said give them the ability to access a dataport by sticking their finger in it, or grabbing the wire. They don't need to spontaneously grow a new organ in order to interface with the matrix. You could have just gone with the old Skinlink Echo here to achieve the same result.
But they already did this in Unwired. I'm not saying honest-to-goodness real cyberware shows up in their bodies, only that the physical and biochemical changes in their physiologies is enough to copy those effects. Look again at the Acceleration Echoes and their effects. Or its prerequisite, Biowire. Or the unrated complex forms, Simrig and Smartlink. How again are technomancers not already able to do this in the game world? And in order to get Wired Reflexes I, they have to use two Resonance Points and submerge. To get WR3, they have to submerge three times and use FIVE Resonance Points. Assuming you start off at Resonance 6, that's 168 karma, far more than it would take to initiate the four times to get Biowire and the three ranks of Acceleration.
The Biowire echo is simply described as the ability to modulate the neuro-electrical and neuro-muscular network of their own body, basically just slightly modifying how their nerves interact with eachother and their muscles in order to effectively mimic a skillwire. They do not grown a new nervous system. Acceleration just does exactly what it sounds like: accelerates neural impulses. The difference between what you are describing and how these echoes are described are the same difference between hardware and software. These echoes just change how the data moves through a technomancer's body, which is software. You're having them make large-scale physiological changes to their internal organs, which is hardware. Stick with Software.
But skillwires and wired reflexes aren't the real problem with this enhancement. As you said, mimicing those already existed in unwired. The problem is that you are opening the floodgates for a huge chunk of the cyberware suite available, with minimum restrictions and no essence cost. If there is a specific cyberware option that sounds like a technomancer should be able to do it, make that a separate enhancement or echo. A blanket power like this is just too all-encompassing and diminishes cyberware.
If you... disagree with Defragmentation, you disagree with just a rehash of an Echo from Unwired, in SR4. I just retooled it a little bit and wrote it out because I think it's a solid inclusion. If you compare Defragmentation from SR4 to my write-up of it, I have actually nerfed it.
Not really. Defrag in Unwired didn't work on Black IC or Fading, yours works on Black IC. You specify Stun only, which is implied anyway by the unwired Defrag since the only way to take Physical damage as a technomancer in 4th was Black IC and Fading. Your stun track would fill up first and dump you from the matrix before you took any physical damage from matrix attacks (and hot-sim dumpshock doesn't count for Defrag, because it isn't Living Persona damage). Defrag in Unwired was also an extended test with an interval of 1 Combat Turn. Yours isn't. You also give a dice pool bonus equal to submersion bonus, which Unwired didn't. Unwired specifies that you cannot perform any other actions while Defragging, and you don't.
I'm seriously not seeing how you nerfed it.
I will take your feedback into consideration for Buffer and explicitly state it does not mitigate Fading. But my main concern when I was writing up Buffer was for databombs, the single biggest threat to a technomancer's life and health (even more than IC, or even GOD). A bad (good?) roll on a databomb is enough to instantly gib your technomancer, even if it's not a remarkably powerful one. The worst that can happen to a decker is he has to work on his commlink for a few hours. The worst that can happen to a technomancer is you start rolling up another character.
A technomancer can just summon up a Sprite to deal with databombs, just like a hacker can use an agent for it. If your main concern was Databombs, give them an enhancement specific to Data Bombs, like the Defuse program (which they can already duplicate with a different echo) or a Complex Form.
A Complex Form is probably a much better way to go about it. Have them thread up a buffer of redundant resonance constructs that soak up harmful code before it can hit their living persona, effectively giving them a number of extra damage boxes of a matrix condition track equal to the hits they get. The difference being they have to Sustain this, so they don't just grab an enhancement at submersion that instantly makes them practically immune to matrix damage from all sources.
But have you seen the tricks that magicians can do with drams of reagents? Or with the various foci they can sink karma into? Because those definitely help magicians and shamans summon more powerful spirits, and technomancers have no recourse in this regard. A powerful spirit can destroy an opposing runner team or TPK your entire Shadowrun group. A sufficiently powerful sprite can make your commlink not work. See the difference?
Neither Drams nor Foci change the rule of greater than magic equals physical drain, and both of those examples are significantly more expensive than just taking a metamagic at initiation, you may notice. If you want to give technomancers an equivalent to drams and foci, then give them an equivalent to drams and foci. Don't essentially make a metamagic that does what they do, but better.
Make your commlink not work? You mean bricking every piece of gear your team has, and killing the technomancer outright because they don't have a matrix condition track. And after it does that, it can call security to your position, or skip the middle man, hack the defensive turrets, and pump bullets into your squishy bodies. A super powerful out of control sprite is just as capable of making a run go south as an out of control spirit.
Overwatch is that score you run up pretty quickly when you're not sitting around twiddling your thumbs in any host that matters. When every one of your rolls get opposed by a ridiculous host Matrix attribute and backed up by a smart admin's settings, you'll burn through those extra points awful fast. Don't believe me? Try some test rolls against rating 8+ hosts, and tell me how quickly those points add up.
I know what Overwatch is, I was making a joke. Technomancers can already disable the automatic time limit with sustaining Static Veil. Giving them Blind the Eye on top of that means they can very rapidly never worry about overwatch again, especially when you add Cleaner to that list as well, considering how you made it Instant and a lot easier on the fading.
Well, that doesn't give me much to work on, and I won't presume that I can read your mind.
So I do have to explain why Rootkit is broken? Okay. This single enhancement gives a technomancer all of the following:
An uncapped, potentially unlimited dice pool bonus to all Sleaze actions.
An uncapped, potentially unlimited dice pool bonus to the opposed Resonance Veil test.
The ability to run silently without a -2 dice pool penalty.
Because as of right now it's useless. The Fading was too high for something that might lower your OS by a measly point or two, and you had to sit around for multiple entire Combat Turns to get that benefit. In addition, it broke the rules in its own description, saying it was a Simple Action -- so you could (weirdly enough) cast two of these things in one turn, sustain both of them, and sit around waiting for them to take permanent effect. Why not just take up the whole turn and give it the benefit of a single, combined shot?
A Simple Test is not the same thing as a Simple Action. It's another way of saying Success Test. And Cleaner takes effect immediately, you just have to keep sustaining it for [Level] Combat Turns for it to stick. This prevents you from just spamming Cleaner every pass until your Overwatch is 0, which every technomancer who has a spare moment will do with the version you provide, thanks to it also being cheaper in fading.
It is Permanent in the regard that after a time you no longer have to sustain the effect. But Permanent does not mean "forever." As soon as the device reboots or the proper amount of time has passed, all is in the original configuration. Keep in mind that Diffusion is resisted, and you have to pump up the Level of the complex form to get any affect whatsoever.
And that is broken. Diffusion is the exact same thing as the Decrease [Attribute] Spell, which is not only harder to cast successfully, but is also sustained. You could cast Diffusion of Firewall at Level 1, spend a point of edge to have no limit, soak the 2 DV fading, make it permanent, and then feel free to do it again, now against a weaker Firewall, probably without even needing to spend edge this time. And then you do it again. And again. And then you switch to their other attributes. You do not specify that it doesn't stack, and 1 hour is a hell of a long time when a technomancer can use this thing up to 5 times per 3 seconds, so a technomancer could very easily drop a host to 1's across the board, and then log out and take a nap if he happened to take any fading and let his decker buddy curbstomp the host into submission.
Edit File is a Data Processing action, meaning it will never alert the host, and it will never piss off GOD. You can do it all the live long day (at least until your time runs out and GOD converges, but even that will take a while.) Why am I going to make a technomancer risk alot of Fading for something that is virtually risk-free?
Because it doesn't require any marks and is resisted with Data Processing instead of Firewall.
How? You still have to cast it at a minimum Level of the original Attribute's rating? And again, it doesn't last forever.
Technomancer Infuses his Decker buddy's cyberdeck until he manages to double all his attributes, then goes to take a nap while the Decker curbstomps something.
Because commensurate effects in other parts of the game have much less risk for much more benefit. Most of the complex forms written as-is are, frankly, quite crap. Now, I'd take damn near any of them.
I'll even give you my favorite example: Stitches. Stitches allows you to heal a sprite for boxes of Matrix damage. It also originally had a FV of L-2. For healing a sprite. Compare that to the actual honest-to-goodness Heal spell that spellcasters get. Your buddy gets shot with a gun and is on death's door, and you can heal him. The Drain Value on that is F-4. With a Heal spell I can target any physical, living thing and heal damage done to them, possibly saving lives (and PCs. Your friends probably like their characters.) With Stitches I can knit a sprite back together. And you're telling me that it should be worth a whole 2 extra boxes of Fading, even despite its vastly limited utility? I don't buy that one bit. In fact, I think making Stitches' FV EQUAL to Heal's DV is being awfully generous.
You don't have to run up and lay hands on the sprite to Stitch it. There is no concept of range for Complex Forms, which spells do have to deal with. Not to mention that Stitch can be used repeatedly to return a Sprite to 100%, Heal cannot.
If by "more powerful" you mean "technomancers can actually do stuff," then I think you're right. First off, keep in mind that technomancers were my favorite part of the game in SR4, and so I took it as an affront that they were essentially emasculated and made useless. Other folks who are writing new rules and fixes for the game are being motivated by the parts that bother them. For example, some people are rebalancing cyberware for price and effect. Some folks are rewriting weird vehicle rules. In the end I choose the part that bothered me the most and I decided to be proactive and write some rules that I felt made technomancers fun to play again.
I've made technomancer metamagic analogs function similarly to the way that they do for other awakened: they are actually (for the most part) WORTH taking, and they get better over time as the character initiates. Currently their selection of options upon initiation is limited to what are essentially overpriced adept powers. If you are going to spend the karma to submerge, you ought to get something substantial in return for that. Any of the enhancements I just wrote up are many times better than the individual Echoes you could pick up in their place.
The technomancer that I think you are fearing is one with about 500 karma under his belt using these rules. In reality, I've never gotten higher than Grade 2 with any awakened or emerged character. In the Shadowrun game that I GMd for two real life years, my players got to about 150 karma before they collectively decided to retire. If I spent every bit of that on technomancer submersions and Resonance increases, I wouldn't get very far, wouldn't have a very high grade, and my skills still won't be where the mundane hacker's will be, since he can take less than that 150 karma and get that 12 in his Hacking skill, on top of his top-end cyberdeck and the 'ware he has implanted in his body.
I personally found the changes from 4th to 5th rather refreshing, since 4th made technomancers inherently superior to hackers in every conceivable way, to the point they were virtually unstoppable by enemy hackers. Some cases, literally, because a hacker couldn't hack or spoof a Technomancer command since they have no resonance, and you had silly situations like people slaving all their gear to the Technomancer, making it unhackable by anyone but another technomancer.
Probably because Fading costs are far too high across the board. For example, there is fundamentally no reason for Puppeteer to have a Fading code that is 5 points higher than the Drain code of the much more powerful Control Thoughts.
I don't think you understand the full potential ridiculousness of Puppeteer. You can make them perform any Matrix Action, and unlike magic, there is no equivalent 'noticing resonance' system in place, so nobody even necessarily realizes you did it. Here are just a few examples of why Puppeteer is ridiculous, and fully deserves +4 Fading.
Jack Out: It's a Simple Action, so the threshold is only 2. You force them to jackout and hit them with dumpshock.
Invite Mark: Also a Simple Action, for a threshold of 2. And when you make the offer, you choose how many marks it is, so with 1 Complex Action, you can force an opponent to give you 3 marks, something that's normally a -10 penalty on Brute Force or Hack on the Fly.
Format Device: Threshold 3 that basically bricks their device on reboot and takes hours to fix. Make them do this to themselves to get around the 3 marks you'd need and the defense test, then follow it up with...
Reboot Device: Threshold 3, they reboot themselves, erase all their marks, suffer dumpshock, and if you did Format first, are effectively gone for the remainder of the run.
Disarm Data Bomb: Make them blow themselves up instead of you.
And perhaps most Insidious of all...
Switch Interface Mode: Simple Action, so it's a Threshold of 2. You do this in Meat Space to dump anybody who's got a DNI into VR, causing them to collapse and become helpless long enough for an ally to kill them, or for them to die from the environment.