[Dracain]

If I may make a suggestion on the ghost.  You can drop muscle toner to 3 and reaction enhancers to 1 and the stats will still be the same because of the suprathyroid gland, as it is, you're going over the cap by 1 point on both reaction and agility .  It isn't much, but it does save 18,000¥. 

Oh, and on an unrelated note, why does the ghost have so much willpower?  I can see 3 or 4 being enough, and then another point could go into body for better armor. 

[UmaroVI]

The Agility is actually exactly at the cap. Elves normally have 7/10, the Ghost has Genetic Optimization(Agility) which makes it 8/12, and has base 7, +4 toner, +1 suprathyroid.

Reaction is a bit odd. Technically, the Reaction bonus from suprathyroid gland and the Reaction bonus from Reaction Enhancers don't stack. This is really stupid and frequently houseruled, but I'm sticking to the rules as written for the Archetypes, even when they are really dumb. If your GM rules they do stack, I'd actually drop base Reaction by a point; the 10 bp are more useful to free up.

Willpower is useful for stun boxes and for resisting some of the most common attack spells. It's a reasonable choice to have less Willpower and more Body, but not necessarily better.

[Dracain]

Thanks for clearing that up.  I don't know how I messed up on the agility calculations.  On an unrelated note, where does all the recoil for the Ingram White Knight come from on the Bad Enough Trog?  I ask because I see no way it could reach 11.  The highest I see it reaching are 9 with the gyromount from the left arm and the folding stock all ready. 

[UmaroVI]

Huh, it should actually be 10, not 11. Missions uses the recoil compensation from high strength rules, but that still makes only 10. Oops. He only needs 9 at most, so it doesn't matter too much, but I fixed it.

[Dracain]

Ok, where are these RC from high strength rules?  I keep hearing about them and cannot find them anywhere.  I would greatly appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. 

[UmaroVI]

Arsenal 163

[Dracain]

Thanks for the quick answer.  It cleared my confusion right up. 

[Dinendae]

I have a question regarding the InfoSavant's stream: Since it is primarily a rigger, would the Dronomancer stream be a valid choice as well? As I understand it, it uses the same stats to resist fading as the Info Savant stream; the only difference being the types of sprites available. Since Dronomancer still has the machine sprite available, would I be hurting myself if I went with Dronomancer instead of Info Savant?

[Orvich]

The big loss would be access to paladin sprites, which are some of the best hacking protection a technomancer can have. You will, on the other hand, gain tutor sprites, which are very useful. As far as I can tell, you'd be fine either way though!

[UmaroVI]

Both are valid choices. You're swapping Courier, Code, and Paladin for Crack, Tutor, and Fault.

Courier sprites are useless.
Crack sprites are OK, but they don't really bring anything unique. They can very reliably do kick-down-the-door-grab-the-data-while-Mute-is-up hacking.

Paladin sprites are really good at stopping you from getting WTFPwnt in cybercombat, and can very slowly win pretty much any cybercombat for you.
Fault sprites bring the WTFPwn.exe, but unlike Paladin sprites don't have a way to defend you aside from shooting first.
I'd rather have Paladin sprites, but it's not a big deal.

Code and Tutor sprites are both really good. I think Tutor is actually better because they are so flexible, but Probability Distribution is really good as well. In the long run, it doesn't matter because you definitely want to Sprite Link whichever you don't have anyways. In the short run, I would rather have Tutor.

[JustADude]

Both are valid choices. You're swapping Courier, Code, and Paladin for Crack, Tutor, and Fault.

Courier sprites are useless.
Crack sprites are OK, but they don't really bring anything unique. They can very reliably do kick-down-the-door-grab-the-data-while-Mute-is-up hacking.

Paladin sprites are really good at stopping you from getting WTFPwnt in cybercombat, and can very slowly win pretty much any cybercombat for you.
Fault sprites bring the WTFPwn.exe, but unlike Paladin sprites don't have a way to defend you aside from shooting first.
I'd rather have Paladin sprites, but it's not a big deal.

Code and Tutor sprites are both really good. I think Tutor is actually better because they are so flexible, but Probability Distribution is really good as well. In the long run, it doesn't matter because you definitely want to Sprite Link whichever you don't have anyways. In the short run, I would rather have Tutor.

So, what I'm taking away from this is that Dronomancer avoids the utterly useless Courier Sprite, and gets you some major face-busting power, at the cost of a Sprite Link Echo to get some Paladin Sprite tankage?

[Orvich]

Probability distribution doesn't seem so useful, not unless it stacks with assist operation.

From what I can tell, assist operation allows any sprite (and in fact, EVERY sprite) to add its rating to any program used by the summoning technomancer, without any sort of limitations written in. Probability distribution seems trickier to use, and adds half the rating of the sprite to a dicepool (Assuming it succeeds its roll against the rating of the node), with the ability to instead remove it from an enemy. Is this removal part what makes it useful?

[UmaroVI]

No, it's that it does in fact stack because it's a dice pool bonus, not a modifier to CF rating (Assist Operation can't take you over Resonance x2). Also, Probability Distribution can work on things that aren't a technomancer, too - it can assist another sprite, or a mundane matrix user, for example.

[Dog Boy]

No, it's that it does in fact stack because it's a dice pool bonus, not a modifier to CF rating (Assist Operation can't take you over Resonance x2). Also, Probability Distribution can

I thought Assist Operation was uncapped -- and it's threading that's limited by (Resonance x 2). Of course, it doesn't seem like a bad idea, since it's possible to compile a sprite greater than your resonance.

[Dinendae]

Ok, I'll go ahead with the dronomancer stream then. Thanks for the replies!