5th edition, Chapter by Chapter

[endersdouble]

They gotta make it simpler. No, simpler than that. With less die rolls.
-Username17

Fewer.

[Username17]

They gotta make it simpler. No, simpler than that. With less die rolls.
-Username17

Fewer.

That depends on whether you consider die rolls to be distinct units or an aggregate quantity. It's fewer dogs, but it's less sand. Personally, I consider die rolls in a dice pool system to be amorphous quantities, and thus to be treated like sand piles rather than fire engines. So it would be "less" rather than "fewer." I admit, that's a dialectal regionalism.

-Username17

[endersdouble]

They gotta make it simpler. No, simpler than that. With less die rolls.
-Username17

Fewer.

That depends on whether you consider die rolls to be distinct units or an aggregate quantity. It's fewer dogs, but it's less sand. Personally, I consider die rolls in a dice pool system to be amorphous quantities, and thus to be treated like sand piles rather than fire engines. So it would be "less" rather than "fewer." I admit, that's a dialectal regionalism.

-Username17

Meh. We discuss how many die rolls it takes to resolve a combat action (three), not how much rolls, hence fewer in my book.

[RandomCasualty2]

I never really liked the whole brain hacking concept mostly because it made people without commlinks totally screwed over. And it opens whole cans of worms regarding interrogating prisoners.

The idea that it's a tradeoff behind defenses and exposure is a good one though, so I'm thinking something like... What if you could just wirelessly hack electronics?

you can totally fuck up a wired maglock with some kind of wireless surge, but a wireless one can use firewalls and other forms of defense. Same with cyberware. A dude can totally cause your cyber arm or wired reflexes to switch off if you leave the wireless turned off, but otherwise you get defenses. That'd basically still let wizards run wireless, but would definitely encourage the street samurai to worry about defenses. I think that's a bit more in line with SR's theme, since letting a hacker basically fuck up anyone is a bit extreme.

Hackers should basically counter technology, not necessarily organics. And brain hacking basically lets the team hacker pretty much win against everyone.

I'd feel better with some kind of counter system like.

Hacker> rigger, street sam
Street sam, rigger > mage, adept, critter
Mage, adept, critter > hacker

Otherwise it seems like the entire game would just involve a party of hackers who wirelessly fucks up everyone in the building and then just steals shit. Which, while that may make a good game in itself isn't conceptually in line with Shadowrun.

It still doesn't solve the problem of the dude who papers himself in wifi blocking wallpaper... but I'm not really sure what you'd do about that anyway.

[Username17]

I'd feel better with some kind of counter system like.

Shadowrun is already built on the assumption that Hackers do things to Matrix targets, and Mages do things to Magical targets. Therefore an RPS counter system cannot be employed no matter how nicely you could set one up. The answer to a Watcher Spirit is a Mage, because no one else can even touch the damn thing.

As such, what you need from the Hacker is the same thing the Magician provides:

• The ability to do something to team White Hat if team White Hat chooses to not engage them on their terms.
• The ability to do something unique to help Team Black Hat if Team White Hat does invest in specific security of their type.

The obvious point of comparison is the purely mundane building to the unwired building; and the Watcher Spirit and the Security Camera.

If the target building has no magical defenses, then the Magician can cast spells to their heart's content and scout the building astrally without fear of repercussions. That dynamic makes mystical defenses valuable and reasonable. The Magician character has an edge if the target attempts to drop out completely.

Similarly, the Hacker needs an edge if the target drops out completely. If the Hacker is at a disadvantage because the target went low tech - then the optimal defense against Hackers is simply to not invest in any of this shit that costs thousands of ¥. And it wants to be different from the edge that mages get, because otherwise the two archetypes feel too similar. So right away, we're giving a big "no" to an equivalent to astral scouting, which means that hacking is plum inferior at giving up building layouts or guard positions.

Now, Wireless blocking paint is a big problem. And I mean really big problem. Because essentially what it means is that people can purchase background counts for Hacking. Where you can make a Dungeon Facility that has weak or no magic on premises, you have to do it by finding some fucked up magical ley line that makes it hard or impossible for people to use magic - and there are still going to druids or toxic mages or some shit who feed off that mana line flavor and can run amok super hard. For Hacking, it's definitely not like that. You can run copper infused paint on pretty much anything, and get some pretty good protection that way. But that's not an unsolvable problem.

The first step would be deciding what you want your hackers to be for. And my reaction would be "staying unseen," which is really to say the exact opposite of what a Magician delivers. Rather than getting better mapping data on the target facility, the Hacker removes information from the other side. And he does that even if they have Wi-Fi blocking paint. Which basically leads us to the idea that a Hacker can interfere with any receiver. Not just antennae, but also cameras and eyes. The Hacker puts out the radiation, and then the targeted cameras record only fuzziness (or possibly a loop of the last recorded images) unless and until someone does some counter hacking to stop you. The Hacker's purpose is the selective jamming of devices, with humans and the photo-intakes of cameras themselves being devices for that purpose.

As long as you can't be recorded without the target leaving themselves open for you to do something about with hacking, then the Hacker maintains a purpose, and counter hacking investments like security spiders and IC make sense.

Otherwise it seems like the entire game would just involve a party of hackers who wirelessly fucks up everyone in the building and then just steals shit.

The protection against that is actually the role protection of the magician and the deadliness of large numbers of dudes with shot guns. You can't hack even a lowly watcher spirit - it's not even on the same plane of existence as you. So the all hackers party is never going to be optimal. The goal is merely to give the Hacker enough to do that the fact that a Magician can learn Trid Phantasm and Improved Invisibility doesn't completely obviate the Hacker archetype. That means making the Hacker enough of a threat (even and especially to unwired opponents) that reasonable security precautions include stuff for the Hacker to deal with personally.

And it opens whole cans of worms regarding interrogating prisoners.

Interrogating prisoners should probably be a Hacker thing, because it's very difficult to imagine a set up where that is not the case. The fact is that if you have a victim tied to a chair and unconscious, you can put a damn trode net on their head. You could even install a datajack in them against their will if it came to that. Anything that could possibly be done to any hacker at any level of exposure to the Matrix is something that can be inflicted on a guy tied to a chair. The hacker controls every part of the devices and the connections - and is thus in full control of both sides of the Hacker vs. IC equation as regards the prisoner.

Since Psychotrope and Brainscan were totally printed and part of the canon, we can pretty much write off any hacking setup that does not allow a Hacker to trap a prisoner in a Cardassian mind prison as a possibility. Regardless of what kind of restrictions there are on Black Hammering your mom, Psychotrope or Black Hammer can be used on a prisoner. That's just a given.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Shadowrun is already built on the assumption that Hackers do things to Matrix targets, and Mages do things to Magical targets. Therefore an RPS counter system cannot be employed no matter how nicely you could set one up. The answer to a Watcher Spirit is a Mage, because no one else can even touch the damn thing.

Well, street samurai can take out manifesting spirits with the right weaponry, and really if I was going to mod the game balance some, I'd say that spirit attacks were similar to magic healing, in which having low essence actually made them weaker, which would put drones and street samurai in the position of countering spirits pretty well. Now, obviously he can't harm passive watchers or anything, but that's not a heck of a big deal combat wise, since they can't do much to him either.

Obviously the passive stuff will require like counters. If you want to stop magical spying you need a mage. If you want to stop some dude from hacking your commlink and steal data, you'll need hacker protection.

Similarly, the Hacker needs an edge if the target drops out completely.

That's true. And I'm rather proposing that the edge is that the hacker can basically fry all the guys electronic gizmos so they don't work. In other words, while he may not be able to move your cyberarm on its own without wireless, he can like send a surge and totally disable it. Meaning that if you're a corporation that wants to go without wireless, the hacker can just easily pop off an electric surge on all your maglocks and wired cameras and totally fuck them up, and he can do that pretty much from range. Now, this may not seem all that useful to a shadowrunner since it would ruin the element of surprise however, consider that corps would be super vulnerable to electronic warfare terrorists, making it totally not worthwhile to do it that way, since any dude who hates them with a commlink can start causing chaos from a van outside. Servers go down, cameras go out, drones start to fuck up and so on.

If the Hacker is at a disadvantage because the target went low tech - then the optimal defense against Hackers is simply to not invest in any of this shit that costs thousands of ¥.

Well that's fine honestly. But corps don't work that way. The fact is that they *need* computers to do the kinds of telecommunications that's necessary in Shadowrun. You honestly cannot function without them. Sure, they can totally decide "fuck it, we're going back to typewriters and sketchpads" but that's just not a feasible financial model in an age of high tech databases and AIs.

Now you can totally hire mundane security without cyberware, but that's sort of the point of Shadowrun, in that you've got a team of people who all contribute something. And your team needs a hacker and needs a street samurai.

Now, already the hacker is the most important member of your team, for many of the reasons you listed. There's certain goals only he can achieve, and only he can wipe information from the system. The bottom line in SR is that there's not much useful in astral space, but there's a fucking ton of shit in cyberspace that people want. And that instantly gives the hacker an ultra valuable position in your team.

Due to the way data can be stored and secured, there are many runs that street samurai and magicians flat out cannot accomplish. Really, I just don't feel that hackers need a boost in what they can do. Because already they're a hugely valuable member of the team.

The protection against that is actually the role protection of the magician and the deadliness of large numbers of dudes with shot guns. You can't hack even a lowly watcher spirit - it's not even on the same plane of existence as you. So the all hackers party is never going to be optimal. The goal is merely to give the Hacker enough to do that the fact that a Magician can learn Trid Phantasm and Improved Invisibility doesn't completely obviate the Hacker archetype. That means making the Hacker enough of a threat (even and especially to unwired opponents) that reasonable security precautions include stuff for the Hacker to deal with personally.

You can't hack watchers, but you could totally just hack the mage summoning it. In fact, your goal would seem to be to sit in a van (or storage closet if the building is wifi protected) and totally just go to town on everyone wirelessly. Watcher spirits are pretty powerful but they're also really stupid. Unless you tell them exactly what to look for, they're not going to be able to spot an intruder in a crowded corporate building.

In effect, you're a mage who can cast spells on shit without even seeing it, and there's really no defense for a non-hacker, save wrapping yourself in wifiblocking paper. Because the thing is that, hackers are designed to beat security software. If the IC wins, then basically you have no meaningful game. At best you can slow them down, but basically if you can't beat them at matrix combat, you get fucked over. Not just your cyberware, but like your actual brain.

[Username17]

First off, Spirits have physical powers. From Pychokiesis to Firebolts. Those powers are never going to be discounted against low essence or even inanimate targets. Now, how good Street Samurai have been at ripping spirits in half has varied tremendously edition to edition, and it revolves around how the rest of the combat mechanics interact with Invulnerability (the new name for ItNW). In some editions, Street Samurai cry like little babies until the Mages come to stunbolt them away, in others the Street Samurai get two whole actions worth of blowing their fucking faces off to um... blow their fucking faces off.

I would actually favor combat mechanics and Invulnerability tweaks such that normal handheld firearms were rather pathetic against spirits, causing Street Samurai to reach for magic katanas that they used to carve spirits up. I think that by eliminating the Defense Roll (which spirits completely dominate at in SR4 melee rules), that can actually be achieved. I just doesn't even matter how much damage a katana would do to a spirit in SR4, a Force 6 spirit has a melee defense pool of 14 dice before taking a defensive action to boost it to 20. Without that particular hurdle, and spirits still bereft of armor not granted by Invulnerability, I think you could arrange a situation where a Street Samurai would actually want to sword fight against Fire Spirits.

But yes, to an extent, the magician guy is really there for the things he can do to the normal physical world when the astral stuff isn't fighting back. He can spy on it, he can cast spells on it, he can conjure spirits at it. It's good stuff. But the Hacker's real draw is that he can extract the paydata from the computer at the end of the adventure. But the problem is - that's the end of the fucking adventure. He needs something to do before then. In fact, he needs something to do at every part of the adventure.

So do Street Samurai of course, which is a big reason why their combat skills are getting collapsed. The fact is that "killing fools" is only useful in a relatively limited part of the adventure, and the Street Samurai therefore needs to be able to do it on relatively few Build Points. They also need to be able to buy themselves some legwork and B&E skills to keep themselves from being useless when the combat music isn't playing. But that's a separate rant.

The Hacker has Data Search stuff. That's a great legwork skill, and it can do a lot of things. And they have Hacking, which can get them the paydata from the computer in the vault at the end of the mission (if there is such a thing, as opposed to the mission being an extraction, structure hit, smuggling run, or any other mission where the monster at the end of the book isn't a computer). But they still need something to do, something hacking related to do between those two points. And while you can say flippantly enough "locks and cameras" that answer only works if there isn't some simple method of keeping the hacker out. And copper paint... is a real thing. At the point where the hacker has to pry the wi-fi blocking paper off the body of the camera before he can hack it, you might as well just have the Street Samurai shoot it from across the room.

For my own Matrix direction I would take SR5, the hacker's two tools would be the Commlink and the Holo-projector. And even if they couldn't get access to a retinal scanner, they could still "hack" their way in with holograms. Even if weren't any meaningful devices on the other side, the Hacker could still run interference with hypnotic patterns. Remember, "go rough up that street gang" or even "go into the sewers and fight goblins" is totally a viable mission, one which the Street Sam and Mage have a clear and present utility during.

The things people want are somewhat contradictory. They want Black Hammer to exist, and they want it to be used. But they also want just not plugging your brain into the computer in the first place to be complete protection from Blackhammer. And that means that the Hacker needs to be a compelling enough threat as to drive someone on the other team to hook their brain up to be hammered to run signal defense for everyone else. And in a world where you have a buddy with a gun, the ability to make distracting and paralyzing hypnotic patterns could likely fulfill that demand. You still need a DNI to Blackhammer or Psychotrope or provide signal defense, but holo-hacking is good enough that you want someone on your team interacting with the wireless shit with their brain.

-Username17

[Koumei]

As somewhat of an outsider to Shadowrun... what is Blackhammering? I can infer that it's a powerful hacking thing, and it sounds awesome.

[schpeelah]

Black Hammer
Type: B Range: S (LOS) Time: CA
An improper neural impulse can digest a pancreas, terminate breathing, or stop a heart, which is exactly what Black Hammer does. If a character is affected by Black Hammer, she uses Willpower (Biofeedback Filter bonuses apply) to resist physical damage equal to the Rating of the attack plus the net hits. Black Hammer is incapable of doing damage beyond that which is necessary to completely fill in the condition monitor. Any excess damage is lost (stoppage of internal organ function is bad, but it's not "heads exploding" bad).

From the Ends of The Matrix pdf, b/c it's the easiest.

[Koumei]

Ah, groovy. It sends a "stop function" command to programs, where the programs could be your heart and brain. Thanks.

[RandomCasualty2]

But yes, to an extent, the magician guy is really there for the things he can do to the normal physical world when the astral stuff isn't fighting back. He can spy on it, he can cast spells on it, he can conjure spirits at it. It's good stuff. But the Hacker's real draw is that he can extract the paydata from the computer at the end of the adventure. But the problem is - that's the end of the fucking adventure. He needs something to do before then. In fact, he needs something to do at every part of the adventure.

That's very true. But I think the hacker's schtick should stay with machines and not with just randomly KOing people. If anything needs to take a nerf, it's the wifi blocking paper. Honestly, you may just want to get rid of that shit entirely. If we're dealing with some kind of special rays that can hack brain matter without any active connection, I don't see why it's a big deal to say that it can go through copper.

Seriously, why can't we just get rid of wifi blockers entirely? It seems like it's still an issue even with brain hacking, because people will run around with military helmets with wifi blocking paper on it anyway. So why not just let them affect any technology (wireless or not) and say that wifi blocking either doesn't exist or can only affect wide areas and not individual cameras. Make it something more elaborate than just wallpaper or paint.

Otherwise you either end up with the problem of hackers hiding in storage closets and black hammering everyone in the building, or you run into the problem of every security dude layering his helmet with wallpaper.

[A Man In Black]

Seriously, why can't we just get rid of wifi blockers entirely?

Because Faraday cages exist in the real world and in previous SR canon. While you have a free hand to rewrite how the Matrix works, from a great deal of previous precedent, eliminating gadgets - especially gadgets which have become ingrained to the setting - is not something that will be well-received.

[Username17]

Seriously, why can't we just get rid of wifi blockers entirely?

Because Faraday cages exist in the real world and in previous SR canon. While you have a free hand to rewrite how the Matrix works, from a great deal of previous precedent, eliminating gadgets - especially gadgets which have become ingrained to the setting - is not something that will be well-received.

This is important.

Electromagnetic shielding is actually pretty well understood. It works. It works, very well. And it's a gadget that exists in the real world. If you take it out of the game, you will offend people. Importantly, you will offend the same people who would be offended if you just let people black hammer your mom, and you'll offend a bunch more people who were willing to let that one slide because it's science fiction. In short, not only will you offend the hard scifi people (including all the armchair physicists who spout bullshit like "there isn't enough electric power in a human brain to send a radio transmission"), you'll also be offending all the people who don't like retcons - and all the people who like to be able to relate the future to the present in some way because that shit already exists! It's not just that you're talking about something that was purchasable in previous editions of Shadowrun, or that it's something that is theoretically possible, it's already here. You're not just retconning a device out of last edition, you're retconning 2010 tech.

Which is where the holo-pattern-hacking thing comes in. Hackers need the ability to do something to low tech people in metal armor - because those are real. If you can't come up with something for hackers to do against "a gang of orks with baseball bats" or "someone who makes their building into a Faraday Cage and puts a mechanical lock on the outside" then your hacking system has failed to deliver on providing a viable hacker archetype, because those missions exist.

-Username17

[Zak]

While I have no issue with your hacking changes, certain missions will always push someone out of the spotlight into a more passive role.

I never really like the one-trick-pony style a lot of SR characters showcased. I would expect every runner to have a certain skillset just to survive the streets they work and live in. This includes certain knowledge, social, infiltration and combat skills.
They don't have to be exactly the same for every character.

While I do not expect the Street Sam to fast-talk a dragon, I would however expect him to handle a gangmember by socials means (intimidation is perfectly fine) and I wished runners would not to be dependent on the party face for every single negotiation when buying a soy burger.

This is to be extended to combat skills and obviously infiltration skills aswell. It is just plain boring when your team has to split up every time because the mage or face didn't learn how to sneak (yea, i know invisibility and silence - but you can only cast so many spells at once, and sometimes mundane stealth will be of critical importance)

I have struggled with this issue for years (and three editions) without finding a good solution. Halving skill costs in SR4 and forcing players to take certain crucial skills came closest to working.

How can this be adressed in SR5, or should it be ignored for the core book and only later be discussed in some obscure sourcebook (like SotA)?

[mean_liar]

Part of the trouble is the setting assumption that a character that can hack can only hack. You want Street Sams to do more than "killing fools", and that's a good thing - so why would you limit Hackers to just hacking while trying to figure out a way to expand the scope of hacking so that it's as useful and universally-applicable as Magic?

[Murtak]

Frank, why do you assume not wiring a facility is even an option? Sure, you can be hacker immune, for the low cost of being a hundred years behind the curve (read: useless). Non-wired facilities are basically possible for storage sites and that's about it. Just shielding an entire facility is a somewhat workable option, but even then a single repeater smuggled into the building will defeat your shielding. Simply skipping wireless and old-school-wiring the place is conceivable, but again, access to a single cable defeats all of your efforts. So even if you can shield an entire corporate facility, I can't see it become commonplace unless it is incredibly cheap - it simply does not do much.

First, because it is easy to defeat. Second, because (just as today) most attacks will be insider attacks, which bypass shielding by definition. Third, because corporations and government aside like to skimp on costs, even if it does not make sense. Unless it is dirt-cheap or the person responsible will lose their job, it probably will not get done.

Basically I can see top-secret research facilities and the likes being cut off from the matrix - anything really small and really valuable you do not need instant access to basically (research labs is the only thing that comes to mind). I can definitely see shielded data stashes in tightly controlled rooms. But 99.99999% of everything is going to be online.

[Username17]

While I have no issue with your hacking changes, certain missions will always push someone out of the spotlight into a more passive role.

This is true, and you've got to be planning around it. When the bullets aren't coming hot and heavy, that pushes the Street Sam to the back of the bus. When the adventure moves to the observation deck of an abandoned chemical plant, the magician gets pushed to the back of the bus. And yeah, there should be things that push hackers to the back o the bus. I nominate Cockatrices, because they have non-human nervous systems, no datajacks, and are not fooled by holograms.

But one of the great conceits of Shadowrun is that perhaps the number one thing that keeps Magicians from running roughshod over people is other magicians. That is to say, when both sides have a magician providing spell defense, both sides have less impressive magic. And that's got to be the balance point you strive for with hacking as well. That is, the Hacker should go "Fuck, they have a security spider!" and not "Sweet, an enemy Hacker, something to do!"

I never really like the one-trick-pony style a lot of SR characters showcased.

Part of the trouble is the setting assumption that a character that can hack can only hack. You want Street Sams to do more than "killing fools", and that's a good thing - so why would you limit Hackers to just hacking while trying to figure out a way to expand the scope of hacking so that it's as useful and universally-applicable as Magic?

Well, there's two things there. Firstly, yes. Every character should have a dabbling of abilities to do in various parts of the game. Frankly, shit like Uncouth just shouldn't even be an option in the basic rules. Save that shit for when you're writing up Centaurs and other dubious characters that require intense discussion with the Game Master to fit into a story line.

But the flip side is simply this:


You see that? That's the iconic 3-person team. The one the game must cater to if it can call itself an edition of Shadowrun. It is: Dodger (an Elven Decker), Sally Tsung (a Street Shaman, with boobs), and Ghost-Who-Walks-Insane (an Amerind Street Samurai). The tagline is: Where Man Meets Magic and Machine. You really do need to be able to make each of those characters and have that be a viable thing.

Now there's another thing you probably noticed. And that's that both Dodger and Sally intrude somewhat into Ghost's idiom. They are both physically present and both armed with guns. However, Ghost cannot intrude into Dodger or Sally's schticks, because those take place in alternate realities (virtual or mystical) in which Ghost simply does not exist. Therefore Ghost has to be something of a jack of all trades, because his schtick isn't unique, and if he doesn't cover a lot of ground, Dodger or Sally could end up making him redundant on accident. Further, the less Dodger or Sally can rely upon their uncopyable alternate reality schtick to justify their existence (and thus have to rely upon physical tasks that Ghost might have been investing in), the more of a threat to Ghost's aura of competence they are.

How can this be adressed in SR5, or should it be ignored for the core book and only later be discussed in some obscure sourcebook (like SotA)?

I don't think the core book can help you that much in not making failure characters. You're going to get a couple of side boxes that emphasize such words of wisdom as "Magicians should provide some fucking spell defense" and "You will make a lot of Perception tests no matter where the story arc is going." But to an extent, it's highly campaign specific - hell, there are games where Nautical Mechanic is gold.

One thing that I think the game can be assisted with, is dropping to three mental stats. Very roughly, Dodger maximizes his Logic, Sally maximizes her Willpower, and Ghost maximizes his Intuition. Putting some coherent limitations on contact lenses can also go a long way towards stressing Ghost's commanding lead in Perception dice - seeing as how he should be getting +3 from cybereyes that Sally likely will not. And once each character has a high stat that is used a lot during the legwork and cleanup phases, each of those three characters has a clear list of things they ought to consider being good at. So Dodger might take up Medicine, Demolitions, or Nautical Mechanic. Ghost will be shoehorned into Perception, but he might also consider Disguise or Survival. Sally may consider the joys of Intimidate or Negotiation.

But the biggest way you're going to get people to diversify is simply to set starting character caps well below what costs all their points. You tell people that they can't spend more than 12 BP on Firearms, you're going to have another 138 BP lying around that are going to go into Edge, Skills, Contacts and Equipment. And that's going to get into things that aren't shooting people in the face sooner rather than later.

But yeah, Hacking isn't just going to be a big deal because the players are being asked to drop 40/300 BP just on skills before they even have attributes just to be able to turn the holo projector on (that they also have to buy with more BP). It's got to be a big deal because the less of a deal it is, in terms of costs and effects, the more Dodger is going to getting into Ghost's yard and making things hard for him.

-Username17

[Ganbare Gincun]

So Willpower would be the stat that is linked to Social Skills instead of Charisma, then?

[RandomCasualty2]

This is important.

Electromagnetic shielding is actually pretty well understood. It works. It works, very well. And it's a gadget that exists in the real world. If you take it out of the game, you will offend people.

Well you offend them with brain hacking too. So I don't see what the big deal is. It's magically okay for electronic devices to use some weird quantum entanglement thing to hack people's brains, but bypassing wifi shielding is some concept completely alien to sci-fi? Seriously. wtf?

I mean, it doesn't even have to be a retcon, you can seriously just say that that shit was just invented or something. It can be the next generation hackers commlink, capable of generating enhanced radio waves or whatever the fuck terminology you want to use which are capable of breaking through wifi shielding. It's the same deal with how the wired matrix became the wireless matrix. Even though the wired matrix was pretty stupid conceptually, it wasn't really retconed, it was just assumed to be advancement of technology to make the game work.

This is seriously an RPG game where we've got nanites, magic alchemical passkeys and cyberzombies. They have the technology to interface a human brain with a fucking computer, but somehow bypassing copper paint is such a monumental feat that it is completely unimagineable.

Seriously, you find it more conceivable that hackers can remotely hack people's brains without any kind of attachment to the brain than it is that some kind of sci-fi tech managed to break through copper paint or a faraday cage.

Honestly I'm kind of baffled by that.

Which is where the holo-pattern-hacking thing comes in. Hackers need the ability to do something to low tech people in metal armor - because those are real. If you can't come up with something for hackers to do against "a gang of orks with baseball bats" or "someone who makes their building into a Faraday Cage and puts a mechanical lock on the outside" then your hacking system has failed to deliver on providing a viable hacker archetype, because those missions exist.

Well, I don't really see an issue with the hacker being less useful against the ork gang. The same deal where the big bulky troll is less useful for missions that require social stuff primarily. Every runner should have a chance that he's put out of his element, in fact, it's the very reason you have runners with multiple specialties. Behind a hacker doesn't even prevent you from just using a gun, and honestly that's what SR expects you to do sometimes.

Not every single problem should be solvable via a commlink. Sometimes you should have to use a secondary schtick. We shouldn't design the game like 4E D&D. Sometimes in SR, you should have to use a secondary schtick, and that's okay. SR4 even made commlinks and stuff cheap enough such that hackers could actually afford to buy wired reflexes and be half decent otherwise. You no longer have dedicated deckers who only know how to use a computer and that's it.

Why not let the street samurai have a chance to shine? Handling a bunch of low-tech orc street toughs should be his thing. But in your set up it seems the best way to approach any problem is for the hacker to sit in a closet somewhere and start fucking with people remotely. Really I can't imagine why you'd even want a street samurai on your team at that point? Critters are basically going to be totally unshielded minds, so are now totally counterable by the hacker. Regular computer systems and commlinks are something the hacker is built to hack through, so that's no big deal. About all he really has trouble with is spirits on remote service. But given that spirits don't really have any way of tracing matrix connections, I don't see that as being a huge problem.

Basically it seems like under your paradigm, the matrix fucks non-hackers either way. Either you expose yourself less, and basically have no firewalls, but are apparently still vulnerable to brain hacking. Or you get yourself a commlink and IC, which the hacker is designed to beat anyway, and put your brain and your devices at risk. It's a lose-lose situation for anyone without a hacker. Basically, all meaningful combats will occur in cyberspace, because losing the cyber war means that at the very least you get your eyes blinded by hallucinations. At worst, you get black hammered. In any case, the balance prospect is equivalent to a projecting mage being able to blast mundanes from astral space.


I'm really kind of puzzled that you'd want to make hacking into something capable of solving any problem. Why is that a big design priority?

I mean I can see that obviously your other changes to the system are great, but the brain-hacking thing just seems way over-the-top and game breaking. It seems a lot more reasonable just to say that hacker spytech has found ways of breaking through wireless shielding.

[Orion]

Magic fucks you up whether you personally use any or not. The only defense against magic is superior magic.

Why shouldn't hacking be the same way?

[RandomCasualty2]

Magic fucks you up whether you personally use any or not. The only defense against magic is superior magic.

Why shouldn't hacking be the same way?

Magic requires a line of sight, which means you can just as easily shoot the mage.

Hacking doesn't require that. You have a functional range of about like 300 meters which can actively go through walls and in three dimensions.

It's nearly the same as letting a mage launch attacks from astral space, because you have no opportunity to shoot the mage.

[Orion]

But mages *can* totally just drop giant spirits on you from the astral.

[RandomCasualty2]

But mages *can* totally just drop giant spirits on you from the astral.

Yeah absolutely, but that's really something that needs to be fixed, given that a cabal of mages tossing endless remote service spirit summons at you is broken in SR4.

So it's probably not a great balance point.

[Akula]

The problem is the remote services, not the spirits.

So your argument is irrelevant.

[RandomCasualty2]

The problem is the remote services, not the spirits.

So your argument is irrelevant.

Not really, anytime you can basically sit in a closet and direct an infinite amount of defenses without reprisal, that's bad. Offhand I'd recommend making spirit drain such that it always drains you at least 1 point of stun and that your astral link to the spirit remains after it was summoned, such that they can follow you back to your closet and screw you.

But that's different from a hacker, because if it's set up right, the wizard is paying stun drain for summoning those spirits and banishing (or even just attacking the spirits) is a perfectly okay thing to do, because if drain is set up right, the mage will eventually run out of juice. Now assuming you provide a medium to track him, that's fine.

Hackers don't really work that way though. If you do your matrix stuff correctly, you don't really suffer any penalty for doing it, therefore you can basically keep repeating it over and over until you're beaten at matrix combat. So you have two options:

1. They have IC/Spiders and they can't hold you off, in which case there is no defense against hackers.

2. They have IC/spiders and they can hold you off, which makes hacking basically suck completely since you can't really hack through defenses.

In SR, you basically want to assume that hackers can actually do stuff to defended systems, and yeah the best defense against that for the unskilled should be to avoid the matrix entirely. But losing the matrix should basically mean losing all your technology, and in SR, that's generally a big deal.

Basically you want to make all technology hackable. The cost of having weak matrix security should mean that you lose electronic devices, and there shouldn't be some cheap substitute to matrix security like copper paint. But if someone wants to run their office pencil and paper, no cameras, no smartguns and no computers, they totally should be able to do that and basically not care if there's no matrix security. Of course, only very small offices could even afford to do that from a business standpoint. Fact of the matter is that any decent business needs telecommunication equipment. That means you have to interact with the matrix. Cutting yourself off from technology is literally not an option from any even mildly serious business.

The problem was in fact never getting people to use technology. People will totally do that for very logical reasons. The problem is that you want to make all technology hackable. That means you can't have copper paint and you can't have switches to turn off the wireless.