(Shadowrun) Perfect Crime Matrix Rules [WIP]

[JesterZero]

To be fair Jester, there was an archetype for the people who didn't have magic or cyberware and that was the Detective one. Now no one I knew ever played one.

Hey, I'm happy to grant that. I'll even go beyond that and point out that there were a number of sample characters who were "neithers" when it came to magic and tech.

SR1: Detective, Ork Mercenary, Tribesman
SR2: Detective, Tribesman
SR3: Investigator
SR4: Weapons Specialist
SR5: Face, Bounty Hunter

Like you, I don't know of any player who played any of those pregens. And more importantly, I don't know anyone who would argue that those archetypes...as represented by the sample characters for their respective editions...is at the core of Shadowrun.

The core Shadowrun archetypes have always been Dodger, Sally, and Ghost...in one incarnation or another.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Never said he was at the core of Shadowrun. Actually said, the choice between man, magic or machine was at the core of Shadowrun.

Oh really?

RLY brah. Choice between man and machine is at the core of the cyberpunk genre, Shadowrun just adds magic.

The choice to embrace magic (if you have the potential) or technology, or neither is at the core of Shadowrun character creation and Shadowrun playing itself...

Emphasis mine. Words yours.

Explain to me how picking "neither" there results in anything except Anti-Magic-Anti-Tech guy? Because "neither" eliminates...you know...magic and technology.

I was assuming that your use of anti- was meant in the context of "works against", because it appeared that you were intelligent enough to know that "lacks the quality of" is shown by "non-" and "doesn't like, works against" is shown by "anti-". Apparently, appearances were wrong. Protip: "anti-tank" means "works against tanks" not "lack of existence of tank".

And yes, as Leress mentioned mundanes have appeared as PC possibilities in Shadowrun before. Much like combat hackers, they haven't really taken star roles because the game short changed them for a long time.

(Summary) Hackers should not be glorified riggers.
-Username17

(Assuming you are responding to Zaranthan) I agree with you there. Riggers should be their own distinct group, especially with the added flexibility they have vs pure hackers. And on the matter of adepts, I kind of ambivalent towards them, would Shadowrun really suffer that much from removing them?

[Lokathor]

Mage / Samurai / Decker is even the basis of the goofy 1990s promo vid they did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Mage / Samurai / Decker is even the basis of the goofy 1990s promo vid they did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w

Dear God that couldn't be more 80's if Nancy Reagan suddenly appeared and hushed up the existence of AIDS.

[JesterZero]

Two things:

I was assuming that your use of anti- was meant in the context of "works against", because it appeared that you were intelligent enough to know that "lacks the quality of" is shown by "non-" and "doesn't like, works against" is shown by "anti-".

One: that's demonstrably false. "Anti-" as a prefix not only can not only denote opposition to (the definition you cherry-picked), but opposite to (the definition you deny). Heck, if you look it up in MW, the second sense is actually listed first.

Two: since you are running away with the goalposts as fast as you can, and since you have now shifted your claim from "core of Shadowrun" to "PC possibilities", I'm going to assume we're done here. Because I'm really not interested in your redefinition of Shadowrun terms...or prefixes.

No one's denying there are fringe elements in Shadowrun that are anti-/non-/a-/ne- magic/tech. Leress mentioned a sample character, Frank expanded on that, and I've cheerfully listed them all and what book they're from. But contrary to your original claim, (before you started making wacky statements about semantics), they are not core. That's what a lot of people here are saying.

The core archetypes are hacker, street sam, and mage. That's why they get the splatbooks every edition. That's why they get the clever chapter titles. That's why they're on the cover of all these books I have to put back. Cutting out a picture of John McClane and gluing it over Dodger does not make anything more cyberpunk, and it certainly doesn't make it more Shadowrun.

Stop flinging crap at the wall, take a beat, and just think it through.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

One: that's demonstrably false. "Anti-" as a prefix not only can not only denote opposition to (the definition you cherry-picked), but opposite to (the definition you deny). Heck, if you look it up in MW, the second sense is actually listed first.

I did not deny the opposite to either. I was denying that anti- meant "lack of" mundanes are not opposite to magic or tech. They just lack it. 0 essence is opposite to magic. Its semantics, yes, but the way you word it in regards to mundanes is kind of important. Mundanes in and of themselves are not opposite to or in opposition to magic and technology. In fact, quite the opposite. They have plenty of potential to travel down either path. Its once you've gone down the rabbit hole on either side that you become "anti-magic" or "anti-tech", until then you are "non-magic" or "non-tech".

Two: since you are running away with the goalposts as fast as you can, and since you have now shifted your claim from "core of Shadowrun" to "PC possibilities", I'm going to assume we're done here. Because I'm really not interested in your redefinition of Shadowrun terms...or prefixes.

I should have been clearer here. Mundanes and the choice between tech and magic is at the core of Shadowrun the setting and fiction (fluff). Which is why I emphasized from the start their role in the fiction, while mentioning how lacking they are in game. You're right, mundanes are woefully underrepresented in the game itself and even with my changes as is they are mostly there as an insurance policy in case the enemy hackers are too strong. But they should be stronger and its a shame they aren't represented well in game. And you should be interested in prefixes, they are an underrated part of lunguistics!

[Nath]

If your idea for the hacker to participate in the run itself is to have him pilot a drone or draw and fire a pistol, you have in effect conceded that the hacker isn't a major archetype at all. You've just written the concept out of the game.

On the other hand, you did about the same thing. All the stories you mentioned has brainhack requiring the target to hear a high-pitched noise on the phone or look at a screen for some time or something similar. A "brainhacking" that does not require to target or pass through a connected electronic device, and does not work over international or even intercity communication lines, but only within line of sight, is not less outside the hacker concept than drones or kung-fu skillsofts are. You slap the verb "hacking" on it, arbitrarily decide to lump the required know-how into one existing hacker skill, and claim it's totally part of the archetype concept.

"Brainhacking" has existed in Shadowrun ever since Shadowbeat. But it was purposefully made not usable at distance and in combat (or even barely adverse conditions, as it requires several hours to perform). And it used the Biotech skill. If you changed the former to make brainhack a viable combat option, but kept it under the Biotech skill, that would make just as sense as far as the setting is concerned. But it would not change much to the archetypes balance because hackers usually don't have the Biotech skill when the archetype is defined as "the person who hijacks computer and networks systems." And that's the only reason why you wouldn't want it to work that way.

Following the same line of reasoning, I could argue that the Blades skill should totally allow to ride bikes because the cyberpunk genre always has the street samurai moving on a bike and they never have enough point to spend on the Ground Vehicles skill.

That would be different if we were discussing hacker archetype as a generalist "tech-head," which could have Computer and Biotech skills as part of its concept (though if you asked me, I would consider moving brainhacking into the cybertechnology skill, as an application of brain-to-machine technology, and not just healthcare ; besides, in the cyberpunk genre, the hacker is the one checking the street sam implants' drivers or extracting the data chip from the bad guy minions head, so he should have that skill). But as a generalist tech-head, using drones would be just as right.

Really, that's a lot of hassle for the sole purpose of dealing with jaguar shapeshifters in big stone temples.

Of course, unlike the Rocker, the low-tech mundane never got any support. It was a non-viable concept from the start. There was a Rigger Black Book in every edition, but no one ever made a mundane detective book for any edition.

I'm under the impression that the Detective archetype with its twelve contacts in 1st and 2nd editions, originally played the part of the Face archetype (which doesn't appear at all in these editions). There never was a Face book either, so the point somewhat stands.

Then Shadowtech introduced Enhanced Pheromones, making face a high-tech archetype, and much later SOTA: 2064 introduced Social adepts, who eat mundane faces at breakfast.

[Username17]

Following the same line of reasoning, I could argue that the Blades skill should totally allow to ride bikes because the cyberpunk genre always has the street samurai moving on a bike and they never have enough point to spend on the Ground Vehicles skill.

That would be procedurally weird, but would actually be structurally effective. The Street Samurai has been ever short of skill points, especially since they split up Firearms into component skills. Linking skills that street samurai use would would be effective at helping to balance a frankly floundering archetype. Motorcycles and blades wouldn't necessarily be the place I'd start combining skills, but mostly because it's hard to come up with an evocative name for the combination. Collapsing Blades and Gymnastics into Martial Arts or Blades and Intimidation into Dacoity might be an easier sell. Although even melee weapons in a combination is not an impossible sell - you could allow physical based characters to take skill groups based on Urban Brawl positions and putting points in the Outrider group would give you biking, melee, and tactics.

But that's all a side show. Yes something should be done about the skill list so that it is less punishing to characters who want to use weapons. Also, yes the skill assignments you end up with have to be flavorful in a way that doesn't offend people. But that's not a fundamental problem, that's a balance issue. Deckers have a fucking fundamental problem.

The fundamental problem is that they were always intended to be a core archetype and they were always intended to contribute during action scenes with offensive hacking actions. And that has never worked. And one of the big reasons it doesn't work is because hacking has been too fine-scale. Spending a number of actions to hack into a single I/O port or shut down a single device is just too gucking much when the rest of the game involves death spells and flying bullets taking out people and all their associated devices simultaneously. And another big reason is that the rules have normally enshrined dropout. People can simply turn their devices off during combat and then those things can't be hacked. That obviously obviates the possibility to conduct combat hacking.

Street Samurai have a simply solvable balance issue. In SR4 they are under powered. Hackers have a fundamental issue where the thing they have been concepted as doing does not work at all in real games.

-Username17

[Cyberzombie]

If your idea for the hacker to participate in the run itself is to have him pilot a drone or draw and fire a pistol, you have in effect conceded that the hacker isn't a major archetype at all. You've just written the concept out of the game.

Now I could certainly see an argument that you might want to make "hacker" be a downtime side-role like fixer or mechanic when designing a cyberpunk roleplaying game. But if you think preserving the "flavor of Shadowrun" is important at all, then you can't fucking do that. Mid-battle hacking is on the cover of every single edition of Shadowrun. Even first edition. Even fifth edition. All of them. Deckers decking during the action sequences of the run was front and center before Adepts even existed. You could literally just cut Adept powers completely from the game and it would be less disruptive to Shadowrun than writing off combat hackers.

I don't think anyone here is advocating getting rid of midcombat hacking entirely. But having guns be better at killing people than cyberdecks isn't a design flaw. Hacking is a support role and should remain that way. If you want to play Rambo, then play a Street Samurai, that's what they're for. Hacker roles should require more finesse like sabotaging a TacNet to lure the enemy into an ambush, controlling a cyberarm and smartgun to have them shoot an ally or simply cutting the lights at the right time and having your team switch to thermal.

I don't see any benefit to turning the hacker from a thinking man's role to a Rambo type that just spams his commlink's built-in brain laser and make the bad guy's heads explode. If you want to gun down bad guys as your primary role, then just play a Street Samurai. Having different roles is good for the game. You seem to want to go 4E D&D style where everyone makes very similar attacks, they just use a different key stat for their combat. That's boring. I want classes to behave differently.

[Username17]

You seem to want to go 4E D&D style where everyone makes very similar attacks, they just use a different key stat for their combat. That's boring. I want classes to behave differently.

That's insane. You are insane.

My position is that hackers should be able to take offensive actions at all. I didn't specify that they should necessarily be exactly the same as the offensive actions of other archetypes, and indeed when I made a real system for SR4, they were not. While I grant that your suggestion that one class should be able to take offensive actions while another class cannot act at all is different, I don't think that's a difference that is particularly good for the game.

I mean, we could make magic be unable to affect anything that wasn't currently astrally active and that would be different. But I think it's pretty fucking obvious that that would be terrible. How you can justify essentially exactly the same suggestion for the Hacker with the fact that it is merely "not the same" is beyond understanding.

-Username17

[Cyberzombie]

My position is that hackers should be able to take offensive actions at all.

I realize you see anything short of brain lasers firing out of the commlink to be zero offense, but others don't see it that way.

What people are saying is that hackers should excel at a support role, with combat a far secondary role. Making people's heads explode with computers is just not necessary. Guns and drones do that job as well as you'd want a secondary offensive role to be. Damn man, leave something for the street Samurai to do.

I mean, we could make magic be unable to affect anything that wasn't currently astrally active and that would be different. But I think it's pretty fucking obvious that that would be terrible. How you can justify essentially exactly the same suggestion for the Hacker with the fact that it is merely "not the same" is beyond understanding.

Because it's not the same. The shadowrun world is rich with technology, but the astral plane is for the most part, a barren wasteland with occasionally a spirit or whatever. Technology controls key aspects, and bypassing it is a critical element to any Shadowrun, unless you want to set off alarms everywhere you go.

Everyone in the world carries a commlink and can potentially set off an alarm. Facilities are laden with cameras and laser grids. Not setting off alarms is something that requires a hacker. I realize because hacking doesn't work in SR, most games gloss over that stuff to make it playable. But if you played out the world with smart security, it's almost impossible to do any kind of run against a corporation without a hacker. A simple biomonitor wirelessly tied into a commlink is enough to instantly let you know an employee has been dropped.

I wonder what kind of runs you must play where you think technology isn't a big factor. It must be some crazy adventure spent entirely in the jungle playing Shadowrun versus Predator. All my experience with SR has been in cities, where the hacker is the undisputed king, or at least he would be if the system didn't force people to ban hackers because hacking is too slow. He doesn't need brain lasers or be good at combat, because he's much better off doing support stuff.

But hey man, if you're running SR like a D&D dungeon crawl then I guess go ahead and give the hacker his brain lasers. If that floats your boat to have hackers make a wendigo's head explode, then cool I guess. I just think there's more to the game than combat. If I wanted a pure hack-and-slash, I'll play D&D. In SR, I focus on avoiding fights.

[Username17]

Guns and drones do that job as well as you'd want a secondary offensive role to be. Damn man, leave something for the street Samurai to do.

Guns and drones are indeed fine things to use during combat. However, here's what they aren't:


See how that dude on the left is in combat, yet he is plugged into a wall and hacking instead of using a gun or a drone?


See how that dude on the right is in combat and yet he has an AR display and is hacking instead of using a gun or a drone?

Shadowrun is a skill based system. If you want to play a character who has skills from two different archetypes, you can just do that. So in abstract, it's not important if any particular archetype can't contribute in any particular phase of the game. If the face skills have no combat application, that's not a big deal - we can just tell faces to get some skills with guns or drones or spells or whatever.

But you know what? The Hacker is supposed to have hacking actions to do in combat. It's on the fucking cover of the god damned game. It is a fundamental betrayal of the audience if hackers have to branch out into other archetypes and use actions other than hacking actions in the middle of combat. It's not an unworkable game balance position - it's just a blatant bait and switch followed by shitting all over the reader and then wiping your smelly asshole on the book in their hands.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Is there some reason that "debuffing the enemy" doesn't count as a hacking action to do in combat? The other side of this thing keeps mentioning stuff like making a cyberarm shoot a gun at an ally, killing the lights so your group can see and the enemy can't, or switching off the enemy's stream to a constantly updating How To Kill Fools software that will grant your street sam (who is still connected) an immediate advantage. Those aren't direct attacks, but they are hacking and they are in combat. I'm not really sure who you're arguing with whilst talking about how hacking while in combat is a necessary part of the game.

[Username17]

Is there some reason that "debuffing the enemy" doesn't count as a hacking action to do in combat? The other side of this thing keeps mentioning stuff like making a cyberarm shoot a gun at an ally, killing the lights so your group can see and the enemy can't, or switching off the enemy's stream to a constantly updating How To Kill Fools software that will grant your street sam (who is still connected) an immediate advantage. Those aren't direct attacks, but they are hacking and they are in combat. I'm not really sure who you're arguing with whilst talking about how hacking while in combat is a necessary part of the game.

Let's go back to the magician example. Imagine if the proposal was that mages can only cast spells on astrally active targets. Supporters of that proposal might give all kinds of examples for actions to take, such as befuddling a ward or turning a spirit against its master. And those would, indeed, be actions in combat. But that wouldn't change or lessen the fact that the proposal would necessarily be a huge nerf and that in the entirely likely event that the enemy had no astrally active targets to cast spells on they would have no spellcasting to do at all.

That is exactly as fucked up as the proposal on the table, because it's exactly the same proposal. The proposal is that hackers can only use their hacks on matrix active targets. So however useful those hacks are and whatever the fuck they do, they don't do shit when the enemy presents zero matrix active targets. And in order to present zero matrix active targets you have to spend: zero Nuyen.

Now worrying about which individual devices are hacked or not and what they can be made to do when compromised on a device by device basis is just fucking unworkable. It's way too fucking complicated and takes too long to use at the table. As we've seen with SR5's version of the Infinity Mirror even asking what devices are available is too time consuming to actually do at the table. But even if we glossed over that point, even if the number of devices people had was very much smaller, this would still be a fucked idea. It would be a fucked idea because the defender is the one who gets to choose whether devices are matrix active or not, and they get to make that choice after knowing what the potential hacking consequences of each device would be.

So for example, obviously no one is going to take the wireless activated heart mod that makes you instantly die if it is hacked, while lots of people are going to take the wireless raincoat that is a waste of your god damn action to hack subvert because who gives a fuck?

It's not that the paradigm of hackers only being able to hack matrix active technology is shitty because there's nothing to hack in combat. It's actually worse than that. It's that there's lots of crap to hack in combat and absolutely fucking nothing that is worth a combat action to hack! You've made a giant trap option that serves no purpose but to repeatedly frustrate players, and you've ensured that resolving it is going to take fucking forever.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

In both of those pictures, it looks like the hacker is trying to do something that's not combat, the enemies are trying to stop that, and the other runners are trying to keep the enemies from stopping the hack.

[Ice9]

Brain Hacking doesn't necessarily mean useful mind-control either. If your brain hacking is things like "BLIT holograms that make people go into seizures", or even "limbic system control that makes people lurch around like zombies", then you're not going to take over the world with it. And if you say that it has to be calibrated to the individual brain you're hacking (on the fly, so it can still be done in combat), then you don't have "live TV broadcasts = basilisk gaze" issues.

For that matter, even if it did give significant mind-control, it would still be non-world-conquering if it was easy to spot and remove, like Dominate Person in D&D is.

However, personally, I do feel like hacking people's cyberwear/guns/etc should be more common than brain-hacking. So, IMO, it should be a superior option when it's available, with brain-hacking as a fallback against luddites. Hackers that can screw with your mind - fine. Hackers that always screw with your mind, in preference to hacking your tech - not very thematic.

[Lokathor]

However, personally, I do feel like hacking people's cyberwear/guns/etc should be more common than brain-hacking. So, IMO, it should be a superior option when it's available, with brain-hacking as a fallback against luddites. Hackers that can screw with your mind - fine. Hackers that always screw with your mind, in preference to hacking your tech - not very thematic.

To an extent, yes.

However, even asking for a list of what specific devices the cops or the guards have is crazy, because even if they all have the same gun and they all have the same Agility and Firearms score, some of them will have it because of cyberware, some because of raw training, some will have bioware, some will have skill wire, there's so many ways for a guard to get a total of 6 or 8 shooting dice when they go to shoot at you, and listing off which guards have which implants is way too much bullshit.

Now you could, in some games, go with an after-the-fact-explanation style on this issue: you make your hack roll, then check your result against their result, then based on if you got net hits and how many your attack works and suddenly their cyberarm stops, but if you don't get any net hits then the attack failed because they never actually had a cyberarm in the first place. There's an RPG that could be built around that sort of style, but that wouldn't really be fitting for Shadowrun.

In Shadowrun, we want a world that doesn't rewrite itself suddenly, and we want manageable skirmishes, and we want each of the three primary character types to be able to participate in every (or almost every) possible skirmish setup. And it has to be quick enough to resolve so that players don't wander off while waiting for their turn to come around again.

[Ice9]

I'm - not seeing the crazy there. I mean, as the GM, you either wrote down whether the cops have cyberarms or you didn't. If you did, then fine. If you didn't, then you're already in "the world rewrites itself" territory.

I mean, I don't consider this some crazy exchange that would grind the game to a halt:
Decker: "What important devices does the guard have?"
GM: *looks at card* "Cyberarms, a gun, and goggles"
Decker: "I will hack the cyberarm." *rolls*

Later:
Decker: "What important devices does the mage have?"
GM: *looks at card* "Nothing combat-related, just a commlink"
Decker: "Then I'll use a brain-hack." *rolls*

Hell, if you wanted to make it simpler, you could just have a single value - Full-Cyber (anything that includes the CNS), Semi-Cyber, Gear, or Luddite. That's at least better than making Deckers be psychics with a sideline in hacking.

[Username17]

I'm - not seeing the crazy there.

Whu?

OK, let's look at a single sample character. Not a real character made by a player, not a character made to exploit infinity mirror problems or with built-in redundancies to limit hack attacks, just one of the bullshit sample characters in the book. I choose the Enforcer because he happens to be on the first page in that part of the book that I opened it up to. His equipment list is as follows:

Cyberware
Datajack
Wired Reflexes (2)

Gear & Lifestyle (55,000¥) (11 BP)
Transys Avalon Commlink (w/Renraku Ichi OS
and Sim Module Modified for BTL/Hot Sim); AR
Gloves; Glasses w/Smartlink and Image Link;
Ares Predator IV (w/Concealable Holster and
10 clips of Explosive Ammo); Remington 990
(Smartlinked, w/10 clips of Flechette Ammo);
Monofilament Sword; Lined Coat; 3 Different
BTL Chips; Fake Gun License (Rating 4); High
Lifestyle (1 Month)

How many of those things can be hacked? Probably at least the Datajack, the Reflexes, the Commlink, the Glasses, and the Gun, right? That would be five device targets. Five choices isn't the end of the world from an option paralysis or game learning curve standpoint, but think about how completely fucked this is getting.

First of all, that's actually five things off a list that goes on for nearly fifty pages [pdf] even in list form. There's really a lot of fucking equipment, and while not all of it is going to be hackable, it's a list which is nevertheless long enough that it is wholly unreasonable to expect any player to remember what the hacking options are for any equipment they don't own. And it's even worse than that. You aren't seriously suggesting that there's only one hack option to perform on vision systems are you? At the very least, you'd expect to be able to blind them or make them see something fake as two different things.

So now let's consider a relatively simple scenario with like two enemies. Maybe it's a named commander and a bunch of identical grunts. Maybe it's just literally two different enemies. Whatever. There's two of them. Each one has five hackable devices, which in turn creates ten hacking option entries that the hacker player now has to look up in the middle of the fucking game because they sure as shit didn't memorize all the hacking entries on all the equipment in fucking Shadowrun. Now that they've looked it all up, they have at least twenty hacking options (disable or subvert for each device) to choose from. Holy fucking shit!

So it's initiative count 8. It's the hacker's turn and there are two different enemies. Now the hacker needs the GM to rattle off ten devices, which the hacker has to look up in the book (better hope none of those devices are from expansion books), and then evaluate twenty fucking options that he didn't know he had back at initiative count 9. The game would slow to a fucking crawl.

And remember: we're making extremely simplifying assumptions about the opposition and the hackable items list. To give you the merest glimpse of how fucked up this would get as soon as the rubber hit the road, I just google searched a street samurai character sheet. Let's look at the equipment list of an actual player character someone felt like posting:

Cyberware

Commlink w/Sim Module 0.2 2,300¥ -
Data Jack 0.1 500¥ -
Data Lock 0.1 1,600¥ Encryption Rating: 6
Cybereyes Basic System 0.3 750¥ -
-Eye Recording Unit 0.1 2,300¥ -
Smartgunlink 0.1 2,300¥ -
Vision Magnification 0.1 2,300¥ -
-Flare Compensation 0.1 750¥ -
Bone Lacing 1.5 40,000¥ Titanium

Gear
Armor Clothing 500¥
Full Body Armor 6,000¥
-Helmet 1,000¥
--Low-Light Vision 100¥
--Thermographic 100¥
--Nonconductivity 1,200¥
--Shock Frills 200¥
-Thermal Damping 3,000¥
Backpack ?¥
-Medikit 600¥
-Survival Kit 100¥
-Gas Mask 200¥
-GPS 200¥
-Thermite Burning Bar 500¥
Miniwelder 250¥
2xConcealble Holsters 150¥
Sidearms - 10 Gel Rounds 30¥
Sidearms - 30 Regular Rounds 60¥
SMG - 30 Ex-Explosive Rounds 300¥
SMG - 90 Regular Rounds 180¥
SMG - 30 Tracer Rounds 225¥
Sniper Rifle - 20 APDS Rounds 140¥
Sniper Rifle - 20 Ex-Explosive Rounds 200¥
Defiance EX Shocker 150¥
2xHammerli 620 S 1,300¥
Walter MA-2100 5,000¥
Katana 1,000¥
Survival Knife 50¥
Ingram Smartgun X 650¥

Even if it was possible to create a device-based hacking effects list that had a Nash equilibrium where players preferentially used the special hacking effects allowed by devices and players voluntarily used those devices despite the fact that the special hacking effects they unlocked were nasty enough that enemy hackers would choose them preferentially - it's just not something you can dump onto the game without creating a complete traffic jam every time it's someone's turn. The device list is so long that the device based hacking effects list must necessarily be too long. It has to be too long in the book to read and remember it all, and it has to be too long in any particular encounter to lead to quick and coherent decision making.

Basically you need a hacking effects list which is irrespective of what actual devices people actually have. Because generating the effects from the available items is completely impractical in an actual game. Also virtually impossible to balance. But the fact that it's simply procedurally unachievable is more than enough reason to discount it as a possibility.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Would it be reasonable for the hacker to hack stuff they carry to make them do things they can't normally do for combat actions? Example: you have some kind of holo-projector, but as a hacker you use it to make fully-blown illusions. You have something that makes noise, you use it to make the head-splitting soundwaves.

I know that's more overclocking and jailbreaking and such rather than actually hacking, but it sounds like that could fall under their purview and give them an actual thing to do in combat that other people aren't doing that plays an important role and uses their abilities.

And with my limited knowledge of Shadowrun, that might already exist as an option or even as basic equipment anyone can have, no idea.

[Ice9]

I don't think it's as complicated as you're making it out to be. And including things like Katanas and GPS units on those is either irrelevant or actively dishonest. You don't have separate fucking rules for hacking every piece of equipment, you have a few things you can do, and what type of equipment that applies to. For example:

Disable [Any Equipment] - The equipment or cyberwear turns off. You already know what this does.

Sensory Fuckery [Anything Sensory] - Spam flashing lights / loud noises. In addition to shutting that sense off, -X penalty to stuff from distraction.

Stop Hitting Yourself [Cyberarm] - What it sounds like.

Friendly Fire [Any Gun / Grenade] - Make said weapon go off, possibly shooting teammate (attack with low accuracy, but they're probably surprised), or just detonate grenades in the bandolier.

Cyber-Seizure [Any CNS-Connected Cyberwear] - Like the brain-hacking seizure, just more effective (if you can beat their security).

You're maybe doubling the total number of options over "always brain hacking". And let's be honest - Shadowrun is not a game about keeping it simple. There would not be so many ammo types if it was. In fact, the Street Sam wouldn't be deciding to throw a flashbang, they'd be using the Distract maneuver, because keeping track of whether enemies have flare protection is "crazy complicated".

Hell - if you're going to go that simple, then it would still be better to assume that the Decker's "hacking effects" apply to "whatever equipment/cyberwear they have" first, because if you're going to abstract it anyway you might as well have good flavor.

[Username17]

Disable [Any Equipment] - The equipment or cyberwear turns off. You already know what this does.

I'm going to stop you right there. No. You don't. You don't know what it fucking means to turn off someone's cyberware.

You turn off someone's balance augmenter, do they fall down or just lose the bonus? You turn off someone's smartlink, is their gun unable to fire or do they just lose the bonus? You turn off someone's bone lacing... does that do anything?

If you're doing it device by device you are fucking right that you need to tell people what the actual devices do when subverted or shut down. Because it's not obvious. And if you claim it is, you are obviously full of shit.

Which brings us back to copypasting the entire gear list. Of course you have to read the whole gear list. Everything hackable would be in the gear list. And beyond that, it isn't at all obvious whether hacking any particular thing is good or not until you read what the hacking options actually are. Can you have someone's GPS to make them explode themselves with their grenades? Can you hack someone's gas mask to strangle them? Can you hack someone's medkit to sedate them? There's no obvious answer to any of those questions, I guess we'll have to look it up in the fucking hacking options for each and every fucking device in their gear list, won't we?

-Username17

[fectin]

This all seems to say that shadowrun has a bad system for what it wants to do.

Is it better to rip out all he mechanics, and replace them with something much lighter?

[Cyberzombie]

See how that dude on the right is in combat and yet he has an AR display and is hacking instead of using a gun or a drone?

Or he could be giving orders to a drone, hacking some dude's cyberarm or rigging the getaway car. Nobody really knows, because hackers can do a variety of stuff through AR. I do know with certainty that he's not brain hacking, because that shit didn't exist in the game.

But you know what? The Hacker is supposed to have hacking actions to do in combat. It's on the fucking cover of the god damned game.

Nice spin you tried to put on there. You auditioning for a job at Fox News or what?

Apparently you're not familiar with SR before 4E. The hackers in pre-4E did not hack in combat. While you could be hacking a computer while other people were shooting guns, the actions you did in the matrix had zero impact on gunplay in the real world. Back then, you didn't hack brains, cyberware or well.. anything remotely combat related. People didn't even run AR TacNets back then because the entire matrix was wired.

Before making arguments like this, I advise you actually read the source material you're using pictures from. What you think is going on in that picture is far from the truth of how the game actually works.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Before making arguments like this, I advise you actually read the source material you're using pictures from.

Oh, son.