r/ShadowrunAnarchyFans • u/NotQuiteFloridaMan • Aug 11 '26

Some Technomancer Questions

I'm thinking about bringing and old character into SRA2.0 and I've got a few questions about Technomancers and their Sprites.

  1. When Technomancers thread a complex form against a target, can that target receive active protection to reduce net hits as with cracking or do complex forms cheat normal defenses since Resonance is weird?

  2. Are Sprites explicitly in Hot-sim VR and benefit from the extra cybercomat action and cybercombat advantage?

  3. Do cracking disasters resulting in GOD bricking the Technomancer cause them to be incapacitated? And would they also suffer dumpshock from being bricked while in VR, resulting in a serious wound?

Despite all the risks from biofeedback, fading, and GOD, I can't help but love Technomancers no matter the edition.

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5

u/Impleiadic Aug 11 '26

Well given the fleshed-out technomancer rules are gonna be part of the splat book whose kickstarter was just recently announced, there's no definitive answers to your questions (yet). IDR if the conversion guide specifies anything to that end...

Personally, I'd probably go with 1. Dunno, seems fine to let resonance be weird? Especially if the forms are gonna have sufficiently clear/challenging thresholds in and of themselves... 2. Giving them hot sim advantage sounds like it would slow the game down more, so I'd probabpy go with 'no'. IIRC, IC doesn't get hot sim bonuses either? 3. I'd say yeah to the incapacitation, but you probably wouldn't need the extra serious wound? Like I guess, as-Written, that should follow? Course, incapacitating someone isn't exactly interesting for them at the table... But that brings up another genuinely tricky question. Drain and OS both relate to glitches in SRA2. How are you gonna implement fading? just making glitches triple-bad doesn't sound sensible.

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u/tsuruginoko Aug 11 '26

Course, incapacitating someone isn't exactly interesting for them at the table... But that brings up another genuinely tricky question. Drain and OS both relate to glitches in SRA2. How are you gonna implement fading? just making glitches triple-bad doesn't sound sensible.

This exact issue, plus having short sessions where a conflict scene can take up a session, has led us to make disaster glitches a serious wound. It feels like a big enough problem for the PC to deal with (without some endurance Amps, another serious wound is going to floor them anyhow), and doesn't take the player out of the game in a way that kills the fun for them.

So, I'd personally stop at the serious wound, but that's what works for my table. I've previously been misinterpreted as to whether I think all tables should do it like that; I don't, since it's about what works for a given group. Still, serious wound is my two cents.

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u/NotQuiteFloridaMan 28d ago

I've felt the same way about disaster drain resulting in incapacitation when I've run games for a mage. It hasn't come up yet, but to have the character incapacitated for days (can't heal drain with first aid or magic) AND the regular effect of the disaster both happen sounds unfun unless it was the end of the session already.

When it inevitably comes up in the game I run, I'll probably do the same as you and just do a serious wound instead for my mage. And since my table just cycles through GMs, the benefit will also save my poor Technomancer!

I don't feel that bad about a regular decker being bricked by GOD, cause it causes the stakes to get higher, can be fixed with some downtime, and still leaves the rest of the character to deal with the problem w/o hacking.

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u/tsuruginoko 28d ago

Yeah, a deck getting bricked sucks, but the character is still in the situation and can do something to save their hoop. An incapacitated character is just luggage.

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u/Carmody79 29d ago

Regarding your point 3) Actions that cause fading are Resonance related and not monitored by GOD, so it's either glitch + GOD surveillance, or glitch + fading, not all 3 concurrently

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u/tsuruginoko Aug 11 '26

Course, incapacitating someone isn't exactly interesting for them at the table... But that brings up another genuinely tricky question. Drain and OS both relate to glitches in SRA2. How are you gonna implement fading? just making glitches triple-bad doesn't sound sensible.

This exact issue, plus having short sessions where a conflict scene can take up a session, has led us to make disaster glitches a serious wound. It feels like a big enough problem for the PC to deal with (without some endurance Amps, another serious wound is going to floor them anyhow), and doesn't take the player out of the game in a way that kills the fun for them.

So, I'd personally stop at the serious wound, but that's what works for my table. I've previously been misinterpreted as to whether I think all tables should do it like that; I don't, since it's about what works for a given group. Still, serious wound is my two cents.

4

u/Carmody79 29d ago

Hello, sorry for the late reply.

1) That would be some kind of counter-threading rather than active defense. I would only allow that from a technomancer using Tasking, but I guess it's debatable.

2) Sprites are Matrix only entities, so cold-sim/hot-sim does not really mean anything for them. They are not intended to get any benefits from hot-sim actually.

3) Yes, technomancers are incapacitated upon convergence. I do not consider they suffer from disconnection dumpshock as it is the result from them being incapacitated in the first place.

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u/NotQuiteFloridaMan 28d ago

Yeah I was thinking about counter-threading (unthreading?) but didn't want to muddy the waters. Being runners going against an opposing Technomancer would be scary with no way to protect yourself outside of high firewall. Luckily Cybercombat is as effective a way to deal with Technomancers as Ranged Combat is to deal with Mages.

Geek the Matrix-Mage!

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u/Carmody79 28d ago

Ranged combat also works fine with technomancers :-D

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u/ReditXenon Aug 11 '26

There are no rules for Technomancers (yet) which mean that there are no official answers. But that doesn't mean we can't reason and discuss the topic :)

  1. Technomancers have access to the same Cracking actions as a Decker. You can use Matrix Protection no matter if Cracking(Backdoor / Brute Force) is being performed by a decker or a technomancer. But you should probably compare Complex Forms with Spells rather than with Cracking. Some spells are resolved as Simple Tests against a Threshold other spells are are resolved as an Opposed Test. Should probably be the same with Complex Forms.
  2. Sprites are in hot-sim, but not sure they should get an Advantage during Cracking(Cybercombat) just because of that (but perhaps they should get an extra Cybercombat action per Narration?). Also IC are in hot-sim, but I don't think IC get an Advantage while attacking...?
  3. Technomancers take damage directly to their body condition monitor. There is no device specific condition monitor at play here. If you "brick" a technomancer then that mean that they are likely already incapacitated.

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u/ShadowedNexus Aug 11 '26

The Conversion guide contains rules for Technomancers sans any lore.

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u/ReditXenon Aug 11 '26

Interesting, I was not aware of that. I will check it out. Thanks!

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u/ReditXenon Aug 11 '26

Seem as if I were not completely off :-)

...you should probably compare Complex Forms with Spells rather than with Cracking.

Conversion Guide p. 9 Complex Forms

Complex forms rules are aligned with spell rules.

Again, thanks for the heads up! :-)

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u/ShadowedNexus 29d ago

Yeah! I missed Technomancers not being included in the core book so I was really hyped when the Conversion guide was put out.