[Hobbes]

Rise!  Rise from the grave I say!

Had a thought about this the other day, and was reminded of the thought by another thread. 

Build your standard PAN with a high rating Commlink with a Program Carrier running Smoke and Mirrors and a Sleaze dongle and all that.  Then, here we get into serious smack you in the face with a rule book territory.  Run your Nixdorf Wireless off, but have it plugged into your Commlink Via UDP.  The Agent on the Nixdorf has no access to the Matrix, but can still do a Matrix Perception check on the device it's plugged into via a UDP (your Commlink) and therefore still effectively monitor your PAN for extra Marks.  It can only Send Message to the Device it's plugged into (your Commlink) but since you've formed your Persona with that device you should be good to go.

Oh.... why this matters.  The Have a Agent Monitor your PAN thing's weakness is low Sleaze to resist Matrix Perception.  And the Agent on the Nixdorf is never going to be very sneaky anyway because of the low rating of the Nixdorf.  Your PAN is relatively easy to spot, but difficult to Hack.  Now you can have both.  As a Bonus it becomes well nigh impossible for an enemy hacker to ever even know you have an Agent monitoring your PAN, since the Agent is running Wireless off.

Probably RAW.  Likely overkill.  Apologies to the GMs that like to use hackers to mess with PCs gear.

[Kuirem]

The real question is : do you take the Liebesekretär upgrade?

Nice, dirty trick but is there anything RAW about being able to connect a commlink to a PAN wireless off? I've always thought that anything connected to your PAN is still spotable from the Matrix. This doesn't invalidate the trick, I just have doubt about being able to have an Agent Wireless off.

[Jack_Spade]

Considering that you can tell the agent to always run full matrix defense and you can just slave the secretary to your PAN and it uses your defenses against detection.

[Hobbes]

The real question is : do you take the Liebesekretär upgrade?

Nice, dirty trick but is there anything RAW about being able to connect a commlink to a PAN wireless off? I've always thought that anything connected to your PAN is still spotable from the Matrix. This doesn't invalidate the trick, I just have doubt about being able to have an Agent Wireless off.

Two Commlinks, one running the Agent, one running the PAN, connected via UDP.

Agent is a Persona just like a Hacker.  If your Decker was using a UDP for a Direct Connection to a Commlink they would be able to perform Matrix actions on that Icon, such as Send Message (to that Icon) or Matrix Perception (count Marks) on that Icon.  The Agents capabilities aren't a Wireless bonus so RAW I think it all works. 

[Hobbes]

Considering that you can tell the agent to always run full matrix defense and you can just slave the secretary to your PAN and it uses your defenses against detection.

Full Matrix Defense is only protection against Attack actions.  Matrix Perception is a Data Processing action.  And I'm not sure the Agent's defense works for your PAN unless you've made the Agent the owner of the Devices in the PAN?   PAN/Device defense tests are all based on the owner's dice pools, so presumably, the owner would need to take a Full Matrix Defense action to get the bonus. 

The Nixdorf gets kinda fuzzy since technically it's being used to form two Personas (Player and Agent) and a PAN.  Not something I recommend picking at too hard since you'll likely find something contradictory in the RAW. 

[Jack_Spade]

The full text for Full Matrix Defense is:
"This allows you to defend against attack actions, and may be taken at any time. Whenever you make a defense test against a Matrix Action, add your Willpower to the dice pool (or add it again if it’s already in there)."

The question is if you interpret the first sentence to mean that it exclusively works against Attack actions or if the second sentence increases the range to include all defense tests.
In my opinion the latter is more significant than the first, otherwise you couldn't defend against Sleaze actions or the new Data Processing actions from Rigger 5 either.

I concede that your interpretation is a valid one, but considering the general state of Catalyst rules writing, I'm not sure it's the intended one.

As for the agent: As long as you don't form your persona on the device, there is no reason for the agent to form a separate one - it's the simplest way to handle it.

[Hobbes]

The full text for Full Matrix Defense is:
"This allows you to defend against attack actions, and may be taken at any time. Whenever you make a defense test against a Matrix Action, add your Willpower to the dice pool (or add it again if it’s already in there)."

The question is if you interpret the first sentence to mean that it exclusively works against Attack actions or if the second sentence increases the range to include all defense tests.
In my opinion the latter is more significant than the first, otherwise you couldn't defend against Sleaze actions or the new Data Processing actions from Rigger 5 either.

I concede that your interpretation is a valid one, but considering the general state of Catalyst rules writing, I'm not sure it's the intended one.

Away from book, did they use lower case attack or upper case Attack?  Generally when the upper case is used it's the game mechanic, lower case is the general English definition.  Generally. 

Then my question becomes is resisting Matrix Perception a Defense test?  I'm not entirely sure it is as Running Silent is basically a Sneak test in the Matrix and I can't see a Full Defense action adding to Sneak tests.  YMMV. 

[Jack_Spade]

I typed the text by hand from my English book and it should be "Attack" instead of "attack"

But I just noticed that there is once again a significant difference between the German and the English book:  The "Attack" part is entirely absent in the German version:
"Diese Handlung erlaubt es dem Charakter, in der Matrix auf Volle Abwehr zu gehen. Sie kann jederzeit durchgeführt werden. Wenn der Charakter eine Verteidigungsprobe gegen eine Matrixhandlung ablegt, darf er seine Willenskraft als Bonus zum Würfelpool addieren."

The bold part reads as matrix action instead of attack action. So this might just be (once again) a translation issue.

Regarding your question: Since every matrix action has its own resisting/defending dice pool I am inclined to say yes: LOG+Sleaze is a defense test as much as the Trace Icon WIL+Sleaze.

[Hobbes]

There you go then, perfectly clear   

IMO the use of Attack rather then attack means full defense only applies when resisting Matrix Actions that use the Attack attribute.  Clearly YMMV, and the Germans are on their own.