[SmilinIrish]

So I have an intuition mage with an intuition of 9 (due to incr INT spell) and a Log of 4.  I could pick up an increase Log spell, and have a spirit of man cast it on me, and run with a Log of 8.  I have a basic understanding of hacking, with lots of little things that I find confusing.  Playing with a group of newbies (including GM) and our decker is not having a lot of fun with it due to lack of in depth Matrix action from GM, and lack of general understanding of hacking by everyone.  I'm considering dabbling in hacking to either join her on hacks so the GM can do matrix plots that include more than one player, or  replace her should she make a new character. 

My focus would be on sleaze actions:  Snoop, Spoof Command, Control Device, Trace Icon, Hide.  It is worth noting that we've reduced the hacking skills from 6 to 3 (with this group, we tweaked a lot of skills and groups, but that is another story).  The entire electronics group is combined into Computer, Electronic Warfare was combined into Hacking.  So there is one group with Cybercombat, Computer and Hacking.  I already have Computer at 2.  What I'm looking for is what kind of dice pools would allow me to do some basic hacking on devices.  I don't think I'm going to be entering hosts and cracking files.  Mostly I'll be opening doors, fiddling with cameras, and marking commlinks to snoop or trace icon  and such.  I don't intend to be engaging in cybercombat.  If I come under attack I'm likely to just jack out.  With an additional investment of 12 karma, I could have Computer and Hacking both at 3.  This would give me 11-12 dice for most actions I want.  Fun tricks like analyze device (16 dice with mentor and spec), I could be a decent back up hacker. 

With 11-12 dice (13-14 if hot sim and not running silent), what could I reliably hack?   That is a good dice pool against many devices, but are mag lock doors usually slaved to a host? Trying to explore this possibility as I consider the value of it.  I'm essentially trading an initiation or 2 spells for this ability. 

If the player drops the decker and makes a new character, the GM may allow me to repurpose the 6 ranks of astral combat into hacking skills.  Kinda thinking I should be casting mana spells instead of astral combat anyway.

[falar]

If the player drops the decker and makes a new character, the GM may allow me to repurpose the 6 ranks of astral combat into hacking skills.  Kinda thinking I should be casting mana spells instead of astral combat anyway.

Yes.

I think 11-12 dice is decent for a backup thing and you'd be able to deal with most maglocks and cameras as they likely won't be slaved to the host. The reason for that is that they're easy to get a direct connection to and therefore easy to hack and if they were slaved, you'd get a mark on the host. Which would be bad.

[SmilinIrish]

With a direct connection, would you need to get marks, or would the direct connection give you the marks and just need to control device after that?  Nevermind, I see that it negates noise, and removes the protection of the host.  Now you comment makes more sense.  Easy to reach devices aren't slaved to the hose because a direct connection to the them allows marks with the defense of the device but allows marks on the host

Editing video footage would likely need to happen on the host where the feed is sent, but looping video could be done from the camera, right?

[SmilinIrish]

Also, most devices like cameras and door wouldn't have the data connector exposed.  You'd likely have to do extended hardware test to remove case and access data port.

[Rooks]

Ya back up hacking is regulated to hacking devices not protected by other enemy hackers and the like like bricking guns or spoofing a command or garbage in garbage out so when the enemy pulls their triggers to shoot the clip ejects Good idea to pick up the forked program so you can hack two devices at once (ie the enemy's gun and their commlink to get two marks total on the commlink the gun is slaved to)

[Csjarrat]

Yeah that's not a bad idea at all and fits for an investigator type to be able to do a bit of tech stuff. You could get one of the cheaper decks with a fixed array or mod a commlink/rcc for sleaze actions. Sleaze dongle and program carrier mod for example if you didn't want to spend serious deck money

[SmilinIrish]

Yeah, figuring I would start with a decent comm and R3 dongle, add program carrier and run Virt Sys and keep a few useful programs (like baby monitor until I get a feel for OS). Primarily stealth and sneak though. We'll have to see