[Kuirem]

Hey the other day I had an interesting conversation about whenever or not it is possible to build a half Decker/Techno as a secondary role, kind of how some people are secondary Face, Sam or even Mage. The general consensus was that Decker and Techno required too much in term of equipment, skills and mental attribute to be secondary. And I think it's true, when you see how dangerous the inside of a Host can become it is suicidal to get into one without the full set of a Decker/Techno but it got me thinking, can you really not do anything in the Matrix other than the occasional Matrix search? Is the whole set of a Hacker an all-or-nothing? I don't think so. I will focus on Decker for this one and I might take a look at Techno later.

What is a Decker?

It all come down to that, what is the difference between a Decker and a Street Sam, Face or even Rigger in the Matrix? Marks! Decker manipulate Marks and that's what give them access to all the other actions. And to do that they need to use the Hacking or Cybercombat skills along with a Sleaze or Attack attribute.

So here is my idea, to create a half-hacker only invest in Hacking + Sleaze or Cybercombat + Attack, that way you don't need such a big deck or that much skill points. Note that you still need to roll 12+ dice if you want to survive in the Matrix but you can get away without the whole skill set.

What skills can/should you pick?

Skills are one of the huge investment for the Decker. You need a lot of skills between Cracking and Electronics skill groups. If you only want to be a secondary Hacker your first choice will be to pick either Cybercombat or Hacking, if you take both you are probably going for a full Decker. Let's review those groups and see which one you have to pick or to dump and which are optionals.

Cybercombat

Cybercombat is interesting because it almost work all by itself. Cybercombat is only use for 3 actions : Brute Force, Crash Program and Data Spike so if you focus on it your role is clear : Inflicting the maximum of damag.

Because you want to get a high Attack rating you also have access to other actions : Crack File, Erase Mark, Erase Matrix Signature and Jam Signals. Crack File require Hacking that you likely don't have a lot if you are going half hacker, Erase Matrix Signature is for technomancer so we will ignore these two. Erase Mark is really interesting if you have a full Decker in your team because it gives you a support option along with being able to take down IC (or try to) with Data Spike. With a good Electronic Warfare attribute Jam Signals can be a good way to get past short range sensors.

Hacking

Your second option, Hacking gives access to the mighty Hack on the Fly which allow you to sneakily place Marks. The big downside of Hacking is that you almost always need to couple it with an other hacker skill unless you can manage to find the owner and use Spoof Command. I've already mentioned that Crack File require Attack rating, if you hack with a (cheap) cyberdeck it might be usable but if you are using a Commlink with Dongle you will need to leave this to your team full Hacker or to a contact.

Contrary to Attack, Sleaze is used in a tons of Matrix actions so being specialized in Hacking is less binding than Cybercombat.

Electronic Warfare

Electronic Warfare is especially good for Sleaze hacker, you get access to Control Device and Snoop. Control Device can be used for tons of things : Opening doors, crashing a car… while Snoop is a good spying tool. Hide is particular because it often require an Erase Mark beforehand but it can still have its uses. An attack hacker with Electronic Warfare only has access to Jam Signals so you should probably just dump it if you want it unless you plan to be the sensor expert as well.

Electronic Warfare also have good use outside of Hacking since it help using Sensors.

Computer

This skill is pretty much mandatory, the reason is that if you can't see your target you can't do anything and this is covered by Matrix Perception. So invest into it with a specialization for Matrix Perception if possible. There is a lot of other interesting Matrix Action using Computer so the skill points you put in there won't be wasted : Edit File, Format Device, Trace Icon…

Software

It's already a secondary skill for a Decker and it still is for you. It's worth to dump it for the occasional Data Bombs and it you should consider specializing if you want to do a lot of Edit/Crack File.

Hardware

You absolutely have to dump it at least. Hardware is used for Jack Out so if you don't want to get geeked in the Matrix you can't afford to default it. The only exception is if you hack from AR, then you don't need it. Note that Hardware can be used to get through Alarms and sensors if you have access to their physical location so it might be worth investing into it for an Infiltration Specialist part time Hacker.

With what Device can you hack?

Decker use Cyberdeck but you are not a Decker, so what do you use? There is 3 options : Commlink with a Dongle, Cyberdeck, RCC with electronic modification "Add a Matrix Attribute".

The Commlink is a good choice since you often specialize into either Attack or Sleaze, a Transys Avalon is with a dongle is quite cheap compared to a Deck and will come with 6 Firewall/Data Processor. It's also more inconspicious when you need to go through security goons. It is extremely worth to use the electronic modification "Add a Module", choose Program Carrier and Virtual Machine on it so you can run a couple of programs and you have a commlink almost as good as a deck. If you are a Sleaze hacker you don't even need an expensive Dongle, you can pick a rating 3-4 and run Smoke and Mirrors or Exploit.

The Cyberdeck give you access to the full option but are quite expensive. If you don't want your part time hacker job to take on your full Face/Gunner/Whatever you will want to pick a cheap one. I strongly recommend to buy a Transys Avalon with either and slave them on so you keep a high Firewall for defense test at all time. Let's see what is available :

• Radio Shack PCD-500/MCT Trainee : They are extremely cheap but also extremely crappy. It is still possible to work with them, particularly with Smoke and Mirrors.
• Erika MCD-1/Microdeck Summit : The cheapest, not-so-crappy decks. I generally use a Modify Matrix Attribute on them so I have one matrix attribute at 5.
• Little Hornet : The cheapest deck with an attribute at 5 and swappable array. It is a really good choice combined with a Commlink for defense, I've actually seen full Decker build running on this one.
• C-K Analyst : Cheaper than the Hornet and you can't swap attributes but it can be a good choice for a Sleaze hacker. Sadly it only run 1 program so it is generally better to find 6k Nuyen and to invest in a Hornet.

Hacking with a RCC is particular and really only doable for Sleaze Hackers. Use the electronic modification "Add a Matrix Attribute" (probably with an Increase as well) and run Smoke and Mirrors, the Noise won't matter with the RCC ability to soak Noise. Rigger have common Attribute and Skills with Hacker so it works pretty well.

What Attributes to use?

Logic is the core of hacking, it is use in pretty much all skill roll you will do so max it and pick Cerebral Booster if you can. Having a good intuition is recommended for Matrix Perception (remember, you can't hack what you can't see) and VR initiative. 5 WIL is strongly recommended if you are going VR to avoid Biofeedback damage, if you are mostly AR you can get away with 3 (but not less, it is used in a lot of defense test).

Specializations!

Because it's what all this is about. You aren't a Decker with the full set so you need to specialize yourself on a few actions that you will do well, kind of like what the Aspected Magician is to the full Magician. Your role in the Matrix will be heavily influenced by what Specialization you take for Hacking or Cybercombat :

Hacking

• Devices: The most flexible option, you can use Control Device, Edit File or Reboot/Format after placing your Marks and overall mess with your enemies without them knowing you were there.
• Files: The Crack File specialist, make sure to combine it with a good Software (Data Bombs). You will need to have both a Sleaze and Attack attribute for that so you are probably running on a Deck.
• Hosts: This is a weird specialization because you can't do much directly to a Host. Maybe if your GM consider that the Host is the owner of all Devices in the WAN you can heavily use Spoof Command but make sure it does.
• Personas: Similar to Hosts that's for a Spoof specialist. You can mess really hard with someone like this. The Fork program is really interesting here because you can Spoof on two device at once easily because you only need Mark on the owner.

Cybercombat

• Devices: A sort of demolitioner expert but in the Matrix, your objective is simply to brick devices. Fork and Hammer does wonder here.
• Grids: It's only used for jumping Grid so probably not worth specializing in.
• IC: This specialization is ideal if you have a full Decker/Technomancer in your team. While they are busy doing their thing sneakily you can lure IC on you and take them down with Data Spike. It's a dangerous job so make sure you are loaded in Willpower and Firewall to survive all the Data Spike you will take yourself.
• Personas: The most nasty of all, obviously coupled with Lockdown your aim is to take down enemy deckers and technomancers.
• Sprites: Technomancers are rare so not really worth it.

Examples

I've build some character based on that to give an idea of what you can do. The full character Sheet can be found in attachments.

Wheely is a human Rigger specialized in Groundcraft. He is the closest to a full Decker because he has a good level in the whole Electronics skill along with Hacking and Electronic Warfare. He use a RCC running Smoke and Mirrors for hacking. Sum to Ten : E - Metatype, C - Attributes, E - Magic, A - Skills, A - Resources.

Spike is an Ork gunner ex-matrix security guy. His job was to take down hackers by data spiking their ass. With high WIL, LOG and BOD he was an obvious choice for a Narco user and will run heavy on drugs. He use a Little Hornet for hacking. Priority : C - Metatype, A - Attributes, E - Magic, D - Skills, B - Resources.

Viper is an Elf Face/Assassin. Using her charm to get through the first layer of security she can then use Format Device with the Bootstrap program (if possible with a Direct Connection) to get access to everywhere. She use a Commlink with a Sleaze Dongle Rating 4 and Smoke and Mirrors. Priority : D - Metatype, A - Attributes, E - Magic, C - Skills, B - Resources.

Warning

You are not the team Decker, you can not replace him with a build like this. Any heavy or even average Matrix Security (remember a local corporate host is rating 7 and have 10 Firewall) will take you down quickly. You can fight against low security or support the Decker but don't try to be what you are not.

Any feedback on the concept or the character is welcome of course. If you have also build a half decker that worked well in actual play I am interested to see the sheet.

[firebug]

Software isn't used for editing files, in the core book, if you're not a TM (please don't be one) then it only has one use.  Data Trails added a new, fun (and useful) action called Garbage In/Garbage Out that makes Software more useful, but still, probably not worth taking.

A higher Intuition is much more useful than a high Willpower.  There's a number of rolls that use Intuition, and Matrix Perception is an absolutely vital roll that, if you cannot succeed at, means you cannot do anything else on the matrix.  Control Device, Snoop, Spoof Command, Trace Icon...  Lots of Intuition-based rolls.

Using Smoke-and-Mirrors is incredibly cheesy--  a lot of GMs will probably ban it since it's frankly broken.  Beyond that though, you'd need to first mod the RCC (Data Trails, pg 66) to have a Sleaze score before you can add to it with the program.

Viper wouldn't be able to run Smoke-and-Mirrors and Bootstrap at the same time on her commlink; only one could be hardwired in.

Spike and Viper would struggle to be able to find people with their Matrix Perception tests; especially if you're in a game where an enemy Spider can be using Smoke-and-Mirrors while sitting in the host (where Noise has no effect) and be impossible to target.

[Kuirem]

Never said Software was used for Editing File. But if you specialize in file manipulation there is a good chance you face some Data Bombs.

Good point about Intuition.

Exploit is a good alternative to Smoke and Mirrors for Hack on the Fly but more limited it's true. Depends on your table I guess. I mentioned modifying the RCC to get a Sleaze score.

Oops Viper should have a Virtual Machine on the Program Carrier.

Viper is specialized in Devices, you really don't want to bring her in the middle of a host to fight Spiders, as much as possible she will try to go for Direct Connection, anyway I think I should tweak her around because she is quite skill starved for a Face. Good point for Spike though, even with ICU it will be short maybe sacrifice 1 dice from the other skills (Automatics, Cybercombat, Sneaking, the other are taken with Karma) to raise Computer to 5.

[Hobbes]

Riggers are a natural back up Decker.  They'll have the gear, skills and stats, just generally not high enough dice pools.

If you're not doing this on a Rigger....

Cheesy 20k Hacking commlink, 5 Intuition, middling logic, Narco and carry a does or three of Cerepax and Overdrive on a character with 5 Edge or so.  Basically a Juicer Edgelord build.  +4 Logic, +3 Intuition and +1 Logic Skills and another +5 dice re-rolling 6s on tap.  So 3 Logic, 3 skill, appropriate specialization.... 17 or 18 Dice on any one test?  *shrug*   

Computer skill can be used for at least Legwork, Matrix Searches, and Matrix Perception so has strong value on it's own presuming the team doesn't have a hacker.

Hack on the Fly is your next most essential skill and it's opposed.  Take a specialization in Devices because you'll never want to hack a real host.  With drugs and Edge you can get Marks on about any device.  The question becomes, what the hell do you do next?  How much Edge are you going to throw at this venture...?

Software and Hardware a couple dice will get you by as long as you've got Edge and they're easy tests.

Electronic Warfare, if you've got some Sensors and Drones you can use for Perception, so if you skip Perception (that sounds like a good idea) you can just spend those points on EW.

Cybercombat, you don't have an Attack stat anyway so .....

Anyway, yes you can do it.  I'm not sure why you would other than nobody on the team will play a hacker and the GM insists someone be a Hacker.

If you're not a Juicer/Edgelord Jack of all Trades type of character I don't see how you pull this off and actually do other things.  If you've spent most of your skill points and monies on Decker stuff and have a Decker's stat array... aren't you just playing a Decker?  Because you can totally build a Samurai-lite Decker, see the many Combat Decker builds.  You can actually build a decent Face / Decker if you give up on meatspace completely.   Adept Hackers are a thing.  Hermetic Decker can barely be done too btw with a crap ton of compromises and Skills A.

[Kuirem]

You can do some stuff in the Matrix spending less than half your money/skills. Let's say you are going for A - Nuyen, B - Skills. Get a Erika MCD-1, slap a Modify Matrix Attribute on it, you now have a 5 Attack or Sleaze rating for 50,500 Nuyen, ~10.6% of your Nuyen if you have A - Resources, ~18,4% for B - Resources and ~36% for C - Resources, it should leave enough money for your other roles, for 2 Karma you can get Practice, Practice, Practice to raise the limit of Cybercombat/Hacking to 6.

Now for Skills the essential are Cybercombat/Hacking + Computer, with just those two you can do a bunch of interesting stuff, you will need to spend around 12-14 points on those to be decent, so a Skill C character might struggle a bit but skills A and B will have more than enough left.

How do you get a 20k Hacking Commlink btw? Using a low rating Stealth Dongle coupled with Smoke and Mirrors? The cost for Stealth Dongle is (Rating)² x 3000¥ right?

[Hobbes]

How do you get a 20k Hacking Commlink btw? Using a low rating Stealth Dongle coupled with Smoke and Mirrors? The cost for Stealth Dongle is (Rating)² x 3000¥ right?

Commlink, Program Carrier, Virtual Machine, Smoke and Mirrors plus whatever, Stealth Dongle 1.  Gets you just enough Sleaze to do something dangerous.  Noise reduction from some other source is good.

I really disagree with the idea that 12 Skill points and 50k are a minor investment.  And likely you've got a couple stat points thrown at Logic because other than Hackers, Riggers and Herimetics Logic is a dump stat.  You've likely had to bump up your Skill Priority at the cost of Stats so you've given up 4 or so stat points for that higher Skill priority.  Then you're using your smaller pool of Attribute points to buy up a stat you may not need for your primary thing. 

Again I circle back to , if you're a Rigger, you're already a back up Decker.  If you want to do Shooting and Hacking, Combat Deckers are a totally a thing and are quite effective at booth.  Face / Decker i.e. "I do all the non-combat tests." is also doable if you write off physical meat space.

Mundane Runners do three and a half things.  Hacking and it's little brother Rigging.  Combat.  Social.  You can generally build a Mundane character to do one of those things well and a second thing "good enough".   If you're going to build a Hacker, build a Hacker.

I think if you go to actually build a half-hacker, you'll see what I mean.

Edit: If you actually build as you suggest, 4+ Logic, 5 Intuition, Computer and Hacking at 6, and a low end deck.  For 1 or 2 stat points, 2 to 4 skill points, 6 to 10 Karma and around 20k Nuyen you could just be a full on Decker and carry on.  Bump up Logic to 5 (or 6), pick up Software (Data Bombs) and specialization Hosts & Matrix Perception, spend a couple Karma on Hardware 1 and Cybercombat 1, swap whatever you spend on Perception to EW, upgrade to a Little Hornet, add a Sensor Array to your Armor or pick up a Fly Spy, toss some Overdrive and Psyche in your go bag.  Add Cerepax and Frensal Fabric to your Christmas list.  Call it a day.

tl;dr Your friend was basically correct.  Not that your OP is wrong, I agree with everything you've got there, just that the "minimal" investment (for Non-Riggers) to be a back up Decker is so high that you may just as well be a Decker.

[Kuirem]

Of course it's not cheap, I am trying to dip into one of the main role. Your upgrade cost is also more than that. If I have, say, a 4 LOG, 5 INT, 3 WIL which is enough to be a half decker you will probably need around 4-5 Attributes points to raise all that. Little Hornet cost 30k more and giving up Perception for a Sensor/Fly Spy means that anything throwing more than 9 dice (average 3 net hit) is invisible for you due to sensor limits. Nothing impossible of course but the cost is close to ~50% of the base cost I've put in it.

Whatever I think the cost of dipping into Decker's turf isn't much more than for other main roles. If you build a Face and decide to be good at gunning as well you will need a good deal of extra AGI/REA, probably not much in skills but quite a bit of Nuyen to get more initiative (because even with Cram/Jazz you are 3D6/2D6 initiative dice behind) and even the cheapest solution is 10k (or Adept Power), on top of that if you want to be good at combat you will probably want some more soak dice which means either raising BOD or getting some more wares. Let's not even talk about the cost of trying to dip into Mages/Riggers.

[Hobbes]

Of course it's not cheap, I am trying to dip into one of the main role. Your upgrade cost is also more than that. If I have, say, a 4 LOG, 5 INT, 3 WIL which is enough to be a half decker you will probably need around 4-5 Attributes points to raise all that. Little Hornet cost 30k more and giving up Perception for a Sensor/Fly Spy means that anything throwing more than 9 dice (average 3 net hit) is invisible for you due to sensor limits. Nothing impossible of course but the cost is close to ~50% of the base cost I've put in it.

I have an Orc Combat Decker that says Logic 5 is plenty.  And it really is.  Perception Limits are the biggest issue with swapping out for EW, but with Rigger 5 Increased Sensor ratings are possible.  In actual play Limit of 3 isn't bad since mostly you're going to be doing Matrix overwatch anyway so your Matrix Perception if far more important.

Anyway, if you're "Dipping" into Decker, what is your Main Thing?  Because as long as we're talking just mechanically here, adding Decking to your Main Thing is usually doable as long as your not building "Oh he was a former Navy Seal that awakened and is now an expert Rigger/Decker too. " 

[Kuirem]

Anyway, if you're "Dipping" into Decker, what is your Main Thing?

Just look at the 3 character in the main post, they can certainly be improved but I think they give a good idea of having a "main thing" and dipping into Hacking. Spike is a gunner drugomancer, Viper an infiltration expert and Wheely a Rigger.

For the fun I just tried to build a Mage/Decker and I quite like the result, see the sheet in attachment.

I picked A - Magic, B - Attributes, C - Skills, D - Nuyen, E - Human. Attributes are 3 BOD; 3 AGI; 2 REA; 2 STR; 3 CHA; 6 INT; 4 LOG; 5 WIL.

Put 10 Karma into Nuyen and get an Erika MCD-1 with modify Matrix attribute (5-3-2-0), Program Carrier (Stealth) to get 6 Sleaze along with a Transys Avalon for the 6 Firewall in defense test. Focus Concentration 4 combined with Increase [LOG] so I can throw a good 14 (16) dice for Hack on the Fly with the advantage of being able to cast spells and summon spirits for meat and astral world.

[teknoviking]

I am a first time shadowrun player (played the video games though) but a long time RPGer.  I am quite interested in attempting to play a Decker/Rigger hybrid guy so I've been looking pretty hard at this thread and digging deeper into the forums as well.  I don't know how foolish this is but my initial thought was to put resources at C or D.  it would look something like skills - A, attributes - B, metatype - C (human w/ edge), resources - D and no magic. 

idea is he is / was a drug addict and lost most of his gear but has the skills and know-how to be effective if he can get some equipment.  Thinking theft would be a way to get gear early and then do some runs for $ to get there.  It's going to be a long term game so i don't mind sucking for a session or two.

How dumb is this idea?  I literally don't see any decker or rigger builds that start with lower than a B in resources which makes me nervous.

I looked at Wheely who seems close to what I would be doing but I was planning on mostly being a drone dude and not dedicating much to driving at all (especially since its unlikely I could afford a ride anyway).

Any top tips?

[Kuirem]

Resources D Rigger will be really really tough to build. The Control Rig Rating 1 cost 43k (or 32k Used) and Drones aren't cheap either. Decker also need fairly expensive equipment so combining the two together with so few resources… I don't see it happening at Resources D without a big In Debt at chargen. Resources C might be doable.

Drone driving use similar Skills/Attributes to vehicle driving so it's a bit of a waste not to have a car as well, even if it is a cheap one. Look at the Ford Americar for a cheap transport car with well balanced stats.

For a first time player it's probably best to stick on a main role (Muscle, Face, Mage, Rigger, Hacker, Infiltration) rather than trying hybrid though. The Matrix alone is already a lot to handle to start, you can always just build a regular Decker and slap a Control Rig on top. Take a look at this guide, it was really helpful to me when I started.

[Haywire]

Erika MCD-1 with modify Matrix attribute (5-3-2-0), Program Carrier (Stealth) to get 6 Sleaze along with a Transys Avalon for the 6 Firewall in defense test.

This is an unclear point: a persona can't be a master or a slave, so you can't use your deck to hack while slaved, or you lose Master's firewall as long as you for your persona on that deck.

[Hobbes]

Your Matrix Persona uses the stats of the Device used to create the Persona.  You can't simultaneously use the Stats from Multiple devices, to use different stats you need to re-boot. 

If you can hot swap stats one of the main mechanical reasons to take a Cyberdeck goes away. 

[FST_Gemstar]

I would argue that it is easier to make a technomancer a matrix support character (half-hacker) than a decker, and can be more usefully synergistic especially if your team is going to have a primary matrix specialist (a dedicated decker). A low Resonance technomancer can supply complex form and sprite support to your decker, making the decker that much more effective, while at the same time having their own non-matrix specialty (face, rigger, etc.). If the decker is ever out of commission, your team can still have some matrix capability through said sprites/cfs. 

[Kuirem]

Good point but this post was specifically for Decker.

By the way I think a high Resonance Techno would be better for that. Pick a good Resonance and a good WIL to easily soak the drain from Sprites/Complex Form and invest your points into whatever else. Basically you ignore the "Techno" part with all the hacking. This kind of build often abuse the Machine Sprite Diagnostics and run with stuff like Chameleon Suit, Smartlink, Sensors, high fashion clothing, that can be boosted by it.