[Shinobi Killfist]

We don’t know the some of that magic in that the real play thing could have been wrong. We know there is a separate drain test like normal. We know mages can get multiple minor actions likely more than a street sam it’s a lot of drain but her character has focused concentration 3 so could sustain 3 spells without penalty. Again they could have it wrong. But magic initiative, combat sense and improved bod all day seems pretty potent.

Commanding a spirit minor action. Spells major but  I don’t think you have to ready a spell.

[easl]

2. no ... technomancers didn't get as much love as I wanted to give them due to space limitations in the book, they are definitely matrix powerhouses.

So Banshee, while you're here, could I ask a somewhat provocative two questions?
1. What matrix things do technos do better than deckers?
2. What matrix things do deckers do better than technos?

I think, ideally, SR should have a solid answer to both. And not a self-referencing one like "summon sprites!", but an answer in terms of matrix actions the rest of the team cares about, like hacking into systems, defeating security, obtaining information, etc.  IOW, personally I'm hoping that neither technos or riggers are the poor stepchildren of the other. That both have a 'that's cool' place in a party.

[easl]

Sadly when it comes to systems questions like these, what ever the designers intent the min/maker will always min/max whatever the new system limits are. The people that end up suffer are those who don’t know systems newbies

You may be right about SR, as its hard for me to think of a variant to the rules that would be sufficiently shadowrunny to make fans of the system like it, yet effectively deal with minimaxing. Having said that, there are certainly other systems that effectively address minimaxing and allow for design of several-dimensional PCs that are still 'as good as can be' at combat.

As a simple, partial example, SR 5's karma vs. chargen point difference is part of what creates such a significant drive towards 'tall stack' builds. This in turn encourages more one-dimensional PCs and stovepipes them into specific team roles. Games where experience and chargen points are essentially the same don't have that 'push' on the players. Sure you still want high pools, but without that, improving ones' skills in important secondary ways like sneak or con or perception at least aren't bad point allocation choices.  Different example: limits were an attempt to deal with players maxing one or two dice pools at any cost, though IMO it mostly failed at that.

10 gangers will probably be a major threat in 6. Where they would be warm up in 5. Guns maybe less powerful but is almost nonexistent. 6e will be radically different and not to benefit of the players.

IIRC, in 6 you can target multiple people with a single burst or auto attack, which might make up some for dropping high init characters from 3-4 attacks down to 2. But I doubt very much any game system - including SR 6 - can stop GMs and play groups from picking whether the bad guys consist of "many tissue thin grunts lead by a few tough hombres" or "NPCs mostly built like PCs". Or even switching between those two models. It's certainly the case that a GM in SR5 could make a group of 10 gangers be tough to beat. The "challenge per enemy" or per enemy group has always been something the GM can control in order to move the game along or make combat more high tension...depending on what the play group thinks is most fun.  "The benefit to the players" is not whether 1 NPC or 10 is a real threat; the benefit is what the players find to be fun - which can sometimes be 1, or 10, or 100, depending on the player, the group, heck it can even change from scene to scene.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Attacking multiple targets is still a split pool thing I’m the play video.  Without a dice pool penalty vs bursts that’s a rough attack. Though edge may make it possible.

A interesting possibility since enemies can attack as a group would be if grouped enemies could be attacked as one.  Kind of feng shui take out all the goons you want rule.

[Marcus]

You may be right about SR, as its hard for me to think of a variant to the rules that would be sufficiently shadowrunny to make fans of the system like it, yet effectively deal with minimaxing. Having said that, there are certainly other systems that effectively address minimaxing and allow for design of several-dimensional PCs that are still 'as good as can be' at combat.

10 gangers will probably be a major threat in 6. Where they would be warm up in 5. Guns maybe less powerful but is almost nonexistent. 6e will be radically different and not to benefit of the players.

IIRC, in 6 you can target multiple people with a single burst or auto attack, which might make up some for dropping high init characters from 3-4 attacks down to 2. But I doubt very much any game system - including SR 6 - can stop GMs and play groups from picking whether the bad guys consist of "many tissue thin grunts lead by a few tough hombres" or "NPCs mostly built like PCs". Or even switching between those two models. It's certainly the case that a GM in SR5 could make a group of 10 gangers be tough to beat. The "challenge per enemy" or per enemy group has always been something the GM can control in order to move the game along or make combat more high tension...depending on what the play group thinks is most fun.  "The benefit to the players" is not whether 1 NPC or 10 is a real threat; the benefit is what the players find to be fun - which can sometimes be 1, or 10, or 100, depending on the player, the group, heck it can even change from scene to scene.

Fighting Min/Max is really waste of time, why dev even bother focusing on it is just silly, they are just placating a tragically out dated section of the fan base. Min/Maxer are  more helpful to system then harmful, all you have to do you is errata the holes they find, it's not actually complicated. Just look Pegasus errata early and often there is no problem. Over and over again we saw terrible choices made in the first couple books for 5e, almost all of which got rolled back the later books. How 6e handles it remains to be seen. 

Sure Granularity is always an important question, Depth vs Breadth is always a classic conflict for any game. There was plenty of room to be solid at combat and be solid at contribute to legwork in 5e, or combat/face, combat/decker were all very possible depending on your pool tolerances. As you said Karma is best for this, when you have extremely fine control then you get exactly the result you want. 5e kinda dropped ball on this. Adding it in Run Faster meant players just saw it as to little karma to make it worth while. Now all that said, multi-dimensional characters don't in any way require multiple rolls, it just means making a PC that isn't flat as the paper it's written on. The old AK-97 example is the one they love to point to, and it works well. But just because a character around shooting doesn't mean it's bad concept it just needs to be fleshed out, made into something more complex that an FPS bot.   But 6e isn't looking better Priority has always been a farce when it came to making good choices. I can't tell you how many times i have seen Skill A end up being an epicly poor choice. 

Yeah they have reported multi-target though as with a lot of things their are contradictory reports, the early reports said you could do it, but that it cost you hit chance. If the system is such that damage is very low, spreading out low damage is only going to make it still lower damage, with the greater chance of failure. I can't show that for sure, as we have no idea what defense pools are actually going to look like. It remains to be seen what Profession rating looks like 6e. But my hopes are not high.

[Banshee]

2. no ... technomancers didn't get as much love as I wanted to give them due to space limitations in the book, they are definitely matrix powerhouses.

So Banshee, while you're here, could I ask a somewhat provocative two questions?
1. What matrix things do technos do better than deckers?
2. What matrix things do deckers do better than technos?

I think, ideally, SR should have a solid answer to both. And not a self-referencing one like "summon sprites!", but an answer in terms of matrix actions the rest of the team cares about, like hacking into systems, defeating security, obtaining information, etc.  IOW, personally I'm hoping that neither technos or riggers are the poor stepchildren of the other. That both have a 'that's cool' place in a party.

to be honest I tried to keep them on as even a keel as possible mostly because in 5E most people felt that technos were very underpowered compared to deckers and therefore not worth playing.

with that being said deckers will generally come out the gate at character generation being a bit faster since the techno speed bump requires submersion, deckers will also usually be more skill focused so should have a slight edge in hacking and defense but technos will have the definite edge in directly effecting things either through complex forms or their sprites.

[Marcus]

For the record Banshee it was not that players “felt” that TMs were under powered; they were epicly bad. It took literally years to make even the most basic fixes. The many errors included things as basic as the submersion karma cost being wrong.  I’m not even going to discuss the total uselessness of all complex forms. The whole archetype was a wreck, for the majority of 5e. It wasn't some kind mood the players were in. It was bad editing and major over reaction to the end of 4e. We can go look the errata if you feel like I need to prove the point.

[Banshee]

whether it was perceived or actual doesn't matter at this point so there is no need to argue over it .. which we each have well founded reasons for it

BUT ... I can say I heard the complaints and tried to fix them and hopefully people are happy with what I did and even more hopefully I get a chance to expand (and correct if needed) sooner rather than later

[Cabral]

whether it was perceived or actual doesn't matter at this point so there is no need to argue over it .. which we each have well founded reasons for it

BUT ... I can say I heard the complaints and tried to fix them and hopefully people are happy with what I did and even more hopefully I get a chance to expand (and correct if needed) sooner rather than later

That's appreciated.

Can you speak to the flavor of Technomancers in 6e?

I have felt in 5e, they were awakened, but not called out as awakened. In 4e (and more so in 3e and earlier), I felt that they still retained a less magical and more AI-connected and tehcnical-based flavor. In 5e, everything seemed to be more magic flavored.

Secondarily, how are Technomancers as riggers?

[Banshee]

for simplicity sake in keeping the rules streamlined we kept the mechanics in line with 5E in that they work much like magic system does overall rather than have a new system just for technomancers ... so complex forms function like spells and sprites function like spirits and in all other aspects TM's used the same mechanics as deckers

TM's as riggers is still blocked by submersion if you want the full effect you need the echoes but there are complex forms and sprites both that will let you more or less control drones and/or vehicles

[easl]

Banshee,
First, thanks for your responses. I'm looking forward to reading.

for simplicity sake in keeping the rules streamlined we kept the mechanics in line with 5E in that they work much like magic system does overall rather than have a new system just for technomancers ... so complex forms function like spells and sprites function like spirits and in all other aspects TM's used the same mechanics as deckers

In terms of mechanics, that seems very reasonable and effective.

TM's as riggers is still blocked by submersion if you want the full effect you need the echoes but there are complex forms and sprites both that will let you more or less control drones and/or vehicles

That's a bit more concerning. I was really hoping the system would get away from the "for a techno to hack, you're going to need these *extra* things..." and go more towards something of a 'parity out the gate, but each has different strengths and weaknesses' model.

But, still looking forward to it!

[Banshee]

TM's as riggers is still blocked by submersion if you want the full effect you need the echoes but there are complex forms and sprites both that will let you more or less control drones and/or vehicles

That's a bit more concerning. I was really hoping the system would get away from the "for a techno to hack, you're going to need these *extra* things..." and go more towards something of a 'parity out the gate, but each has different strengths and weaknesses' model.

But, still looking forward to it!

they can hack just as good as deckers right out of the gate it is the rigger aspect that takes more development ... deckers can load up on certian traits or programs that will give them an edge in some ways but the TM's get to play with complex forms and sprites that can directly effect anything matrix related directly

[Shinobi Killfist]

If anything I wanted rigger to be harder. In 4e when being a rigger was a $2000 piece of ware and .5 essence it being easy worked. 5e it’s expensive for a decker to pull it off and would be hard to do both well.

I’d of liked if at start you decided if you were a rigger or decker style technomancer. With multiple  submersions roughly equal to the costs of doing both for a decker to add the other 1/2.

[Iron Serpent Prince]

TM's as riggers is still blocked by submersion if you want the full effect you need the echoes but there are complex forms and sprites both that will let you more or less control drones and/or vehicles

they can hack just as good as deckers right out of the gate it is the rigger aspect that takes more development ... deckers can load up on certian traits or programs that will give them an edge in some ways but the TM's get to play with complex forms and sprites that can directly effect anything matrix related directly

So...  Unless it is much easier to "dual-class" Decker / Rigger, Technos are still the better choice over a Rigger.

I was hoping the Techno was forced to give back some of the Rigger's stuff after ganking her in a dark alley...  At this time it still reads as if Riggers are trashed on.

[Shinobi Killfist]

One thing I hope for is essence loss being more punishing to the magically active. Bioadepts should be a story choice not a go to power choice. When the bang for your buck of waring up is too good it messes with setting ideas of magic and tech not mixing well, and magically active types not wanting to damage their magic.