Ok so the question posed is, can a sapient critter (Pixie) be a technomancer? The rules are vague on the subject. The conflict is that sapient critters start with 1 point of magic. The books says in some grey terms that a character may not posess both magic abilites and resonance. I think this was intended to keep technomancers from ALSO being mages.

On page 85 (87 of 186) of the runners companion it states the following : Sapient Critters are Awakened, but they are not magicians. Those sapient critters with the Dual Natured or Enhanced Senses(Astral Perception) may learn assensing and astral combat, but otherwise they cannot learn or use magic skills astrally perceive or project, initiate, or bond foci unless they take an appropriate quality such as adept, astral sight, magician, or mystic adept

page 80 in Sr4 goes describes the technomancer quality, which states that a character with this quality cannot take adept, magician, or mystic adept qualities

The other bit of grey is that in the book they say no one really knows how technomancy works. Some people beleive it as an evolved form of magic adapted to the matrix. If that is the case it would fit the pixie situation perfectly. She loses her "magic" but gains a different form of it.

One solution to make this mix "kosher" has been suggested to give the Pixie a Gaeas(sp?) so that she would lose all her magic when not in a specific spot which could be someplace unreachable or nonexistent anymore. Such as she lost her magic powers when she was young, found technomancy, ect. ect.

And just to clarify I don't want her to have any magical powers at all, including the "hide" she starts with. I just want her to technomance!

What do ya'all think?

(scatters pixie dust!)
Da Diz.

Big fat no.  You can't have both magic and resonance, not ever.  Pixies are always Awakened critters, no matter if they lose their powers, they always have a Magic attribute, which means they can never have Resonance.

Not in chargen.

Not at all.  Not Ever.  They are Magical Creatures.

Explain what happens if a character's magic is reduced to 0 and they then use karma to add qualities.

They add up qualities.  They still cannot become Technomancers as they are still magically inclined characters (they at one time took the Magician, Mage Adept, etc quality... to include picking from a magical race).

On the opposite side, I sorta like DizzyKa's idea of being a pixiemancer so long as she gets none of the pixie's ability, to include flight.  She'll be a little pixie with huge wings that's capable of awesome technomancer stuff.

A Pixie does not have to take a magical quality. It is an option to do so as it is for any other character. A Pixie character starts with 1 point of magic, which can be lost due to cyber and/or bioware. They then can spend to gain the Technomancer quality. It's an expensive way to become a Technomancer compared to standard metahuman characters but can be done.

"A character who possesses a quality that grants a Magic of 1 or higher cannot have a Resonance attribute."  p.71, SR4A.  Now, it's true that pixies don't have a quality that grants them Magic, they just have a Magic attribute.  However, going this route involves exploiting a loophole, plain and simple.  I'm sure DizzyKa wants a character that actually makes sense in the game world, not a character that was created based on a flaw in the rules' language.  If you make a pixie technomancer, you're making something that contradicts all existing fluff.  You are putting rules technicalities above and beyond having a character that fits into the setting.  I can't see how playing that kind of character could ever be fun.  If there was a pixie technomancer, it wouldn't be coming along on any of my plots, and I would almost certainly bow out of RPing with it.  I can't force anyone to do anything because there are currently no rules in this game, but I can control my own conduct, and that would be to treat the pixie technomancer as if it didn't exist, because it shouldn't.

Huh.  Well thanks for doing the legwork and looking that up, it certainly is an obscure kernel of fluff   So I guess as long as you don't have a magical quality, you could be a technomancer.  Of course, as a metasapient you need to spend 40 BP to buy off Uneducated just to learn computer skills in the first place without paying double points.  And I'm still leery about the character concept, even so.  Being a pixie is already enough of a stretch, being as how they're incredibly rare.  But now you're a pixie technomancer?  You're making yourself into a one of a kind, against all odds kind of person, more like a canon character from a novel than a PC that other people would be comfortable interacting with.  It's like being a dryad drake or something.  Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

EDIT:  Hang on, there was a post from Moira about fluff that indicated metasapients could be technomancers, and now it's gone.  That's what this post was supposed to respond to...

Not true. This is from unwired:

> I’m not worried about metahuman technomancers any more, but
what I am curious about is technomancers of other species. Remember
all of those efforts to make datajacks for dolphins, satyrs, dragons, and
whatnot? Those projects all went mysteriously silent after the Crash
2.0. You have to think some of them were successful. So is there a
chance we have non-meta technomancers and the like out there?
> Ecotope

> There’s a sasquatch performer in Vegas, stage name of Little Foot,
part of a magical variety show on the Strip. He pulls a lot of clever magic
tricks, including knowing non-public details of audience members, and
some funny routines with animated commlinks and other devices. It’s
all supposed to be illusion and clever use of AR, of course, but some of
his material seems awfully similar to things a technomancer could do.
> Cosmo>>>> Thread Posted By User: FastJack

And I can see that you're taking this question personally because you think I'm some jerk trying to break the rules. Thats not the case - the only reason I even have an inkling about a pixie technomancer character is because as a n00b on my first tabletop session of shadowrun the GM who was helping me out helped me make my character and he suggested I could be a pixie; I said that would be cool! Then we went through jobs/classes and I thought the technomancer was cool and he said well that will be tough... but we made it and I played with her and it was a lot of fun and the ONLY reason I would like to bring my character to this game is because she's already developed and like I said, I had fun.

As far as the rules go, if you really look at it making a pixie technomancer is shooting myself in the foot character wise anyway and its not like I'm trying to create some uber twink of great injustice that will powerplay and create crash 3.0. First off pixies are uneducated, I had to "buy" that off for 20 BP the gm said. Not only that I have to buy extra things to get rid of my magic point, other stuff is more expensive.

Moira's playing with the Forum.

-Hades

Actually, it's 20 BP or 40 karma.

Hey, just popping in since this came up in a couple other places, and there are some options.

The Latent Technomancer quality in Unwired can be taken even if you have a Magic attribute - it just never activates while the character has Magic. For a character-in-play, this means if you reduce your Magic (via implants, etc.) then you lose all your Awakened abilities (astral sight, Concealment) but there's a chance you will one day gain Resonance.

Nice gamemasters, as Absinthe pointed out, don't make the character sweat it and just let them take the Technomancer quality after they reduce their Magic to 0 (keep in mind that this means changing up the general order of character creation).

Not that this has anything to do with technomancy but here's a bit from "The Runners Companion" about a famous hacker-pixie. A haxie you might say ; )

Grace
This female pixie, of unknown origin, has been on
life support in Portland Hospital for the last six years.
The only known pixie with a datajack, Grace was apparently
jacked into the Matrix during the Crash 2.0
and the trauma of a viral attack caused her to enter
a comatose state. The local pixie tribe in Portland
continues to pay for her care and medical expenses
and visits her often. On slow news days, the local
stations like to remind viewers of “Little Grace.”