Just like in my mage log post of what makes a good mage and how to build them here are my views on the the quintessential items that must be taken in building a Technomancer
Editor, puppeteer, cleaner, and resonance spike are your core workhorse complex forms.
Technomancers need to maximize their sprite pools before anything else. While being able to hack personally is important, their anemic matrix stats and increased risk means that they can't even consider specializing in it compared to a decker. Any time you want to do serious hacking you will need assistance from multiple sprites to up your limit, where as sprites provide value even if you aren't hacking, so getting a stable pool of sprites is critical.
Resonance, willpower, and logic are critical stats, in that order. Otaku to technomancer is also vital to keep fading down for when you need to use complex forms at high ratings.
Figure out the largest sprite you can routinely grow in downtime, assuming that you spend all your time registering and remembering you lose 1 hit every time you re-register. While the initial compiling roll will get more hits than re-registering, there is a high value in having the ability to "spam" sprite powers and assistance without having to re-compile mid run, as you are already being brutalized by fading. Get one or two workhorses up during downtime with over 10-20 services over a week or two.
Seriously abuse any trick you can find. Technomancers have a lot of neat and unique toys but at the cost of having one of the worst power schemes in the game, being utterly dependent on submerging and more dependent on their resonance stat than mages are on magic to boot. Use complex forms either at low value when the level and net hits don't really matter (Like cleaner), in emergency, or to exploit the unique properties of resonance actions.
Sprites are easily your strongest tool. Sprite powers are often stronger than even a decker's action, and can have physical world effects as well as matrix ones. Machine sprites allow you to both buff allies and force opponents to glitch on many important rolls, so figure out what your teammates do that is gear dependent and figure out when you would want to buff with a machine sprite.
Avoid Static Veil, Tattletale, Stiches, Static Bomb, and Transcendent Grid. Static Veil does not help you avoid detection once you are caught hacking and for the most part does nothing. Tattletale does not work on most anyone you run into because the target must already have an OS score, and security spiders do not gain OS. Furthermore the amount of OS you grant even on illegal hackers is completely irrelevant. Static Veil not only requires sustaining compared to cleaner, but doesn't even help you versus the main source of OS, defender hits. Transcendent Grid is a wonderfully flavorful ability that nearly is all downsides and doesn't actually help you unless you somehow can sustain it for free, and the situations where you need to strike across grids are unbelievably rare. Stiches is less efficient fading wise than just creating a new sprite.
Buy or steal a deck ASAP, as Technomancers dramatically benefit from being able to deck on many high resistance targets and especially on hosts.
Technomancers aren't able to slave drones, but can still slave them to a high value comlink or RCC and then act as their owner, issuing commands. Therefore technomancers get a lot of value from minor investments into gunnery and piloting after gen, and because remote controlled gunnery is a logic based test you will find yourself becoming good at it rapidly. As a bonus drones keep your pathetic meat body is safe and should be well protected.
Note: I went with the following human stats for this build however you could substitute Elf or Dwarf if you wanted to however the build would change some see below.
Human w/ Resonance: A; Skills: B; Attributes: C; Metatype: D; Resources: E
Something like:
B:3 A:5 R:5 S:1 W:6 L:5 I:5 C:2 Edge 1 Resonance 6
Cracking group at 5, Registering, Compiling, Software, Computer at 6. And you've got points to burn. Grab Electronics Group at 4; Grab a gun skill up to 6, possibly some sneaking, or throw around some specializations.
Don't for get about your free Knowledge Skills these should be Knowledge Metroplex Matrix, Local City your running in, etc.
Now lets talk about you complex forms you get 7 with the above build because we put Resonance: A; these are your sprites.
Focused Concentration 1 and Static Veil lets you keep your un-registered Sprite around indefinitely instead of randomly exploding every couple hours. Edit and Puppeteer are your "I win" buttons in the right circumstances.
Psyche, Cram, Jazz are all a TM's friends. Get familiar with Drug rules.
And Machine Sprites are arguably the most powerful buff in the game. Use them constantly, they're free. Even just as little ones.
As far as build goes, the bread and butter hacking mostly takes care of itself as a Technomancer so long as you build decent mental attributes. For intercepting messages, editing them, then sending them on to others as the intended message is a bit tricky. Editing them is straight forward (use the Editor complex form or Edit File Matrix action), it's the intercepting that can get tricky a bit.
You would have to mark the receiving device, use the Snoop matrix action to monitor the incoming signal to know the file has been sent, then cracking and editing the file before another user looks at it.
That being said, for fooling video cameras and tacnets, you can probably get away with just preparing your fake feed in advance, marking up the device, then using a spoof command (or the Puppeteer Complex Form) to send the other feed instead of the real one. You could also just jam the signal, but that does tend to raise suspicions when done to security feeds. It should work just fine against a tacnet though.
Almost all of those actions rely on sleaze or intuition (or both) which for TMs are the same stat so build high Intuition. You will also need decent scores in your other mental attributes, as well as the Software, Hacking and Electronic Warfare skills. Having a decent Hardware skill wouldn't hurt either.
If you want to make use of Sprites while messing with video/audio feeds. Your best bet, imo, would be to use them to sustain complex forms like Puppeteer so you don't have to suffer the sustained form action penalty once you've set up your spoofed feed.
Oh, and in case it needs to be said, the more Resonance score you can squeeze out while not gimping your other stats, the better.
The thing to remember is this when playing a technomancer, has access to every program simultaneously. If he/she doesn't know the form (or if he needs it to be more powerful), then he can thread it. The hacker can't thread, and he's limited to running a certain number of programs at one time.
Anyway, this is something close to what I used when I started as a technomancer in 5E:
Priority A: Renaissance
Priority B: Skills
Priority C: Attributes
Priority D: Resources
Priority E meta type: Human
bod 2
agi 3
rea 3
str 2
cha 5 int 5
log 6 wil 5 res 5
edg 1
Cracking group 3
Electronics group 3
Tasking group 2
Dodge 1
Etiquette (matrix) 1(3)
Perception 1
Pistols (semi-auto) 2(4)
+qualities:
Technomancer
Natural Hardening
-qualities:
Combat paralysis
SINner (Naturalized UCAS)
Weak Immune System
Complex forms:
Analyze 4
Browse 2
Edit 4
Scan 4
Armor 4
Attack 5
Decrypt 4
Exploit 5
Stealth 5
Living Persona:
Response 5
Signal 3
System 5
Firewall 5
Biofeedback Filter 7
The trick is to thread what you need if you don't already have it. In legwork (when time is not a huge issue), always opt to probe in VR (1 hour interval) and then, before you actually enter the node, thread up your Stealth to a higher level so the node has a very small chance to see you go in. You have 10 dice here to resist Fading, and FV for threading only goes off used hits. Once you're in, you can probably drop Stealth to keep from incurring the sustaining penalty, and you can then poke around to your heart's content.
The drawbacks: sometimes it can be difficult to find things, so you might need to thread up Browse. But, if time's not an issue, 2 is plenty when you're starting off. You might want to prioritize improving that with Karma as you start, though.
The idea behind this character was that he had been trapped in the Matrix in Crash 2.0. he didn't Emerge until 2072 or so, and he'd been working at the Pirates Haven in Seattle to make ends meet (he had 1 month of low lifestyle). When he Emerged, he spent more and more time online--not just doing the social media thing that most kids his age were doing, but also figuring out his abilities and learning the forms he'd need. At the start of the game, he'd quit his job, as it was hardly fulfilling, and he decided to start running because it paid better, and it was more exciting than peddling cheap electronics and bio ware products. Basically, if he was going to live from paycheck to paycheck, he figured it might as well be fun, even if a bit dangerous.
Now... can you make a superior hacker? Certainly. But he'd lack the pure flexibility of the technomancer. Basically, what it comes down to is how long your campaign is going to run. If it's a fairly short one, build a hacker and be fairly skilled right off the bat. if it's a long campaign, the technomancer will quickly outpace the hacker once you start submerging.
The one area where the cybered hacker will always be superior to the technomancer is AR hacking. Since AR is based of meat speeds, your technomancer will only ever get one IP per turn. The cybered hacker can have four. Why hack in AR? It's safer, for you and your teammates. It's slower, too, though. So there's a trade-off.
How good is the build? After getting 150 karma and spending it not just on Matrix stuff, but also on some combat skills, he's become a competent (though not exceptional) combatant, able to hold his own in a firefight. However, his real use, though, was to serve as both hacker and face for the group. That second role is one he had to grow into through karma expenditures of the social skills, though. As a human, you have a bit more BP to play with since you don't have to pay for a meta type.
Update: Now your probably asking your self why Logic 6? Data Processing makes you fast, but it's not really as good as Sleaze or Attack or Firewall for most purposes, especially since if you really need DP, you can spend 8k on something with 6 DP.
If you did this build as an elf stats should be
Priority A: Renaissance
Priority B: Meta type: ELF
Priority C: Skills
Priority D:
Priority E: Attributes
If your Playing A Dwarf
Priority A: Renaissance
Priority B: Skills
Priority C: Meta type: Dwarf
Priority D:
Priority E: Attributes
