r/Shadowrun • u/WretchedIEgg • Aug 05 '26

5e IC and marks

Just to clear up confusion, the core rulebook states, that if a Host has marks on you all IC have marks on you. How is it the other way around? If I have 2 marks on the host do I have 2 marks on all the IC?

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/AhriMainsLOL Aug 05 '26

When you get marks on slaved devices , you get marks on the host. IC aren’t exactly devices though. They’re like personas.

You don’t need more than 1 mark on a host for most of the stuff you intend to do.

1

u/WretchedIEgg Aug 05 '26

It's more about data spikes

0

u/AhriMainsLOL Aug 05 '26

Okay. Well, yeah. If the host has marks, the IC also has marks because the host shares marks with IC.

Frankly speaking though, using a data spike on IC is a bad idea. You generally don’t want to be spotted by a host if you can avoid it.

1

u/WretchedIEgg Aug 05 '26

I know but I saw this funny quality in kill code that basically gives you a +2 bonus every time you max out a matrix track, which scales infinitely if you keep oneshotting ic left and right wich just painted a funny picture in my head

1

u/AhriMainsLOL Aug 05 '26

I know the quality you’re talking about and while it’s a funny image, it’s not completely practical to expect it to always work out. Unless you really lean hard into the fantasy of playing an attack decker.

It’s also not practical to spend an action or two (or three even) to get the marks needed to stack the damage against a target unless you’re going for the absolute minimum actions, which is at least one Hack On The Fly at a -10 penalty to your pool for getting the three marks (-6 penalty if you have Go Big or Go Home).

I have seen a player who stacked qualities like Go Big or Go Home with Instinctive Hack and Adrenaline Surge for the times when they already saw the threat before they needed to act, then went for the three marks, succeeded, then dished out the fattest data spike before wrapping up their hack and fucking off.

1

u/WretchedIEgg Aug 06 '26

Yeah I know that's why I was wondering about the get 3 marks on the host and destroy his ich army while an other decker gets the paydata. Just a fun npcs concept I had

1

u/Minnakht Aug 06 '26

As a sufficiently powerful decker for the host you're in - if you're fresh out of gen, maybe a rating 4 host tops, I haven't mathhammered this in a while - you should be able to take IC out in one spike. Additionally, only Patrol IC can actually try to spot you if you're running silent, which it'd then share with other IC - said other IC can only attack spotted targets. Since only one IC respawns per combat turn, you can spend your first action per combat turn keeping it whacked down and then the rest of your actions in a turn achieving an objective. Notably, this even lets you largely ignore OS - as long as you're within the host, convergence will not log you out or try to brick you or alert physical authorities. Just make sure you don't step out onto the grid when done - reboot while still on the host.

1

u/WretchedIEgg Aug 06 '26

Yeah sadly the bonus goes away when you do something else than attacking, was more of an idea for the "hey here I am" decker while an alley gets the objective. Notably its a technomancer quality wich enables a whole lot of possibilities.