[X] My Assistant

[binarywraith]

First, it doesn't get to change the mechanics, PERIOD. Second, that is what happens when SOME items are bricked. Not when ALL times are bricked. What makes you so certain that 'ware fails in that manner? Any reasonable design for something like Wired Reflexes would include something to protect the user in case of catastrophic failure, similar in principle to a surge protector or to the shear pin on a boat motor - a part that needs to be replaced before you can use the item again, but that prevents a far, far, far more serious failure. It might smell like burnt silicon (which is not a good smell, let me tell you), you might feel the pop or hear the bang (and it would certainly be UNCOMFORTABLE) and so on, but more catastrophic failure like a freaking fire has been prevented. Hell, depending on how the failure occurs, this might be localized to a specific site that is near the skin, allowing for easy access and repair without requiring full surgery. Likely in the same place as a physical on/off switch and possible a physical wireless toggle might be.

You're being a very selective literalist.

Those -are- the mechanics. That is literally every single word written about bricking in SR5. 'Preventing a more catastrophic failure' is purely against the express intent of the written rules, which state that all such failures -are- catastrophic.

In short, it's a terribly written bit of rule, but those are the rules as written.

[RHat]

Those -are- the mechanics. That is literally every single word written about bricking in SR5. 'Preventing a more catastrophic failure' is purely against the express intent of the written rules, which state that all such failures -are- catastrophic.

False. The rules are silent on the subject, and the rules state that all failures are spectacular, which is not remotely the same as catastrophic. See: They don't say fires happen in all cases, but that they are part of a list that covers most cases.

That bit of fluff should not exist, but it doesn't mean that you're suddenly taking damage when no rules for such a thing occurring, and for that matter that isn't even the only possibility the fluff creates, because the "spectacular failure" can happen in other ways.

[Kyrel]

As I indicated earlier, this entire issue is a debate between the importance of the fluff vs. the rules. The way the Bricking crap has been written in the official texts, the fluff description lists a variety of common forms of catastrophic failure that result from the given mechanical item falling victim to "Bricking". As described, no level of regular logical thought on the matter should be able to conclude that it shouldn't most likely be AT LEAST VERY uncomfortable to someone, if they happen inside of that individual's body. Having any serious level of Voltage and Amps run rampant throughout your body is neither healthy nor comfortable in the real world. Try holding your hand inside a flame, or dip any part of your body in molten plastic and tell me that it isn't going to cause you any form of damage, and then imagine that this shit is happening INSIDE your body, or even your brain, and tell me that your regular common sense doesn't tell you that something like that happening inside your body will not cause at least severe discomfort, and that death couldn't be at least a possible consequence.

In terms of the rules, however, there are no descriptions of what happens at the Game Mechanical level to a victim of Bricking. Or rather, there is, but the thing is that the consequences of potentially having i.e. a commlink inside your brain cease to function, and give off sparks, leak electricity into your brain, along with smoke from overheated components and melted plastic, simply doesn't make sense on any level of common sense, as all it will take to fix this damage, is a couple of hours with a "mechanic", who won't even need to crack open your skull to get direct access to the blown fuses and whatever other damage has happened to the ruined 'ware. Also, as the mechanical rules go, having molten plastic run around inside your body/brain apparently isn't harmful or even unpleasant enough to cause any level of distraction in the mechanical sense.

Now, I'm willing to accept that we can come up with a variety of alternative descriptions that will make the fluff and the mechanics line up. But as the official rules are written for the moment, this simply isn't the case.

And so we are back to the fluff vs. mechanics argument. Having played a variety of roleplaying and tabletop games since around 1989, I'll put my head on the block and claim that:
A) Many players care more about having the fluff and the rules line up, than the designers/writers.
B) Game balance is less important than being able to make the product sell.
C) In terms of the game, the described mechanical rules trumphs the describing fluff. Especially if you argue based on the RAW point of view.

As much as I generally respect people on these boards, I have to say that based on RAW, it's pretty damned difficult argue that Bricking causes damage to a character, even if I too agree that based on the fluff description, Bricking implanted electronics should at least impose some level of negative modifiers to the character (and not just cause the elimination of the bonusses from the bricked gear), and in some cases they should cause a fatality. But as much as I hate to say it, the mechanical rules do not support that interpretation, and thus we are left with the current idiotic situation where the fluff describes truely catastrophic damage that typically reduce electrical equipment to non-functional pieces of hard to repair crap, and the mechanical rules that say that all you really need after having something bricked, is to "visit someone with a screwdriver" for some light repairwork...even if the bricked gear is located inside your body and really should require something comparable with open heart surgery. Now until we either get the writer and rule designer to show up on the board and clarrify what they actually intended when they wrote this stuff, we are stuck with dealing with the mechanical rules, and curse, bitch, whine, and moan about the fluff descriptions, which don't line up with the mechanics on any level. To some of us this is no big deal. To others of us, this is a god damned clusterf*ck that detracts severely from the enjoyment of the game.

/Kyrel

[Kyrel]

A thought just occured to me. If the "Bricked" state happens once the gear has taken matrix damage equal to or beyond it's matrix "damage boxes", why not, as a house rule, simply let "overflow" damage done to the gear cause physical boxes of damage on a person with the gear implanted. Thus if your gear has 4 boxes of matrix damage left, and it takes 6 boxes worth of damage, the thing is bricked, and the character takes 6-4=2 boxes worth of physical damage due to whatever form the described "spectacular" damage to the equipment takes.

[RHat]

As I indicated earlier, this entire issue is a debate between the importance of the fluff vs. the rules. The way the Bricking crap has been written in the official texts, the fluff description lists a variety of common forms of catastrophic failure that result from the given mechanical item falling victim to "Bricking". As described, no level of regular logical thought on the matter should be able to conclude that it shouldn't most likely be AT LEAST VERY uncomfortable to someone, if they happen inside of that individual's body.

Oh, it would certainly be noticed no matter what. The point of argument here, though, is that the passage to which you refer does not in any way state or imply that all of those things happen in all circumstances. Ergo, it is logical to infer that only some of those things happen in any given circumstance. It is not unreasonable to suggest that in the circumstance that the bricked item is an implant, the things that would potentially damage a person do not happen due to designed failure paths being in place to prevent that.

A thought just occured to me. If the "Bricked" state happens once the gear has taken matrix damage equal to or beyond it's matrix "damage boxes", why not, as a house rule, simply let "overflow" damage done to the gear cause physical boxes of damage on a person with the gear implanted. Thus if your gear has 4 boxes of matrix damage left, and it takes 6 boxes worth of damage, the thing is bricked, and the character takes 6-4=2 boxes worth of physical damage due to whatever form the described "spectacular" damage to the equipment takes.

Because a bricked device should not directly damage the user. A bricked vehicle might, or bricking something in the presence of a gas leak might, but otherwise no.

Frankly, bricking isn't the sort of risk I'd like to see in the first place, but the system I'd prefer is a lot more complicated to balance.

[Kyrel]

Oh, it would certainly be noticed no matter what. The point of argument here, though, is that the passage to which you refer does not in any way state or imply that all of those things happen in all circumstances. Ergo, it is logical to infer that only some of those things happen in any given circumstance. It is not unreasonable to suggest that in the circumstance that the bricked item is an implant, the things that would potentially damage a person do not happen due to designed failure paths being in place to prevent that.

This is really one of those things that can be debated ad nauseam, right up until the designers tells us what the "truth" is. Arguably you are right RHat. What can be argued to suggest other wise, is that every example the writers/designers have given, would likely be pretty damned bad, if they happened inside someone's body. Also, it is, as I recall, specified that the failure always is "spectacular" in some way. My interpretation of that word would normally mean that you get some form of more or less visually impressive effect. Having an internal fuse burn out, having a few LED's shut down, and/or having a failure notice show up in your AR window, or as a text message on your Commlink, would not exactly be "spectacular".

Because a bricked device should not directly damage the user. A bricked vehicle might, or bricking something in the presence of a gas leak might, but otherwise no.

Frankly, bricking isn't the sort of risk I'd like to see in the first place, but the system I'd prefer is a lot more complicated to balance.

"Because a bricked device shouldn't damage the user" is your oppinion. It's quite valid, but it's your subjective oppinion, even if RAW the designers apparently agreed with your view on that issue (even if the fluff writers possibly didn't).

As such I'm not opposed to the theoretical posibility of hacking someone's cyberware, but for me the ability for security conscious professionals to avoid that kind of hazard, is a key issue. That, and a decent correlation between the fluff and the game mechanics. If the fluff specifies that a device that is bricked "blow up" in some sort of potentially dangerous manner, I'll want that potential consequence to be present within the rules. But that's my oppinion.

/Kyrel

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Frankly, bricking isn't the sort of risk I'd like to see in the first place, but the system I'd prefer is a lot more complicated to balance.

I agree that Bricking is poorly done and not what I would like. I am curious, though. What would you LIKE to see? Complicated makes no never mind to me.

[RHat]

I agree that Bricking is poorly done and not what I would like. I am curious, though. What would you LIKE to see? Complicated makes no never mind to me.

In short, my ideal system is one where the options after compromising a device are listed after its wireless bonus, allowing for a more nuanced system overall (such that rather than simply destroying someone's eyes, you instead can explicitly send false images and the like, or if you get into their wires you can cause them to zig when they should have zagged so to speak - but given strict and defined mechanical weight), which would then allow for the severity of the effect to be modulated right alongside the strength of the bonus; this would make it rather easy to have a system where your wireless bonuses are worth it because in designing it you simply have to consider whether players will find Bonus X to be worth risking a hacker getting access to Actions A, B, and C. Wireless bonuses that are actually worth the risk and an interesting system that gives the hacker cool things to do, all at once - and it lets the hacker actually be subtle about it if he wants.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

In short, my ideal system is one where the options after compromising a device are listed after its wireless bonus, allowing for a more nuanced system overall (such that rather than simply destroying someone's eyes, you instead can explicitly send false images and the like, or if you get into their wires you can cause them to zig when they should have zagged so to speak - but given strict and defined mechanical weight), which would then allow for the severity of the effect to be modulated right alongside the strength of the bonus; this would make it rather easy to have a system where your wireless bonuses are worth it because in designing it you simply have to consider whether players will find Bonus X to be worth risking a hacker getting access to Actions A, B, and C. Wireless bonuses that are actually worth the risk and an interesting system that gives the hacker cool things to do, all at once - and it lets the hacker actually be subtle about it if he wants.

Interesting... though wouldn't just throwing a few Marks on a device give you the access to screw with it in interesting ways? Which works now, from the way I read it.
And yes, I would like to see actual Wireless Bonuses that mattered.

[Wounded Ronin]

What I think is kind of humorous about all this is that my gut feeling is that the spectacular failure rule was probably simply written because whoever wrote it decided that if ware fails the user should know, as opposed to the GM being like, "Oh, this guys wired reflexes failed, but he doesn't know till he moves slowly in the next firefight, ha ha ha."

And then they never thought it through to the extent that it has been argued here.

[Sendaz]

And see that is the weird part, certainly this should have come up in the playtesting with the various groups during development.

Yet the impression one gets from the few comments handed down is they don't see it as an issue, or even a possible issue with one going into long detail of how it all worked, only to have to retract and backtrack when they realized that what they thought the system was wasn't what the final cut was.

Perhaps they simply invoked the TJ Fallacy and the playgroups just never brought up or were exposed to situations where this would have been relevant/noticeable.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

And see that is the weird part, certainly this should have come up in the playtesting with the various groups during development.

Yet the impression one gets from the few comments handed down is they don't see it as an issue, or even a possible issue with one going into long detail of how it all worked, only to have to retract and backtrack when they realized that what they thought the system was wasn't what the final cut was.

Perhaps they simply invoked the TJ Fallacy and the playgroups just never brought up or were exposed to situations where this would have been relevant/noticeable.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif)

[Kyrel]

>>I just realised that T.J. and not RHat posed the question my comment below is answering, and which I initially thought was meant for me *LOL* Now I know I'm getting tired<<


What would I like to see RHat >>should have read T.J.<<? Good question really, because I'm sort of divided on the issue. On the one hand, I don't mind that a skilled hacker might have the possibility to spoof/hack a piece of cyberware, if the victim haven't made sure to take steps to prevent it. But on the other hand, being able to screw up potentially lifecritical systems implanted into someone's body from affar. Especially if said equipment really shouldn't have ANY need at all of being accessible at a distance, rubs me the wrong way.

I can see the possibilities that could be in allowing a hacker to shut down a pair of cybereyes or take over a limb, or something to that effect. but I can also see a couple of challenges with such possibilities, depending on exactly how you implement those options. Things can quickly get either very fiddly on the game mechanical level, or it will end up being left very much up to the GM to decide what will be possible to get away with or not. Both paths present it's own set of challenges and criticism. Though it might make perfect sense, for a hacker to be able to utterly cripple a street sam with significant amounts of chrome, another question in this regard is also whether it is fun to be on the receiving end of, as a player. It might sound cool on paper when a hacker takes over the body of a street sam and turn him aginst his colleagues, but just as it isn't much fun to have your character be on the receiving end of a mind control spell, would it really be fun to have a security spider shut down the effects of ½mil. worth of 'ware, or take over your character and have him/her start blasting away at your fellow PC's? That I'm not so convinced of.

Then you have the issue of believability, which I find somewhat important. Though I'd like the cinematic effect of Bricking that's been described in the fluff of 5th ed., if I was watching a movie, I have to ask the question of whether I really believe that it should be possible to cause this level of damage to a given piece of gear, simply by hacking it. You could say that if you remove various software safeguards and the like, why shouldn't a particular piece of gear be able to destroy itself in a spectacular manner? The reason, IMO, is design. If you are designing a piece of gear that is going to be implanted into someone's body, I can't really envision that you will design it so that a simple software hack will be able to cause it to destroy itself. Safeguards etc. won't simply be a matter of software settings and coding, it will also be a matter of circuit design, fuses, over voltage protection, over temperature protection, short circuit protection etc. There will be safeguards and back-up systems, especially on systems where you could have potentially fatal consequences of a failure. And in a world where stuff can be hacked in a matter of seconds, regardless of which level of security you've tried to install, the importance of hardware security design that can't be bypassed or turned off, without physically getting your hand on the thing, will be even more important.

I know it might sound like a double standard, seen in light of my earlier criticism, but based on this view, if you want hackable 'ware, 5th ed. actually does it OK with it's mechanical effects, even if it screws up on the coordination of the fluff and mechanics. Effectively you get the option of turning some stuff off, or leaving it on. The gear isn't damaged as such, but it might require a hard reset or something, but it's an easy fix once you are out of combat. But again. If your character has spend ½mil. on various types of 'ware, will it really be any fun to have these abilities taken away at the drop of a hat? Would it be any more fun than it would be to take away a mage's ability to use magic, or a hacker's ability to hack anything and access the matrix at all?

In some situations it might make sense to allow a competent hacker to download diagnostics data or something, or he might be able to hack into the video feed from the sam's cybereyes, or his audio feed from the cyberears. But where do you draw the line?

If I'm going to conclude something on the above, I'll say that I wouldn't be complaining if it was possible for a competent hacker to hack cyberware, if the owner hadn't made sure to take steps to protect himself from such an act. In this respect I actually believe that 4a hit it OK. I'd probably leave the exact options on what you could do, if you managed to hack the cyberware, fairly open, allowing for player creativity and GM moderation. I'd make sure to include some examples of what could be done, in order to provide a decent picture of the "power level" of what a hacker could creadibly get away with. I'd probably want the options to be more of a short term/spoof level temporary effect, rather than causing real damage to the gear, and I'd probably also want to prevent actual sustained "remote control" of gear and thereby the owner. Dropping your gun or throwing off your aim or something is OK, but becoming a puppet is problematic for the same reason that Control Actions/Mind etc. is.

If it should be decided that it should be possible to get 'ware to fail in the spectacular manner described in 5th ed., then I'd insist on having such damage cause potentially severe damage to the owner of the 'ware. And I'd probably still insist that the fluff description be changed a bit, so as to not make it sound so clear to regular common sense, that having various forms of 'ware fail in a spectacular manner, would obviously be fatal.
Hope that makes some sense, I'm getting tired.

/Kyrel

[Smash]

False. The rules are silent on the subject, and the rules state that all failures are spectacular, which is not remotely the same as catastrophic. See: They don't say fires happen in all cases, but that they are part of a list that covers most cases.

That bit of fluff should not exist, but it doesn't mean that you're suddenly taking damage when no rules for such a thing occurring, and for that matter that isn't even the only possibility the fluff creates, because the "spectacular failure" can happen in other ways.

The great thing about fluff (unfortunately not in this case) is that it is subjective. Unless it says cyberware causes "X physical damage based on essence cost" when bricked then you're just making up whatever the effect is.

You should draw the conclusion then that if you're interpretting it a certain way and that makes you belief that the bricking rules are to harsh, then perhaps you are interpretting the fluff incorrectly.

I'd also still like to know why a deltaware cyberarm taking only 0.5 essence instead of the usual 1 doesn't destroy the fabric of the universe?

[RHat]

Interesting... though wouldn't just throwing a few Marks on a device give you the access to screw with it in interesting ways? Which works now, from the way I read it.
And yes, I would like to see actual Wireless Bonuses that mattered.

Only insofar as you can convince your GM an existing Matrix Action covers it, which really does limit your options at the best of times (using existing Matrix Actions, I don't see what you're gonna do to wires) - and when I approach tabletop games, I take a certain design philosophy that holds that you take as much of that load as possible off the GM; it's not his job to fill the holes in your system, he's just the poor bastard who gets stuck doing it if it needs done.

In any case, giving WR something like a Sensor-based bonus to defense tests that is determined based on the sensors you have access to, possibly capped by the Data Processing of the node it's routing through (essentially using powerful and advanced predictive algorithms to process reflexive action based on more than what you can yourself perceive). IF someone was using this wireless bonus, a hacker would than be able to force a corrupted signal through to create some specific effect upon the person with the wires (such as forcing them out of cover, imposing a penalty upon all tests for a Combat turn, an effect similar to the Accident power...). At that point, you could even start to give some items more than one wireless bonus, with each one opening up different options for the hacker.

The complication entailed here is that to figure out what you can do with the device you just found, either the GM has to have those actions listed in his notes or you have to look it up. Of course, you could have a super-set of actions that covered for various types of wireless bonuses, such as a Corrupt Signal action that could apply to any Signal wireless bonus (basically, any bonus that is based on a specific signal from Points A through Y to Point Z) to make things a little simpler.

[kzt]

And see that is the weird part, certainly this should have come up in the playtesting with the various groups during development.

SR playtesting has always been weak. When it was done at all. It usually wasn't done at all.

[binarywraith]

"Because a bricked device shouldn't damage the user" is your oppinion. It's quite valid, but it's your subjective oppinion, even if RAW the designers apparently agreed with your view on that issue (even if the fluff writers possibly didn't).

We don't actually know, of course, because nowhere in the book do the writers actually talk about bricking cyberware.

The section under bricking reads as if it is specifically applying to handheld devices such as commlinks and guns. So do the repair rules, as it is absurd to assume that implanted cybernetics, many of which have components that are not accessible without cybersurgery, are fixable with a simple toolkit and an hour of fiddling.

[Erik Baird]

Yeah, one gets the impression that the developers didn't think about the possibility of remotely attacking cyberware, even though they made cyberware wireless by default.

[binarywraith]

Yeah, one gets the impression that the developers didn't think about the possibility of remotely attacking cyberware, even though they made cyberware wireless by default.

Have you read the first SR5 Missons adventure?

[ Spoiler ]

It has every NPC with cyberware having their wireless disabled on all of it.

So clearly this sort of thing is undesirable, and the game rules as written for the modules show that professional guards will opt to turn that shit off first chance they get.

Why exactly was it such a stretch to assume Shadowrunners, who have even more paranoid security practices, would do the same, again?

Obviously at least some of the folks writing for SR5 have looked at the rules, said 'what the fuck is this', and just opted not to put the opportunity to encounter them into their published works.

[DeathStrobe]

We don't actually know, of course, because nowhere in the book do the writers actually talk about bricking cyberware.

The section under bricking reads as if it is specifically applying to handheld devices such as commlinks and guns. So do the repair rules, as it is absurd to assume that implanted cybernetics, many of which have components that are not accessible without cybersurgery, are fixable with a simple toolkit and an hour of fiddling.

I actually figured that new cyber has external panels you can access to fiddle around with their insides.

Like Data from Star Trek
http://star-trek-world.info/stw/galerie/3/4/Data_brain01.jpg

This way it makes the repairs quick and easy without having to go under the knife every time your headdeck explodes.

[Smash]

Have you read the first SR5 Missons adventure?

This doesn't prove much except that some schmoes who are writing content can have varying opinions, just like players.

[RHat]

Have you read the first SR5 Missons adventure?

[ Spoiler ]

It has every NPC with cyberware having their wireless disabled on all of it.

So clearly this sort of thing is undesirable, and the game rules as written for the modules show that professional guards will opt to turn that shit off first chance they get.

Why exactly was it such a stretch to assume Shadowrunners, who have even more paranoid security practices, would do the same, again?

Obviously at least some of the folks writing for SR5 have looked at the rules, said 'what the fuck is this', and just opted not to put the opportunity to encounter them into their published works.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that take place in the CZ, where you're pretty much never going to be able to get your bonuses due to Noise anyways? Under that circumstance, there is literally no reason to have wireless going.

[tasti man LH]

Last I checked, Noise really only affects Matrix actions and tests. Not the wireless bonuses themselves.

Unless if I'm mis-remembering...

[RHat]

Last I checked, Noise really only affects Matrix actions and tests. Not the wireless bonuses themselves.

Unless if I'm mis-remembering...

Noise in excess of DR denies wireless bonuses.

[KarmaInferno]

I agree that Bricking is poorly done and not what I would like. I am curious, though. What would you LIKE to see? Complicated makes no never mind to me.

Personally, I would have made it EASIER to 'brick', or hijack, or otherwise mess with equipment (as in a complex action to pull it off), but have the equipment recover automatically in a few passes as it reboots and restores from backup. If the afflicted user wants his gear back online faster, he can spent actions to do so.



-k