Hong Kong (vg) inspired house rule Options

[Stahlseele]

Well . .
Cyber-Zombie NEVER was meant as a Player-Character-Choice.
You go to 0 Essence and below, you hand over your character sheet to the GM.
Also, with Cyberzombies, you actually WANT Massive Essence Loss, because it makes them so. much. more. betterer.

[ApesAmongUs]

To be fair: Having a reasonable chance of getting implants with a total reduction of 100% with a minimum cost of 0.01 would be just as game breaking as some suggest Magic is:

Magically active characters would dig even deeper into 'ware just as any "muggle" would so nothing would change in that often discussed area of "imbalance".
In addition to that the already highly questionable concept of "cyberzombie" would become obsolete.

Although, to get back to what I said earlier about percentages, applying them multiplicatively would result in those 10 10% reductions equaling around a 66% reduction. It's still huge, but not insane to the extent of everything costing .01.

[Cochise]

Well . .
Cyber-Zombie NEVER was meant as a Player-Character-Choice.
You go to 0 Essence and below, you hand over your character sheet to the GM.

My comment didn't refer to cyberzombies as player characters. But think of it: Would any mega really go through the troubles of creating a below 0 Essence carrier if they had a reasonable chance of creating a "full borg" with an Essence loss of 3 max (which equals 300 implants at minimum cost of 0.01 per implant)? All the stuff you could squeeze into such a "normal" implant guy would by far exceed ...

Also, with Cyberzombies, you actually WANT Massive Essence Loss, because it makes them so. much. more. betterer.

... the ultimately not that great benefits a cyberzombie can get from higher Essence loss values.

____________________

Although, to get back to what I said earlier about percentages, applying them multiplicatively would result in those 10 10% reductions equaling around a 66% reduction. It's still huge, but not insane to the extent of everything costing .01.

Well, the positive option says that one should apply the total of all similar adjustements as one multiple not separately ... So I guess I have to revise my initial comment: SR3 is actually pretty explicit and goes towards adding up those 10x5% bonuses with the 50% bonus of Deltaware rather than what you're calculating there.

But ultimately it doesn't matter whether it's 66%, 75% or 100%: the result would still be the same: Magic users would have a further increased incentive to get a seriously larger number of implants and making the perceived gap between mundanes and magic users even wider despite giving the mundanes a bit more to play with.

[binarywraith]

... the ultimately not that great benefits a cyberzombie can get from higher Essence loss values.

Sure there is. Their very existence fucks with mages. You can easily identify those astrally active by watching for people who start to seize when looking at them! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[Cochise]

Sure there is. Their very existence fucks with mages. You can easily identify those astrally active by watching for people who start to seize when looking at them! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

And within context of this SR3 labeled thread that's just bollocks. While the astral pollution from a cyberzombie will interfere with magic use to a certain extend within closer proximity there are no seizures or other directly visible indicators on the physical plane. Heck, in SR3 the cyberzombie pollution doesn't even interfere with available magic ratings.

And just as the limited gains in terms of survival via large negative Essence values the actual gains in terms of magic protection both in terms of cost and effectiveness are comparatively low.

Chances are that megas with reliable access to significant Essence reductions beyond the 50% of Deltaware would actually cyber mages and adepts "to the gills" and then let them deal with both magic and mundane dangers directly ... Still cheaper and ultimately more effective than using a blood magic ritual to create an entity that cannot be reasonably treated with magic, has extreme maintainance costs, is permanently in danger of getting lost in details and will negatively impact their own magical assets to the dame degree as they provide protection against opposing magicians.

[Stahlseele]

Cyberzombies gain their negative Essence as Hardened Armor.
And get it as a direct + on their attributes as well if i remember correctly.
So, a -3 Essence Cyberzombie would have 3 points of hardened Armor and a +3 to all his attributes at once.
THAT is pretty hefty of a bonus.

[Cochise]

Cyberzombies gain their negative Essence as Hardened Armor.
And get it as a direct + on their attributes as well if i remember correctly.
So, a -3 Essence Cyberzombie would have 3 points of hardened Armor and a +3 to all his attributes at once.
THAT is pretty hefty of a bonus.

So tell me: Which base attack of which typical weapon is below or equal 3 in order to get that hardened subset of the cyberzombie's armor impacting the whole damage resolution to a significant degree?!

Then tell me how far into negative Essence you want to go in order to get to hardened armor values that really matter and explain how that'll work unless you start messing with the "rules" on what can and cannot be done under SR3 ...

And once you're there tell my how that really remains significant once you consider the fact that you can put a "super-cybered" magician into a military grade security armor (which also happens to be hardened), get the additional benefits of whatever you put into him in terms of "survival hardware" plus him let him cast an armor spell upon himself? Once TNs have dropped to minimum value of 2 and there's enough BOD available it becomes a question of "insane" dice pools to even affect such a character ... and then you're playing in a gaming environment where the rules (and the game) are really no longer of concern.

I'll just repeat myself there: The opportunity cost for a cyberzombie is already highly questionable in context of normal SR rules (and fluff) but if the megas really had means to reliably get to the extreme Essence reductions that M&M surgical options do provide only in theory rather than for practical purposes?! The the concept of a cyberzombie would be obsolete

[sk8bcn]

And within context of this SR3 labeled thread that's just bollocks. While the astral pollution from a cyberzombie will interfere with magic use to a certain extend within closer proximity there are no seizures or other directly visible indicators on the physical plane. Heck, in SR3 the cyberzombie pollution doesn't even interfere with available magic ratings.

For my personnal culture, what's the explanation SR3 gives for that. The pollution is extremely limited or something?

[Cochise]

For my personnal culture, what's the explanation SR3 gives for that. The pollution is extremely limited or something?

Technically it's localized background count created by the zombie's presence ... but unless we're talking Mana Warp levels of backgroung count, i.e. 6+ outside the Gaia-sphere the background count will mainly affect astral perception and drain calculations for mages that get caught within the area of effect and has an upper limit of 5 (which by definition represents places like Auschwitz) and I can't recall cyberzombies reaching such values.*(see edit)

Earthbound background count of up to rating 5 in SR3 can - on fluff level - make mages feel uncomfortable or even sick but that's not a given ... and rule wise there are no explicit physical reactions connected to it and neither are magic ratings directly affected => A cyberzombie doesn't impact magicians to such a degree where they become easy to identify by simple physical observation as binarywraith suggested. And an astral observer who might notice "health" related reactions or other negative impacts on magic users would be able to identify them without the zombie's presence just as well because in either case he'd be assensing ...

[edit]To be more precise: A SR3 cyberzombie dynamically generates localized background count up to a value of half of his absolute Essence value rounded down. In order to reach Mana Warp levels of background count he'd need to have an Essence value of -12 or lower ... which in turn creates a survival TN for the associated procedure of 40+ and 24 for the cancer test. Overall slightly likelier than getting to the 100%/0.01 Essence implant ... but the premise of the current debate was that the rules on the additional Essence cost reduction was more readily available, i.e. supposedly has significantly lower TNs and/or less threshold problems.

[binarywraith]

Yeah, it's mostly described as being deeply unsettling for mages to look at, because it's clearly a person, yet on the Astral what should be showing their soul is a sucking black hole of negative energy twined about with chains of blood magic holding the tatters of their spirit into the body.