Making a stealthy character Options

[TheScamp]

You mean the part where it says, "vat-grown synthetic muscles replace the user's own"? ;)

[Cursedsoul]

My "if its not mentioned...." comment was directed at the notion that you can't adjust to it. He basically said its not possible, there's nothing in the rules about it, so its GM call. Hope this clarifies.

You people are missing the point about my "its the only piece of cyberware to like, not replace anything" I was trying to convey the point that you aren't adding anything foreign. I'm starting to get kind of tired with this debate as nothing new is really being said anymore so I'm not caring as much how I word things. Sorry. :sleepy:

Bone lacing adds. muscle replacement adds. You can't control it naturally, only influence. Bone lacing doesn't need control as you add to the bones, so it the bone hits something or moves, the BL goes along for the ride.

MR is harder to buy but its still not a really big deal. A muscle either pushes or pulls, not both. Its not overly hard to imagine it being worked into the central nervous system so that it works in perfect coordination WHICH WOULD HAVE TO BE DONE. I doubt that's really possible but its not really worth debating as it doesn't matter. MR isn't going to make you fly off the handle and shoot someone in the face.

Wired Reflexes is hooked up to everything in the body but its certainly not fluid. Like I said, it activates in spurts, firing off electric signals to the rest of the body. It'll be passively active until an offending stimuli's prescene is detected at which point it fires off.

BR on the other hand is ALWAYS ACTIVE. Its ALWAYS FIRING SIGNALS. They aren't electric. They're the natural signals produced by the various glands (I forget the scientific name. Shame on me) and distributed across the body.

Initially its going to cause all sorts of hell. After a day or two of this it'll noticeably be improved. You're still frazzled, but you're learning to cope. It'll improve little by little over the course of let's say, a month. I don't know how long it takes to adapt to a dramatic change but its not going to take much longer than that I imagine.

It doesn't matter though because runners are like I said, kind of presumed to be at home with their implants. BR is going to be controlled a lot easier than WR.

You know why? The body doesn't NEED all of its nerve endings all the time. Its not going to use what it doesn't need. Now with BR I'm sure there's something in there that will rotate their use because they'll eventually wither and die without use.

This is what addiction does. You take a drug and it clogs the ends of your nerves just before the synapse so the neurochemicals (whatever they're really called..ugh I feel like an idiot) can't get through. Your body's solution? Grow more.

It'll keep doing this so long as that entrance to the synapse is blocked. Stop taking the drug? It gets cleared. Neurochemicals can flow through the once again. What happens to the unused ones? They complain bitterly. They whine and complain because they're hungry for stimuli and not getting any.

I think this is what's attributed to the shakes and discomfort associated with withdrawal. Your body is going through hell because its adapting to the sudden change of not having the drugs its become accustomed to using.

Anyways with BR that's what's going to happen. These nerve endings will be there and we'll presume kept functional (after all 2.8e is a helluva lot to pay so it makes sense). Normal life? Not going to be a big hassle.

Life threatened? All of those extra neural pathways will be pumping neurochemicals (can someone PLEASE tell me their real name?) quickly and efficiently. This will give you more chemicals to work with, increasing their effect, and thus, giving you boosted reflexes.

The same thing is accomplished with WR only its artifical electrical stimulation, not something you're going to really get used to.

I'm rather annoyed with the people who wrote these books. I doubt they picked up a science book or attended any basic anatomy and physiology class. I've taken an entry level one and I know enough to be able to debate it.

I took the class a couple months ago and I've forgotten a lot of it unfortunately. I've actually got a CD encyclopedia containing 4 CDs of information on the human body. I bet the designers of this game could've made jolly good use of it.

I'm not saying I know everything but gods, this is basic stuff and it should have been accounted for. :( If I were designing a game that I cared about (which for me, would be a prerequisite, no questions asked) I'dve researched it. Asked a few people, seen some movies, whatever.

For a high-tech world you need to have a solid background on the basics. How hard is that? How LONG would that take? Not very. Hell, a few months in basic A+P, electronics, physics, etc types of courses and you've probably got enough factual information to work with.

Shadowrun's got an interesting history and a cool atmosphere but damn...a lot of what's in these books is bleh. Before you go and say "If you don't like it, don't play" slap yourself because if I didn't care, I wouldn't debate it, as I'm sure a lot of you do.

I care about this game. I want to succeed at it and I want to understand it. When fallacies, blank spots, hazy areas, and loopholes abound it leads to a lot of discussion.

Whether this all matters or not I don't know. I love debating, especially when its kept civil. I've enjoyed myself, its getting kind of stale, but that's to be expected.

[Cheesy Answer]

[BitBasher]

you can rationalize all you want, but it's a house rule. All cybernetic systems are as twitchy as each other on a die for die basis.

[Kagetenshi]

The twitchiness comes from your reflexes working faster than your mind does. That problem doesn't come into play with synaptic accelerators or magic, because those accelerate your mind too. Wired and boosted, however, just increase the speed at which signals travel around, meaning your spine does a lot more of the talking.

/possible interpretation that, while non-canon, fits into canon (which "they'll get used to it" does not)

~J

[Cursedsoul]

[Necrotic Monkey]

[Cheesy Answer]

[Kagetenshi]

[Herald of Verjig...]

Wrong.

Edit: not a response to Kag

[Cursedsoul]

First off I wasn't trying to claim that we use EXACLY 10%. You missed the point guys. I was trying to convey that we don't use a whole lot of it. We certainly aren't using it to its fullest potential. So you can stop feeling superior now. Stop taking everything so god damn literal. Hopefully you should know how to critically analyze by this point in the game. You apparently missed the boat on this attempt.

You could have you know, done what I did and ask for a rules page (or in this instance, some proof) instead of being Mr.Bland and assuming you knew exactly what I meant and that I was trying to pass off my 10% statement as solid fact. I wasn't trying to do that and shame on you for thinking otherwise.

[Kagetenshi]

[Necrotic Monkey]

I completely disagree that it "should be" that way. Boosted Reflexes shouldn't be a cybernetic modification -- chemical or genetech would make more sense whereas bioware wouldn't -- but it should still have the twitchiness factor. It's basically a permanent drug boost. It's like being on PCP 24/7. That's why it's a cheap alternative to the much more expensive and effective Wired Reflexes; it's a drug treatment even gangers can afford (relatively). It's not supposed to be better than Wired.

You may get used to it to some degree, but that's accounted for as part of the healing process to begin with... just like with every other permanent augmentation. I'm sure it takes time to get used to that new cybernetic arm, or those heightened senses, or having a computer in your brain, or etc.

[Cheesy Answer]

[Cursedsoul]

Its not an outright lie kage. Scientists know precisely jack squat about the human mind. From what I read in my text book and from what my teacher showed us (you guessed it, another video. I swear he has a million health documentaries...) its plausible.

Its not a lie. I'll admit that I don't know everything but I'm sure there's a scientist out there who would agree with the concepts I've put forth. There are skeptics and there are believers, someday down the line there will be enough information to make both happy. Until that day (and its probably YEARS away) all you can do is say "I disagree and you're an idiot."

Anyways..

I haven't mislead anyone. I admit to not expressing myself as well as I would have liked, but who doesn't suffer from this? Its just as much your fault for misinterpretting as it is mine for not being crystal clear.

I never said that it was canon. I said it SHOULD be not that it IS this way or that way.

Its not misleading. I'll admit to confusing and a bit muddled, but well, no one's exactly helping me out and I'm no expert. Just how am I supposed to provide all the facts and fill in all the holes when its my opinion and the rulesbooks don't really help?

My only real aim was to convince you that what I'm thinking is possible. Of course totally convincing you is all well and good but that's not what I wanted to do. I tried, just as you, and failed, just as you to sway me.

We've more or less agreed to disagree and that's fine with me. I'm the unpopular "let's change it all!" POV so any admission that "yeah it COULD be possible" is good enough.

Now moving on.

CAN YOU PLEASE GOD DAMN READ MY POSTS?!??!?!

Ugh. Everyone who thinks I'm saying that there should be no problem IS WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

I keep trying to say THAT ITS NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE and not everyone is picking up on it.

I'm taking to capping stuff because you may not be reading my entire post, or are reading it but its so long that your brain is banging itself against your skull and you're missing the point here and there. Understandable, and understandably annoying.

I am trying to convey that YOU CAN ADJUST TO IT AND THEREFORE DO NOT SUFFER THESE FITS OF UNWANTED ACTIONS AS OFTEN AS WITH WIRED REFLEXES NOR ARE THEY AS HARD TO RESIST.

BR3 conveys TN6. That's a 16% chance of not going haywire. The books says nothing about how many successes are required. NONE.

So its up to the GM and player to compromise. Frankly I'd say that you have to get a # of successes equal to the level of the boost to completely blunt the impulse.

Example: Someone slams a car door, you roll the perception test. We'll say you have BR3 and the TN is 6.

You have intelligence 6 so you roll and get 1 success.

Its decided the impulse is to push this person down. You push them, but you manage to restrain yourself enough to mediate the blow and simply push them back a few inches.

Same test, only this time you get 2 successes. This time you get as far as laying your hands on them before stopping.

Same test, now you get 3 successes. You start to move towards them but are able to stop yourself before you do anything to draw any attention, having successfully blocked your impulse.

For WR this makes sense because you have no god damn choice. The machines you have in you are going auto-pilot so yes its going to be a real pain in the ass.

For BR, something wired into your natural body, and thus able to be controlled by your brain, yes its hard but not that hard.

I don't agree with TN6 at all. I think TN4 (base perception, right?) is better. 50/50. Hell, TN5 is still good at essentially 40/60 in favor of reacting.

Its not NEARLY as hard to resist NATURAL urges as it is MECHANICAL urges. You turn that machine on and see how well you can stop it. All the self-control in the world isn't going to make involuntary reactions easier. It'll make DESTRUCTIVE ones (such as pulling a gun) easier, but that's a separate test and is covered in the book.

I have no problem with failing the initial perception test then having to roll willpower just as with WR because you've already elected to react so there's nothing you can do except not get yourself arrested with any luck.

This is of course, also assuming the impulse is to BE destructive not like, hit the deck or hide behind the mailbox.

This brings up an interesting point my friend made. I was discussing this with him and he brought up combat veterans.

What about them? You know how it is in the movies, Combat veteran zones out and relives the battles, or hits the deck when a carhorn goes off, etc, etc.

Sure they don't have wired reflexes but its still something the brain has learned and become accoustomed to.

How would this impact a life in the shadows? If you've been running for a few years, what kinds of damage has it done? How paranoid have you really become, willful or not?

[BitBasher]

Debunking the "10% of your brain is used" myth.

This has come up on this forum before.

Just cause your teacher tells you somehting doesn't mean he isn't full of shit. :D

[Kagetenshi]

[Cursedsoul]

He didn't just TELL us. We watched a video, read a short blurb in the book. If its in a printed book in a school its got to have some sort of basis. Its a fairly recent book too.

And he didn't just cover one side, we got both. You don't use a lot, but it doesn't mean it'd be easy to and its probably not going to be something you can consciously influence. The way he described it, it functions like a backup. I lost the part of my brain responsible for speech. Its got a shot at rewiring it in due time so that I can talk normally (or close to it anyways) once again by using parts of the brain that don't see any real use.

and like I said we know almost nothing. Just because its a theory today doesn't mean its real. "The world is flat" was once a proven fact until some dumb shmuck discovered it wasn't totally by accident.

Thats more or less how advancement happens in science I imagine. Some guy fiddles around and BAM! goldmine.

That's what happened with Watson and Crick. They stole (scooped is the term my teacher taught us for this behavior) the research done in collaboration with Rosalind Franklin and some other guy who's name I forget.

They were all working together but Rosalind was stubborn as all hell. She accidently discovered a big piece of the missing proof W+C needed to verify their DNA structure theory.

Happened totally by accident. Sure they had formulas and theories but in the end it came down to plain ol' chance.

So yeah, my teacher isn't full of shit. If he is, so are you. :P

[Person 404]

[Kagetenshi]

[Cursedsoul]

The real stress was that we aren't using our brains to the fullest possible extent. I don't really care what scientists have to say at this point because its not infallible. Sure they've got a lot of things figured out partially, but they will never get the whole deal. They can get enough to satisfy most everyone, but what we know now about the human brain hardly qualifies as anything worthy of more than a "good job, keep it up. Looks like you might be on to something."

To Person:

Yeah I know. I live in Massachusetts, where the taxes are high and the education system is good. Its pretty well up there apparently. I'm sure a search could provide some link to data giving the ranks of education quality for the states. Whatever. Doesn't really matter.

For a schoolbook its a lot safer, especially with the fact that the teacher and books generally say "we don't have all the facts in, but this is what we've got."

I'm sure in ten years what we thought was good stuff is going to be obsolete or vastly expanded upon. My AP Bio teacher got to telling us about all the stuff that made the newest edition of the Campbell biology books that weren't in the previous one, and how whole sections of what we learned weren't in the books she had when she was in highschool and college.

[Kagetenshi]

[Cursedsoul]

All I'm trying to do on that issue is say that what's said now isn't solid as a rock. That's all. I'll admit that you could be right if you'll extend the same to me.

Its not like I'm trying to debate something as useless as "do we breathe air?"

We're debating something that's contemporary and probably done so formally between two scientists who've dedicated a significant portion of their life to the pursuit.

I'm going to stop responding to this debate on the grounds that its failing to be interesting now. Neither of us really doing much of anything. Shall we just consider the matter at an impasse for the time being?

[Kagetenshi]

I'll grant that there is a possibility that you are correct. However, for the viewers, it must be said that the evidence does not weigh in your favour. Obviously evidence is not infallible, but we cannot go on evidence that we do not have.

~J

[KarmaInferno]

All I know is that if you want to have parts of your clothing glow in different colors, go right ahead.

After all, the stars of Splinter Cell and Starcraft: Ghost both have glowing bits and nobody can see them sneaking around.

:D


-karma