Lamentations of a Cyborg Options

[=Spectre=]

I've been working for a while to come up with a list of rules that I want to present to my GM about converting a character to a fully cybernetic being. For technical or inspirational references, think of Ghost in the Shell, and especially the Stand Alone Complex series of anime, where there is no real organic components left, and the essence of a person is downloaded into a cybernetic brain.

But for all of the advantages I've come up with, I really am hitting a roadblock on what detriments there are in regards to the process. I really don't want it to be a dodge around the rules for Cybermancy, but I also don't think that Cybermancy itself fits the drawbacks area. There's no risk of Cancer(No body to crate cancer cells), getting "lost in the machine" is equally unlikely as the machine is all there is. So I'm reaching out to the comunity for help on this one. I'll post the rules I've come up with so far, and everyone jsut give me whatever detriments you feel should apply. I'm gonna cut out the filler of the rules for now and go straight to the basics. I'll have a weblink up in a day or so with the detailed stuff.

=====RULES FOR FULL CYBORG BODY CONVERSION=====

1. Cyborg body cannot be purchased at Creation.

2. Requires access to a Delta clinic at least to download the mind.

3. Body cannot be fited with any Bioware.

4. Body can be constructed using the following values:

• Intelligence and Willpower remain the same
• All other Attributes start at a base of 1
• Increasing an attribute from 1-6 costs ¥10,000 per point
• increasing an Attribute from 6-9 costs ¥15,000 per point
• Increasing an attribute from 9-12 costs ¥20,000 per point
• All attributes save for Intelligence and Willpower have a maximum limit of 12. Intelligence and Willpower have the normal racial limit of the character's race.

Body has Essence of 8, however, the following cyberware cannot be taken:
Cybertorso, arms, legs, or skull(all are incorporated into the body already)
Strength enhancers or Quickness enhancers.
Move By Wire

Advantages
Body adds +2 to all physical damage resistance rolls.
Mana based combat spells (Stunbolt, Manabolt) cannot affect the cyborg. However, spells such as Wreck or Ram(cyborg) can.
Illusion spells that affect only the mind fail, howver, spells which also have an effect on technological systems work normally and Artifical body gets a +1 to TN to resist them - James McMurray

Disadvantages
Spells such as Heal, Treat, Stabilize, Hibernate and Oxygenate all automatically fail. All damage must be repaired in a facility or shop with the following requirements - James McMurray

• Light Damage: ¥2000 per box of damage, B/R Electronics or Cybernetics test TN difficult 3
• Moderate Damage: ¥6,000 per box of damage, B/R Electronics or Cybernetics test TN difficulty 5
• Serious damage: ¥25,000 per box of damage, B/R Electronics or Cybernetics test TN difficulty 7
• Deadly Damage: ¥100,000 per box of damage, B/R Electronics or Cybernetics test TN difficulty 9
• Over-damage: Not possible Body has been too badly damaged. Replacement parts must be ordered for locations determined by GM. Cost is equal to Body cost / 5 per piece.

Brain can be hacked into especially with a head-mounted radio or telephone active (More to come on this) - Backgammon

[James McMurray]

The -1 TN for phsical illusions should be a +1 TN to pierce them. Having a cyborg around shouldn't make it harder for other people and cameras to see through illusions.

I would definitely give a serious charisma hit (even down to a max of 1). Being completely inhuman and made of metal has to have some major social drawbacks.

Healing won't work. Fixing damage requires a shop/facility and B/R Electronics & cyberware. Not sure what the cost should be, but it should increase exponentialy with the damage level. i.e. It should also require some fairly hefty skill checks.

Stress for cyberware rules should be used, perhaps even worse for cyborgs because all they have is cyberware. If a street sam's armware gets a little twitchy he still has meat and bone to use it with. If a cyborg's arm gets twitchy, he stuck with it.

[Nikoli]

I would at least triple the costs and step up the progression a bit.
6 point steps are too much leeway. try 2~3, 4~6,7~9, 10~12 and you'll more closely fit what's already published.

Also, i don't see the quickness being all that great.

What you are esentially describing is a Medium Anthroform drone with a great deal of online memory. I don't see these bodies being that much better than what's already possible with drone or cybernetic technology.

[mfb]

interesting concept, but i don't think it fits with SR's current level of technology.

if you're going with it, though, i'd keep the "lost in the details" problem. the person has effectively become an AI, a program; the chance that their program has no bugs or glitches is vanishingly small.

[Botch]

Um, you seem to have missed a restriction on CHA, say a cap of about 3.

1. No biological components, no pheromones.
2. No natural body language.
3. Empathic disassociation.
4. Its a machine, no primal or chemical drives

Essense should be 6, not 8, absolutely no justification for 8. Actually I'd like to see it be 0.01-ish base and use ECU/free essense slots (ie. cyberlimb/eye) for allocation of cyber essense costs.

Attribute costs are way too cheap. 24,000 :nuyen: for a paragon body?

Body +'s should come from the fitted cyberware, not automatically.

Not trying to be too critcal, stick with it and maybe it won't be rejected straight away.

[Ancient History]

With the concept you describe, "cyborg" is an innappropos. Think ye rather "Artifical Intelligence in a Robot Body."

[=Spectre=]

I did forget to mention that everyone who presents a solid idea will get mentioned both in this post and my final version. I'll be editing the original post to include the references.

Thanks James. I don't have my books in front of me, but I had forgotten that everyone gets a resistance roll to illusions.

And Nikoli, I don't want to reinvent the wheel here. My GM and I have already agreed that there is enough information in Shadowrun already to create the body of an artifical being. But like there are rules for Cybermancy that go beyond the technical impressions, so too, do I want rules that go beyond just tossing points together. In my particular case, the drawbacks are going to be the determining factor in whether ornot my character(or anyone else's for that matter) can actually do this as we'll be RPing this all out.

[Jrayjoker]

Are you going more for the android in the Alien movies, or a cyborg without the -org(anism) part?

[=Spectre=]

Botch, It's not ¥24,000, it's ¥240,000, and that's all before street index or anything else gets added. Just like in Cybermancy, it's not the ware or the IMS that's the expensive part. it's the process. With price tags ranging from a quarter million, to maybe 1.3 million nuyen per body, it's not going to be too uncommon to find a body availible or have one ordered by the mega corps for their clients. Getting the body is supposed to be the fairly easy part. It's getting into it that's the pain. I've got other rules going into how the mind is downloaded into an offline UV matrix host and the signals from the mind are calibrated into the body. But those rules have been pretty well hammered out. I'm just looking for drawbacks here.

[=Spectre=]

The latter JRayJoker. Like I said, think Ghost in the Shell, where there really isnt a physical component left in the artificial body. chalk up the early references to cyborgs as too much Mountain dew in the morning :-)

[Lantzer]

Could be interesting, but the big question seems to have been left out:

Is this a robot running a simulation of John Doe, with autosofts for all his skills, a learning pool, and an extra autosoft for 'personality emulation of John Doe'?

Or is this really the 'soul' (for lack of a better term) of John Doe, trapped in the machine?

In the first case, no cybermancy stuff is necessary. You've just got a new hardware AI running around. In the second, you can't escape from the cybermancy rules, as the problem is that there is nothing to keep the soul anchored. If removing a bunch of tissue and implanting ware will cause the person's spirit to bugger off and make them die, then total replacement of tissue will do the same thing. There is nothing left that the spirit recognizes as 'John Doe'.

I have no idea that the essence cost of this would be. minus infinity? You've basically turned the person into a free spirit inhabiting a robot body, and yet able to make use of all of it's special toys.

I guess this wasn't much help. I don't think Shadowrun's assumptions are geared for this.

[Lantzer]

As another thought, ever look at the full-borg rules in the chromebook conversions at the plastic warriors site?

[Jrayjoker]

OK, so I should think of the base body as that of the android, er sorry, artificial person in Aliens.

Give them a +TN on all in-person social skill rolls and ettiquites, and limit their charisma to 1/2 the original PCs charisma (roound down) for all charisma based checks.

Don't allow them to dev their charisma beyond unmodified racial max of the race the PC started as, and make the karma cost to dev charisma 2-4 times normal (due to not being in their own bodies and having to overcome the new shell).

[=Spectre=]

Well Lantzer it's the real soul. For a while I tinkered with the notion that the body is just a copy of the person's mental image and reactions, while their meat body was cryofrozen, but that presents a whole nother slew of rules to come up with.

I'm trying to avoid Cybermancy because the rules for that are effective, but also rather frustrating to roleplay out. What I'm looking for is something that has a lot of functionality as a person still(thinks, acts, has likes and dislikes, plans and hops still) but also has a number of physical problems with being an AC(Artifical Construct shall be the new phrase. So I have written so it sahll be :-) ), not just social ones.

[Botch]

[=Spectre=]

That's why I'm asking for some drawbacks here Botch. I want ideas on how to reign in the power some.

[Backgammon]

[GrinderTheTroll]

[=Spectre=]

Good call on the hacking rule Backgammon. I don't have the rules in front of me, so I'll have to figure them out when I get home, but yes, the mind can be hacked. Even worse, if you have a head mounted radio or telephone, it can be hacked even if you aren't plugged into a datajack or the matrix.

[KarmaInferno]

Hm. Yes, by SR standards a full conversion body would have little to no Charisma.

However, in the Ghost in the Shell source, the main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, has scads of charisma and empathy. The GitS universe has the cyborgization process pretty much perfected, with few of the mental problems stemming from going fully artificial that Shadowrun has.

I don't think SR level tech is near that level yet. Heck, in GitS it's possible to copy a soul to several different bodies, though the copies are generally degraded and it eventually destroys the original.


-karma

[=Spectre=]

Karma, you have nailed the effect that I want to get. The Artifical Construct is going to represent the next major leap in cybernetic technological development in the SR universe. Instead of constantly trying to reduce the essence cost and psychological effects of cyberware and bioware, the idea is to follow the thinking of an AI and pretty well remove the body from the equation. But it's nowhere near as comon as it is in GitS and GitS: SAC. Artificial construct implantation takes as much processing power as it does using a PAB unit to alter someone's memories if not a lot more.

[Cray74]

[hyzmarca]

To get around the cybermancy restrictions, I have a few ideas.
1) Argubably, a person's "soul" can become a spirit under certain conditions. There is canon to support this. (Big D's Ghost)
2) Spirits can be bound to physical objects. (Homunculi, Hidden Life)

In normal Cybermancy, the "soul" is either tricked into believing that the flesh is still intact or bound to the body using unnatural magics. The latter is more likey than the former, as spirits that try to possess a Cyberzomibe become trapped.
To get around this problem, the bosd should be killed and the mages performing the procedure should facilitate the transformation of the "soul" into a Free Spirit (or other type of spirit) and bind it. Binding this spirit should be fairly easy since it shares the person's True Name.
Before the person is killed, all of his memories should be downloaded a heavily enchanted electronic brain in which all conductive metals have been replaced with orihalcum. This would allow the Spirit to interact with the flow of electrons in the electronic brain to access its memories and control whatever body with brain is implanted in.

It fails the procedure is far more risky than cybermancy considering that it means certain death for the character and a POed Free Spirit .

[CanvasBack]

Well, here is how I look at.

You need a Deltaware clinic to pull this off, right? Well, why don't you just go through the BBB and M&M and see what a full set of Deltaware body parts is going to cost you. With whatever essence you have left, start getting things like the Mneumonic enhancer, MPs of memory, datajack (all at delta), whatever else you would need to replace your brain and other enhancements would be gravy.
Get your essence down to .01 this way, and you'll basically have what you want, at the appropriate cost.

I don't think it's worth it either way, but I think it's the only option if you wanted to stay within the rules.

[=Spectre=]

Hyzmarca, you're definetly on the right track as well. Give me more on what you're thinking. I'm liking the orichalcum brain, especially considering that our game is post YotC.

CavnasBack, my GM suggested the same thng at first. But that's not what I'm looking at. I don't want to just be a mega cybered character. Cybermancy already covers that. As I said, look at ghost in the Shell and give me your thoughts.