Valkyrie Unit, OR: doing surgery on myself! Options

[fistandantilus4....]

Just a thought I had the other day:

Say you jack in to a Valkyrie unit, using a RAS override, and perhaps a pain editor or something to that effect, and have a good biotech skill, could you use it to do cybersurgery on yourself?


What kind of moodifiers would you have to apply besides the norm for the Valkyrie?

Also, this is assuming some upgrades for it to handle cybersurgery , since I believe it's basically just for EMT surgery and such.

[Edward]

Any applicable wound modifiers (calculated including surgery damage) even with a pain editor if it puts you over deadly damage your going to pass out and loose the ability to run the Valerie unit.


A willpower test target about 8 to do that to yourself.

Edward

[fistandantilus4....]

BTW, does a pain editor even apply when you;re not exactly in your boding, such as for decking or rigging? Most of the 'ware that edits out pain is magic or bio. Is there a cybered way to do it, like ignoring damage from black IC hits?

[Grinder]

An Intelligence (2) roll - better find a good doc who can surely help you better.

[fistandantilus4....]

THat's not the POINT!

Quit talking sense Grinder! :S

[SirBedevere]

You could do brain surgery on yourself. The brain has no pain nerves and you could use local anaesthetic on the skin and muscles of the scalp.

[fistandantilus4....]

interesting.... so you could install your own Math SPU... but not your own cyber arm...

[hyzmarca]

You could install your own cyberarm, too. I just wouldn't recomend it. It would hurt but there are ways around the pain. RAS override would probably be most efficient. It wouldn't cause you to pass out if you are smart enough to manage bloodloss. You would certainly need a transfusion, but that isn't too difficult. If you were really insane (or a Jehova's Witness) you could potentially self transfuse from the severed arm with the proper preperation. It would be difficult none the less.

Of course, this is speaking realisticly, not concerning SR's messed up surgery rules.

Both the surgery and the planning should suffer a +2 modifier because of the unorthidox nature of the procedure. It should, however, be very possible. Remember, some very cheap doctors have sucessfully performed self-surgery in real life.

[Lady Door]

Here's my question... why are you even bothering to do this when one of the player characters in your group has a biotech skill of 13??

Stubborn dork. :)

[Vaevictis]

I'd allow it, and I wouldn't provide any modifiers other than the normal ones -- ie, damage levels if applicable, lack of sleep, etc, unless you did something that knocked out your ability to control the device (ie, brain surgery on the wrong part, etc).

I will say this -- if you take this route, and something goes wrong, you're really fscked. If you lose consciousness due to bloodloss when someone else is working on you, no big deal. You pass out; they keep working. If you lose consciousness while YOU are performing the surgery...

*shrug*

Go ahead if you really want to, but uh, yeah. That's dumb. :)

[Ol' Scratch]

All implant surgery requires the subject to basically take a Deadly Wound, which in game terms means you're knocked unconscious. So if you did try it, not only would you have to find the willpower to basically kill yourself, you'd also suffer Dumpshock the moment you did.

You'd be much better off giving a drone with a Mechanical Arm or two a drone pilot 5, an autosoft interpreter, and custom Biotech 5 and Medicine 5 autosofts.

[Edward]

Actually looking at the implant surgery damage table (MM p 151) in order for the surgery to cause a deadly wound you would need to be installing 8.9 points of cyber and bio wear. Although this is possible without cybermancy or complications (essence cost 5.9 bio index 3 for example) it would be incredibly uncommon.

A cyber arm is 1.0 essence (assuming no grading or essence costing additions) this would inflict 5 boxes of damage to the patient.

Recall that a decker or rigger benefiting from a RAS override still takes penalties for damage to his meat body (both physical and stun) thus when making the surgery test I would impose the damage penalty including the surgery damage. Obviously pain resistance from any source would be able to mitigate this.

Edward

[FlakJacket]

[Ol' Scratch]

I'm pretty sure the rule you're looking for applies only for Stun wounds. In any case, you may be right, Edward. I may just be misremembering the Trauma Surgery rules... I pretty much just skimmed that chapter in the book as I didn't see much use for it in my games. :D

[Modesitt]