A few months ago I saw a thread on whether or not Trolls belong in Shadowrun, and the conclusion I saw was that the majority think they do. That something has to make Street Samurai afraid of going to prison was my favorite argument.

I have the same question about cyborgs. Here is my take:

1. The Essence problem. Based on the Essence loss from other types of cyberware, I would think a brain in a jar would have an Essence far lower that 0.1. If you are just a brain in a jar, the astral self no longer recognizes the physical self and departs, and then without it the brain dies.

2. The targeting problem. From Augmentation "Mana spells are simply unable to lock on to the the cyborg's living component and are useless as a result." Couldn't the same thing be said of Full Body Armor? The explanation given is that there is a double inanimate barrier: {cyborg body}->{CCU}->{living brain} instead of just {full body armor}->{meat body}, but something like full-body FFBA under Full Body Armor could also have the correct properties to prevent targeting of Mana spells.

An obvious solution - make it like a Cyberzombie. A Cyberzombie is basically a soul bound to an artificially sustained corpse.

So for a cyborg, maybe be explicit that the astral self is locked in that CCU as well. Maybe the special sauce in the MCT surgical procedure is a layer of Orichalium in the CCU and the SR equivalent of the Magic Jar spell (haha).

In any case, if cyborgs are going to be in Shadowrun, let's make sure they make sense.

Edited to add SR4 tag.

I like that suggestion.

Back in the day when they introduced cyberzombies, it was because a lot of them were people who would otherwise have been dead. It would probably work well to basically combine the two and call them cyberzombies. I never understood how you can be a brain and innards and still have negative essence, but a brain in a jar is 0.1 essence. How are there no cyber-hearts? There are effectively cyber-lungs, or there were anyway.

But I agree, if not totally want to rebuild cyberzombie rules and descriptions now.

Be more precise in your terms. Presumably you mean a full-body 'borg—the term "cyborg" is poorly defined, and may cover people with hip replacements, but certainly covers someone with a smartlink and a smattering of headware.

But yes, in SR3 at least it is not possible to build Skwaaark without either absurdly high-grade 'ware (and still relatively weak stats) or cybermancy.

~J

Sorry, I meant SR4 cyborgs from Augmentation. The type where a brain in a jar rigs a mechanical body. I edited the original post to add a SR4 tag.

An additional thought to what I started with is something like a Cyberzombie is to Conjuring as cyborg is to Enchanting. So, there is magic involved, but instead of the Invoking, Corruption, and Metaplanar Quest the magical part of the procedure could be about Enchanting, Reagents, and the "Magic Jar" mojo.

Ugh, did they abuse more real-life terms?

Ah well, that's my cue to exit this discussion.

~J

The only thing that makes sense is genetic modification of the conception materials to create a fetus whose astral pattern is just a brain in a jar. The whole adult and child brain splicing is too metaphysically off.

That also solves the mana targeting problem, because the astral aura would only extend a short way from the pattern, just as it does with people in full armor, except their pattern is much closer to the surface.

The discussion about removing the brain is kinda moot, since it is a established reality in SR. Also, the 0.1 essence part is the beauty of the process.
And how do you know the astral self does not recognize itself anymore? Usually low essence is reached through massive implantation, which is not the case here. If you do the math, a sim booster, a crenial commlink (no sim module, mind you ) and a control rig are not worth a lot of essence. There were never rules or any indications for Body loss. Also, there was a character in the Dragonheart saga who lost his body to an aggressive flesh eating virus (or something) and was a brain in a jar. No blood magic involved here.

But the second part of your question is even more interesting. The aura of a cyborg is about as big as a football. you could certainly target it, if the CCU was exposed, but inside a drone body it is just too small to notice. Now think of the guy in superheavy armor. The guy is the brain, the armor is the CCU. The drone body would be a vehicle he is in.

So, armor does not render you impervious to manaspells, since your aura is still quite visible. With very low essence it could be debatable, but to game mechanics it makes no diffrence. If you hid yourself inside a car with tinted windows you would enjoy said immunity.

heh, i was just talking to the other GM in my group about that yesterday.

he made a pretty damn good point, actualy. the full body armor, while providing a full enclosure of the metahuman body, still works as a conceptual anchor for spell targeting. you can target someone with a mana spell because you know there's a human in there. you can't target a cyborg because you don't instinctualy know where the organic parts (spirit) is located.

you could also make the argument that the cyborg's armor is completely sealed, and higher density than body armor, as body armor would still have woven fabrics, air intake, and view ports, all of which could concievable allow for the astra signature to leak out of. however, this line of logic does still imply that you could concievably make a exoskeleton for a metahuman that would shield him from spells.

I think it's been said before, probably in one of the earlier editions of SR that the aura actually extends a short distance from the body. It was on the order of an inch or two, just like in those kirlian photographs that are said to show the aura.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography

So the guy in armor still has a visible aura, which extends a touch away from his body, but the aura of the jarhead extends a short distance from the biological brain, which is (or should be) buried deep in the body, hidden from view.

I think that more important than the magician knowing that there is a human in the full body armor, is that the target thinks of themself as a person wearing armor. The astral body of a projecting magician is representative of his own self-image. Because the wearer of the armor understands that that is what he is doing, his aura is vulnerable through the armor. This is a similar principle to objects of sympathetic links and, carried further, Attunement to an object.

The way that the cyborg brain interacts with the body is like a rigger with a vehicle, rather than like a person with clothing or armor. I suppose that maybe a cyborg's body might be useful as a sympathetic link, though, if he had a particular favorite.

They seem to have one body assinged, so yes it could be used for linking. But if you have the body, you most likely have the jarhead, so ritual sorcery is not necessary.

I think all that cyborgs do is confirm that Essence is more pshysiological than magical. The metahuman body can only take so much alteration before it dies. It's not the soul fleeing, it's the body going critical and flatlining. That would naturally cause the soul to go poof. But with magic, they can effectively kill you with implants, then tie your soul into the artificially sustained corpse.

With cyborgs, there's no body shutdown problem, since they take the body out of the equation. They have figured out how to sustain a brain seperate from the rest of the body. Why wouldn't this work for a cyberzombie? Probably because the body would still be sending lethal biofeedback to the brain as long as some of it was still left. When the body is going "yo, I'm dead!" the brain listens, and refuses to function. But when the brain is getting artificial signals from the nonexistent body going "yo, I'm cool over here," the brain is ok.

Or something like that. I know it's not a perfect explanation, but there's no such thing as a perfect explanation for essence. It defies codification and explanation, which is precisely why there's never been a definitive statement of what it actually is. It's both physical and magical at the same time, and also neither, and who cares?

If anything, Cyborgs lose too much essence from the process. You don't lose essence essence from having things cut off. The uncybered guy who steps on a landmine in Iraq and has has both of his legs blown off still has six essence. The bunraku quadruple-amputee fetish prostitute has a few tenths of a point worth of essence loss from the chipjack and that's all.

Having your brain cut out doesn't cost you any essence. Its putting it in a jar which, apparently, is the source of the problem. But, honestly, I don't see why it is so high, other than game balance.


On the issue of the drone body; it's a vehicle. It doesn't cost essence for the same reason your car doesn't cost you essence. It's controlled by a rigger interface using vehicle rules and vehicle skills. The big advantage over rigging, other than the immunity to jamming and spoofing, is that the brain-in-a-jar rigger doesn't have to waste karma on meat skills or meat stats. This is also why you can't target the brain-in-a-jar rigger with spells. You can target someone through his clothes; you can't target someone through his tank.

Augmentation cyborgs weren't the first brains in a jar in Shadowrun.

Hey, if I have to choose between canon and cool cyborgs, canon's getting the boot ASAP.

I'm probably going to eliminate cyberzombies from my games, and lessen the psychological limitations imposed on cyborgs. I like Ghost in the Shell.

Personally, I link the current Jarheads as being the "prototype" stage. Remeber when Cyberzombies first came out how they were pretty much just that: Cybernetic Zombies. Then, the second iteration, they retained a degree of their personalities, but not much, and now, they pretty much retain alot of who they are, and just suffer severe clinical depression. I expect that with Jarheads, we are going to see the initial problems we have now, then a little less, then even less as the technology and cybermancy involved in the procedure(yes..I figure that there IS some degree of Cybermancy involved) improves. I figure that Ghost in the Shell is probably about 3rd r 4th RUles Iteration of Cyborgs.

Actually, there is no magic involved at all. That was kind of the point of the whole thing. Just tech. Clean. Pure. Predictable (you wish)

Cyborgs definitely remain in the prototype stage. However, there is also definitely no magic involved in the process, nor is there likely to be as the technology advances. Those who want a little more game world background on cyborgs might want to spend some quality time reading through VR2.0, Threats, or System Failure.

Wouldn't it be highly useful to apply magical healing?
One of the problems with 'borgs is the period of total sensory deprivation in the time between removing the brain and the damage from the surgery healing.
Augmentation claims that this process takes several weeks, during which the borg cannot make use of his sim implants, having no access to the outside world, being trapped in his own mind and going apeshit crazy.
Wouldn't a good, simple healing spell avoid this?
Or is a standard healing spell unable to accelerate the integration of cyberware into neural tissue?
In the latter case, development of a spell that does just this would make borgs as written a good degree more stable.

I tend to agree that cyborgs are too low essence, but remember that surgery can cause essence loss, even in order to offset some of the penalties (in SR3).

But it's not the brain in a jar which is the problem. It's that the astral pattern would become attached to the drone body to such a degree, that it would stretch over to cover it just like a cyberbody, causing essence loss, unless it never remembered the loss of a body. Obviously my degree in metaphysics is from an Amazonian institution, but still.

do i smell a round of fluff bending as to avoid having a mage run into a jarhead in a coat and wonder why his uberspell didnt drop him on the spot?

Well, yeah, most likely you would have both, but you could certainly get the body on its own if you, say, damaged it, and after it got away, the brain was transplanted into a different body while the first was undergoing repairs. Really, it doesn't matter, though.



It's definitely both. This is essentially the basis for holistic medicine.



You could have a cyborg that was also a cyberzombie, I reckon.

Keep in mind that healing thresholds are penalized by essence. The 0.1 essence of a jarhead isn't exactly amenable to that. Also consider that the folks who were in on the development aren't among the more magic-friendly.

hyzmarca's actually much more on the right track on this one. The CCU is not an essence-friendly environment for many, many reasons.

Gah. That certainly was not the intent. Besides, a jarhead has its magic attribute reduced to zero. That's going to conflict with the cyberzombie's magic rating of 1.

The original developers might not have considered it, but for further improving (read : mentally stabilizing) jarheads, it might very well become an option.
The penalties on healing would definitely hurt, but i doubt that experimental delta clinics would employ mages unable to heal patients with 0.1 essence.

Still, one could argue on a basis of my suggestion that standard healing spells do not accelerate the neural integration of the CCU, thereby further slowing down the advent of this improvement of the whole jarhead concept.
But for later editions, it might be worth considering.
After all, cyberzombies have come a long way, too, since the days of Hatchetman.



Shure, turning a cyberzombie into a jarhead would not work out.

Turning a jarhead into a cyberzombie, on the other hand, might very well be possible.
After all, the average cyberzombie wouldn't have a magic attribute to begin with, right?
And even if he had, it would be reduced to zero by the cybermantic process, wouldn't it?
And still, he winds up with magic 1 afterwards.

I understand that a combination of both approaches was not intended, the whole Essence 0.1 thing sounds as if it is designed to prevent any aditional implants, like, i don't know, cerebral boosters and similar headware.
But still...for some of us, certain possibilities are just too insane not to take into consideration.

Then again, a clonal brain would prevent efficient use of an IMS.
So, this attempt could only work out with an adult or probably child brain...resulting in an extremely unstable, most likely utterly insane individual with a life expectancy of several months at best.

Yeah. I never sincerely considered ever doing this, but like you were saying, both cybermancy and cyborging are crazy enough on their own not to think about bringing them together.

As to why magical healing isn't more common in the cyborginization process, I think that the main reason is that the facilities that are equipped to make the jarheads probably have a rather nasty background count built up. I guess it wouldn't be too much worse than where they work their cybermancy magic, though.

You know, I'm a little tired of ways for scientists to reduce essence to improbably low levels. Where's our arcane, rare process for increasing someone's essence, huh? I want a procedure to feed a mage's soul to another mage and give that mage twice the essence and twice the magic power, GDI!

essence drain? vampires and similar has it.

That's something i was really wondering about when reading the new cyberzombie rules.
Just consider the amount of astral pollution a single cyberzombie causes by RAW.
A clinic with cyberzombies as patients is not exactly a good place to conduct warped healing magic and quests to abhorrent metaplanes.

They'd have to do the whole postsurgical care in a completely different place than the original operation/ritual combo, or they're mightily hosed.

Except the magic is cast by toxic shamans. Don't they benefit from the twisted nasty stinky aura of a cyberzombie? If they don't per RAW, they probably should...

Hm...no exact statement regarding that issue, i think.
Toxics take well to background count caused by environmental pollution, but i don't know wether the astral hazing caused by cyberzombies should fall under this category.

I'd say, if anyone benefits from cyberzombie background count, it's the guys who practice cybermancy (which would solve the problem with the astrally polluted clinics).
Maybe this could even be extended to mages following the path of the dead in general, since SM mentions that cybermancers fall under this category.

Hm, since cyberware is limited by your essence.. wait, dont dragons have shitload of essence?
I present to you Cyberdunkel!

Dragon cyberzombie !
Some runners are gonna cry :>

(although a dragon with only wired reflexes would already be frigging scary)

There was a rule in SR3 MitS about background count being aspected to the type of magic which caused it, IIRC. Such as blood magic sites becoming more powerful for blood magic as time went on, while simultaneously making it harder to perform other magic there. There was also a metamagic which allowed a group to aspect power sites towards one form of magic or another. This comes up in game fluff a few times, along with a similar issue sparking the SS/Tsmishian war.

You mean "scary" as in "gimped"?




That's practically the same in SR4.

Why gimped? He would lose a few dices of magic (compensated with initiation) in exchange for more initiative passes.
A dragon playing more each turn is bad news...

He should better stick with a synaptic accelerator.
But wait, that is scary.
A wizworm with 4 IP and just one die less for spellslinging...that's what i'd call more bang for your buck.

What's really scary is having an amnesiac disembodied dragon possess a cyberzombie. He retains his full essence but also has all of the cyberware.

Don't forget to add a universal, uberpowerful magical focus into the equation. Good times.

Additionally, he stands at the threshold of reality and forcibly halts the return of paradise.

~J

that's a possibility, but it's also possible that there simply isn't enough actual deviation from the astral template (or whatever terminology one chooses to use) to kill a cyborg. in SR, losing a limb does not subtract from your essence--only replacing that limb causes essence loss. from a magical point of view, popping your brain out of your skull isn't neccessarily a change--it's just like amputating your body. for all we know, the essence loss is 100% accounted for by the cybernetics attached to the disembodied brain, which allow it to survive and to control its cyborg body.


well, he could spend essence on it... or he could sustain an increased reflexes spell at the cost of -2 dice pool. or use a sustaining focus for -0 dice pool.

So THAT's why the cover dragon of Dragons of the Sixth World is wearing nipple rings !

Yes, but I'm not going to wait for SR7 or 8 to get the cyborgs I want .

I do not have augmentation yet unfortunately so I have not read this.
Does this refer to sim implants added during the process or ones added prior? I mean I would think if they were previous implants (near or in the head naturally) then they could be used. I would think it would make sense that SOP would become, "get the sim mods in and working before the actual brain yanking starts".

Also bear in mind the process of becoming a cyborg sets essence to 0.01. This is distinctly different than having a piece of 'ware which has a cost such that the loss works out to leave you with 0.01. Sure, there's skillwires, and a datajack, and a VCR, but what does all that add up to? There's some life-support handwavy stuff, but my point is, it could be that a large amount of that missing essence is actually usable "essence hole." There's obviously a limit to what you could use it for, but cerebral boosters, mnemonic enhancers, etc, why not? I'd like to see the VCR expanded upon to have an actual essence cost, maybe a requirement to be delta grade, and still keep the rule that the process sets essence to 0.01, if it is higher than that.

Hmmm, I don't actually have my copy of Augmentation in front of me, what all do we know cyborgs have, in addition to life-support details that we don't know exactly about?