With the new matrix rules, and rampant discussions on ware hacking, and even some suggestions of brain hacking, as well as new toys like jarheads and full cyber-bodies, I think it's time (if no-ones done it already) to put some stats to Major Motoko Kusanagi, of Ghost In The Shell fame.

No BP or availability limits. We'll assume that she's got a full delta body. The idea is to create closest to what the Major is within the rules. All sixes for the skills shows a lack of imagination. No more input from me, get to it and discussing it.

full delta body would assume that she got cyber-limb replacement, but wouldn't in her case be the jar-head in an anthro-drone be more exact?
as an aside, when i read this topic i first thought someone was trying to build the major devlin krass *g*

I'd throw a build together myself, but I don't actually have Augmentation, and therefore don't have jarhead rules.

Thinking about it, maybe we could make this thread for more than just Kusanagi. I'm sure Batou would be an interesting build too, and fairly different. Togusa would probably be built with realistic buildpoints. Any character from GITS is fair game, really.

togusa would be a normal human with a headware comlink, thats it.

and the major is most likely a jar-head. thats the impression one gets from a episode of gits:sac-2, where they show some of her childhood.

supported by the fact that she gets her cyberbrain taken out and plopped into a new body several times throughout the various series, mangas, and movies.

it's interesting to note that if you consider Kusanagi to have 9s in all physical stats, and you don't want to make her a jarhead, it's actually impossible to create her under SR4 rules. synthetic cyberarms simply don't have the capacity to get 9s in Bod, Str, and Agi, even if you use custom limbs with base stats of 6.

here's what i ended up doing:

2x custom cyberarm (6 Str, Agi, Bod)
+3 Str
+3 Agi
+2 Bod

2x custom cyberleg (6 Str, Agi, Bod)
+3 Str
+3 Agi
+3 Bod

custom cybertorso (6 Str, Agi, Bod)
+2 Str
+2 Agi

custom cyberskull (6 Str, Agi, Bod)
+2 Bod

the net result is, if i did my math right:
Bod: 7 average, 8 in all limbs + head, +6 soak
Agi: 8 average, 9 in all limbs
Str: 8 average, 9 in all limbs

thats the problem of numbering something thats been created and recreated in different media.

just like superheros from marvel and dc comics, what works without fail in one interpretation of the character do not so in another.

so one have to set a baseline, what variant are one going to use? the gits1 movie, the gits:sac series, or the manga?

and i think its been shown in all variants that while the body is both strong and fast, it cant really take that much abuse.

and if one go by the sac series, its claimed in one episode that her shell is a old model...

are they different enough to require different stats? the only major difference (haw!) i can think of is that in the manga, she's shown to be a freak a bit more explicitly. that aspect is definitely hinted at in SAC, though.

Why would you assume that she got 9s across the board? How about working with some more reasonable numbers.
Just because it is some superhero (or whatever) taken from some movie or comic doesn't mean it has to be the 'best of the best'.

I thought the whole idea of full prostetics in Augmentations was to build the Major and Batou. Boy was I disappointed.
I think we'll get closer with a heavily cyber strett sammi though, even thought it's not accurate.

Without going into number crunching the skills I can think of are:
Driving- car (does she drive a bike or copter?)
Stealth- able to through off the trains tracking her in 2nd Gig
Athletics- All that jumping
Unarmed combat
Fire arms- pistols and smgs. (You could argue she was using an assault rifle when she met Saito.)
Decking/hacking whatever system you know what we mean.
Leadership
group tactics.
Electronics breaking into locks and the tank in 1st season.

limited ettiquette skills- yeah we thinks she's cool but she doesn't seem to interact well withouthers and neglects her contacts- think of the gilrs who complain 'we haven't seen you in ages"

relies on others for heavy weapons and demolition.

i think its mostly related to the jumping abilities and at times the ability to bend metal items, break weapons with a grip and break limbs with ease.

still, one could argue that most future weapons will be much more polymer contructs then metal ones, with the glock handguns as a possible example.

and breaking bones can be done without resorting to cyberware.

another factor is that while our bodies can do a lot, much of it would risk harming ourselves in some way. with a cyberlimb one can potentially kill the pain/damage reports and therefor push the limb beyond its limits.

on that note, do not augmentation have rules for redlining a limb? could one argue that she does so at a regular basis, as the repairs and downtime are paid for by section 9?

hmm, did a quick check of the jumping rules, and redlined limbs with 6 in agility can go as high as 12. that results in 12S tho...

still, it will allow a person to jump 12 meters horizontally standing, 18 running, and 2 vertical if rolled well...

hmm, i wonder if one should allow a jar-head to redline in the same way...

part of it is guesstrapolation from the physical feats she accomplishes in the various series. another part is comparison--the only cyborgs intimated to be stronger than Motoko's cyberbody are the ridiculously huge 9-foot-tall guys with obvious limbs (which, if i were converting GitS to SR, i would rule as being troll or ork cyberbodies). and Motoko isn't shown to be much weaker than those guys--she soaks a hit from one that cracks the pavement below her without any damage.

the other part is logic. Section 9 is the best of the best, and they appear to have nigh-unlimited funding when they aren't being disavowed and hunted. it makes sense that Motoko's cyberbody would be the best available.

to be honest, though, SR just isn't equipped to replicate GitS-style cyberbodies. for one, being a jarhead in GitS doesn't appear to have anything remotely resembling the serious issues jarheads have in SR. for another, in SSS, Batou jumps off a skyscraper to the street below without a second thought. must have some serious hydraulic jacks installed. SR cybernetics just aren't that tough.

heh, i did earlier point out that one sac episode (number 22 to be exact) talked about it being a old model. but then as i revisited that episode, its said that while the design is old, its modified beyond whats legally allowed...

The Major is definitely a full body cyborg (jar-head with anthropomorphic drone body).
I'm thinking a customized Otomo frame with things like armor, body stabilizer, ruthenium coating, some speed/handling ameliorations, etc...

I don't think Batou is a cyborg though. But he's definitely a sammie with cyberlimbs , obvious cybereyes, hydraulic jacks, and many upgrades to make him stronger/tougher...

Even if you didn't make Major a jarhead (and I do believe a highly advanced jarhead would easily be most appropriate) she wouldn't necessarily need a maxed out physical attributes all around-- remember that due to the way cyberarmor stacks (even 1-2 armor per limb adds up fast) that the Major could be very durable even if she "only" had 6 Body, and that'd give her room to be a little less durable (truly a relative term!) than some of the more obvious full body conversions you see in the series. I mean, really, it wouldn't be out of line to expect her to have like 11 armor and 6 body to resist damage with naked; combine that with a trauma damper and she'd be fairly capable of laughing off pistol damage consistently and it'd take an excellent shot with an assault rifle to threaten physical against her. Add in a armored vest, chameleon suit, form fitting body armor or a suit of Light Military and she'd be sitting rather pretty. Don't forget as well that she would still be quite capable of redlining attributes when necessary (quite handy if combined with a trauma damper or pain editor (I would think she'd have both-- could use the damper most of the time and override with the Pain Editor when needed); 6 body to resist an effective 1 stun would work out fine, so redlining in small amounts would be easy for her). Strength, btw, has to be the single biggest problem, since as everyone who's spent any time here on DS is well aware, SR4's strength rules are kinda wonky.

i could be wrong, but as i recall, wasn't the point of that exchange to show that her body is effectively 'camouflaged' by looking fairly generic, resembling a popular but somewhat older model? like using a Corolla as your getaway car, instead of a Porsche.


i'm pretty positive Batou's a full cyborg. at least, i can't imagine how human squishy parts could be cushioned enough to survive jumping off a skyscraper.

the funny thing is that if one take redlining into account (but watch out, the stun effect is down right nasty) no current anthroform is able to match a funny cybered person.

indeed, it appears so. it had been a while since i had watched that episode, so that part of it had slipped my mind. it popped up as a surprise to me while re-watching just now.

Batou is about 60-85% cyborg, depending on the source. For instance, he still has his natural right arm for half of Innocence, but that's definitely not the case in the manga or SAC. He does specifically state in a couple of places that he's not 100% like the major, but is ALMOST 100%. I think I recall him indicating in SAC that most of his meat parts are stuff like liver, CNS, pancreas, spleen - internal organ type stuff, not limbs or bones or anything. His digestive tract is quite patently not normal, though, given that he eats "cyborg food."

Also: he can't get drunk.

im not even sure about the liver, as more then ones its commented that he can drink beer any time as his cyber is able to get rid of the alcohol on a moments notice, if he allows it at all.

Well, my source is the manga, where he's explaining how the flesh body is limiting the cyberlimbs (you can't have an incredibly strong arm because it would rip itself off if you tried moving something too heavy) using batou as an example. and saying that problem does not exist with full body cyborgs such as the Major...
I made a quick scan (sorry though, it's in french):
Clicky

Edit: The thing is, you can't be half-cyborg. Whether you are a jarhead in a full cybernetic cyborg, or you are a heavily modified human with more or less (in the case of batou: more) parts of your body replaced with cybernetic implants. Then you are a sammie/cyberzombie... but I don't think Batou can yet apply for the cyberzombie status.

funny how the major ripped her own arms of trying to pry the hatch of the spider-tank in the first movie then

The last episode of Gits:SAC where Batou gets beat up by the power suits he has an arm stomped off and his skull is shown to be armored. Then in the GitS:SAC2G episode "Fake Food" he eats 'novelty food' with no real nutritional value and rather weird taste.

With no limbs or even a working digestive tract, he's pretty much a full jar-head.

I figure the Major's body is similar to the "nearly immortal" military bodies given to the PKF (e.g. Kuse from 2nd Gig) that were self-repairing. Could be that every time she leaps off a building she takes (non-catastrophic) damage and heals it up later.

But she has to be maxed strength, just from the time she held a Gigabatchi in place during a 2nd Gig episode.

It's also possible she had different bodies for different roles, some of which aren't actually synthetic cyberlimbs as much as they are camoflaged obvious cyberlimbs. Like, what if her "SWAT" outfit isn't actually clothing as it is a dedicated combat body with the outfit being her "skin" and only equipped with synth-skin face and hands? Her body wouldn't need much support for synth-skin, neural receptors, or faux-musculature and could be bulkier, factoring in the thickness of the body armor she was "wearing."

I used a similar camoflage approach in one SR game where my troll wore full security armor with a very thin layer of leather over the top that had been "Fashioned" to resemble dermal armor. Add a turtleneck sweater with wide cuffs, elbow patches, and some tailored pants with knee patches to hide the more obvious joints. Everybody knew I was wearing armor at first glance, they just thought it was "obvious" (and excessive) dermal armor. Very not-comfortable for extended periods of time since it was hot as sin but then, that's security armor for ya.

Well... maybe the tank was stronger than her ?

She tried redlining but failed to force it open and took heavy damage in result.
That's the problem with cutting off the pain input...

most likely, it was this bit i was commenting on:

Yeah, you kinda got me there...

The problem I was referring there was having a part of your body too strong for the frame, making it liable to damage/destroy such frame...
In the case of the tank, she is unwillingly using it as a lever to rip off her own arms.
And she can do it because she can cut off the pain and she has a better strength ratio than a normal human.

sorry, im just a bit bored and when im that my pedantic streak kicks into overload...

but we are also then back to my earlier comment about how different media presents her capabilities in different ways, and more often then not with a focus on dramatic vs realistic...

Shadowrun has it's own dramatic device as well though too guys: Edge (I mean, let's be honest: how many times do you hear people complain around here that Edge "Turns sessions into a damn anime"?). The Gigabatchi thing was definitely rather amazing and frankly I chalk it up to redlining, creative license and a point of Edge on the part of the Major more than anything. And personally, I've always suspected the Major likely redlines and takes damage more often than we realize-- even if you cede that she isn't a jarhead it's still hard to argue that she doesn't have the equivalent of a Pain Editor, which would allow her to shrug off grievous amounts of stun damage and continue to function as if it were nothing (and with armored full body cyberlimb conversion, most damage she suffers WILL be stun). When you take that into account along with the idea that she's probably got around 11 Stun boxes and 17 Physical boxes on her Condition Monitor and is possessed of an almost total disregard for her own safety, and I think it's fair to say that whether she's truly virtually indestructible or not is for all intents and purposes rather academic. Maybe she'll only have 4 of her 28(!) damage boxes left, but she's too tough to let that slow her down much and by that point she's that damaged she's probably already kicked your ass.

Well, to go back on topic the objective is to build the major.
And I think it's pretty much certain that she is a jarhead in every version available (animes/mangas/movies)

Why not build a generic commando Otomo jarhead and see whre it goes from there ?

i had a quick look at that, and the options available was not exactly staggering...

ack, i remember that now. i need to go back and re-read/re-watch my GitS stuff.


no nutritional value, but didn't it contain a package of nanites that helped maintain his cybernetic systems?


there are certain portions of various GitS timelines where Motoko can do that sort of thing by simply transferring her consciousness (or a portion thereof) into them, similar to the way a rigger jumps into a drone. for the bulk of most of the timelines, though, she'd have to physically swap her cyberbrain into whichever body she wanted to use. as shown in one ep of SAC (i can't even recall which season, at this point--i wanna say 2nd Gig), that process is somewhat complex and time-intensive.

first season, episode 22...

the same one that talks about her body being a old design with technically illegal mods...

All nines isn't necessary. She's very, very tough, and very quick. But she isn't a tank, and if you shoot her enough, she'll go down. I'm not suggesting anyone make an all-9 bullet soaking machine. Or necessarily make her capable of the things she's done in the anime. Imagine the chase scene in the Ghost in the Shell 1. That wasn't a superhuman effort. Just forget about that part in 2nd gig where she leaps out a bathroom window, across a street, and then bounces her way up, building to building. Don't build that.

This is the SHADOWRUN 4 version of the Major, not her abilities verbatim.

funny thing is that with a bit of creative leeway from the gm, that jumping scene would be perfectly doable with a redlined set of agility 6 cyberlegs...

with a jarhead on the other hand...

She can block a massive blow with her arms but not necessarily deal out hard blows, so extreme body but not strength. In both 1st and 2nd gig she puts on shock gloves as she's rushing into a fight-the assassination of the police chief by Laughing Man and the Hong Kong Ganster's spring to mind.

Batou's close enough to full cyborg to not make any differnce. in early 2nd gig we learn his groin is cyber. During the laughing man there is a complaint against him buying body building stuff, what's the point? You're just throwing your money away.


In 2nd gig Roh mangles his leg and jambs rebar through him and it damages him but doesn't kill him.

Towards the climax of the 1st season they are faking their deaths and get 6 dummy cyborgs to look like their bodies. so even if Batou has organs, he's close enough to full cyborg to pass as non-human.

Some people have used the manga as a source, I think we should stick to the anime. At one point I read Batou was holding a 9mm .38 special! which is impossible, so the written word has some real tech problems.

i guess one way to explain her ability to block the attack was that she performed a controlled "crumple".

as in, put breaking on the joints but not so much as to fully lock them. this would absorb some of the blow and channel the rest into the ground as seen.

hell, i even think its ingrained in some forms of martial arts as a way to avoid damage.

and shock gloves incapacitates the target without inflicting major trauma, in theory. the idea is to hit the target with a nice high voltage, but not much watts iirc.

but yes, she isnt really heavy "muscle". she more likely relies on her artificial body's ability to take more damage then meat, while fighting non-cybered humans. hell, if i had bones and other parts made out of carbon fiber, steel or whatsnot i would probably be more likely to try and put max force behind a blow as it can probably take much more then my meat fists can today.

so 3-4 strength, and then going readline as needed maybe.

i keep being tempted to allow a jar-head to redline just like a limb user can do, if applying the optional rule from augmentation. if not, there isnt really much a jar-head can do that a cyber-suit based body cant, as the redline rule allows for the doubling of attributes, at a price.

i dunno, man. she halted an assault chopper by tying a rope to it and pulling real hard. the impression i've always gotten is that you can't very many non-overbuilt cyberbodies with more power than Motoko's. her ability to soak damage is a factor too, i agree, but she's definitely got some more-than-human muskles.

im guessing your referring to episode 4, season 2.

hard to tell how much she really pulled as the helicopter had already been dragging that tachicoma around.

it may well be that she used her body as a anchor against the root side (in a somewhat similar manner to what we see in matrix, only that neo didnt end up holding back the helicopter there) making the ai react to the unbalancing effect of having part of it stay behind when trying to fly forward, pulling back to rebalance and then finding out what was the reason.

but it could be either way i guess.

heh, its kinda funny btw looking at those tachis being worried about the helicopters as the helicopters look a bit like big wasps. wasps hunting spiders anyone? i think i have heard about it happen.

oh, and a quick look at the lifting rules (closest one got iirc) the test would be strength+body. so low body, high strength, or high body, low strength goes the same way. only with high in both it gets interesting. and i wonder, can one redline body? it is a cyberlimb attribute after all...

Alright I've got a really really wacky idea. We want to have Jar-Head that can redline while staying RAW. Why Not assemble a bunch of highly customized cyberlimbs together without installing them in anyone, and then cram the jar into the collection of cyber limbs, and have the jar-brain rig that. Wham bam done. Worst case scenario is that you have some corporate code monkey bang out a new activesoft: "Pilot (Sack-O-Limbs) rating 4".

If you don't like that you have very few choices
A) Ignore the fact that the major is very clearly a jar-brained cyborg, and give her some 'ware
B) Put her in a completely inappropriate anthro-form drone (A purposely gimped servant, or quarter ton kill bot with bad melee)
C) Depart from RAW and write up your own ninja-bot anthroform drone.

About C. The Manservant-3 fluff talks about how it really is just the Arcology disaster that Renraku gimp their house bots from 3rd ED era. Would it be useful to convert a pimped out SOTA SR3 anthro-form droid and give it a Comlink and CCU?

The bullets fired by the 38 special are .357 inches in diameter, or 9mm.
As another silly sample, the Colt M1892 is usually referred to as a '36 caliber revolver', but was chambered in .38 Colt Long.

On Kusanagi's strength:

Kusanagi is very strong, but isn't at the absolute top end, to be certain. This is indicated by the fact that Batou repeatedly suggests she swap into a male cyborg shell so she can get extra strength out of it, and also by the fact that in several places it's implied that Batou is physically stronger (once he's full cyberarms arms and torso) than she is.

So she's probably way out there in strength, but not absolute max.

male cyberbody: +2 max Str and Bod! hee!

you people with your "facts" and your "quotes from the actual source" are seriously ruining my fanboyism.

Also no-one is mentioning her elite hacking abilities and powerful internal commlink.

And most important of all, the element that defines a section 9 agent, and what makes Motoko their top gun:

Personally, I would do the Major, at this point in SR, as full body synthetic replacements, with Full body Dermal Sheath with Ruth coating. Admittedly, she wuld be delta ware, with Adapsin and Cyber Combatibility, and I would likely use Synaptic Boosters for her. Why? Because, at present, the Shadowrun Cyborg technology is not up to Ghost in the Shell levels. Simply put: It is prototype technology, and, one impression I got heavily about The Major was that she did not seem to want to use unproven tech. ESPECIALY unproven tech with a guranteed lifespan of getting into it of no more then 6 years! I would see doing her as full limb replacements as, actually, being along the the lines of a Young Major, and what we see in GitS is an Older, more experienced Major, using stuff after the CCU technology has matured and gotten rid of some of the..kinks.

Unfortunately, there is evidence to suggest that she plays for the other urban brawl team

*slaps Sir_Psycho around with a large trout!* No quoting me out of context! You are no knight!

To be fair, I would suggest she has an 8 strength while Batou has a 9.
I mean, she's weaker, but she's still stupid strong.

In terms of what urban brawl team she plays for... Both?
I mean, her VR shenanigans with her 'girlfriends' indicate one way... but her boyfriend in Section 6 (in the original manga) suggests otherwise.

the Major's psychology is kinda fun to hypothesize about. for instance, regarding which team she brawls for: according to SAC, she got her cyberbody before (or at least quite near) the time when most people start picking their team (or having their team picked for them, or however one chooses to believe it works). as cyberbodies were an extremely new technology at the time, it stands to reason that certain electrochemical balances which shift during the time period that marks ones' initial choosing may have remained static instead. in a culture with less-than-strict values wrt which team one should properly play on, it may simply have never occurred to her--on a biochemical level--to pick one team over the other.

as far as Str, if you wanted to go by strict SR4 rules, she'd have to have an average Str >=7 and Batou would have to have an average Str >=8. a synthetic cyberbody can't, as best i can tell, get 9 average Str because there isn't enough capacity in the torso. unless you deliberately set the limbs a point lower than their capacity would otherwise allow, and then got muscle replacement or something?

For her body armor, "type 2 load out" We agreed it was 2nd skin with level 4 personal body armor.

We do not know if she has extra armor built in. She is usually running from gun fire which implies she doesn't want to get hit.

We know she has a smart link. We know she does not have built in weapons, or hidden compartments.

Ummm, not sure. I thought the nanites were to offset the gluten but I could be wrong on that. It seemed like the "with vitamin C!" tag on citrus sodas, where sure, it's nice, but it's not your real source of nutrition.



The final ep of GitS:SAC had her running puppets, and in the Cats Eye (Cash Eye?) episode, the bank owner thought the Major was a remote controlled android. Jamming was apparently not a big risk. The body swap was the GitS:SAC ep where the Laughing Man downloaded his memories to her.

On second thought,, I'll agree that Motoko doesn't need maxed strength, assuming the Gigabatchi incident involved her taking damage. One nice thing is that other than some sensory mods, she doesn't have any "gizmos" (cyberguns, gyros, grapple lines, etc) just a strong/fast/tough body. She doesn't even need integrated ruthenium since non-cyborg Togusa wears a stealth suit that provides optical camoflage. About the only odd thing she might need is skillwires (or autosofts) so that she can download skills.

In Man Machine Interface, her main body (sic!) has a grenade crossbow. bther Bodys have other features.