*blink*
*blink*
*looks at rules*
So that means that I can build a cyberlich?
*blink*
Lets see I can go to -6 Essence. Thats +6 max to all stats, even Logic and Charisma. Damn, all I can picture is the CEO of a cybernetics corporation Cyberzombie. Brilliant cutting edge ware, but the guy is a recluse. Cybermancer CTO... Delta-ware clincs... prototype cyberware for him and his minions.
Great now I'm going to spend the rest of the day stating him out.
*gets a pencil*

Wow, that is a VERY cool idea - one for the "cyberzombie inspiration" thread.

Running it down with a vehicle ("RAMMING SPEED!!!") is unlikely to work, because even in a vehicle, it's going to jump/dodge out of the way before you hit it unless your vehicle is totally silent/invisible, and immune to ultrasound/radar detection.

"The Emperor's New Citymaster?"

Using lots of Steel Lynx drones might work, as long as the zombie isn't a very good hacker/rigger - of course, with that giant essence sink, they could feasibly have Skillwires rating 6 (or more, can't remember offhand if you can do SW > 6 in SR4) with activesofts for every skill in the book. Gotta be careful there ...

...I have a salesperson who is doing just that to our company in RL. (hmmm...I'll have to investigate this further)

As to really taking one out with means within the reach of most runner teams, I do have a few ideas, but that would be giving away [ spoilers ]

For it to dodge the bulldog, it would need to get as many hits as the rigger. But, how about an invisiblity spell on the bulldog? Maybe even silence to counter ultrasound? Our rigger took out about six solid street sams with his invisible bulldog last session.... It only took one hit, even for the troll. I even gave them dodge rolls (with a small negative), but the rigger got 10 hits. Waddya do? From now on all my bad guys have to make sure they don't get run over by invisible trucks.

Erg. I won't mention the guy who in our squad who kills people with narco-jet filled chopsticks. (7P base damage, usually excess of 5 hits, then an additional 10S with just body after. Two of those, and you're done for.) Wait, i guess i just did. Oh well.

You know, it had simply never occurred to me to build a cyberzombie for anything else.
That is such an awesome idea.

BRodda: Good call on "cyberlich". That is the icing on the awesome-cake of this idea.

but, wouldn't the Stock of company drop when the CEO forgets to eat for a month and drops dead because he didn't refill his injectors?

When did "Automatically achieve a critical success on one action" mean "except for opposed tests"? 5 net successes might just be enough to wipe out a cyberzombie if you do it right, and you'd score that if you burnt a point of Edge.

Intruder, Nanoinfector, and maybe even Demolisher nanites (with a Nanoinfector vector) would be a pretty good way to wipe out a CZ unless, of course, he's got a nanite hunter system onboard keeping him clean. Chemical weapons may really be your best bet here.

Going after a cyberzombie with small arms makes me laugh. The armor rating on a cyberzombie intended for flat-out combat gets pretty sick. Assuming we're talking about the maxed-out human CZ here (-6 Essence), you're looking at a truly silly amount of armor:

12 points of HARDENED armor (absolute value of -6 x 2), +
7-odd points of inherent armor from orthoskin/dermal sheath/bone lacing/carapace leech/whatever, +
Whatever he's wearing OVER it (say, Heavy Military Armor with a helmet and some addons like Gel-Packs and Chemical Seal... not to mention fire resistance, non-conductivity, insulation, etc)... that works out to a 19/17 suit without even having to drag along a shield.

Theoretically, you could get even further out by using cyberlimbs and armoring them, but I've got some issues with the concept of armoring your bones, then amputating those bones to stick on an armored cyberlimb.

I can't think of many automatic weapons in the system capable of taking on a 38/36 armor rating with a 12/12 Hardened Armor core that aren't mounted on vehicles that weigh many tons. Most of the autofire-capable weapons capable of racking up the seriously high DV's run into the 12 Hardened Armor issue... enough successes and you might be able to keep the pre-autofire DV above 12, but any AP is getting wasted on the 25-ish points of armor it hits before it gets down to the Hardened stuff. High-DV small arms might be where it's at... a Panther Assault Cannon only needs to get 3 net successes before its DV gets to 13 and it might at least manage some stun damage if the CZ blows his damage resistance. Missiles would probably work, too. If you're dealing with someone who's not rolling the big -6, the Hardened Armor is less of an issue.

The problem arises when you realize that even if you nail this sucker with an ATGM, you're looking at a possible 50+ dice pool to resist the damage once you figure in remaining Armor, natural Body (maxes at 13 for a human CZ'ed this far out with some genetweaking) and augmented Body (maxes at 19), various 'ware that adds dice vs damage, and all that other good stuff some yahoo thought was a good idea to put into a cyberzombie (like platelet factories, trauma dampers, and other cool implants). You're not going to reliably inflict *any* damage short of hitting it with something that reduces armor by half, rather than a straight -AP, which means you're looking at gauss weapons, lasers, or something with an Elemental effect (and that's where those bonus dice from the armor mods come in handy). Autofire weapons help out a lot here, but the highest man-portable DV you can get with an autofire weapon would be 21+net hits (from the Vindicator minigun), and getting through hardened armor with a base DV of 6 is going to be a pain in the butt. DV's this high, on a bad resistance roll, will add a few points to the condition monitor. CZ's, of course, have a long, long condition monitor (and pretty frequently pain editors).

You could always try modding a Panther for autofire, adding some recoil compensation (gyromount, shock pad and electronic firing gets you 8 points, for a -2 to hit on a 10 round burst... overmodding would let you fit on a heavy barrel for 9 points of RC), and seeing what happens. You could also, of course, just hack him and detonate his cortex bomb

Let's assume that it works the way Cain envisions for a moment. What would happen if the Cyberzombie also spent a point of Edge for a Critical Success on the same test?

Infintite loop as both parties would spend their Edge after the other had spent their Edge. Probably the Universe would implode.

The most logical course would be to have them cancel out as with spending Edge to go first, but I'd rather recommend that GM's not use Cain's interpretation.

I would think a CEO Cyberlich would have a personal calendar and an agent constantly reminding him of eating and doing the daily chores to stay alive, not to mention all those flunkies that work for him.

Then we have the bioware that improves and makes the CZ eat anything so that he can basically inject neutrient packages and munch pills.

I hope that someone with mental attributes 6 points above the augmented max will be able to remind himself of what he needs to do to stay alive...
But does the modifier to attributes caps really apply to mental attributes?

From page 158 of Augmentation:


As there are all sorts of cyber, nano and bioware that increase Log and Chr, I can't see why those would be limited. It doesn't say just physical attributes.

Problem is there aren't a lot of Logic raising modifications. Might need to home brew a bioware implant like this:

Auxiliary brain: Adds +3 to Logic. User can complete 2 complex tasks at once. User can have one brain "sleep" while the other stays awake, but limits number of actions per turn and while the primary brain sleeps logic for tasks is reduced to 3. The Auxiliary brain can not be modified.

Essence: 3
Availability:20R
Cost: 200,000

(I'm basing the costs on Wired Reflexes 3)

I think that's handled by the encephalon, at least fluff-wise.

OK I stopped assuming and cracked open Augementation at work quick. So it looks like I was wrong and there really isn't anything that raises you Logic...
I guess that means there is a niche. Good hook too.

Encephalon: Doesn't add to Logic, just gives you more dice.
Genetic Optimization: Ok this raises both the natural and augment total, but still not that great.
PuSHeD:Again Gives you dice to Logic.

Might need to get back into GMing. To many evil ideas to just be a player.

30-50 kg of r15 plastic explosives = one dead... um deader cyberzombie. as long as you get it about 10-15 meters of him he is toast. Have three air spirits w/ movement and conceil even with the background count the minute he slags one spirit the other carries the explosives. The minute they get close enough they go astral and you detonate it.

Can they soak about 40-60p worth of damage? I mean if it's enough to slag a building it's probably enough to slag a cyberzombie, and anything else in about a 40 meter radius. The only thing that would make me sad is that you couldn't loot the body with all its yummy delta ware.

Also on a side note you should mold the plastic explosives into the shape of the cyberzombie just to screw with its last shreds of painful, agonizing sanity.

Cerebral Booster increases Logic equal to its rating, to a maximum of 3.

You can always fill in arbitraty attribute boosts up to the modified limit with spells, but that can require unrealistic dice pools and/or rolls.
edit: And there's the whole background count thing, but we could assume it's aspected to the magicians who made the thing and that they're the ones doing the boosting.

OK, thats the one I was looking for. I only have Augmentation at work and I was just skimming it quick. Still An auxiliary brain still sounds like a plausible, and cool, piece of bioware.

Probably cancel each other out, but Cyberzombies can't augment their Edge. That's the one stat that can't be anything but normal. At any event. it's utter cheese for a GM to burn a NPC's Edge like there was no tomorrow, since it costs the NPC nothing.

And we're not talking about spending Edge. We're talking about *burning* it. Two totally separate monsters.

I wrote the wrong word, but I knew what I meant. I'm old, cut me some slack.

Cheese or not, we're talking about a Cyberzombie. If the player is going to pull cheesy-but-legal moves, then the GM should also be free to do so.

Then unless the GM doesn't want the player in his game, what works for the GM should work for the player. The player burns Edge until his PC hits zero Edge, he creates a new PC and so on.

Has anyone considered a Magic Cyberzombie yet? I partially mean a CZ that can use magic, however, I also mean a person that has been Quickened with all the Attribute Boost spells, if not with some previous genetech. Or maybe even a CZ with Quickened Attribute Boost to achieve truly epic stat levels. I mean just for a human

B 6(9) 12(18)
A 6(9) 12(18)
R 6(9) 12(18)
S 6(9) 12(18)
C 6(9) 12(18)
I 6(9) 12(18)
L 6(9) 12(18)
W 6(9) 12(18)

disclaimer (my math may be a bit off, forgive me)

Now what about an Albino Night Ones Elf with Genetech raising his maxes even more:

B 7(10) 13(19)
A 8(12) 14(21)
R 8(12) 14(21)
S 7(10) 13(19)
C 9(13) 15(22)
I 7(10) 13(19)
L 7(10) 13(19)
W 7(10) 13(19)

Now, Im sure you can get pretty damn close to the new augmented max with Cyber, but Im not 100% sure and I sure as hell don't want to try (too much maths). Now I now for certain, that they can be achieved with magic. Of course, you might need dragon mojo to a point, but hey, maybe Lofwyr wants a pet that will last a while, and I'd say getting 300-400 years out of your pet zombie is not such a bad idea. You could also upgrade whenever you want, since he is 95% metal now. Or push his limits even further and figure out a way to prepare him for an absurd force possession spirit. Of course, at this point, I don't see how anything the runners do can touch him.