So, what happens to a technomancer or mage who has his/her parts replaced forcibly with secondhand cyberware? What if this happens to a PC?

(I mean obviously you don't behave like a babboon if the GM describes the scene above, by jumping on the table urinating on it, followed by setting it (the table) on fire. That would take effort.)

So besides passive-aggressive reactions of the player, what could a character do in the SR universe?

What happens is easy enough. Essence Loss, everything that comes with that, physical and psychological traumata.
What you can do against something like that? Save your last bullet for yourself, otherwise you're shit out of luck.
Deal with it. That's the way it is in the World of Shadowrun.

If you're talking about, what does the player do about their loss of abilities? I don't know if it'd fix everything, but if the player has the freedom they can get the cyberware removed and then get gene therapy to fix the essence loss. But in your specific example, I think the player ought to count their lucky stars that it's a commlink that got forcibly implanted instead of a cranial bomb.

Agreed. Its a gritty world. Bad things happen. What would probably result from that specific example is a fairly long process of roleplaying out my character coming to terms with the loss of some of his power. He would continue to attempt to use the Resonance like he had before, and that might result in some dangerous Fading (I used to be able to summon this Sprite, I'll be fine!). Then some questions might arise. Is this a one time thing? Am I going through Fading, like the Otaku did? And when I finally came to terms with what had happened I would go to extreme lengths to pay the bastards back.

And then I would Submerge and spend some Karma to get my Resonance back. A significant set back, but not one that cannot be overcome.

My thoughts almost exactly. After all, if they forcibly implant a BUNCH of second-hand ware, you don't have much reason not to have it all replaced with delta, come back, and eat their heart while their children watch and scream. But hey, that's just me, and I'm kinda crazy like that.


Btw, don't forget to kill the family afterwards, you don't need to be dealing with vendettas years later when you're getting old and slowing down.

It really depends on how badly the character is maimed. If the character is a mage with lots of points invested in magical abilities, and that mage becomes a mundane, then you might as well start a new character. If that mage loses two points of Magic from forcibly-implanted 'ware, he can get better eventually (replace the second-hand 'ware with better stuff, and initiate to get back the lost Magic), and get revenge.

It depends on the circumstances, too. The SR universe is a grim one, where fates worse than death are common. But if it's just the GM being a dick, then don't dismiss the urinating on the table/setting it on fire thing out of hand.

I think that a captive mage or technomancer could be burned out through drugs or similar means, though - performing surgery on someone and giving them a piece or 'ware seems kind of silly. Although it would be plausible if, say, it was a headware that also kept the mage's captors in communication with him, recorded the mages sensory impressions so they could nab his associates eventually, and had an explosive charge to keep the character in hand. Which goes back to the "might as well start a new character" thing. But "Nya-ha-ha! We're involuntarily implanting a commlink in you!" seems... goofy.

Although doing it to someone who is still conscious, without any anesthetic, is a nice, dystopian touch.

Curl up and cry, take risks until someone ends your life for you, rage, revenge, maybe adapt and find peace?

Depends on the individual. Someone once forcibily implanted a dragon with a datajack, things did not go well for that organisation/individual after their pet project got free and reported their actions. Dragon adapted, upgraded and made its draconic mission to deal with them.

Any sentient being can break under enough pressure over a long enough time line. The lucky few die before they find that breaking point or overcome it with time. Human society tends to prefer these stories to the hero broke, lives their remaining days a shattered being and is never be the same stories.

So most i have met prefer to roleplay the, am messed up but OK to get even or good death, to massacistic anguish of despair.

Roleplay is meant to be fun after all. So when faced with the "Really real world and there aint no coming back" drawing a line and playing a new character may be lot more fun and realistic.

Meh, get it out asap and use your newfound Essence Hole to install useful toys. Then use those new toys to turn the table on those bastards, including cutting off their balls and making them eat them.

I imagine someone out there in the 6th world has developed tamper-proof cyberware that can't be removed without destroying the cyberware and/or the brain it's attached to. Something like that would be what you'd expect severe criminals to have forcibly implanted. Or an option for headware memory for secure couriers for any number of groups (criminal syndicates all the way to spy agencies). If a runner got implanted with something like THAT, it could be the basis for an entire adventure to find them a delta clinic to get it out, and then find and get revenge on whoever put it in.

I also think there ought to be a low-essence piece of cyberware that could be forcibly implanted to completely suppress magical talent while it's implanted. The sort of thing you'd expect that they'd implant in mages when they get to prison.

Well, in theory I suppose your "tamper proof" cyber could be simulated by implanting a canial bomb that is set to explode if the cyber is tampered with, dangerous but not fool proof.

As for the anti-mage cyber, while thankfully not as effective as you suggest, I seem to remember a piece of mana-tech that could in theory be used as an implant, I'll have to do some reading and get back to you...

None of that stuff is something you'd want to hit players in your group with willy-nilly, but I think that those would be things that would be pretty useful for building NPCs.

Is that not delving into the realms of Manatech, something that is iffy at the current level of technology? Hell, most of the Manatech they already have is biological based (Be if FAB, those Slug thingies, or something else). And do they not already have drugs that supress a persons ability to use Mana? Even if they didn't it would probably be more profitable to a) Put your Awakened prisoners to work or b) Drug them up so much they can hardly tell where they are anymore.

And you can basically make Tamper-Proof Cyber already, it just involves attaching really sophisticated Cranial Bombs with certain triggers. One false move by the Cyberdoc and BOOM goes the rest of your head. Would need to be a fair sized bomb I guess, people in the fluff have survived cranial bombs going off.

*Fiddles, Ravor snuck in while I was posting*

Turn a set of Magecuffs into an implant and you've got a seriously pissed off mage who is on the hunt for a Pain Editor.

I don't know the_real_elwood I don't think a "tamper proof" mage-cuff implant tied to an internal commlink or some other long range comm device is out of line for a mage that is foolish enough to get captured but too useful to kill or keep imprisoned long enough for the psych-IC to take affect.

how bout an auto injector full of Kurari or plain old cyanide? tamper with the cyber and get a load of nasty straight to the blood stream.

Because nothing says "Get your hands off me you filthy apes!" like the ability to turn the cyberdoc into fine red mist.

hmm, have to agree with you on that one.

difference between the doc saying"wow, look at that, never seen that set up!" and"Umm, I need to ahh...go check on something. Nurse, could you um,close this one up while I run,err ummm, change my shorts and take something to stop my shaking hands?"

No, no.

Eat his children's hearts while he watches. Then kill him. Vendetta eliminated, and more pain to him.

Aggressive-Aggressive reactions.
Truck + Anfo or some other large amounts of cheap explosive, send bitches into orbit

Or just throw some K-10 into his kids.

In all seriousness, and in answe to the OP, it's going to depend.

If I'm already an advanced character, and I am just "reduced" or diminished, but I still have some access to my abilities, then I may go along with it unhappily. If I've been stripped of my abilities and lost most of what I invested in while the rest of the party is unaffected, then ... I'm probably shopping for a new GM.

Bottom line is this: if you're going to do something that nasty (OOC terms, here) to a PC, you either need to be punishing them (Player and PC both) for willful stupidity above and beyond, or you'd best get some buy-in from the player ahead of time unless it's party-wide and everybody's getting cut back similarly. No, I know the 6th World's dark and gritty as drek, but it's a game and we play for fun. Destroying a person's beloved character's heart and soul just because you can... just make it simple and have somebody hoze them down with miniguns or something like a tac nuke and call it a day. Taking the time to attack such a core element of their efforts in such a spectacularly vicious (IC here) way, you've got to be careful.

And like it was said, seems there are other ways to achieve the same ends without giving ANY bonus back, but then again, just waste them and call it done.

My biggest worry, if doing it without balancing the party level, is making that player (and character) feel left out and ineffectual, and that can damage not just a party, but friendships as well, because a well-developed character is a lot like a child, and one thing history shows over and over is that parents don't always react rationally when their childeren are threatened or especially when harmed - or maimed intentionally and cruelly in a pre-meditated way.

We're not talking pure RP values here, we're talking capability damage. RP only things, you can pretty much do as you please, but buy-in is still better. If you're making big cuts on that character sheet...

Now, now folks, it's one thing to whack innocent children, I'm perfectly willing to go that far, even eating their hearts as our dear friend pbangarth suggests is acceptable as long as they die quickly, but torturing the little bastards or pumping them full of drugs is a bit much. After all, it's not their fault mommy or daddy was a world-class hemorrhoid in dire need of lancing.


Edit: Sorry, had to go kill a rattlesnake in the garage. Seriously. On the bright side, I get a new rattlesnake-skin hatband.

I'd have to agree with Kerenshara on the seriously negative effects this could have on a game, especially if the Player doesn't adjust well in the face of adversity, or it was done to a particularly favored character. Also, if the GM was a real prick about it, something like this could easily turn into the proverbial "falling cow from space" type of situation. On the other hand, if the player has become dissatisfied with the direction his character has taken, but doesn't want to kill him off, this could be a good device to role-play the change in direction. But, that's just my .02 .

For an in-game explanation for an implant that prevents spellcasting, I was thinking along the lines of a small brain implant that stimulates/impedes function in a certain brain area that's necessary for spellcasting. Something that's not enough to impede other functions, but prevents the specific mental processes necessary to use magic. I guess something like that would be taking a bit of a liberty with the currently established science canon in-game, but it's not completely outrageous.

I agree that messing with a character in this way can elicit strong reactions from the player, whether it is part of the "gritty" genre or not. Also, note how nearly every response about the character's reaction involved getting revenge somehow.

That's another reason to be careful in using this against a PC. Once you do this, the player will be obsessed with getting revenge, and impatient with anything that sidetracks it. Don't do this if the group is committed to a big plot arc (stopping the Universal Brotherhood or whatever). The player won't be interested in the other plots, or meeting a potential love interest, or anything but getting the bastards back. And if you make the bastards too untouchable (the PC doesn't know who they were, or they are too powerful to take on), then the player will be likely to lose interest in the game altogether, or at the least become a lot more apathetic, callous, and cynical.

Personally I'd presume that anyone unilaterally powerfull enough tocapture and implant me and then cAtch and release me is powerfullly enough to outrightt kill me. Disapear, get it fixed and avoid. shadowrunners loose escalating MAD scenarios with those kind of folks.

I freely admit I can be an Asshole GM from time to time. But if someone did that to my character, depending on how long I'd been playing said character, it'd be tough to not want to punch his lights out.

Allowing for the possibility that this could be called for/part of a plot/by some freak occurence I cannot think of - but if it hasn't been socialised with the player well in advance then the GM is just being a dick. That said, I honestly can't think how/why such a scenario would occur except to punish a player in all seriousness.

If that was sprung on me without any discussion how I felt, I'd calmly request the the GM to reconsider his action or otherwise up and leave the table - for good.

One a sidenote, there are NPCs who have 'burned out' for many reasons - Twist (former Dog shaman, now hacker), Bishop (former otaku), but these are characters from novels and by no means PCs. I'd put them in the realm "different kettle of fish". A burned out otaku/TM turned hacker would make for a very knowledgable character on all things considering the Matrix... but these sorts of concepts would require considerable discussion/planning between the GM and player - to say nothing of the fact they are effectively gimping themselves. I think they are more suited as NPCs.

Sorry Chrysalis if this doesn't really answer your question - were you thinking PCs or NPCs?

- J.

Honestly, if my character was abducted/tortured/maimed, and I was told OOC that the people who did it were too "big" for my character to ever mess with, I would see no point in continuing to play that game.

A burnout would be interesting to play, as a new character who had it happen to him years ago. Make a sammie with a few magical knowledge skills, and say that he was a mage who was caught and burned out by someone. In-game, though, it would take far too long to catch up to the power curve, and losing so much of what I had invested in the character would be too frustrating, and infuriating.

In SR3, you can do that without any surgery. All it takes is a lot of stim patches...

Well, unless your GM is a complete asshole and sics some megacorp spec ops teams on you just for fun, if you've made dumb enough decisions to get caught and have cyberware forcibly implanted, then by all rights your character probably should be dead anyways. This isn't something where you should show up for a session and the GM says "oh by the way, there's an Ares Firewatch team knocking on your apartment door because you extracted a low-level exec in the last game".

But if you've screwed up big time and get caught, some forcible implants like that could theoretically be a second lease on life. You know, get caught, get implanted, do some time, and then get turned loose. But other than that, I don't see much of a purpose for it with player characters.

Meh, I'm not sure that I'd want to play with someone who was unhinged enough to want to actually get physical over a fragging game!

However, I do somewhat agree with Glyph, there should never be any NPC that is simply "too big" for a determined PC to try to take down, provided that they get lucky and are willing to pay the piper.

Even that would be intentionally gimping yourself in all seriousness....

- J.

Nah, not being "min-maxed" is hardly the same thing as being "gimped".

If the rest of your group built their characters optimally and you didn't, it might as well be the same thing. Challenges appropriate for the rest of the group may be too tough for you, and challenges appropriate for you may be too easy for the rest of the group.

Only if the DM falls into what I consider to be the downfall of RPGs thanks to The Cancer Game, namely tailoring the "CR" of the game to the characters.

There's nothing at all wrong with doing that, depending on how it's done. If you have a team of characters who all qualify as "elite runners," then you're going to be sent on missions tailored for your level of abilities. It's a roleplaying game, not a static video game. It's meant to be alive, dynamic, and tailored to the players. It's the whole reason you have a live person as a GM instead of a computer program.

Clearly you're all missing the wonders of the cheesy 80's training montage. If you as a GM, feel that the plot demands that you maim a character, but you want them to keep playing at the same level as the rest of the group and not lamp you, give them something in return.

F'rinstance, horribly maimed player gets burned out by forcibly implanted 'ware and the wakes up in a secure hospital with nurse leaning over him to adjust his IV. Give the player the chance to gank the nurse, and break out of the hospital. Maybe they find that doc that did it to them in the hospital and take some revenge. Maybe leave some files about the people that did it to them. Maybe a stackload of hush money. Maybe just a James-Bondesque breaking out a of a hospital guarded by armed trolls whilst still drugged and wearing a only a butt exposing hospital gown.

You then either end up with a dead PC, but a dead PC who's gone down on his own terms and taken some of the bastards with him, OR, a PC that's escaped from the facility with a stackload of karma, some experimental 'ware and whatever cash/paydata/extortion material he needs to bring the character back to the standards of the rest of the group. Possibly even give them some free edge increases as a kind of karmic balancing.

The point is to give the player a shortish solo run with plenty of opportunities for either a glorious death or a crowning moment of awesome.

you sir are made of win.

thats probably the best way to handle it if you ever decided to do this to a player. in all honesty though. if a gm did this to me without any kind of consent from me i would be pissed. especially if i spent all my resources to be an optimal mage for the team and the gm outright stripped me of my magic.

I have to somewhat disagree Dr. Funkenstein, the purpose of having a live DM is to breath life into the world, not to tailor the world to the PCs. Now, of course, "elite Runners" are going to be given higher profile missions than Runners on the lower rungs, but I disagree that having gear and skills are what makes one "elite", that should fall on one's rep in my opinion.

No, Tarbrush, that is an equal or greater fail on part of the GM, & insult to the player.

I wanted to play a magician, so I made a magician. If I had wanted to play a samurai, I would have made a fucking samurai.


Events like this should only ever affect a player character if the GM & player have previously discussed it, and the player has agreed.

You and I aren't always on the same page, and I usually try to be a little more subtle (and wordy) but you hit it right on the head.

If you can get the player to "buy in", you can do whatever you like. If that means tossing them a bone to get them to go along (bonus Karma for new skills, the ability to rip out the 'ware and upgrade, etc.) then if it's really important to you then do it.

The ONLY time you don't need to worry about buy-in is when you're punishing willful stupidity. The most important words a GM can say in an encounter are "Are you sure?". If you hear those words, and continue with whatever action it was, and if it's something any objective observer would refer to as "stupid" ("Pornography: you know it when you see it" to paraphrase), then the GM can feel entitled to tell you "OK, two choices, new character time because the last one was TERMINALLY stupid, or you can accept the significant consequences of said stupidity and keep playing."

I wouldn't do it without talking it over with the player either. But I'm not every GM, and some players might tolerate or even appreciate it, particularly in high grit games, or in a situation where the alternative is killing the character.

But there are situations where I could see it working.

a) Player is bored of character, and has been for some time.
b) Player has roleplayed themselves into a death sentence (My honour demands I give Lofwyr the finger. In person!) and is effectively consenting to the death of their character. Not common, but it happens.
c) Character's powerlevel is massively disproportionate to the rest of the group and has ... eh, this is more or less explicit consent, which is fine.
d) I may think of some more...

But it would depend entirely on the player, and how you feel they'd deal with it.

Alright i'm going to step back and untangle a few statements.

First off, it would be a poor GM indeed who stepped out of a clear blue sky and inflicted their players with forced cyberware "just because" or to tell a story not caused by player events.. On the other hand considering I have used this method as a retribution for a particularly screwed up run (and for the record it wasn't to screw over the mage, everyone got the "don't jerk us around again" headware package. Including the street sam who had to have somethign removed so his essence would support it) I don't see a particular problem with it. The most heinous violator of the group did leave soon after, a not entirely anticipated, nor unwelcome change.

The rest of the team re-evaluated, regrouped and got things taken care of, and they did eventually get some pay back.

As to essence loss if one does have cyber forced upon them, well sucks to be you. That is the price of power of playing a character who can bend space and time to their will. Frankly that's been one of the more distressing things about fourth's magic system it has very little cost for a steadily expanding magical system. Manatech, bioware etc are all things that have made magic essentially less and less costly to play.

Now as to the issue of "untouchable" NPC's. Personally unless your running a game world where the PC's have the potential to run multimillion dolalr enterprises yes I do believe there are some people, especially someone who could have custom cyberware put into their heads or bodies. Cyberware that could report and analyze their every thought then yes I especially think those sort of NPC's are going to be well nigh untouchable. Even before that point there are certainly some NPC's int he setting that are simply beyond PC's in my games ability to go after. Because the preperation for takign down such an individual would effectively become the central focus of the campaign and generalyl I don't allow people to dictate that without really good justification both to me and the other players.

On what could the character do...

Depends how burned out the process made them. The conversation seems to imply complete burn out.

tarbrush has a great answer - 80's training montage, find a small chinese master, learn kung fu in an afternoon and start kicking peoples heads off. Skillwires might do at a push?

Perhaps start looking into (stupidly, obviously dangerous) methods of getting their powers back.

Some ideas for a magician: Buy Sacrificial Geas for Dummies. Sign up as an Ordo Maximus test subject. Ask the neighbourhood Shedim if he needs a new place to hang out? Fly to Chicago and start eating the vegetation around Ground Zero.


If the GM was a good one, then I'd give them time if they sprung something like that... In the past, I've had some really good gaming fun with characters who got totally messed about. But they'd better have something *really* cool in mind.

You might be misunderstanding me. I'm not talking about buying a magician quality that my character will never use, or anything like that. I'm talking about building a street samurai, same as I would any other street samurai, with the only difference being that some of his knowledge skills are magic-related, and that him being a former burned-out mage is part of his background. So I don't see how doing that with a starting character would really be "gimping" him. If the GM wanted me to buy qualities or active skills that I could no longer use to play such a concept, I would say "Never mind, I'll play something else."


@Lurker: I didn't say there was no such thing as "untouchable" NPCs (although there should be little that is truly out of reach of a desperate, suicidal, homicidal runner). I said that if I had a character get nabbed/tortured/maimed by such NPCs, I wouldn't see much of a reason to bother continuing with that game. And generally, when you do something like that to PCs, getting revenge does become the central focus of the game to them, which is why it is especially a bad idea if you have other long-term campaign stuff you want to do.

If the GM wanted me to buy qualities or active skills that I could no longer use to play such a concept, I would say "Fuck you", and leave the game.

A GM like that is not worth playing with, at all.