I've been reading Augmentation and despite the chance of a botched implantation, upkeep and permanent background count, they seem almost feasible (assuming runners get enough cash and locate a delta grade clinic capable of performing the operation). Almost that is...

Has anyone had any success with playing a cyberzombie under the new rules? I'm curious to hear stories from the PC side of the fence, not the GM side.

Not that I'm playing at present but my PCs have 3 magicially active members in the party and should have a shit fit if anyone wanted to play a 'zombie.

- J.

Why would they have a fit if someone else wanted to play a cyberzombie?

Honestly, at this point cyberzombies don't make much economic sense. You can screen for people with the Biocompatability gene, build a Cyberware package, and prep them with Adapsin far, far more cheaply than you can make a cyberzombie.

Look at the numbers - Adapsin + Biocompatability + Deltaware + designed package = 80% Essence reduction. That means 29.9 Essence worth of stuff before you have to go Zombie.

Now. I challenge you to find 30 Essence worth of stuff in the entirety of 4th Edition material that is mutually compatible.

Why would anyone create a Cyberzombie past 2068?

I would have thought Type 0 System would be worth more than Biocompatibility. But true, point taken. I just liked the idea of being dual natured, ripping apart spirits with your bare hands, immunity to age and normal weapons. I'm sure I'm not the only cyber-oriented player that would consider this.

- J.

Actually, the Dual Natured and Immunity to Normal Weapons tricks are incredibly useful; I hadn't thought of that. So basically, Cyberzombies are the ultimate anti-magic response, and a bizzare means of "awakening" a mundane in the most backwards way possible.

Huh.

Cyberzombies have a number of other reasons for existing:

1) Some think they are a ticket to eternal life

2) You can use it to extend the life(and hopefully loyalty) of a skilled warrior

3) They are great anti magic and anti spirit troops

4) They are very demoralizing

5) We need something to make aztechnology look more evil.

6) Because cyber-zombies are super cool.

7) Because mega-corps can.

8 ) Think of the mana tech that could come from further research.

9) Becuase it makes GM's just so very, very happy.

Cyber Liches. CZs have higher max and aug max attribute caps. Paying several million for one fighter with AGI 12 is bad call. Paying a couple million of researcher or designer with logic 12 is not so dumb.


Also CZs are crazy vulnerable on the astral. They can't fly or use ranged attacks on the astral, so an astrally projecting mage or a spirit with an M combat spell, 5 or more magic, and a little space to work with can mess them up pretty easy.

Except they apply their aspected domain/backgroudn count to any spell being cast at them, not just to spells within a certain radius....

There are certain Qualities that a CZ could acquire that would make them a veritable nightmare to any spirit. I forget the name but Magic Resistance or the one that halves the force of any spell cast on him/her? Granted it would make the ritual to create a CZ even more of a bitch but I suspect should they succeed in the task, said CZ would scare the piss out even the most hardened mage or spirit.

- J.

Sure, you can turn a Fomori into a cyberzombie and make it very difficult to deal with by mages or spirits. But you can already do that with anyone with Arcane Arrester and Astral Hazing.

IMO if party A can attack party B and party B can't readily retaliate or disengage, party B is vulnerable.

even if party a uses pea-shooters and party b uses military grade full body armor?

Unless the CZ is a magician or simply has an autoinjector with shade in one of his limbs.
The idea of a cyberlich with insane mental stats and a weapon focus rolling over the astral plane with his background count has something to it, i think.
Fortunately, the Magic of 1 severely limits the operational duration of such a monstrous astral combatant.

For your run-of-the-mill, non-awakened CZ, a wagemage might just have given him one or several bound spirits on remote service hovering outside of the BGC just for that occasion.
Corps tend to protect investments worth millions of .

'scuse me: why?
essence only limits the time someone can astrally project, not the time he can be dual-natured by nature or just astrally percieve O.o
dunno if it's still in, but in SR3 there was the Burning of magic in magical duels between mages.
if that's still in there, this would be the one serious weakness of zombies. if they lose their one magic attribute, they die.

That is touched on in the rules however they do neglect to delve into this.

- J.

Essence is, again, SR3 only for projection. Magic (Hours) in SR4 - also, turns out that a mystic adept with astral projection CAN go on metaplanar quests, as you meditate before projecting and you can stay in astral form as long as you require while on one. Ta, Street Magic.

that works rather because the time in the meta-places does not work like it does in meat/astral-spaces . .
one day in the meta could be one minute in the meat or the other way around.

Don't believe that Mystic Adepts can get Astral projection like full blown Mages can. I do recall an Adept power that gives Limited Astral Projection where it lasts (Magic) Minutes rather than (Magic) Hours though.

I think that came from one of the SOTA books.

you think that right

Yes. I know. It was more a comment on the first thread I ever made in which it was decided that mystica depts could not go on astral quests at all since they'd meditate, then project and run out of time.

Immortality.

Is it really immortality when your life is only maintained by unique designer drugs, and if you stop taking them you die? Is it worth having if you will inevitably go crazy, or simply lose the will to live? Something tells me that the person with vast resources who wants to live forever will use leonization, instead of the tragically flawed cybermancy. Hell, I'd rather stake my fortune on finding a magical cure for aging, like the fountain of youth -- it probably exists in Shadowrun, and it's a safer bet than trying to live forever as a cyberzombie.

Except the mechanics make that a poor comparison. An Amazingly strong willed dwarf with the will boosting cyber written up, only has 8 Will so they are evenly matched versus a run of the mill F4 spirit of man, or a magic 3 spell casting 3( +2 combat) mage. Hardly Pea-Shooters versus Mil-spec.


There isn't a rule that says CZ can't astrally project, but from a fluff stand point it's absurd. The point of all that magic involved centers around keeping the spirit bound to the flesh.


Yes they do, and mixed forces are must in the 6th world, but CZ aren't cost effective as combat monsters. CZ have insane costs in upkeep and creations and don't last.


As for imortality cybermancy isn't it. Don't forget about age pacts with free spirits

There's Background Count, so unless overcasting, it is pea shooters versus mil-spec. Without overcasting, any spell the F4 spirit casts will be reduced to Force 0.

I stand corrected. Pretend i said F5. Magic 5 mages and spirits don't exactly grow on trees, but compared to CZ they might as well.

Eh, ok... so without overcast, the spell is Force 1. I think if you want to even seriously think to challenge a CZ, you'd need Force 7 or 8.

Especially since this hypothetical Essence -4 CZ we're discussing has a natural Willpower max of 10. Even with just a Willpower of 8 or so, you're only needing 1 hit against Force 1.

And of course, unlike Astral Hazing, CZ's can go past a Background Count of 4. How's 6 for ya? Maximum Willpower of 12 (before augmentation), and needing Force 7 before the CZ is even rolling. To actually do anything to a Willpower 12 CZ at Essence -6? We're talking Force 10 just to get even odds. That's what you might call an unhealthy quantity of Drain.

Actually they can't it's always 4 just like Astral Hazing, unless there's an errata for Aug that i have missed.

I've actually build quiet a few CZ (though never actually used them in game against my players) and once you start getting pretty deep into the - Essence, they become a walking magic destroyer.

Any magic using PC who runes into a CZ in game, their first reaction should be total and complete horror. Their second reaction should be to freaking run the freaking hell a freaking way as freaking fast as they freaking can. Change all those to proper four letter words.

only the biggest of guns, either magical OR mundane can do more than scratch and annoy a "good" CZ.
one question though: how does counter-spelling factor into this?
can one dis/counter-spell a cyber-zombie?
because technically, they would have to be a quickened or focus bound enchantment . .

I'm pretty sure that, if you know the ritual to create a cyberzombie, you also know how to reverse that ritual. But you'd probably need to keep him still while you did it, as an ultra-super-secret dark ritual isn't going to be undone with one dice roll. It's a lot easier just to drop a bomb on a cyberzombie, that'll paint his wagon. Or just swap his meds for placebos, and watch him die on his own.

*snippage*
Toxins/Drugs . . if you can get it into him, he's about as fucked as most people i guess . .

A good CZ (read: very negative Essence) will have a monster high body, so most toxins will have little chance of effecting him. That is, if the they can even be effected by toxins anymore. Something I can't remember ATM.

nice thing about toxins is, that no matter how high your armor is, you resist with only natural body . .
in sR3, the meanest thing to do was lace anything with GammaScopolamine. if you got any damage on the attack, the target got to Resist 10D Stun Damage with only natural body and if he had specializes cyber/bio stuff . . but still, even with a 20 in body, try and roll 8 times a 10 on D6 . .
and i guess there's some vile stuff in SR4 too right? O.o

When I said a good CZ would have a monster high body, I was talking about his "Natural" (as much as you can use that term while talking about a CZ) body. If a human CZ has a -10 Essence, his natural body max is 16!

still has to roll good for most toxins neh?

Technically, they are more comparable to bound and invoked spirits.
Cybemancy is a metatechnique that involves knowledge of both Invoking and Corruption (yes, technically, cybermancers would have to be toxics), both of which are directed at spirits.
The end of the cybermantic ritual is a Binding test, not an enchantment.

The fluff in SR4 regarding them is similar.

So the question should be : can they be banished?
The rules don't say anything about it.



Until now, no one has officially managed to take a CZ below -6 Essence.
Of course, the corps are working on that.
I don't suspect the results to be very stable, but one has to keep in mind that cybermancy is becoming more and more reliable.

I wouldn't think so. What's the point of being a cyberzombie if someone can take you out with toxins? I think a basic requirement for a CZ is toxin filtration ware, and probably an oxygen tank. I was referring to the fact that they need special immunosuppressants, requiring a facility to formulate, or they die. Now, if I was a CZ, I'd have chemical analyzer ware and I'd check my pills to make sure they were real. But lacking that, you could kill a CZ by replacing his regular drugs with harmless placebos.

Not quite. I have a group of PCs that was built to take into account background counts and make use of them. One of them had Astral Hazing(hello Astral Hazing Fomori Technomancer!) and the rest of them used BC4 as a hard datum for their builds since that guy is always in the center of BC4, so no one could screw them over with Mana Static hijinks and they could operate just as well in space and other unstable and unfriendly mana environments.

They aren't toxic. Theyre corrupted.

Granted it is a subtle but its a very important distinction.

- J.

I always perceived them as corrupted as well and am aware of the difference, but Corruption is listed under toxic metamagic.

I retract that statement.

BTW all, background count on a CZ is ALWAYS a 4. It does not change irrespective of the essence of the zombie.

If you wanted to houserule it you could argue the BC is equal to the nearest whole number of said CZ's essence. This would allow for nightmarish BC of 6 for the most tricked out CZ.

Realistically though, if you're going to go the route of the CZ, I'd go all the way and push for a -6.

- J.

yeah, if you gotta do something, at least, do it thoroughly and in style . . -6 essence means all 12 max attributes for a human cyber-zombie.
and if you start with the human metatype with the more than 2 arms you can do some pretty ugly things ^^

Hrm. So basically, the Essence loss below 0 represents the effective "Force" of the Inhabiting Corrupted spirit that's controlling the body (which, presumably, happens to be the original body's spirit, just turned sideways, shined up real nice and shoved right up the CZ's candy-ass).

It would seem a reasonable assumption.

If the negative essence is the number of points that enhances the natural attributes of the CZ, it would stand to reason that the background count should have some kind of portional level of taint.

Obviously that process of becoming a CZ is so corrupt and horrifying that it might be higher, perhaps warranting the four minimum rating?

Having said that the more I think about it, the more I think a BC of anything under 4 seems a tad low for what they've become....

- J.

I wouldn't have said it quite that way but yea, that is pretty much right on.

And since your shooting for -6, why not take some serious delta grade bio and cyber, get it in packages, and really load that ass up. You can manage something in the 40s of total essence of Cyberware and Bioware without any merits that reduce their essence cost.

When I just did the math on one I just built, I stuck 26 essence of cyber (Delta, Suite, Adapsin), 12.6 essence of bio (Delta), and 1.8 essence of genetics in em and ended up with a -6 essence. That gave me a total of 40.4 essence worth, which I could have cranked to 42 by dropping the Genetic Optimization in each stat. But hell, I wanted a max of 13 across the board.

Since he was SOTA, I stuck some Wild Card Nano Prototypes in him, but didn't give him any other qualities to reduce the cost.



True, and the effect that their neg essence has is to increase the radius around them. But I feel sorry for the poor magic types who attack one in their home ground. That radius just keeps on growing if they stay in one place and can get pretty damn big in their "home".

I was thinking of CZ's from the other side of the same coin -

How would you use them as a PC if you had mages in the party?Where would said CZ live?

I was thinking - there's a quality for your lifestyle you can take which affects mage, Astral Repellent. Could you take Astral Repellent with a -4 background count and with the CZ's background count, would the two negate each other? Street Magic doesn't cover these sorts of bizarre situations well (overlapping background counts).

- J.

I'd assume more powerful count takes priority.

The CZ would really need lots places to live. Since the radius increases by 1m for every ~3 hours (IIRC), it would be up to ~14m from the center of his house when he leaves it. It also shrinks fairly slowly.

Any place that a CZ has stayed for a length of time will show up fairly well to magic types and he has stayed there for days on end, it will be a big honking wasteland. Our -6 CZ would have a BGC 4 zone with a radius of 62m around a place he stayed for a week.