One of the players in our group suggested a run that culminates in a fight with a cybermancy experiment a la Robocop 2. I've got the general ideas down, but I've never made a cyberzombie before, and haven't made many cybered characters at all. What sorts of things should a cyberzombie have, and what sorts of things would make him experimental?

I've been thinking about a swarm exhaler, kinda like a toxin exhaler but it spits out a swarm instead. The group's only real AOE effects are the street sam's grenades, which will be unpleasant to use against a melee attacker.

Also, what about human biodrones? The plot involves a gang leader being experimented on, so having the gang members be his biodrones could be cool. Some would be suicide bombers, but most would basically be perfectly loyal gangers with a little more 'ware than you'd normally expect.

Finally, any way to involve monkeys? (trust me, it makes sense )

I'd rather have the monkeys as biodrones rather than the gangers - the little buggers ahre fast and strong for their size, and raise far less legal issued than fitting a stirrup interface into an human being - even a SINLESS one.

For the gangers, personachips and autoinjectors with the right mix of drugs can get you some good enough results at a fraction of the cost. Especially considering that the corps don't have much interest with a metahuman stirrup interface. Skillwires, personachips, drugs and the like are far cheaper and just as good for most intents and purposes.

Ideas... swiped!

So what sorts of stuff should a cyberzombie have on him? Definitely Move-by-wire, eye mods out the wazoo, ear mods, and a full-body conversion.

Being dual natured but not a magician, how does a cyberzombie defend itself from ranged astral threats?

What's a good race? Troll seems obvious, but is there anything better / more fun? Mayeb a pixie cyberzombie. ;D

I played a CZ face for a little while, I'll see if I can dig out my character sheet and find all the 'wares he had packed in there. I didn't go for the full-body conversion, going more for things that wouldn't be immediately apparent.

As to ranged astral threats, the only solution I could come up with (in my rather limited experience) was close and wreck 'em in mêlée.

Is there some sort of flight or super jump 'ware? Astral foes fly, so melee without the ability to chase isn't really an option.

Astral Hazing, and staying indoors.

Well, a good Ranged Magical Defense is the Inherent Background Count of the CyberZombie. Makes it a might difficult to actually effect them in most capacities.

As for Race? I prefer either Human or Ork. But that is just my preference. There could be all kinds of interesting others. A Naga comes to mind. Assuming you could find enough experimental Delta Grade 'ware for the Naga. Of course, you WERE looking for experimental, weren't you?

The problem with a naga or pixie needing deltaware is the difficulty in getting essence below zero with deltaware. The size of the astral hazing area and unnatural vigor (natural attribute maximum increases) are both based on how negative the essence goes. Working with gangers would be a good enough reason to have some second-hand ware in there.

Also, the invoked memory stimulator (157 Augmentation) is important.

Genemods, nanoware, and similar things could cover experimental. Otherwise, how cybermancy works is a pretty closely-guarded secret. Unless it is being done by one of the few companies who have the knowledge, trying to recreate the process could be a pretty big experiment.

In a pink mohawk game, you also can have that single mad scientist being taught cybermancy by a very, very mean free spirit. Even a small group of (toxic?) magicians (yeah, you need those) and scientist with their own little conspiracy is possible (not entirely impossible, anyway).
Or have some megacorp run secret experiments in an abandoned corner of the city. A street gang of cyberzombies, on the other hand, is way powerful. Those guys are considered one-man-weapons-of mass-destruction, as far as I remember.
This may have some serious impact on your world, though. Cybermancy is such a close guarded secret, not even all megacorps have it - so if a freelancer with the necessary knowledge appears, he's worth a lot of extreme measures, at least alive/with intact brain.

Maybe stick with mind-controlled gangers and a cyberzombie as the end boss?
Magical defense: His own background count is good for starters, if you need more, add in a toxic mage as backup.

Let me know how this goes, I'm very interested in the outcome
A buddy and me have been thinking about such a scenario before, so I'm curious...

Definitely. This is just one cyberzombie and some gangers, not a bunch of cz gangers.

Like this? (Note: Marvel comics villain named "Pestilence", able to spawn beetles from her mouth.)
In case, just allow them to improvise some kind of flamethrower, Hollywood style. The idea itself just sounds great.

Outfit one ore more monkeys with a CAST interface (see "Augmentation"). Then give them customized guns and chameleon suits

-Geneware is always a good way to get Essence down far enough to profit from Unnatural Vigor. Besides that, building a cyberzombie is in large parts just skimming through Augmentation and putting in whatever strikes your fancy. Maybe you'll want to set some budget constraints depending on plausibility, maybe you'll want to add a few more negative Qualities for a CZ who has a really low negative Essence score.
A -6 CZ would come out of the procedure considerably deranged if the leading mage isn't really, really capable.

-Astral Hazing is a CZs most important defense against astral threats. It's safe to assume that he is also accompanied by powerful spirits to defend against projecting magicians. Note that Magical Guard is unaffected by the CZ's background count as it is a spirit power. The spirits may very well be toxic, too. After all, cybermancy has Corruption as a prerequisite, and that's basically a toxic metamagic.

-If you want something really nasty, go for a troll ghoul. Combined with cybermancy, the Strength and Body scores you can end up with are just scary. Ghouls also have the advantage that they already know Assensing before they are zombified, which makes adaptation to unlife a bit easier.
Pixies won't work by RAW, thanks to the Vanishing weakness (cybermancy is listed as an example for situations in which the pixie would just disappear).
You could, of course, always go for Binky, the Horse of the Apocalypse (centaur with Shiva Arms II, full cyberlimb replacement and maxed-out cyberlimb armor).

I just noticed that the background count of a CZ applies within that radius and also to any attempts to use magic on it, regardless of range. I'm not as worried about astral defense now, I thought they could just sit astrally at the ends of the haze zone and nuke away, but at -4 magic for attack spells and powers they're not likely to do much. That plus a spirit set to protect it astrally should be enough.

Speaking of spirits, I just found my experimental portion. Normally Cybermancy requires Corruption and Invoking. This version will be Aztechnology's attempt at a homebrew version using Sacrifice and Invoking Blood Spirits.

Huh, that's wierd. Scratch that last bit. The rules section says it requires corruption, but the fluff says Aztechnology started it with blood magic. The team has dealt with several toxic threats lately though, so this one will definitely be blood magic based.

Many, many moons ago I ran a campaign that featured a deranged former cyber-surgeon that hired my PCs to help him take revenge on his former employer (who maimed him and killed his family when he tried to defect with knowledge of thier evil doings...). The character was basically a twisted mad scientist type that had replaced most of his body with obvious, alien-looking cyberware (including his legs with a hover platform)- the kind of shit no sane member of society would do to themselves. He had cybered street urchen/messenger named Minion (imagine a street kid with obvious black opaque cybereyes) who was his window into society and the runners' point of contact. They lived in an abbondoned building in Puyallup that the locals stayed far away from.

But heres the creepy part: lacking certain necissary resources to create CZs (mostly magic) he applied his knowledge of advanced cybertechnology in another way: he used makeshift tech and dead bodies as a platform for building undead "biodrones" (mind you this was long before SR4 came up with the concept) called Sentinels. These were usually dead elves all stiched together Frankenstien-stylee. They had shaven heads, mouths stiched shut, opaque black cybereyes. All 4 limbs were replaced with telescoping cyberlimbs and they had long handrazor/claws. They would scuttle around in dark places all hunched over until a threat was detected and then they would stand errect to like 2 meters tall and tear shit up. They were controlled by a jarhead/computer/zombie called Guardian- an obese human's dead body (head mostly) used as a platform for a drone network server (or what we would now call a nexus).

My players said these were some of the most terifying images they had ever encountered in a SR game.

That is just awesome, Method...

Jep, awesome. Really, really awesome.

That is an awesome idea. I've worked with Cyberzombies once before, and as a GM, I had to tone them down to avoid a total party wipe.

The party got lucky, as on a glitch, the gun bunny accidentally threw her entire belt of grenades (8 frags, 10 high explosive) at the zombie, and the rest of the party was charging in a vehicle. Threw another round of combat, the grenades went off through sympathetic detonation, and with the zombie right on top of them, he barely was dropped (at the mention of the "barely", the party about lynched me), the rest of the party in the charging van barely survived, and the gun bunny got crazy lucky with spending edge.

That is an odd glitch.

Yeah, that is exactly what I was thinking myself.

Well, I've opted for a cyborg instead of a cyberzombie. The player that requested the run mentioned RoboCop 2's bad guy, and while that could be a cyberzombie troll with full-body modification, it's easier and truer to the original to go straight cyborg. What I've got so far:

Cyborg is an experimental large walker drone with 10 body and 30 armor. The armor is also experimental. It's ablative, so its designed to provide massive up front protection but fall off over time. I don't have an exact rate of decay yet. -1 per shot seems about right, as there's only two guys on the team with guns. He's also got a 10P claw hand, 6S(e) shock hand, and a gun of some sort on an articulated arm.

The monkeys are mutated Green Monkeys (RW 94). They'll have alibinism, adrenaline surge, +4 reaction, orientation goads, and collars with internal auto-jectors and shock pads. They start with clubs, so I figure it wouldn't take too long to train them to use stun batons (just be sure to pick up the right end). The batons will be experimental versions that do 6P(e) instead of 6S(e), but the power output they require means that they glitch easier. I'm not sure if they should count as having an extra 1 or just have 1's count double. The autoinjectors are loaded with kamikaze and jazz, and controlled wirelessly. The shocker is for knocking them out once the enemy is taken care of, since otherwise that cocktail they're running on might have them killing each other.

Finally, the cyborg has a storage space that contains a Body 4 swarm if stinger biodrones. I haven't decided what payload they'll carry. Maybe Surtr nanites Seven-7. In any case though, forcing the team to nuke itself to take them out should be fun.

Just give the Experimental Stun Batons the Gremlins 2 Negative Quality. So a Glitch requires 2 less 1's than normal. Simple and easy...

Thanks! I hadn't seen that. Is it in Unwired?

Gremlins is in the SR4A Main Book. Negative Qualities. Page 94.

Thanks.

The first run of Robocrook and the monkeys are here.

Note on the clubs : making they pick the right end is rather easy : just make sure the business end isn't comfortable to grip - maybe even use the lowest setting of the taser to give them an electric-fence style jolt during training. They'll soon lern to use the right end.