I know this idea is paranoid, but...

You can have Awakened and Resonant life, right?

Well, Soft Nanite colonies are really just viruses that have been tailored not to act all virus-y and to do something you want them to do, and bioware symbionts are, well, implanted symbionts. Who's to say that you couldn't engineer a strain of Awakened nanites or a Resonant symbiont?




I bet those tricksy corps are working on that shit...

Yes, because mages who can be augmented without sacrificing Magic are exactly what Shadowrun needs.

Well there is that macguffin called the magus factor that screws with magitech.

Technically speaking, they already can be: Nanites don't require Essence loss, just replenishment, which a Nanite Hive (an implanted cyberware device) can handle, but which is not nessessary for the hive to function. And there's also the optional rule allowing symbionts to be implanted without Essence loss, either.


This thread isn't about that, though. It's about the notion of Awakened (or Resonant) symbionts or nanite colonies in mundane characters.

I'm gonna go with holistic integrity on this. Awakened bacteria/virae adapted for nano application would most likely be altered to such a degree that they lose they effectively burn out (bear in mind that extreme genetic alteration is subject to essence loss) Now one could also argue that because they haven't figured out the magus factor, it's impossible to artificially cultivate awakened bacteria/virae.
Nano adapted HMHVV sounds like something out of a zombie movie although.
"We've cured cancer!"
*6 months later*

IIRC, Mages can already use free-floating Nanoware with no Essence Loss. *shrug*
EDIT: Ninja'd by ShadowDragon8685.

Fluorescing Astral Bacteria 1 through 3 would disagree with you, there. You may not be able to clone a magician and get a magician, but you sure can cultivate Awakened plants and bacterium.



Hah, yes, yes it does. It sounds like a phenomenally bad idea, doesn't it?








Also, I'm thinking of like, a symbiont that automatically Counterspells anything thrown at you with its Rating.

Out of curiosity... What would happen when the counter spell symbiot went parasitic?

and I maintain the burnout stance for nanites, symbiotes... Well those you don't need to alter much. Question is if there is a awakened symbiot?
...
Dibs on the babelfish!

Only if it Counterspells everything.

I'm not so sure.

if its possible for diseases and viruses to be awakened and magical, its possible for living machines on a similiar level to be as well.

However, such a device would pretty much impossible to deliberately create on purpose because shadowrun science still isn't sure how all this awakened stuff works. Its much more likely to be a freak accident or an mana-spike based spontaneous evolution.

I find it MUCH more likely that the corps would figure out a way to make an Awakened Symbiont based on already existing awakened creatures, before they figured out a way to make magical nanites.



Finally, samurai have a defense against stunbolt that isn't lots and lots of FAB.

But think about the role playing ideas you could have with it. . . All of a sudden you see a message coming in on your display link:

MESSAGE FROM YOUR CLEAN METABOLISM BIOWARE:

Seriously if you are going to go out and binge drink again tonight I am not helping, and that thing you brought home last night, I had to kick your antibodies into overdrive to clean up all the plauges that so called lady was carrying. Why don't you go to temple and find a nice girl? [4.3 Gigapulses deleted by Sysop]

The people I play with know better than to even suggest bioware with Resonance. That is just a licence to really have fun with them. (& I can do the display link messages with a Yiddish Mother's voice)

-LZ

It would probably be a boolean on/off thing, yes. It either counterspells everything, or nothing.




Why is their PAN seemingly being administrated by FastJack?

Think about what you just said for a moment.
Now let me rephrase your question: How did FastJack, the best decker who ever lived, get into their PAN and mess around with the settings?
See? stupid question.
Though if you meant it as 'Why did FastJack bother?', that makes more sense.

No, no. You get it implanted, it counterspells every spell cast at you from that point forward: not just the Manaball the corp mage is trying to fry you with, but the Levitate your mage buddy is trying to use to get you onto the roof of the target building, the Invisibility keeping you from being perforated by that squad of Red Samurai, and the Heal when you're bleeding out.

Sure, you can be a mundane and have a defense against magic. You just can't turn it off.

A variation could be yhe equivalent of gel packs filled with the bacterial colony - you can't turn it off nut you can drop it when you need the mojo - not completely convenient and it won't help you when you're skinny-diping, but it sounds like a viale alternative. And from a corprate angle it has several interesting bonuses : way les problems with preventing genetic dift and a design that can include a limites helf life, for regular reloads. Also far les chances for nasty side effects rearign thei ugly heads. Not that it would bother a corp much idf some lowlife gets messed up, but with the real market beign in military/law enforcement/corporate security and even some managerial types if you can get it slim and sleek enough, side effects are a concern as those markets have the means to retaliate to shoddy products, unlike Joe Average or Jane Shadowrunner.

I'm sorry but how is this not a foci? Foci are inanimate objects with magical properties, correct?

That corps would be working on making foci would be a given, IMHO, especially with anything they think could give them the edge, but its not their rare successes that would interest me in the shadows, what would happen to all their less than the program specs objects...

Magically jacked up bioware and cyberware is probably already a thing, its probably prohibitively rare in its components let alone as a constituted object. I would bet its probably only owned by a dragon of exceptional influence to boot (and claw and maw...). Good luck trying to steal that, let alone pay for it.

Oh what, a Runner got their hands on some? A when does the manhunt for their parts and possessions begin? It started a month ago? Huh, fancy that. Better hope the dragon behind the Mr J of the Mr J that put you up to grabbin that very verboten gear is feeling generous and not hungry.

Correct. So for Hard Nanites, I could see the argument that they'd have to be foci, as they aren't alive.

But Soft Nanites and Symbionts? Totally living things.

~Umi

One of my players had an interesting experience when his trump card, a great form guardian spirit, ran into some weapon focus shrikes... and dissolved. Still he learned an important lesson - corp offices and corp facilities are two VERY different things.

Except that a focus inactivates if it loses contact to the person it is bonded to.

Am I the only one who suddenly had a bad case of combined Body Horror and And I Must Scream?

Oh, those links are to TVtropes by the way. Don't click them if you want to get anything accomplished today.

*facepalm*

Viruses are NO LIFEFORMS. Viruses are, if anything, naturally occurring nanomachines, though "very complex organic poisons" is maybe a better way of putting it.


Sensible game design. That idea belongs right up there with shelved Omegaware (cyberware with no essence loss. Yes, that Idea was tossed around at the end of SR3).


Cultivate, not scratch-create.

Thats the fun part of GMing if you want dual natured shrikes and treating them as a foci makes it easy you get to do that.

Sure, as a GM i can also state that the great-form spirit trips and breaks his neck. If detached activated foci exist in your world, then mages should be allowed to develop weapon foci bullets/shuriken/whatever ranged weapon as well.

There's like... no difference between what you guys said.

And the answer to both is: He's recording your reactions and putting them up on his site's humor forum.

He's using your PAN as a practice ground for hacking with the new grid. It's important to get a headstart against uppity young'uns that would like to claim the title of Best Hacker.

I thnk I remember some kind of oricalum-based equipment that would accomplish something like this that Ancient History proposed for his magic book.

That's also been a few years and the book never happened, so I could be misremembering.

Read Augmentation again. It is very specific in that you can, in fact, design augmentations with an on/off trigger. In the case of an Awakened symbiont that counterspells everything coming at it, you'd have some kind of biological trigger that puts it to sleep so it can't counterspell anything.

If they're living things enough to be Awakened (see also: HMHVV,) then they're living enough to be tailored and cultivated into Awakened nanite colonies.




There's a vast gulf of difference between "augmentations for Mages with no Essence loss, yay!" and "this little critter we're gonna put in your stomach will counterspell everything thrown at you until it goes to sleep."




Hahahahaha. Fun times.

I honestly do not see an Issue with "OmegaWare". With current game mechanics, you can get your Cyberware Essence cost multiplier to 0.2. Crazy expensive (Delta Ware, Adapsin, Biocompatability, and Suite Costs). I would have no issues with Cyberware that doubles that in cost (x20) for a Base 0.3 Essence Loss (with all the trimmings you get 0 Essence Loss). You would rarely see it as it would be the Bleeding Edge of Cutting Edge. *shrug*

The issue is that even at 0.2 (all the trimmings) there is just not 29.9 Essence points of CyberWare that is useable. You run out of things to get at that level. Of course, the zero Impact on Essence is nice for those awakened/Emerged characters for their couple of points of Cyber, but it is so crazy expensive that it is a moot issue most of the time.