So, I was wondering how exactly Psychotropic Black IC works in terms of what it can do and how much control the player has over its effects. Can a player decide what quality if causes, subject to GM approval? If so, how specific can I be? Like, if the GM says that I'm allowed to use it to cause delusions, can I pick what kind of delusion it is, or will it just cause "some delusion", and I have no control over what that resulting delusion would be?

Thanks!

when you buy it, you get a specific version. that is, you buy psychotropic(phobia:your PAN, severe) or something like that, not just psychotropic.

i'd probably give a bonus to any programming attempts to make a similar thing if you have the source code... that is, if you had the above phobia version, and you had the source code (important: owning a copy of the program is not the same as having the source code), i'd probably shave quite a bit off of your threshold and even the time interval on your software tests to make a psychotropic(phobia:your buddy's PAN, severe) option on the same base program as your source code was for

how much of a bonus you'd get would depend on how close you are to what you already have. changing the program it's an option for (small difficulty increase for same function but different company, larger for, say, adapting black hammer to blackout), changing the quality (small difficulty for severity change or change of trigger, substantially larger for completely different quality imo, though changing phobia to mania or vice versa would probably be somewhere in between), and other such things would modify the difficulty of what you're trying to do, or at least that's how i'd handle it.

By strict RAW, you make your choices, add the option to an existing program you already have the source for and make your programming rolls in an extended test. Your GM probably has other ideas on that though.

Some ban it outright (the smart ones) or limit its effects. Because it seriously screws with the game in very bad ways. Here's a load of utterly crippling negative qualities... permenantly... just because I managed to hit you once with a single nasty software program which barely hurt you....

Many use the optional sidebar rule that the qualities are only temporary and wear off quickly... but overall... like all crafting rules... you'll need to go over with him what you can craft and in how much time. Exactly how are you programming a phobia in-character when you have zero expertise in simsense or psychology knowledge? Or worse... technomancer threading them on the fly.

Yeah, playing a Technomancer, so threading on the fly....

Anyways, thanks, guys! That's helpful. I was actually asking because my GM is still rather undecided on the issue, and I wanted to solicit some outside opinions.

Mad Fool... then lets put that in simpler terms...

You would simply roll your threading and use a sprite to sustain as normal if you wanted to.

So if you had a rating 5 blackhammer CF. You could thread it up to 5 times... each option is 1 point... each different psychotropic option up to 5 points.

So lets say you wanted to inflict 5 different 5 point flaws on the character. Easy you roll your threading... get 5 successes suffer your 5 drain and just pick them out off the list. The same as you would any other program option.


You then hit some poor schlub with that beatstick in cybercombat ... congrats you've just given him 25BP in negative qualities permanenty by the rules. That'll take *50* karma to buy those off. Now put that shoe on the other foot.. how would you feel if your character got slammed for 50 karma of negatives with no benefit just a big karmic debt to buy them all off otherwise he's effectively a cripple in the matrix.

You see why I'm so negative on these rules? Whoever wrote them obviously loved fluff because they had no bloody idea how severely they affect play when used. That's why I suggest not using them and talking with your GM about that like MAD (mutually assured destruction...) you use them and I'll use them and nobody will have any fun.

At that point the only people who have any business in the matrix are technomancers... (who can get an echo making them immune), or AR hackers (guys who get a ton of meat passes and don't go VR, most often these are adepts but some street sams with hacking secondaries do it as well). Because you can't hurt them with it when they're in AR, only VR.

or you make the effects temporary and call it a day

Even if temporary... most of them are still automatic 'I Win' buttons lionhearted. Whoever wrote them should be fired and never given another writing contract. Whoever playtested them (which I sincerely doubt ever happened), similarly should be kicked out the playtesting program and blacklisted.


Really look at how utterly crippling the negative qualities inflicted can be. Tymeaus loves to give examples of utterly devastating psychotropic options.

You drive the guy out of the matrix and inflict something on him so he'll be too crippled to come back.

Falconer, I actually quite understood why you were down on psychotropics from the get-go. I may try to talk my GM into fully adopting the sidebar option, which permits a vague psychological effect (lethargy, fear, aversion to some particular thing, etc) for (rating) hours. Alternatively, it might be best to just do away with it entirely, and say that you can't go causing specific effects on something as complex as the human brain without full-on PAB reprogramming.

That said, I do like the fluff, and it'd be nice if I could figure out some way it'd be balanced...perhaps require that the target get knocked out? That would only give you one shot at causing the quality, and makes it only useful on Blackout (plus, if you got Blackoutted into unconsciousness, you should be happy they weren't using Blackhammer and you're not dead).

If they (those psychotropic qualities) can be placed with no issue, then they can be removed (through therapy) with no issue. Simplest solution, and no Karmic Debt, as you call it. All it takes is the money to go through the therapy. *shrug*

"Oh you got hit by that spamAd that gives a phobia of non-alcoholic liquids? Here take this tape and listen to it for a few hours, should be good to go, that'll be 800¥ Sir"

TJ:
Even if they can be removed with no issue... they still reflect instant 'I win' buttons... BUT the rules don't reflect that... no unless you use the optional side bars by default they're permanent debilitating scars for life. Think how much fun that is when you're a missions GM... who has to use the rules with no optional components.

Whoever wrote the idea... wanted to make something scary... but it should have been limited to the blackest of black ice. Not something anyone can thread on the fly or get into their favorite blackout program. The kind of thing that isn't a program option but a specially written and crafted combat program all in it's own right.

One hit and you go screaming from the node... unable to login or protect the node as is your job. Yeah that's what I mean by overpowered... you didn't even beat the guy in cybercombat you got one hit on him and abused a clearly broken mechanic.

I guess that you and I just see it differently, then. Nothing new there.
I do get what you are saying, and in theory, it may work that way, but in practice it has yet to do so at our table.

the only extensive use of this i've ever seen is from technomancers.

who can also be basically kicked out of the matrix for an extended period as well, in the form of being killed.

additionally, it requires an investment in blackout or black hammer, which is not trivial for a technomancer. also, so far as i am aware, nothing permits technomancers from having more program options than is regularly allowed active at a time; if you have a rating 5 blackout/black hammer, you can have 2 options, no more.

and then, the psychotropic has to actually work. at rating 5 blackout/black hammer, with two options at rating 1, you're looking at 6 dice vs willpower + biofeedback filter (plus any other applicable modifiers).

fourthly, fading. non-trivial when you're apparently just sucking up 5 points of it on a routine basis for what is likely to be a single use. of course, you can go with the more reasonable 2 points of fading i proposed above, which is much less likely to add up over time, but then you get less in the way of results.

fifthly, there's plenty of stuff it won't work on anyways. agents, sprites, people not using simsense, AIs, IC, etc.

sixthly, if you're using this stuff on a regular basis to cause permanent harm, you should expect to be put on some pretty worrisome "most wanted" lists.

and seventh, a technomancer with a reasonable investment can already functionally remove a person in simsense from the matrix anyways. a single hit from a high rating blackout or black hammer, followed by dumpshock, isn't exactly going to leave the hacker feeling like they just had a wonderful vacation after all. if the technomancer is really serious about it, taking 10 or more damage from a blackout/black hammer is not terribly improbable. if the technomancer is lucky on the damage rolls, they could probably take out someone's stun and physical monitors in a single shot. being able to shut someone down with psychotropic options is not adding anything new to the technomancer's arsenal.

psychotropic effects are great for manipulating people. they're not particularly more useful at getting a KO on your opponent than what a technomancer already has access to.

as for a regular hacker, they're restricted by the fact that you need a completely separate program with separate program options for each purpose. and the fact that loading a psychotropic option means you don't have access to another tool when you might need it, and that the other tool could prevent the need for shutting someone else out of the matrix in the first place (and can potentially do so much more subtly, which is by far likely to be a much better option than going in guns blazing in the first place). and that they could have spent their cash/time elsewhere, like getting some new piece of 'ware that will help keep them in meatspace combat while the technomancer is curled up in a ball somewhere hoping nobody notices them because they have little if any 'ware and skills for that situation, while the average hacker can get fairly close to street samurai levels of capability without making any major sacrifices.

psychotropic is a powerful option, it is true. in the hands of a technomancer, it's downright terrifying. but it's not powerful or terrifying for the ability to get someone out of the matrix; it's powerful and terrifying because you can force someone into the matrix, and then use these effects on them, to gain a benefit outside of the matrix.

Well said Jaid... As I mentioned, I have yet to see Psychotropic actually cause problems in real play.

TM with Psychotropic blackout and that "force trode" echo = the scarecrow?

well, single-target, melee-combat-only scarecrow.

if you really want the scarecrow, load a splash grenade with nanopaste trodes and use an area psychotropic blackout.

(note: i would require nanopaste trode grenades to have a lot more than 100 nuyen worth of nanopaste, and of course you would need to subscribe everyone to a sim module first, making this both resource-intensive and action-intensive, but i think it should work. sort of).

Firstly the number of program options are half program rating... but the rating of those options is still 1-6 unless the option says otherwise.


So the TM in question could start his CF at 5, thread it up 5 more points... put a single psychotropic option on it at rating 5 (better to just go rating 9, 1 poiint psychotropic)... or say increase his rating to 8... and also put 2 different psychotropic options on at rating 1... or increase it to rating 7 and put 3 different options at 1 point each. (the shotgun method... if you keep rolling odds go up that you'll fail at least one test, so one test vs 10 dice, 2 vs 9, or 3 vs 8 dice). Given the nature of technomancers you only need the program option rating at 1... the rest is best used to thread up the CF like normal. (the test is BlackIC Str + program option strength... so it doesn't matter which side of the plus sign you're on).

If dealing with hackers... its' trivially easy to put a single option on at rating 6 right away and keep it there. The rules for adding options to existing programs are a lot less punishing than writing from scratch.
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So sorry Jaid... I disagree with your lowballing of the figures. The few times I've seen it come out.. it has been extremely nasty and pretty much an 'i win' button. Codeblock was a favorite... because it stopped the sucker from doing something critical.

Also the qualities inflicted are so far out of whack... that 15BP negatives are just one program option away.

To take that another way...lets say you're not dealing with another security hacker with biofeedback. Lets say you broke into some guys entertainment simsense unit. Congrats he has almost no defense against this whatsoever.


So yes it's a poorly thought out and utterly broken tool.


While the nanopaste idea is fun... nanopaste isn't just splashed on people and it works. It actually has to be painted and applied to the head properly (hey look a hat!). Also... there's the volumetric problem of chemical & gas grenades... they have to have enough chemical to dose everyone in their volume... for a 10m splash grenade... that's ~250m3. (1/2 4/3 pi*r^3 hemisphere). If each human is roughly 2m3 (1mX1mX2m)... that's ~125 doses worth of chemical.

if you thread up 5 points on a technomancer, you're probably taking damage. if you use even one of those points to go beyond your resonance, it will be physical damage. not a good time.

furthermore, as i've already pointed out, if a TM wants to give the opposing hacker a boot to the head, he's already screwed. period. you don't need psychotropic for that. black hammer at rating 10 has a very good chance of killing the target... which, generally speaking, is somewhat harder to recover from than having a negative quality, regardless of how nasty that negative quality may be. if the technomancer is really serious, black hammer at rating 15-18 is likely not out of reach (about 12-14 is what would likely be possible without taking much fading - start with 6, thread for 2-3 points, have a rating 4-6 registered sprite boost it - and is likely sufficient for the vast majority of targets).

truthfully, for a regular hacker, you just set up a volley of rating 6 black hammer from your agents and you'll get an almost indistinguishable result.

15 BP of negative qualities is unpleasant. but the technomancer can already inflict the "you're completely dead" negative quality in all likelihood, so what's the big deal?

as to the guy sitting at home with his simsense unit... guess what: the technomancer can already crush the poor SOB anyways. there is essentially zero reason to give a crap one way or the other. the technomancer won't even have to thread anything to pwn that system anyways. who gives a damn if the guy using that system can't access it? he's a regular schmuck on his home network. he's chump change. of COURSE it's not a challenge. it shouldn't be. would you expect a street samurai to have a hard time beating the crud out of the VP of finance in the average corporation as well?

Yes he can crush.. and the guy with his home sim module is only in cold sim... congrats you knocked him out.

But he can't do mind control. Psychotropic adds the ability to implant suggestions like adding a compulsion to do something to the character he might not even realize.

And my point is that those qualities themselves are pretty big, not the dinky 5BP negatives but the 15BP ones... so you thread up something and you can truly do worse than kill someone you can torture them with 45... 60 points of negatives.

Such as... a compulsion to go down to the local stuffer shack because he just needs that order of extra large bigass fries. Oh did I mention the rest of the team was waiting there to kidnap him?

black hammer can kill you in cold sim, you just have to fill the stun and physical tracks at the same time. note the following line in blackout: "Damage
from Blackout does not overflow into the Physical Condition Monitor." and the lack of any such line in black hammer, which mentions: "Against cold sim VR users, it only inflicts Stun damage." and furthermore, the following quotes from the cybercombat section:

"If Black IC knocks a user unconscious, it keeps the connection
open."

"Black Hammer overflows the Condition Monitor
just like other damage."

black hammer will absolutely let you kill the target on the other end, even if they're only using cold sim. it just takes a bit longer.

anyways, now that's resolved to what i would hope is your satisfaction, on to the next point:

the complaint was raised that a technomancer can use psychotropic options to knock someone out of the matrix for an extended period of time. that's all very well and good, but as i've just demonstrated, you can already do that whether you have psychotropic options built in or not.

as to your "oh, well, we'll just use blackout with a psychotropic option on him to get him to come out", just because he's not aware of the psychotropic part, doesn't mean he didn't notice that he suddenly got a massive biofeedback spike which made his nose bleed, gave him a migraine, and his mouth is full of blood. or maybe you think that getting hit with several points of stun damage (roughly equivalent to being punched in the gut by a fairly strong troll; note that 5S base is what a strength 10 troll will deal) tickles?

at that point, congratulations: you have absolutely guaranteed that your plan will not go unnoticed. if the guy has medical insurance (which most worthwhile targets will), he'll probably get a matrix call asking if he's alright, because his brain just got it's teeth kicked in, figuratively speaking.

but sure, we'll presume you're setting this up a week in advance or something like that. if the matrix security is so weak your technomancer can just waltz in, no problem, make an attack, and waltz out, still with no problem, and the guy's medical service doesn't notice that his brain just got hit with something more than your basic black IC attack - which will probably be somewhat suspected, given that there's very little else in the way of reasons someone using military grade black IC is going to hit a person once, wounding them, and then walk away unless this person makes a habit of taunting hackers to punch him in the face and having pathetic matrix security measures - then eventually this guy will act on his compulsion.

or, given that his matrix security is apparently so low as to be almost nonexistent, that you have no qualms whatsoever about probably triggering an alarm, you could probably have just had the group sneak in, do whatever you needed done, and sneak out, because if the matrix security is so pathetic i'd be very surprised if there was significant physical security.

the second you use any cybercombat program, any hope of a stealthy completion of the mission is basically gone. sure, he may not be able to spot you, but he can still trigger an alarm, scream for help, or (especially if he's wearing a biomonitor) get called by a concerned medical insurance company, or any number of other things.

as it stands, psychotropic basically gives technomancers a less effective form of mind control magic. except that the technomancer likely payed a hell of a lot more to be decent at what he does than the mage paid to be good at what the mage does... and the mage is likely better at a lot more things than the technomancer.